25

“This is weird,” said Kim Mykolos. “Seriously weird.” She was standing in the middle of the forgotten room, staring around in slack-jawed fascination.

When Logan had let her in on the secret — after securing the necessary promises of utter confidentiality — the young woman’s reactions had been first disbelief, then shock, and then consuming curiosity. Leaning against the worktable, Logan watched as she moved around, peering at this and that, reaching out to touch something, then quickly pulling back her hand as if afraid of being burned.

The tungsten lamp stood in a bare corner, providing a strong illumination but also splashing deep, jagged shadows against the far wall. Turning toward the worktable, Logan opened his duffel, pulled out a video camera, and then a portable music player, which he placed beside the unknown implements and turned on. The calmly syncopated rhythms of Jazz Samba wafted quietly over the room.

“And you say that whatever research was going on in here stopped abruptly in the midthirties?” she asked.

Logan nodded.

“And the room was sealed off and remained forgotten to this day?”

“So it seems. And all the notes and records of whatever went on here have apparently vanished from Lux’s files.”

“What about Dr. Strachey? Did he discover this room before…” Her voice trailed away.

“I don’t know for sure. But it’s quite possible.”

Mykolos pulled herself away from her examination and glanced over at Logan. “So why me, exactly? How can I help?”

“You were his assistant. You’re got a background in computer logic, in reverse engineering. I need a mind like yours if I’m going to solve this room.”

“Solve it?”

“Yes. I’m convinced that only by solving its puzzle will I learn why Strachey died. And besides, from a purely practical standpoint I need a second pair of hands.” He hefted the video camera. “I want you to use this to document everything we do here.”

Mykolos nodded slowly. “So how do we start, exactly?”

“I’ve given that a lot of thought. I think the most important thing is to understand the purpose of that.” And he pointed to the oversized, coffin-shaped device of polished wood that sat in the center of the room.

“I was wondering about that. It looks sort of like a mystery machine on steroids.”

“A what?”

“A mystery machine. Something from the old penny arcades. A big box of wood or metal, with question marks all over it but no obvious features — no handles, levers, knobs. You put in your penny and then kicked it, banged it, tried to figure out how to make it do whatever it did.”

“Well, don’t kick it, please.”

Mykolos nodded toward the bulky metal suits that hung from a metal bar on the far wall. “What do you make of those?”

“I can only assume they’re some sort of protective gear.”

She walked up to the closest, took it gently by one wrist, and moved the arm up and down, watching as the fanlike elbow joints telescoped to accommodate the movement. “Protection from what?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” He motioned her over to the central device, handed her the video camera. “You see those brass plaques screwed into the base, there and there? Those are manufacturers’ imprints.”

Mykolos turned on the camera and pointed it at the indicated plaques, filming both.

“I’ve looked into the names on those plaques. Elektrofabriken Kelle was a German electronics firm founded in Dresden in 1911. It has since merged with so many companies that its original purpose has become obscure. And in any case, all its records were destroyed in the firebombing of 1945. Rosewell Heavy Industries was an early manufacturer of sound and radio equipment. It went out of business in the fifties. I haven’t been able to learn much beyond the fact that it made highly specialized equipment for industrial use.”

Mykolos panned the camcorder slowly over the device. Then she thoughtfully caressed the appendages that sprouted irregularly here and there: gently curved panels of rosewood, carefully fitted and locked to the central mechanism, itself completely encased in wood. She walked over to the thick end of the device, looked at the roman numerals etched into the floor beyond. Next, she walked around to the narrow end and filmed the heavy wooden housing that was locked in place onto it. Lowering the camera, she pointed at the two words, BEAM and FIELD, etched into another brass plaque just beneath the cowling, raising her eyebrows at Logan as she did so.

“As good a place to start as any,” he said. Approaching, he examined a wooden keyhole set into the housing directly over the plaque. Plucking a flashlight from his duffel, he gave it an even closer examination. Then, pulling a set of lockpicks from his pocket and laying the flashlight on top of the housing, he started working on the lock.

“Odd skill for a professor of history,” Mykolos said as she filmed the process.

“Don’t forget, I’m an enigmalogist, too.”

A brief silence settled over the room, broken only by the low sounds of samba. “What’s with the Stan Getz?” she asked after a moment.

“I’ll tell you if you promise not to laugh.”

“I promise.”

“I’m what’s known as a sensitive. An empath. I have a knack — if you can call it that — for hearing things, sensing things, that people felt or experienced, whether in the present or in the past. This room is…unpleasant. I’ve been hearing music — hearing it in my head. Stan Getz helps me to tune it out.”

“What kind of music?”

“Wild arpeggios, giant clashing clusters of notes, waves of sound. Unsettling melodies, almost insolently virtuosic.”

“You could almost be describing Alkan.”

Logan paused. “You mentioned him before. Wasn’t he a favorite composer of Strachey’s?”

“Charles-Valentin Alkan. Perhaps the strangest composer who ever lived. Yes, Willard was a huge fan. In fact, Alkan was the only composer other than Bach thematically and harmonically complex enough to interest him. I think it was his mathematical turn of mind.”

Logan reapplied himself to the lock, and a second later there came a click as the last pin crossed the shear line. Straightening up, Logan placed both hands on the rosewood cowling and carefully lifted it. Beneath lay a row of buttons, with two knobs — one above the BEAM label and the other above the FIELD label — sporting matching antique VU meters and sets of switches. Everything was remarkably free of dust.

“What do you suppose all this means?” Mykolos asked, putting the camera aside and shaking out her jet-black hair.

“You tell me. You’re the propeller-head, remember?”

For a moment, they looked at the controls in silence. “Do you see anything that looks like an on switch?” Logan asked.

“No. But I wouldn’t look for one near these controls. I’d look on the side, below, nearer whatever machine powers this thing.”

Logan hunted around the base of the wooden housing until he found a much smaller cowling attached to the near edge. Once again employing his lockpicks, he managed to remove it after about ten seconds of manipulating the pins. Beneath were two switches, one marked PWR and the other LOAD.

“Bingo,” Mykolos said, looking over his shoulder, video camera once again in hand, eyes widening in excitement.

Logan reached forward to flip the power switch, then hesitated. “Should we?”

“Won’t get any further if we don’t.”

Gingerly, he took hold of the switch, then flipped it into the on position. At first, there was nothing. Then there came a low humming, almost beneath the threshold of hearing. He placed one hand on the main housing. It was now vibrating slightly.

“Anything?” Mykolos asked as she filmed.

Logan nodded.

“What’s that?” And she pointed to the LOAD switch.

“It probably connects a load from a voltage source.”

“In other words, like throwing a car from neutral into drive.”

“Basically, yes.”

They looked at each other, then at the switch. Even more gingerly this time, Logan reached forward and placed the tips of his fingers on it.

“You think maybe we ought to put on those suits of armor first?” Mykolos said, only half joking.

Logan did not reply. He took a firm grip on the LOAD switch, flipped it into the active position.

Nothing happened.

“Broken,” Mykolos said after a moment.

“Not necessarily. We don’t know the function of all those switches and dials on the front panel. They probably do the real work. But let me see if I can get the rest of these cowlings off first.”

Logan turned off the load switch, then the power switch. The faint vibration stopped and the device came to rest. Then, one after the other, Logan picked the locks of the two wooden housings fixed to the flanks of the device, and then, lastly, the metal plate covering the wide far end. Removing the two cowlings revealed complex gizmos of metal and rubber. One reminded him of a bulky, futuristic antenna; the other a kind of labyrinthine radiator, sporting two rows of horizontal tubes.

He shook his head. It seemed that each bit of progress they made with this strange device just yielded up fresh mysteries.

They bent over the antenna-like device. “What do you make of it?” Logan asked. “Does it ring any bells?”

“Look at this faceplate.” And Mykolos pointed to a legend beneath the contrivance that read, in small letters: EFG 112-A. PATENT 4,125,662. WAREHAM ELECTRIC COMPANY, BOSTON. TOLERANCES 1–20 MG, .1–15 MT.

“ ‘mG,’ ” Logan read aloud. “Do you suppose that’s milligauss?”

“I think so. And I think mT stands for microtesla.”

“Then this thing is a…” Logan fell silent.

“A primitive electromagnetic field generator. And that” — she pointed at the lower section of the assembly — “is probably a rotatable pickup coil.”

Logan took a step back from the machine.

“What is it?” Mykolos asked.

Logan did not reply.

“What is it?” she repeated, frowning.

“One function of such generators,” Logan said at last, “is to detect changes in electromagnetic fields.”

“Yes, I recall that from my electrical engineering courses. So?”

“In my line of work, they’re used for a specific kind of electromagnetic change. Distortions caused by paranormal events.”

Surprise, then disbelief, crossed Mykolos’s face. “You aren’t saying that this was a machine built to…to detect ghosts?”

“It seems possible. Interest in spiritualism and mysticism was big in the nineteen thirties, and—”

“Wait. You’re creeping me out here.” Now it was Mykolos’s turn to take a step back from the machine. “You think this thing was created to detect ghosts…and was abandoned because it didn’t work?”

“Perhaps,” Logan murmured. “Or perhaps because it worked too well.”

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