The Diamond Conspiracy: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel

by Philippa Ballantine

  Steam from underneath the Amédée Bollée thickened again, but this time rotors and gears within the motorcar’s engine began to run, the soft, steady idle becoming more of a snarl as the motorcar trembled, but still went nowhere. Faster and faster the inner workings of the motorcar cycled, the snarl ascending higher and higher to a whine. The entire car was shuddering violently now, and all Gertie could do was tighten her own grip on the steering wheel to keep the chains from cutting any deeper. The parasol woman in tweed then started to grow taller. Gertie blinked at this oddity, eventually realising it was her own changing perspective that was causing this illusion. She craned her neck over her shoulder to watch as the Amédée Bollée’s passenger section collapsed on itself while the steering wheel shifted forwards within her grip. She turned back around to see the front of her motorcar reaching into the night sky, beginning its own folding pattern as well. She could only assume that this sequence would continue until she and the motorcar were of a more practical size, to be easily transported and disposed of.

  Gertie watched the parasol lady disappear from her sight as both the front and rear of the motorcar began another folding sequence. She swallowed through the hard, irritating tension growing in her throat. This death under the Department’s supervision would be just as she imagined. It would be efficient. It would go unseen. It would remain secret.

  It would not be quick.

  INTERLUDE

  Wherein Miss del Morte Finds She Does Indeed Have Limits

  This was not what Sophia del Morte had expected when she joined the Maestro on his mission. Watching over the doctor that ministered to him was something she’d have thought was more appropriate for someone less skilled and with more patience than she had. The Maestro had insisted that the good doctor was one of the most important people in all of the Empire, and that she was the only one he trusted to keep him safe.

  Unfortunately, as Sophia had just discovered, the term “good” was not a term that could be applied to Doctor Henry Jekyll, and he was apparently unhappy to have someone watching his every move. He had slipped away from her and returned to his old apartments, against the strict instructions of the Maestro. This reflected poorly on her, and she did not appreciate the slight.

  The control room had reported a sudden power spike from the doctor’s laboratory. Twice. She recognised that power signature. Following the second instance, Sophia stormed across the compound to the laboratory the Maestro had constructed for him. For a facility that had once served as a slaughterhouse, the doctor’s laboratory was clean, bright, and well organised.

  It also terrified Sophia to her core whenever she had to step within it.

  She pushed open the double doors, her temper burning brightly in her eyes, her hands ready to at least slap the disobedient doctor. The reek of the laboratory, however, struck her dumb for a moment. Last time she had visited the doctor’s domain, the air smelled unnaturally clean. If “sterility” had an odour, it would have been this chemical smell. She did not care for the scent. Now, she longed for that unnerving smell. What hit her on entering the lab was rank, a combination of death and decay that nearly choked her where she stood.

  Throwing the sleeve of her jacket over her nose, she blinked through suddenly watering eyes and saw Henry at the far end of the laboratory. His back was to her, and he was bending over something that she couldn’t quite see.

  With bile welling in her mouth, Sophia gasped out what she had meant to be a stern reproach. “You used the Culpepper device, Doctor! You made me look extremely foolish in the eyes of the Maestro . . .”

  He didn’t look up, merely waved his hand at her. “I needed something from my apartments. No need to concern yourself, my dear. I had taken precautions not to be apprehended.” He turned and grinned over his shoulder at her. “Called in an old friend for protection. I was perfectly fine.”

  Sophia’s nausea subsided. The doctor had used the serum on himself, and let the monster roam free?

  “As it turned out it was most fortuitous,” he said, beckoning to her. “Come look for yourself . . .”

  The cheerful tone in his voice and the merry look in his eye did not make her feel anything but dread. She most certainly did not want to go closer, did not want to see what the smiling doctor was doing, or to whom. If Sophia did not look, then she would be ignorant, and ignorance “was the path to disaster,” so her mother had taught her. Slowly she walked the few feet needed to stand at Henry’s side by the long table.

  It was a boy. The doctor had snatched a child, and brought him back to his lab.

  Sophia pressed her lips together. That was another thing her mother had instilled in her: No children. They were not “innocent” so much as “blank slates” upon which impressions could be made. Children could be influenced, trained, and refined. There was always potential in them. Good or evil? That depended on the guardian. Therefore, children were never targets. As she looked down into the eyes of the lad who lay on Henry’s table, she remembered what she had been taught. Anyone can be a mindless killer, anyone can have no scruples, but it is the person who holds on to just one that remains in control. It had been her mother’s rule and Sophia’s too. She would not kill or injure a child unless one attacked her.

  This boy with his wide frightened eyes tried desperately to cry out, but no sound—not even a whisper—came. He could not be more than twelve, and the pleading in his eyes was directed solely at her.

  “He’s quite secure.” That was when Sophia noticed there were no bindings holding the child. “Paralytic agent I’ve been working on. Quite effective. He may look tense, ready to bolt, but his muscles are completely relaxed. So relaxed, his vocal chords are incapable of working.” He gave one of his syringes a flick of his finger, making it ring lightly. “Very happy with this little cocktail.”

  For a moment Sophia contemplated snatching up one of the doctor’s many sharp instruments and plunging it into his eye, but she knew that impulse carried consequences. There was nowhere in the world, no hole she could crawl into, that would be deep enough for her to hide.

  From either of them.

  “Who is this?” Sophia asked, her voice flat and devoid of any emotion. Her skills of deception held her in good stead in such moments.

  “Some gutter rat. I stumbled on a horde of them breaking into my house. The little girl was particularly endearing. A scream that could shatter glass. Oh, how they scampered when we appeared.” The doctor’s laughter sent a chill through Sophia’s body. “We managed to get this one. I would have loved to grab another, but sadly it was not to be.” His grin was genuinely delighted. “Fate brought this little cherub to me. I needed a new test animal.” He made a flourish with his hands over the boy. “Et voilà!”

  The boy shuddered, the sweat on his forehead indication of how hard he fought against the toxin Henry Jekyll had administered. The urchin was skinny and dirty, but he was still a child. Sophia tried to harden herself against what she knew she was bound to see, by thinking how many boys just like this died every day on the streets of London, how perhaps the next winter might have killed this one anyway.

  Yet, Sophia could not help but think of her brother, and for an awful moment she saw him on the table before the doctor. What would she have done if that were true?

  “What will happen to him?” she asked in a disinterested tone.

  Henry, who had turned to his long bench of shining medical devices, replied in a slightly more excited manner. “Oh, don’t worry, I won’t be wasting him. Our plan needs good soldiers, especially after the grand unveiling. This young man and I will accomplish a great deal together.” He shot her a chilling yet completely affable grin. “After all, this is what we are accomplishing here, yes? Progress?”

  Sophia could not bear to think what this experiment might become. “I am sorry, Doctor, but the sciences are not my expertise.”

  “This is more than just the s
ciences, my dear signorina,” he said, his eyes sparkling in the light of the burners that created his concoctions. “This is about progress. Control and command of the human mind. Unlock its mysteries, and progress occurs. You know this. You’ve lived this. All that the ‘Maestro’ has taught you, and you answered to that so readily, only to discover—”

  “Yes, I know,” she said quickly.

  The disdain in Jekyll’s voice whenever he spoke the Maestro’s name served as a reminder of who held the true power. Sophia had allowed herself to desire more than just employment from the Maestro. She had fallen under the spell of the Duke of Sussex, Peter Lawson’s curious dual personality. She knew that Lawson’s alter ego, the Maestro, was the true power, the dominant personality of the two; and she was determined to win his approval and, perhaps, manipulate him to her will, as she had done with so many men of power. Yet she had been disappointed to find out the person she had thought so special was nothing more than a broken experiment.

  That was when she discovered Jekyll. The puppeteer. He was far more dangerous than a stranger to her. Jekyll was a wolf, dressed in the trappings of a lamb.

  “Progress,” she repeated, looking at the boy on the table. “I have no doubt you will fulfil the Maestro’s wish and, in turn, achieve your own accomplishments.” She gave a slight shrug. “We must maintain illusions as well, mustn’t we? Allowing the Maestro to believe he is in control.”

  “Of course.” He glanced at the clock. “Speaking of the master of the house, he’s about to drop in ‘unexpectedly’ right about . . . now.”

  The creak of the laboratory doors opening changed the moment. Sophia watched in the instant as Jekyll slipped from the master manipulator to humble servant.

  When the Maestro entered the room he somehow brought shadows with him, even into the stark brightness of Jekyll’s domain. He was flanked by soldiers as well. Soldiers he believed to be his—when these “Grey Ghosts” were actually in the service of Jekyll. The Maestro’s mechanical arms, breathing apparatus, and brass helmet were today cobbled together with an evening suit that still managed to look smart on Sussex, even in his mechanical chair that glided towards them as if he were ice-skating. The elegance he exuded against the technology he wore only served to make him more terrifying. Behind the helmet’s slightly grimy brass fixtures there was nothing of the man within to be seen. He was impregnable, a tower of modern power.

  Yet the collection of machinery threatening to devour him, supposedly granting him life and superhuman power, was merely part of the grand illusion. None of these apparatuses assisted him in staying alive, but they did perpetuate the illusion. Even though she knew the Maestro to be nothing more than a lie, he still possessed a power, a power that, if Jekyll lost control of it, would carry heavy costs. What she had heard on the Titan after her harrowing flight from San Francisco assured her of that.

  And Jekyll was hardly a trustworthy sort. Glancing at the soldiers flanking the Maestro and Jekyll’s examination table, she shuddered at the doctor’s intentions for them.

  Accompanied by a small, savage outpouring of steam from the breathing apparatus on his back—something Sophia now regarded as nothing more than cheap theatrics—his raspy voice was accentuated with mechanised amplification as he spoke. “I see you have caught a little rat for your experiments.”

  Jekyll turned away from the Maestro and winked at Sophia as he prepared a syringe of a serum she did not recognise. “I was just telling your lapdog here that very thing.”

  Sophia clenched her teeth, and only the presence of the Maestro stayed her hand from slitting the doctor’s throat then and there. In her brief time with him, she had noticed a certain attitude towards women from the doctor, just one of many traits he possessed that made her skin crawl. She would have liked to impart on this bastardo some manners . . .

  . . . but then, who would control the Maestro?

  “I trust this means that you will be able to stabilise Victoria.” One brass hand with its articulated fingers rested lightly on the laboratory bench. The boy’s eyes now welled up with tears.

  Sophia forced herself to look away from the young wretch.

  “Yes, yes,” Henry said, pulling the serum bottle free of the syringe. He remained ridiculously certain that the Maestro would not simply turn and smash him into the ground. “The Queen is merely a means to an end, bear that in mind.”

  Sophia could not help herself. The idea that this doctor would brush away control of the British Empire as a stepping stone to some kind of greater achievement was insulting. This was the end that the Maestro had envisioned all along. She knew that.

  “So what would the end be then?” she broke in, while stealing a glance up at Jekyll.

  The doctor’s stare was a warning. When he tapped the stopper to squirt a small measure from the tip, he smiled at her as though she were a bug he was ready to squash. “Progress has always been the goal. If I may?”

  “You may,” the Maestro said, watching Jekyll and the boy with keen interest.

  Jekyll leaned closer to the paralysed boy and spoke gently into his ear. “Lad, I know you are scared. And you should be.” He held the syringe in front of them both. “You and I are about to take great steps into the unknown. Like those grand explorers who traverse the poles, and those daring aviators talking of travel to the moon, we are about to test the limits of human knowledge and existence. Together, we will accomplish amazing things.”

  When the needle pierced the boy’s skin, its viscous liquid slowly entering his neck, the urchin finally made a sound: a strained, breathy moan. It was soft but just audible to the three of them.

  Jekyll tapped a small timer by the examination table, completely unmoved by the child’s pathetic wail. “What is power, control of Empire and Crown, compared to the betterment of the human race?”

  Sophia only barely held back her desire to clench her hands into fists, as the subject of the experiment foamed at the mouth. Jekyll’s only response to the lad’s distress manifested itself as furious scribbles in a nearby notebook.

  “What are your plans for this one?” the Maestro asked, leaning over the boy. The sound of his ocular focusing on the boy’s torments underscored the whimpering.

  “Make him compliant. At first.” Henry glanced up from his notes as he watched the child begin to settle into his serum’s euphoric side effects. His eyes jumped to the timer, then back to his notebook. “This batch is still experimental, more so than Victoria’s present formula, so it remains uncertain what effects it will have on him. The question I have to answer for myself is, will the results appear in other subjects.”

  “Victoria is still too valuable to risk.” The Maestro’s ocular focused on Sophia, but she doubted he really saw her. “Yet it would be pleasant to be able to control all of the aspects of her personality. Her anger in particular.”

  “I’m not interested in temperament control so much as I am interested in tapping into muscle stimulation. The human body is quite a machine, capable of astounding things, if we know how to tap into its possibilities.”

  Sophia remained silent, the best policy at present. The two of them were imparting valuable information that could be useful to her later.

  “Consider the unexpected side effect with Her Majesty,” Jekyll said as he placed two fingers against the boy’s forehead. “Her particular cocktail was supposed to restore vitality and vigour, but it actually repaired skin cells and restored muscle tissue, which returned her to her youth. I have to now build on that unforeseen discovery, and see if I can reproduce those results here.”

  “In order to share with others?” the Maestro asked.

  “Cure your ailments, for example, or unlock amazing potential in others,” Henry said. His eyes then flicked over to Sophia. “Provided I find other willing test subjects.” His grin faded as he returned to his notebook. “Building on the success of Her Majesty’s treatment, I beli
eve this batch, which could lead to an army of supremely strong and supremely compliant soldiers, will help your cause.”

  The Maestro straightened, the steam engine on his back singing an eerie note, and gestured to Sophia.

  “You will continue to help Henry, my dear, in whatever he needs. If he needs more test subjects such as this one, then do not hesitate to drain the city of its guttersnipes.”

  “Children, in the beginning,” Henry interrupted. “Much easier to control. As my experiments progress, I will need men.” His eyes returned to Sophia’s, this time the look not sly or covert. He wanted the Maestro to see this. “You can lure men for us, can’t you?”

  The Maestro’s ocular, brandishing a sapphire glow today, remained fixed on her. Sophia had the horrible sensation that he could see inside her. In there, he would find cracks in her faith, and that would make him terribly angry.

  Through her dry lips she managed to grate out, “Yes, Maestro. Whatever is needed.”

  Jets of steam escaped from the back of his suit—a malevolent hiss. “Then I suggest you begin immediately.”

  A change in her perception of the Maestro and Jekyll reducing her to nothing more than his concierge had helped her find a fresh anger and outrage, dangerous bedfellows to the terror she felt being caught between both men. She had always been a woman in control. Even on feeling herself surrender to the charisma of the Maestro, Sophia maintained a model of decorum.

  Now, she was a toy in a child’s hand, quickly abandoned if deemed dull or uninteresting.

  “As you wish, Maestro,” she stated with a quick bow.

  As she turned to go, her hand flickered out, and hidden by the fullness of her sleeve she scooped up two of the vials on Jekyll’s desk. As she slipped her prize into a pocket inside her jacket, she had no idea what to do with Jekyll’s serum, but at least for a moment it felt as though she had taken a little bit of herself back.