Fiendish Schemes (37 page)

“Perhaps,” I said. “But let us postulate that I do. If I were to transfer this desirable key device into your hands—by which you could activate the
Vox Universalis,
for whatever obscure purpose you contemplate—would your gratitude also be of a financial kind? That is to say, would you bestow upon me sufficient funds that I could comfortably turn my back upon the whole lot of you? I am not speaking of the sort of vast fortune with which you and the late Stonebrake continually enflame your imaginations. Just enough for a sufficiency of comforts—that’s all I’m asking.”

“Done,” said Scape. “How soon can you get it here?”

“That all depends.” I folded up the piece of yellowed paper and tucked it in my coat pocket. “Upon how soon you leave off with your endless haranguing, and allow me to proceed on what I assure you will be a simple quest.”

“All right.” He tilted his head to one side, as though newly assessing the person before him. “Then hit the bricks, pal.”

I
N
the event, it turned out that I had misspoken.

Within the comfortable environs of the Fex establishment, I had assured both Scape and his accomplice, Miss McThane, that it would be an enterprise of no great difficulty to lay my hands upon the key to the
Vox Universalis
device and bring it to them. Before my exit, as Scape had escorted me to the building’s front door, he had offered to accompany me—not from any concern that I would fail to return with the desired article, motivated as I was by the promised reward for its delivery, but in order to facilitate my journey through the city. I had refused his assistance, relying upon the proverbial wisdom that a person travels fastest when he travels alone—and I had no wish to tarry further in the execution of these matters.

As I quickly realized, though, I should have taken him up on his offer.

While we had conversed in the drawing-room, I had been aware of distant shouts and clatter, the noises drifting to my ear as though from some remote battlefield. No sooner was I out upon Kings Road than it became apparent to me that the battle was closer to hand—in fact, was upon the city’s doorsteps.

I shrank back against the nearest wall as a tumultuous mob roared past me, its assembled faces gleaming with fervid excitement, throats raw with the shouting of various coarse slogans. From what little I could understand of them, it was obvious that whatever their previous opinions might have been, they were all possessed of a passionate dislike for all things steam-related. To hear the jostling people’s cries and witness the brandishing of their various torches and improvised tools of destruction, one might have concluded that a sweltering Devil had descended upon London to impose some igneous tyranny, to the abolition of which these citizens had now dedicated themselves.

“Come on, mate!” One of the rioters spotted me and extended a laughing invitation as the crowd surged through the street. “Havin’ a right smash-up, we are! Miss it and ye’ll be sorry!”

The human tide moved past me in its chaotic yet single-minded fashion. I counted myself fortunate that the cumulative effect of my own recent adventures, while unenjoyable at the time of experiencing them, had rendered my own garments to a less respectable state, with various tears and stains, as well as general grime, evident on my coat and trousers. If not for such a disheveled appearance, I might have been mistaken for exactly the sort of well-mannered toff to which the mob was also directing its disdain. Various gentlemen, mistakenly believing they still possessed the liberty of moving about the city at will, were even as I watched being pummeled to the ground or, if less fortunate, hoisted onto lampposts by hempen ropes tightened about their necks. Either fate seemed to evoke even greater hilarity on the part of the rioters, shouting and brandishing their torches.

That the torches were not being used merely for illumination was soon made evident to me. The sharp, unmistakable noise of shattering glass reached my ear; beyond the close-pressed bodies of the mob, I saw flaring brands tossed inside a number of shops and residences. Soon, flames and sparks were swirling up into the night sky, a sight which served to further elevate the mood of the howling crowd.

At last, I glimpsed an opportunity to venture forth on my errand. Enough of the mob had passed by before me, that through the straggling remnant I could see the dark alleys across from me. From my long-ago upbringing in London, I was familiar enough with the district that I could envision a circuitous route that would enable me to bypass the rioting populace and safely reach my destination. Summoning up my courage, I dashed into the street, shouldering my way past the mob’s stragglers, and succeeded at diving into the unlit passageway beyond.

While I might have initially underestimated the difficulties involved in fetching the
Vox Universalis
key, I prudently ensured that I would not similarly dismiss the mob’s ability to do me harm. I was familiar enough with the nature of human enthusiasms, so easily stoked to the incendiary point, to know that while I might have once escaped those attentions both mirthful and murderous, a second encounter could not be guaranteed to go so well. Very likely, at a certain point in their mingled inebriation and vandalism, they would commence hanging one another just as readily as any perceived member of the genteel classes who fell into their hands.

Keeping a sharp ear out for the sounds of the mob’s revelry, I navigated a course as widely diverging from its course as possible. My progress was made faster by the fact of the rioters having already bestowed their efforts on the districts that lay before me. Once having reduced them to rubble and ash, they had quickly abandoned them for fresher fields, with windows yet unsmashed and buildings unrazed.

In short order, I found myself picking my way through Clerkenwell, in which my old watchmaker’s shop had been located years before. I saw no indication of it now having been converted to other uses, so thoroughly had the area been transformed—first by the invading advent of Steam, then by the mob’s rampage. The great pipes which coursed through the once familiar streets had been hammered asunder, their assailants apparently dismissive of their chances of being scalded to death by the gouts of heated vapour gushing forth. The resulting effect on the depopulated scene was of some industrial disaster, perhaps a crashing wreck upon the railway lines. I covered my ears against the mingled hisses and shrieks; I would have been quickly deafened if I had not. Ducking beneath the jets of steam and crawling on my stomach when necessary, and with mist- sodden black ash clinging to my hands and face, I laboriously effected my passage to the district’s perimeter and the marginally less hazardous streets beyond.

Continuing onward, I managed only through the greatest of prudence to avoid being scalded to death, mauled by various bands of rioters, or clubbed over the head by the constables futilely attempting to gain control of the London streets. At various moments in the course of my journey, I sought refuge behind various heaps of iron scrap, the detritus of the mob’s increasingly frenzied vendetta against all things relative to Steam; at others, the great hissing clouds of vapour filling the passageways afforded me sufficient cover to elude any who might have sought to impede my progress.

At last, I spied my destination before me—Featherwhite House was but a few dozen paces or so away, with nothing blocking my path. I quickly broke into a run, anxious to reach the imposing structure before anything else could go amiss.

In that simple endeavour, I was thwarted—I should scarcely have been surprised by that, given all that had happened thus far. No sooner had I attained the gate opening onto the street than I heard the now familiar discord of shattering glass and mingled shouts indicating the presence of some contingent of rioters. Worse, a flaring light fell across my face as I halted in my tracks. As I watched, fire and smoke issued forth from the lower windows of Featherwhite House. Before I could seek a hiding-place, a giddily hilarious mob rushed past, knocking me to the ground beside the lane curving toward the building’s ornate front door.

“You’ve come too late—” Dazed, I felt a hand grasp mine, pulling me again to my feet. “Likely, you should be thankful for that!”

By the light of the fire quickly engulfing the townhouse, I saw that I was being addressed by Royston, the foreman of those workers who had been engaged upon their various activities within Featherwhite House, chiefly to do with those devices created by my father which had been brought hither.

“What . . .” I was grateful to have avoided being trampled by the mob—in my previous haste, I might have been able to discern their presence if their torches had not all been used for purposes of arson. “What do you mean?”

“They’ve all fled!” Royston pointed to the burning structure with an outflung hand. “As they damn well should have!” Blood trickled down the man’s brow, from a wound he had no doubt suffered in his own encounter with the mob. “As you should as well!”

Before I could elicit further information from the man, he had turned away and hurried from me, disappearing into the street’s flickering shadows.

I was near enough to Featherwhite House that I could feel the heat from the flames quickly advancing through the ornate structure. There was no consideration of allowing that to deter me from approaching even more closely—not if I was to succeed in securing the object for which I had come all this way, under such dangerous circumstances.

The massive front door stood ajar, giving me full view of the townhouse’s interior. It took but a second’s scrutiny, one upraised hand protecting my face, to determine that it was primarily the outer walls that were engulfed in flame—the mob’s fiery brands had not traveled more than a few feet through the smashed windows. I could see as well that the progress of the fire was to some degree retarded by the geysers of steam upwelling from the broken floorboards—at least some members of the mob, in their spiraling lust for destruction, had apparently turned their attentions to the detested machinery in the cellars. As I cringed back from the searing heat, a deafening explosion shook the building, an overheated boiler sending its sharp-edged fragments through the walls blackened by smoke.

Not for the first time, I realized the advantage that sheer desperation gives one, when confronted by circumstances at which more reasonable minds would quail. Though possessed of no great amount of physical courage, and certainly less of it than the majority of men, I found myself diving into the flame-engulfed premises, heading for the central staircase.

Blinded by the mingled smoke and steam, I availed myself of the carved wooden rail to pull myself upward. The structure had been so weakened by both the fire and the explosion from the cellars, that the rail swayed with every grasp of my hands, the steps beneath my feet yielding in a similarly precarious fashion. Looking above, I was able to discern the stairs’ mounting creak away from the point at which it attached to the next story. Fearful of being plunged to the burning wreckage below, I made even greater haste, throwing myself headlong past the final steps and onto the floor of the upper hallway to which I had directed myself.

There having been only a relatively few occasions on which I had been inside Featherwhite House, it required some hurried investigation on my part, flinging open one door after another, to find the room which had been assigned as my temporary quarters. The diminished, smoke-filled air evoked fits of wracking coughs as I spotted my luggage still laid out on the narrow bench at the foot of the bed. Within moments I was inside the room, batting away a flurry of sparks with one hand as with the other I flung open the
portmanteau
’s battered lid.

Even in as unfortunate circumstances as these, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the key to the
Vox Universalis
was where I had placed it, when I had first packed up my meager possessions and hied myself to London. So exact was its resemblance to the diagram I had obtained from Scape, there was no necessity for me to draw the paper from my coat for confirmation. Instead, I seized upon the device itself, lifting it and holding it in both hands, gazing upon the thing with new understanding—

For when I had grasped it before, it had been with the intention of employing it for my own self-destruction.

I had then thought it to be some manner of pistol, crafted by my father so that its intricate workings were somehow capable of hurling a projectile from what had seemed to be its muzzle. No wonder that I had been unable, despite all my poking and prying at the machine, to cause it to send a round crashing through my skull! Even those minutely detailed separate objects that I had previously discerned within it, which I had assumed to be bullets, my previous familiarity with my father’s designs now informed me were but sub-mechanisms for altering the operations of the larger
Vox Universalis
device into which the key would be inserted. Their microscopic gears would interconnect with those larger than them, thereby producing the desired results, whatever those might be.

If there had been sufficient air to breathe in the increasingly stifling room, I might almost have laughed at the recall of my earlier frustrations. But now I was gratified to an even larger extent, to have been informed of the device’s true purpose. The device trembled within my grasp, as though from its unlimited potentiality as well as the various mainsprings I had left wound before packing it away in my luggage. For it was not only the key by which my father’s voice-simulating construction could be set into operation—it was as well the key to my own fortunes and security.

That was, of course, if I could find a way out of the fire-wracked building in which I presently stood.

As I brought my gaze up from the precious construction in my hands, an ominous noise reached my ear—a great clattering, as of timbers tearing apart from each other, then collapsing as rubble to somewhere below. Clutching the key device to my chest, I hurried from the room. Merely by my stepping into the hallway, my worst apprehensions were confirmed—Featherwhite House’s central staircase had separated into its component elements, leaving a smokefilled vacancy where my route of escape had formerly stood.

“Mr. Dower! Is it you—”

While not completely startled by the collapse of the staircase— the event seemed in keeping with the general course of my fortunes—I was, however, taken by surprise at hearing a woman’s voice calling out to me. And a familiar one—I turned about and peered through the billowing clouds of smoke and steam. To my further astonishment, Lord Fusible’s daughter, Evangeline, stood but a few yards away from me.

“What is it you are doing here?” There was no time for formalities—or for explanations. I hastened to her side and laid hold of one arm to prevent her from collapsing. “We must find a way out—immediately—”

There was but little resistance on her part, so overcome was she by the thickening smoke. Her eyelids fluttered as she gasped for breath, her negligible weight pressed into the crook of my shoulder.