King of the Cracksmen

by Dennis O'Flaherty

  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

  Douglass shook Liam’s hand warmly: “It’s my pleasure, Mr. McCool, it’s we who will be honored if you consent to join us in our undertaking.”

  A tiny alarm went off in Liam’s brain, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from bowing to the daughter of the great poet:

  “And a very great pleasure and honor to meet you, Countess.”

  She burst into a peal of merry laughter and reached out to take Liam by the hand: “For goodness’ sake, Mr. McCool, I’ve been an American for a good many years now, and plain Ada Lovelace will suit me nicely!”

  Becky smiled as she noted a rare blush climbing Liam’s cheeks. “I’m afraid you won’t turn yourself into plain Ada quite that easily for Mr. McCool, Ada dear, he’s a fervent devotée of your father’s poetry.”

  Miss Lovelace chuckled and put her arm around Becky’s shoulders: “Your father’s a man of no mean fame himself, Becky, so you’ll know just what I mean when I say that every woman must struggle to step out of the shadows of the men in her life, but it’s even harder for those of us whose fathers cast particularly long shadows.”

  She shook Liam’s hand warmly and he could feel the blush climbing the rest of the way into the roots of his hair as he returned her grip. Surely, he thought, it would take a downright monster of sang froid to shrug off falling in with such luminaries as these. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to stay on his toes—whatever they were all here for it looked like they wanted him to take a goodly piece of it and he didn’t want to end up buying a pig in a poke.

  As Douglass and Ada Lovelace sat back down at the table, Twain pulled out two more chairs for Becky and Liam:

  “All right, folks, everybody take a pew and let’s call this meeting to order! Miss Fox, Liam, what can I give you to drink?”

  Becky had been eyeing a big silver bucket on the sideboard filled with ice and bottles of wine and beer.

  “I’m sure the solemnity of the moment calls for champagne but I’d just as soon have one of those Ballantine’s,” she grinned and nodded towards the beer.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Liam said, “and then maybe someone will let me in on this ‘undertaking’ that Mr. Douglass mentioned.”

  Twain nodded thoughtfully as he poured drinks for Liam and Becky and opened another for himself. He took an appreciative sip and then leaned forward across the table and fixed Liam with his eye as he spoke:

  “Well, young man, have you heard anything about the Freedom Party?

  Wondering just what he’d gotten himself into, Liam shook his head.

  “It probably sounds a deal grander than it is,” Twain continued, “but we expect we’ll be picking up more members every day as dear old Father Stanton cranks up the heat.” He grinned slyly: “and we’ll be needing all the help we can get if we’re to keep him from plunging us all back into the days of the thumbscrew and the bastinado.”

  Liam smiled a little. “I haven’t got anything good to say about Stanton and his people, as Miss Fox may have told you. But do you really think they mean to start an Inquisition?”

  It was Douglass who answered, his rich orator’s voice stirring even across a table: “Mr. McCool, what do you know about the present condition of our freed slaves?”

  “Not much beyond what I read in the papers, sir. But even that little tells me that in the southern states the Reconstruction has turned their ‘freedom’ into a bad joke. As for those who’ve made their way north …” he made a wry face—“times are hard and jobs are scarce, and newcomers aren’t too welcome whether they’re from Alabama or Sicily.”

  Douglass nodded grimly. “A fair summary,” he said. “So what do you suppose will happen if the moment we declare war on Little Russia we see the following …” He held up his hand and counted off the points on his fingers: “(1) martial law is also declared throughout the United States, (2) all the white workers excepting a few who will be kept on as job instructors are sent into the Army to fight Little Russia, and (3) all the northern blacks are impressed into the factories as a Labor Army while all their southern brethren are put back to work in the fields?”

  Liam was stunned. “It doesn’t bear thinking about,” he muttered. He turned to Becky: “This is what you were talking about with me and Barlow back in Henderson’s Patch, isn’t it?”

  She nodded unhappily. “And according to what we’ve learned it’s only the first stage.”

  “There’s more?” Liam shook his head incredulously.

  Becky turned to Miss Lovelace: “Ada, would you mind telling Mr. McCool what you learned when you met with Col. Colt at his Hartford gun works?”

  The great mathematician winced as if she’d been struck by a migraine. “Poor Samuel was almost beside himself. It seems Stanton has been working hand in glove with our big industrialists to put them literally on top of the world. When the projected measures have been completed our factories will have a labor force that makes American industry the envy of investors world-wide: a perpetual supply of workers who are tireless, cheap and completely docile. Stanton himself came to Hartford to tell Samuel of the new ordinances and to make it clear that henceforth every factory floor would have an overseer from the Department of Public Security as well as the one placed there by the factory’s owner.”

  Liam could feel his patience starting to give way. “How in the name of all that’s holy is Stanton going to pull off a stunt like that when every day he swears up and down to anybody that cares to read a newspaper that all these emergency measures and restrictions and regulations of his are only in force until it’s plain that the danger’s past?”

  Twain snorted. “Well, young man, if Edwin McMasters Stanton is not the most blackhearted liar in all Creation he has missed it only by the skin of his teeth.”

  Liam stared at the others for a long moment, feeling an oppression as heavy as an anvil sitting on top of his head. Finally he turned to Douglass: “What’s the ‘second stage’ to be then, sir?”

  Douglass smiled without much mirth and gestured to Ada Lovelace: “That’s a question that can best be answered by our scientific advisor …”

  “In a sense, the second stage has already begun,” she said in a professorial tone, “though the public may not actually see its operation for a couple of years yet.” Catching Liam’s baffled frown she smiled apologetically: “I’m sorry, Mr. McCool, I’m afraid my tutors gave me the bad habit of starting with a puzzle to catch my listeners’ attention. The explanation is simple enough—the second stage will based on the application of technology which is still far from perfect, though the questions involved are being worked on day and night by Prof. Babbage and Henry Royce in England, by me and Samuel Colt here in America, and no doubt by many other mathematical/ industrial teams throughout Europe and Asia.”

  “Automatons,” Liam said with a groan. “The perfect workers.” Then, as a thought hit him, he added: “Except for one thing, Miss Lovelace. They’re stupid. Workers may demand wages, they may need food, they may even call strikes, but they have brains.”

  “Ah,” she said with a bittersweet little smile, “that’s the problem in a nutshell. I’ve been working for some years now on a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and the nerves to feelings, what you might call a sort of calculus of the nervous system. And I’m confident that I’m close to a solution that will improve my current predictive engine beyond all recognition with the use of storage batteries and a complex electrical network. But of course I wouldn’t help Stanton if they held my feet over a fire.” She turned to Becky:

  “Becky, dear, would you please tell Mr. McCool what you’ve learned about Secretary Stanton’s plans in the event that one of the many bright sparks laboring over the problem of intelligent automata offers him a solution? What will he do with it?”

  Becky sighed and shook her head: “The black Labor Army will be sent West at once to work under the supervision of our white soldiers, taming the wilderness and carrying out constru
ction work, while their places in the factories will be taken by specialized automatons.”

  “Wait a minute,” Liam said. “Won’t Little Russia have a thing or two to say about that?”

  Becky smiled bleakly. “That’s why Stanton is in a hurry to have his war right now. The Empire of Tsar Aleksandr II is completely preoccupied at home with massive uprisings of Central Asian tribes who want to bring back the glorious days of Tamerlane and revive the Mongol Empire. If Stanton waits till Aleksandr’s army and aerial navy are free to support Little Russia he hasn’t a prayer of success. But he can’t just attack Little Russia without provocation, either. If he does, Great Britain and Germany have treaties with Russia that will have them sending their armies and aerial navies to attack us at once—and believe me, they’d be thrilled to have an excuse for it. So Stanton needs to send our Army and Aerial Navy in as soon as he has a decent pretext for it, and then follow up with the rest of stage one the minute he declares martial law here at home.”

  “And meanwhile,” Ada Lovelace added in a tone tart enough to curdle milk, “Stanton will seize the Colt/Lovelace Automaton Works and open the door for your old acquaintance Lukas.”

  “What?!”

  Liam had been so taken aback that he had almost shouted the question, and Ada Lovelace chuckled in spite of herself.

  “Becky and I had rather thought that would catch your attention. As it happens, “Lukas” was once known as Prince Nikolai Aleksandrovich Yurevskii, son of Tsar Aleksandr II by his morganatic marriage to Princess Yurevskaia, not to mention the most brilliant brain surgeon in the history of the Imperial University.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Liam said, shaking his head disgustedly, “Lukas has figured out how to put artificial brains into automatons.”

  “Oh, no,” Miss Lovelace said, “he has figured out how to use real brains.”

  For what seemed like a long time Liam simply stared at Miss Lovelace. Finally he cleared his throat and said:

  “Real brains.”

  She nodded tiredly. “From the little information I have been able to glean, it seems that Lukas has identified the areas of the brain that control various important bodily functions and figured out how to wire them directly to an electrical system similar to the one I have envisioned for my predictive engine. How he will be able to maintain a living brain inside an automaton, I have no idea. But I have learned of one other horrifying innovation: he has managed to wipe all traces of personality out of the subject brains, and all traces of individual volition, so that they will be perfectly trouble-free instruments for receiving and storing information and executing instructions. When you take this together with the rumors that identify him as the only man in the world apart from a team of research chemists at Cambridge who knows how to refine calorium from pitchblende, the mind fairly quails at the prospect.”

  “If only I had killed him the moment I met him,” Liam muttered in frustration. “I hate to think where he and his playmates mean to get the brains they need.” He turned to Becky: “What about Lincoln? Where is he in the midst of all this madness?”

  She smiled and shrugged. “As you might imagine I have pushed and prodded every source I have in Washington in the hope of learning that. But all anyone will admit is that ever since John Wilkes Booth’s attentat on the President’s life, Mr. Lincoln has become increasingly reclusive. The last public address he gave was nearly a year ago, and he looked unwell then.” She quirked her lips wryly—“There are even those who whisper that Stanton has the President tucked away somewhere, like the Man in the Iron Mask.”

  Liam’s chin sank onto his chest and he stared unseeingly at the tabletop for several minutes. Finally he looked up and took a ragged breath:

  “All right then, friends, somebody tell me where and how I come into all this.”

  It was Becky who answered, reaching out and laying her hand on Liam’s arm as if she were trying to inspire him by some sort of Mesmerism.

  “You said not long ago that if there were anything useful to my cause that’s being kept under lock and key you would be ready to go and get it for me.”

  Liam nodded slowly, thinking that there was probably nothing under the sun he wouldn’t try if she asked him to, but that he definitely didn’t want her to know it. Not yet, anyway.

  “And what might that be?” he asked in a cautious tone.

  “It’s an indian relic,” she said. “In a locked case in the Smithsonian Museum.”

  He stared at her, his features immobile.

  “In Washington, D.C.,” she said. Unable to stop himself, Liam rolled his eyes.

  “And it’s not just my cause it’s useful to,” she added hastily, “though it will be, it’s your cause too, and your grandmother’s, and all the rest of us who aren’t Stanton’s myrmidons.”

  Liam nodded, thinking about Government guards and alarm systems and how far from New York Washington was.

  “And one last thing,” Becky added a bit desperately, clearly unsure of Liam’s response: “We must leave tonight. You and I, together.”

  Liam broke into helpless laughter. “Are you sure that’s all?”

  Becky looked so worried that Liam relented at once and put his free hand on top of Becky’s:

  “I’ll do my best,” he said. “I can’t promise more, since I’ve already promised to help Mike with something tonight, and you know he’s a brother to me.”

  Becky bit her lip and nodded. “I’ll be waiting at home, as long as I can. I must leave no later than midnight.”

  “Agreed, then,” Liam said, “and I’d better get going.” He stood up and turned to the others:

  “I must admit,” he said with a grin, “that was absolutely the most interesting bottle of beer I’ve ever drunk.” He bowed to the company, squeezed Becky’s hand and left before he could think twice about it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Liam stopped to wipe his face with a hand towel he’d brought in his jacket pocket, cursing the diabolical excellence of the two little locks. Gotham Savings had always been more than a little puffed-up about its “impregnable” security, and though Liam’s presence in their strongroom had stuck a pin in that boast, it was true they hadn’t stinted themselves on lockwork. The locks on this safe deposit box, for instance, one for the bank and one for the customer, had been made by Chubb in England and both confirmed Liam’s feeling that the Limeys were spiteful, conniving, overbearing shite-pots and no friends to the Irish.

  Gritting his teeth, he pulled his little carbide pocket lamp closer, changed his picks for a springier pair and went back to work. Any other time he might have made short work of the locks with a few drops of “soup” and a jimmy. But Mike had said that they didn’t want the Gotham crowd to have the least suspicion that anybody’d been inside their precious strongroom, that way it would be at least a couple of months till the job was discovered since Mike’s source had put the box’s owner on vacation in London and Nice till September.

  The sweat was starting to sting Liam’s eyes, so he wiped his forehead again and then pulled out his watch. 10:04. If he could just get this moving a little faster, he’d have the job done, his exit made, and the swag handed over to Mike in plenty of time to cover the dozen or so blocks uptown to Becky’s home on Gramercy Park South …

  Hah! With a silvery little whisper the bank’s lock gave up the ghost. Almost there. Inside were the personal skimmings of a junior partner in one of the firms that supplied Tiffany’s—according to Mike’s source, more than a million dollars’ worth of AAA grade rubies and emeralds, plus a healthy selection of perfect diamonds. Once all the payoffs were taken care of that would give them enough of a war chest to fight Stanton and his plug-uglies forever, and the beauty of it was that the gems would fit nicely into his money belt, whereas printed money could be devalued or declared worthless any time the Government took a notion to play games with it, and it would take a small army to move a million dollars’ worth of gold.

  Hah, hah! There went lock number
two! Liam had been thinking about the next step so intently that it took him less than a minute to have the box open, scoop out the little envelopes of jewels and get everything closed up again. Another minute to give his working area the eagle eye and make sure he’d left no signs, and another couple to stow the gems away in the dozen pockets of his traveler’s money belt, re-button his shirt, slip on his jacket, pick up the grate to the air duct, turn out his lamp and pocket it, and then shin up the rope that dangled into the strongroom from the open maw of the ventilator.

  Well enough pleased to have to stifle the urge to hum, Liam put his finger-tips through the hole in the grate and drew it back towards its frame, into which it suddenly thunked, pulled tight by the heavy-duty magnets fixed there by Adam Worth a couple of years ago. Little Adam had been keeping a safe-deposit box in the Gotham for a while now, and once it had occurred to him that a way of entering the strongroom at night might come in handy, it had taken the game’s greatest con man no effort at all to send his bank “shadow” off on an errand for long enough to let him loosen the four screws in the corners of the grate, set the magnets in place, replace the screws with dummy screw-heads and glue, put it all back spick and span and return to examine the collection of stolen cameos he was about to deposit. Mike had agreed that they owed Little Adam a diamond of the first water for this one, it was like having the keys to a candy store.

  It took Liam a bit more effort to crawl painstakingly through the bends of the duct till he reached the point where it came out in the Gas Company’s tunnel, then a repeat of the grate routine and Liam was standing on the floor of the tunnel brushing himself off and pulling out his watch, thankful for the gaslights that studded the brick walls every hundred yards or so in both directions. 10:18. Still running to schedule, thank Heavens. Coiling up the rope and stuffing it into his pocket with the feeling of a job well done, Liam headed off in the direction of Mike’s place.