Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [4]
“Not nearly so extraordinaire as Alastair Wohlmeth.”
Reaching into her canvas sack, the crone produces the January, April, and July issues of Oscillation Dynamics for 1879. “But you published articles in all these, ja?”
“It was a good year for me,” Jonathan replies, nodding. “No fewer than five of my projects came to fruition.”
“But 1881 will be even better.” The crone’s voice suggests a corroded piccolo played by a consumptive. “Before the month is out, you will bring peace and freedom to a myriad unjustly imprisoned souls.” From her sack she withdraws a leather-bound volume inscribed with the words Journal of Baron Gustav Nachtstein. “I am Countess Helga Nachtstein. Thirty years ago I gave birth to the author of this confession, my beloved Gustav, destined for an untimely end—more untimely, even, than the fate of his father, killed in a duel when Gustav was only ten.”
“My heart goes out to you,” Jonathan says.
The Countess sighs extravagantly, doubling the furrows of her crenellated brow. “The sins of the sons are visited on the mothers. Please believe me when I say that Gustav Nachtstein was as brilliant a scientist as your Dr. Wohlmeth. Alas, his investigations took him to a dark place, and in consequence many innocent beings have spent the past eleven years locked in an earthly purgatory. Just when I’d begun to despair of their liberation, I happened upon my son’s collection of scientific periodicals. The fact that the inventor of the Wohlmeth Resonator is no longer among the living has not dampened my expectations, for I assume you can lay your hands on such a machine and bear it to the site of the tragedy.”
“Perhaps.”
“As consideration I can offer one thousand English pounds.” The Countess presses her son’s diary into Jonathan’s uncertain grasp. “Open his journal to the entry of August the sixth, 1870, and you will find an initial payment of two hundred pounds, plus the first-class railway tickets that will take you from London to Freiburg to the village of Tübinhausen—and from there to Castle Kralkovnik in the Schwarzwald. May I assume that a week will suffice for you to put your affairs in order?”
Cracking the spine of the Baron’s journal, Jonathan retrieves an envelope containing the promised bank notes and train tickets. “I must confess, Countess, I’m perplexed by your presumption.” He glances toward the grave, noting that the crater is now sealed. The mourners linger beside the mound, each locked in contemplations doubtless ranging from cherished memories of Dr. Wohlmeth to wonderment over who among them will next feel the Reaper’s scythe to curiosity concerning the location of the nearest public house. “Does it not occur to you that I may have better things to do with my time than extirpating your son’s transgressions?”
By way of reply, the Countess produces from her sack a tinted daguerreotype of a young woman. “I am not the only one to experience remorse over Gustav’s imprudence. My granddaughter Lotte is also in pain, tormented by her failure to warn her father away from his project. Having recently extricated herself from an ill-advised engagement, she is presently in residence at the castle. The thought of meeting the renowned Dr. Hobbwright has fired her with an anticipation bordering on exhilaration.”
JONATHAN SPENDS THE remainder of the afternoon in the Queen’s Lane Coffee-House, perusing the Baron’s confession. Shortly after four o’clock, he finishes reading the last entry, then slams the volume closed. If this fantastic chronicle can be believed, then the evil that Gustav Nachtstein perpetrated was of so plenary an intensity as to demand his immediate intervention.
He will go to the Black Forest, bearing a tuning fork and collateral voltaic piles. He will redeem the damned souls of Castle Kralkovnik. But even if their plight had not stirred Jonathan, the case would still entail two puissant facts: £1,000 is the precise sum by which a competent vibratologist might continue Dr. Wohlmeth’s work on a scale befitting its worth, and never in his life has Jonathan beheld a creature