"We'll leave the sacks here," I said. "As far off the floor as possible. I'll come down here again tomorrow, when it's daylight. With a better torch."
"I completely understand, sir."
Together we went to the left wall, and located another of the slabs. Bracing myself, I felt across it with my hand. There seemed to be nothing significant there, so with Hutton's help I lifted up the two sackfuls of prestige materials. With this done, and without saying another word between us, we returned quickly to the surface, and pushed the outer door closed behind us. I shuddered.
In the cold air of the night-time garden, Hutton and I shook hands.
"Thank you for helping me, Hutton," I said. "I had no idea that it would be like that down there."
"Nor I, my Lord. Will you be requiring anything else from me this evening?"
I considered.
"Would you and your wife care to join myself and Lady Colderdale at midnight? We plan to see in the New Year."
"Thank you, sir. We shall be honoured to do so."
And that was how our expedition ended. Hutton dragged the handcart away towards the garden shed, and I crossed the East Lawn then walked around the periphery of the house to the main entrance. I came directly to this room, to write my account while events were still fresh.
However, a necessary delay arose before I could begin. As I entered the room I caught a sight of myself in my dressing mirror, and I stopped to look.
Thick white dust clung to my boots and ankles. Cobwebs straggled across my shoulders and chest. My hair had become matted on my head, apparently held down by a thick layer of grey dirt, and the same filth caked my face. My eyes, red-rimmed, stared out from the hollow mask my face had become, and for a few moments I stood there transfixed by the sight of myself. It seemed to me that I had been hideously transformed by my visit to the family tomb, becoming one of its denizens.
I shook off the thought with the dirty clothes, climbed into the filled bath waiting for me in my dressing room, and washed away the grime.
Now this account has been written, and it is close to midnight. It is time for me to seek out my family and household for the simple and familiar ceremony that celebrates the end of one year and, in this case, one century, then welcomes in the next.
The twentieth century is the one when my children shall mature and thrive, and I, of the old century, shall in due course leave it to them. But before I go I intend to leave my mark.
1st January 1901
I have been back to the vault, and moved the prestige materials to a better position. Hutton and I then put down some rat poison, but in future I shall have to find something more secure than canvas sacks in which to store the materials.
15th January 1901
Idmiston Villas
Hesketh Unwin reports that he has received three bookings for me. Two of them are already confirmed, while the other is conditional on my inclusion of In a Flash (which is now temptingly described in Unwin's standard proposal). I have agreed to this, and so all three bookings may be considered secure. A total of three hundred and fifty guineas!
Yesterday, the Tesla apparatus arrived back from Derbyshire, and with Adam Wilson's assistance I immediately unpacked it and erected it. According to my clock it took under fifteen minutes. We must be able to be sure of doing it within ten minutes, when working in a theatre. Mr Alley's sheet of instructions declares that when he and Tesla were testing its portability they were able to erect the whole thing in under twelve minutes.
Adam Wilson knows the secret of the illusion, as he must. Adam has been working for me for more than five years, and I believe I can trust him. To be as sure as reasonably possible I have offered him a confidentiality bonus of ten pounds, to be paid into an accumulating fund in his name after each successful performance. He and Gertrude are expecting their second child.
I have been putting in more work on my stage presentation of In a Flash, as well as rehearsing several of my other illusions. As it is several months since my last public performance I am a little rusty. I confess I approached such routine work without enthusiasm, but once I settled down to it I began to enjoy myself.
2nd February 1901
Tonight I performed at the Finsbury Park Empire, but did not include In a Flash. I accepted the commission as a way of testing the water, to experience the feeling once again of performing before a live audience.
My version of The Disappearing Piano went down exceptionally well, and I was applauded loud and long, but at the end of my act I felt myself frustrated and dissatisfied.
I hunger to perform the Tesla illusion!
14th February 1901
I rehearsed In a Flash twice yesterday, and will do so twice again tomorrow. I dare not make it any more than that. I shall be performing it on Saturday evening at the Trocadero in Holloway Road, then at least once again in the week following. I believe that if I can perform it regularly enough then extra rehearsals, beyond stage movements, misdirection and patter, should not be necessary.
Tesla warned me that there would be aftereffects, and these are indeed profound. It is no trivial matter to use the apparatus. Each time I pass through it I suffer.
In the first place there is the physical pain. My body is wrenched apart, disassembled. Every tiny particle of me is thrown asunder, becoming one with the aether. In a fraction of a second, a fraction so small that it cannot be measured, my body is converted into electrical waves. It is radiated through space. It is reassembled at its designated target.
Slam! I am broken apart! Slam! I am together again!
It is a violent shock that explodes in every part of me, in every direction. Imagine a steel bar smashing into the palm of your hand. Now imagine ten or twenty more hammering down in the same place from different angles. More fall on your fingers, your wrist. A hundred more strike the back of your hand. The ends of your fingers. Every joint.
More explode out from inside your flesh.
Now spread the pain through your whole body, inside and out.
Slam!
A millionth of a second of total agony!
Slam again!
That is how it feels.
Yet I arrive in the selected place, and I am exactly as I was that millionth of a second earlier. I am whole in myself, and identical to myself, but I am in the shock of ultimate pain.
The first time I used the Tesla apparatus, in the basement of Caldlow House, with no warning of what I was to experience, I collapsed to the floor in the belief that I had died. It did not seem possible that my heart, my brain, could survive such an explosion of pain. I had no thoughts, no emotional reactions. It felt as if I had died, and I acted as if I had died.
As I slumped to the floor, Julia, who of course was there with me for the test, ran to my side. My first lucid memory in the post-death world is of her gentle hands reaching into my shirt to feel for a sign of life. I opened my eyes, in shock and amazement, happy beyond words to find her beside me, to feel her tenderness. Quickly I was able to stand, to reassure her that I was well, to hold her and kiss her, to be myself once more.
In truth, then, physical recovery from this brutal experience is itself speedy, but the mental consequences are formidable.
On the day of that first test in Derbyshire, I forced myself to repeat the test in the afternoon, but as a result I was cast into the darkest gloom for much of the Christmas period. I had died twice. I had become one of the walking dead, a damned soul.