Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection

by Michael Coorlim

  In the social regard Bartleby was my opposite. While I preferred the isolation of what he had playfully but accurately termed my "lair," he was a social animal, flitting about the London scene like a butterfly, supping at the nectars high society had to offer. A gentleman forever on the cusp of the latest fashions and trends, of means, with an addictive personality and too much free time, he had fallen in love with the idea of the Spider from the moment he first saw her lithograph.

  In short order she had become his obsession. He eagerly purchased any publication that so much as hinted her, dined and interrogated any that claimed to have witnessed her murderous performances, and had waxed melancholic at his own ill-fortune in not having seen her himself, until that fateful airship voyage. His morbid interest did not go unnoticed, and the expertise my dilettante partner had acquired lead directly to the Home Office calling on us.

  Bartleby was in heaven. Even to those with connections as influential as his, the evidence lockers at Scotland Yard were off-limits, and the crumbs available at auction were only those artifacts that the Met didn't feel were relevant to their investigation. As proud of it as he was, Bartleby's collection of Spider memorabilia had been somewhat on the paltry side, things of value and interest only to the morbidly obsessed... but creative sorts live and thrive on just that sort of obsession.

  A fact I understood all too well, so I refrained from needling Bartleby about it.

  Too much.

  The evidence the police had transported to us, on the other hand, held treasures that Bartleby could have only dreamed of. Recovered murder weapons. Shards of glass from her more explosive entrances, mixed in with possible fibres from her costume. A bit of lipstick scavenged from the cheek of a victim she'd pecked while driving a dagger into his sternum. All of it tagged, logged, labelled, and displayed, laid out in my workshop.

  Bartleby abruptly rose and began to ascend the steps, seemingly having lost interest in the artifacts. I turned from the table to watch him go, befuddled at his abrupt change in demeanour before realising that he'd come to some sudden conclusion about the case.

  "Lunch then?" he asked.

  "Any conclusions?" I asked.

  He ignored my question until we were in the entrance hall at the top of the stairs. I'd insisted upon my workshop entirely cut off from the rest of the basement, the kitchen and the servants quarters. It wasn't that I didn't like or trust them -- I came from a working class upbringing myself. While I find our servants less tiresome than Bartleby's peers, I do not much care for any company when I'm working, and Bartleby calls such fraternisation with those he deems my lesser unseemly.

  "I've concluded that I'm in the mood for a light fruit compote for lunch," Bartleby said. "What shall I have Mrs Hoddie fix you?"

  "Bread with drippings," I said. "No, Bartleby, conclusions about the Spider. You've worked something out?"

  "What I cannot work out is your taste for bread soaked in last night's dinner. I'm rather well off, you know. You needn't eat like an east end factory worker."

  "It was how I was raised," I said.

  I have little patience for small talk. It isn't my way. I had grown up in a working class family, raised by a father with little tolerance for idleness or affection for his children, and I preferred conversation be short and to the point. Bartleby knew this, of course, and his continued deflections were his attempt to rile my temper for his own amusement. I would not give him the satisfaction.

  Still, I had to wait with growing impatience and discomfort while the cook prepared Bartleby's compote, and again while he took his goodly time nibbling at it. It was a good ten minutes of idle chatter concerning matters of little interest until he placed his napkin to the side of his plate and abandoned the facade of disinterest that he wore so very well.

  "I say, do you know what I fancy, James?"

  "You fancy any number of terrible things." Out with it, already.

  "I fancy some entertainment. Do you care to take in a show?"

  "Is this related to the case we've taken or have you just gotten distracted again?"

  He ignored my hostility. "Perhaps an Italian opera. Something jocular. Some sort of dramma giocoso -- yes. How about Il filosofo di campagna?"

  "On with it, Bartleby."

  "Oh, I think you'll like it. It's no opera buffo, but your working-class sensibilities will enjoy the intermezzi at the very least."

  I glared at him while the housemaid cleared our dishes away, but he seemed impervious to my sincere desire to throttle him with my mind.

  ***

  I am not a fan of opera, nor any passive entertainment, really. It isn't so much that I am incapable of grasping them as Bartleby has on occasion implied, but when I'm not working (and, as Bartleby will tell anyone shortly after meeting them, I am almost always working) I prefer a good earthy carouse to sitting in some stuffy theatre, watching painted men prance around like women, and listening to songs I cannot begin to understand the lyrics to. I like things simple. I like things precise. Efficient. Art is none of those things, and I daresay I'll never understand it.

  Still, through my association with my partner I am not entirely ignorant of the venues the city offers to patrons of the arts, and I was thus surprised when Bartleby didn't lead me to the Royal Opera House. He didn't lead the way to the recently opened London Coliseum, or Sadler's. He instead traveled down a maze of side-streets and walkways, past pawn shops and brothels, almost beyond the outskirts of the city to what looked like a ramshackle warehouse worn by years of neglect.

  "This can't be right," I said.

  Bartleby simply smirked, gesturing towards a hand painted sign declaring that yes, Il filosofo di campagna was to be performed that evening, and swept through the front doors. The interior was in scarcely better condition than the exterior, dark curtains placed over cracks and gaps in the walls, paint and graffiti splattered over the plywood that seemed to be holding everything together. A small crowd of what I presumed were actors and crew hustled about, completing whatever construction they hoped would make the place suitable.

  "It looks as though they're still building the theatre," I said.

  "They are," Bartleby said. "You laugh, but I'm quite serious. This is an unlicensed troupe -- they stay on the move, performing at a new, temporary venue every other night to avoid the scrutiny of the police."

  "What's their company name?"

  "They don't have one."

  "I had no idea that such a thing existed."

  "Oh, yes. Underground artistic endeavours are always the rage, don't you know? Of course, much of what they perform might be labelled as subversive by the small of mind or quick to judge. Plays about Fawkes, female performers, abolitionist manifestos, that sort of thing."

  I chuckled. "You've got me associating with agitators and anarchists now? What's next, Luddites?"

  "Oh, only the most talented, I assure you."

  He made his way across the floor towards a young woman dressed in men's clothing, applying makeup to a young man dressed in women's clothing. Theatre people.

  "Lilly, can you spare a moment?"

  "Oh." The woman didn't look away from the eye shadow she was applying. "Hello, Bartleby."

  The young man she was making up was dressed as something naggingly familiar -- possibly some popular literary figure I wasn't fully remembering.

  "I've got something I'd like you to take a look at," Bartleby said.

  "If it's your John Thomas again I'm not interested."

  Knowing my partner, I honestly wasn't shocked. And that disturbed me.

  Bartleby handed over a swab containing a bit of what I recognised as the greasepaint the police's evidence had provided us with. The girl took a quick glance at it, then grunted and slipped a wig onto her actor.

  With a cold shock I realised that she'd been making him up to look like Queen Victoria.

  "Bartleby--" I hissed, gesturing at the man-woman.

  "Yes? Oh. They're doing some show for the Jubilee."

>   "Sail'n along the parade route the night before," the actor playing the Queen said. "The band will be play'n, and I'll be wav'n."

  The girl had pulled out a jeweller's loupe to examine the swab that Bartleby had given her. "It's got bits of mica in the oil. See that slight sparkle? Definitely flashier than a base you'd use as a foundation. And look at how bright the white is -- any of my actors in this would be a huge distraction."

  "Just as I had thought," Bartleby said. "Thank you for the confirmation. Do you know who makes it?"

  She shook her head. "Nothing commonly available. I used to work with a stage magician who'd use something like this on his assistants. You should have seen the way they sparkled under the house lights."

  "A stage magician! How perfectly splendid. You wouldn't happen to know where I could find him, perchance?"

  ***

  Bartleby had once admitted to me a flirtation with opiates in his naval days. He seems the type, at first blush, to be drawn into the languid purgatory of opium addiction, but as any sensible man knows first impressions can be deceiving. It isn't pleasure that my partner is addicted to, but experience. The new and the novel, the strange and sublime. He confided in me that he knew almost immediately that he could not persist with his opium experimentation -- if he had, he wouldn't have wanted anything else, and to a man like Bartleby such artificial contentment is the world's greatest prison.

  Each opium den we visited in our search for the magician D'Agostino was more wretched and pathetic than the last. Old men and young, the poor and affluent of all races and nationalities lay insensate and uncaring, heedless of the amazements of this age of wonder we live in. I often wonder what it could be that makes the simple experience of living life so unpalatable to so many, that they'd rather lose themselves in such a numb escapism. The attendants of the dens, while initially taciturn and tight-lipped, were all too eager to help once Bartleby had given them a few coins.

  The stage magician looked like many of the other addicts, an older man in faded clothes, leaning against a wall, slack jawed with vacant eyes, cracked lips loosely held a pipe trailing thin wisps of smoke into the air. He was utterly unresponsive to Bartleby's initial attempts to rally his attention, and didn't so much as glance our way until I gave him a good hard shake.

  "D'Agostino?" The waste and excess had put me into a foul mood. "You! Are you the magician D'Agostino?"

  He muttered something that I didn't quite catch.

  "What?"

  "Illusionist!" His weak arms tried to push me away as he slumped to the side. "Prestidigitator! Never magician."

  Pity and revulsion warred within me, pity winning by the narrowest of margins. We weren't going to be getting any useful information out of the wretch in this state. I stood, still holding him, lifting the slack form of the illusionist to dangle by the waistband of his trousers.

  Bartleby turned to the den's attendant with an embarrassed chuckle. "We'll... uh, we'll be taking him home with us."

  ***

  Recovering from opiate addiction is a slow and painful ordeal. The body grows dependent on the drug to function, and when deprived it reacts like a spoilt child throwing a fit. The detoxification process naturally takes up to a week, and we did not have the luxury of time on our side. Fortunately, after hearing about Bartleby's experimentation with the drug, I resolved that if he ever should succumb I should help him recover -- and to that end I had built a detoxification apparatus.

  "I really don't think that this is entirely necessary." If I didn't know better I'd have said that Bartleby actually sounded concerned about the old addict. "We can simply sober him up and question him later."

  "Nonsense," I said. "Look at this poor wreck of man. We would be remiss in our social obligations if we didn't do all in our power to cure him of the drug's grip."

  Besides, I hadn't been able to test the Detoxification Apparatus, and if there's one thing an engineer understands, it's how to take advantage of the opportunities that providence affords.

  "Help me strap him in."

  The Apparatus took the form of a sturdy wooden chair reinforced with tin plates, having manacles and ankle cuffs built into its arms and front legs. A brass casing had been built into the back, holding an array of syringes set into a clockwork gatling cycle, along with a pair of small phonographs reading from the same wax cylinder mounted at the base. D'Agostino looked barely cognisant of where he was, and didn't react when I snapped the supportive brace around his neck.

  "Is that really necessary?"

  "Oh absolutely. We don't want him thrashing around and injuring himself or dislodging the needles." While I may not like it when others watch me work, I do so enjoy explaining the operation of my inventions to an audience.

  "Thrashing?"

  "There will be a significant amount of thrashing, Bartleby. The Apparatus is going to syphon out, filter, and recycle his blood and spinal fluids. I imagine that it is going to be quite unpleasant. I'm going to numb his brain's pain receptors, but that's still a goodly amount of needles."

  "That sounds absolutely horrid."

  "Oh my yes." I began winding the crank that would regulate the needles' movement. "But I'm no monster, Bartleby. See the twin phonograph horns? I should say some Strauss will help keep our 'illusionist' calm during the procedure."

  I stood, clapping the dust off of my hands and we left my workshop up the stairs to the ground floor. Down below we could hear the first strains of The Blue Danube beginning.

  ***

  D'Agostino was alert and awake when we returned in twelve hours to unstrapped him, cleaned him up, and gave him a nice hot bowl of pea soup.

  "You monsters!" he said by way of thanks for the new chance at an honest man's life I'd provided him with. "You lashed me down and left me for hours in that infernal torture device!"

  "So you would characterise the experience as entirely unpleasant?" I frowned in disappointment. I had really expected that the music would have alleviated the stress of going through a week's detoxification in less than a day. Perhaps if I developed a system to automatically switch cylinders when one song ended? "Yes, I imagine that nine hours of any one song could grow tedious."

  "Unpleasant? You tortured me. I'll have the Met on you! They'll have you swing in Newgate!"

  "They tore Newgate down," Bartleby informed the magician. "But if it is any consolation, you needn't go far to report us. We're currently consulting for Scotland Yard."

  D'Agostino grew very silent and still as he let that sink in. "Oh. I... I see."

  "Yes, so you'd better tell us what we want to know--"

  Bartleby was quick to cut me off. "Mr. D'Agostino, we're working on a very important case for the Home Office, and we believe that you might be able to assist us in an informative capacity. The matter relates directly to the upcoming Platinum Jubilee. You do love your Queen, don't you?"

  "I love the Queen." His response was quick and almost automatic, in the way that many had adopted since the turn of the century.

  "Then you'll help us, won't you? Help us help Her Majesty?" Bartleby asked.

  He nodded with hesitation, not making eye contact with either of us.

  Bartleby slid the swatch of greasepaint across the table towards the illusionist. "This substance is related to a person of interest we're investigating, and we understand you used to use a similar foundation in your stage shows?"

  He examined it carefully, tilting the swath so that the mica glittered in the dim lights of my workroom. "Oh, something similar, yes. For misdirection's sake -- the more eye-catching my lovely assistants, the less focused the audience was on what my hands were up to."

  "And that lack of scrutiny made performing your tricks easier?" I asked.

  "They were no mere tricks," he said. "I performed illusions."

  "Why did you stop?"

  "The winds shifted. Audiences dwindled. I couldn't keep up anymore -- the illusions the younger generation could perform with the wonders of modern technology far outshon
e my repertoire -- and I was too old and set in my ways to adapt."

  "Did you make the paint yourself?" Bartleby asked.

  "Me? No. Such alchemy is beyond my purview, I'm afraid. I special ordered it from an apothecary down in Southwark."

  "Do you remember the address?"

  "No, not off of the top of my head -- this was years ago." D'Agostino shook his head. "I do remember that he operated out of an old church -- it shouldn't be terribly hard to find."

  ***

  The church the magician had spoken of was in similar condition to the rest of Southwark -- old, run down, largely abandoned, and bearing the legacies of multiple fires. Though in heavy disrepair, its structural integrity appeared to have suffered the ravages of time admirably, its steeple bowed and slanted but unbroken, most of the windows in its facade unbroken. A brass placard set next to the chapel doors bore the name "Henry Dobbson, R.G.E.A."

  "He's Guild, then?" Bartleby asked.

  I grunted in reply. It wasn't exceedingly difficult to proclaim yourself a member of the Royal Guild of Engineers and Artificers, and many second-rate machinists had done so without hesitation. It diffused the actual credit owed those of us who had actually completed the Academy's rigorous curriculum. There was no real enforcement because no true Guild member had the patience for administrative busywork, and the banking firm we contracted to handle mundane matters for us sold RGEA associate memberships to any dilettante who could afford the hobby and pass a correspondence course.

  Bartleby gave the door a quick rap. After a few moments it was opened by an older gentleman, stooped with age.

  I immediately revised my opinion of him. His hands, gnarled and callous, were stained with ink and dye. Heavy concentrations of grease had collected under his fingernails, and his glasses were smudged with soot and steam. Distaste and annoyance showed on his face at having to greet potential customers or clients, and his leather apron stank of sulphur and lye. This, gentle readers, was an engineer.