Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [58]
I shook him off and renewed my address to Lord Bendray. "It's true; I am in complete ignorance of these things–"
"Don't pay any attention to him! He's flipped out!"
The vast interior of Bendray Hall, with its colonnaded, marble staircases, seemed to wheel about me as I spun about on my heel with hands upraised. "I don't know for what purpose you've brought me here; what you expect me to be able to assist you with – and this thing you call a Regulator… Granted, my father may have constructed it, but what it is, and what it does, are subjects beyond my comprehension!"
"Indeed?" Lord Bendray greeted this revelation, not with the outrage that Scape had apparently expected, but with a quizzical smile. "My dear boy – why didn't you tell me this sooner?" He took my arm again, solicitously patting it with one veiny hand. "There should be no secrets in matters of Science. My word, no; I forgot that you had not the opportunity to spend time with your late father as I had. A brilliant man, he was – yes; yes, indeed; brilliant." He drew me on, his tottering steps leading into one of the Hall's wings. "You shall know all; that I promise you–"
I looked over my shoulder and saw Scape, palms upward, shrugging mutely at Miss McThane.
"Ah, here's the port. That will be all." Lord Bendray dismissed his servant, but retained the bottle from the silver tray. I took the offered glass and followed after him. He had guided me down several flights of stairs, the walls mouldering with damp and age, to reach his laboratory beneath the Hall.
He swallowed the contents of his glass in a single go, head thrown back and the cords of his thin neck tightening around the wobbling bob of his Adam's apple. The dark port brought a diluted spot of its colour into his grey cheeks. He sauntered beneath low stone arches, the bottle angling in his hand, appearing the model of a London roué entering some haunt of dissipation.
I looked about the space as I sipped from my own glass. It stretched as far as I could readily see; from the aspect of the walls and ceiling, it appeared as if the various chambers beneath the Hall had been knocked into one, leaving only the great stone pillars to support the weight of the house towering above. Rows of gas jets provided illumination; several of these had lens and reflector contrivances to magnify and focus their light upon the various workbenches and racks of equipment strewn through the area. Everywhere the glitter of polished brass reflected into my eye. Again, my father's craftsmanship; more of it than I had ever seen before in one place, including the workroom of his that I had inherited with the shop. Some of the items I recognised as duplicates, albeit in better preserved condition, of those in my possession. Others were unrecognised by me, and of unguessable function, in form as varied as what seemed an articulated spider taller than a man, or a simple pocket watch with dial calibrated into unknown hours. The latter I picked up as I passed the bench it lay upon; the motion of my hand triggered some internal mechanism; a soft bell-like chime sounded. The note stopped only when I realised it was counting out the measure of my pulse, and I dropped the device with a sudden unreasoning panic. I hurried after Lord Bendray as he progressed through this clockwork Aladdin's Cave.
"Great things…" Lord Bendray's wavering voice echoed from the limits of the subterranean space. The level in the bottle had gone down by several measures; his spirits were correspondingly elevated. "The man was a genius…"
"Your Lordship – perhaps you had better rest a bit." We had come far from the stairs by which we had descended; looking about, I could not even see in which direction they lay, so confusing were the interlacing arches and pillars. Alone as