The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Menace (7 page)

Maybe Garrett
was right? Maybe her gut reaction did have something to do with
jealousy?

Good God, was
she
behaving less than professionally here? After
accusing him of the same?

It was an ugly
thought.

“
Do you know who delivers the flowers?” Perry asked, flipping
open her notepad. “We could perhaps trace them back to the
owner.”

Facts were
easier than emotions. Miss Radcliffe wasn’t entirely certain, as
the youth who made the deliveries to the theatre was unknown to
her, but she did offer a description, and she knew what time the
lad arrived each day.

“
Thank you for your co-operation.” Perry stood, tucking her
notepad in her pocket. “We should leave you to prepare for the
night ahead. We’ll follow up on the flowers tomorrow at noon, when
the delivery lad arrives.”

Garrett was
smiling at Miss Radcliffe when she turned toward the door. “Break a
leg tonight. That is the correct expression, is it not?”

Instantly Miss
Radcliffe relaxed. “Thank you.” She took a deep breath, a small
glitter of excitement glowing in her eyes. “It was a positively
horrible dress rehearsal, which means tonight’s show should be
spectacular.” Then she sobered. “Oh, I shouldn’t even be thinking
such a thing when poor Nelly is... missing.”

“
Leave Nelly to us,” Garrett told her. “People don’t just
disappear. We’ll find her, for you. You just concentrate on the
show.”

They left Miss
Radcliffe nervously murmuring her lines.

Garrett’s
smile lasted only so far as several feet along the corridor. “I’m
walking her home, am I?”

“
She feels more comfortable with you” The corridor seemed
narrow and hot all of a sudden, and Perry’s strides were brisk.
“Perhaps it would be best for us to separate? There’s something
bothering me about Hobbs’ murder. I want to go back through his
books, see if there’s any reference to Nelly or her amputation in
his ledger. There has to be some sort of connection between the
pair of them.”

“
And you want me to remain here?” Garrett’s shoulder brushed
against hers as they reached the bottom of the stairs, leading up
to the back of the stage.

“
Someone needs to keep an eye on the theatre.” Perry shrugged.
“The flowers bother me. Whoever sent them has turned his attention
from Nelly to Miss Radcliffe quite quickly.”

“
You think someone removed Nelly from the show to make way for
Miss Radcliffe?”

“
Always a possibility. It could mean she’s in danger too.
Maybe Nelly rejected her suitor? Mrs. Fotherham said earlier that
Miss Radcliffe bears a striking familiarity with Nelly.” This was
the frustrating part of a case: dozens of tiny little pieces
floated before her, none of them fitting together in a nice,
orderly pattern. She needed more information, more clues - the
missing pieces to the puzzle. To keep digging until she found
something that tied the pieces together, and she could put a
working theory into place. “But I’m not quite sure how Hobbs fits
into that, and I need to find out - I think he’s the string tying
this whole thing together. Maybe you could examine Nelly’s room
again? Try and work out how she could have disappeared without
anyone noticing.”

“
I don’t like you working alone.”

“
We often work alone,” she retorted. “And I’m perfectly
capable of handing someone his teeth, if needs be.”

The faintest
quirk of a brow. He was standing quite close to her, in the shadows
of the theatre. Above them, dozens of stagehands scuttled around
the stage, setting everything into place for tonight. “I’ve always
found you more partial to a man’s privates.”

Perry colored
up, and he noticed.

“
As a target,” he said wryly. “You’re far more ruthless than
I.”

“
That’s only because you suffer an instinctive wince whenever
you see a man downed in such a manner. I don’t have that problem.
Any vulnerability, any time.”

He let out a
soft exhale of a laugh. “Lynch’s favourite motto.” Then his
expression sobered, and he added in a gentler tone, “Watch your
back. If you haven’t returned by three o’clock, I’m coming after
you.”

Perry rolled
her eyes. For a moment it felt very much like their old sense of
camaraderie - though she could still sense something lingering
beneath the surface, between them.

Let’s just pretend nothing ever happened
.

“
If you’re not here by the time I return,” she shot back,
“I’ll come rescue you too.”

Garrett
grinned and brushed his knuckles along her jaw. “Happy
hunting.”

“
You too. Break a leg. Or don’t,” Perry said dryly. “You’re
too big of a lummox for me to carry around.”

There hadn’t been a good chance to examine the Maker’s shop
in detail
yesterday,
what with the discovery of the body. Perry made certain she
locked the door behind her, and eyed the trapdoor into the cellar.
She wouldn’t find any evidence of Nelly upstairs in the shop, she
guessed. No, Nelly and her mechanical leg would be somewhere in
Hobbs’ paperwork below.

“
Somewhere nice and dark and creepy,” she murmured under her
breath, sliding down through the trapdoor into the workroom below.
She lit the lantern she’d brought with her, and its flame gleamed
on the trays of metal implements and the mech limbs that had been
already crafted. They weren’t as finely made as Nelly’s leg, and
lacked the synthetic skin that she’d used to hide the metallic
gleam.

Hobbs had been
a meticulous record keeper, judging from the heavy leather-bound
tomes on the shelves - if one counted on the work to be coded.

Taking several
of his logbooks from the shelf, she flipped through them, her eyes
straining as she sought to work out the code. Bloody hell, he must
have been paranoid. A legitimate fear though, when one thought of
the Echelon’s enclaves, with their enforced registration of mechs.
The blue bloods of the Echelon wouldn’t like knowing that
unregistered mechs moved throughout the populace without so much as
a serial number or means of identification.

A further
search brought her to a timber box, which opened to reveal some
sort of cipher machine, or cryptograph. There were six wheels
within it, each indented with copper letters and numerals she
didn’t know. She’d seen the type before, once, on a visit to the
War Office, but this was outside her realm of experience.

There’d be a
key that helped decipher the algorithms used. Possibly the long
line of text rotating on a cylinder above the copper wheels.
Snapping the lid shut, Perry dragged it off the shelf. Fitz would
know how to crack it, if necessary, and then Hobbs’ secret ledgers
would be available for her perusal.

Dumping it on
the table, she gathered up the logbooks. There was a diary there
too, more of a field diary, than a personal one. The notes were
crude and rudimentary, and odd little scientific drawings had been
tucked into the folds. Anatomical drawings of a child with strange
cleft hands, and a cleft foot. A gap in its lip showed it’s teeth,
and Perry paused.

The drawing was titled, ‘
Lovecraft
’.

The next page
detailed the finding of a child of monstrous proportions, who’d
been abandoned in the alley behind the shop, and beaten by local
children.

‘
It is believed that Lovecraft’s mother
,’ the author mused,
‘suffered a
fright during her pregnancy of such proportion that it caused the
mother to go into paroxysms. Hence, the child was born severely
malformed
.
It is
truly hideous to look at, and the local children all fear it, but I
wonder at the malformations. Could I, with my skills, create limbs
to replace the misshapen ones? Though the child tends to deafness,
perhaps he could live a relatively normal life once the defective
limbs are removed or enhanced?’

A floorboard
creaked above her. Perry froze, glancing upwards as she slowly
eased the diary closed. She was just about to relax when a faint
shifting whispered again. Someone stealthily slipping across the
floor. Tiny little pinpricks marched down the back of her neck, and
she eased out the breath she’d been holding.

Someone was in the shop with her
.

She’d locked
the door behind her. Perhaps they’d come through the side door that
led out into the little brick yard behind the shop?

A pair of pistols were strapped to cuffs around her wrists.
She triggered the right one, and the wrist-pistol slapped into her
palm with a faint click. Perry melted behind a stacked shelf with
mechanical arms and legs hanging from it. The lamp on the other
side of the room betrayed her presence,
but there was no way she could bring herself
to extinguish it. Darkness was the one thing she
truly feared after that time as a young girl when–

-don’t think
of that–

Fear punched
through her chest. It was too late. She’d given the monsters of her
past a glimpse into her mind, and the familiar swirl of panic
settled in her chest.

Damn it. She could barely hear over the thumping of her
heart. Tingling started about her lips, and her mouth went
dry.
Hell
.

She hadn’t
suffered a fit of hysteria in years, and she couldn’t afford
another now. Her protective over-corset seemed to tighten as if
fingers dragged through the laces at back.

Identify the cause
, Lynch’s calm,
familiar voice reminded her.
What is it
you fear?

They’d worked
together over the years to manage her hysteria. The martial arts
and meditation he’d recommended helped, but Lynch’s true power was
working out the rationale behind maladies of the mind.

I can’t see him.
She focused on
breathing out, nice and slow.
I can’t see
who it is, and I’m trapped down here, the way I was
when
–

She forced the
past out of her mind. It had no place here, and the brief thought
of it only made the sway of dizziness worse.

If she didn’t
move, she wouldn’t be able to.

Perry
swallowed hard, and forced her muscles to unlock. She was strong
and powerful now, the way she hadn’t been as a young woman, and her
then-tormentor was gone. She’d never have to see him again. This
wasn’t the same. She was a blue blood now, with power.

But the
not-knowing was making it harder to breathe. She had to see
him.

Confront the fear
, Lynch whispered
in her mind.

Exploding up
the narrow ladder, Perry squinted briefly against the glare of the
light through the shop windows. The enormous shadow in front of her
froze, hunching low, and as her eyes focused, she saw its hideous
face widen in shock as she leapt over the counter and held her
pistol up.

“
Don’t move.” The tremble in her fingers betrayed her, but the
pistol held steady. She wasn’t alone in the dark anymore, and
somehow that made it easier to breathe.

The creature was enormous. It towered over her by a good
foot, with shoulders the size of a wine barrel, yet something about
the way it hunched made her confidence soar. As if it was afraid
of
her
.

Perry licked
dry lips. “Stay right where you are. What’s your name? What’s your
purpose here?”

Thick fingers
flexed behind the creature’s leather half-glove, revealing four
thick fingers. She could just make the tiny clockwork whirring in
the joints as they flexed. Not mech-made, but clock-mech, which was
an older form of mechanism the blacksmiths had been able to devise.
True mech work often joined seamlessly with flesh, but this was a
stop-gap measure.

Clothes hung
from its figure and someone, not too long ago, had cut the man’s
hair neatly, though lack of attention made it stick out beneath the
cap he wore. His cheeks bore the burr of gingery fluff, though
nothing grew on the scarred section of his upper lip. Brass
earmuffs covered its ears, and she could almost hear the tinny
vibration of her own words echoing within the contraption, with her
superior blue blood senses.

“
Lovecraft?” Hobbs’ diary had said his lip was cleft, and he
suffered from deafness, after all. Could this creature be the
orphaned child he’d spoken of? “Can you hear me?”

The behemoth
didn’t move. One eye rolled, as though he was trying to see what
she’d been doing below stairs. Nervous sweat trickled down his
temples. Perry made a decision.

“
I’m going to put my gun away,” she told him, holding it up.
“Please don’t make any sudden moves. I just wish to speak to
you.”

The man backed
up a step as she moved, his eyes trained on her pistol like an
animal that knew when something could hurt it.

Perry slid it
into her holster, and held her hands up in a placating gesture. “My
name is Perry. I’m a Nighthawk, here to discover what happened to
Hobbs. He was your... your friend, wasn’t he?”

Wary blue eyes
met hers. The man nodded, and made a sound that showed where his
lip had been sewn together over what looked like a pair of fused
metal teeth.

So, Lovecraft
could hear her - or understand some of what she spoke of. Another
glance at those clockwork hands promised that he’d had nothing to
do with Hobbs’ murder. He wouldn’t be able to grip a pistol.