Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) (16 page)

“
Our
stories?” he queried.

“
Mm, regarding the crumbling towers you happened upon in prehistory—the Leviacrum towers. And what that means for Meredith and I, for our legacy.”

“
You’re speaking of your mother?” Tangeni called out.

“
How much do you two know about her?” It appalled Meredith to think that Father had made these strangers privy to their family heritage before he’d told
her and Sonja.
But only for a moment. The silence allowed her to clarify her thoughts. It was now quite clear, this circle of colleagues, including the two men present, Professor Sorensen, and Sir Horace Holly whom Father had lectured alongside many times over the years: this clique knew things no one else could be allowed to know, dangerous things, subversive things, unequivocal things, and that she was hearing even a few of them here was both a privilege and an inexorable challenge to her character. For she could never un-learn what she’d learned in the past few days, nor could she share any of this to a living soul outside this particular circle.

She gasped
, thought of her own private investigation, the book waiting for her at home.

“
We know only what you know,” Tangeni replied. “Your father told us he played you her projected message. So the answer to your question is yes, Miss Sonja, the prehistoric towers do appear to be linked to the subterranean civilization from which your mother emerged. That riddle is in your father’s hands, God willing. But we must look to today’s events, and your own safety. Rest assured, William and I will stop at nothing to learn who hired Westerfeld and his scum, and why. In two days’ time we must return to London, but you have relatives at hand, I understand.”

“
Yes, Aunt Lily, when she’s at home, that is,” Sonja answered.

“
I will hire a chaperon for you,” he said. “Be sure to mind his advice.”

Meredith touched shoes with Sonja across the c
arriage, a classic, tacit vow of rebellion against anyone foolish enough to try to control them, often made under the dinner table: nannies, governesses, home tutors, and a babysitting constable named Gabe had failed that task spectacularly over the years. With a little help, of course.

And anyway, Father owned a collection
of rare steam-pistols bequeathed to him from a scientific colleague in Morocco, heavy, nickel-plated things both she and Sonja knew how to work. Well, in theory. They’d shot an empty china vase to smithereens once—at point blank range in the back garden.

But for one or two airship lanterns roaming the heavens like elegant drifting stars, and the town streetlamps’ dim glow beyond the forest on Southsea front, the night was unimaginably cold and lifeless. All along Bitker Lane the wheel-grooved mud had hardened and the puddles frosted over, so the buggy’s heavy-set wheels crunched along the track. Even the Van Persies had turned in—no light in their cottage across the lane—and Meredith couldn’t remember the last time she’d returned home this late.

Father
’s tubular trailer was gone from the garden; likely he’d had one of his expedition lackeys load the last of his supplies in a hurry and drive them to Portsmouth harbour, for immediate transport by boat or airship to some foreign port, away from prying eyes.

No sooner had they started up the gravel path when Sonja halted,
shushed
them, and whispered, “Tangeni, William, look lively now, but be quiet. There’s someone in the house.”

“
Where?” William set his valise down with extreme care. “I don’t see anything.”

“
A lamp light. It moved across the landing. I saw it through two sets of curtains, then—there, do you see? On the stairs?”

“
I see it.” Meredith inched beside her younger sister, and Sonja took her by the arm while they watched. “Definitely an oil lamp. Whoever it is isn’t in a hurry, though; he’s creeping down those steps. Mustn’t have seen us.”

Tangeni fetched two sidearms apiece
from the buggy for himself and William. By the glow of his pocket dynamo lamp he clicked the water and acid cylinders into place, rechecked the magazines. “You ladies keep your distance. Best if you climb back in the carriage. This won’t—”

“
Not on your life.” First Sonja, then Meredith snatched a pistol from him, and before he could protest they were half way up the lawn. Meredith focused on Sonja’s stiff crouching dash ahead, as powerful and un-feline a scurry as she’d ever seen. Whatever they were up to, they were doing it together; that was all that mattered. But
damn it,
the others had best be right behind them.

“
False alarm.” Sonja peered through the vestibule window, and after swapping pistol for key, flung the front door open. “What are
you
doing here?”

“
A fine greeting, I must say,” a familiar female voice called from the hall.

“
A fine time to be greeted,
I
must say.”

“
Lady Catarina?” To Meredith’s surprise, the elegant socialite was dressed in a nightie and dressing gown. Her hair flowed down to her hips.

“
All this to-do. Your Aunt Lily telephoned me earlier and invited me to spend the night, to keep you both company until she arrives. She thought it improper for two young ladies to share a house with two strange men without a female chaperone. I assure you it’s nothing more sinister than that. And certainly no offence intended, Mr. Elgin, Simeon.”

“
None taken, ma’am,” both men agreed, accepting her invitation to enter.

“
Well, we’re glad to see you again and all but—isn’t this a bit unnecessary?” Sonja wiped her feet on the mat. “I thought we were in the twentieth century, not the Dark Ages.”

Lady Catarina tutted. “
Propriety is propriety.”

“
Quite right, Cathy...I mean Lady Catarina.” Tangeni gave her a wink, which she returned, to Meredith’s surprise.

“
And you two know each other
how
?” Sonja snatched Tangeni’s dynamo torch off him and shone it under his chin. They all chuckled at the cross-eyed faces he pulled.

“
Oh, we’ve known each other for several years,” Lady Catarina explained, “through Professor Sorensen and your father. Simeon—”

“
Tangeni,” Meredith corrected her. “We know who they really are.”

“
Very well. Tangeni tells the most amazing stories of his time in the Air Corps. Apparently he met Quatermain once.”

“
Aye, he gave me one of his rifle cartridges—an eight bore—in exchange for my water canteen. Best sale I ever made. But now—” He seemed eager to change the subject as he guided Sonja’s light, still in her grip, toward the chronometer clock, “—it’s time we turned in. Right, Cathy?”

“
Absolutely. You ladies have had a most trying day. To bed with you.” Charming though it was, and she was utterly charming, Lady Catarina’s playful command didn’t sit right with Meredith. Under Mother’s portrait, in Father’s house—indeed
Meredith’s
house while he was away—this prim interloper calling the shots fell the wrong side of meddlesome. Meredith was seventeen, a lady in all but squares on a calendar. She didn’t need anyone ordering her about under her own roof.

“
I’m not ready for bed yet. I’m going to read awhile. But the four of you must turn in.”

“
Merry?” Sonja dazzled her with the dynamo light.

Meredith walked away to the study without another word
, removed her coat and shoes and sat at Father’s desk. The careful footsteps and hushed conversation continued upstairs while she retrieved her notebook and her copy of
Shadow Players: A Study of Esoteric Societies and Modern Conspiracies
from the locked bottom drawer, which only she had the key for.

She wrote the name Westerfeld
on the next blank page of her notebook. Somehow, despite the barrage of happenings and the new information she’d learned today, that was the only fresh lead she could really include as part of her investigation. The owner of the mysterious pocket watch Sonja had found in Sorensen’s garden. So he was a mercenary, almost certainly Leviacrum, and formerly an Asian-Pacific war correspondent. She could try the newspaper archives in the London Central Library, maybe the Union of Empirical Press building, to find out more about him, perhaps whom he was affiliated with, which topics particularly outraged him: clues as to why he would want Father dead, or who might have hired him.

And lastly, why a man like that was given to posse
ss an object of such esoteric nature.

She pivoted the
pocket watch under the light of the table lamp, fingering its seamless edges, its unmovable winder, the pictorial engraving, the Latin words:
exitus acta probat.

“
What the devil are you?”

According
to the French volume, the eight original Atlas Club members, whose real identities had never been proven, each presided over a sect of no more than thirty-six followers. Each sect met in secret at a specified time on a designated date singular to the sect. For example, one group would gather on the first of the month at one o’clock, another on the second at two, and so on, all the way up to the eighth of the month at eight o’clock (presumably post meridian). It was called ‘The Rule of Eight’. Father had let that phrase slip the day he’d projected mother’s posthumous message, and had told Meredith not to pursue it—it was too dangerous a topic for little girls.

Poppycock. Was it better to bury her head in the sand, pretend nothing was happening, that no one was baying for McEwan blood? Or was it her right as a free-
thinking woman to learn the truth? Maybe to the rest of Britain, under the unspoken yoke of Leviacrum rule, ostrichdom was the safer bet; but she’d never been taught the virtue of sand; long necks should be used to look beyond danger.

“
Each member is said to be equipped with an instrument, unique to the number of his sect, for gaining entry to his meeting place on the allotted day. It is small enough to carry in one’s pocket, and inconspicuous enough for him to carry on his person at all times in case of emergency, or for identification among fellow members. Its protective case will bear both the Atlas insignia and its owner’s individual membership number.”

Meredith
breathed on the back of the pocket watch and polished the smooth metal with her sleeve. Number 826. If that signified his sect number then Westerfeld would meet his twenty-five fellow members on the eighth day of every month at 8pm. But where? How could she possibly find that out? And even if she could, how in the blazes was she supposed to open this infuriating casing without taking a hammer to it and possibly smashing the valuable item inside?

The book went on at some length about the political and industrial subterfuge practiced by the Atlas Club and its vast network of “
familiars”—those who did its members’ bidding but weren’t yet members themselves. The Rule of Eight was inviolate, its structure inflexible; maybe the familiars were on the waiting list to replace a member who died or was “expelled” for whatever reason. That none had ever gone public with his or her affiliation with the sect suggested a frighteningly tyrannical authority that bound them with secrecy, and perhaps demonstrated the fatal nature of any “expulsion”.

But any
theories of political conspiracy put forward by the author were, in his own words, mostly hearsay and speculation. Rumblings of whisperings of rumours heard through upturned drinks glasses pressed against unspecified walls. The Atlas Club clearly limited its membership by necessity; the fewer complicit, the safer the secret. Its supposed influence, though, stretched much farther than Meredith had imagined, to the far ends of the globe: Africa, Asia, the Far East, Canada, the rich plantations and mines of Brazil and other South American countries, and of course Europe, especially Portugal, Britain’s old ally.

“
Yet by that same token, factions of the rebel underground movement known as the International Coalition for Free Nations, more commonly referred to as the Coalition, have sprouted in every one of those regions, often violently, in direct response to the perceived threat of Leviacrum dominance. Increasing distrust among colleagues in political spheres has resulted in thousands of reported cases of espionage behaviour, kidnapping and blackmail in Britain alone, and the trend looks to continue.

“
Foremost among those industries on the list of suspected Leviacrum interests are military weapons manufacturing, oil and gas distribution, steel manufacturing, steam-methane reforming, and psammeticum energy research. The latter, still in its infancy at time of writing, is a closely guarded endeavour and is believed to be linked to several speculative scientific hypotheses. No further information is available at present.”

Indeed, time travel had not yet e
scaped halfpenny fiction at the time of writing, 1893.

“
As a postscript to this chapter, it is worth noting Dr. Joao Pinto’s claim in the Portuguese newspaper, Jornal de Noticias--reportedly a Coalition-sponsored journal—that ‘a monopoly on scientific patents is currently held by organisations almost certainly in bed with the Leviacrum Council of Great Britain, and a consensus of leading independent European physicists shares this opinion.’”