Dawn's Early Light

by Pip Ballantine

  Yes indeed, stealth was no longer an option. “Taking the left,” Eliza said, bringing out her pistols.

  “Goin’ right,” he replied from behind her.

  Eliza crept around the barrel of the lighthouse in a low crouch. She had only travelled a few feet before she saw the figure ahead of her, dressed in black. The man was not looking in her direction. Instead, he was leaning over the railing, looking down. That would not do, Eliza thought. They had many questions to pose.

  Still, she and Bill were moving in on him like pincers of a crab. Now there was no other escape, but that was the worry.

  Just as she was deciding how best to work this, she heard her OSM counterpart speak from the other side of the stranger. “Easy, partner. It don’t have to end this way.”

  Darkness swallowed the man whole, but there was just enough light for Eliza to see the movement of shadows in front of her. When the intermittent light returned and pierced the darkness, Eliza felt her chest seize up when she saw the man’s leg clear the Gallery. He was leaning out over the abyss; only his arms wound into the iron railing kept him from slipping off into the night.

  “You won’t stop the House,” the man warned, and his voice cracked on that assertion.

  “Look,” Bill spoke gently, “I’m unarmed, see? How ’bout we jus’ talk, okay?”

  “Do you really think talking will make things better?” he replied, his eyes flicking up to the stars as if they had some answers to offer.

  Eliza took a few hesitant steps forwards. Between the fall underneath him and Bill on the other side of the deck, she remained unseen to the Usher agent. She had seen plenty of people driven to the edge of terror before. So long as Bill kept calm and kept him talking, it meant time. Time for people to consider their actions.

  “It could,” Bill insisted. “Come on—is the House of Usher worth throwing away your life like this?”

  “You think I’m going to let go?” The man started laughing in a deeply unsettling fashion. “That would be insane. No, this is my insurance. If you do not do as I say, I let go. Then, we all die.”

  “We all die?” Bill asked.

  The light came up again, and Eliza got a better look at the young, bearded man. What she had first thought was terror causing the henchman’s voice to waver now appeared to be conviction. Conviction of a fanatic.

  If needed, Eliza knew she could catch the henchman’s forearm or bicep before he took that lethal fall. He had interlocked his arms with the railing, and clearly showed no intention of letting go.

  Her eyes narrowed on one of the Usher man’s wrists—there was something odd about it.

  “I know you don’t want to die,” the American agent said, “and while this may sound odd coming from this side of the railing, I can assure you that I do not want you to die either.” Eliza heard the soft sound of a boot heel against the iron platform, marking Bill’s cautious approach. A gust of wind ripped through Eliza’s leather duster as if it were not there. She could also hear the flapping of the Usher henchman’s long coat and even Bill’s duster.

  When the gust subsided, the Usher man continued, “You leave. Your compatriots leave. We all live. One more step, and I take us all.”

  “Not sure if I can do that, partner,” Bill replied in a conversational tone.

  Currituck’s light grew brighter again, and a thin steel band wrapped around the henchman’s right wrist gleamed for only a moment. Eliza also caught a glimpse of wires running underneath the man’s shirt cuff. Eliza leapt, grabbing the man’s forearm in a vice-like grip. Bill was not far behind her.

  “I had this under control,” Bill grunted, struggling with the Usher thug who was now attempting to wriggle free of his coat.

  Eliza thought a little pepper was needed on Bill’s attempts to keep the man still. “He’s wearing a dead man’s switch. He’s either dropping, or trying to disconnect the leads.”

  The American agent immediately changed his grasp on the Usher man. Eliza tightened her own grip, but with the thug’s feet dangling in open space, gravity refused to be ignored. She felt the railing of the lighthouse Gallery press harder into her chest as the man kicked and squirmed.

  “Goddamn it, Bill, pull him up or we die!” she shouted.

  Apparently that was the just the inspiration he needed. Both agents heaved, and the man bounced hard into the railing. Eliza thrust her head forwards to plant a Glasgow kiss between the Usher agent’s eyes. She got a bit of a nasty shock in return, but the blow was hard enough to stun the man. Feeling him slacken, Bill and Eliza readjusted their grip and pulled him over the railing.

  “Nice move,” Bill grunted. “You’re quite the lady!”

  “Shut up and get him on the landing,” she growled through clenched teeth.

  The Usher agent suddenly became lighter, easier to manage, and Eliza felt another pressing against her. With the help of a newcomer, the limp body cleared the railing and fell against the iron landing. The henchman lay groaning against the light tower, bleeding from where Eliza’s forehead had connected with his nose. She turned to see Wellington standing over the thug, his hands on his hips, examining their prisoner as if he were a prize fish he’d just helped land.

  “Any idea as to who this rather enigmatic gent is?” her partner asked.

  “He,” Eliza said, ripping the man’s shirt open, “is one highly dedicated git.”

  The small box strapped against the centre of his torso continued to tick merrily into the darkness and Wellington gaped at it with a pale face and wide eyes. Eliza bent down and pulled the thug’s right sleeve back to reveal the steel band and set of wires she had seen in a flash. It was the House of Usher’s sophistication that always unnerved and alarmed her. Their shadowy rival appeared to have unlimited resources, and technology paralleling the Ministry’s own. She knew these kill switches intimately. She and Harry had worn them when running highly sensitive documents from city to city, country to country. This was uncommon technology, or so Blackwell and Axelrod had told her.

  “Wellington!” an all too familiar voice called from inside the lighthouse.

  Eliza pursed her lips. She’d been rather enjoying some quality time with her partner, and didn’t appreciate Felicity’s interruption.

  “Once we heard the struggle, Agent Lovelace and I dared access to the Watch Room,” Wellington said, adjusting his besmirched cravat. “You should come have a look at the inner workings of this light.”

  Eliza turned to Bill, who waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head. I’ll keep an eye on our friend here, make sure he don’t go nowhere.”

  Another wave of light swept across their balcony scene and that was when her eye caught something tucked into one of the kill switch’s chest straps. With a frown, she peeled back the strap and found what appeared to be a key.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” she said. The key had no markings, and didn’t look a regular size. So rather than show it to her partner, she tucked it into her waistband. “Come along, Wellington. Let’s go look at the pretty clockwork of Currituck.”

  Eliza followed Wellington inside the cramped cylindrical chamber housing the magnificent clockwork running the Fresnel lens. Feels as though we are trapped inside a glass grandfather clock, Eliza mused. She pulled apart the top two buttons of her shirt, since the temperature here was actually warm, almost stifling. She didn’t need to look to know that Wellington was more fascinated by the clockwork than her own external workings. That irritated her more than she could express at present.

  “Over here,” Felicity said, her eyes not leaving the light’s clockwork arrangement. At least, for once, she was not ogling Wellington.

  They walked around Currituck’s huge movement together, coming to an abrupt halt on seeing what prompted Felicity’s earlier cry. Six sticks of dynamite were strapped in among the clockwork, the multitude of fuses leading
back to a small metallic box that ticked and blinked in time with a rhythm similar to a heartbeat.

  “Now there’s a design I can respect,” Eliza said with a smile, though her heart began to race just a little.

  “Miss Braun,” Wellington hissed, “have a care.”

  “Oh, give over, Welly. You have your Archives where you rule, but this? This is my element.” She bent over to examine what they were up against. The kill switch relay she identified earlier, if she were lucky, would be the most complex component of this bomb. “What I need is—” Eliza looked over to Felicity and said, “Do you happen to have one of those fancy half dollars on you?”

  Felicity patted about all over her tight jeans, before finding and handing over a single coin. It was amazing she could fit anything in the pockets at all.

  The coin easily served as a makeshift screwdriver, and within moments Eliza had removed the cover of the relay, revealing an even more wild array of lights, gears, and wires. She carefully ran her fingers along the wires leading from stick to relay. The tiniest pinprick of sweat began to build on her neck as she gently gnawed on her bottom lip, each tick-tick-tick testing her patience. Then finally Eliza muttered, “There you are.”

  “There what is, Eliza?” Wellington asked, leaning forwards—curiosity getting the better of him despite the situation, despite his constant fussing.

  She smiled slightly. For the first time on this mission, she held Welly’s undivided attention.

  “That,” she said, pointing to a small brass box lodged behind two slow moving cogs, “is the cypher to the puzzle.”

  Eliza tucked her thumb underneath the silver dollar, sent it skyward, and then caught it on its fall. She slipped it underneath the small metal box connecting all the sticks of dynamite to the relay. The box’s internal metronome continued to tick, but now the coin vibrated in time with the ticking.

  Wellington beamed. “Fantastic.”

  “What?” Felicity asked—completely out of her depth in this situation—and glancing at Wellington and Eliza for clarification.

  It really was most satisfactory to have all of his attention in this way. “The kill switch works on the principle that a second signal must continuously send a sequence that keeps the fuses dormant. Without that second signal, boom.” She then turned to Felicity. “I’ve created with that half dollar a false signal. When the relay attempts to detonate the bomb, the coin disrupts the sequence, resets the timer, and the sequence begins anew.”

  Felicity looked back and forth between the two of them, but stopped on Eliza with a decided glare. “You did what?”

  “I gave the bomb a bad case of the hiccups.” Eliza motioned to Wellington. “So have a look at your clockwork, Welly.” She then began to remove the fuses from each stick. “Take all the time you need.”

  Her victory over the librarian, she discovered, would be a short-lived one since Felicity nuzzled in closer to Wellington as they studied these modified inner workings of the Currituck Light.

  “This is all rather ingenious,” Wellington said as he flicked open his journal and began to sketch. “The targeting works with the timing of the lighthouse itself, and the beam powers up from this source.”

  Felicity narrowed her eyes on the generator. “A rather small generator to carry such output, don’t you think?”

  Eliza seethed quietly as she stepped away from the clockwork engine, giving Wellington and Felicity more room, but neither one taking it. Of course he knows it’s a small generator. I’m sure Wellington is smart enough to deduce how Edison was able to focus more power for the beam.

  “Well, yes, but do you not see these additional optics? I believe that assists in creating a more narrowed, focused output,” he said, motioning to a configuration of two large glass lenses mounted on arms, lowered to the right and left of the main clockwork chassis. He continued to scribble notations and draw rough sketches of the device as he added, “I’m certain this is the death ray’s targeting system.”

  See? Eliza thought proudly. I knew Wellington would have the answer.

  “There is something in this array,” he whispered, gesturing to the extra lenses, “that is completely different than what one would find in a typical design of Edison’s.” He pressed his lips together, and stared off into space in a rather charming gesture. “Good Lord, what’s the word I’m looking for?”

  Felicity considered both the targeting time and power source. Then, on looking at the lenses again, she stated, “Economical.”

  He looked down at her, and Eliza was alarmed at how his eyes sparkled at the librarian. “Brilliant. Yes, that is exactly the word. Economical.”

  When the archivist returned his attention back to his sketching, Eliza snapped a look over at Felicity. The American was smiling far too appreciatively at Wellington, before happening to catch Eliza’s eyes. She crooked an eyebrow ever so slightly at her just before she returned her attention to Wellington and the death ray.

  That little strumpet, Eliza raged inwardly, she’s playing Wellington like a Stradivarius! If not for being in this peculiar situation, Eliza would demand the American’s guts for her finest garters.

  “Most of Edison’s designs are quite complicated, both inside and out,” Felicity continued. “This, you can tell, is so wonderfully simple.”

  “At least on the outside,” Wellington added. “If this is truly one of Tesla’s designs, it could be a rather complicated enigma on the inside.”

  Amazing no one was pointing out the obvious. “And Edison wanted to blow it up?” Eliza asked.

  Wellington and Felicity looked at one another, back to Eliza, and then to Edison’s invention. “Well put, Eliza,” her partner answered.

  Eliza happened to catch Felicity’s gaze. She made sure the smile on her face was not too proud, but definitely self-assured.

  “It’s a prototype,” Wellington said. “Build it to see if it works in the first place. Test it. And then . . .”

  Felicity finished the thought. “Rebuild it. With improvements.”

  Sinking down to the floor to get another perspective on the device, Eliza looked at the array’s housing, then at the device’s base. “Any idea if we can help ourselves to this prototype so we can understand what we’re dealing with?”

  Wellington looked back at Eliza for a moment, then pushed his spectacles up higher on his nose as he leaned closer to the moving mechanisms. “It would make sense that the device would be portable. This was built, after all, as an addition to what was already here.”

  Eliza’s hand immediately went to the waistband of her trousers as she remembered what she had found on the henchman. “Wellington, I found this key . . .” She ducked under the low-hanging lens and ran a hand along the pedestal underneath the machine. Her fingertips slipped over a crack in the base. “Here’s where it splits.”

  “So we need to find a keyhole?”

  “Exactly.” She looked on either side of the optics’ base. “It doesn’t appear to be here.”

  Felicity tapped Eliza on the shoulder and pointed to a small indention by Eliza’s left foot. “What about there?”

  Eliza looked at the key, then back at what appeared to be a matching keyhole. She fixed her grip on the key, slipped it into the slot, and turned. The sounds that softly echoed all around them suggested some kind of large and intricate pulley-lock system built within the lighthouse. A loud hiss emanated from beneath them, and the agents scampered back as the base slid away, parting in two. With a slight clang, it stopped, and then retracted into another segment that widened the part in the pedestal. This pattern repeated twice more, leaving the death ray optics and targeting system mounted on what looked like a reinforced crescent-shaped base. With the pedestal open before all of them, they could see a metal column, no more than two feet in height, perhaps a foot thick, decorated with tiny valves, pipes, and gauges.

  This was Welling
ton’s domain, but Eliza had some experience with mechanics. She could easily read not only boiler pressure on the gauges, but could make out there were also stored volts and amperage displayed, as well as firing solution and estimated range. Mounted on top of this pillar was the firing mechanism. She had rather a lot of experience with firing mechanisms.

  Another loud groan and the floor beneath the targeting device opened. Slowly, the lighthouse mod began a slow descent on pulleys towards the base of Currituck Light.

  “And now we know how they intended to transport it,” Eliza said, watching it lower to the ground. “Shall we see if Bill’s found out anything new?”

  With a final look at the progress of Edison’s creation, Eliza led them back to where Bill had remained. He looked cold, but still not as miserable as the Usher henchman, who had his hands now bound behind him. A gust of wind attempted to claim Bill’s Stetson and send it off into the darkness; but the quick gust only toyed with the flaps of his duster.

  “I got to admit,” he said on seeing the three of them, “Cornwich’s crew jackets are pretty good at keeping the wind off you.”

  “How’s our guest here?”

  “This cuss really hasn’t been good company,” Bill said, giving him a nudge with his boot. “Not pleasant company at all. Got quite the mouth on him.”

  Eliza’s gaze narrowed on the prisoner. “Why don’t we all go back to the resort together then? Maybe a nice warm fire and some time alone with me will make him more social.”

  “Do take care, Eliza,” Wellington said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “we need him to be able to tell us as much as he can about the weapon. If his jaw is broken that might prove difficult.”

  Even with as dark as it was, Eliza could see the henchman’s face grow paler. “You have the death ray?” he asked.