Clockwork Chaos (28 page)

“Felipe,” she said, working Sandeman’s hand in hers. “Don’t be foolish, my sweet. The man said he’s going to get your violin back and save our lives. Why not listen to what he has to say?”

Sandeman calmed as if the storm inside him had given way to its eye, and his face resumed its natural blush. He kissed Ms. McCalla’s hand then bowed to Garvey.

“I apologize, Mr. Garvey, for allowing my emotions to run away with me,” Sandeman said. “Passion is the great fault of those of us who have given our lives so fully to music. I am a lucky man to have a good woman to bring me back to earth. If you can forgive my outburst, I would be most grateful for your aid.”

“No forgiveness is needed for such a natural reaction to your situation.” Garvey stood and exchanged the elevator operator jacket for his own, which hung on a coat rack behind his desk. He straightened his hair and checked his appearance in a mirror. “It is I who should apologize for my deception. But it was necessary because until this moment I suspected you and Ms. McCalla of lying about the nature of the crime committed against you. I now realize you are only lying about your magic violin.”

“You have called it that twice,” Sandeman said. “But my violin is not magic.”

“Then why will you play no other?” Garvey said. “And why is it desired by the Cult of Bast?”

“Whoa, hold on there a second,” Matheson said. “A couple pieces of cat-lady jewelry doesn’t necessarily mean the Cult of Bast is back in town, does it?”

“I’m afraid so. Our morning was not as misspent as you thought,” Garvey said. “One cat-headed lady is chance, two a mystery, indeed, but three? Or four? That’s a pattern, a trail to follow.”

Garvey led the others to a cluttered worktable beneath a row of tall windows where he had arranged several recent newspapers. The open articles covered several events: the opening of the Egyptian exhibit at the Nestor Museum, the theft of a ceremonial cloth from the private collection of the city’s foremost scholar on ancient Greece, and the sudden preponderance of cats in Pluto’s Kitchen, a downtown, waterfront neighborhood. The last was played for its headlines’ comic effect, but it remained unexplained why every free-roaming feline in the city seemed drawn to the Kitchen. Also on the table were a record of a title exchange for the purchase of an old apartment building in the same neighborhood and a shipping manifest.

“You see? It’s quite obvious,” Garvey said.

Sandeman and McCalla regarded him with bafflement. Matheson pushed his hat back on his head.

“Obvious to you, Morris, but for those of us without the time and resources to track and study every last worm that turns in this city, it might yet be a bit of a leap,” Matheson said. “And how in the hell did you get that title record on a Sunday?”

“Called in a favor,” Garvey said. “Let me explain. The Egyptian exhibit opened last week at the Nestor. Here is a copy of the shipping manifest, which includes three unusual canopic jars, ceremonial containers normally used to store human organs for burial. These jars bore the effigies of cats and were dated to about 200 A.D., long after the fall of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the last Egyptian empire. They never reached the museum. The stolen Greek cloth was known as the Shroud of Ailuros, the Greek’s name for Bast, and was said to have been woven in Bubastis on the Nile River Delta. Lastly, there is the purchase of a decrepit property in Pluto’s Kitchen by the Sistrum Company at the same address where Andy Parker was hired to collect the ransom. A sistrum is a rattle favored by Bast. Since its sale, the property has become the epicenter of the Kitchen’s present feline infestation.”

“I confess it does paint a particular picture,” Matheson said. “But what has the cult got to do with Mr. Sandeman’s magic fiddle?”

Sandeman gasped, and then said, through clenched teeth, “My
violin
, sir. And it is not magic.”

Garvey held an open hand toward Ms. McCalla. “Ma’am, may I borrow your bracelet? You can guess which one.”

Ms. McCalla slipped a gold bracelet from her wrist and handed it to Garvey. “It can only be this one,” she said.

Garvey displayed the carved ivory and alabaster cameo inset into the gold band, its depiction of Bast was similar to the image on the pendant Andy Parker had provided.

“Where did you get this?” Garvey said.

“In Egypt. It was a gift,” Ms. McCalla said. “Sent to me a few months ago when I concluded my last tour of Europe and the Near East.”

“A gift sent by whom?” Garvey said.

“The wife of the mayor of Cairo.”

“Well, there, you go. The mayor of Cairo has been a widower for two years now. I was with him, consulting on a steamship program for Nile shipping, when his wife succumbed to a fever.”

Garvey crossed the room to a workbench where a brass tank was mounted on a wooden stand. He opened a porthole door, placed the bracelet inside, and then clamped it shut. Working the device’s intricate control panel, he said, “Please watch the lamp on top. The brighter the light, the stronger the magic.”

The mechanism vibrated and hummed. It clicked and whirred and puffed out weak blasts of steam from its release valves, and then the lamp came to life with a faint bronze light. Garvey checked his pocket watch, noting the time, counted down a few more seconds, and then switched off the device. The lamplight lingered then faded out. Garvey removed the bracelet and returned it to Ms. McCalla.

“Ma’am,” he said. “Your bracelet is imbued with a weak magical field, sufficient for someone to locate you with a properly attuned scrying device.”

“I had no idea.” Ms. McCalla stared at the bracelet as if she had never before seen it.

“My magic detector doesn’t lie,” Garvey said.

“So you finally got that thing working,” Matheson said.

“Even better, here’s the prototype for something to make life easier for you and your men.” Garvey picked up a tool that resembled a hammer forged from brass tubing, tiny gears, and pieces of gemstones. A smaller version of the magic detector lamp was affixed in the claw position. Garvey waved it over Ms. McCalla’s bracelet and a faint light flickered. “Ms. McCalla, I believe you were given that bracelet by the Cult of Bast so they could track you until they saw an opportunity to steal your husband’s violin.”

“But why?” Matheson said.

“Only its owner can tell us that. My guess is it has to do with the Thirteen Cats of Bubastis. Am I correct, Mr. Sandeman?”

Sandeman flopped into a nearby chair. A rivulet of sweat ran down one side of his face, and after meeting the three expectant stares directed at him, he shrugged and dropped his gaze to his feet.

“I have never heard of these cats of Bubastis,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“The truth ought to do,” Matheson said. “We’ll sort out the rest.”

“Felipe,” Ms. McCalla said. “I am certain we can trust Detective Matheson and Mr. Garvey to be discrete. Is that not correct, Mr. Garvey?”

“Most correct, ma’am,” Garvey said.

“All we’re looking to do,” Matheson said, “is get back your fiddle, make sure your show goes on as planned, and keep y’all and everyone else at the Expo safe. Unless you’ve committed a crime, what you tell us won’t go beyond these four walls.”

Sandeman emitted a resigned blast of air. “Then I have no choice. I must take you gentlemen at your word. I have not lied. My
fiddle
is not magic—but its
strings
are. The spell has nothing to do with my musical ability. They only give me great endurance, allowing me to perform for many hours without fatigue. But I keep it a secret because it would be very difficult to explain that distinction to the public. What that has to do with cats, I do not know.”

Matheson said, “Fiddle strings are made of catgut, ain’t they?”

“Not literally,” Garvey said. “The intestines of goat or sheep are most often used. But where magic is involved, the necessary materials are often unorthodox and sometimes quite literal. Mr. Sandeman’s violin strings may be made of actual catgut taken from one of the Bubastis cats.”

“Sonofagun, doesn’t anyone ever just rob a bank in this city?” Matheson said.

“I have told you everything, gentlemen,” Sandeman said. “I know nothing of these cats or their cult. I do not see how this will help me recover my violin.”

“It won’t,” Garvey said. “Not if we sit around here talking. Now, we must act.”

“In Bubastis, the legends say, the goddess Bast often dwelled for a time among the many temples and shrines consecrated to her honor,” Garvey said.

He sat pressed in the back of a speeding coach with Detective Matheson, Sandeman, and McCalla. The horses’ hooves tapped out the rhythm of their urgency. They were racing toward the Sistrum Company’s building in Pluto’s Kitchen. Matheson had summoned a police squad to meet them there.

“She guarded and nurtured the town as if its people were her children. Whenever the spirit moved her, she blessed random cats there with immortality and imbued them with magic. She did so thirteen times, creating a pack of cats endowed with enough magic power to have made Bubastis the seat of a new empire if only the townspeople had understood the nature of the enchanted animals among them. Alas, they did not, and soon the thirteen cats wound up scattered around the world by chance and Bast’s enemies. As centuries passed, they died, one-by-one, because Bast had not made them invulnerable to accidents or violence.

“Only one is believed to remain today, sheltered by Bast’s cult. They seek the remains of all the others, so they can resurrect them through magic. They can only do that while at least one still lives. If they believe the violin strings are the remains of one of the cats, then they want them. They may have stolen the Egyptian exhibit’s canopic jars for the same reason. It’s rumored some of the Bubastis cats were mummified. And I’d wager the Shroud of Ailuros factors into the ceremony they plan to undertake.”

“If they succeed, what could they do with the magic cats?” said Sandeman.

“Damn near anything they want to,” Garvey said. “But don’t worry yet. They need the remains of all the cats for the resurrection ceremony, and they’ll want to do that in Bubastis, anyway. So we only have to stop them leaving the city with your violin strings if they haven’t already.”

The coach tilted as it took a corner and then jolted over cobblestones. They were in the Kitchen, heading to the Sistrum Company’s building. The police had cordoned it off, and Garvey had assigned a handful of Troubleshooters to neighboring rooftops and sewer tunnels to monitor the less obvious exits. When the coach stopped, Matheson instructed Sandeman and Ms. McCalla to wait inside, and then he and Garvey stepped into the street.

Cats roamed everywhere. Black, brown, and gray. Calico, Siamese, and tabby. They wandered around and rubbed against the legs of police officers. They came and went from adjoining alleys and strolled in and out of the Sistrum Company building. They mingled with the police, purring and indifferent to whether or not they were in the way. Garvey, who was allergic to them, sneezed three times and kept clear of the largest clusters, while he waited for Matheson to choose half a dozen men for the raid.

The detective then led the way into the run-down building, which was filled with still more cats. The first floor was gutted and what remained was falling apart. The black gaps of missing steps riddled the stairs to the upper floors. Gloom filled the space, lit only by daylight creeping in through the grimy windows and cracks in the walls. Matheson halted Garvey there and ordered three men to investigate upstairs and three others to take lanterns and check the cellar. Garvey tried to follow the cellar group, but Matheson held him back.

“No need for you to take unnecessary risks,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the din of cat noises.

“Simply setting foot in this building is a risk,” Garvey said.

“And if it weren’t for the Cult’s involvement and time a-wasting,” Matheson said, “I’d have ordered you to wait in the wagon with our favorite fiddler. But I may need your expertise on the spot. So, stick close to me, now, y’hear?”

An alarmed shout came from the basement.

Matheson and Garvey rushed there, Matheson pushing ahead on the stairs. The detective lit a small lantern he carried on his belt, and the two men followed the beckoning cries of the police officer. They entered a large room, where three officers stood, their lanterns illuminating a grisly scene. Four men lay dead on the floor, each with their throat slit deep across the width of their neck. Blood dribbled from the wounds; the smell of it hung rich in the air. Cats circled around the bodies, eyeing the intruders with hostile curiosity.

“Those wounds are fresh,” Garvey said. “The killer may still be here.”

“The entire cellar is only this room and the other,” one of the officers said. “No one’s down here.”

“Not in the open at least.” Matheson sent an officer upstairs to put the others on alert for a murderer, and then he asked Garvey: “What do you make of it?”

Garvey crouched beside one of the bodies and lifted its dead hand. A ring gleamed on one finger: a silver oval engraved with the cat-faced likeness of Bast.

“Dead cultists make no sense.” An uncharacteristic edge of anger sharpened Garvey’s voice. “None of this does. They took the violin two days ago. Why stay in the city? Why bother with the phony ransom? What kept them here? These men wouldn’t be easy victims for a common cutthroat. Either they were taken by surprise or by trained killers.”

“Assassins,” Matheson said. “Damnation, I’ll have to warn Ridley at Expo security.”

“Shh,” Garvey said, rising. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Matheson said.

The sound came again, almost inaudible: a faint mewing and the twang of a single violin string, like water plinking into a tin cup. Garvey paced the room, seeking its source, but Matheson pinpointed the hollow section of the wall. Closer inspection by lantern light revealed a series of discolored bricks, which operated a secret door. It swung open onto darkness. A cat leapt out and raced for freedom. The plucking sound grew louder. The men lifted their lanterns and shed light on a fifth cultist, who lay on the floor, curled into a ball, with a violin clutched to his chest. He lingered on the edge of consciousness and smeared with blood from knife wounds. The police dragged him beside his dead brothers. The cultist’s eyelids fluttered. He mumbled through quivering lips.