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

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  Off to the left, where the narrow street connected with Dust Town’s main thoroughfare, they heard the tinny sounds of dissolute pleasures and the occasional bang of sudden death, Neither man saw two dark figures pacing them stealthily, keeping low and hugging the deeper shadows.

  “We should have brought that caloth along, sir,” Hand said as they reached the canal and the complex of warehouses and small manufactories along its banks.

  “The caloth?” Folkestone asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious. Why, in heaven’s name?”

  “They do make good guard animals,” Hand replied.

  “They are vicious brutes.”

  “It would be a good protector against foes.”

  “Who would protect you against it?”

  “You just have to know how to handle it,” Hand pointed out. “Now, at my uncle’s place, he…”

  “Not another word about that damned caloth,” Folkestone said. “When Baphor-Ta comes to take charge of all the artifacts, he can also take charge of that ferocious beast, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “It was just an idea, sir.”

  “Well, it was a daft idea.”

  Hand sighed. “Yes, sir.”

  “Besides, what happened the last time you adopted some stray as a pet?” Folkestone reminded him. “That did not work out well for any of us.”

  “Yes, sir, but who was to know, it looking so cute and such” Hand said in his defense. “Besides, a caloth is not a coeurl, and is not about to suck the phosphorus from your brain.”

  “Well, I will give you that, Hand,” Folkestone admitted. “Tear your arm off maybe, but your brain would be safe.”

  Hand grinned.

  “But you’re still not going back for the caloth.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hand moaned.

  By the dim starlight, the canal did not look nearly as decrepit as it did during the hours of light. The silted patches were hidden, and the clotted waters shimmered. Even the barges and other watercraft took on a somewhat romantic aspect. There is a memory that stays upon old ships, a weightless cargo of bright lagoons and islands in the dawn, of tortuous channels where their keels have gone, of calm blue nights of stillness and the stars, remembering old shores.

  “Shine your torch up on that panel, Hand.”

  Hand flashed the light on, then off. “That’s the place, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Folkestone said. “Let’s find our way in. Keep quiet and your wits about you.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Even around here, there will be a roving guard.”

  Hand grinned. “And we can’t depend on it being some deaf and one-eyed pensioner with a time-clock in one hand and a gin bottle in the other. Though he may be.”

  Folkestone grinned. “Right you are, Hand.”

  They finally came to a locked door and Hand went to work on the mechanism. Folkestone, keeping watch, was surprised when the seconds lengthened to long minutes.

  “What is the delay, Hand?” he asked. “It’s hardly the Royal Bank of Mars.”

  “No, sir,” Hand agreed, “but the door doesn’t have the sort of cheese-box lock I expected, though it does seem banged up.”

  Folkestone glanced quickly over Hand’s shoulder at the door. “No Dust Town warehouse is going to have a lock like that. Must be Poulpe’s doing. And he probably roughed it up himself to make it not stand out.”

  “Just give me a bit more time to work on it, sir, and I’ll…” The door opened. “Got it. Sir.”

  “Good man!”

  They eased through the barely open door and into the darkness, then closed the door softly behind them. The interior revealed by the beam of Hand’s torch was distinctly disappointing. Other than a few broken down crates, the storage building was empty.

  “It’s a dead end, sir,” Hand remarked. “Twenty by sixty yards of a lot of nothing.”

  “It’s a wonder he tried to hide the existence of this place.”

  “Could’ve already moved everything out,” Hand suggested, looking around. “Whatever it was.”

  “I doubt we’ll find out now what…”

  “What is it, sir?”

  “It does look about twenty by sixty, doesn’t it?”

  Hand shrugged. That was what he had guessed, and he did not see anything to suggest he had overestimated. If anything, he had given the ramshackle building more than its due.

  “The exterior seemed larger.”

  “It’s hardly bigger on the inside,” Hand said with a smile.

  “No,” Folkestone agreed. “Only one thing in the universe is like that, and this isn’t it. I don’t see any windows. See if you can find some lighting for us.”

  In just a few moments, the blackness of the warehouse was replaced by the gloom of sputtering gaslight. The illumination did not reveal any contents other than what they had seen in the torch’s beam, but it more easily allowed Folkestone and Hand to examine the difference in perceived dimensions.

  The door through which they had entered was at the end nearest the canal. By it was a large panel. During the day the panel would be hoisted, apparently by muscle since the warehouse lacked any of the steam mechanisms found in more prosperous districts. Raised, the opening would allow natural illumination and transport of cargo to and from boats moored to the rickety docks. All very ordinary, but the opposite end of the warehouse was a different matter.

  “Over here, Hand,” Folkestone called softly.

  Hand joined his commanding officer. They examined the joints and the corners, the base and the top, and rapped knuckles against the boards at various points.

  “Seems solid, sir,” Hand remarked. “And it’s no different than the other walls.”

  “Yet it ends about twenty feet too soon,” Folkestone said.

  “It does seem to, sir,” Hand agreed. “I could give it a running smash, see if I can break through to anything.”

  “And you could also break your neck, and I’d rather not see that happen.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “There has to be a way in that is as obvious as it is hidden,” the Captain said. “That seems to be a constant theme with Poulpe—he wears the clothing of a worker, yet he is a scientist; a Dust Town hovel hides an obsession; the obsession hides a key…”

  “And don’t forget the flash lock he put on this place, then got scuffed up to make it look like a cracker-box,” Hand said.

  “If there is some way beyond, we won’t find it by banging or bashing,” Folkestone said. “Look for something that could be pulled or pushed.”

  “Secret panel?” Hand looked at Folkestone incredulously. “In a dump like this?”

  “Where nothing is as it appears,” the Captain reminded.

  Hand sighed in resignation, but began to search diligently for a mechanism of some sort. It was a rum idea, he thought, the sort of plot device he would expect to find in the shilling shockers he read with such glee, and which Captain Folkestone, as well as everyone else, maligned with much enthusiasm.

  Suddenly, Hand stopped dead in his tracks and looked slowly around. What would Nicodemus Legend do in this situation? In The Mystery of the Feathercreek Murder the Solitary Knight of the High Plains had encountered just such a conundrum, a room that held a secret, the hidden exit by which the murderer had fled when the only other entrance to the room was heavily guarded. Hand knew good old Nicodemus had more of a scientific bent than he did, and that Legend eschewed violence and gunplay while Hand rather doted on it, but, still, after reading all thirty-seven novels published to date, Hand was sure as blazes that some of Nicodemus Legend’s acumen had rubbed off on him.

  Hand looked for some object that apparently belonged in this milieu, but really did not. While Folkestone was busy pulling every wall-hook and pushing every nail that stuck out a bit, Hand let his gaze slide over everything on and around the wall. Finally his vision lighted on a postcard on a table beside the wall, the kind tourists could buy five for tuppence anywhere in Syr
tis Major, almost lost in the other bits and scraps on the table.

  “Over here, sir,” Hand called.

  “The postal card, Sergeant?”

  “It shows Cydonia, and it’s pinned to the desk,” Hand said.

  “So it is,” Folkestone agreed. “Go ahead, but be ready to jump back. Even dead, Poulpe seems quite the cheeky devil.”

  His confidence now tinged with caution, Hand moved forward and pressed his finger against the brass tack that apparently kept the postcard in place. The tack depressed easily, there was a click and whir of gears, and the two men jumped back, halfway expecting the next sound to be the roar of some infernal device. Instead, a section of the wall next to the table slid up, revealing blackness beyond.

  “Poulpe was a cheeky devil,” Folkestone exclaimed. “The panel was absolutely undetectable; I went over it twice.” He clapped Hand’s brawny shoulder. “Good work, Sergeant! Well done!”

  “Thank you, sir,” Hand acknowledged. “But I couldn’t have figured it out without Nicodemus Legend and The Mystery of the Feathercreek Murder.”

  “What? One of those penny dreadfuls of yours?”

  “Well…” Hand rolled his eyes in embarrassment. “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr Legend may not be on the same level as Bill Shakespeare, but I suppose he’s not utter rubbish,” Folkestone said. “Let’s take a look at what Poulpe was so keen to hide.”

  The beam from Hand’s torch reflected off chrome and glass, refracted through beakers filled with liquids all the colors of the spectrum. And it revealed a toggle switch on the wall. When the switch was thrown, the door whirred back into place, leaving them in blackness. Simultaneously, however, a faint humming filled the air, and lights flickered to life above them, shedding a bright pervasive illumination, coldly pale and casting no shadows.

  “Cheeky devil,” Folkestone muttered, glancing up.

  “Cor,” Hand breathed. “Never seen lights like those.”

  “Neither has anyone else, I think.”

  The odd illumination was provided by more than a dozen very thin glass tubes, each about a yard long. The pale light within them seemed to shimmer.

  “They appear electrical in nature, but totally lacking in any sort of wiring,” Folkestone observed.

  “I’ve seen electrical lighting, sir, a strand of wire glowing in a blown-glass bulb,” Hand said. “This is a far cry from that.”

  “No filament here, just as there is no wiring,” Folkestone said. “I think we’re seeing two things, both revolutionary—light provided by the fluorescing of electrically excited gases within a hermetically sealed glass cylinder, something along the lines of a Crookes tube, and the transmission of electrical power without benefit of physical connections…in short, transmitted power.”

  “Blimey,” the Martian breathed.

  The room in which they stood was a laboratory dedicated to the physical sciences. Sparkling beakers and flasks were everywhere, as were brass tubes, curiously cut crystals, and intricately filigreed bars of gleaming metal. Obviously, some sort of advanced scientific research was being carried out secretly here, but neither man could make sense of it.

  “Poke around, see what you can find,” Folkestone instructed. “We will carry away anything that seems of importance, then have Baphor-Ta’s guards secure the place until the Admiralty can take over and bring in our own brain-trust.”

  “What would class as important, sir?”

  “In that, Hand, my judgment is probably no better than yours,” Folkestone admitted. “I try my best to keep up with science in the news and technology, for that is now the way of the world, but I don’t have a scientific bent, any more than you. Just do your best.”

  They searched furiously and methodically for any paper that seemed important. At the same time, they kept in mind they were in a laboratory where there could be any number of flammable or explosive substances. And, as Folkestone cautioned, there was always the chance that that ‘cheeky devil’ Poulpe could have left a nasty surprise for unwanted visitors.

  They stuffed into their tunics any document the late Professor Poulpe had either displayed prominently or had secreted away, both statuses they considered as being indicative of importance. They had not been searching more than five minutes, however, before the panel whirred upward abruptly.

  Two men stepped into the room, one tall, blond, and sporting a scar on his left cheek, the other short, dark and oriental. Both were armed, the fair-haired giant with an M1879 Reichsrevolver, the oriental with a steam-needle gun of Chinese manufacture.

  “You will stay where you are!” the blond man snapped in a strong Teutonic accent.

  “If you will be so kind,” added the little man, who spoke with a distinct Oxford accent.

  * * *

  “They are coming out now,” said Zimmer.

  “Are they carrying anything?” Tanaka asked.

  The blond Zimmer squinted as he peered from his vantage point two courtyards over and halfway up a stunted plane tree. He looked down to his small companion and shook his head.

  “It does not appear so,” he whispered, “but it is very dark.”

  “Are they…”

  “Wait,” Zimmer hissed. “They are not returning to the street. They are going over the back wall.”

  Zimmer shifted to better follow the movements of the human and the Martian, and nearly fell from the tree. He hugged a nearby branch, held on till the dizziness passed and at the same time tried not to lose sight of their quarries. It should have been his smaller partner in the tree, but he lacked the authority to give orders.

  “Come down from there, Zimmer,” Tanaka commanded.

  The German let go, fell the short distance to the ground, flexing his knees as he landed in a semi-crouch near the Nipponese agent. Both men moved quietly to the back wall of the weedy courtyard to which they had retreated to when the British officer and the native regular appeared around the corner of Poulpe’s house.

  “They must have found something we missed,” Zimmer said.

  Tanaka merely nodded. He disliked Zimmer’s tendency to talk too much and to state the obvious, but, there were many things to dislike, including his putting a bullet into a man’s brain before they had obtained needed information. However, since he been assigned to the Poulpe matter by Lord Khallimar, and Zimmer by Baron Wilhelm Bellaseus, dissent was impossible. Each had to tolerate the other, at least until the successful termination of the mission.

  “They probably did not spend their time breaking apart drawers and overturning furniture,” Tanaka remarked dryly.

  Zimmer frowned. The arrogant and supercilious agent recruited from the Nihon teikoku sekyuritisābisu grated on his nerves. He also resented that Tanaka spoke English, the only language they had in common, far better than did he. While Zimmer was getting his badge of honor at Heidelberg, Tanaka was at Oxford, reading in history and mathematics, pretending he was superior to an English gentleman. As far as Zimmer was concerned, the Nipponese agent was not worth half an English gentleman, and Zimmer considered himself as far above the English as man was above jungle apes. It was a loathsome arrangement, the Nipponese being in authority, but it was at the command of their chief, hence beyond question or doubt. Zimmer consoled himself with the knowledge that eventually the assignment would end.

  “They are heading toward the canal,” Zimmer observed.

  Tanaka rolled his eyes in the darkness. “We will stay low and follow at a distance. Keep silent.”

  Zimmer nodded, then eased over the low stone wall. He was careful not to make any sound that would alert either the men they stalked or the possible inhabitants of the building behind them. He did not hear Tanaka. Looking back, he saw no trace of the little man but was not surprised. Even he had to admit Tanaka had no equal in moving stealthily, an outcome of his intensive shinobi, or ninja, training in the Imperial Secret Service. Such abilities, however, did not make Tanaka valuable to Zimmer, merely untrustworthy.

  Zimmer paced the human a
nd the Martian as they crossed a barren stretch. Neither man suspected they were being followed. They spoke, but he was too far away to understand their words.

  He did not understand the British mentality, military officers being assigned rather than intelligence operatives. Obviously they did not understand the Poulpe affair was an intelligence matter, not a mere criminal investigation. However, the positive outcome was that they could have no inkling of the involvement of MEDUSA, possibly were not even aware of its very existence.

  Zimmer reached into his coat and felt the reassuring presence of his Reichsrevolver in his shoulder holster. After the British officer and his Martian pet were no longer of value, they would meet the same fate as Poulpe.

  Once the two men reached the miserable little canal servicing Dust Town’s limited commercial needs, they were much easier to follow. Zimmer found easy cover behind buildings or stacks of cargo upon the quays and jetties. There was no sign at all of Tanaka, but that was unimportant. All that mattered was that Zimmer not let the two men get farther away than his ability to shoot them.

  Eventually, they stopped at a small warehouse, flashed a torch upon it, then moved around to the side were the pedestrian entrance would be. He flitted past them silently in the darkness and settled behind some crates where he could observe their efforts to enter the building. He pulled his weapon from its holster, rested the long barrel upon his forearm for support. He aimed at the human as the Martian worked on the lock.

  The night was very still, enlivened only by the gentle murmur of the canal behind him. He distinctly heard a faint click as the lock was breached, then the soft creak of hinges. He aimed at the British officer’s head and depressed the trigger.

  Zimmer did not at first understand what had happened. Then he realized the hammer of his revolver was being restrained from striking by a finger, his hand being gripped by something that felt like steel talons. He almost cried out, but his training by the brutal Deutsch Staatssicherheitsdienstes prevented him from betraying his presence to his enemies.

  “You fool!” Tanaka hissed in his ear.