Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (20 page)

Notes for
The Centaur of the Champs Élysées
(Unpublished)

Not a centaur, of course, but an insane and rather ghastly Spanish plot against the French. I’d stopped over in Paris after the wolf business in Cologne, and happened to see the thing firsthand. Crude automaton work, using the actual corpse of a headless horse, fitted with steam pistons, and a dummy human torso, head, and arms fitted to the neck. The horse’s body was stuffed with gunpowder, and the Spanish spies let it loose down the Champs Élysées with the intention of it running smack into the Eiffel Tower and blowing it up. It might have worked, too, if the “centaur” hadn’t gone awry, running around in circles before galloping off to the Seine, into which it plunged and rendered itself useless.

Not much of a tale for
World Marvels & Wonders,
with the best will in the world. But the episode is notable because of who I ran into while watching the blasted thing haring around Paris: Lord Arthur Somerset. He had just been involved in that terrible business on Cleveland Street, the molly house raided by the police. His name had been handed over to the constabulary as one of the clients, and he had been arrested. That was the last I had heard of him.

How did he happen to be at liberty in Paris?

“It’s not just who you know, old chap, it’s what you know about them as well,” said Somerset.

He claimed he wasn’t going to say a word more, but the man has always been an inveterate gossip. It turned out that he had struck a deal; he would clear out of London in exchange for keeping his mouth shut.

“About what?” I asked.

“Can you keep a secret, old boy?” Somerset had asked.

“It’s about Eddy.”

“Eddy? You mean Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence?” Somerset nodded. “Did you know he was to be married?”

“Some German, isn’t it? Princess Mary of Teck?” Somerset chuckled. “It is
now,
old bean. He’d set his cap for quite a different filly this time last year, mind. A shopgirl. Lived down the road from the molly house, in fact, on Cleveland Street. I saw her once or twice. She used to sit for Sickert.”

“It’s not unknown, though, Royalty mixing it up with the commoners on occasion. . . .”

Somerset shook his ruddy head, his ginger whiskers swaying. “That’s not the secret, old boy. The secret is, they had her done away with. Quite brutally. Chopped the top of her head off and stole her brain, by all accounts.”

“They?”

“The government, old friend. Or at least, the shadows that work for it. I whispered a few words in the right ears, told ’em bits of what I knew, and intimated I’d make a bit of a fuss if they threw me in the clink.” He spread his hands.

“So here I am. Gay Paree. More wine?”

It was a gruesome enough tale, and something about it simply wouldn’t leave me be. Somerset hadn’t said the name, and I couldn’t prove anything, but this had W’s fingerprints all over it. I don’t know how it fits into everything else, if it does at all, but I don’t think there’s much time to waste. I’m about due for a little soirée to the land of the Sphinx.

Letter from Dr. Reed to Captain Lucian Trigger. Posted in Alexandria September 1889.

My darling Lucian,

I have arrived safely in Alex, thanks to the impeccable airmanship of Miss Rowena Fanshawe. And who should I meet as soon as we touch down on terra firma, but Louis Cockayne!

He has put me in touch with a local man who can take me up the Nile. I intend to spend a few days researching and gathering supplies, and then I will head out into the countryside to see what I can see.

The heat is infernal, the flies are persis tent, and the blasted sand gets everywhere. I miss you, Lucian. I wish I could be with you.

Until I return, John.

13
The Belle of the Airways

Each scribbled fragment, each journal entry, each note and letter forged Captain Trigger’s loss even more keenly. But, to his surprise, the memories also awakened a delight Trigger had thought long dormant within him, if not even dead. They plotted and planned late into the night, studying maps of North Africa and reading through books piled high on the dinner table, as Mrs. Cadwallader huffed and puffed with her effort to remove the dinner plates and bring them wine and coffee. Not all of John’s notes were relevant to their studies—indeed, there were personal notes he would never dream of sharing with the others—and while from his journals they knew John had been looking for the Rhodopis Pyramid, if he had made any detailed notes about its location he had taken them to Egypt with him.

“Rhodo-what?” asked Bent, flipping through a book on antiquities of ancient Egypt. “Piss?”

“This is hopeless,” said Gideon, obviously deflated. “It could be anywhere. How big is Egypt, anyway?”

“It will look better in the morning,” said Trigger. “Things often do.”

Bent sat back and noisily quaffed a glass of wine. “You’ve perked up, Trigger. Almost got a bit of color in your cheeks.”

Trigger shrugged. “For too long I have borne the burden of John’s loss alone. It is gratifying to have someone share my trouble.”

Bent yawned and stretched. “Well, I’m completely fucking exhausted now. Did you mention a bed?”

“Mrs. Cadwallader will show you to the room,” said Trigger. “And Mr. Bent? If we are to spend much more time in each other’s company, might I ask you to modify your profanity somewhat?”

“You might,” agreed Bent. “And I might tell you to shove it up your arse. Good night, all.”

Trigger watched him lumber out of the dining room in the wake of a horrified Mrs. Cadwallader. He sipped at his wine and watched Gideon following with his forefinger the course of the White Nile in an atlas, as Maria sat by his side. A most curious girl. There was a great sadness in her, thought Trigger, and he smiled ruefully. It took one to know one. There was an idea forming in his mind, and try as he might to push it away, it would not depart. It was a foolish, stupid idea, but he could not help but dwell on it. Perhaps the morning would bring with it a more sensible frame of mind.

“Why did you place your trust in the Captain Trigger of
World Marvels & Wonders
?” he asked eventually.

Gideon blinked up at him, as though not comprehending the question. “You . . . he . . . is the Hero of the Empire.”

Trigger nodded thoughtfully. “And are you disappointed your hero has been found wanting?”

Gideon shook his head vehemently, waving his hand at the cabinets laden with souvenirs. “Wanting? I don’t understand.” He stood and walked to the nearest glass-fronted cupboard. “Every item here, every dagger and stone and gem . . . it’s all like, like . . .” He paused, frustrated at his lack of language to describe how he felt. Then he said, “It’s like when my father was fishing for cod, and sometimes, not often, but once or twice a year, they’d perhaps net a fish no one recognized. Not a cod, not a haddock. Some strange thing that had swum from some faraway place. That’s what these things are, the Captain Trigger adventures. Strange things from faraway places. Disappointed, Captain Trigger? Oh, no.”

Trigger joined him at the cabinet, his pale reflection at Gideon’s shoulder. They stared at the strange things from faraway places, then Gideon placed a finger near the glass. “Another empty cushion . . .”

Trigger peered closer. “So there is.”

Gideon read from the caption. “The Golden Apple of Shangri-La.” He turned to Trigger. “But that’s impossible.”

Trigger raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“You remember,” insisted Gideon. “Captain Trigger and Jamyang the Tibetan mystic journeyed deep inside the Himalayas to the secret valley of Shangri-La, where time flows differently, an oasis amid the howling snow storms.” His eyes shone as he quoted from memory, “
A verdant paradise of meadows ablaze with color, patchwork fields given over to swaying crops, blue pools, and white foaming rivers. Orchards of trees groaned with fruit and herds of deer grazed the lowlands near the bank of the river
.”

“I remember.” Trigger smiled. “Remember writing it, anyway.”

Gideon jabbed the glass again. “They confronted the rogue archaeologist Von Karloff who had stolen the Golden Apple, which was to be given by God to unite mankind in one tongue when their penance for the Tower of Babel was paid, and which was kept in Shangri-La for safekeeping until that day.”

“Of course.”

Gideon turned back to him. “At the end, Jamyang said ‘
Cui bono
.’ We didn’t do Latin at school. I had to look it up.”

“To whose benefit?” said Trigger.

“To whose benefit?, yes. Jamyang was suggesting someone was pulling Von Karloff’s strings; he was stealing the apple for a higher authority. The point is . . . in the story Captain Trigger returned the apple to the women of Shangri-La. If he hadn’t, they would have aged and withered, and the lush valley would have fallen to the ravages of time and been destroyed.”

Trigger was becoming somewhat impatient. “Yes, yes, I remember. So?”

“So . . . why is there a space for the apple in your cabinet, if it was supposed to have stayed in Shangri-La? And where is it now?”

Trigger shrugged. “I confess I am not familiar with every item in the house. I cannot really recall the apple, if it was ever there. Perhaps John prepared a space for it, but never brought it. Maybe a replica sat there, and has been lost. Now, Mr. Smith, I would humbly suggest we get some rest before tomorrow. . . .”

Gideon nodded and retired, and for a long moment Trigger stood alone, staring thoughtfully at the bare cushion, hidden behind a South Sea statue carved from volcanic rock.

“
Cui bono,
” he said softly.

Highgate Aerodrome commanded a prime spot on one of London’s highest points, all the better for the dirigibles soaring in and out day and night to catch the winds bearing them aloft to all points of the Empire. Over the years most of Highgate Woods had been removed to accommodate the growing aerodrome, and on the corner of Hampstead Heath were ranged the air traffic control towers coordinating the hundreds of airships spiraling around in the updrafts, waiting for their opportunity to land, and those tethered by steel cables to the large iron rings cemented into the macadam apron, poised to take off. Nearest the Heath were the ranks of vast intercontinental and trans-Atlantic passenger dirigibles, served by a small colony of hotels and departure lounges. Further back, away from the public gaze, the cargo dirigibles loaded and unloaded, a terminus of steam-lorries, locomotives, and stilt-trains waiting for the spoils of the world to be delivered and later disseminated among London’s shops and markets.

“Miss Fanshawe runs a private dirigible business,” said Trigger as the hansom cab deposited them at the main portico of the Aerodrome. “We’ll find her at the far northeastern end, with the rest of the independent operators.”

Trigger led them to a quarter of the Aerodrome that was far less luxurious and exciting than the Hampstead Heath side. They were in a much more perfunctory locale, a place of rundown wooden sheds and slightly shabby dirigibles in a variety of sizes, bobbing in the breeze. He took them to one of the more dilapidated structures, beside which there was a small dirigible, in relative terms; its balloon, long and slim like a cigar, was perhaps sixty feet from nose to tail, and betrayed signs of patching up and a make-do-and-mend program of repairs and maintenance. It floated a dozen feet off the ground, its gondola strung beneath it, small stanchions supporting idle propellers extended at either side. On the taut fabric of the balloon was the name of the ship, the
Skylady II
. Gideon looked at it rather doubtfully and Bent whispered, “Fucked if I’m going up in that wreck, Smith.”

But Trigger was already hammering on the door of the shed, which had a printed notice nailed to it: Fanshawe Aeronautical Endeavors.

The door was yanked open and a small man with a grease- blackened face appeared, dressed in oil-stained overalls and wearing a welding mask. Upon seeing Trigger, the man tore off his mask and smiled broadly, and then Gideon realized his mistake. It was not a man, but a woman . . . and not, on closer inspection, unattractive. She had shorter hair than Gideon had ever seen on a young woman, spiked and plum-colored, and a beaming smile of white teeth. Her overalls were unbuttoned scandalously low, and with the mask gone Gideon could see she was most shapely in the torso, and had slim legs and— when she turned to quiet the din of some kind of hammering machine behind her—a rather curvaceous backside. Bent whistled appreciatively and murmured, “Nice set of Cupid’s kettle drums on that one.”