The Inventors and the Lost Island

by A. M. Morgen

  Ada leaned over the birth record, eyes furiously scanning the words.

  George pulled out the crime reports and compared the documents side by side. “It must be a fake—right, Ada? Another piece of my grandfather’s puzzle. Just like these crime reports! I knew my grandfather didn’t do all those terrible things.”

  “A forgery?” Ada looked from one document to the other. “I don’t think so, George. Trust me, I’ve forged plenty of documents. This seal would be very hard to replicate. Plus, someone was responsible for sinking La Isla, remember?”

  “He would never have done that. Only a villain deliberately sinks a ship,” George said sternly, trying to erase the glee he’d felt while drilling very large holes in the vice-chancellor’s ships earlier that day. He racked his brain to put all the evidence he’d found together in a way that made sense.

  Ada tilted her head and began to tug on one of her curls, which she always did when puzzling over an invention. “George… what if we’re both right?”

  An uncomfortable sensation swam in his chest. He wanted to defend his grandfather’s honor until his last breath, but all the things he’d just learned were casting a shadow on the bright light of his memories. “What do you mean?”

  “What if the reports are real but your grandfather didn’t do those things?”

  “You mean someone stole his identity? An impostor?” He thought of Frobisher’s fake identity. It was possible for one person to live as someone else.

  “Yes, but”—she gestured with the birth record—“what if your grandfather was the one who stole someone else’s identity? What if he was the impostor?”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.” His gut shifted inside him, making him feel sick. Ada couldn’t be right.

  But…

  George picked up the leather bag where he’d stored all his clues: the portrait Oscar had re-created, the butterfly pendant, and the poisonously written letter. Slowly, as if pulling a venomous snake out of a tank, George took the letter out of his bag. One phrase lashed out at him, alive with new meaning.

  I curse your true name, 1st Lord of Devonshire.

  Cold and heat raced over him in alternating waves. He glanced up from the letter to find Ada staring wide-eyed at him. “‘Your true name,’” she quoted. “Your grandfather’s true name.”

  George began to shake. Everything he knew about his life, every image in his memory, began to peel away and fall into a black abyss. The ground swirled beneath him. The sea lions barking on the beach below grew distant, as if they were barking in a dream.

  “My…” George began to ask out loud. “My grandfather wasn’t the 1st Lord of Devonshire?”

  A sharp bark of laughter made them both spin around.

  Fear stoppered George’s throat. Ada clutched his hand.

  An impossibly tall man stood within arm’s length of them. They’d been so absorbed in their discovery that they hadn’t heard him crossing the sand.

  He stepped forward. Instinctively, George pulled Ada behind him.

  Just as he had in No. 10, the man carried a long stick that he used to help himself balance. His tall shadow fell across the papers in George’s hand, blocking out the sun.

  “Your grandfather wasn’t the 1st Lord of Devonshire,” the tall man said. “I am.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tie him up.”

  Snapping to his senses, George scrambled to get away, but red-coated ruffians grabbed him and pinned his arms to his sides, holding him in place. Beside him, Ada yelped as she was pushed to the ground at Don Nadie’s feet. George looked back and glimpsed a familiar sneering face surrounded by bright red curls.

  Roy. The thief who’d first stolen his grandfather’s map.

  Don Nadie was soon joined by Roy’s sister, Rose, a sopping wet Vice-Chancellor Shadwell, and other members of the Society, who were restraining Il Naso. The policeman was glowering underneath his black eyebrows with barely contained rage. After their initial fright, Ada mostly looked annoyed and impatient, while George was afraid he would soil his trousers from fear.

  Still, he managed to meet Don Nadie’s gaze. “You.”

  Don Nadie tipped his chin proudly. His shock of white hair fluttered in the warm breeze, and his gray eyes wandered over the scene in a detached inspection. “Astutely observed. I’m also the rightful 1st Lord of Devonshire. Your grandfather stole my family, my future, and the commission in the Royal Navy that was supposed to be mine. Everything that’s yours is mine.”

  “That can’t be true,” George insisted forcefully. He struggled against Roy’s iron grip. “This is all part of your game!”

  “I told you, George. Your grandfather was the one who played games. But after forty years, the game is now concluded.” Don Nadie waved his walking stick at another Nobody, Shaw, whose bald head was already beading with sweat in the hot sun. “The map, if you please, Mr. Shaw. And the rest of the papers.”

  Shaw gathered up the papers from where they lay at George’s feet. He handed them up to Don Nadie.

  “What are you going to do with those?” Ada asked, eyes darting from George to the papers to Don Nadie.

  Don Nadie peered down at Ada. “This is a family matter, Miss Byron. Your interference is most unwelcome and will no longer be tolerated.” He tapped Ada’s shoulder with his walking stick and a blue spark flickered from its tip.

  “Ow!” Ada cried as she clutched her shoulders.

  “Don’t you dare hurt her!” George screamed.

  Don Nadie tapped George’s shoulder with his walking stick. A stinging pain coursed over George’s skin. “Settle down, children. If either of you misbehaves again, the other will be punished. Is that clear?”

  Ada’s eyes were aflame with rebellion, but she held her tongue. George nodded grudgingly.

  “Now,” Don Nadie continued, “if you had been a little more patient, I would have been happy to tell you what I plan to do with these papers. I’ve thought of nothing else for the past forty-two years, two months, and eleven days. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time before I have to return to London for a certain scientific gathering, so I’ll have to give you the short version. Your grandfather liked to tell stories, did he not? He was an orator?”

  George could only nod.

  Don Nadie tapped his walking stick on the ground. “His father taught him as a child—correct?”

  “How do you know that?” George asked, voice trembling.

  The man sighed, as if bored. “Because the same person taught me.”

  He cleared his throat and began.

  THE VERY TRAGIC TALE OF GEORGE,

  THE TRUE 1ST LORD OF DEVONSHIRE

  My story begins in the city of Greenwich, the most elegant city in all of England. My parents, Thomas and Victoria, were both from distinguished families of minor nobility and—

  No, no. Too early. I shall start again.

  My story begins when I was three years old. My mother died and the widow Foote arrived to be my little sister’s nursemaid. The widow was poor, very very poor, and had a son not much older than my sister. His name was Arthur. The three of us—myself, my sister, and Arthur—we loved to—

  No, still too early.

  My story begins when my beloved nursemaid, the widow Foote, died, when I was thirteen years old. She was like a mother to me because my own had died.

  The widow’s son, Arthur, was the same age as my sister, Estelle. We grew up together as children, as close as siblings could be. When the widow Foote died, my father adopted Arthur. In spite of the tragedies that had marred our lives, we were happy. Arthur was as much of a brother to me as if we’d shared the same blood.

  I couldn’t have known how wrong I was about that.

  As we grew older, some people began to say that my father favored Arthur and loved him best of all. Arthur was handsome and clever and charming—and I was not.

  The tall man stopped, bringing a hand to his chest, as if he’d been struck by an invisible blow. He cleared his throat,
then continued.

  What Arthur did best was make words dance like butterflies. He flattered my father no end: “Sir, how can I ever repay you? It is my greatest honor to be your son.” Codswallop! He was a liar. He said the words, but he didn’t mean them.

  Soon my sister fell under Arthur’s spell, too. We used to all play a game together. We pretended to build a house or a castle, and then one of us would hide a treasure inside, and the others would have to find it. Arthur and Estelle would use all sorts of riddles and clues. My father even gave my sister that silly gem so she could encode and decode messages.

  “The Star of Victory?” Ada asked.

  Yes, something special from my father for his little star, his beloved wife Victoria’s Estelle. Stella Victōriae, another toy for their games—but they made it so complicated! They invented the most outrageous story that it was a priceless stone and that whoever owned it would win any battle.

  Arthur and Estelle’s fantasies grew wilder as time went on. They said they would find the lost gold of Montezuma, the crown jewels of King George, and the third Sacred Treasure of the Japanese emperors. But what was even wilder was that my father believed them! He thought they could do anything.

  But me? No matter what I did or how many friends I made, nothing I did was worth anything in my father’s eyes. I would always be a nobody to him. Some of my new friends told me I didn’t need my father to get what I wanted. There was money to be made all sorts of ways. Not everybody hides their money or buries it behind riddles and games. In fact, they barely protect it at all. Can you believe that?

  There’s not enough time to tell you about the trouble I got into with my new friends, the first members of the Society. It was all in good fun, and nobody was meant to get hurt. But my father was looking for any excuse to cut me off. When I turned twenty-one, he had promised me a commission in the Royal Navy. I was the oldest; it was my birthright and a sure path to knighthood. But the third time he posted my bail to free me from prison, he said I didn’t deserve it.

  With his dying breath that same year, he told Arthur he was the son he’d always wanted, and gave him everything.

  Well, if Arthur could take things that didn’t belong to him, then why couldn’t I? Everyone was fleeing England for the colonies, taking all they owned with them. My friends and I took a ship and decided we would head to Australia to see what we could find. And who followed us there? Arthur and Estelle, of course. They couldn’t bear the thought that I would go around the world before they did. They completely ruined my first adventure and sank the ship we were planning to rob. Everything would have been fine if they hadn’t been there! She would not have gotten hurt!

  He stopped abruptly, staring somewhere over George’s shoulder. An image of the brother and sister in the portrait in No. 10 flashed through George’s head. He’d been so focused on the Star of Victory in the girl’s hand that he hadn’t thought about the boy in the portrait at all. “Estelle? Your sister? She… died?”

  Don Nadie’s gaze fixed on him, eyes blazing, and George knew the answer was yes.

  We weren’t going to fire on the ship. We didn’t even think it had cannons. But they fired on us first. When La Isla went down, Estelle and most of the other passengers didn’t survive.…

  Don Nadie paused again, swaying on his long legs.

  Arthur made sure I got all the blame even though it was his fault. He took over my ship during the battle, and afterward he threw me into the darkest, nastiest, worst prison he could find. And then what did he do? I’m sure you can guess by now. He took the Royal Navy commission that was meant for me. He took my title, the 1st Lord of Devonshire, as his own.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. He kept playing games with me, sending me strange mechanical people and writing me cryptic letters. I behaved terribly in prison, all so I could be moved to a new location, because I didn’t want to see him ever again—not until I was ready to take everything away from him.

  I made a vow. I would play my own game that was bigger and better than anything Arthur could create. The prize was getting my life back tenfold. I became a Nobody, but I would be better than a lord. I wouldn’t just leave prison and return to an empty life without my sister; I would take back what was rightfully mine and more besides. Your grandfather took Estelle away, and he deserved to suffer along with the rest of the world.

  He thought that throwing me in prison would make me disappear. Well, I turned my prison into my palace. I found other people whose families were dead or who didn’t believe in them. Other Nobodies. I became their king. Through letters and stories, we grew and grew into the biggest society in the world. That’s the kind of family loyalty that your grandfather could never understand.…

  “Now, the end of the game is finally here,” Don Nadie finished. “It is so much sweeter because you’re here to see it. I’m out of prison and free as a bird. Perfectly legal. Perfectly proper. I can take whatever I like and go wherever I like. Soon you will see.”

  “He’ll be king of everyone!” Roy cheered.

  A smile curled on the 1st Lord of Devonshire’s lips. “To start.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  While Don Nadie told his story, a crowd of mechanical beasts gathered around him on the shore like an army of giants amassing on a battlefield. He had steam-powered whales like Ada’s and others that George had never seen before, including a glass bubble driven by a shining silver propeller and a ship that seemed to skate across the water on thin legs like an insect.

  “You won’t get away with this. We’ll stop you,” George spat out.

  Don Nadie’s shoulders shook with a silent chuckle. “You can’t stop progress. I am progress. I’m taller, faster, and better than anyone alive. After I invade C.R.U.M.P.E.T.S., I’ll be in possession of the newest and best technology. A new army. Unstoppable.”

  “That’s preposterous,” George said.

  “The best plans always are,” Don Nadie replied. “Your grandfather taught me that. My one regret is that he’s not alive to see this.”

  “Don’t you dare talk about my grandfather. He was twice the man you are, even if he wasn’t as tall as you are.” George’s jaw clenched with anger—but questions swirled in his head. How could his grandfather have lied to him? The disappointment put a dull ache in his chest. He felt like an egg that had been cracked.

  “He’s wearing stilts,” Ada said scornfully. “He’s not really taller than anyone else alive.”

  Don Nadie took one large step on his stilts and was in front of George in the blink of an eye. “Your grandfather never told you who he really was, did he?”

  A lump the size of a fist curled in George’s throat. “I know who my grandfather was.”

  “But he didn’t tell you he had a brother? A sister whose death he was responsible for?”

  “I—he—” George stopped. He couldn’t go on. His lower lip was trembling too hard.

  Don Nadie shook his head slowly. “How does it make you feel to know you were just another pawn in his games?”

  Something shattered inside George. All the cracked pieces of himself that he’d been so carefully holding together fell apart. The one thing about himself that he’d always known to be true—that he was the 3rd Lord of Devonshire—was a lie. He was nothing.

  He was a nobody.

  George’s body went limp, and he nearly fell to his knees. He wished he could crawl into a deep, dark cave and never have to face the world again. Ada’s voice called to him from very far away—“Stand up, George. Stand up.”—but George’s spine seemed to have turned into jelly. His father had always said he had the spine of a snail, hadn’t he?

  Don Nadie took out a small perfume bottle. He sprayed a light misting of liquid over the map, which he had pinched between two fingers. All of George’s grandfather’s beautiful work vanished, leaving behind a page that had been ripped from a parish register long ago to erase the record of the real Lord of Devonshire from history—by his grandfather, George realized with a t
errible jolt, who claimed the identity as his own.

  George let out a little sob that sounded like the whimper of a puppy.

  “I know exactly how you feel, my boy,” said Don Nadie, his voice flat. “It’s very sad, isn’t it? But you’ll survive. I’ve been thinking about killing you, but that doesn’t seem right. I’m going to punish you by the book. Nothing illegal. Just like your upstanding grandfather would have wanted. I would rather you live and suffer, stripped of your name, like I suffered all those years.”

  “I’ll never help you,” George said.

  Don Nadie made a face as if he’d swallowed a fly. “No, of course not. Did I ask for your help? I didn’t offer that. I’m disgusted by the sight of you. You look just like your grandfather, you know.”

  Behind them, Shaw cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir. We need to leave now. There’s no time to waste if we’re to be in England for the start of the scientific gathering.”

  “Load up the ships. I’ll be along in a moment,” Don Nadie said with a wave of his hand. Roy released George with a hard shove and followed the rest of the Society as they moved toward the strange mechanical fleet, taking Il Naso and Ada with them.

  “Ada! No—” George ran after them, but Don Nadie lashed out with the tip of his stick.

  “You can stay here. Start a new life for yourself on this barren island with nothing, just as I had to do. You’ll probably die fairly quickly, but maybe you won’t. Either way, if I ever see or hear from you again, I will find a way to make sure you die a slow, horrible, legal death.” He spread his hands wide and smiled. “There can be only one Lord of Devonshire, and starting from this very moment, he’s standing in front of you.”

  George gathered his last shreds of dignity to fire back: “You may call yourself the Lord of Devonshire, but you’ll never be a true nobleman.”