The Erotofluidic Age
by Vinnie Tesla
Circlet Press, Inc.
Cambridge, MA
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The Erotofluidic Age
by Vinnie Tesla
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Table of Contents
The Ontological Engine, or, The Modern Leda
Chapter 5: The Ontological Engine
The
Ontological Engine,
or,
The Modern Leda
It is imperative that I make this utterly clear from the start: my motives in the affair of Miss Pertwee were the very highest. Desire for personal gain, worldly fame for the name of Daedalus Tesla, or selfish pleasure of any sort were absent from my mind at all junctures. I hope that my setting down the bare facts of the case will suffice to clarify that the dreadful outcome which resulted arose despite the noblest intentions on my part and could never have been reasonably foreseen.
My troubles began when I had been a Fellow of ----- College, Cambridge, for several years. In retrospect, it is clear that I was already beginning to tire of the position. A considerable family income left me free of the need for remunerative work, but I had initially hoped, foolishly, that the storied intellects of that renowned College would prove a congenial atmosphere for the life of the mind. How comically naive that seems to me now!
The laboratory facilities with which the college had provided me were, I suppose, adequate in size, though my budget was laughably small, given the importance of the work I was doing.
Nonetheless, certain of my researches demanded rather more remoteness from the prying eyes of the jealous and the small-minded than was afforded by my official accommodations. By great good fortune, I had come to be aware of a disused storage attic in ----- House and had managed to assemble an entirely adequate facility there for my more sensitive researches, with very few people the wiser for it.
The eventful May afternoon I propose to describe was a Wednesday, and being so, Mrs. Mathilde Hargreaves, wife of the Head of the College, was providing me with her inimitable assistance for the day's researches--my most ambitious exploration of ontological forces to date.
With trembling fingers, she disrobed, eager as always to aid in the cause of Science. I guided her to the padded collection platform, placed the metal circlet--which I had designed to channel the energies she produced so copiously--upon her head, and strapped her, face down, to the cushioned stand.
Once I had selected a suitable birch bundle, we commenced with the day's activities. The flagellation, oftentimes the highlight of our Wednesday research sessions, was that day the merest prelude. I did not even bother to activate the collection circuit as I briskly brought her wriggling posterior to a pleasingly roseate glow.
Coming around her, I found that the exercise had brought colour to her face as well, her dark eyes now moist and sparkling. When I inquired whether she was ready for the next phase of our experiment, she nodded most avidly.
It was now time to test my newly-augmented Electrick Vibratorium. When I flipped the switch, a great throbbing hum suffused the room. Mrs. Hargreaves jumped and squirmed about despite the lack of contact. I reached between her limbs and she ground her pubis against my hand most avidly, bedewing my knuckles with the fluids of her ardour. I pressed the swollen labia apart, exposing her clitoris, and pressed the buzzing pad of the Vibratorium against it, eliciting a long groan of delight from the hot-blooded woman. With some little effort, I subdued her motions sufficiently to strap the Vibratorium in place and then took my place at the control panel I had assembled.
I activated the Amatory Capacitors, and a crackling noise filled the air. It joined in pleasing counterpoint to the Vibratorium's hum and Mrs. Hargreaves's groans and gasps as my Ontological Engine woke to life, powered by the trickle of Vital Energies she was emitting.
We were entering a phase of the project that demanded the utmost care and patience. I was purposing to embark on the harnessing of ontological forces on an unprecedented scale--any error could derail the undertaking or render it gravely perilous.
My ears were to guide my labours of this time as much as my eyes. As Mrs. Hargreaves' cries rose in pitch and volume, they were joined by an acceleration in the crackling from the Ontological Engine. I twisted a knob, cutting power to the Vibratorium, and a note of dismay entered Mrs. Hargreaves's voice.
"Oh, pray, Mr. Tesla! Do not pause--I was so very close!"
"All in good time, dear lady," I assured her. "The day is yet young."
Impatiently, she struggled with her bonds, striving to press herself more firmly against the Vibratorium. Whistling merrily, I once more looked over the Engine's connections and switches, the lusty woman's desperate moans sweet music to my ears.
Arrayed on the work-table before me was a divers array of exotic materials from the Americas, each singularly rich, according to my instruments, in Vital Fluid.
Long did I ply that dial, ever and again raising Mrs. Hargreaves's pleasure to the utmost, then denying her the release she so urgently craved, while the crackling of the Ontological Engine, and its unearthly blue glow, rose and fell with the lady's excitement.
"I think things may be nearly in readiness," I told the writhing woman at last, but the observation was met merely with gasps as she strove to regain her breath.
"Do you think you would like to spend now?" I inquired.
At this she found breath. "Oh, yes, yes! I cannot abide another moment of this abominable teasing!"
I had made something of a study of this woman's particular tastes, and I possessed a smattering of knowledge of how to maximize her excitement, and thus her output of Vital Fluids.
"Beg," I said coldly.
"Oh, pray, Mr. Tesla," she gasped, "I beg of you, allow me to spend. Oh, I crave it so! I shall be your servant in all things, if only you permit it!"
Not particularly ingenious, but one must make allowances for circumstance. Slowly, slowly, I began to turn the dial upward.
Moans gave way to cries, cries to shrieks. Much of my attention was consumed with adjustments to the Ontological Engine as I made ready to marshal its forces to best effect.
The moment of Mrs. Hargreaves's maximum pleasure came, and the room was suffused with a flickering blue light. I threw the switch. The Ontological Engine came fully to life, throwing its powers on the arrayed materials. Small vortices of ontological energies formed, drifting away from the table before dissipating into the air. One struck a potted ficus by the window, which opened golden-slitted eyes and watched the proceedings intently; another brushed the sleeve of my coat, where good brown Irish tweed blushed a vulgar scarlet, turning to crushed velvet for a few seconds before fading to tweed once more.
My attention to these processes was interrupted by a splintering bang as the locked door to the storage room was forced open.
"Mathilde!" Professor Hargreaves's bellow was as unmistakable as it was unwelcome.
"Fear not, darling! I am here to rescue you!" he cried out.
On the work-table, my materials were merging, taking on new forms, new aspects. On the Collection Stand, Mrs. Hargreaves was still trembling violently against the Vibratorium; I suspect that her cries had covered the arrival of her spouse and would-be rescuer, such that she remained blissfully unaware of his arrival.
"As for you, Tesla, you foul beast," Hargreaves continued, gathering rhetorical momentum, "it's the gallows for you now! Criminal! Rapist!"
"Do you mind, Hargreaves?" I said. "I'm a bit busy at the moment. Could we perhaps discuss this at another time?"
Hargreaves was undeterred. "Charlatan!" he persisted. "Mountebank!"
I whirled on him in a fury. "You dare--?" I began. But the reckless oaf was charging me like a bull. Before I could defend myself from this unprovoked assault, he struck, and the two of us were tumbling against my control panel, bringing it to the ground with a monstrous clatter. Inertia carried us backward, until a cable caught my foot, and I went sprawling to the floor. Hargreaves, however, ran up against the work-table, his head falling into the beam of blue light cast upon it.
In my attempts to free myself from the cable, I detached the engine from the amatory collector, and the light faded.
I stood, and ascertaining my parts to be largely undamaged, looked about. In the aftermath of the engine's radiance, I could make out naught but vague shapes in the storeroom's gloom. I strode to a window and threw open the blinds, allowing the daylight to stream in, revealing a tableau that shall remain always in my memory.
Nearest me, the ficus shielded its lambent eyes from the sudden glare with two furry grey paws, dragging itself away from the window with another four such.
On the Collection Stand, Mrs. Hargreaves had at last recovered sufficiently from her massive climax to become somewhat cognizant of the changes in her surroundings, constrained though she was by the straps that yet held her in place. "Augustus?" she said, looking in confusion at her husband.
For his part, he sat on the floor, mouth agape, feeling tentatively with his pudgy hands at the pair of incongruously handsome antlers which now sprouted proudly from his broad, gleaming forehead, rendering his marital status all too visible.
Beside him, on the work-table that had previously supported naught but my inert ingredients, three tiny creatures gurgled and squawked. Judging the day's experiment to be, if not complete, then at least terminated, I gathered the creatures on the work-table to my bosom and made my exit, leaving the Hargreaveses to discuss the day's events amongst themselves.
* * * *
Within a month of the incident, I had been removed from the faculty on grounds, according to the Deanery, of "gross immorality." I might say rather "failure to defer adequately to the bloated egos and withered, timid intellects of the college's Lords High Poo-Bah," but I grant that the former phrase is at least more concise and arresting.
The whole business was, to be sure, unfortunate, and not unmarked by errors of both analysis and judgment on my part. Nonetheless, Hargreaves had previously scoffed at my "ludicrous assertions" with regard to the power of ontological fields, and his fate had more than a whiff about it of poetic justice.
I rather fancy it was the validation of my theories, which he had, in such extravagant and unequivocal terms, derided that rankled with him more than the more mundane humiliations attendant thereon.
I feel compelled to add that, in contrast to her husband's petty acrimony, Mrs. Hargreaves's refusal to press charges betrayed her own excellent breeding and fine character.
As for the other issue of my experiment, my feelings were even more mixed. My calculations had led me to believe that the outcome of the day's work might be some fabulous avatar of lasciviousness, mighty entities capable of--somehow--gathering ever-greater quantities of Vital Fluids, enabling ever-greater feats of ontological engineering.
Instead, at the end of the day's debacle, I was confronted with three mewling, gurgling wee creatures, patchily covered in fine down. Nonetheless, they were a concrete and exotic trophy of my mastery of ontological forces, and it seemed to me that they might well be of some practical value someday, though in what manner, I could scarce imagine.
Upon my ejection from the faculty, I had little choice but to return to the ancestral manse, and set about to remake myself, at least to the eyes of the world, as a reasonably unremarkable country squire, so as not to draw further unwelcome attention for my researches. My pets grew rapidly in the bracing country air, and, in less than a year, had reached nearly their ultimate proportions.
As they figure prominently in the tale before us, it would behoove me to describe them now. Webbed-footed, winged, and long-necked, their avian ancestry must needs be the first aspect that strikes any viewer. Another glance, however, and the impression is cast askew, for the body, neck, and head are not of any bird, but instead resemble that giant clam of the Pacific known as the "Geoduck." Their siphons, located where one might expect the bird's head and neck, serve for them as organs of consumption and generation, and despite the apparently featureless end, they hear and see adequately well, understanding speech better than any dog, and at least as well as several valets I can think of.
There is a third point of resemblance that bears noting. Those prehensile siphons, innocent of either hair of feathers, bear an arresting resemblance as well to, to put it indelicately, the biggest, most obscene and wrinkled, semi-tumescent male member imaginable.
Upon my return to Tesla Hall, I assembled as small a domestic staff as seemed consistent with my station in life, but found that, contrary to my fears, maintaining privacy in my affairs from them was no matter at all. To a one, my servants were loath to come near the door to my basement laboratory and were hugely reluctant to do so much as knock upon it, for fear, one supposes, of it coming to life and devouring them. Not that that was entirely outside the realm of possibility, come to think on it.
On the other hand, the forces I had available to work with were pitiably small. A massive coal-fired steam engine, imported at great cost from Liverpool, provided a modest trickle of ontological energies, but the conversions from heat to mechanical force to the ontological realm were heartbreakingly inefficient.
To the extent possible, I gave my ungainly little pets the run of the estate, and found that I had grown rather fond of the creatures. In time, they began taking a distinct interest in the female house servants, a warmth that was sadly unreciprocated, as the members of my staff were uniformly terrified of the harmless little dears.
My life thus proceeded rather drearily for many months as I moved in, made the minimal social rounds of the area, and worked to build a first class laboratory of ontological endeavour.
Then one day, a little more than a year after my taking up country life, I received a visit from a particularly talented former pupil of mine--one Victor Dalrymple, whose company I had always found quite reasonably congenial. He, for his part, was quite unabashed about his admiration for my extraordinary intellectual accomplishments.
"My dear fellow!" he effused to me over our second bottle of sherry. "How aptly you match your namesake: master inventor and artificer!"
There was justice in his words, but the social niceties must be observed.
"Oh, you are too kind, Victor," I demurred. "I am naught but a woolly-headed theoretician. Why, even your mechanical skill is nearly a match for mine."
Victor seemed a bit taken aback by the extravagance of my praise. "Er... thank you," he said at last. Then he leaned in and spoke in hushed tones. "My dear fellow, I just want to you know that I consider the scurrilous charges old Hargreaves leveled against you to be libelous balderdash."
My surprise was unfeigned. "You do?"
"Daedalus, my friend. Anyone who knows you realizes that you are a man of science, not some sordid libertine rogue! Hargreaves is a spiteful ass, and his vague claims that you had 'disfigured' him were the most transparent poppycock. Why, if such a thing had occurred, why would he refuse to specify the nature of the damage done? Frankly, I am convinced that something was wrong with his head!"
I started guiltily. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Brain fever, old boy. The man is a bit cracked, to be blunt. Why, to this day, he refuses to remove his hat, even in church. It is quite the scandal about the old college."
He sat back and took another sip of his sherry. "Clearly, his jealousy of your brilliance eventually got the better of him, and he concocted his absurd fable to smear you!"
My eyes filled with tears at this speech, moved not merely by his display of faith in me, but by the poignant certainty that I could not, at that time, reveal to him the grain of truth in Hargreaves's malicious attacks, that my researches in pursuit of knowledge, in pursuit of human betterment, had once more served to isolate me, to sever me from the happy intercourse of the common run of man. For the first time in months, I was seized by the loneliness of the great, compounded by the prolonged isolation of my rural retreat.
To be a giant in a land of midgets is to be ineluctably isolated, and yet it occurred to me that some relief might be at hand, as well as solutions to certain other of my dilemmas.
"I say, Victor," I ventured, "I hope you will forgive the presumption. I well realize that such labour is vastly below your worldly station, but would you have any interest in assisting me at my researches?
"My dear friend," he said. "It would be a signal honour!"
* * * *
The days that followed I still remember with distinct pleasure. Victor proved both an eager and an able assistant, turning his hand to tasks both difficult and menial with nearly equal ardour. We were, in many ways, a complimentary pair, my theoretical genius enhanced by his formidable mechanical ingenuity, his rosy complexion and bronze curls a contrast to my swarthier colouring, his buoyant naiveté a welcome tonic to my own bitter awareness of humanity's true nature. Withholding those aspects of my researches for which he was not yet prepared was an inconvenience, to be sure; and exposure to my full arsenal of equipment earned me a fair scattering of interrogative glances as he scrutinized the manacles, the electrodes, the Electrick Vibratorium. I urged him towards discretion as he went about in town, reminding him that there were those who would be eager to steal the secrets of ontological engineering to pervert it to their own selfish or immoral ends, and he pledged himself to perfect silence.
In time, he introduced me to the fruits of what other avenues of invention had recently been cast up into the world, arranging the installation of an Edison Electrick Tele-phone between my parlour and laboratory and bringing along his own collection of the latest modern Daguerreotype machines. Truly, it is an age of wonders we live in!
Victor took wonderfully to the 'ducks, and they to him, nosing about him as he walked through the estate, following him in an orderly little line, poking their siphons inquisitively into every crevice of his constructions.
As our work advanced, he oversaw the purchase of an ever-larger and more modern series of steam engines, which, ravenous and temperamental consumers of coal though they were, proved modest indeed in their supplies of power. One day, in late March, I threw down my tools in frustration. "Dash this cursed temperamental steam engine!" I shouted. "This thing is filthy and inefficient, the coalman's bills are eating me alive, and its output is utterly inadequate to my purposes."
Victor was perplexed. "What source do you propose, then? Water? Wind?"
"Victor, dear friend, it is time to take you into my confidences. The energies that power the Ontological Engine are paltry when generated by mechanical force, but they are emitted copiously by human beings."
His puzzlement only deepened. "Would you have me operating a treadmill, then?"
"You misapprehend my purpose. The Vital Fluids that shall power the Ontological Engine are not the vulgar fruits of manual labor, but the finer emanations of the human spirit! Here. I believe a minor demonstration is in order. Help me prise open this crate."
We set to work with crowbars, and in a moment, we had unpacked the Amatory Condensers I had developed at Cambridge.
"Now, old fellow. Do you recall that one night at FitzSimmons Hall, after the servants had all gone to bed?"
Victor blushed to the roots of his hair. "I don't know what you... that is to say..."
I smiled. "You and Harry and Professor Lawrence and I had all had entirely too much of that excellent French brandy, and we were discussing zoology."
"I must have forgot--" Victor said.
"Now, now, Victor. You may have forgot, but it's clear your prick has not. It's standing out in your trousers quite proudly. Now do have it out and let me have a look."
Victor's hands clenched together in agitation, and he shifted uncomfortably from side to side. "I say, Daedalus. I mean, that sort of thing is quite all right when one is at University, but...."
"Out with it," I said more firmly.
Whether it was the lascivious memories I had summoned or the months of accustomed obedience to my orders, Victor tremblingly unfastened his breeches and drew out the handsome red cock I remembered so well.
I fell to my knees and took it into my mouth, the soft head swelling against my tongue as I began to exert suction upon it.
"Oh, Daedalus!" he cried, "I don't think I can--I believe I shall--"
"Excellent," I responded, frigging his gleaming length with one hand when he emerged from my mouth. "Be a good lad and don that circlet on the table there."
With a trembling hand, he took the metal band and rested it upon his head. At once a low hum began to emerge from the Ontological Engine, and a faint glow suffused it.
I stood. "Now I must ask you to attend to yourself while I attend to the engine." I guided his own hand to his rampant dart of love and manned the switches of the Ontological Engine.
On the work-table stood a crabapple from my own neglected orchards, a pair of Categorical Condensers trained upon it.
I adjusted the azimuth of materiality and disengaged the Vitality Stabilizers. To my side, Victor presented a wonderfully pleasing sight, his face darkly flushed, his handsome cock appearing and disappearing as he rapidly worked his hand upon it.
"I shall spend... I shall spend..." he whispered.
"Good. Behold!" I flipped the switch, and the engine's hum rose to a noisy whine. The Condensers cast the crabapple in an unearthly glow. The skin of the fruit swelled, coarsened, paled, till it had clearly become a grape-fruit. Victor groaned, and semen splattered across the work-table, a few drops hitting the grape-fruit, which sprouted eye stalks and four shaggy legs. The transformed crabapple blinked improbably long lashes at us as it looked about. Victor groaned and slumped, his spent cock softening in his hand. The glow of the condensers faded, and the creature on the work-table shrank, shrank, until a single dark orange kumquat stood in place of the impossible entity that had moments before occupied the spot.
"Voila," I said.
Victor composed himself, refastened his breeches, and leaned in to examine the kumquat on the table.
"Careful!" I cautioned him. "It's probably a perfectly ordinary kumquat, but one can't be entirely certain."
Victor prodded at it tentatively, then, when it failed to attack, he hefted it. "It was something quite extraordinary for a moment there."
"Indeed," I said. "The effects of ontological energies remain extremely unpredictable, and at first I had the very devil of a time fixing the more exotic alterations. Something about the masculine vital emanations is apparently unstable. But," I raised an eyebrow, "it turns out that with a suitable female to draw upon...."
Victor stared at me, his eyes widening. "Hargreaves wasn't lying!" he said at last.
I rolled my eyes in frustration. "I wasn't rogering his damned wife!" I said. "There is certainly an element of... indecorousness... to our researches, but the results speak for themselves."
"Results?"
"Three giant Pacific clams, three Argentine Lake Duck eggs, and, er, a lock of hair from my own head were on the table when the remarkably talented Mrs. Hargreaves attained her climax, and one outcome of the process was--"
"The Geoducks!" Victor exclaimed. Then his eyes sparkled with mischief. "I rather fancied I detected a familial resemblance there. But what feat of jesuitical pedantry was it when you denied rogering Mrs. Hargreaves, Daedalus?"
"You wound me, Victor. I am pledged to Knowledge as my only bride."
Victor drummed his fingers. "Hair-splitting does not become you."
I drew myself to my full height (my eyes still near half a foot below his, I confess). "I do not spend," I pronounced. "Thus, I conserve my Vital Fluids for intellectual pursuits, rather than carnal enjoyment. Celibacy is the Tesla family secret, passed down through the generations."
"Celibacy, passed down through the generations?" Victor asked dryly.
I flushed. "Its efficacy is not disproved by its imperfect application," I muttered.
There was a silence.
"So what do you propose?" Victor said at last.
Here the answer was clear enough. "We require a female," I said.
Victor shrugged. "Easily enough done," he said. "Shall I take the morning train down to London and return on the evening train with a suitable harlot?
"On the contrary," I answered him. "Such women, of necessity, have cultivated a degree of detachment from their labours that renders them distinctively unsuited to this task. Oh, what I wouldn't give for another Mrs. Hargreaves! She was a great asset to science. Her warm temperament, its ardour only sharpened by a decade of near-celibacy, her exceptional stamina, her magnificent posterior!"
Victor grinned. "Her posterior was an arse-et to science?"
My embarrassment to find that my recollections had momentarily gotten the better of me was considerable. "Her, er, stability upon the collecting platform was excellent. No danger of her falling off, none indeed."
"So how shall we procure another such?" Victor said, kindly changing the subject. "Perhaps we can make the rounds of the neighbouring estates: 'Pardon me, Madam, but do you find that your spending produces an ample quality of ectoplasmic emanation?'"
"No such inquiry should be necessary, fortunately. I have a cunning plan that should make discerning suitable subjects far simpler." I took a sheet of foolscap and began to sketch my design.
* * * *
A couple of days later, the Erotometer was ready for testing. I pointed the collection trumpet at Victor. "Fix your mind upon a particularly pleasant lascivious recollection, if you would be so kind, old boy."
Victor gazed off into a far corner of the workshop, his eyes unfocused. "I happened to be in town yesterday, when Lady Wollaver arrived to pay the vicar a call. In stepping out of the carriage, she revealed almost her entire right calf, right there in the town square!"
The needle on the Erotometer jumped and held in a slightly elevated position. Success!
But before I could celebrate, the content of Victor's anecdote penetrated my preoccupied mind. "Blast! The vicar! He'll be visiting this afternoon! Damn country life and its infuriating distractions. No time to waste--we must get out of these grimy work clothes and prepare to receive visitors."
* * * *
Reverend Pertwee, the vicar of -----shire, was a tallish, bent man, quite bald, with a long, ever-sniffling nose, thick spectacles of questionable efficaciousness, and a peculiar warble in his speech that I found quite distinctively irritating. With him on that day was a notably attractive young person who was unfamiliar to me.
"Mr. Tesla -sniff!" he addressed me when I stepped out to meet him. "What a pleasure it is to finally visit your charming grounds." He peered myopically about at the weed-choked garden, the unpruned orchard, the vine-covered walls. "Quite handsome -sniff. Yes, yes, quite -sniff handsome."
"I'm so glad you could make it, along with...?"
My prompt had the desired effect. "Oh! Oh! Yes, yes! -sniff Of course! Mr. Tesla, my daughter, Eleanor. Eleanor, this is Mr. Daedalus Tesla." She smiled and curtsied prettily. "Quite the richest man in three counties," the good reverend appended in a whisper so loud it fairly echoed from the manor walls. Eleanor sighed.
"Tesla," the vicar mused. "That's a foreign name, is it not? Hungarian, is it?"
"Serbian," I corrected him. "I'm afraid the -----shire Teslas are a scant three centuries in these parts, having constructed Tesla Hall in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We are a restless people, and no doubt will be moving on again any century now."
Suddenly, Victor was at my side, a peculiar stunned expression on his visage.
"Reverend Pertwee, Miss Pertwee, allow me to present my assistant, Victor Dalrymple."
"A pleasure, Reverend," Victor murmured vaguely. Then he took one of Eleanor's hands in both of his own. "Good day, Miss Pertwee," he sighed. "I, er, I'm Victor Dalrymple."
"So I've heard," she answered sweetly, and, after a pause, extracted, with some small effort, her hand from his own.
I shall not recount the burdensome and tedious tea that followed. Suffice it to say that at the end of an hour-and-a-half, I knew more about the stomach ailments that the sheep of the local yeomen suffered from than I had expected to learn in my entire lifetime. Eventually, with some effort, I managed to insert a reference to the pressing business that called me and shoo him and his daughter, who had been largely silent, out the door.
I returned to my laboratory to find the Erotometer in ruins--its connectors scorched, the needle hopelessly bent, its glass shattered. My first impulse was to blame my pets, who milled anxiously at the other end of the room, but it soon became clear that it was not a fall or an impact that had done this damage. A quantity of Vital Fluid must have passed through the device too powerful for it to contain.
I shewed the ruins to Victor. "Is it just as you found it?" he asked.
I affirmed that it was.
"Then all we need do is trace the path of the collection trumpet, yes? Here... it points upwards, and towards the northwest corner of the room. So if nothing entered the laboratory in the interim, it would be picking up emanations from the sitting room, just by the fireplace."
"Absurd," I said. "No-one was in that side of the room but that milk-and-water daughter of the Vicar's. That meek little girl couldn't possibly have done that."
"On the contrary, Daedalus, I sensed from the moment I saw her that that girl has the most extraordinary depths."
I smiled. "What you sensed, my dear fellow, was a cockstand."
"Be that as it may, it looks like we may need to invite her back for further research."
I sighed resignedly. "If you can keep her unbearable father from coming along, I should be most grateful."
"I assure you that that is very much my intention."
* * * *
Two days later, Victor notified me that Miss Pertwee would be visiting for a further tour of the grounds.
"Alone?" I asked, surprised at his resource.
"I assured the vicar that my patron, the esteemed and wealthy Daedalus Tesla, would be in attendance at all times."
With diligence, we completed several new, more robust Erotometers before the appointed time. We were upstairs in time to receive our guest, who, removed from her father's baleful penumbra, proved herself to be a reasonably charming young lady, bright and warm of manner, albeit with a sprinkling of freckles about her nose that bespoke an unseemly degree of exposure to sunlight.
After a short time, I excused myself, citing pressing work, and admonished the youths to be on their very best behavior.
In the laboratory, I removed the tele-phone from the hook, having previously taken like measure in the parlour. I pressed my ear to it just in time to hear Victor directing the girl to the seat she had occupied previously. The needle sprang to a position that, in Mrs. Hargreaves (for example), would have denoted the very acme of excitement.
From the earpiece I heard:
"I know that you are Mr. Tesla's assistant, but I do not quite grasp what you assist him at."
"Oh, business. Keeping the books, buying and selling, managing affairs, buying and selling, all that dreadful rubbish."
Eleanor nodded politely. "So then it was you who oversaw the purchase of those three massive steam engines last summer?"
"Oh, yes yes. That was I," he said quite truthfully. I winced, recognizing the trap the cunning little minx had laid. "Quite a lot of bother it was, too. Deuced things were unbelievably expensive."
"But what--?"
"UnbeLIEVably!"
"I'm sure. But what were they for?"
"For...? Oh, oh. Science. Scientific research. Thrilling, terribly modern stuff. Don't really understand it all that well myself. You'll have to ask old Daedalus to explain it to you some time."
The buck, as the Americans say, had been ably passed. It was not a conversation I looked forward to.
"Then he is really doing scientific research? Because..." she paused, and the needle on the Erotometer crept upward. "Rumor down in town has it that you two are up here rogering each other all the time."
A coughing fit from Victor followed. Apparently she had managed to time her remark to coincide with a mouthful of cake. When he got his breath back, he replied: "Oh, how perfectly ridiculous! I mean, we are, rather, from time to time. You know, when the mood strikes us. But not like that. I mean, I'm as fond of the ladies as the next fellow."
"Are you?" Eleanor said politely.
"Well, not to excess, of course," he appended, laughing nervously. "I mean, moderation in all things, what? I mean, I like some more than others, you know. I mean--dash it all, Miss Pertwee. I mean to say, I find you awfully charming." The needle responded to his confession with another modest gain. Miss Pertwee's output of Vital Fluids was now at approximately three times an ordinary Mathilde Hargreaves orgasm.
Eleanor laughed merrily. "You do have a certain fumbling charm yourself, Mr. Dalrymple," she conceded.
Soft sighs, and the gentle smacking sounds of tentative osculation followed, accompanied by a continued rise in the Erotometer's readings. The dial reached its maximum capacity, and I hastily unscrewed it and attached an even sturdier one I had prepared for such a contingency.
"Mr. Dalrymple," Miss Pertwee gasped after a time, "you take such liberties. Pray continue."
A bit later, Victor spoke: "Oh, Miss Pertwee, you are so lovely. May I call you Eleanor?"
"You may, dear Victor. Tell me: have you copulated with a great many women?"
"Oh, er, I say. That's a rather personal question, isn't it?"
"Yes."
There was a silence.
"Several," he ventured at last.
"That is more than adequate. Might I induce you to initiate me into these mysteries?"
"To... to..."
"Take me, yes."
"Miss Pertwee, wherever did you get such ideas?"
"French novels, of course. I had a school friend with a remarkably extensive collection. And I believe you have permission to address me as Eleanor."
"French novels. Of course," Victor echoed. The needle on the Erotometer was starting to flag a bit.
"I, er... I would be delighted to assist you in such an endeavour," he ventured. "Really, extremely delighted.
"Marvelous," said Eleanor. "The moment I saw you, I thought you might be just the man to instruct me in these matters. I am certain you are not one of those dreary fellows one reads of who demands that their lady friends be in possession of a maidenhead. Mine was taken by a marrow two years ago."