The man was a professional picklock. It had taken some time for Paul to make inquiries, to find a public house where men of murky repute would be likely to congregate. He couldn’t very well ask his law school friends if they knew any handy burglars, could he?
It had taken some negotiating and more than one two-dollar bill pressed into the palm of a talkative bartender. Whiskey wasn’t Paul’s drink of choice, but he made do, given the places he had to inquire.
This man, whose name Paul preferred not to know, had come highly recommended. Tonight Paul would see if his reputation was deserved.
The thief removed from his jacket what appeared to be the tools of his trade. Paul could hear the gentle clink of metal instruments against the lock on the door of Number 45.
Paul watched the street. He hadn’t been instructed as to his role in all of this, but manning the lookout seemed the logical thing to do.
Three interminable minutes passed before Paul heard the satisfying click of the tumbler. The two men stepped into a pitch-black marble lobby. There were electrical lamps on the walls—Paul could make out their shapes—but he dared not turn them on.
He had a few candles ready in his coat pocket. He lit two with a match, and handed one to the thief. The light was underwhelming. They couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of them.
Paul found his way to a staircase. He’d spent an afternoon idly walking through the area at midday. He knew where Harold Brown’s office was. It didn’t take long to make it up to the third floor, and to Brown’s door.
Wordlessly the thief took his cue and reapplied his tools to this inner door. There were two locks to tackle. The look on his face was relaxed. He’d done this many times before, Paul reasoned. This night, for him, was not out of the ordinary.
Sometimes it took a criminal to catch a criminal. And Thomas Edison—along with his compatriot Harold Brown—was most certainly a criminal.
Had Paul become one himself? He had to admit that it had been a strange path from Columbia Law School to breaking and entering.
Paul looked across the dark third-floor hallway. He listened carefully for any sounds on the staircase. But all he could hear was the soft scraping of the thief’s work.
The lower of the two locks submitted quickly. It took less than a minute of effort. So far, this was going well.
“Can’t do it,” whispered the thief suddenly.
“What?” said Paul.
“Your top lock here. Can’t open it.”
“You’ve barely tried.”
“It’s the model…too heavy. I ain’t got the tools.”
“You’re a professional.”
The thief shrugged again. His professionalism was not something he seemed to feel he needed to defend.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Damned if I know. But whatever it is, I’d be quick about it. Someone will see our lights soon enough.”
He wasn’t wrong. Windows looking out onto Wall Street were evenly placed down the hallway. Paul had seen the streetlamps when he’d passed the windows. Which meant that someone looking up would be able to see them, faint as their candles were.
“How strong is the door?” asked Paul. “Can we kick it down?”
The thief pondered the door.
“Probably not, I’d say. But maybe. If you land a good blow or two right about there”—and here he gestured to a middle section of the wooden door—“you might get a chunk free. Something you could climb through. Though I doubt it. And what you’re talking about would be dreadful loud.”
“But you’re saying it’s possible.”
“I’m saying it’s stupid.”
Paul took a moment to consider his options. It was not a long moment.
“Sometimes those are pretty much synonymous.”
Paul took three steps backward. He pointed at the middle of the door, then looked to the thief for confirmation. The thief nodded. Paul took a breath. Once he started breaking down this door, there would be no going back. And yet…Well, he’d passed the point of going back long ago, hadn’t he?
With all the strength he had, he launched his right foot at the locked door to Harold Brown’s office.
If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
PAUL’S KICK CREATED a three-foot hole in the door. His body ricocheted back. There was a searing pain from his foot to his forehead. His leg, he quickly realized, was caught in the half-broken door. His body hung strangely on the outside.
He pulled his foot free slowly, painfully. His pants tore on the sharp wood. He could feel the shards dig into his skin; he couldn’t see blood, but he felt confident it was there.
“You’re strong, for a fancy man,” said the thief.
“My foot…,” said Paul. “Can you…?”
The thief regarded Paul’s limp leg and then the hole in the door.
“You want me to have a go at the rest of it?” he said.
“Yes,” answered Paul.
“I have a better idea.” The thief stuck his hand through the hole in the door and found the top lock on the inside. He flicked the bolt, and the door swung open.
“Thanks.” Paul had little time to waste. The crash had made quite a noise. Someone was bound to have heard it.
The supposed laboratory resembled Paul’s office more than it did Westinghouse’s. The front area contained a few desks for secretaries. Tables for correspondence. There appeared to be two private offices in the rear. Paul moved to them instantly. On the left, there seemed to be the only space that could really be devoted to any sort of scientific exploration. It was a small room, full of devices, with a worktable at the center. But the devices looked to have been laid around the room haphazardly. Paul had been in enough electrical laboratories to recognize them as a few different kinds of generators, lamps, and some basic motors. It was a room full of inventions that had already been invented.
This was not a space for discovery; it was a space for dissection. Brown took other people’s devices and toyed with them. He did not create his own.
“What is all that stuff?” asked the thief, peering over Paul’s shoulder.
“Not much,” answered Paul before moving to the other rear office. This looked more promising. It contained a simple cherry desk, a tall chair at which to sit, and two filing cabinets. This would be where Brown conducted his real business: manipulating the public.
Paul set his candle on the desk as he looked through Brown’s papers. It was no surprise that almost all were letters. Paul flipped through the documents on the desktop and in the drawers beneath, finding little that he would describe as being scientific. There were no schematics, no diagrams, no plans. Only letters to editors, letters back to Brown, letters from city commissioners and concerned citizens and journalists and curious mayors and from…
Thomas Edison.
There was Edison’s letterhead. Paul instinctively skipped straight to the bottom. Edison’s signature. He was holding a letter from Edison to Brown. Proof of their conspiracy.
It was only when Paul started to read the letter’s contents that whatever elation he had felt at the letter’s existence quickly dissipated.
Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.
—BILL GATES
“HAROLD BROWN HAS designed something he calls an electrical chair,” said Paul.
George Westinghouse frowned. “How can you make a chair out of electrical current? That is nonsense.”
“The chair isn’t made of electricity—it transmits electricity to whoever is sitting in it.”
“Why in God’s name would you ever want to do that? It’d kill you.”
“Exactly.”
The men were speaking aboard Westinghouse’s private rail car, the Glen Eyre. The empty acres of Pennsylvania countryside sped by. The recent snow had left the landscape a dull white, an even plain stretching into the distance.