Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper

by David Barnett

  “She has been, and gone,” said Gideon. “I do not think we shall see her for some time, I fear.”

  Maria raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I had rather hoped she might spend Christmas with us.”

  Quickly, Gideon crossed the rug and gathered Maria in his arms. She yelped in surprise as he lifted her from the floor, holding her gaze fiercely.

  “Maria. Tell me that you love me!”

  She blinked. “Gideon, I do! I have told you many times.…”

  “But always at moments of stress, or danger. Atop dragons high above London, amid Yaqui warriors baying for our blood! Tell me here, now, in the safety and comfort of our very own parlor, that you love me!”

  There was urgency in his eyes, his voice, that infected her as well. “Put me down,” she whispered, “and I shall tell you. I shall show you.”

  He lowered her to the rug, and she took his face in her hands. “Gideon Smith. Until I met you I thought I had no right to love, to hope that another could love me. I considered myself less than human, unable to enjoy the privileges of normal people. But Gloria Monday taught me, Gideon, that whatever I feel here”—she touched her head—“and here”—she placed his hand on her breast—“makes me what I am. And I feel that I am a woman, Gideon, despite outward—or rather inward—appearances. A woman who loves you very, very much.”

  He broke out into a huge smile, and she kissed him, hard and long and deep, until she felt his body stirring against hers. She broke away, planting a smaller kiss on his lips, and said, “And now I am going to take you upstairs to your room, and I am going to show you how much of a woman I am, and how much I love you.”

  She led him by the hand from the parlor, and he paused in the hall. “Wait,” he said. “I need to make one very quick call.…”

  * * *

  Gloria Monday considered herself someone apart from the ordinary masses of London, but even she had to admit that the past few days had been somewhat unusual. Jack the Ripper, gigantic lizards, fleeing through the sewers … she sighed happily, and not a little forlornly, looking at her unmade-up face in the cracked mirror in her small room. Back to real life, performing for those cabbage-throwing Philistines to raise enough money to go to Zurich, with the added complication that her affair with George was now out in the open.

  She started at a knock at her door. The landlord, probably, after the rent arrears. Or word was out about her and George, and it was someone from the Britannia Theater in Hoxton, telling her the rest of her run there had been canceled due to the scandal. Or … she sighed and went to open the door a crack, throwing it wide as she saw the figure standing on the other side.

  “George!”

  He stepped in and laid the leather bag he was carrying on the bare floorboards, allowing Gloria to plant a kiss upon his cheek. “Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t shaved yet.”

  Somewhat alarmingly, he withdrew a revolver from his overcoat pocket and began to check the chamber. “George…?”

  He smiled. “I have just received a telephone call from Mr. Gideon Smith, and there is some business to attend to at Highgate Aerodrome. I would like it if you could accompany me.”

  Gloria smothered him in kisses again until he playfully pushed her away. “So am I being deputized into the Metropolitan Police?”

  “After a fashion. Are you ready?”

  She fixed him with a hard stare. “I just told you I have not yet shaved, and I need my makeup. I’m not going anywhere like this.”

  Lestrade sighed and checked his pocket watch. “As quick as you can, dear.”

  * * *

  There was nothing—nothing!—like the feeling of an airship pulling free of its tethers, nosing into the air with a sudden lurch, defying the gravity that had kept mankind earthbound for so many millennia. Rowena stood on the bridge of the Skylady III, her heart soaring higher and faster than the ’stat could rise in the sluggish, cold December air. How could they have thought to deny her this? Anger burned within her, flushing her cheeks. How could they?

  She would never again put herself in the hands of men who thought to make the law. She should never have so meekly allowed herself to be taken from her offices, transported by policemen to Holloway Prison and then to the Old Bailey. She was Rowena Fanshawe. She was the Belle of the Airways. No longer would she pay lip service to empires, to nations, to laws. She had been betrayed, and no one betrayed Rowena Fanshawe twice.

  As she left English soil for what could be the last time, she felt one final tug at her heart.

  Gideon Smith. She could have loved him, if he’d loved her. It was best that she left. Not just for Gideon—he loved Maria, and she could never come between them—but for her. Gideon’s love would have bound her as strongly as any prison cell, squeezed the life from her as much as any hangman’s noose. It was like Louis Cockayne had always said … they were cut from the same cloth, him and her. Louis, Rowena, her father … the high winds flowed through their veins, not blood. You could cage them, as you could cage an eagle, but they’d die of that, eventually.

  She shed a tear as she turned the Skylady III above the aerodrome, perhaps for Gideon Smith, perhaps for Louis Cockayne. She could have loved Louis, too, if he hadn’t been a bastard. She was sorry he’d died back there at the Alamo, but perhaps that was for the best as well. Rowena Fanshawe didn’t need any distractions. She’d thought her father dead all these years, and if she had any love to give, she had a lot of time to make up. Her heart was his, for now.

  Newgate Prison nestled beside the Old Bailey. Its stone walls were bound by the blood of all those who had died there: from execution, from cruelty, from despair. As she nosed the Skylady III over central London, she smiled agreeably at the outraged fingers pointing her way from the snow-sodden streets. She shouldn’t be flying so low over London, easing her way between the towers and ziggurats. The police blimps would already be mobilizing. She didn’t have much time.

  Locking the wheel, Rowena rushed out onto the observation deck, the biting cold air taking her breath away. The inmates were shuffling around the small exercise yard at the center of the prison, looking up at her. They had the same exercise routines at Newgate as at Holloway and, she supposed, at all the prisons across London. Nothing if not reliable, the English penal system.

  She hoped her father was down there among the prisoners. She took position behind the Hotchkiss, already bolted to the deck. It would be a very big waste of some rather spectacular explosions if not.

  And then, she saw him through the crosshairs of the Hotchkiss, unmistakable though she had not seen him for so many years. He stood apart from the others, as though even in prison he was afforded the respect she now knew was owed to him, merely for his refusal to conform.

  Bringing the Hotchkiss lower, she let rip the first shell, and it exploded into the outer wall of Newgate with a shriek of splintering wood, smashing glass, and cracking stone.

  * * *

  They had been unable to bind Charles Collier’s legs with irons because of his wooden stump, and had decided that it was enough to chain his wrists together on the supposition that he wasn’t going to go very far with only one leg.

  Idiots.

  He gazed skyward as the airship hove into view above the narrow exercise yard, and he slowly began to smile as the first of the shells hit the front of the prison. The guards began to run toward the shattered frontage of Newgate, and the inmates began to lurch around in fear, hope, and panic. Only Charles Collier stood still, right in the center of the yard, alone.

  “Good girl,” he said softly to himself as another shell exploded on the roof in front of him.

  Smoke billowed up from the prison and the inmates spied their chance, charging the wrecked walls. Collier remained where he was as the airship pulled up sharply, nosing over the walls, and a rope ladder unfurled. As it swung by he grabbed it in his chained hands, and he let out a cry of triumph as the ’stat, its pilot now back on the bridge, began to ascend sharply up and over the chaos, carrying him to
his freedom.

  * * *

  “She’s a fine ’stat, and no mistake,” said Charles Collier as Rowena set to his chains with a pair of bolt cutters.

  “She’s what we call a tripler,” said Rowena. “She’s got a gear winder, some electric, and a light coal-powered steam engine. Came out of the Gefa-Flug factory in Aachen.”

  He looked out the window, behind the ship. “We’re going to need it. I can already see the police airships.”

  Rowena smiled and pushed forward a lever on the bridge; the gondola lurched as the Skylady III thrust forward. Collier, his wrists free, hugged her. “I’m so proud of you, you know. I could not have spent another hour in that prison, shut off from the sky. I feel as though I have been delivered from hell.”

  Rowena felt tears prick her eyes. “We have lost so much time,” she said. “We each thought the other dead.”

  “And here we are, both alive,” said Collier. “Though we might as well be dead, at least as far as coming back to England is concerned. You know that, don’t you? You have nothing to keep you here, I hope? For we are outlaws now, Jane.”

  She thought of Gideon again, then said softly, “No. Nothing to keep me here. Not anymore.” She took her father by the hand. “And Jane, I’m very much afraid, is dead. You’ll have to get used to calling me Rowena.”

  They ascended as they flew, the smog and clouds thinning. Collier said, “I was intending to take my punishment, you know. I deserve it. Mr. Smith was right; I was blinded by guilt. I mistook vengeance for justice. I still hate the British Empire and everything it has done, but that does not mean everyone who lives here is evil.” He smiled again. “You live here.”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “I’m done with England. Where shall we go first?”

  There was a noise behind them, and they turned to see Inspector George Lestrade ascending the ladder to the bridge. Behind him came Gloria Monday, looking somewhat confused and carrying a large leather bag. Lestrade held a revolver, which he pointed directly at Rowena.

  “I hope I don’t have to use this gun,” said Lestrade.

  Rowena returned his stare. “You will if you expect me to land this ship on English soil. I presume Gideon alerted you?”

  Lestrade helped Gloria onto the bridge, not lowering the revolver. “He did. He telephoned me at the Commercial Road police station.”

  “And you hid aboard the Skylady III to ambush us,” said Collier. “Well done, Inspector. A good move.” He appraised Gloria. “Though I thought you might have brought more … firepower.”

  Gloria looked at the gun, then to Collier, then to Lestrade. “I must confess, George, I’m not quite sure myself why you brought me here.…”

  Lestrade took the bag from her, unlatched it with his free hand, and tossed it onto the bridge. He said, “I’m going to put the gun down now.” He looked at Gloria, then at Rowena. “I’m not here to arrest you, Miss Fanshawe. In fact, I’m rather hoping you will take us with you.”

  Rowena stared at the money overflowing from the leather bag. There must have been thousands of pound notes.

  “George?” said Gloria. “I thought you were here to stop them.… And where is all that money from?”

  “Markus Mesmer’s ill-gotten gains. I couldn’t tell you before, Gloria, in case we failed. I did not wish to implicate you if I was stymied. I was going to log the money at the station, but before I could, and just before Mr. Smith called me … well, I have been relieved from my duties. Apparently my unblemished record with the force and my exemplary service is nothing compared to whom I choose to love. The law has abandoned me, Miss Fanshawe, much as I expect you feel it has abandoned you. Therefore, I have decided that I shall abandon the law.” He looked at Gloria. “For love.”

  Gloria squealed and threw her arms around Lestrade. Rowena said, “Where would you have us take you, Inspector?”

  “To Zurich, if you would. I believe there is a doctor there who can make my Gloria very happy. After that … who knows?” George Lestrade gave a rare smile. “It’s all rather exciting, don’t you think, Gloria?”

  She began to smother him with kisses, and he added, “And please, Miss Fanshawe, it isn’t Inspector any more. Just George will do.”

  Rowena raised an eyebrow at her father. “Mr. Collier, would you set a course for Zurich?”

  “Might I beg one stop before that?” he asked.

  She nodded. “As you will, Mr. Collier.”

  He broke into a grin, saluted his daughter, and said, “Aye aye, Skipper,” as the Skylady III broke through the clouds into clear blue sky.

  * * *

  “How long do we wait?” asked Kalanath, the scar on his face purple in the cold. “You read the newspapers, didn’t you? They have captured Fereng. He is not coming for us.”

  “How far is it to India? And how are we to get there?” asked young Naakesh.

  “A long way indeed,” said Phoolendu, leaning on the gigantic statue that dominated Blanchard Square. It was a representation in bronze of the prototype powered balloon in which Jean-Pierre Blanchard had made the first powered flight in 1782, built in the place where he had landed in central London and not only astonished the Empire, but ushered in a new age of flight. It was the place where Fereng had said they should meet should they ever get separated. Phoolendu popped the last of the nuts into his mouth. “And we will need a lot of food.”

  There was a ripple of astonishment from the crowds around them, and the four Thuggees looked up. Deeptendu smiled and pointed at the huge dirigible bearing down on them, scattering the crowds from its shadow. The Skylady III. On the observation deck of the rapidly descending airship they could see the unmistakable shape of Fereng, scourge of the British Empire.

  32

  DELIVERED FROM HELL

  “Now that,” said Aloysius Bent as he poured himself out of the steam-cab that had just brought them home, “is what you call an adventure.”

  “Though not one to be repeated,” said Gideon. They had been summoned to the Commercial Road police station to offer some explanation about what had happened at Newgate Prison. They had none. The new inspector, Abberline, had regarded them with suspicion.

  “You might have gotten away with all sorts of things under George Lestrade, but he’s shown his mettle now, and he’s gone. There’s a new guvnor in charge here. Just don’t cross me, if you know what’s good for you,” he’d said, before curtly dismissing them.

  “I cannot believe Rowena has gone,” said Maria. “And in such spectacular fashion.” Maria was still wearing the suit Gloria Monday had given her; she thought she might go shopping later, perhaps buy some more.

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” said Gideon, half to himself. “Though now she is considered a criminal … I rather hope our paths don’t cross, not in the immediate future.”

  Bent nodded as he fished out his keys for the front door. “Everything tied up nicely, apart from one thing.”

  Gideon raised an eyebrow. “We have a mystery left unsolved?”

  “That feller I saw hanging around here, two or three times now,” said Bent, unlocking the door and pushing it in. “No idea who he—” He paused, openmouthed. “You!”

  Bent launched himself at the man, dressed in a black suit and bowler, graying sideburns wobbling with astonishment on his face. Bent grabbed a handful of his lapels and pushed him against the wood-paneled wall. “Who are you working for? Walsingham? Are you one of Mesmer’s?”

  “Mr. Bent!” cried Mrs. Cadwallader stridently. “I shall thank you to leave Mr. Grayson be immediately!”

  Bent blinked at her and slowly let go of the man. “Grayson?”

  Mrs. Cadwallader sighed. “Mr. Bent. Might I have a moment in private with you in the study?”

  Nonplussed, Bent followed her in and she closed the door. She said, “Mr. Grayson is in service with the Rogersons at number 17. He is a widower. We have been … spending some time together recently. When I went out the other night? We share a passion for opera, M
r. Bent.”

  Bent stared at her. “You and him? You’re stepping out? But Sally … I thought … after yesterday…”

  She closed her eyes. “Mr. Bent, please do not remind me of that. When those lights flooded the whole house … We were both under the influence of that dreadful Markus Mesmer. It should not have happened, would not have happened otherwise.” She opened her eyes. “Please, Aloysius. I am very fond of Mr. Grayson. I am sorry if what occurred gave you the wrong idea of my feelings toward you. Now, as all the excitement is over, we are going for a walk to Hyde Park.”

  Bent followed her out and watched them depart. He looked at Gideon and Maria. “I need an effing drink. Pub?”

  Gideon shook his head and placed his arm around Maria. “Rowena’s experience with her father has taught us that opportunities must be seized, time must not be wasted.”

  “I am going to move my things into Gideon’s room,” said Maria.

  As they began to climb the stairs, Bent snorted. “All right for some, I must say.” He stood alone in the hallway. What the bloody hell was he supposed to do now? Then something occurred to him, and he broke out in a wide grin. The strike was over. The bawdy houses were open for business.

  Whistling, he checked his wallet to make sure he was well-off, then went out to find a cab to take him to Whitechapel. As Gideon Smith had so sagely said, opportunities must be seized. Time must not be wasted. Oh yes, time must not be effing wasted.

  * * *

  It was something of a subdued Christmas at 23 Grosvenor Square, the first one the house had seen without Captain Lucian Trigger and Dr. John Reed, and the absence of Rowena Fanshawe in the company weighed heavily. Gideon had written a long letter to Inez in the town of Freedom, hoping that enough traffic had built up between the British American enclaves and the burgeoning township to have it delivered.

  “Perhaps we ought to have a little trip out there,” said Bent, finishing off one of Mrs. Cadwallader’s mince pies and washing it down with a gulp of sherry. “Be nice to see a bit of sun, after all this effing snow.”