Dawn's Early Light

by Pip Ballantine

  “I know jewellers, clockmakers, and clankertons use these ocular enhancers for precision work,” the archivist replied. “I thought they would serve our own endeavours admirably.”

  With Eliza’s fingers tightening on his arm, Wellington and his effectively accessorised partner continued on under the guise of a stroll. Even with his sun specs, the Arizona glare was quite intense. He was reminded of his time in the bush, the African sun bearing down on him and his men with only pith helmets to stave off the light.

  Eliza’s words broke into his reverie. “All clear, it seems,” Eliza said, flipping the final ocular up and out of the way. “Are you ready to move?”

  “Yes, it would seem so,” he replied as quietly as possible.

  “Let’s just wander another two storefronts down, cross the street, and then find our way in.”

  Wellington hesitated, considering the woman on his arm. “That’s the plan then?” He gave his bottom lip a gentle nibble. “We have no idea how many are in there!”

  “Details, Welly, details,” she said as they continued past Edison’s workshop. “But you should know there is one Pink keeping watch upstairs, and two more just visible in the lower right window.”

  “Very well then.” Wellington licked his lips. “You’ve done this before, so I’ll follow your lead.”

  “Tosh,” she scolded, “it’s not like we haven’t been on a case before. Just this one is—”

  “Sanctioned,” he interjected drily.

  The fact she had chosen the moment a horse-drawn wagon rumbled by to cross was not lost on him. They slipped into the gritty veil of dust and sand, the sun specs shielding their eyes a bit as they continued into the alleyway. Eliza slipped her hand into the open fold of her skirts and produced her Remington-Elliot. Wellington could see each barrel indicator was green, providing an odd comfort as they crept closer to the rear of the structure.

  Eliza held up a lace-gloved hand, stopping him in his tracks as she peered around the corner. Wellington stared at her fingers, noting that such delicacy was better suited taking a high tea or perhaps a spot of cross-stitching, not taking part in clandestine operations in the Americas.

  “All clear, Welly,” she whispered as she continued around the corner.

  Just as he followed her, it became apparent she had pulled back the hammer on her weapon.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” he hissed, pushing the gun down just as she raised it.

  “We have to get in here,” Eliza said, with a determined twist of her lips, “and the ’81 here serves as quite the skeleton key.”

  By Jove, she was at it again! “Not to mention an attention getter,” he said desperately.

  “Time’s not a luxury we have,” Eliza bit back, “so unless you have another idea, or a key on your person perhaps?”

  “Well now you come to mention it,” Wellington said, reaching underneath his coat, “I do have this.” The Jack Frost, once out in the sunlight, looked even more complicated in its design. It also looked larger, for some odd reason. “Shall we see if this bloody thing works?” he asked, giving the heavy weapon in his hand a slight shake.

  He knew her grin should have been more disturbing to him. “Let’s play with Axelrod and Blackwell’s toys then.” Eliza motioned to the door.

  “Watch the window,” Wellington said, as he studied either side of the gun. “I believe there is a setting lever here.” Indeed on the inside surface of the weapon, there was a small switch that offered two options:

  FROSTBITE—POLISH WINTER

  Eliza peeked inside the window, then glanced back at him. “Any ideas?”

  “Not like Axelrod to provide instructions for his over- indulgent engineering feats,” he grumbled. He flipped the switch to “Frostbite” and shrugged. “If I need more, I’ll unleash the Polish Winter.”

  Wellington splayed his fingers around the butt of the exciter, and squeezed the trigger. It made a soft snapping noise reminiscent of ice cracking underfoot, or when trees and plant life struggled against the elements following an ice storm. However, this gentle creaking and cracking was coming from the door. From the Jack Frost itself, a cone comprised entirely of blue iridescence covered the doorknob and keyhole, blanketing the metal and surrounding wood in a thin sheet of ice that even the heat of Arizona could not melt. The ice went from a crystal clear sheen to a faint grey to a stark white within seconds.

  The odd crackle stopped when Wellington released the trigger. A tendril of cold mist rose from the invention’s muzzle. “Anyone notice anything?” he asked.

  Eliza peered inside the window. She shook her head.

  He stared at the now-white doorknob, fascinated by the fact that the pearlescent wisp rising off it was not coming from heat but the exact opposite. Wellington positioned the butt of the gun immediately above the doorknob and rapped it lightly. The knob popped out of its housing and shattered against the ground.

  “Now I admit,” Wellington whispered as the door swung open, “that is impressive.”

  Eliza held her Derringer at the ready, and gave Wellington a nod. He opened the door quickly, and she stepped in, her small pistol ahead of her. When she motioned with her head, they crept together into Edison’s workshop.

  The door thankfully did not creak open or shut. Both of them remained light of foot, taking wide strides, not placing their heels down hard against the wooden floor. Wellington was afraid to take a breath, in case anyone would hear it. The archivist turned as quietly as he could—but froze when a plank creaked underneath him. He dared to peer down the hallway to his left.

  Two people were talking but from the opposite room, an open doorway separating Eliza and himself from Pinkertons.

  Didn’t Eliza say there was a man keeping watch upstairs?

  “I still do not see the point of carrying out tonight’s show with what happened in Detroit,” the unseen man stated.

  The next voice that followed was one Wellington recognised from the Carolinas. Gantry, the House of Usher man liaising with Edison. “What part of ‘stick to the script provided’ fails you, Sutherland? Any more deviation will only cast more suspicion, and considering how you all blundered the Currituck Experiment—”

  “We blundered it?” Sutherland growled.

  “The Pinkertons were in charge of security. Had you done your job, we could have continued operations under the myth and mystery of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, thereby maintaining our secrecy.” There was a pause, and then Gantry guffawed. “The United States government is not that hard to hoodwink, but still they came. Didn’t they?”

  Wellington held his breath. No one was moving in this standoff between Pinkertons and the House of Usher.

  The front door opened, flooding the hallway with light. Wellington ducked back into hiding with Eliza. She kept her attention on the nearby stairwell while he leaned back towards the room where Gantry and Sutherland were talking.

  “He’s awake,” the newcomer said. “A bit more pleasant than when we got here, but not by much. I left him ordering lunch.”

  “Are your men ready to go?” Gantry asked in a tone that spoke of his annoyance.

  “Of course they are, Elias,” Sutherland bit back.

  “Good. The sooner we put on a show for these trappers, the sooner we can get the optics we need and then leave.”

  The sound of feet scuffling against the dusty wooden floor reached Wellington as, one by one, they began walking away. Sutherland called to another Pinkerton from what he surmised was a second staircase, and footsteps above soon descended. Wellington pressed himself harder into his corner when sunlight poured into the hallway. The door closed, then locked. Neither he nor Eliza moved for a moment.

  “Right then,” Eliza said, returning her Derringer into its concealed holster, “I think we have the place to ourselves.”

  “At least for an hour, maybe two
,” he agreed, holstering the Jack Frost. “Edison will want the details of tonight to be completely flawless.”

  He poked his head into the room where Gantry, Sutherland, and Pinkertons had been. The table was clean, apart from a small stack of papers. The top sheet spelled out tonight’s agenda, a handwritten collection of lighting cues and notes, all of which he recognised as the same key points of emphasis from Edison’s lecture in North Carolina. Wellington’s eyes looked all over the room. Nothing more than a room for meetings such as what they overheard.

  Wellington crossed the hallway over to where Eliza stood examining the next room. This one was twice as large as its counterpart, with various-sized crates bearing the General Electric logo all pushed up against the far wall. Recent arrivals, he thought quickly. Long tables with workbenches on either side waited for what Wellington imagined would be future projects.

  His gaze followed along the ceiling the two rows of ceiling fans wired with lamps, presumably to allow the staff to work at night. Instead of the usual belt system accompanying a cooling system like this, the motors and mounts were simply housed in the ceiling, independent of one another, save for a network of coils that ran from their mounts, along the ceiling, and down the wall where the crates were stacked.

  “Keep the workers cool during the day,” Wellington said, motioning to the fans above. “Provide light for when you make them work into the evening.” He looked around the empty room. “Rather sparse, considering this building’s been here for close on a year.”

  “Crafty old bastard, isn’t he?” Eliza suddenly blurted out.

  He stared at her in disbelief. Where did that come from? “I beg your pardon, Miss Braun?”

  “Look at how he operates. He visits cities and towns, puts on a fancy show for the locals, and then sets up a permanent business for himself. With all the excitement this codger is cooking up, he will bleed communities dry supplying them with all his latest baubles.” Eliza gave a bark of a laugh. “Edison’s no mad scientist. He’s a shrewd businessman wrapped in the sheep’s clothing of an innovator.”

  With a final look of disgust at the wall of crates, Eliza walked past Wellington and headed for a staircase leading up to the second floor.

  “Sounds as if you do not approve of Edison’s business ethics,” Wellington ventured as the two of them ascended the staircase.

  “Wellington, when you grow up in the farthest reaches of the Empire, you meet many an opportunist who manage to cloud your judgement with a delightful turn of a trick or two.” She shook her head as she stepped back before the closed door in front of her. “Edison’s bringing the promise of a brighter tomorrow, at a cost that may send some honest people into ruin.”

  This was something Eliza apparently had seen before as the kick she dealt the door carried a good amount of fury behind it. The hatch and its frame did not stand a chance as it flew open, revealing an office with two desks, one at each end of the room. By the window, spent cigarettes littered the windowsill and floor.

  “And there’s where the lookout man had stood,” Eliza said.

  The floorboards creaked underneath him as he walked around one of the desks, his eyes moving from it to the chalkboard hanging between the two desks. He stood mere inches from the slate, reaching up to touch the board.

  “Eliza,” Wellington said, looking down at the eraser and two sticks of chalk resting in the board’s cradle, “this has been cleaned recently.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” she asked in reply. “I’m sure the workers here need to wipe down their boards after a week or so, if Edison’s the slave driver that I think he is.”

  “Yes, but . . .” His voice trailed off. There was no dust even in the cradle. He expected to see, at the very least, sketches for incandescent lightbulbs, lamps, or other conveniences he would not have recognised. “This is a workshop. Where ideas are realised.”

  “Welly, what are you getting at?”

  Something was tickling the back of his brain. “Eliza, both desks are clean. Impeccably. Nothing in the desks’ boxes—in or out. We heard the meeting room underneath us also in use, but there was no outward evidence of any work currently in development.” He held his hands out wide. “Eliza, you have seen the basement of my home. Even R&D at the Ministry is more cluttered than this.”

  “The workroom—” Eliza began.

  “Boxed up? No sign of any bother or toil whatsoever?”

  “I put this away too soon,” she grumbled, pulling out the Remington-Elliot. “Shall we see what is waiting for us up here?”

  Wellington stepped behind Eliza, who was slowly crossing over the one threshold to stand before the other. If the layout was consistent, this would be a second production room of some kind as it would be directly over the other one they had seen. With her free hand, Eliza tried the doorknob, which turned freely in her hand.

  “And Wellington?” Eliza whispered, looking at him over her shoulder. He shrugged in reply, earning him a groan. “You’re in the field, in a hostile setting. Are you going to arm yourself?”

  “With what?” he said, feeling a dry prickle in his throat. “The Jack Frost? What shall I do, give our Usher opponents a cold?”

  “A second gun?”

  “From where?” He then followed Eliza’s gaze to the folds of her skirts. “Oh.”

  “No booby traps down there, I assure you,” she said, her smile quite unnerving.

  “Right then,” he said, clearing his throat, “as I am a field agent now . . .”

  His hand fumbled along the folds of Eliza’s skirts until he found the opening where she could access a second Derringer. His hand reached forwards; but instead of touching the butt of the Derringer straightaway, his fingers grazed by a butt of an entirely different kind. He continued down, and found Eliza’s thigh far softer than he imagined. How low did she keep this gun?

  “A bit to the left,” she said with an arched eyebrow.

  And there it was. With his thumb, he flipped the strap from the holster and slipped the second pistol free.

  Wellington gave the Remington-Elliot a cursory glance. Indicators were at green. And the gun was warm. Delightfully warm.

  Hoping he wasn’t blushing too hard, he pulled back the hammer, hearing the internal compressor hiss to life. “Ready then.”

  The door groaned from the hinges as Eliza pushed. They both heard the door knock against the inner wall, but neither of them moved.

  “Eliza . . .” Wellington whispered, not in order to keep his voice down, but because his throat had suddenly gone incredibly dry.

  “Yes, Welly, I know,” she whispered back. She splayed her fingers around the butt of the Derringer and swallowed. “In for a penny?”

  The room was completely barren, save for a single crate placed in the centre of the room. In front of the crate, a crowbar had been set. Eliza lifted up a hand, and both of them froze halfway across the room. Wellington knew his partner was still breathing, although she moved more like an automaton as her eyes swept the room, her head moving slowly from one side of the room to another.

  “It’s all right, Wellington,” Eliza said, lowering her weapon. “It’s just us and whatever is in this crate.”

  “This crate and its phonograph, you mean?” Wellington asked, eyeing Edison’s creation as if it were his Archimedes curled up and peering down from the top of his dresser. “So what would this room be, the dance hall?”

  “And the crowbar? I suppose that’s needed to motivate people to relax and be social?”

  “Or pry apart couples too amorous with one another,” he quipped.

  Eliza gave a laugh and proceeded to walk around the crate, while Wellington crept towards the window. He peered out over the street. Wagons and carts continued past while townsfolk strolled along the streets.

  He cleared his throat. “No one appears to be lingering outside.”

  “
And no sign of any activity in this—”

  He heard the board creak under Eliza’s step. Then it clicked.

  That was when the door slammed shut on its own accord. It locked itself, as well.

  Wellington knew this all served as one grand, ill omen when the phonograph on top of the crate suddenly came to life, and Edison’s voice echoed in the room.

  “Well hello there. Now I must first give you all my most heartfelt appreciation for your tenacity, whoever you are. I always regarded myself as being driven, on the verge of stubborn, but for you to follow me all the way from the Outer Banks, to the Paris of the West, to the Arizona Territories?” Edison’s laugh was genuine. Even the cylinder’s recording made his admiration quite clear. “That truly is impressive. I applaud you.

  “However, I cannot abide your pursuit of my person—flattering and inspiring as it may be—any longer . . .”

  “Wellington,” Eliza spoke, “crowbar.”

  Edison’s words were drowned out as the iron wedge dug into the wood. Together, Eliza and Wellington pried open one corner, drove the wedge lower into the opening, and continued to force the opening until finally the wooden panel ripped free.

  Once the crate panel settled on the floor, Edison’s voice was now audible. “. . . made this detonator a bit more layered than the one in the Carolinas. I’ve connected it with the crates downstairs which have enough collected explosive agents and incendiaries to level this building and, I am afraid with the amount of wood structures surrounding my workshop, its neighbours too.”

  “The old bastard’s right,” Eliza said to Wellington as she studied the interior of the crate, its complicated array of wires, gears, cogs, and pins slowly ticking in time with the phonograph’s cylinder. “This is going to take some time.”

  “If my theory about your skills is correct,” Edison’s recording continued, “and I have no doubt that it is, judging from how you not only kept Currituck Light intact and disarmed my first security system, I gather it would take you roughly twenty minutes to crack this enigma of mine—”

  Eliza snorted. “Tosh. Fifteen minutes if I take my time.”