The Clockwork Menace

by Bec McMaster

  “Perhaps I will.”

  The sound of her words followed him through the door, which he slammed, just a little.

  5

  Some women—like Perry—looked ghastly while crying.

  In others, it brought only a rosy bloom to already creamy cheeks and made the limpid pools of their eyes look even bluer. Of course, Miss Radcliffe was one of the latter group.

  Perry sank into the chair opposite the woman, well aware that Garrett was watching from the door, with his arms crossed over his chest.

  Next time, you can handle Miss Radcliffe, he'd snapped. It hadn't been an idle threat.

  "So tell me about the flowers," she suggested. An uneasy sensation made her stomach squirm. She hadn't been handling this case well at all, and Miss Radcliffe wasn't to blame for that. And whilst she genuinely felt sorry for the blonde actress, Perry knew she wasn't very good at handling grieving people. That was more Garrett's forte than hers. Easy for him to say you could catch more flies with honey, but he had a natural charm she could never hope to mimic.

  Miss Radcliffe's eyes kept flickering between them, as though even she could sense the tension. It was utterly humiliating.

  "Red roses," Miss Radcliffe sniffled into her delicately patterned handkerchief. Her message had arrived by pneumatic tube that morning, requesting a word with Garrett. "Two dozen of them. They always arrived for Nelly before her big shows." A wave of wetness coursed down her cheeks as she looked up, her eyes betraying a hint of fear. "They arrived for me this morning with a note. I haven't let anyone touch it, but it's the same person who's been sending them to Nelly. Do you think...? Do you think it's the man who took her?"

  Garrett strode toward the flowers in their vase, and examined the note. "'For your upcoming debut as lead. I look forward to it, my dear. You shall be a shining jewel among the masses.'" He flipped it over, but there was nothing on the back.

  "It could simply be an admirer," Perry said awkwardly. Should she reach out and pat the woman's hand? Such a display was uncomfortable but Garrett often touched people. It put them at ease.

  "But they knew I've been offered the lead." Miss Radcliffe suddenly flushed, as though realizing how that sounded. "Just until Nelly's back. Mr. Fotherham said the show must go on. How could someone know that? Only the theatre staff are aware. They don't have time before tonight's show to change the playbill!"

  Perry made a decision. "Even if it is the abductor–" She was loathe to call it a murder, until Nelly turned up in one way or the other, "–both Garrett and I shall be in attendance. Nothing's going to happen to you tonight. And... And Garrett shall see you home safely afterwards." That would help this situation, wouldn't it?

  Garrett had been correct. For whatever reason, Miss Radcliffe's mere presence made Perry uncomfortable in a way she'd rarely experienced before. Was it jealousy? Of what though? Miss Radcliffe's simple ability to be utterly charming, stylish and clearly well-bred?

  She's exactly what you tried to be as a young girl, a voice whispered in her head. And what you failed at.

  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 gle
amed 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.

  "Did you know Nelly Tate, the actress? Did she come here at all, to get her leg seen to?"

  "Nerly," Lovecraft growled, but she couldn't be certain if he was repeating her, or answering her question. He circled her warily, then disappeared down the ladder.

  Perry hesitated. Returning to the dark made her feel somewhat less safe, but she didn't gain the feeling that man-child would hurt her, so she followed.

  The behemoth limped across the floor, then lifted the mattress in the corner, and slid out a thin lacquered box. "Nerly," he said again, lifting the lid to show her.

  There were photographs inside it; a s
eated man and a woman who stared unsmiling at the camera, with her hand resting on his shoulder. Scrawled across it were the words: 'To James, With Love, Nelly.' There were also a whole string of playbills advertizing her in various theatre productions going back almost six years.

  More photographs revealed the young actress, both at another theatre and smiling shyly in a park. One of them featured a young boy in short strings, with his hand clasped through a much-younger Nelly's, and a frozen look on his deformed face as he stared at the photographer.

  Lovecraft. Perry looked up over the edge of the photographs, and put them gently back into the box. "Nelly and James were friends, weren't they? They've known each other a long time." Since Nelly was a young girl, judging by that last photograph.

  He made a muffled sound, fingering the last photograph with a child-like wistfulness.

  "Perhaps it would be best if you come with me," Perry suggested, setting a hand on his sleeve. From the smell of him, he'd been sleeping in alleys the last few nights. "I'll take you to the Guild. We can get you something to eat and drink, and perhaps a bath? Would you like that? Would you–"

  He yanked his arm out from under her grip. "Nuh. Nuh. Stay 'ere. Nerly." Fisting the enormous clockwork fingers, he curled them up by his face.

  "Nelly's not going to come here again," Perry whispered. "Nor Hobbs. Do you understand that? Hobbs has... gone to sleep. Forever. You put the coins on his eyes, didn't you?"

  That set him off. He pounded his fists against the brass muffs that covered his ears. Then again.

  Perry tried to grab his hand. "Please don't, Lovecraft. You'll hurt yourself." She swallowed. "Come back to the Guild with me. Maybe you can help me find Nelly? If you answer my questions, I might be able to trace where she's gone. Maybe she's not sleeping, like Hobbs? Maybe you can help me save her?"

  The big brute bared his teeth at her. "Nuh!" Agony twisted his ugly features. For a moment, Perry almost reached out again, at the look in those childlike blue eyes, but he shoved past.