“Mr. Mackintosh?” The landlady knocked again and then unlocked the door to the attic room with her master key. “Sir? Are you in?”
She looked inside but the room was deserted. Mrs. Jones strode into the middle of the floor and tutted at the state of the place. She owned this house, including the room Mr. Mackintosh was renting, and she wasn’t accustomed to such uncleanliness. It was disconcerting, to say the least. The bed was unmade, the curtains were closed, and there were papers strewn on all the surfaces she could see: open notebooks, correspondence and a notice board that was pinned with scribbled-on scraps.
“And now I’m adding to it,” she sighed, looking at the letter in her hand. It had come for Mr. Mackintosh that morning. Whatever it is you’re waiting on, she thought, I hope this is it. She knew he’d been placing notifications in all the newspapers; she’d often had to run his errands for him, which she’d decided had given her permission to look at the message he kept trying to send. It was always the same: Sharpthorn. I have come through. Mrs. Jones had no idea what it meant.
Sighing deeply, she propped the letter in front of Mr. Mackintosh’s radio set (though what he needed one of his own for, when there was a perfectly adequate wireless in the living room, she couldn’t imagine) and turned to leave. Mrs. Jones began reciting a list of requests in her head for the next time she saw her tenant, which included telling him to open the windows and do his washing a bit more frequently. She was so preoccupied that she didn’t hear the Oscillometer—which she’d taken for a radio set—crackle to life.
Mrs. Jones left the room and locked the door behind her. The air settled, dust motes trickling to earth through a random sunbeam. Everything was still.
And the Oscillometer hissed its unheard message out into an empty room, over and over again, before finally falling silent.