The Boneshaker (18 page)

"Surprised you got to ask," the drifter replied. "After all, I've been waiting for you lot to show up."

"He's a phrenologist," Limberleg said evenly. "Just let him get his hands on your head and there won't be a need for further questions."

"Yep, that's a good one." The drifter set down his carpetbag, perched his lean frame comfortably on it, and produced a cigarette from his pocket. The three remaining Paragons looked at one another and then at Limberleg as the newcomer lit his cigarette and sucked in a lungful. "So just how much did the good Mr. Coffrett's sanction cost y'all?"

Limberleg raised an eyebrow. "I never talk business with strangers."

The drifter smirked. "Oh, I don't think we're strangers." He put out a hand without standing up. "I'm Jack." Limberleg extended his own without moving so the drifter had to reach to shake it. "Nice gloves."

Vorticelt gave a chuckle like a short bark. Willoughby Acquetus folded his arms across his chest and twitched a grin in Argonault's direction.

"They're hardly rare," Limberleg said coldly.

"Don't suppose that makes each and every pair any less ... special." He pulled on his cigarette, pale eyes glittering. "So what's a town like this cost?"

"Are you in the market?"

"Always curious."

"Sorry to disappoint. We're only visiting."

The drifter who called himself Jack smoked silently, watching Limberleg as if there was more to be discussed. The doctor brushed a spot of ash from his glove but said nothing. Behind him, Argonault and Acquetus stood like bodyguards. At last the drifter stubbed out his cigarette and rose.

"Nice talking to you." He lifted the lantern.

Thaddeus Argonault spoke up. "Why were you waiting for us?"

Limberleg's eyes narrowed. "What does it—"

"I'd like to hear the man speak." Argonault looked at the drifter again. "How did you know we were coming here?"

Jack opened the little door on the lantern and blew on whatever was inside so that a brighter glow spilled from the holes punched in the tin. "Like to tell you, but I'm afraid I never discuss business with strangers, either."

Limberleg waited until Jack was out of earshot before whirling on Argonault. "Why in the name of—"

Argonault put a huge hand up. "Find. Our. Wheel," he snarled.

He stomped off, disappearing into the deeps of the medicine show. The remaining Paragons followed. Limberleg turned with his gloved hands in his pockets and watched the tin lantern with its odd pattern of light move away down the road into town.

"I know who you are," he said quietly. Then Jake Limberleg shuddered.

"M
AMA'S NOT COMING TODAY
, either?" Natalie kicked a stone as she hiked along between her father and Charlie. She'd woken up in a bad mood, stiff and sore from hours of trying to master the red bicycle the afternoon before. The revelations about the pedals she'd had on Limberleg's blue Chesterlane hadn't quite solved the problem—or rather, they'd solved the
pedal
problem, only to reveal how many other difficulties were still standing in the way of an easy, effortless bicycle ride. If such a thing was possible on the red Chesterlane at all, she thought grumpily.

"Your mother's tired." It was Saturday morning, and her father looked tired, too. "If Dr. Limberleg asks, I'm still looking for the right size wheel," he said to Charlie. "Don't mention the telegraph machine if you can help it."

"The telegraph?" Natalie repeated as they left Mr. Minks to turn onto Heartwood Street toward the fair. "Dad had a telegram yesterday. Is that what he's talking about? What was it?"

Charlie shook his head. "Someone broke into the general store last night," he said quietly.

"A
robbery?
"

"Shhh!" Charlie hissed. "Seems the thief got himself tangled in the Central Exchange wires. Mr. Tilden heard the noise, came down from upstairs, and scared the thief off, but Central's wrecked. The telephone lines and the telegraph machine are out of commission."

"So Dad's helping fix them."

"Yeah, and Dad doesn't want Dr. Limberleg to think he isn't paying attention to the wheel problem, but the Central Exchange
is
more important."

A nostrum fair, it turned out, was very similar to a technological medicine show: frying foods, syrupy sugar smells, penny amusements. Bursts of odd, discordant music from the One-Man Band. Sudden appearances and disappearances of the harlequin in its costume of velvet triangles and bells, capering and somersaulting and then vanishing in a flash of tarnish and motley.

The primary difference that morning was the bright signs all over the lot:
COMPLIMENTARY CONSULTATIONS
, they shouted, with arrows to guide potential patients to the correct tents,
FREE DIAGNOSES!

A clash of horns and frantic banjo picking erupted somewhere behind the main stage. The curtain zipped aside, and Dr. Limberleg strode out. "Welcome to your very good health!"

The applause was a little more ready this morning—by now everyone knew the Pinnacle flu had stopped menacing the town down the road, and that these so-called Paragons might have had something to do with it.

"Hey." Ryan and Alfred strolled up, pockets rattling with pennies, and Miranda predictably in tow. "Think they've got different films today?"

"This morning," Limberleg announced, "we welcome you to our nostrum fair, the greatest collection of technologies in medicine and purveyor of the most advanced panaceas and curatives currently available in these United States!"

More applause. Dr. Limberleg's frock coat swirled as he stepped aside to reintroduce the four Paragons. They were dressed much the same as yesterday, although Alpheus Nervine had thrown a patched velvet musketeer tunic over his overalls, so the rapier and boots looked a little less out of place.

"Herr Doktor Thaddeus Argonault! Sir Willoughby Acquetus! Dr. Paracelsus Vorticelt and the Chevalier Alpheus Nervine! Yesterday we presented the specialties of Phrenology, Hydrotherapy, Magnetism, and Amber Therapy! Today we invite you to experience in person the full benefits of these techniques!"

A raucous bleating of instruments passed for a fanfare. Dr. Limberleg waited with a slightly exasperated look for it to stop.

"For those who would like to be cured," he announced after the last squeak had died out, "our practice shall be conducted thus. Myself and Herr Doktor Argonault shall perform complimentary diagnoses in the Phrenology Pavilion and in the Consultation Wagon at the center of the fair. Quinn?"

The harlequin stood up from where it had been sitting on the stairs and disappeared behind the stage, only to emerge a moment later with a huge ladder. The top swung in lazy arcs as the harlequin struggled to keep the ladder vertical.

PLUNK.
It stood the ladder upright in the dirt midway between the stage and the nearest pavilion and let go. The ladder stayed in place, as if balanced entirely on its own in thin air. Then the harlequin scrambled up the rungs, apparently unaware that it was bound to fall over at any moment.

"What the..." Alfred muttered.

When it reached the top, amid gasps from the crowd below, the harlequin stepped off the last rung into midair. It dropped about a foot but didn't fall.

"The wires," Natalie whispered. "The ladder's leaning against one of those wires up there."

And so it was. The harlequin sprinted a few feet down the almost-invisible wire, like a squirrel running along a branch. With a little tinkle of bells it began a series of tumbles and cartwheels, finishing with both little hands raised over its head in victory.

Then a dissonant burst of fanfare caught it off-guard. The harlequin's arms flailed as it teetered back and forth, back and forth, until, at the last minute, it managed to regain its balance. Its head snapped around to shoot what would've been a nasty look at the One-Man Band behind the stage—if its porcelain-masked face had been capable of any expression.

"Thank you, Quinn," Dr. Limberleg said over a final banjo chord. "Be good enough to show our guests where the Phrenology Pavilion is to be found?"

The harlequin bowed and took off running across the web of wires, high enough over the maze of tents that everyone in the audience could follow its progress to the center of the fair. It somersaulted into a neat turn where one wire intersected with another, then cartwheeled the length of that wire only to leap onto a third and take that one halfway before diving for a fourth. Then it whistled and pointed straight down.

"And my Consultation Wagon?"

The little figure leaped nimbly across two more wires and whistled again.

"From there, ladies and gentlemen, it will be our pleasure to direct you, should you choose to heed our counsel, to the best course of treatment: with Sir Willoughby Acquetus in the Hydrotherapy Tent..."

The harlequin executed a series of backsprings across three parallel wires to the southernmost side of the fair.

"...the Magnetism Tent and Dr. Paracelsus Vorticelt..."

A speedy pirouette, then the harlequin walked on its hands to the area Natalie and Alfred had explored the day before.

"...or with Chevalier Alpheus Nervine in the Amber Therapy Tent!"

After several minutes of gamboling, the harlequin reached the last wire, which connected to the center pole of the Amber Therapy Tent itself, the largest and most elaborate structure on the lot. It was so tall that even from where she stood near the stage at the entrance, Natalie could see the harlequin as it crept higher and higher.

At last it spun to face the audience and flipped backwards off the wire to land nimbly amid a collective gasp atop the slender flagpole that stood at the top of the tent.

"Of course," Dr. Limberleg announced, "for most of you, your medical journey will bring you straight back here..."

The little tumbler leaped into motion again, crossing the fair at an unbelievable speed, springing from wire to wire as if it were no more difficult than running across solid ground, sprinting across straightaways and changing directions so fast that Natalie could barely make out the wire under its feet before it had abandoned that one for another.

"It looks like it's running on thin air," Ryan said.

"That's impossible." But Natalie gave up trying to spot the wires. It was just happening too fast.

"...straight back here," Dr. Limberleg repeated, "to the Dispensary."

And suddenly the harlequin stopped dead above the front of a closed-up tent to the left of the stage. It swung its arms once, twice, and jumped, catching hold of a blank shingle at the front of the tent on its way down. The shingle flipped over, revealing the word
DISPENSARY
in flaking gold paint.

Dr. Limberleg flourished his hat as the crowd applauded. "The Amazing Quinn, ladies and gentlemen!"

The harlequin let go of the shingle, dropped softly to the ground, and pulled a cord. The flaps of the tent opened to reveal yet another thin, pale man behind the metal counter. He lifted his chin off his chest and raised a hand to wave. Behind him, neat rows of bottles and jars stood on bright metal shelves.

"May I present Mr. Dalliot." Dr. Limberleg descended the stairs and crossed to the Dispensary to shake hands with the pale man. "And if this fair is the flower of scientific medicine, may I present the nectar: Dr. Jake Limberleg's own patented panaceas!" Another flourish as he swept his hand out to indicate the rows of bottles lining the shelves behind Mr. Dalliot. "And, ladies and gentlemen, with every purchase, we will include a one-of-a-kind gift!"

"Let's go," Ryan muttered. "He's just going to talk about medicine now."

"Don't you want to know what they're giving away?" Natalie asked as the man called Dalliot lined up bottles on the counter.

"Probably a tea set or a quilt or something stupid. Let's go to the film tent." But Natalie held up a hand. "What?" Ryan whispered.

"Don't know." Something about this needled her, although she couldn't put a finger on it. She pushed forward through the crowd until she could see the patent medicines more clearly and try to make out their names. They were predictably strange, like the lot down at the general store—a collection of words Natalie didn't know all jumbled up together like fairy-tale spells: Vorticelt's Aqua Magnetica, Galvanic Amber Salve du Chevalier, Peruvian Apple Catarrh Compound, and Zedoary-Cassilago Household Soap.

There were about fifteen different kinds of bottles and jars in all, but Natalie's eyes kept coming back to a round, green one in the middle. Thanks to the shape, its label was hardest to read.

"Jake Limberleg's Ginger-Angelica Bitters," she read out loud. Why did that particular bottle demand her attention?

"Natalie!" Alfred whined.

"Can we go now?" Ryan grumbled. "I don't need to hear about pimple soap and cough syrup."

But that bottle ... reluctantly, Natalie allowed herself to be hauled away from the lecture into the deeps of the fair.

"This is the wrong way," Miranda insisted half an hour later. "We've been past here three times."

"Don't be stupid." Alfred turned to glare at Ryan. "I thought you said you
remembered.
"

"It was here yesterday!"

"It wasn't," Miranda interjected. "It was on the other side. If you'd just listen to me..."

They wandered farther. A shadow passed overhead: the Amazing Quinn on the wires.

"Is anyone ready to let me try now?" Miranda asked once they'd passed the Phrenology Pavilion three times.
Without waiting for an answer, she turned left between a booth containing a baseball toss and another that smelled like burned sugar.

They emerged onto a familiar corridor. Natalie paused to glance into the silk-topped box that contained the torso of Phemonoe, the Libyan Sibyl, but the waxwork woman sat composed and still, eyes closed, as they passed.

"Hey, look at that!" Alfred jogged ahead to the Cabinet of Curiosities to peer into the glass case beside the entrance. "It's a different one!"

The automaton shaped like the strolling One-Man Band had been replaced by a whole setup: two little vertical poles secured by thread stood about two feet apart from each other. A piece of wire stretched between them, and a tiny, velvet-suited harlequin cartwheeled slowly from one side to the other. At the end it turned smartly and pirouetted back to the other side.