Submitted for the January 2026 prompt: Auld Acquaintance

“Thieves apparently broke into the workshops at the École de Physique last night,” I read aloud. “Took off with two ten-metre rolls of insulated copper wire and a crate of bar magnets, would you believe!”

 

I looked up from my La France and waited for a response from Dubois. But none came.

 

“Not the sort of stuff to interest the common thief, I should have thought,” I persisted. “Singularly peculiar, don’t you think?”

 

Dubois put down his dip pen and looked up.

 

“Peculiar, I grant you, yes,” he replied, “but not singularly so. It’s the surgical instruments that puzzle me most.”

 

He deflected my further queries with an impatient wave of his hand and returned his attention to his microscope and notebook.

 

* * *

 

I went to visit my sister. When I returned to Paris some three weeks later, I discovered a large corkboard set against the wall above the mantle shelf in the drawing room. Affixed to the board was a city street map with a number of women’s hat pins marking specific locations.

 

“What do you make of this?” Dubois asked without preface.

 

I huffed and sighed, but took off my overcoat, tossed it onto an armchair, and went to inspect.

 

“Well, these two mark the École de Physique and the hospital on the Île de la Cité …” I noted, “… and this one, the Foundling Hospital and poorhouse on Rue d’Enfer. As to the others, I have no notion.”

 

“Well, the one here marks an opium fumoir…” Dubois explained, “…and these six mark locations where, at various times over the past two months, my informants have witnessed a certain well-dressed woman in company with small groups of twelve-year-olds that she took from the poorhouse to apprentice — or so she claimed.”

I nodded.

 

“This pin,” Dubois said with some emphasis as he pointed, “marks where you and I must go now!”

 

And with that, he grabbed up his cape and swordstick and swept out of the room.

 

I remained rooted to the spot, transfixed by his words, but then was spurred to action when he shouted up from the staircase: “Hurry, man! Children’s lives may depend upon us!

 

* * *

 

In the carriage as we journeyed over to the Rue Sentille, Dubois explained that he had received word that very morning that the foundlings were being held captive in the house where we were headed.

 

“I have no conception as to details,” he said, “but I have the gravest fear that there are inhuman experiments being performed on these twelve-year-olds — experiments that demand the use of opium stolen from the Montmartre fumoir back in late May, and which in some way involve electromagnetic constructions and surgery.”

 

* * *

 

We entered the house via the Jardin des Plantes, scaling the back wall into the rear garden. After descending the stone steps to the basement, Dubois forced a casement window.

 

Once inside, we made our way as stealthily as we might up to the ground floor and proceeded along a hallway, aiming for a part-opened door at the far end.

 

When we drew close, I pushed it a little wider to see more of the room.

 

“My God!” I said with hushed breath. Dubois raised a hand to restrain me.

 

I counted a total of thirteen children in the room, each manacled upright to a wooden chair, and all of them looking like circus grotesques: their heads plastered with a thick grey salve, their faces pallid and wasted, their eyes wide and vacant. Metal pins protruded from their heads through trepanned bore holes, with wires running between them to connect each child’s brain to every other by way of transformers and other electrical contrivances whose function I was unable to discern. The humming of the apparatus seemed to pulse within me, and I felt suddenly quite nauseous.

 

“What in God’s name is the woman doing here?” I whispered. “We must act.”

 

But he raised a finger to his lips and bade me wait. Behind the lectern to the right stood a young, neatly dressed woman, quite calm and collected in her manner, who made fine adjustments to a bank of dials. She then pulled on a side lever. It, in turn, brought to life a pulley contraption that moved a succession of folio-sized plates before the children’s eyes. The plates were inscribed with the words: human hand…chalk sketch… life-like… fine-lined…cross-hatched…

 

As each plate passed along, a tremor ran through the network of wires, causing one boy to twitch, then another, and another, until the collected disturbances reached the boy at the rear. When this child had ceased to quiver, he took up a piece of chalk and began to draw on a parchment laid out on the desk before him.

 

The woman then moved from behind the lectern, walked over to inspect what he had drawn, compared it against other drawings she took from a folder, then returned to make further adjustments to her control dials.

 

The boy swept his drawing aside and took up a clean sheet of parchment. As his discard fell to the floor, I saw that it bore not merely an accomplished likeness of a man’s hand, but all the unmistakable character of a work sketched by Da Vinci himself.

 

* * *

 

Dubois and I attended court when the woman was brought to trial.

 

As she was led away for incarceration and later execution, she turned to the gallery and addressed her parting words to us.

 

“Engines capable of being taught to perform works of art and intellect will surely come,” she said. “Whether you consider them virtuous or monstrous, gentlemen, I’ll wager that their advent is all but certain.”