The Electrical Affairs of Dr. Victor Franklin
Mad Scientists Society #2
Chapter 1
The Consequences of Not Thinking
Detroit, Michigan
January, 1892
Victor dodged just in time to avoid being clobbered in the head by the weighty A-D volume of the Encyclopӕdia Mechanica. Unfortunately, he did not fare so well with volume E-I.
“Ow! Goddammit!”
Volume J-M struck him a glancing blow in the shoulder.
“You selfish lout!” N-Q slammed into the wall beside him. “How could you?”
Victor threw up his arms to shield himself as R-T and U-Z came flying at him together. “What did I do?”
“What did you do?” his occasional scientific collaborator shrieked. “What did you do?” She reached up to the next shelf for something new to hurl at him.
Victor sprinted across the laboratory. “Wait. Please. Don’t throw anything else.” He stopped a few feet from her and held up his hands in surrender. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry, but I truly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mrs. Mary Clay, ordinarily a quiet and good-natured scientist, looked down at the Electro-magnetic Actuator in her hands. Fragile and expensive, it wasn’t the sort of device that ought to be thrown at any man, much less one who didn’t even know his own crime. Victor held out a hand, giving her an imploring look.
She scowled. The looks that worked on most people never seemed to work on her. In the two years he’d known her, Victor had yet to discover why that was.
“Please,” he said again. “Let’s talk first. At least give me the chance to understand what’s happened.”
Mary returned the Actuator to the shelf, but none of the fury receded from her pale-blue eyes. Her short blond curls were always a bit unruly, but now they fell over her ears and into her face. She drew herself up to her full height—which still only reached his chin—and took a menacing step toward him. Victor shifted to his left, putting the large, rectangular worktable behind him. That way, if she shoved him, he wouldn’t have far to go.
“You betrayed me.” The words held a note of anguish beneath the snarl. Whatever she thought he had done, it had hurt.
“Betrayed you?” Victor examined her closely, looking for any signs she wasn’t in her right state of mind. These days it was all too easy to accidentally ingest a drink or a drug with unexpected side-effects. His friend Hal Finch—formerly Jekyll—could attest to that.
Mary’s cheeks were rosy, but that could easily have been from the anger. Her pupils were a normal size, and her eyes clear. She was neither breathing hard nor perspiring overmuch. Nothing about her appeared in any way altered except her temper.
“Are you certain you have the right man?” Victor asked. “I’m Dr. Victor Franklin.”
If she was under the influence of some strange substance, she could have confused him with her philandering lout of a husband. From what Victor knew of the situation, the man had married her for her money, then dropped her like week-old porridge. Augustus Clay lived outside of town these days, but periodically wandered in to attend some show or event with another woman on his arm. He deserved an encyclopӕdia to the head.
Mary did try to shove Victor this time, though not especially hard. Braced against the worktable, he barely moved.
“I know who you are, you oaf!” she exclaimed. “You cheated me out of my rightful place! You stole all the credit!”
Victor raised both eyebrows. “Stole the credit for what?”
She threw her hands in the air. “The hydroconductor, of course!”
“What are you talking about? Your name is on the patent, right next to mine. In front of mine, in fact, because we’re listed in alphabetical order.”
Mary made a noise of extreme frustration and turned away. Her fists clenched at her sides. “I’m talking about the article in the paper.”
“I haven’t read the paper,” Victor admitted. “I haven’t even had breakfast. I only got up half an hour ago.”
She turned back, some of her anger now replaced with disbelief. “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon!”
“I went to bed at eight a.m.”
“Oh, never mind that.” Mary jabbed an accusing finger at him. “You did an interview with the newspaper.”
“Yes. I did. But I never claimed the hydroconductor was all mine. In fact, I’m certain I mentioned that it took a collaborative effort both to build and to test.”
“Did you even bother to mention my name?”
“Um.” Victor tried to think back to the interview. It had been weeks ago. And at the uncivilized hour of ten a.m. “I think so.”
“Oh, you think so.” Mary folded her arms across her chest. “Well, isn’t that just peachy. Do you know how many times the article mentioned me?”
“I told you I haven’t read the paper.”
“Zero. Zero times. Nothing. Nil.”
“I understand the term.” Victor rubbed a spot in the center of his forehead where a headache was beginning to form.
“Not even a hint. Not even an implication of anyone but you.” Mary’s voice cut like a knife. The slight waver at the end of every sentence only shoved the blade in further.
“I never intended to cut you out.”
“But you did. You didn’t push for me. You didn’t talk about my contributions. You didn’t even ask me to join you for the interview!”
All true. He’d hurt her without thinking. He’d hurt her because he hadn’t been thinking.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t bother with excuses. They would only waste breath.
“We were partners.” Her voice was rife with sorrow now. “I thought you respected me. I thought you cared about me and my career.”
He did care. More than she knew. He’d woken up at nine a.m. every damn day for three months straight to work on that hydroconductor with her. It had not only upset his sleep schedule, but it had delayed much of his work on his mechanical man. And he hadn’t even regretted it.
But science was a man’s world. He’d been invited to chat with the boys. Hanging about, smoking cigars in a room that had probably never seen a woman except perhaps when it was cleaned. Of course they hadn’t mentioned Mary’s name. She was irrelevant, no matter how much she’d contributed.
Victor should have known better. He, of all people, really should have known better.
Instead, like a fool, he’d done what he always did, as if he hadn’t even had a partner. She’d be doing interviews of her own, right? Wrong. No one would ask her. No one would care.
Victor cared. But caring wasn’t enough when it didn’t go along with doing. She was right. He’d betrayed her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll write to the paper. Ask them to issue a correction. What else can I do to make it up to you?”
Mary shook her head. “It’s too late. You’re too late. Consider our next project canceled.” She spun away and walked out, not sparing him so much as a parting glance.
Victor crumpled onto the nearest stool and put his head in his hands. For two years he’d lived in agony, pining for the love of a woman who could never be his. He’d had her friendship, though, and he’d treasured every second of it.
Now, he had nothing. He looked across the room at the man-shaped metal shell propped in the corner. Hollow. Empty.
“I guess it’s just you and me now, buddy.”
Chapter 2
Good Morning to Bad Rubbish
An unusual buzz hummed in the air around Amesbury Copper Works this morning. Not quite a sound, not quite a feeling. Almost like an electrical charge, primed to spark. Mary’s breath crystalized into fog in the frosty morning air as she scurried the few yards between the autocab and the factory. The wind off the river was bitter today. To match her mood, apparently.
She slipped inside and pulled the door securely shut behind her. Yes, something was most definitely odd today. All the men were at work, performing their usual tasks, but idly, as if something else vied for their attention.
Had something happened? Mary hoped there hadn’t been any accidents. Her father had established rigorous safety protocols, but her husband wasn’t nearly so conscientious. If the company needed to cut costs, he’d choose money over safety without a second thought. And Mary had no notion of the current financial state of the company. She’d been cut out of her family’s legacy the instant the minister had declared, “man and wife.”
The bang, bang of a hammer snagged her attention. Her head swiveled. Above the main entrance, a man dressed in rough laborer’s garb pounded nails into a wooden sign. A sign that had replaced the beautiful scrollwork placard bearing the Amesbury Copper Works name.
Clay Copper Ltd. the new sign read.
“That bastard,” Mary hissed. Yes, Augustus was the owner, ever since her father had foolishly handed over the company as part of her marriage settlement. But the only mark Clay had ever left on the business was that of negligence. He spent the bulk of his time out of town, overseeing his marginally profitable agricultural shipping business, leaving the copper works to fend for itself. Making him money he hadn’t earned.
Mary stomped through the factory on her way to the old office space she’d set up as her laboratory. It was dark and cramped, but having access to extra tools from the factory whenever she needed them was convenient. Maybe she’d try to fix up the space a bit, now that she no longer had the option of visiting Victor’s lab.
Dr. Franklin, she corrected herself, scowling at mere thought of him. He didn’t deserve such intimacy of address. Not after he’d shown his true indifference to her.
Thank God I’m married.
The thought brought a bitter little laugh. At least her undeserving, company-stealing husband was good for something. Without him, she might not have kept her romantic fantasies hidden safely away. How much worse would things have been, if Victor had been both partner and lover?
Mary shivered. She’d avoided that scenario. A tiny relief to her aching heart.
She dug in her pocket for the key to the office, only to stumble to a halt the moment her fingers touched metal. The door ahead of her stood open.
“My projects!” she gasped, breaking into a run. Her laboratory door was never unlocked. The room held too many fragile, valuable, or outright dangerous things. And if someone had left the door standing open, even if they didn’t mean to touch what was inside, the dust and grime from the factory could have damaged equipment or contaminated an experiment.
“Well, well,” came an icy baritone voice.
Mary’s already battered heart lurched. Her husband stepped out of the office, a sneer on his handsome face.
“If it isn’t my wayward wife.”
Mary drew herself up straight. As if she were the one who had walked out? She’d been here the whole time. He was the deserter.
“Augustus,” she greeted him impassively. “What a surprise to see you.”
“I assume you are to blame for this… disturbance in my factory?” He waved a hand at the room behind him.
“I have made use of an unoccupied space, yes.”
“I see. And who authorized this use?”
Oh, no. She wasn’t going to let him play that game. If she named even a single worker who’d known about her laboratory—and everyone here knew—Augustus would dismiss the man on the spot. A lesson to everyone: if you side with her over me, I’ll hurt you.
“I authorized it. This was one of my father’s rooms. It was empty, so I put it to good use. I didn’t realize you had a key.”
“This is no lady’s playplace.” His sneer had turned condescending, his voice honeyed. “I can’t have you putting yourself in danger with all these machines and rough men about. You should be at home, doing needlepoint.”
Mary gave him a frosty smile. “For what purpose? There’s never a husband there to lay his head on my embroidered pillows.”
Augustus dropped the pretense in favor of an all-out scowl. “I am returning to supervise this factory, with no intention of leaving. You have no claim on this space and no right to use it without my permission. As of right now, your little toys are just so much rubbish to be disposed of.”
Panic clawed at Mary’s throat, but she clenched her fists and tried not to let it show. “If you provide me with the funds to rent a new studio, I would be happy to remove everything.”
He sniffed. “You can’t honestly think I would contribute to such a revoltingly unfeminine pursuit? You have two days to clear this space. Don’t say I never give you anything.”
“Two days?” Mary blurted. “Impossible. I could never secure another location so quickly.”
“Two days,” Augustus repeated. “Then I begin removing it all myself.”
Her cool facade cracked. “Why do you hate me? What have I ever done to you? You got the company. You got everything you wanted. Why can’t you let me be? You don’t want me. Why not agree to a divorce?”
It would be a scandal, of course, but she preferred scandal to remaining forever trapped. She already lived outside the bounds of society’s rules for women, and certainly none of her friends would ever shame her for it. But whenever she’d pressed him, he’d always insisted that if she went to the courts he would contest her case.
“And lose the company of my charming wife?” he mocked. “Don’t be silly. Two days, Mary. After that, I am taking control of this room and the entire factory with it.” He strode past her into the heart of the factory, not even giving her the courtesy of a nod of farewell.
Tears gathered in the corners of Mary’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall. He would not win. She would never let him destroy the life she’d built. With the help of a few friends, she could get her equipment moved in two days. All she needed was a place to put everything.
Unfortunately, only one viable option sprang to mind.
So be it. Emergency situations called for emergency solutions.