Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (24 page)

“Come on, come on, come on!” said Gideon, slapping the leather of the seat’s arm as the steam-cab ferried them agonizingly slowly from Mayfair to Embankment.

“Sorry, sir,” said the driver, glancing over his shoulder. “The traffic’s terrible, and this fog isn’t helping any.”

“Mr. Bent, wasn’t it your theory that Annie Crook was the first victim of Jack the Ripper?” asked Trigger.

Bent leaned forward in the seat and rubbed his hands together. “You have to admit the old modus operandi is the same.”

“Didn’t Annie Crook die well before the current spate of killings?” pointed out Trigger, sitting opposite Bent and Gideon, his cane resting between his knees. “And am I right in recalling that while Jack the Ripper does indeed slice the heads off his victims, he does not go so far as to remove their brains?”

“What if Jack the Ripper’s looking for something specific in his victims’ heads?” said Gideon slowly. “What if he’s after the Atlantic Artifact?”

“W,” breathed Bent. “Christ, lad, you’re effing right. Jack is W. He wants his artifact back.”

Trigger frowned. “Mr. Bent, there are far too many holes in
that
argument.”

“Real life ain’t one of your stories, Trigger,” said Bent. “Things aren’t often neatly tied up in a dozen pages, with illustrations. But give me the benefit of your literary acumen, Trigger. Tell me the plot holes.”

Trigger shrugged. “For starters, W. ostensibly has the artifact. He gave it to Einstein. He knows full well where it is.”

“But does he?” said Bent. “Gideon said Einstein was missing.”

“But Maria was not,” countered Trigger. “She was in the house all along. Why couldn’t W. just go back to the house and take her?”

“Maybe he didn’t know,” said Gideon. “There’s nothing in Einstein’s journals to say he actually told W. he’d transplanted the brain and the artifact into Maria. And there’s something else. Einstein’s manservant, Crowe, mentioned some device the professor had invented to stop people finding out things about the house. It’s why the telephones didn’t work. He called it a dizzy rupture.”

“A disruptor,” said Trigger. “Hmm. That could be the answer. If Einstein had told W. he no longer had the artifact . . . if W. had some kind of machine to aid his search for the artifact, then any disruptor devised by Einstein could conceivably block it, put him off the scent.”

Bent’s eyes were shining. “Say W. thinks Einstein’s gone to ground with the brain and the artifact. Say he knows enough about the professor’s work, but not everything. He knows Einstein would have done at least some research into the artifact, knows he’ll have tried to use it with a brain. Stands to reason he’d make the leap to an automaton, given the professor’s field of expertise. Maybe old W saw Maria when she was a work in progress. Maybe that manservant, Crowe, told him about her. If Einstein’s in London, W. would know about it. Unless he’d gone underground, living in the slums, with an automaton in the shape of a young girl. Which is why . . .”

“Why W’s slicing heads off street- girls,” said Gideon. “Looking for his artifact.” He sat silently for a moment. “But would a representative of the Crown really stoop to that?”

Bent guffawed. “You’d be surprised how low the Crown would go, lad.”

Trigger sighed. “But why, Mr. Bent? Why go to all that trouble?”

“Here’s your motivation, Trigger,” said Bent. “Here’s your killer plot twist. W_____ wants the brain back because of what’s in it. Because of what Annie Crook remembers.” He looked up to the driver. “How long to Embankment?”

“Fifteen minutes, sir, if the traffic doesn’t get any worse. Which I can’t promise.”

“Just enough time, I reckon,” he said. “Gentlemen, let me take you back two years to June of 1888. London, Cleveland Street to be exact, and a young girl has just finished her shift at a tobacconist on the Tottenham Court Road. It’s a balmy night when Annie Crook turns the key in the door of the house where she takes rooms, but she doesn’t mind being cooped up inside, as small as her apartment is. Because Annie Crook is in love, and she’s about to have a visit from her sweetheart . . .”

“It sounds preposterous, if I might say so,” said Trigger. “You might, but it’d be a bit effing rich coming from you, who spins them tall tales for
World Marvels & Wonders
every month,” said Bent, sitting back with the satisfaction of a good tale well told.

“A fair point, I suppose,” said Trigger. “But then, my tales are true.”

“As is mine, sir,” said Bent.

Trigger leaned forward in his seat as the steam-cab rumbled on. “So the Duke of Clarence, grandson of Queen Victoria and heir to the throne of the British Empire, falls in love and gets betrothed to a lowly tobacconist’s assistant, and agents of the Crown . . . what? Murder her and steal her brain?”

“Your Mr. Reed said as much in his journals. I imagine the brain stealing was an afterthought. A mistake,” said Bent. “W.

dropped the ball on that, somewhat. He needed a brain for Einstein’s experiments with the artifact, and W. needed to do away with someone. Happy coincidence.” He paused.

“Though not for Annie Crook, of course. And not for W, in the long run.”

“So the Jack the Ripper killings can be ascribed to W, who wants the artifact back?” said Trigger. “Fascinating.”

“And the brain,” nodded Bent. “Because he couldn’t have guessed at the time, but Einstein’s experiments evidently preserved some of Annie’s memories.”

“Maria’s dreams of London,” said Gideon.

Bent nodded. “It’s a bit of a jigsaw at the moment, and I’m not saying all the pieces fit properly. But I’ve survived thirty years in Fleet Street on hunches, and this one won’t let go. As you say, Trigger, fascinating. But effing unprovable.” There was a sudden howling of dogs that caused them all to fall silent, and the driver pulled the steam-cab to a hissing halt. “We’re here,” he said. “Embankment.”

“Will you wait for us?” Trigger asked the driver as he paid him. “We may need your services for the return journey.” Bent peered through the window. “We’ll never see anything in that fog, Like trying to find an eel in a barrel of puke.” Then the night was rent by an ear-splitting scream.

Enveloped in fog, Maria felt utterly alone, as though the rest of London had leaked away and there was only her, the thickening mist, and the terrible figure, inching toward her with painful deliberation. Its breathing came heavy and rhythmic, as though it was murmuring guttural but perversely comforting words in a language Maria had never heard.

“Why are you doing this?” she screamed. “Leave me alone!” But still the figure walked on, closing the gap between them. The electric lights strung out along the river faded as the fog swallowed them, and Maria backed up as far as she could, coming up sharp against the balustrade separating the walkway from the river.

This had been what she wanted, wasn’t it? Oblivion? To be thrown into the perpetual blackness? So why was the substance that passed for her blood hammering in her ears? Why did the collection of pistons, flywheels, and cogs in the place where her heart should be bang like a drum? Why did her cloth muscles clench and tighten as she readied to flee . . . or to fight? Could it be that Maria, the clockwork girl who was not alive, did not want to die?

She realized her revelation might have come too late. The dark shape was upon her, and with a fluid movement it tore off her bonnet. Finally, she saw its face.

But she had no time to recoil, as her instincts screamed at her to. Instead, Maria kicked her attacker in the shins and swung her arm, connecting with its head and knocking it off its feet. Now it was Maria’s turn to stop in surprise. She looked at her hands as her assailant groaned at her feet. When had she become so strong? She had never had cause to use more strength than it took to pour a pot of tea, or undo the buttons on Crowe’s breeches. But with all that clockwork and brass within her, those metal bones, the pistons and plumb-weights powering her limbs . . . well, was it any wonder? Professor Einstein had not merely given her life, he had created her. She was not inferior, by God. She was superior! It was not some evil soup flowing in her veins, but power. With a sneer, Maria aimed a kick at her attacker that snapped its head back; the creature fell upon the stone with a wet thud in a silent tangle of limbs. Maria had felled it. But what was it? She looked in horror at the figure on the cobbles.

“Maria!”

She turned, hoping against hope, as Gideon emerged, breathless, from the fog. Behind him were Captain Trigger and Mr. Bent, neither of them looking much the better for their exertions. But Gideon appeared as an avenging angel from the Old Testament, his dark, curly hair flying behind him as he ran, his white shirt plastered to his chest by the damp smog. He had come looking for her, her very own angel. He had come to her.

“Maria!” cried Gideon again, and he ran up to embrace her. He felt as though his heart might burst. “Thank God we found you! But why did you—”

He paused, seeing the figure on the ground, and as Trigger and Bent puffed up he released his grip on Maria, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Good God,” he whispered.

“I was attacked,” said Maria. “But it did not reckon on its victim fighting back.”

Gideon turned to the motionless form on the ground. At last. The Faxmouth mummy, more horrible in the flesh than he could ever have imagined. Its limbs were thin and wiry, desiccated yet muscular. Its head was bulbous and gray, with huge orbs staring sightlessly at the fog-bound sky. Its mouth was indeed froglike and elongated, with rows of black, slavering teeth stretched in a perverse grin.

“But what is it doing in London?” said Gideon. He felt a sudden swell of something bigger than himself, something that threatened to swamp him. For the first time since leaving Sandsend he was aware that he was no longer driving his own destiny. He was being swept along. But toward what?

“Smith,” Bent said to him. “Smith. Snap out of it. How many of these things did you say there were?”

Gideon blinked and looked at Bent. “What? One, of course.”

He followed Bent’s outstretched arms, and the journalist said, “Then what the eff are these buggers?”

All around them shapes were melting out of the fog, rangy, thin figures hissing and muttering in unison, their claws outstretched.

“That’s twelve I make it, counting the one out cold on the floor,” said Trigger. “Anyone got a plan?”

Bent let loose a long, wet fart. “Eff to a plan, does anybody have a
gun
?”

Gideon braced himself for their attack . . . just as a furry thunderbolt howled out of the fog and slammed into the ghoul.

At an unspoken signal from Bathory, the dogs that had gathered in a frenzied, panting pack by the stone balustrade near the river surged forward with a great howling and barking. Bathory stood with her cloak gathered about her and watched them go, Stoker wringing his hands by her side.

“I shall let Varney’s curs soften them up first,” she said. “But the last thing the final one standing will see before it falls will be my face.”

She strode after the dogs, Stoker running to keep up with her. Ahead, through the mist, they heard the battle being joined . . . and human voices among the clamor.

“There are people there!” said Stoker.

They ran together through the curling fog to where the transmogrified vampire hounds wrestled with a dozen or more of the Children of Heqet as though, thought Stoker, in some obscene netherworld dinner dance. Stoker waved at the huddle of figures by the balustrade, a young couple and an older, white-haired man, as frail looking as the fourth—a portly, shabby gent— was fat. “Hi!” he called. “Over here!”

“Get them to safety,” Bathory said. “Varney’s dogs are not coming out of this too well.”

“The odds are too great,” said Stoker as the four people began to sidle along the balustrade away from the combat. “You cannot engage them.”

Bathory looked at him, her eyes shining terribly. “I must.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Bram, you must stop thinking of me as one of your polite London ladies. You have seen what I can do. But . . . if I fall in battle . . . I thank you for your assistance. You are a good man.”

“Elizabeth . . . ,” began Stoker, but he didn’t know how to finish.

Madly, impossibly, he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her. Instead he shook his head and did as she asked, stealing around the battle toward the group, his eyes widening with recognition.

“Gideon! Gideon Smith!” he called.

Gideon tore his eyes away from the slaughter at the sound of the lilting, Irish voice hollering through the mist. “Mr. Stoker!” he cried. “But what are you doing here . . . and with the mummies?”

“A long and complicated tale,” said Stoker, glancing back at Bathory, who still stood watching the carnage. “I suggest we get away from here.”

“First effing words of sense anybody’s spoken all day,” said Bent, thrusting his hand at Stoker. “Aloysius Bent, of the
Illustrated London Argus
. You’re Bram Stoker, ain’t you? Do a bit of theater reviewing for us, from time to time?”

“I’ve got a long story of my own,” said Gideon. Stoker’s appearance had gladdened his heart, at the same time it reinforced his belief that he was being carried along by forces larger and more powerful than he could have guessed at.

“Can we please effing hear these long stories anywhere but effing here?” pleaded Bent.

“Bram!”

Gideon turned to the woman who stood watching the last of the dogs fall beneath the claws of the mummies. She was in full view, her black hair falling in curls around her long cloak. But the creatures were ignoring her and turning back toward Gideon’s group.

“Run!” cried the woman. “I don’t know what they are about . . .”

They ran. Gideon was first to the waiting steam-cab, rattling at the doors as the driver looked up from his newspaper. “Back to Grosvenor Square!” he gasped.

“Whoa!” said the driver. “Six? I’m only licensed to carry four passengers.”

“Drive!” demanded Gideon through gritted teeth as he hauled the door closed. “Just drive!”

Bent and Trigger squeezed into the narrow forwardfacing seat with Stoker’s companion—who was so breathtakingly, exotically beautiful that she took Gideon’s breath away—sandwiched between them. Stoker and Maria sat on the pull-down chairs facing the rear of the cab, leaving Gideon to squat in the foot-well as the steam-cab laboriously began to putter along Embankment.