The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle) by Catherine Webb Read Free Book Online Page A

hats,’ scowled Lyle. ‘ Who? What name does he leave?’
    The butler sat up. ‘Mr Augustus Havelock,’ he said. ‘The man’s called Mr Augustus Havelock.’
    In the silence, the tick of the upstairs grandfather clock became deafening. At length, in a voice rattling from a throat suddenly tight as a noose, Lyle said, ‘Are you sure of that name?’
    ‘Yes. Is he important?’
    ‘He . . . has his moments. I need to see Berwick’s room.’
    ‘I ain’t sure if that’s ...’
    ‘Miss,’ snapped Lyle, grey eyes suddenly burning, ‘in my time, I have been hit by lightning and chased by madmen, I have built a machine that can fly above the city and fought a battle on the ice of a frozen river. If you could imagine half the things that frighten me, you would never be able to sit alone in a darkened room by yourself, and of all the things in this world that alarm me, Augustus Havelock is right up there, next to demons with glowing eyes, on the top of my list. If your master is mixed up with Augustus Havelock, and wanted by Them at the same time, then your salary had better be very, very good, because I swear all manner of trouble is just itching to come your way. Now show me his room!’

    Tess had just one memory of Augustus Havelock, and even then, she couldn’t put a face to it. It had been an encounter that felt an infinity ago, when the world was fuzzy and out of focus, and she woke up every day surprised to find that a week had gone by, not sure of when the next week would come, a time before the night she ’d met Horatio Lyle, and everything had changed.
    Even if there was no face, there was the voice still firmly in her mind, as sharp as the snap of a silk flag in a strong breeze, soft until the click of the sharper sounds, when she could hear the teeth in his mouth as sure as if he was a feeding piranha closing his jaws for the kill.
    He had said, ‘Miss Teresa Hatch. I’m informed you are a very, very good thief.’
    She had said, ‘I’m good, yep. Whatcha want, bigwig?’
    He had said, ‘For a start, respect. You may call me Mr Havelock. And I will pay you five pounds for the privilege.’
    And for five pounds, she had called him Mr Havelock. For the same five pounds, she promised to do just one job for him, on a house on that strange class barrier between the slums of Blackfriars and the streets off the Strand, where the medieval buildings of Fleet Street decayed into rotting wooden sheds or were replaced by new brick houses, and where Mr Horatio Lyle patiently carried out his experiments, long into the night. For five pounds she would have run to Edinburgh and back and still had change from the expenses - but things were different now. Things had changed the night she went to earn her five pounds, and now she only remembered Augustus Havelock as a bad dream.
    Horatio Lyle clearly remembered Augustus Havelock with more distinct feeling, apparent as he systematically tore Berwick’s bedroom to pieces, dragging pillows off the bed, peering under the mattress, opening every drawer and even looking behind every book, running his fingers down their spines and scowling at every title on the shelf.
    ‘Magnetism, magnetism, magnetism!’ he chanted, turning from the bookshelf. ‘Berwick, Havelock and bloody magnetism!’
    ‘It might be all right?’ hazarded Tess. ‘I mean . . . like this bloke Havelock, he ain’t done nothin’ evil for a while, yes?’
    ‘Apart from hiring you to break into my house?’ suggested Lyle.
    ‘Well, yes, but that were all his fault and nothin’ to do with me!’
    ‘Augustus Havelock is a bad person ,’ hissed Lyle. ‘He ’s never doing anything but it ’s for something bad .’
    ‘How’d you know him anyway?’
    ‘Oh, we ’ve met many times,’ he rumbled, running his fingers round the edge of the wall in the forlorn hope it might not be as solid as it looked. ‘He likes to say he’s a scientist.’
    ‘Well, that can’t be so nasty!’
    ‘He’s a