Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl

by David Barnett

  “It was,” he agreed. “Then, that winter . . . Mother died in childbirth. I would have had a baby brother, but he was not strong enough to survive either. Josiah had to look after me, and he gave up his schooling to help keep the house. But that didn’t matter, because he was going into the business with Dad. He would have been a great fisherman.”

  “Would have been?”

  “Six years ago he died from influenza. I took it very badly. He had been like . . . well, like a mother to me, or another dad. He looked after me. I had always been a bookish child, and sometimes the other boys poked fun at me.” He smiled. “Not that I couldn’t give as good as I got. I had always been strong. Just like Josiah.” His smile turned to a frown. “That didn’t save him from the influenza, though. It had him in the grave in a week.”

  “So it was just you and your father?”

  Gideon nodded. “We were as happy as we could be, given what we had lost. Until that monster took him away from me, and left me with nothing.”

  Maria placed a hand on his. “So you are out for revenge. It will not bring your father back, I am sorry to say. No one returns from the dead, not even through vengeance.”

  Gideon shrugged. “Perhaps. But I cannot let his death lie. I must seek reparations. And who knows what evil the creature plots? It might have claimed more lives in Sandsend already.”

  “And you intend to return to Sandsend with Captain Trigger?”

  He nodded, then realized he had also promised to help Maria find Professor Einstein, or at least some answers to her dreams. He knew the answer already, but he couldn’t tell her out of . . . pity? Fear? He didn’t know. Instead he spoke softly, forcing out each hateful word he knew he must utter. “Maria, I do not expect you to accompany me any further. You are free of Crowe and in London, as you wished. If you decide to go forth alone to find your . . . your creator, then I will not hold you to your pledge to aid me. We can part company now, if you desire it.”

  “If I desire it,” she said leadenly. Gideon went to settle exorbitant bill in the café. When he returned she was dabbing at her cheek with a paper napkin.

  “Maria?” he asked, frowning.

  She smiled, blinking at him. “It is quite all right, Mr. Smith. Merely a slight . . . leakage of fluid. It happens, on occasion.”

  They stood together in an awkward silence. Gideon said quickly, “I did not mean for us to part immediately, Maria. Come with me to the offices of World Marvels & Wonders, at least. Who knows, you might learn something about yourself in Fleet Street.”

  She smiled again. “I am already learning much about myself, Mr. Smith. But thank you, your offer is very kind, and I accept. Shall we take a steam-cab?”

  By the time the steam-cab - another new experience for Gideon — deposited them before the imposing facade of the offices of the London Newspaper and Magazine Publishing Company, Gideon was feeling wretched. Reverend Bastable would, he considered, be very proud of him. Despite the fact Gideon knew in his bones Maria was a good person, he had tried his very best to reject her, to push her away from him. He was a fool. And now, perhaps, it was too late. She was becoming increasingly distant from him, and when he had excitedly gripped her arm as they saw the famous Iron Guard patrolling outside Buckingham Palace, she had carefully extricated herself from his grip.

  The money was dwindling alarmingly, he noted as he paid the cab driver and the vehicle steamed off. They stood in front of the portico, a sour-faced doorman glancing at them and then away. “Well,” Gideon said. “I suppose we just go in and ask for Captain Trigger.”

  Norman Wright could, in Aloysius Bent’s considered opinion, go fuck himself. There were plenty of papers out there where Bent’s experience and talent would be appreciated. Nurtured, even. Bent leaned back in his wooden chair and breathed out hard. He’d had a good couple of gins over at the Punch. Five, maybe. He could just have a little afternoon nap now. But he was too angry. Wright was willing to let himself be walked all over because Bent had gotten a little too close to the truth with his Annie Crook investigation. What kind of editor did that? What about freedom of speech? The inalienable right of the British press to shine a light on the dark doings of authority?

  Still, no need to be hasty. He could bide his time. And time was one thing Aloysius Bent had plenty of. No point rocking the boat just yet, not when he had bills to pay and that tab at the Unicorn to settle. And Big Henry would want the money from that rummy game at Wapping back in June. He’d better just keep his head down, find something else to write about. He picked up the copy of the Whitby Gazette, the provincial rag he’d taken from the news desk. He shook his head as he read it. Son of a wool man found with his throat ripped out. And they said London was a violent place. This abandoned Russian schooner interested him as well. Witnesses said they’d seen a big black hound running from the hold. He turned back to the murder piece. Throat ripped out as though by a wild animal, it said. He shook his head again. Just how stupid were they out in the sticks? Black hound escapes from beached Russian ship, tourist has throat ripped out. And no one was making connections? He could work with this. The Wolf of Whitby. That had a nice ring to it. Feeling the familiar tickle at the back of his fat neck that signaled a germinating idea, Bent decided to reward himself with one last gin, perhaps over at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

  Bingley looked up as Bent stood and grabbed his coat. “Off again, Mr. Bent?”

  Bent belched. “Going to find a new story, as per Mr. Wright’s explicit instructions,” he said, then paused thoughtfully. “Lend us two shillings, will you, Bingley old chap?”

  Bent was descending the staircase when he became aware of a minor commotion at the reception desk. There was a tall chap with curly dark hair, much too healthy looking to be a native Londoner, haranguing one of the harpies at the desk. Behind him was a slim young woman, quite pretty from what Bent could see of her beneath her bonnet. He sauntered over.

  “All right, Doris? Want me to call Jug Ears?”

  The receptionist looked at Bent with exasperation. “Mr. Bent, I have been trying for the last ten minutes, with little success, to impress upon this young man that Captain Lucian Trigger does not receive visitors at the offices of World Marvels & Wonders. Can you assist me?”

  Bent laughed, spraying spittle over the mahogany desk. “Trigger? You’ve come to see Trigger?”

  The young man turned to him, fire in his eyes. “Sir, I have traveled a great distance to engage Captain Trigger’s aid with an emergency situation.”

  Bent looked at him with interest. Not a London accent. Northern. “What’s your name, lad? Where do you come from?”

  “My name is Gideon Smith,” said the boy. “And I have traveled from a small village near Whitby, sir.”

  “Whitby, you say,” mused Bent. “I confess, the only time I’d heard that name before was in relation to the Prospect of Whitby, a public house with which I am acquainted.” He paused. “Or was, until the landlord barred me at Christmas.” He shook his head. “No matter. Fact is, Mr. Smith, I’m hearing the name Whitby quite a lot at the moment. You don’t know about abandoned ships, do you? And wolves attacking innocent folk in the streets?”

  “If it’s wolves you want, or rather black dogs, you’d be better off speaking to a gentleman by the name of Bram Stoker,” said Gideon. “But of abandoned ships . . . that is the very reason I am here.” He lowered his voice and looked around. “There is evil abroad on the coast, sir. My father has been taken by . . . a thing beyond your ken.”

  Bent couldn’t resist rubbing his hands together. “Well, I think I might be able to help you there, son. My ken has very distant borders indeed.”

  The young man shook his head. “I must see Captain Trigger at once. I simply must.”

  Bent smiled broadly. “Tell you what, Mr. Smith. I’ll take you to see Captain Lucian Trigger, and you can tell me all about what’s been going on in Whitby. What do you say?”

  The boy glanced uncertainly at the young woman, then shrugged
and turned back to Bent. “I suppose so, if that’s the only way for me to get to Captain Trigger.”

  Bent placed his big hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “Absolutely fucking top notch.” He coughed into his fist. “Um, pardon my French.”

  11

  Captain Trigger, at Last

  Stoker thought he was inhabiting one of his dreams, which had become increasingly more bizarre and vivid of late, when he awoke with a pounding head beside the naked form of Elizabeth Bathory. They had made it back to the abbey, somehow, back to Bathory’s cell. Around Stoker’s palm was wrapped a leather thong with a piece of shining black stone hanging from it. He shoved it into his pocket, touched his head and felt the dried blood just below his scalp, and winced. Bathory was crumpled near her long box of earth, the lid shoved off. She was naked and bleeding, but at least she had shed that awful bat-form. He crawled toward her, fearing the worst, and laid a cautious hand on her pale shoulder.

  “Elizabeth?” he whispered, then with more urgency, “Elizabeth?”

  She moved and moaned, turning her head with great effort and opening her eyes. “Bram? We survived?”

  “We did,” he said. He cast around for the trunk containing her clothing and found a long, deep red cloak, which he wrapped around her nakedness. “But your wounds . . . you need a doctor.”

  She shook her head. “I need blood. You must help me. I must feed. Help me find someone.”

  Stoker shuffled backward, shocked. “Elizabeth, no, I cannot abet you in murder.”

  “I must feed, Bram,” she said hollowly. “Or I may die.”

  Stoker scrabbled around for his bag, thanking his stars he had kept hold of it during their impossible flight from the caves. He said, “After watching you take that man in the stews, I vowed I would do all I could to stop you killing like that again.”

  Bathory, leaning on her box, smiled weakly. “So we are back to this, then. Is it to be a stake through my heart, Bram, then an axe to chop off my head? Now you have seen me for what I am, must I finally die?”

  He returned to her with his bag, which still contained his garlic, crucifix, holy water, and stakes. But he left them and withdrew the bottle he had bought from the pharmacist earlier, now filled to the brim with dark, thick liquid. He rolled up his sleeve and showed her a bandage over the inside of his forearm.

  “I took the liberty of drawing off a quantity of my own blood.” He held it uncertainly to her. “Will it be enough?”

  Stoker unstoppered the bottle and placed it to her lips. She enclosed his hands in her own and drank deeply, closing her eyes and shivering as the first gush of blood hit her tongue. They sat for a moment once she had drained it, hands clasped together around the bottle, and she smiled. Her hair had regained its former luster, and her skin shone with internal iridescence. Before Stoker’s amazed eyes, the wounds on her exposed flesh began to close and knit, even the scars fading to nothingness within seconds. Bathory smiled at him.

  “Bram. I thank you. You have saved my life.”

  “And I shall do it again, Countess,” said Stoker. “If you can promise me you will not take innocent lives, then you can have all the blood I can spare.”

  Bathory frowned. “Innocence is a point of argument, Bram. But, yes, for now I agree to your pact. With one exception.”

  “One exception?”

  “The Children of Heqet,” said Bathory. “I can feel them in my mind, discern their intent. I can follow them.”

  “And I will follow you,” said Stoker.

  “Then take this,” said Bathory, digging in her trunk and handing him a glistening bangle of gold and gems. “Get the best price you can for it in Whitby, and book us passage on a dirigible, as soon as possible.”

  “A dirigible, Countess?”

  She looked into the middle distance, riding whatever secret currents flowed in the blood of the mummified demons. “London,” she said at last. “We are going to London.”

  Gideon and Maria followed Bent back on to Fleet Street. “Now,” the fat journalist said, running his grubby fingers through the snot dripping from his enormous nose. “Trigger lives over on Grosvenor Square. Very exclusive little address. Part of the Mayfair set. I’d suggest a steam-cab, but . . .” He patted his pockets. “Mr. Smith, are you, shall we say, well resourced?”

  “We have a few pounds left,” said Gideon, just as one of the overhead steam trains clattered by over a stone viaduct. “I’d quite like to try one of those, things, though.”

  Bent frowned. “Ah, the old stilt-trains. Why, last year, there was a flower girl standing right under the tracks near Westminster when one of the boilers cracked on an engine passing overhead. Took the skin right off her, by all accounts. Steamcab?”

  Bent hailed a cab and they crushed into the back of it together. Bent laid his hands on his knees. “So. We should all get acquainted. My name is Aloysius Bent, and I am a journalist with the Illustrated London Argus.”

  “Not with World Marvels & Wonders?” Gideon frowned. “Then how do you know Captain Trigger?”

  “We’re all published by the same company,” said Bent. He tapped a pudgy, tobacco-stained forefinger against his nose. “I know all sorts of things about Captain Lucian Trigger, young man. But tell me about yourself.”

  Gideon shrugged. “Gideon Smith, of Sandsend. There’s not much to tell, other than that. Not until you’ve taken me to see Captain Trigger, at any rate.”

  Bent cackled. “Nearly had you there, didn’t I? Never mind. And your young lady friend?”

  “This is Maria.”

  “She’s a Whitby girl, is she?”

  Gideon shook his head. “She is on her own errand in London.”

  Bent pursed his lips. “And what errand might that be?”

  Gideon thought he had better let Maria answer for herself. She glanced at him, then up at Bent. “I have strange dreams of London, though I do not believe I have ever been here before, at least not physically.” She frowned and screwed up her face. “Dreams of . . . of Cleveland Street, I think. And a vast market, where I worked.”

  Bent tugged at his chin. “Tottenham Court Road.” He looked thoughtfully at her. “Cleveland Street is just off it. Interesting.”

  As the steam-cab took them west, Gideon said, “You said you knew things about Captain Trigger. What kinds of things?”

  Bent grinned. “That kind of depends on what you expect to find when we get to Grosvenor Square.” He looked around, then whispered conspiratorially, “He’s an invert, you know.”

  “Invert?” asked Gideon.

  “You know,” said Bent, grotesquely shoving his hips forward and back in a rhythmic movement. “A bum-jockey. An arse- bandit. He cruises, as they say, the Bourneville Boulevard.”

  Gideon looked blankly at Bent and Maria murmured, “I think Mr. Bent is trying to tell us Captain Trigger is a gentleman who enjoys the company of other men. In bed. A sodomite, Mr. Smith. A molly.” She looked abruptly surprised, and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh. I wonder how I know that?”

  Gideon flushed and looked angrily at Bent. “Sir, that is the Hero of the Empire you slur!”

  Bent shrugged. “That’s as may be, but that’s what he is, Mr. Smith. What Oscar Wilde calls earnest. Trigger was drummed out of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in ’eightyone for buggering, as Miss Maria would have it, a molly, from the junior ranks. Quite a scandal, it was.” A cloud passed his face. “Or would have been. They hushed it up, on account of Trigger being, as you say, the Hero of the Empire and all.”

  The steam-cab lurched into a square of airy brick townhouses arranged around a pretty park enclosed by black railings. “We’re here,” said Bent. “Pay the driver, Mr. Smith, and let’s go and find Trigger. And prepare yourself for a disappointment.”

  Gideon and Maria followed Bent to a black door at the top of a flight of stone steps and the journalist rapped sharply on the brass knocker. There was a pause and then the door was opened by a broad, ruddy woman in the black frock and white a
pron of a housekeeper.

  Gideon said, “We are here to see Captain Lucian Trigger.”

  The woman frowned and made to shut the door. “I am sorry, but Captain Trigger is indisposed.”

  “Told you. He don’t see anybody, doesn’t old Trigger,” Bent said.

  “Then Dr. Reed!” said Gideon desperately. “Could I not speak to Dr. John Reed, in Captain Trigger’s absence?”

  Gideon became aware of a shadow behind the housekeeper, and then a voice as dry as autumn leaves said quietly, “Mrs. Cadwallader? Did someone mention John? Is there news?”

  Mrs. Cadwallader turned to the figure who shuffled into the sunlight and said tenderly, “Captain Trigger, I told you that you were to rest this afternoon. Excitement does not do for you. I shall see to these people.”

  Gideon gaped at the figure whom the housekeeper had addressed as Captain Trigger. Surely there must be some mistake. There were some similarities between the small, thin man who stood in his house coat and velvet slippers in the doorway and the illustration of the robust adventurer with his chest puffed out that proudly dominated the cover of the penny blood Gideon held out in his hand. Both had well-cut, silver-white hair, and both had gray mustaches with waxed tips. But there the likeness ended. The Captain Trigger who appeared in the flesh before Gideon Smith was thin to the point of emaciation, his face creased with lines of age and worry, his sad, milky eyes squinting in the strong afternoon sun. He looked like the shadow Gideon’s Captain Trigger might cast, like a reflection in a tarnished mirror. Gideon felt his own shoulders slump, felt the breath knocked out of him. It had all been in vain. It had all been for nothing.

  Captain Trigger smiled uncertainly and said, “What is your name?”

  “Smith,” said Gideon numbly. “Gideon Smith.”

  Gently, Trigger took the penny blood from Gideon’s hands and felt in his house coat pocket, withdrawing a fountain pen. With a shaking hand he wrote on the cover To Gideon, from Captain Lucian Trigger, Hero of the Empire. Then he handed the periodical back and said, “Good day to you, Mr. Smith. I hope you enjoy my adventures.”