'Look up there,' he said when Sir Darius and Aubrey had joined him. 'This must appeal to you.'
He pointed. Evenly spaced around the base of the dome were a number of black boxes. They were slightly tilted, so they looked down on the great space below. Featureless, they looked to be about the size and dimensions of a small trunk.
'If I'm supposed to be impressed,' Sir Darius said,' then I'm afraid you've failed.'
Rokeby-Taylor shook his head in mock disappointment. 'I'm sorry about that. I thought you would have been more interested in the greatest advance in magical security in the last hundred years.'
'A grand claim. What are they?'
'Magic suppressors.'
Sir Darius looked up sharply, but Aubrey couldn't help himself. 'Magic suppressors? That small?'
'Ah, I seem to have genuine interest,' Rokeby-Taylor said. 'From both of you.'
'I've heard something about them,' Sir Darius said. 'Experimental, aren't they?'
'I encourage all Rokeby-Taylor industries to be at the forefront of development. You saw that with the Electra.' He rubbed his hands together.
'I saw a demonstration of a magic suppressor at a Royal Society lecture last year,' Aubrey said. 'It was huge, as big as an omnibus. It didn't work properly, either.'
'I told you I have some remarkable people working for me,' Rokeby-Taylor said. He had trouble keeping a grin from his face. 'The Rokeby-Taylor Magic Suppressors are innovative in every way – size, reliability, and other details that I'm far too busy or far too stupid to understand. If they're carefully situated, they can generate an intense damping field.'
'They stop magic,' Sir Darius said.
'No magic whatsoever can be performed, undertaken or sustained within the field generated by my marvellous little boxes.'
The implications made Aubrey's head spin. 'This could be worth a fortune.'
'My thoughts precisely and I'm glad to hear it coming from someone else. A very sizeable fortune, I hope.' He gestured. 'These are the first fully operational models. All I need is some investment funds and some publicity. I put these in the bank, gratis, in order to achieve the latter.'
'And you're looking to me for the former?' Sir Darius said. 'You don't give up, do you, Clive?'
'Come this way,' Rokeby-Taylor said. 'You can see better from over here.'
He took them to the wall near the entrance, pointing out the positioning of the boxes and how they covered the entire banking chamber. A pair of uniformed guards nearby showed unfeigned interest, peering into the heights.
Aubrey automatically wanted to test the magical suppressors, and found a simple light spell springing to his lips. He bit it back. No, he thought, no more magic. Not even simple stuff.
It felt unnatural, like refusing to scratch an itch, but he was determined. It was the only way.
A scream interrupted Aubrey's thoughts and the banking murmur. Aubrey swung around to see four men emerging from one of the many doorways. One of them was struggling, held by two of the others. He called for help and the chamber underwent a transformation.
Many customers rushed directly toward the main entrance, while others fled to the walls, as far from the intruders as possible. It was a sea of humanity, surging one way then the other before clearing the centre of the chamber, leaving it stark and empty. Clerks and tellers stayed at their posts, frozen mid-count.
The intruders stumbled to the middle of the chamber, dragging their captive with them. One – the tallest – had wild, unkempt hair. He was dressed in an expensive-looking dark suit, but Aubrey could see that his boots were old and worn. He stood calmly, with a hesitant smile on his face, for all the world as if he were performing for an audience. The others were less sure of themselves and looked as if things weren't quite working out as they'd planned.
The struggling figure struck at the tall man and cried out again. Then Aubrey realised it was Sir Norman, the governor. The banker's face was an alarming shade of red.
'Stay where you are!' shouted the tallest of the three villains. He pointed at the struggling Sir Norman. 'Or I will scramble this man's brains with magic of untold power.'
Sir Norman immediately stopped his thrashing.
Uniformed guards were moving toward the intruders, a dozen or more of them closing in with steely resolve. The chief villain licked his lips nervously. 'I'm warning you,' he called. 'Step back, or I will unleash such torrents of torment that you'll be sorry you were born.'
Aubrey rolled his eyes. He had always found that the boastfulness of a magician's claims were in inverse proportion to his actual effectiveness. The guards, however, hesitated, until their grey-bearded leader stepped forward. Aubrey was reassured by the man's military bearing. 'Surrender,' he said in a sergeant-major's voice, one that had drilled more than its fair share of recruits. 'Your time is up.'
'Not until I'm escorted to the main vault, where I will melt the door with the power of a thousand suns,' the villain said. He gestured dramatically.
'Not likely,' the greybeard growled. 'At 'em, lads.'
The guards closed in. The chief villain took a step backward, then seemed to remember his role. He threw up both hands and began to chant a spell.
The guards halted their advance, knowing magic when they heard it. Aubrey listened carefully, and had to admit that the villain knew his Sumerian. Even though he hurried, he managed each syllable clearly and ended with a showy flourish of a signature. He then slammed his right fist into his left palm.
Aubrey recognised that the spell used the Law of Magnitude, with the intention of turning the fist strike into a barrage of sound. Despite the presence of the so-called magical suppressors, he felt the sudden build-up of magical power. 'Cover your ears!' he urged, and then he felt a strange, unsettling wave of magic.
Nothing happened. The chief villain gaped, stared at his hands, turned to his colleagues as if he were about to complain, then they were buried under an avalanche of guards.
'Splendid!' Rokeby-Taylor crowed over the hubbub of astonishment that filled the chamber. 'As you see, any magic is nullified by the suppressors. It doesn't matter what type, an equal and opposite effect is created and the final result is as you see.' Rokeby-Taylor beamed. 'A timely trial indeed.'
'Very timely.' Sir Darius watched thoughtfully as the struggle in the middle of the chamber proved to be short-lived. 'Most fortunate for you, Clive.'
'Well, the bank won't have any doubts about the efficacy of the devices now, will they?' Rokeby-Taylor glanced around. 'I hope some of the governors were watching.'
'Sir Norman was,' Aubrey said. That particular governor would give a good account of the magic suppressors, he was sure.
The guards separated and marched the villains out. The foiled spell-caster looked particularly affronted at his unexpected end. 'This wasn't supposed to happen!' he cried. 'I wasn't told about this!'
His protests dwindled as he was hauled out of the bank, along with his unhappy cronies, and Aubrey found himself wondering at the convenience of the attempted robbery. It was a perfect demonstration of the effectiveness of the magic suppressors, with the governors' meeting and the Prime Minister in attendance.