Fiendish Schemes (12 page)

“How fortunate for the parties involved.”

“Perhaps.” Stonebrake nodded musingly. “At least for a time. Alas, human flesh is not as sturdy as your father’s creations. From the hushed reports I’ve heard, his client apparently succumbed to his passions, his heart giving out while he was preoccupied, so to speak, with this very machine. His heirs kept a wise discretion about the matter, storing your father’s handiwork in the stonewalled outbuilding where our agents located it.”

“Piece o’ shite, it is.” The sullen Royston gave the device a kick. “Deprived me of one of my best workmen.”

“Surely you jest.” I stared aghast at him. “It murdered the poor fellow? Or worse?”

“Put your mind at ease,” said Stonebrake. “The man was not of such a robust mentality as you have displayed. He is presently a resident of the asylum at Colney Hatch, his reason having been unhinged by an ordeal that, admittedly, went a bit further than the one which you endured.”

“Jackie’s perfectly fine,” insisted Royston. “Bleeding doctors won’t let him go, is all.”

“Of course they won’t.” The foreman’s comment appeared to exasperate Stonebrake. “You’re not likely to be discharged from a lunatic asylum, are you, if you keep insisting you’ve been buggered by a steam engine with flaming eyes and shaggy orange hair. For most people, this is simply not a credible account.”

Perhaps because of its humid atmosphere, the room seemed to swim about me for a moment. “Is there a place where I might lie down for a moment? I confess myself a bit wearied by all that’s happened.”

“Buck up, man.” Stonebrake clapped me on the shoulder. “Time is hurtling past us, and we must make haste if we are to catch up with the fortunes we seek.”

“Haste? To do what?”

“There are personages of note awaiting us. Royston, have the carriage brought about. Come along, Dower.” He headed toward the townhouse’s door. “We have a party to go to.”

A
T
the best of times, a man of my nature finds sociability to be a trial. Humanity is a commodity I have enjoyed, to the degree that I can at all, in the abstract; if personal circumstances did not dictate a desperate pursuit of my own interest, I could easily have been one of those early notables of the Christian faith, who found living alone in a cave and subsisting on a diet of locusts and wild honey more congenial than the yammering, ceaseless chatter of their own unenlightened kind.

Even so, there is something to be said for loitering about in an elegant drawing-room with a glass of a fine vintage in one’s hand and the expectation of a dinner of equal quality in the offing. The singular advantage of being in as wearied a condition as I was, from the effects of my long traveling, was that it required but a little alcohol to set me in an elevated frame of mind.

“Ah, Dower!” Lord Fusible, in his portly and similarly inebriated exuberance—for it was to his fashionable townhouse that my co-conspirator, Stonebrake, had transported me—wrapped an arm around me and exhaled brandy fumes into my face. “So good to see you again. Stonebrake here had promised your reappearance upon the scene, and he has performed admirably in that regard.”

“I’m glad your lordship thinks so.” Stonebrake lowered his own half-drained glass. “It is a pleasure to accommodate your wishes.”

That sort of obsequious truckling to the upper classes always nettled me, but on this occasion I said nothing about it. Instead, I gave a single nod and told Fusible, “Nothing could have kept me away, I assure you.”

A few feet away from where we stood, the drawing-room was crowded with various sycophants and well-dressed dignitaries; Lady Fusible held court at the space’s farthest reach, surrounded by the wives of Phototrope Limited’s executive officers, most of whom I recognized from the recent launch of their company’s latest perambulating lighthouse.

“I expect not.” Fusible leered at me with a
crêpe
-lidded wink and an elbow to my ribs. “About to do some grand business together, aren’t we? The keepers of the Sea & Light Book will soon rue the day they accepted our wagers!”

I became aware of an encircling constellation of knowing glances and self- satisfied smiles, all turned in my direction from the others listening to our conversation. It became clear to me that the bulk of my affairs was an open secret to the dinner party’s attendees. A certain degree of discomfiture was attached to that realization, given my own doubts as to the legality of the enterprise to which I had become a central figure. The other doubts I found myself entertaining revolved around the eagerness to defend or rescue my person, that any of the assorted toffs might display were our collective plans to go amiss. The sly signs of greed and calculation marked their features; it seemed hardly likely to me that any of them had reached their current state of wealth by being overly concerned of their fellow creatures’ well-being.

Liquor and fatigue had loosened my tongue, though. I offered a few words of advice, unmindful of their impertinence: “Perhaps your lordship might consider it wise to display a bit more discretion, concerning these matters.”

My admonition scarcely seemed to bother him. “Don’t worry yourself about it, old man. You’re amongst friends here. There’s no need to keep confidences from each other—indeed, you would be hard-pressed to accomplish that, given the manner in which this lot relishes gossiping about one another. There’s not the slightest amusing gaffe or scrape that doesn’t get circulated amongst them, as quickly as their tongues can wag of it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“You’ll know the truth of it soon enough,” insisted Lord Fusible. “I was just back in the house’s kitchen a moment or so ago, securing a morsel to tide me over until the dinner gong is struck, and I overheard the footmen and maids having a fine old laugh with that sourly amusing devil Royston, as to some wicked goings-on of which you yourself were the center. Who knew that a mechanical ape could be driven by such amorous longings? The fellow made it sound as if its interests were rather reciprocated on your part as well. To each his own, eh?” Fusible bestowed another wink and nudge upon me. “If the gentlefolk you see assembled in the room are not already aware of the incident, they will be by the time they head to home, and they exchange a few words with their servants as the bedcovers are turned down.”

Such information filled me with a degree of dismay, though not surprise. Years before this, scurrilous rumours had circulated through every stratum of London society, concerning other carnal indulgences to which I was supposedly given. At that time, the stories had been in regard to the ill-famed procuress Mollie Maud’s stable of
green girls,
the piscine jades servicing the city’s most debauched appetites. Reputation is a fragile commodity, determined by others’ whims more than by one’s own behaviour. My attempts to lead a discreet if not spotless life had not met with great success before; why should they now? Particularly in light of the fact that I had embarked upon enterprises of dubious morality, let alone legality. Upon further reflection, any subsequent besmirchment of my public character might be no more than my due.

“Don’t fret about it, my dear fellow.” Seeing the play of emotions across my face, Lord Fusible proffered further advice. “It’s not really the sort of thing that people will hold against you. At least not in London’s fashionable society.”

“That’s good news,” I said. “I have had enough unpleasant things held against me, as it is. Literally.”

As it had at the lighthouse launch party, alcohol made Fusible expansive and voluble. “Indeed,” he said, gesturing with his empty glass, “an eccentricity such as that only serves to render you more interesting, to people of gentility and education. As word gets out, I can assure you, a great many invitations to elegant functions will be offered to you.”

“If they involve either apes or buggery, or both, I’m afraid I will have to decline them.”

“Suit yourself.” Lord Fusible’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “
De gustibus non est disputandum,
as those waggish Greeks would have put it—”

“The Romans, actually. And not the more respectable ones.”

“Regardless. But consider this. Our mutual friend Stonebrake informs me that you are desirous of becoming wealthy. A laudable ambition, indeed, and so much so that the means necessary to achieve that state are of little consequence, as long as they are successful. Such has been the guiding principle of my own endeavours, and I rather fancy that it would be the same for most of the people here tonight. A fortune in one’s purse has its advantages, I can tell you that.” Fusible’s barrel chest swelled to even greater dimensions, as though inflated by his lofty thoughts. “The common morality? The binding confines of those notions that others, those without money to jingle in their pockets, consider so important? All those become as trifles, without weight or mass, as easily blown away by a puff of one’s breath as though they were but dust wafting in the air. A man may cut his morals as he pleases, provided he is a rich man.”

“I am certain it facilitates the process,” was my observation, “but you must admit that there have been at least a few who have managed to become similarly depraved, without the benefit of ample finances.”

“Pooh.” Fusible’s plump hand waved my words away. “Petty criminals and lunatics, or so they are regarded by both the rabble and the authorities, and each as likely to wind up incarcerated behind stone walls. What is illegal for those without funds, becomes merely eccentric or even somewhat charming when it is practiced by the wealthy. Do you doubt me?”

“Of course not.” As yet unsure of what importance the other man might be to my gamey future prospects, I considered it best to not insult him. “If I’m a bit of the agnostic persuasion on the matter, I am certain you can forgive me. Coming from a lesser economic sphere, I don’t have as much experience along these lines as you do.”

“Soon you shall!” The perpetual enthusiasm resident in Fusible’s breast flushed a roseate hue across his wide, wattled face. “And immediately—come, let me introduce you to the exact exemplar of which I speak.”

The dregs slopped from my glass as Fusible tugged me by the arm across the crowded drawing-room. Within moments, I found myself gazing into a fiercely bearded visage, surmounting a muscular, sun-bronzed figure clad only in rudely knotted animal skins. I might well have been face-to-face with one of our primitive ancestors, a cave-dweller from the epochs when great tusked beasts ponderously steered their shaggy bulks around a verdantly primeval landscape, daring lesser creatures armed with sticks and rocks to fall upon them for the sake of a raw cutlet torn from their flanks.

“Viscount Carnomere . . .” A casual and chummy hand was laid upon the gentleman’s bared shoulder, as Fusible directed his attention toward me. “Here’s an interesting fellow, whose acquaintance you should make. May I introduce our renowned friend, Mr. George Dower?”

“Dower, eh?” A disordered, ursine eyebrow rose as Carnomere regarded me with no less mistrust than he seemed to bestow upon the world at large. “You’re the fellow, I take it, who’s supposed to make this whole ungodly lot wealthier than it already is?”

“So I have been led to believe.” By now, I was no longer surprised by every person I met seeming to be well-versed in those allegedly secretive conspiracies into which Stonebrake had recruited me. “Time will tell, if such is to be the case.”

“Not worth fretting about, as far as I’m bloody concerned.” Tangled, unkempt hair framed either side of the dyspeptic Carnomere’s face, the unshorn locks mingling with a beard so similarly primeval as to have actual bits of twigs and other earthen debris embedded in it. “All this grubbing about for money is but a footnote to the history of our dull-witted species’ decline.”

Fusible turned to me with an easy smile. “The viscount holds some amusing notions about modern society. Of which, he is more than capable of informing you.”

“Let no man say I did not warn him.” The scowl darkened behind the matted beard, as storm clouds might have blotted out the sun beyond hillsides fringed with wild brambles. “There’ll be a reckoning soon enough, for the folly of our ways.”

I edged away from the man. The resemblance between him and one of our harshly dispositioned forebears was heightened by the weapon he carried, a rude spear tipped with a stone blade that might have been fashioned by the efforts of his own teeth, so rough and jagged were its edges. Despite the implement’s crudity, I had no desire to have its effectiveness tested upon my hide.

“Tell him, Carnomere.” My host egged on the other. “It’s grand stuff,” he assured me. “Puts the
blood
back into
bloody-minded,
that’s the truth.”

“ ’Tis the fault of agriculture; there’s the truth for you.” Viscount Carnomere appeared to require little coaxing for him to launch upon his familiar diatribe. “That is the turning point in the road of Time, at which we went wrong. Educated folk might grumble all they wish, about the ravages that this new-fangled allegiance to Steam and its attendant workings is bestowing upon both English countryside and society—”

“And if they did,” Fusible drily interjected, “they would be criticizing exactly that which has feathered your own nest so handsomely.”

The glare that Carnomere shot him was so ill-tempered, I believed for a moment that it might be accompanied with a thrust of the spear sufficient to skewer his lordship
en brochette
.

“You needn’t remind me of those sins which already weigh upon my conscience.” Carnomere’s growl was so deeply chthonic, it might well have presaged the ground splitting open beneath his bare, blackened feet. “You would be better off searching the grimy pit of your own soul, while there is yet time.”

It struck me that the viscount’s rugged semblance might be due to his being a
soi-disant
biblical prophet, of the variety that eked out a subsistence on locusts and wild honey, when at home in their bleak desert caves, rather than expounding upon coming dooms to bemused townspeople. In this supposition I proved to be not far wrong, as he expounded further upon his all-encompassing theories.

“What you must see, Dower—” As with many freethinkers, he evidently regarded even the slightest honorifics of address as unseemly affectations. “What all men
will
see someday—is that all the evils of our present mode of life arise from those fundamental errors made upon the Sumerian river deltas by our deluded ancestors, millennia ago.
There
was Adam’s fall, when first he ground between his teeth that which would enslave him to the sweating ways of modern husbandry. Foolish bastards, the lot of ’em!”

“Pardon me?” It seemed as if he were inveighing against an army of Adams, munching
en masse
upon orchards of damning apples. “I’m not quite sure that I see the connection between original sin and steam power—”

“Bother your steam power, man. Hardly worth speaking of, if one is tallying the errors of the human race. This!
This
is what I’m referring to.” An equally fur-bearing pouch, fashioned from the hide of some smaller animal, hung from a tendon-like strap knotted about Carnomere’s waist; he rummaged in it and extracted an object the size of his fist, which he thrust under my nose. “From this is where all the evils stem, which afflict befuddled Mankind!”

I drew back in order to focus upon the item displayed upon his palm. For a moment, I thought it might be some variety of bath sponge; then I realized that it was a hunk of common bread, stiffened with age and spotted with blue and green mould.

“Really, Carnomere—” From beside me, a note of disgust sounded in Lord Fusible’s voice. “Isn’t it about time you acquired a new prop for your speechifying? That one’s seen better days.”

An odour of powdery decay rose from the bread, such that it might be considered edible only by the most desperate of London’s poor.

“You have my apologies,” I apologized even as the distaste with which I regarded the crumbling hunk was no doubt evident in my gaze. “But I’m not quite following the import of your words—”