That Thursday evening, we all sat at the Time Traveller's dinner table. Our chairs, my particular friend's invention, had clamped us fast to their armrests. We listened to him expound on his designs. I found it difficult to concentrate on his words, such was my shock that my fears had come true.
       "I expected you would still come; here by half-past seven as usual." The Time Traveller sat at the head of the table, his unfinished mutton on his plate. He took a first sip of his favourite tea -- my gift for him on this inauspicious evening. The cup clinked against his saucer as he put it down; I noted he was as careful as ever not to spill it on the clean white tablecloth.
       We sat in silence. The danger dawned in the others' minds as we gazed at his strained face. A haggard look that betrayed great turmoil beneath those odd features. Despite his piercing gaze, they had previously shown little awareness in the affairs of man. "I'm not surprised, given your lesser intellects, that you have all completely missed the implications of my great discovery that I showed you last week."
       From where I sat, I could turn my head and see the other four guests. The yellow candlelight of the chandelier flickered and cloaked us in a warmth that contrasted with our anxiety.
       The Old Soldier, who'd experienced danger in the Crimea campaign, kept his expression neutral as he silently tested the strength of his arm clamps.
       The Banker, a stout man and red-faced with anger, rocked back and forth against his unyielding chair.
       The Civil Servant stared down at his empty plate. He looked as if his recently ingested mutton meal was about to return to the table.
       The University Fellow gazed at the Time Traveller in contempt as if he half-expected this turn of affairs.
       My initial distress had receded, replaced by puzzlement at his behaviour. I now listened with as much attention as I could muster in the hope that I'd misjudged his malicious intention.
       "I'll begin with you," the Time Traveller continued. He picked up his cup, swallowed some more tea, and then stared over its rim at the Old Soldier. "You knew my father, didn't you? In the same regiment, I believe: the Royal Regiment of Artillery."
       The Old Soldier ceased his futile tugs at the arm clamps. "What of it?" he growled. "I see the apple's fallen far from the tree. Your pater had honour. Not you, sir. Unclamp me! We shall settle any dispute between us man to man."
       But the Time Traveller sighed. "I'll not engage with you on your terms. I wanted that, but you rejected me. Don't you think I don't know what happened at The United Service Club? Blackballed in Pall Mall? I know your guilt despite the confidentiality rule. I have my own unique way of discovery." He leaned forward to make the point. "Only I can ask to look at club records seventy years after the event! Who then would think it necessary to withhold secrets seven decades afterwards when they expect all of the interested parties are long dead? All I wanted to do was to join my father's club. Would it have hurt you so much to allow it?"
       The Old Soldier lost his startled expression at the Time Traveller's revelation. His face returned to that belligerent look, though he must have known his defiance was hopeless against the unnatural power of the Time Traveller. "It is a matter of honour, sir!" he said. "You have none. It would have been within club rules to allow you membership due to your inventive contributions to the artillery, the mathematics of ballistics and some such; of that, there is no doubt. Regimental connections would have been enough to make you an honorary captain. But I knew your character, sir!" He looked down at his arm clamps. "And this proves to me that my assessment was without fault! Unclamp me!"
       But the Time Traveller ignored him. He rose from his chair and said: "What do you know about honour or loyalty to your flag? I've seen great empires dissolve like mist, their best and most virtuous give up their lives for such illusions. I've known such men; watched them march proud and upright from their gates under waving banners. I've seen their bleached bones two hundred years later that lie as testament to such false ideals."
       He almost spat that last word out. We watched as he departed through the door that led up a corridor into his laboratory.
       When the door closed, we all spoke at once. Our pent up fears released our exclamations so that none of us heard what the others said, if sense it was at all.
       At last, we calmed enough for my voice to be heard above the tumult. "We must be careful!" I said. "Take care not to provoke him..." but my words were cut short as the door from the corridor opened again. The Time Traveller entered the room. It seemed he'd had no time to cause any mischief, but then my mind supplied the answer to that question when we saw a most appalling sight. The Old Soldier expressed surprise at first, then looked down at his right arm. He'd lifted it free of the restraint, or at first he thought he did. In truth, it had vanished. He stared at the stump end, disbelief in his eyes.
       "I'm glad you admire my handiwork," the Time Traveller said. "That time in the Crimea when that gun recoiled on the seventeenth of October in 1854, during the attack on Sevastopol. Forty-one years ago in your life, but ten minutes ago in mine. A distraction, made by me during the recoil that ended in a merciful amputation by your military doctor. How you howled when he did it!" The Time Traveller's lips curled upward. "I heard that, too."
       The Old Soldier was speechless, but I couldn't help but ask: "So how is this happening now, to our friend? Would he not have always been like this since that incident?"
       The Time Traveller nodded. "Good! I'm glad you are finally paying attention." He stared at me with a malice that chilled and also saddened me when I saw the last embers of our friendship had gone. I had never feared my oldest friend before, but now to be at the sharp end of such extraordinary intelligence made my insides churn.
       "My great discovery, that Time is another direction my machine can travel along implies that any changes I make in it will be like ripples in that dimension. They take a finite duration to travel. My machine can move slightly ahead of them. Now we see the result."
       As if on cue, the Old Soldier's face paled. He slumped backward in his chair.
       "A weak constitution," the Time Traveller said with a half-smile. "Encouraged by the unexpected troubles of his last years." He had another sip of his tea. "And now to you, Sir."
       To my shame, I took relief that he referred to the Banker.
       "Do you see, now?" he asked. "See the proof of my great discovery? What power I wield, unmatched by any other in human history? Even a mediocre money-man -- " and, as an aside, I knew he was insulting one of the premier financiers of the City of London, and therefore, the world -- "a mediocre man like you must understand what opportunity and profit you let go when you refused to finance my research! You know now that riches unheard await me. I have only to visit antiquity at will to purchase great treasures with the most mundane articles of exchange from our present time. Great works of art for trivialities of our day. And you would have had a fair percentage of my enterprise. Instead, you forced me to mortgage my inheritance to fund my discovery. The stress of that loss ruined my happiness until these recent days. I swore I would visit ruin upon you."
       With that, he stood up and then went through the door to his laboratory. We could hear his footsteps as he walked up the corridor. I gazed for a moment at the body of the Old Soldier.
       The portly Banker broke the silence. "Of course I refused him," he pleaded, although the Time Traveller was absent from our company. "Antony Gibbs & Sons has a reputation for sound finance to uphold. He had no credibility amongst his fellows and meagre equity to put up as security for a loan. As a responsible member of the Board, what else could I have done?"
       Barely having been gone from the dining room, the Time Traveller returned.
       "What could I do?" the Banker repeated. But as we watched, we saw his clothes transform as they hung on his thinning frame. His Savile Row elegance gave way to a threadbare coat and rough shirt. His pocket watch dissolved away; his gold-rimmed spectacles thickened into an ugly wooden frame that held cracked lenses. He peered at us in shock, then crumpled forward onto the tablecloth, his full head of hair now wispy over a thin pate, skin stretched over his skull.
       "Malnutrition," the Time Traveller remarked. "Even the poorhouse refused him after certain revelations about his past became known." A thin smile accompanied his soft words. "His greed led him to follow certain speculations that at first brought him wealth, then ruin." He paused and took another sip of his tea. "And so we come to you, my old friend."
       My heart skipped a beat, but then I saw that he had addressed the Civil Servant.
       "I don't understand this," the Civil Servant answered. "What complaint can you have against me? I've been pleased to receive your invitation to these Thursday dinners: a chance to catch up from our school days." As he spoke, his voice became stronger. He warmed to his theme, perhaps encouraged by the silence in which the Time Traveller allowed him to speak. To plead his case, he thought.
       I saw that the Time Traveller was the cat, playing with his hapless mouse.
       "I hadn't seen you since those long ago days at Harrow, old chap," the Civil Servant continued. "And you know, I was never one of those boys at school that gave you a difficult time."
       "You never defended me against their cruelty," the Time Traveller interrupted. I could see he couldn't help himself, nor his bitter words.
       "They bullied me as well," the Civil Servant answered, his voice as persuasive as merited his diplomatic profession. I remembered him as one of the brighter prospects in the Indian Civil Service. Then, he produced a masterstroke, a deflection that proved the superior powers of negotiation that one would expect from a man in his professional regard. "Why not use your great discovery to bring them to justice? Some of those boys are powerful men now, but they would be no match for you. You can reach them when they were cruel boys and mete out the punishment they deserve."
       The Time Traveller shook his head. "Do you think so little of me? Perhaps that was initially one of my motivations for creating my Time Machine, but my deeper knowledge of my discoveries has proved that even I cannot take that route. Do you not understand, even now from what you've seen? Were I to change my formative experiences I would no longer be the man I am. As has happened to our military friend and our financial companion, I would dissolve in the altered current of Time." He snorted with contempt. "A commendable try, but clearly, or perhaps deliberately, you have forgotten an encounter with my name since our painful school days. I know that you were pivotal in awarding honours from the Crown a few years back."
       The Civil Servant blanched at his words.
       "My name was put forward for a great honour bestowed by the Empire for my scientific researches, but you did everything in your power to stop this, and you succeeded. You argued that my military inventions were insufficient."
       "No," the Civil Servant protested. "I supported your name. Others were against it. They cited your refusal to accompany your inventions onto the field of battle. They -- "
       "They themselves wouldn't have risked their less precious hides in such circumstances," the Time Traveller interrupted. "But I know that you agreed with them!"
       The Civil Servant replied: "I did not. You have no proof."
       But the Time Traveller had pulled a document from a cabinet and flung it on the table. The Civil Servant gazed at it in horror. He was intelligent enough to realize that his death warrant had just been served.
       "The hundred-year rule for official documents means nothing to me," the Time Traveller intoned. "The minutes of that meeting reveal your treachery."
       We watched as he strode, angrier than before, out of the door to his laboratory.
       It seemed that the Civil Servant's clever tongue had had the opposite effect to that intended, and the Time Traveller was beyond reasoned argument.
       Those of us left sat in silence, each one wrapped in our own thoughts, considering the slights we'd paid to him and the consequences that we now faced.
       After a while, it seemed that the Time Traveller wasn't going to appear as swiftly as in previous episodes. With access to his Time Machine, we knew that no matter how long he was away he had the ability to return to us almost at once, but this had not happened.
       I dared to hope that we were now spared; that some mishap had occurred to him in the past, and we would never see him again.
       My happy thoughts were interrupted by an exclamation. The Civil Servant. I turned my head in time to watch him disappear like a snuffed candle flame. His face had just the time to register shock before he was gone.
       The door to that dread corridor opened.
       "I could not abide to look on him again," the Time Traveller remarked as he re-entered the room. "He met an accident as a child. Never grew up to be invited to my table."
       "You inhuman monster!" It was the University Fellow who spat out those words.
       Again, I felt relief to have that evil spotlight of attention diverted away from me. My plan appeared to have failed. I had to consider defeat and with it, whatever fate the Time Traveller deemed on his whim.
       "Perhaps you should rephrase that," the Time Traveller said to the University Fellow. "You, of all the people here, should reassess your opinion of me. You disagreed with my initial theories of the nature of the Time dimension. I remember the public humiliation well. You sat in the lecture theatre with arms crossed, deaf to my revolutionary insights. You disputed my observations and questioned my calculations."
       "There were faults," the University Fellow said. "Elementary mistakes unworthy of any College undergraduate, and most careless by someone of your early promise."
       The Time Traveller's face twitched at this. I could tell the University Fellow had hit a nerve.
       "Even one of your pomposity and misplaced elevated opinion of yourself can see that my theories are proven correct."
       "Perhaps after much-needed guidance from your College associates," the University Fellow sneered.
       I saw he'd lost all hope of reprieve from his fate. Perhaps it was the ineffectual efforts of the Civil Servant that had convinced him that he might as well state his true feelings before his end.
       "You denied me a place at High Table," said the Time Traveller in a cold voice. With that, he left us alone. The door to the corridor slammed behind him.
       We looked at each other. The last two left at his table. The evening would soon be at an end, whatever happened.
       "I don't care," the University Fellow said. "He's proved his inhumanity, no matter what scientific or technological achievements he's attained." He gazed at me, a man condemned. "I believe you've known him longer than any of us. Was he always this bitter?"
       "No," I admitted. "Our families were old friends, both well-known in the county. We played together as little boys. He was different then: cheerful, hopeful. A confident child, secure in his intelligence that the future held the best for him."
       "So what went wrong?"
       I knew, and was about to relate the tale when the door opened again. The Time Traveller stood there, silent as he watched the University Fellow.
       Although I was fearful at what I might see, I felt the University Fellow's defiant eyes deserved more than my averted gaze. As the waves of the Time Traveller's change caught up with him, the University Fellow looked puzzled. His gentleman's suit remained: if anything, it increased in fineness -- a better quality cloth and finer silk shirt now covered his breast. Yet he seemed disturbed, agitated.
       "Can you feel those memories slip away?" the Time Traveller said. "All those years at College? The endless evenings of high stimulation amongst your betters?"
       The University Fellow gazed at him with incomprehension. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I'm a clerk at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. Never had any other occupation since school."
       "You haven't," the Time Traveller agreed. "Not now. Not after your father was lost at sea in your schooldays, and it became urgent that you earn money for your family. You felt obliged to reject that place at Trinity, and that meant a wasted life in drapery. All those dull, pointless years, with the nagging feeling that life should have been so much more. Now, it's too late."
       The University Fellow groaned. One of the most terrible sounds I'd ever heard. The sound of more than the loss of a man's life: this was the stealing of a man's life, with decades of regret cascading at once through his head, leaving him insensible.
       I broke the silence. "He spoke the truth," I said. "You are inhuman."
       The University Fellow gasped a final time, then was still.
       That left me, alone at the table, facing the Time Traveller.
       "This is about Jane, isn't it?" I said.
       "It's always been about Jane." The Time Traveller reached for a cigarette, lit it, inhaled deep and stared at its glowing tip.
       "Do you think that if you erase me from the competition, she'll agree to be your wife instead of mine?"
       "Perhaps," the Time Traveller said. He settled back at his place at the head of the table. Stubbed out his cigarette and took another gulp of the tea he'd spent his peculiar uncounted time drinking. "I don't know if Jane will accept me now." Another sip. "You'll never know that." He smirked. "I'll find out soon enough."
       "How long have you planned this?" I asked. I had to keep up our talk. Despite the danger, I had to press him further.
       Either he wanted to prolong my torture for as long as possible, his final victim, or his previous cruelties had sated his appetite for the while. Maybe also because, despite his grievance, I was his oldest friend. He looked more relaxed, shoulders slumped under that distinctively shaped head. He toyed with his teacup, rotating it around its saucer, perhaps thinking about those swirling voyages into Time that he'd taken to cause such evil instead of so much else that could have been goodness to the world.
       "I never planned this at the beginning," he reflected. "After the hurt Jane did me, I threw myself into my work. I became determined to prove the others wrong: the University Fellow, the Banker. Then she would reconsider her position towards me."
       He paused. For a frightening moment, I saw the fierceness return to his eyes before it flickered and then died. Would he guess what was quenching it? I hoped he would put his fatigue down to the exhaustion of time travelling. He'd revealed to us earlier that it was an unpleasant experience that no doubt put a toll on the healthiest of bodies -- and he'd never enjoyed a robust constitution.
       "You've achieved your ambition," I ventured. I aimed to provoke more talk, not action.
       To my relief, he nodded assent and stayed in his seat. So long as he remained in this room and didn't leave through that door, I knew that I was safe. Despite my imprisonment by the chair clamps, I was confident he was incapable of direct injury to me. In that respect, the Old Soldier had been correct about the Time Traveller's character. Indirect action -- murder by time travelling, was much more his style.
       The silence grew between us. His arm twitched as I watched him try to move it. With an immense effort, he succeeded.
       Then I knew his reputation for brilliance was deserved, despite the claims of the former University Fellow.
       The Time Traveller shoved his fingers under the saucer of his teacup and, sweat beading his forehead, flipped it over. The cup tipped, then spilled its deadly contents in a dark stain over the white tablecloth.
       "How did you know?" the Time Traveller asked. The poison had not yet reached his vocal cords or tongue.
       "Unclamp me," I said in a firm voice.
       The Time Traveller shook his head.
       Despite his refusal, I answered, "It's an effective paralytic compound, made tasteless by the acridity of the fine Earl Grey you've been drinking this night. My only regret is that it didn't work fast enough to save the others. Perhaps its effect was diluted by the long breaks you took away from this table on your jaunts through Time."
       "So you, of all of them, saw the implications of my discovery?" His voice rasped in his throat. "I would never have credited you with that much intelligence. Of course, you knew I would take your gift of this tea and drink it this evening, as I always have."
       "I'm not that clever," I said. "Unclamp me, and I'll tell you. The poison won't leave you long to hear the truth. Set me free, or you'll never know your mistake."
       My words hit home. The Time Traveller, ultimately, was too much of a scientist to bear to go to his grave not knowing what mistake had undone him. He dropped his hand under the table's edge and felt under it with his stiffening fingers. I heard a soft click, and my clamps released me. All the clamps that held us guests sprang back. The bodies of the Old Soldier and the Banker slumped down to the floor in two thumps.
       "It began last night in my home," I said in answer to his silent query. I felt I owed our former friendship enough to keep my side of the bargain and reveal his error. "I was contemplating the events of the previous Thursday when you'd first demonstrated your mastery of the Time dimension with that model. I'll admit I'd overlooked the implication of what it meant for you personally, but I was soon put straight on that account. A knock on my door, and I opened it to a shocking sight. You stood there yourself, considerably aged from now. Layered onto those additional wrinkles, hanging skin, and white hair was a misery that I didn't understand at first. You feigned friendship. Had brought a bottle of the finest champagne to share as, you hoped, we would reminisce about our old times before my fireplace.
       "You did the talking, mostly. I listened as you recounted our early days. The pranks we got up to in the old Midhurst School before you went up to Harrow. The long summer holidays when we dreamed our ambitions: to change the world for the better. To help create the first civilisation of Man unhampered by the whims of dictators, Kings or Empires. To establish an equitable justice for all. Dreams. You were particularly taken by the ideas of Mr Darwin in those days. Convinced yourself that our hot primate urges would be succeeded by cool intelligence, as certain as a relentless tide laps up a beach. Then you spoke of our early days at Oxford. Meeting Jane. Your eyes grew moist at the mention of her name. A dampness beyond that of an old man's. I feared to enquire of her fate, and you didn't volunteer that information.
       At last, the bottle emptied, the fire's embers on the wane, you took that as your cue to depart. By now, the champagne had loosened your tongue enough to give me some alarm. You had dropped hints as to missing me, which at first I took as an indication that I had not lived my natural span beyond your own personal era. I could live with that, as we all do. But you'd grown remorseful. A regret that hinted of your own actions that would come to be soon. It was almost a tenderness with which we parted, on your side at least. I sensed a deep guilt in you.
       "After you departed, I sat for a long while and considered your appearance and your actions. You are correct that I lack the intelligence to understand even the germ of your great discovery, but I do know you. That had been a goodbye. But why a farewell on that particular evening when you had the ability to visit me at any other point in my lifespan? Once I feared this possibility, I decided to take out an insurance against my suspicions. I still have some chemical skills from my time at Oxford and I put them to good use, lacing the tea. I knew you would drink it -- I would stop you if I was mistaken: claim some excuse to prevent any kind of harmful dose. Then you suddenly clamped us to your chairs. You know the rest."
       The Time Traveller had been silent throughout my explanation. I had supposed that he was keen to understand his mistake. But when I stood up, stretching my legs and arching my back after so long sitting at that malign table, I saw that he was dead. I took his hand, still warm, in my grief.
       I had considered what to do after this, so I wasted no time. An ironic turn of phrase. I pulled his body from his chair -- surprisingly heavy despite his thin frame -- and dragged him up that dread corridor into his laboratory.
       The object of our troubles sat squat in the centre of the room. I recalled the Time Traveller's explanation of its operation. I planned to heft his body over the saddle, then slam one of the levers down as hard as possible. It would carry him away, along with the evidence of his death. He would travel into a future or past era for as long as the power source of his machine would allow. Either way, he would be gone forever.
       As I approached the machine, regretting that my poison had not worked earlier and saved the lives of my dinner companions, I had a further thought. Dare I do it?
       The Time Traveller had revealed the key moments that had led to his despair and mental anguish. If I could adjust those events and steer his fragile psyche away from taking such terrible paths, it could be possible to change what had happened to him. Perhaps alter these events and rescue his victims from their fate.
       I had to admit that the idea appealed to me. My encounter with the old and regretful Time Traveller the previous week had reminded me of his original noble aspirations before life dealt him those hard knocks from which he had not recovered. His incontestable genius deserved more: a chance, as his ambition had once been, to explore man's glorious destiny far beyond all of our natural years. And the reports of his journeying could inspire us, in the present day, to work hard and in harmony to bring those future times closer.
       My mind made up, I mounted the machine. If I was to succeed, there would be a very different Time Traveller known to all. Instead of this wicked demonstration of mortal failings, the world would become aware of the natural tenderness in the heart of man.