Fiendish Schemes (39 page)

“Do not judge him too harshly, Mr. Dower. For he and his associates were duped by the Prime Minister. They had thought, for so they had been told by her, that the intent of all her schemes was to
maintain
that which we have as our
status quo,
which keeps all the elements of society functioning, rather than grinding to a halt. She had convinced the directors of Phototrope Limited that the grimly repressive measures she had devised against the Steam Miners’ Union were necessary to ensure the continuing flow of vaporous energy through the pipes interlacing across the countryside. Without which, not only would their fortunes be lost, but all about them would fall into utter ruin—in that regard, they might well have considered themselves to be motivated not just from self-interest, but a general philanthropy toward their fellow citizens.”

“So all men wish to view themselves,” I observed. “Well, perhaps not Scape and those others like him. But certainly most.”

“How loathsome, then, for Mrs. Fletcher to have turned an otherwise commendable altruism against them! For in pursuit of her own hidden agenda, she kept hidden from my father and his associates her larger plan, to not just cast aside and imprison the miners rendered superfluous by her actions, but to supplant Steam itself as the great motive force in our society. My father and the other Phototrope Limited directors would be reduced to beggary by this abrupt transition to coal—obviously they would never have consented to being cogs in the machinery of the Iron Lady’s schemes, if they had been aware of her actual intentions.”

“I imagine not.” In consideration of the young woman’s recent travails, I thought it prudent to keep unspoken my own assessment, that while her father and his associates might not have been the worst of men, at least in the scale of iniquity on which Mrs. Fletcher held so prominent a position, they were very likely not the best representatives of our kind, either.

“Consider my chagrin, Mr. Dower, to learn that another, the one closest to my heart, had been similarly deceived by this woman—or rather, to be precise, what had once been a member of my gender. For my beloved Captain Crowcroft was also a victim of her wiles, deluded into believing that there was some consummate virtue involved in his commanding the walking lights—only to have it revealed to him by Mrs. Fletcher herself that his position in her coming regime was to be of the brutal and degrading status of a common gaoler!”

Such must have been the information which Crowcroft had received, that had had such an unsettling effect upon him, and of which he had spoken to me in that horrid little room in East London. “Did he speak to you of this?”

“No.” Evangeline shook her head. “I was forced to learn of it in secret. As the first reports of the riots spreading through the city reached my ear, I became aware as well of my father and his associates convening at this place.” She pointed to what was left of Featherwhite House, its roof having collapsed in a flurry of sparks to the fire-engulfed structure below. “I overheard my father and his closest confidants speak of it—and that the captain would be here in attendance as well! Until that moment, I’d had no information as to his whereabouts, or what awful fate might have befallen him in his absence from me. From the tone of what I heard, I was convinced that he was in some grave danger, the nature of which it was incumbent upon me to discover. As my father and his associates took no more notice of me than they had ever been inclined to do, it was easy enough to surreptitiously follow them here and station myself where I could overhear every word they spoke.”

“I rather suspect that you heard nothing that would allay your fears.”

“Indeed so, Mr. Dower. I restrained my impulse to enter the room and clasp my beloved in my arms, the better to ascertain into what dreadful situation he had fallen. From what little I could glimpse of him, he seemed in a terrible state, more disheveled and overwrought than I had ever seen him. Some traumatic event had restored the balance of his reason—or so I heard him assert—which had been the immediate cause for his hastily summoning my father and the others to this conference, motivating them by threatening to make public their various illicit schemes.”

One more item my silence concealed from her, that I had doubtless been present when Captain Crowcroft, previously adrift in his self-inflicted miseries, had been knocked back onto a truer and more virtuous course. Having escaped from the scene which to his mind had implicated him as a crazed murderer, he had apparently resolved to set as many matters aright as he was capable of doing.

“So he got them here,” I said. “What was their response to his informing them of the degree to which they had been duped by Mrs. Fletcher?”

“There was a general angry outcry on their parts—and one who laughed in cruel mockery of their consternation.”

“Who would that have been?”

“I had seen him but once before, in your company, Mr. Dower— when he brought you to a more celebratory gathering at my father’s own house. That man Stonebrake.”

“Rather, that had been his name.” I took some ignoble satisfaction in telling her of his fate. “When I found him now, he lay dead upon the floor of the chamber.”

“I feared as much,” said Evangeline. “For it was a blow from Captain Crowcroft’s hand that sent him hard upon the mantelpiece, with blood streaming from his brow. Though I can scarcely blame my beloved for his sudden rage, so bitterly received were the revelations that Stonebrake threw into the faces of the gathered company.”

“What manner of thing did Stonebrake tell them, to evoke such a reaction?”

“No more than this, Mr. Dower—that virtually everything they had been led to believe was true, and upon which they had based so many of their own schemes and actions, was in fact a monstrous lie.”

“I am not greatly startled to hear this.” Such disclosures seemed to be coming thick and fast to me, varying only by their increasing degree of monumentality. “But what are the exact particulars of which he spoke?”

“They were such that I could scarcely credit them myself,” said Evangeline. “The whole premise for which the walking lighthouses had been created and operated is a concocted fiction, according to what this man Stonebrake said. There are in fact no sentient oceans capable of shifting about from one section of the coastline to another. There never had been; that was all an elaborate ruse to justify Mrs. Fletcher’s government pouring money into the pockets of the lighthouse corporations’ owners, to build and operate the unneeded devices—unneeded, that is, until they could be employed for their true purpose as guard towers for the imprisoned steam miners. I heard Stonebrake make a similar claim about the nature of that supposedly worthy organization from which he had emerged, the so- called Mission to the Cetaceans—it is a vast concocted fraud as well. There might have been some humble members of the group who had naively believed that it was possible to deliver sermons to whales, but the actual purpose of the Mission had been no more than to use its floating headquarters ship to keep an eye on the various walking lighthouses stationed around the coastline, thus ascertaining their readiness to be used for the oppressive purpose which the Prime Minister intended them.”

“I see.” To tell the truth, I but partly did so, the multiplicity of these revelations overwhelming my ability to keep track and sort them out inside my head. The general tenor of them, however, was easily perceived: we had all been made fools of. More was discernible as well. “So—upon hearing all this, Captain Crowcroft flew into a rage and struck the mocking Stonebrake?”

“Yes.” Evangeline sadly nodded. “I witnessed the blow, though I could not be sure of the severity of the effect upon its recipient. Things happened so quickly! There was no opportunity for any of the company to go to the aid of the fallen man, for just at that moment the first draughts of smoke wafted upward, and it became apparent that the rioters had cast their torches through the windows below. My father and the others hastened to make their escape.”

“But you did not—”

“In the ensuing panic and chaos, I flew to the side of my betrothed, with no more intent in mind than to share in whatever fate would befall him.”

“But then . . .” The young woman’s assertion, believable as it was, left me more perplexed than before. “Why was he not there when I arrived upon the scene?”

“He thrust me aside,” came Evangeline’s mournful reply. “I could see that he was still possessed by a towering, vindictive rage, of a strength sufficient to overwhelm his concern for me. He said no more to me than that he had plans of his own, which he was now intent upon setting into motion. He vanished into the smoke filling the townhouse; that was the last I saw of him.”

Whatever my own plans had been, to wrest some trifling advantage to myself, now seemed to have similarly vanished. If I succeeded in making my own escape from whatever remained of London, I would be as much of a pauper as I had been when conveyed here by that mendacious villain Stonebrake.

At the present moment, it seemed prudent to remain obscured in the overgrown garden to which Evangeline and I had fled, the grounds returning to darkness as the flames began to ebb inside the wreckage of Featherwhite House. We could both hear in the distance the mob’s shouts and frenzied merriment, as it continued its destructive course through the city. I had no wish to encounter the rioters once more, or to be forced to hand over the distraught young woman to their mercies. Perhaps in the first light of morning, we might be able to discern some route to relative safety—

My timid musings were interrupted by a thundering roar, louder than any of the night’s previous explosions. It transformed the air about us into an unseen hammer, battering with sufficient force to send us both toppling from the overturned garden bench.

Once more dazed and uncomprehending, I raised myself from the ground onto which I had been thrown. Looking up, I saw the sky turned to one vast sheet of churning orange and red, as though all the mingled clouds of steam and smoke had been ignited.

And worse, by that lurid illumination, I saw monstrous shapes, of dimensions beyond nightmare, rising up in the middle of the city.