Clockwork Chaos (29 page)

“That’s Sandeman’s fiddle,” Matheson said. “But what’s he saying?”

Garvey knelt beside the wounded man. “Sounds like, ‘Betrayed.’ Who? Who betrayed you?”

The man’s glassy eyes met Garvey’s intense stare. He released the violin and drew a finger across his neck in a forceful slash. Then he fell unconscious.

“We’ve stumbled into the middle of a double-cross,” Garvey said.

“They were working with the assassins?”

“Or the assassins were using them, taking advantage of their surveillance of Sandeman. The question is why? In either case, at least we’ve got the violin.”

Matheson ordered an officer to go upstairs and blow his whistle, and in minutes the entire building shook with activity as police conducted a top-to-bottom search. Several carried axes in anticipation of finding further secret rooms or hiding places. While they worked, Garvey wiped the blood from Sandeman’s violin and carried it outside to the coach. Garvey traced his fingers over the strings; they felt smooth and perfect, as if they would never wear down or break. He plucked random notes and was immediately refreshed and energized, but he also felt a dark undercurrent in the tone that reminded him of the source of the strings’ power. A hundred feet from the coach, Garvey stopped.

He was surrounded by purring, mewing cats that stared at him but would come no closer than a few feet. The animals gathered around him from every quadrant of the neighborhood. The violin possessed a measure of Bast’s magic, a power that even New Alexandria’s most contentious alley cats respected. The cultist's clumsiness puzzled him. He had driven them out of New Alexandria once before, and they would have known he would be on watch for their return. He could not understand why they had not, like the cats, shown proper respect for a greater power. The trail to the violin seemed too straight now, as if events had been manipulated for the illusion of challenge rather than the genuine experience. Because the cult never would have returned the violin, the staged ransom must have served someone else’s purposes, someone who wanted the violin to be returned, but not too easily. Garvey felt a nagging sense of having missed some small but important thing.

From inside his coat, he produced his prototype portable magic detector and passed it over the violin. The light flared to brilliant life, flickered, then brightened and popped in a spray of glass. The cats scattered with startled cries. Garvey reeled from the sudden blast but steadied himself. A haze of dusty light surrounded him. The instrument possessed much greater magic than Sandeman had described. Fragmented thoughts gnawed at the back of Garvey’s mind.

McCalla’s bracelet.

Andy Parker’s cat-faced pendant.

The dead cultist’s ring.

He recalled that on the second day of the World Expo, France had hosted a Night of 1,001 Gifts, a festive twist on the traditional exchange of goodwill tokens among diplomats. Garvey had read the list of presents in the paper; the Egyptian deputy ambassador had given the other diplomats jewelry carved with images out of ancient Egyptian myth.

Garvey stared at the violin.

Felipe Sandeman must not play this.

Then people were shouting at him, warning him, and Garvey spied a dark flash of motion on a nearby rooftop in time to drop to his knees and roll before two gunshots cracked the air. Something bit into Garvey’s shoulder and injected pain through his body. The street came to life with police men rushing in every direction, firing on the shooter, and Garvey saw some of his Troubleshooters dashing into the fracas too, converging from neighboring rooftops. He tried to stand, but his strength deserted him. He held onto consciousness—perhaps even his life—by a tenuous grip, as if a force outside him was bolstering him.

Matheson’s hand clamped onto Garvey’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. Garvey drifted through a cloud of agony. Matheson tried to take the violin; Garvey refused to let go. Still, he felt it inching from his powerless fingers.

He shook his head.

“Sandeman must not play,” he whispered. He clutched uselessly at the violin. “The 1,001 gifts hide a death trap.”

Then the instrument left his grasp, taking the world with it as Garvey blacked out.

The shocked nurse leapt from her seat when Garvey snapped awake and shouted that Sandeman must be kept away from his violin. When he realized where he was, and the nurse regained her composure, Garvey asked, “How long have I been out?”

“Eighteen hours, sir,” the nurse told him.

“Then there’s still time.”

“Now, sir, please, lie back and rest,” the nurse said. “You’re injured.”

“Best do as she says,” Detective Matheson said. He was sitting in a chair by a window, half-hidden in shadows. “Nasty poison on the slug that clipped you. Seems the rejuvenating power of Sandeman’s violin saved your life. So, of course, like a greenhorn, I took it away from you.”

“The violin!” Garvey said. “Dan, listen, keep Sandeman away from it.”

“Calm down,” Matheson said. “It’s all rounded up now. I’m capable of solving a case or two without your inspired intervention. But I’m grateful for your ingenuity. After I saw your magic-finding doohickey pop, I confiscated Sandeman’s fiddle—which, of course, gave me no pleasure whatsoever—and I turned it over to the thaumaturgy squad. Turns out more than the strings were magicked up. Sandeman swore he knew nothing about it, and I believed him, so I put that together with what you said about the gifts. I arranged with Ridley to have them all checked and found a magical match: a pocket watch engraved with the face of Bast, given to the ambassador from Argentina. If Sandeman had played within a hundred yards of it, the magical backlash would’ve killed everyone in the vicinity. Damn ambitious bunch of assassins we’re dealing with. The one that shot you poisoned himself soon as we caught him.”

“They used the cult of Bast to get the violin so they could rig it with magic. And if they’d simply ransomed it back to us, it would’ve been too easy. It would’ve tipped us off.”

“They were planning for us to find it like we did, but we got there early, thanks to you. I figure they were trying to take you out of the game to even the odds,” Matheson said. “The Egyptian contingent claims someone slipped the pocket watch into their bag of gifts without their knowledge. Ridley doesn’t believe them, but he’ll never prove it. There must be someone else involved, but I can’t suss out who.”

“You’ve got a hell of an investigation ahead of you.”

“That’s no lie.”

“So, that’s it? No show for Sandeman?”

“Hell, no, that ain’t it. Sandeman huffed and puffed all the way to City Hall, so we got his fiddle strings cleared out of evidence. He’s putting them on a new violin, and the show must go on.”

“Good news, I suppose.”

“Better news is you pulling through.” Matheson stood, removed something from his pocket, and set it on Garvey’s nightstand. “Ms. McCalla came by to thank you. I told her I’d deliver the message. She said she didn’t think she’d have a chance to see you again before she leaves town, so she left you a gift. Get better, now, y’hear.”

Matheson tipped his hat and left.

Garvey settled into his pillows and stared at his gift from Ms. McCalla. He frowned. She had left him the magic bracelet given her by the Cult of Bast.

C
.J. Henderson

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that one shows the greatest talent
.

—Anatole France

––––––––

F
ive Minutes Ago

“It’s not working!”

Gordon Steadwater Biggleton, Master of Extraordinary Weaponry to the Crown, threw the three switches he knew so well in their proper sequence once more.

“Do something!”

Red then yellow then white—the sequence which should have made everything good and proper.

“For God’s sake, I’m trying!”

Red then yellow then white—the sequence which should have opened the siphon and begun the entrapment process as it had a thousand times previous.

“Well, try something else, mate, because whatever it is you’re trying now, I’m telling you true, it is in
no
way oilin’ the gears!”

Red then yellow then white—the sequence which should have thrown out the usual containment field and snared that which would have insured the domination of the British Empire over all the world.

“Oh, my God... Mr. Biggleton, is that... is
that
... it?”

All eyes followed Filimena Edgars’s delicate, gloved finger outward through the forward observation window of the Gibraltar’s gondola and tried as best as they could to focus on the mind-blasting horror filling all of time and space before them. His throat going dry, eyes bulging, mouth dropping open in startled fear, Biggleton found his jaw shaking, lips unable to form words.

Witless, helpless, he turned to his alien machine and fumbled with its three switches, throwing them in their proper sequence once more. Red then yellow then white—the sequence he had tested more times than he could remember.

The sequence which had never failed.

The sequence which had made him famous throughout Britain.

The sequence which had been somehow rendered utterly useless.

Thus condemning the good ship Gibraltar and all aboard her to a fate beyond the damnations of Hell.

Three Weeks Ago

“Captain Dollins,” said the young woman in the sensible gray ensemble, all but her quite pleasant face demurely and properly hidden away from public viewing, “may I present Mr. Gordon Steadwater Biggleton.”

As the two men shook hands in the center of the swirling gaiety which was the Royal May Day Observance, the older of them responded, saying, “Why, would be my pleasure, sure as sunshine is welcome in the morning. Any friend of my dear Miss Edgars ’ere is a friend by me. What’s your game, Biggleton?”

The two men could not have appeared more different on the surface. Whereas Dollins’ thinning white hair announced how rapidly he was approaching his senior years, Biggleton’s healthy, if unruly, blond mop advertised the fact that he was barely thirty. There was more. Where Dollins was ruddy, stout and robust, Biggleton was pale, slender and perhaps even a touch frail.

“Science, actually... applied as it is needed for the defense and aggrandizement of our beloved England.”

But, the easily measured physical differences separating the two men did not begin to match the brobdingnagian distance between their internal dissimilarities.

“Now Captain,” interrupted Filimena, “as you must suspect, I haven’t brought the two of you into proximity for nothing more than polite after-dinner conversation.”

Dollins was a friendly, open and genuinely warm individual who took each day as it came, thanking the Lord God in Heaven for every additional breath he was granted. His counterpart, however, was a reserved, priggish, and unaffectionate person who planned his every move with the forethought of an Alexander and the calculations of a Leibniz.

“Your charming Miss Edgars is correct, Captain,” verified Biggleton. Carefully manipulating his lips into a smile meant to convey equal portions of envy, respect and friendliness, he explained, “I’ve heard tell of your recent adventure over the Dasht-I-Kavir. If even half of what the rumors say is true, then you and your crew are the only possible choice for a mission I have been commissioned to undertake by the Crown itself.”

Dollin’s eyes went slightly wide. Signalling across the room to his pilot, Applejack Stevens, to join them, he replied, “I can’t say as to what you’ve ’eard about our little larkabout with Xibor, but sir, since I’d be willin’ to wager that quite a good portion of it is probably correct, no matter how outlandish, perhaps we should disengage ourselves from the roar of the crowd and find us a more quieter place to further consult with one another.”

Stevens, a larger man than either his captain or the scientist, had been waiting for the proper moment to join the trio ever since he had seen Biggleton enter the room with Filimena on his arm. It had not been all that long since the young librarian had become attached to the Gibraltar and her crew, and indeed, when first they had met the pilot had found her as insufferably arrogant as she had found him unbearably bull-headed. But, time has been known to change many things, and in the short amount of it the pair had been around each other since their voyage to the Dasht-I-Kavir, they had found much to admire within one another beyond what they had first thought possible.

“I quite agree, Captain,” answered the scientist.

Not noticing Stevens’ harsh glare, Biggleton moved them all off into a side drawing room. Then, after further introductions were made, the scientist got down to his proposition. Or, at least, presenting enough of an introduction to it to attempt to interest Dollins and Stevens in listening to more. The two airmen took seats, the captain in a well-stuffed chair with finely rounded armrests—his favorite type of seat—and his pilot on a comfortable-looking, but quite hideously-colored pink and green striped divan.

His choice of places to park himself had nothing to do with aesthetics, but was made solely on the basis that Filimena had chosen to alight there, politely sitting somewhat to one side so as to indicate that she would not completely mind the pilot’s company. Still upset over having seen at least two of the librarian’s delicate gloved fingers making contact with the scientist’s bare wrist, Stevens actually threw propriety to the winds and boldly seated himself within a foot of the young woman.

As Filimena blushed at such a shocking advance, somewhat across the room Biggleton placed his snifter on the desk in front of which he had positioned himself, then asked, “You’re a military man, right Captain?”

“Applejack and me both, sir, served in India, we did. Me in Africa before that.”

“Then each of you understands what it means to be given a commission by her majesty. To explain, I have been charged with the creation of a new defensive office, the Ministry of Extraordinary Weapons.”

“Well,” responded the pilot, “that’s a mouthful. What’s it mean exactly?”

“Good question, that. No hesitation, either. I like that, Mr. Stevens. Enough so as to answer in kind. The Crown is quite open to anything that might help keep England on a par, militarily speaking, with the rest of the world’s major powers. England is—as I’m certain you are all aware—in an arms race at this moment in time. Germany, France, Spain, Russia, all of them are stockpiling weaponry. All of them are pouring vast amounts of capital into military research.”