Amidst Dark Satanic Mills (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 2)

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  Folkestone and Hand glanced at each other, neither believing that claim for an instant.

  “Was Phylus-Zant involved with the murder?” Baphor-Ta continued, with a shrug. “I’ll leave that to you two. If he is, or you lay bare any other secrets, I expect to notified, and I will afford you the same courtesy.”

  “Fair enough,” Folkestone agreed.

  Baphor-Ta gave a stack of parchment to Hand. “I found out the late Professor Poulpe had a flat in Dust Town. I was going to take a look in the morning, later in the morning, but I’ll leave that to you.”

  “Dust Town?” Hand mused. “How the mighty are fallen.”

  Chapter 4

  “You’re nicked, mate!” DCI Ethan Slaughter announced, his hand clamped on the Venusian’s thin bony shoulder.

  The Venusian, a blackmailer named Ezros, twisted violently, slipping from Slaughter’s grasp, then pushed the Detective Chief Inspector hard against the brick wall of the alley, and ran as fast as he could into the twisting darkness of Limehouse. Slaughter was up almost immediately, but Ezros had already put a considerable gap between them.

  “Bugger!” Slaughter swore, lighting after his quarry.

  Just once, Slaughter thought. Just once, I’d like to have one of them say, ‘Ya got me, guv. That was a fair cop.’ But, no, they can’t just be decent blokes about it. Bugger!

  Despite the Venusian’s head start, Slaughter caught up with Ezros easily, grasping his shoulder again and yanking back. The man had been desperate to escape, but the combination of Earth’s slightly stronger gravity and higher oxygen content worked against legs and lungs. The Venusian fell heavily to the cobbled street and squawked in pain.

  “Now, stay there, me bucko, or you’ll really have something to squeal about.”

  Ezros glared balefully at Slaughter, but this time he stayed where he was. Slaughter bent over, reached inside the Venusian’s heavy Norfolk Jacket, and withdrew a small stack of papers bound by a black silk ribbon. He glanced through them just enough to satisfy himself they were the letters stolen from Duke Bainbridge, then transferred him to his own pocket.

  “Up with you, laddie,” Slaughter said, cheerily yanking the fellow to his feet and binding his wrists behind him.

  He made sure the wrist-cuffs were tight enough to hurt. He had already learned the hard way of the extreme flexibility of Venusians, and if he took pride in anything, it was not making the same mistake twice. He marched his prisoner down to the main street, directed a steam-hansom to Scotland Yard, and on arrival learned someone else was going to earn the Duke’s gratitude.

  “Paris?” Slaughter gasped when the Assistant Commissioner gave him the news. “Bloody Paris. In God’s name why?”

  “It seems you have friends in odd places,” said the Assistant Commissioner with a smirk. “Your services have been requested by the Foreign Office, though you know as well as I do that that’s just a blind.”

  “Yes, sir,” Slaughter agreed. “Section 6 never takes a straight course on its own. Shady buggers!”

  “Quite,” the Scotland Yard official murmured, a bit discomfited by the Chief Inspector’s directness. He did not care for the man, but others did, and many of those who had an interest in DCI Slaughter’s career were several notches above the Assistant Commissioner. What the Assistant Commissioner could not dispute, however, was his extraordinarily high success rate. The man was a master thief-taker, no matter what else he might be.

  “And what am I supposed to do in Paris, sir?” Slaughter asked.

  The Assistant Commissioner took a pasteboard folder from his desk and handed it to Slaughter. Inside were several thin facsimile pages and a lithograph of a dead man.

  “This man, Professor Jean Louis Poulpe, was found murdered in Syrtis Major, floating in a minor canal,” the official explained.

  “It’s a Martian matter then, isn’t it, sir?” Slaughter said. “What happens on Mars, stays on Mars.”

  “Normally, yes, but the FO wants someone to investigate the matter in Paris,” the Assistant Commissioner replied. “It seems this Poulpe fellow was a government scientist, one of their smart-johnnies. He vanished a year ago under mysterious circumstances. I think it more a job for the Sûreté than the Yard, and likely they are at it too, but since Her Majesty’s Government is investigating the murder on Mars, the FO wants a hand in it here on Earth. You’ve been chosen to be that hand. So, there you are. Get to it.”

  Summarily dismissed, Slaughter rose, strode to the door, then turned. “Sir, you said the murder was being investigated on Mars?”

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “Who’s in charge of the investigation?”

  “Initially, some Martian chap in the Red Prince’s Court.”

  “Baphor-Ta?”

  “Or some such outlandish name, but authority was transferred to the Space Admiralty…upon the FO’s orders, and we know that means Section 6 again,” the Assistant Commissioner said. “Two of their men…Captain Folkespear…Fieldstone…”

  “Folkestone?”

  “Yes, I believe so,” the official said dismissively wave. “And some native non-comm. Anyway, it’s all in the file you were given. You’ll have ample time to study it on the way. Now, get down to the Transportation Section to draw your chit and get out to Croyden in time to catch the next Channel airship. That’s all.”

  Although Slaughter did not care for the man personally, though no less than he did anyone else who obtained high position through good contacts rather than hard word, he had to agree about the ultimate source of the assignment. That the mission had been channeled to him from Section 6 via the Foreign Office, probably with the grudging approval of Sir William Harcourt and over the protests of Sir Edmund Henderson, was not a shock to Slaughter. He had pulled Section 6’s chestnuts out of the fire before, and he knew no good deed ever went unpunished.

  If Section 6 were to play master to his hound, he knew his actions would not go unobserved. The operatives of the clandestine agency were very much, he thought, like spooks, visible only in glimpses out the corners of one’s eyes, but vanishing silently when searched for. Fine, he thought, as he received his traveling pay and set out for the Croyden Aerodrome. He would be their dog, but they would have to contend with all the bones he dug up, and digging up hidden bones was this dog’s specialty.

  There was only one aspect of this affair that lifted, at least a little, his feeling of dismay, and that was the knowledge he worked in tandem, after a fashion, with Captain Folkestone and Sergeant Hand. Having worked with them before, indeed he owed his life to their intervention, he knew them both to be good men to have at his side, even when separated by the void of space.

  Less than an hour after bringing in the Venusian blackmailer, DCI Ethan Slaughter of Scotland Yard found himself watching the Sun rise over the Continent from a steam-driven airship a thousand feet above the Channel. The chalk cliffs of home were far behind. He set aside the file, leaned back in his chair, and felt the tea and toast of his early breakfast churn in his stomach.

  Part of his trepidation stemmed from heading into France. He had a natural aversion to foreigners, but while Wogs, Wops and Martians were one thing, the French were quite another. As a boy, he heard tales of the Napoleonic War from his grandfather, of rockets carrying deadly payloads to London, of steam-horses that challenged the Empire’s self-propelled guns, of the atrocities of the French prison camps. Almost three generations had elapsed since the madman’s failed attempt at world domination. France and Great Britain were now allies, of a sort. However, the memory of the average Englishman was quite long.

  Still, Slaughter reflected, he had his orders. If an Englishman’s memory was strong, his devotion to duty was even stronger.

  The guard gave the passengers notice they would be mooring at the customs station outside Paris in fifteen minutes. While other bleary-eyed travelers grabbed their bags from overhead bins, sorted out their luggage-tickets, and made sure their documents were in order, Slaughter slid his
file folder into the side of his travel-bag, and clasped the bag to his chest.

  The scene at the Custom House was organized chaos, just what one would expect from the Gallic spirit, but very little of it touched Slaughter. He had no luggage to collect, and the customs inspector gave his bag only a cursory examination after he showed his warrant card and letters of authority and transit. After less than five minutes, he left his fellow passengers to be ground exceedingly fine by the slow mills of officialdom, and went in search of a flacre, the French equivalent of a cab.

  He was not surprised to see few steam-powered conveyances in the queue, all of them in the first line, where the pre-engaged cabs waited. He bypassed the steamers and the first two horse-drawn cabs, settling for the third. He told the driver to take him to the Hotel du Danube, at number 11, Rue Richepanse, and started to climb up when he heard a voice behind him:

  “Pardon me, monsieur, did I hear correctly you are bound for the Hotel du Danube?”

  Slaughter turned and saw a young girl, blonde, very pretty, in her twenties, dressed in a navy-trimmed blue walking suit. She wore kid gloves and carried a parasol and a fitted bag.

  “Oui, mademoiselle,” Slaughter replied.

  “I hope you do not think me too forward, monsieur, but I, too, am bound for the Hotel du Danube,” she explained. “Perhaps we could share a carriage. I am traveling under limited means, and we each save a half-franc by traveling together.”

  Slaughter looked her over carefully, though he appeared not to. She might have been a fellow passenger, perhaps behind him, but he did not recall her. Or she might be there from an earlier arrival, and this just a coincidence. Slaughter did not believe in coincidences.

  “It would be my pleasure, mademoiselle,” he said, helping her into the cab and climbing in after. “Away, driver!”

  The jarvey up top cracked the reins, the horse nickered, and the cab pulled away from the Custom House, entering the flow of traffic on the boulevard. After a last look back, seeing two other airships rising behind the building besides his own, Slaughter turned his attention to the girl. She looked away, then turned back as if she were looking at him for the first time.

  “Permit me to introduce myself,” she said, extending a delicate pale hand. “I am Marie Devereaux.”

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mlle Devereaux,” Slaughter replied. He was surprised by how small and cool her hand seemed in his. She made him feel large and ungainly. “My name is Ethan Slaughter.”

  “A very unusual name,” she remarked.

  He shrugged, gave her a noncommittal smile.

  “You are English, are you not, M Slaughter?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Just in from London on the Channel airship,” he explained.

  “On holiday?”

  “I wish it were so, but, regretfully, no,” he replied. “I work at a commercial bank in the City. My employer has sent me to look into some of our European accounts. All very dreary, I fear. And you, Mlle Devereaux? I did not notice you on the airship.”

  “No, I was not,” she explained. “I am returning home after spending a fortnight in Antwerp with my uncle.”

  “I hope you had a pleasant journey,” he said. He mentally sifted though the arrival schedules of the airships. It was possible she had arrived as she said, but only if she were detained in customs, but he could not be certain. “I am surprised you opted for an airship over a railway journey this time of year. The weather, you know.”

  She tilted her head and gave him a faint smile, as if amused by something he had said. “Yes, it would have been a smoother, faster trip, but it would have involved making a connection with the ferry, and I do not enjoy traveling upon water.” She paused. “It is a fear.”

  “Oh?”

  “A baseless one, perhaps childish, but a real fear nevertheless,” she explained. “A near-drowning as a child left me with a great fear of traveling upon water.”

  She was still, he reflected, not much more than a child now.

  “Besides, is it not much more wonderful to travel by air?” she continued. “To soar among the untrammeled clouds? At such times, I feel almost as if I could reach out and touch the face of God! We live in such an age of miracles, do we mot, monsieur?”

  “Indeed we do, mademoiselle,” he agreed.

  They chatted amiably during the half-hour it took to reach the Hotel du Danube, but the lovely Marie Devereaux managed not to reveal much more about herself than she already had, despite his skill as an interrogator. Conversely, she asked him such questions as to probe deeply into the persona he had constructed, though they seemed quite innocuous at the time, especially when delivered by one who herself seemed the very picture of innocence.

  On the other hand, Slaughter reflected, the most ruthless killer he had ever met was a sweet and delicate eleven-year-old, with curly blond hair, guileless blue eyes, and a radiant smile that would have made the cherubs weep with envy. Lovely to look upon and with crystalline laughter sweet to the ear, and yet the lad had killed all seven members of his family in a single night, merely because they paid more attention to the newest child born into the family than to him. Sometimes, Slaughter learned once he had penetrated the child’s lie, monsters wore very pleasant masks.

  “Is there something the matter, M Slaughter?” Marie asked.

  He looked up, smiled, a little embarrassed she had caught him in a moment of reverie.

  “You looked very sad,” she said.

  “Oh, no, not at all,” he assured her. “Merely thinking of my mission. Matters of finance and commerce are not the sort that tend to lift one’s spirit.”

  “Unfortunately, none of us can choose our own fate,” she said. “No matter how free we imagine ourselves to be, do we often not find ourselves mere pawns? Do you not at times feel as but a puppet whose stings are held by shadowy masters forever unknown.

  He nodded. “Indeed.”

  “Forgive me, monsieur, I am a very foolish child at times, or so my father tells me” she said with a bright laugh and a deprecating smile. To Slaughter, it seemed as if a cloud had settled upon her, but the somberness vanished in an instant. “It has been a very long journey and I am more weary than I realized.”

  “And your journey is not yet over, I think” he said. “You said you were returning home, but you do not live in Paris?”

  “You are correct, M Slaughter,” she acknowledged. “I live in Marseille, with my father, but I wanted to visit with some friends I have not seen for… Ah, we have arrived, monsieur.”

  With a start, Slaughter noticed the horse had clattered to a stop and the driver was leaping down to open the door. On the curb, they each paid the driver a half-franc less than the two-franc fare that would have been due for a solitary passenger.

  They entered the brick façade building which fronted directly onto the street. Despite the economy of the hotel (Slaughter had not expected the Royale Le Luxembourg on the Yard’s shilling) it was nevertheless a clean and pleasant establishment. He planned for her to precede him in registering, but certain small events, which at the time seemed accidental, brought him to the desk ahead of her. After registering, he thought to loiter a bit longer, but to do so would have invited questions he would rather not answer, so they bade pleasant adieus and offered vague hopes at seeing each other again. When the boy conducted him to the lift, Marie Devereaux was engaged in earnest conversation with the desk manager, and then the doors of the lift hissed closed.

  Alone in his suite, Slaughter opened his bag and withdrew the livre de horaires de dirigeable, perusing its columns of small print till he found the arrival time of the Reine de L’air. He stroked his chin. Yes, there was a slim possibility she arrived when claimed, that she was delayed at Customs for one reason or another, and emerged at that precise moment to encounter him, but it was a very slim possibility, especially since she claimed to be a French national returning home. It was Slaughter’s experience with French customs officials that returning French received p
referential treatment while everyone else, especially the English, was left to cool their heels till Hell froze over; if not for his warrant card and his letters, Slaughter imagined he might still be waiting in line.

  Of course, he thought, if she had not arrived on the airship as she claimed, nor had been a fellow passenger, then what? She was obviously no ordinary grifter, since her only ‘touch’ upon him was to save him a half-franc cab fare, and not a shopping dollymop. If the encounter had been engineered, what was the purpose of it?

  Quickly, he unpacked his bag, putting away his few belongings. He transferred the file papers and daguerreotype to his jacket, then replaced them with the flattened livre de horaires de dirigeable and slid the file under the mattress.

  His next step was the mandatory visit to the office of the Prefecture de Police on the Ile de la Cite, at which point he would likely be met by his opposite number in the Sûreté. As he was about to leave the hotel, however, he paused, walked to the registration and asked for a quiet word with the Directeur de l'hôtel, a very tall man with small hands and black curly hair. The manager raised his eyebrows slightly when Slaughter discreetly showed his warrant card, but said nothing.

  “Is Marie Devereaux registered as a guest?” Slaughter asked. “If so, in what room?”

  “And your purpose in asking, monsieur?” the man asked. “You are aware you have no jurisdiction here?”

  “Yes, I realize that, M le Directeur,” Slaughter said. “I showed my warrant card only to establish my identity with you, to prove I was not…how do you say it in French? A débauché?”