A step in Time by Peter Fuller

“But will your damn contraption work?”

 Outwardly, Professor James Filby remained calm, but inside he seethed.  “My contraption, as you care to describe it, is actually a scientific instrument that has consumed my every waking hour for the past five years”.

“I meant no offence”, James Earl Fitzroy Cavendish found it convenient to be contrite for the first time in his life.  “It is just that I cannot express how much it would mean to me if you were able to make your machine do what you say it is capable of”.

“I was at the forefront of research, alongside Theodore Maiman, when the first laser was invented.  But I have taken this unique field of study to an even higher level.  With my instrument I am able to bend laser light into a perfect circle.  This has the effect of warping space and, thereby, time.  The larger I set the circumference of the circle, the further back in time it takes the traveller.”

Cavendish relaxed back into his chair and smiled.  “I am now sufficiently confident to be able to tell you my story.  My Great Grandfather seven times removed, Sir Robert Lyttleton-Pike, was employed in 1764 by King George III as ‘The Keeper of the King’s Diamonds’, a title that demanded of him the greatest trustworthiness.  Unfortunately, my forbear had rather sticky fingers.  So sticky, in fact, that many of the King’s diamonds and gold items became stuck to them”. 

“He was eventually caught in the act of thievery and summarily dispatched to his maker by the King’s executioner.  However, not before he was able to bury an old casket with reportedly two solid-silver locks, containing a considerable fortune, somewhere in the grounds of my family’s estate.  He was helped in this concealment by a scurrilous fellow named Windrush, who was employed as the gamekeeper of the estate, and who reportedly buried the casket somewhere in and around his cottage and workplace”.

“The problem is that today there is not a trace of where Windrush once lived and worked in our 500-acre estate.  If we could just go back in time, find the house where it once stood and dig-up the casket, we could split the treasure, fifty-fifty percent.  What do you say?”

Six weeks later, Filby and Cavendish tentatively walked through the misty centre of the laser circle and, stepping out the other side, knew immediately that they were where they had hoped to be.  “Look, there, right there, is a building that doesn’t exist in our time”, Cavendish shouted excitedly. “It must be the cottage we are looking for”.

They approached the building and Cavendish rapped on the door with his cane.  There was a scuffling noise within and the door slowly creaked open.  The gamekeeper appeared in the doorway wearing a ragged brimmed hat and a long canvas topcoat that reached to the ground.

“Now listen here my man”, Cavendish said with commanding confidence.  “Is your name Windrush and is your employer Sir Robert Lyttleton-Pike?” 

The gamekeeper made a superhuman effort to speak with the other human being.  “I dint knowe ynogh, on even and a-morwe,” he mumbled, “Be’goeth afor aye dispatch yea”.

Cavendish was having none of this and impatiently drew a long blade from his cane and approached the gamekeeper, swishing the sword in a threatening manner.  From beneath his canvas long-coat the gamekeeper drew two already-cocked pistols and fired them simultaneously.   One ball penetrated Filby’s heart and he died instantly from shock.  The other ball passed through the windpipe of Cavendish, who choked and coughed-up blood for a full minute before he lay still.

With the slow and methodical steadfastness of a countryman, Windrush dragged the bodies into his barn, cleared the straw that was strewn across the floor and dug his spade into the soft earth.  When finished, he tipped the bodies into the hole that he had dug.  They fell upon a casket that had two solid silver locks.