“This is a mannequin factory,” concluded Trilby.
“That fool of a Persian must have made the mistake. And we have come all this way by fiacre. Erik should not put his trust in such a person. So the trip is not a wash-out complete, we should go to a café and have some pastries.”
“The Persian’s not a fool,” said Trilby, concentrating.
“He has sent us to the wrong address.”
“But the name is correct, look. It may not be Ecole de Danse Coppélius, but–see–here on the board. Fabricants des Mannequins–M. Coppélius & Sig. Spalanzani. Perhaps the dance school failed, and the Countess’ partners found a new use for the building.”
They had hoped to enroll in evening classes.
“Chrissy, now it’s time for subtle fuge.”
“Subtle what?”
“Fuge. You know, sneakin’ about.”
“Ha! But you are ill-suited for such, with your hopping-of-the-clod Irish feet and so forth.”
“Never you mind my feet. It’s your own slippered tootsies you should be thinking on.”
Christine arched her leg, displaying her fine calf boot and its row of buttons.
“Lovely,” said Trilby. “Very suited for sneakin’. Now, if you’ll climb up over this fence–mind the spikes on the tops of the rail, looks as if they’ve been sharpened–I’m certain you’ll be able to get that chain loosened so I can follow. This is a task much more suited to your delicacy.”
For a moment, Christine wondered whether she had not been manipulated into taking an uncomfortable risk. But she knew the Irish girl was too simple-minded for such duplicity.
“Careful,” called up Trilby. “You’ll tear your…”
There was a rip, as Christine’s skirts caught on a spike.
“Never mind. It’ll set a new fashion.”
Trilby looked both ways, up and down the alley. They had sought out a side entrance to the factory, away from passersby.
Christine dropped from the top of the fence and landed like a cat, with a hiss. She had a fetching smear of grime on her forehead and her hair had come loose. From her reticule, she found a hand mirror and–angling to get moonlight to work by–effected meticulous repairs to her appearance, while Trilby waited for the chain to be seen to.
As it happened, the chain was draped incorrectly around the wrong railings. The gate had been left unfastened. It swung open with a creak.
“I suppose we should have tried that first.”
Christine frowned, a touch pettishly. “Now is not the time to bring up this matter, Trilbee.”
“Perhaps not. Now, the fastenings of that little window, eight or ten feet up the wall, look to me to be similarly neglected. Let me make a cradle with my rough Irish peasant hands and hoist your dainty delicate French footsie like so…”
With a strength born in hours of holding awkward poses while undressed in draughty artists’ garrets, Trilby lifted Christine up off the ground. The French girl pushed the window, which fell in with a crash.
“Perhaps we should announce our arrival with 24 cannons, hein?”
Trilby shrugged, and Christine slipped through the window. She reached down, and Trilby was pulled up after her.
They both stood in a small, dark room. Trilby struck a lucifer. All around were racks of unattached, shapely arms and legs.
“Bonne Sainte Vierge!” exclaimed Christine, in a stage whisper. “We have stumbled into the larder of a clan of cannibals!”
Trilby held the match-flame near a rack. Porcelain shone in the light, and a row of arms swayed, tinkling against each other.
“No, Chrissy, as advertised, this is a mannequin factory.”
Against the wall sat a range of womanly torsos, with or without heads. Some were wigged and painted, almost complete. Others were bald as eggs, with hollow eye-sockets waiting for glass.
“What would doll-makers have to do with these Mystery Brides?”
“I’ve a nasty feeling we’re about to find out.”
A light appeared under the crack of the door, and there was some clattering as a lock was turned. Then bolts were thrown, and several other locks fussed with.
“What are we to do, Trilbee?”
“Take off our clothes. Quickly.”
Christine looked aghast. Trilby, more used to getting undressed at speed, had already started. The clattering continued. Christine unfastened the first buttons of her bodice. Trilby–already down to stockings, drawers, corset and chemise–helped with a tug, ripping out the other 98 buttons, getting Christine free of her dress as if unshelling a pod of peas. The door, so much more secure than the gate or the window, was nearly unlocked.
Trilby picked up Christine, and hooked the back of her corset on a hanger.
“Go limp,” she whispered.
Christine flopped, letting her head loll.
Trilby sat against the wall, making a place among a row of mannequins similarly clad in undergarments. She opened her eyes wide in a stare, sucked in her cheeks, and arranged her arms stiffly, fingers stretched.
The door finally opened. Gaslight was turned up.
A gnome-like little man, with red circles on his cheeks and a creak in his walk, peered into the room.
“Cochenille, what is it?” boomed someone from outside.
“Nothing, Master Spalanzani,” responded Cochenille, the gnome, in a high-pitched voice. “Some birds got in through the window, and made a mess among the demoiselles.”
“Clear it up, you buffoon. There will be an inspection later, and the Countess does not take kindly to being displeased. As you well know.”
Cochenille flinched at the mention of the Countess. Christine and Trilby worked hard at keeping faces frozen. Slyly, the little man shut the door behind him, listened for a moment to make sure his master was not coming to supervise, then relaxed.
“My pretties,” he said, picking up a bewigged head, and kissing its painted smile. “Lovelier cold than you’ll ever be warm.”
Cochenille tenderly placed the head on the neck of a limbless torso and arranged its hair around its cold white shoulders. He passed on, paying attention to each partial mannequin.
“Alouette, not yet,” he cooed to a mannequin complete but for one arm. “Clair-de-lune, very soon,” to another finished but for the eyes and wig. “And… but who is this? A fresh face. And finished.”
He stopped before Christine, struck by her.
“You are so perfect,” said Cochenille. “From here, you will go to the arms of a rich man, a powerful man who will be in your power. You will sway the fates of fortunes, armies, countries. But you will have no happiness for yourself. These men who receive you, they appreciate you not. Only Cochenille truly sees your beauty.”
Christine concentrated very hard on being frozen. As an artists’ model, Trilby was used to holding a pose, but Christine’s nerves were a-twitch. She worried that the pulse in her throat or a flicker in her eyes would give her away. And the urge to fidget was strong in her.
“What these men know not is that they take my cast-offs,” said the gnome, rather unpleasantly. “Before you wake, before you are sent to them, you are–for this brief tender moment–the Brides of Cochenille.”
With horror, Christine realized this shrunken thing, with his withered face and roué’s face-paint, was unbuttoning his one-piece garment, working down from his neck, shrugging free of his sleeves.
She would do only so much for Erik!
Cochenille leaned close, wet tongue out. Suddenly, he was puzzled, affronted.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, shocked, “you are too… warm!”
Christine gripped the rack from which she was hung, taking the weight off her corset, and scissored her legs around Cochenille’s middle. Trilby leaped up, tearing an arm from the nearest doll, wielding it like a polo mallet. She fetched the gnome a ferocious blow on the side of his head as Christine tried to squeeze life out of the loathsome little degenerate.
Cochenille’s head spun around on his
neck, rotating in a complete circle several times. He ended up looking behind him, at the astonished Trilby.
“He’s a doll,” she gasped.
Something in his neck had broken and he couldn’t speak. His glass eyes glinted furiously. Christine still had him trapped.
“And he is a disgusting swine,” she said.
Trilby lifted Cochenille’s head from his neck and his body went limp in Christine’s grip. She let go and the body collapsed like a puppet unstrung.
His eyes still moved angrily. Trilby yanked coils and springs from his neck, detaching a long velvety tongue with a slither as if she were pulling a snake out of a bag. She threw the tongue away.
Christine got down from her rack and uncricked her aching back.
Trilby tossed the head to her, as if it were a child’s ball. She saw lechery in those marble eyes, and threw the nasty thing out of the window, hoping it wound up stuck on one of the fence-spikes.
Outside, dogs barked.
Christine, conscious of her déshabillé, looked around for her ruined dress.
Then the door opened again.
They looked at the guns aimed at them. Christine slowly put her hands up. Trilby did likewise.
“Who have we here?” said the tall old man with the pistols. “Uninvited guests?”
“Snoopers,” said his smaller partner. “Drop ’em in the vat.”
The tall man smiled, showing sharp yellow teeth.
Irene and the Persian had doffed their Kalabari disguises. Now, they wore close-fitting black bodystockings with tight hoods like those popularized by the English soldiers at Balaclava. The lower parts of their faces were covered with black silk scarves; only their eyes showed.
They crept along the deck of the barge, conscious of the music and chatter below. The clowns were performing some interminable Rhapsody from Bohemia, which made Irene vow to avoid that region in the future. The full Moon and the lights of the city were not their friend, but they knew how to slip from shadow to shadow.
On the Pont du Caroussel, a solitary man stood, looking down at the dark waters and the barge. Irene saw the shape and laid a hand on the Persian’s arm to stop him stepping into moonlight. They pressed against the side of a lifeboat, still in the shadow. Irene first assumed the man on the bridge was a stroller who had paused to have a cigar, though no red glowworm showed. She hoped it was not some inconvenient fool intent on suicide–they did not want attention drawn to their night-work, with lanterns played across the water’s surface or the decks where they were hiding. The figure did not move, was not apparently looking at the barge, and might as easily have been a scarecrow.
Irene slipped away from the lifeboat, did a gymnast’s roll, and found herself next to the housing of some sort of marine winch. Heart beating, she looked up at the bridge. The possible spy was gone. There had been something familiar about him.
The Persian joined her.
The Countess Cagliostro’s barge was armored like a dreadnought, which was one reason it sat so low in the water. Aft of the ballroom were powerful engines, worked by dynamos which hummed. The barge was fully illuminated by electrical Edison lamps, and mysterious galvanic energies coursed throughout the rubber-clad veins of the barge, nurturing vast sleeping mechanical beasts whose purposes neither of Erik’s operatives could guess.
“She could invade a country with this thing,” said Irene.
“Several,” commented the Persian.
“Do you think it’s a submersible?”
The Persian shrugged. “I should not be surprised if it inflates balloons from those fittings, and lifts into the skies.”
“You’ve an inventive turn of mind, pardner.”
“That is true. It is part of the tale of how Erik and I became associates, back in my own country… but this is not the time for that history.”
“Too true. Let’s try and find the lady’s lair.”
Beyond the engines, the deck was featureless plate but for several inset panes of thick black glass. Irene reckoned this was Erik’s trick again–transparent for the sitting spider, opaque for the unwary fly.
From the pouch slung on her hip, she drew a cracksman’s tool: a suction cup with an arm, attached to a brutal chunk of diamond. The tool was worth more than most of the swag Irene had used it to lift–the cutting gem had been prised from a tiara and shaped to order by a jeweler who nearly balked at the sacrilege of turning beauty into deadly practicality.
Irene cut a circle out of the glass, and placed it quietly on the deck.
The space below was dark, a pool of inky nothing. Working silently, the Persian unwound a coil of rope from his torso and Irene harnessed herself. After a tug to test the line, Irene stepped into the hole and let herself fall. The Persian, anchored strongly, doled out measured lengths of rope, lowering her by increments.
Once inside, the hole above was bright as the Moon, and all around was cavernous dark. Irene blinked, hoping her eyes would adjust–but the gloom was unbroken, the dark undifferentiated.
Then there was a musical roaring, as if a steam calliope were stirring, and a thousand colored jewels lit up, dazzling her. Incandescent lamps fired, and Irene found herself dangling inside what seemed like the workings of a giant clock. Gears and wheels, balances and accumulators were all around, in dangerous motion, scything through the air. She had to twist on her rope to avoid being bashed by a counterweight.
Music was playing–mechanical, but cacophonous, assaulting her ears.
The Persian began to haul her upwards hastily, out of the potential meat-grinder, and she climbed, loops of rope dangling below her. A razor-edged wheel whirred, slicing through loose cord.
Irene was pulled up on deck. By more than two hands.
Light streamed upwards from the hole.
She was held by men in striped jerseys, their faces covered by metal half-masks. The Persian, scarf torn away and hood wrenched off, was caught by a stranger character, one of the ten-foot toy soldiers from the ballroom, miraculously endowed with life. Its tin moustaches bristled fiercely and its big wooden hands gripped like implements of torture. Slung on its back was an oversized musket with a yard-long bayonet. Stuck out of its side was a giant key. The Persian, lifted completely off his feet, was crushed against the soldier’s shiny blue tunic.
“Messieurs,” said Irene, “you’re taking liberties. Get your paws off the goods if you don’t intend to buy.”
The half-masked sailors were briefly confused, and relaxed their ungallant grip on her person. Irene darted and her slick leotard slipped through the hands of her would-be captors. Like an eel, she was out of their grasp, heading towards the side of the barge. If she got over, she would have a chance. The Persian could be rescued later, if that were possible.
Something rose from the shadows and took a much faster hold.
Three swift blows to the stomach knocked the wind out of her. She doubled up in pain, and was recaptured by the sailors, who were less considerate about how they kept her now.
The thing that had struck her emerged into the light.
It was a woman–of course–wearing a costume modeled on Elizabeth of England, with a red lacquered moon-face mask and towering head-dress. Dozens of pearls studded bodice and face, exciting Irene’s larcenous instincts. Getting her breath back, she sighed at such extravagance.
“Countess Cagliostro, I presume.”
“Your hostess,” said the woman. “Though I don’t remember putting your names on the guest list. What were they again?”
“I’m Sparkle and he’s Slink. We’re desperate Apache thieves. You’ve bushwhacked us properly, so do us the courtesy of summoning the Gendarmes and handing us over to French justice so we can start plotting our escape from Devil’s Island. We accept this as an inevitable reverse of our chosen profession, sheer crookery. And there’s no need to be unpleasant about it.”
The Countess’s mask seemed to smile, its eyeslits narrowing.
She glided, on invisible feet, to the side of
her toy soldier, and twisted the key as if winding a clock. Then she stood back, and the key turned as–with big, jerky motions–the soldier raised the struggling, bleeding Persian above its head, then dropped him over the side of the barge. After a long scream, there was a splash.
Irene’s heart leaped. This was not what had been planned.
The soldier stumped away from the edge of the barge, and the Countess paid attention to Irene.
“Now that’s taken care of, let’s talk about you.”
Irene deemed it politic to swoon.
“She’s with us now,” said Trilby.
“Irène,” said Christine.
“Eh… what?” said Irene.
Irene blinked, awake and uncomfortable. Her wrists were tied above her head, and she hung from an iron hook. To her sides dangled Trilby and Christine, similarly trussed, wearing only undergarments.
The air was warm. A fragrance swelled upwards.
“Don’t look down, dear,” advised Trilby.
Of course, Irene could not help herself.
Below her feet was a vat shaped like a giant-sized witch’s cauldron, heated by a bellows-fuelled furnace. Pink, molten mass bubbled angrily, smelling of paraffin and cinnamon.
“A coat of wax does wonders for the complexion,” said one of the men who stood below.
Irene looked up at her wrists. She could probably saw through her bonds by swinging on the hook, but then she risked a death-plunge into boiling wax.
“Who’s your friend?” she asked Trilby.
“Coppélius,” said the Irish girl.
“Spalanzani!” insisted the man who had spoken. “He’s Coppélius!”
Spalanzani was the taller of the pair. With them was the Countess, who had kept her mask but changed into male evening dress spectacularly tailored to fit her figure.
“Three pretty girls, with unusual talents,” said the Countess. “Only one Agency I know of in Paris can lay claim to such employees. You are the Angels of Music? The creatures of… One Whose Name is Seldom Spoken. I have heard of your previous exploits. It will almost be a shame to write finis to such a feuilleton. Almost.”
Tales of the Shadowmen 2: Gentlemen of the Night Page 22