Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Guage

by Jayne Barnard

  “Well, Miss Emmy Gat. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  Chapter Five

  MISS GAUGE LEANED back against the seat, smoothing the cuff over her damaged wrist. The pale blues of her dress slid over the leather like noon sky over a sun-baked desert. “Not here. Come home with me and I’ll tell you everything.”

  “All right.” Maddie sat back too, and examined her dark blue parasol. The fabric was undamaged save for a few loosened stitches near the tip, and none of the spines had bent when she tripped the ruffian. “It had better be a good story after you’ve had me chasing across half Manhattan two days in a row.” In W.Y. Knott’s inimitable prose, it might read: The Steamlord’s daughter struggled as she was dragged by burly thugs toward a waiting carriage. No-one of English blood may stand by when a lady is in distress, and so . . . Not that she was likely to ever publish this story. One family’s internal complications wouldn’t impress CJ the way the hunt for the batty baron had. But composition in Knott’s manly, slightly bombastic style was good practice against the day when she stumbled onto a story even CJ would find sensational enough to sell newspapers.

  For a scant five minutes the sleek vehicle slid through traffic, passing boxy automobiles and horse-drawn conveyances with scarcely a whirr. On a street paralleling Central Park, it halted. Miss Gauge pushed a button on her armrest.

  “Not a word about this incident to Papa, Bryson. Nor to anyone else in the house.”

  “Yes, Miss.” The chauffeur hurried to hand the young ladies out. Before Miss Gauge’s blue boot touched the paving, a footman was ready with an umbrella, quite in the manner of Maddie’s Old Nobility relatives’ servants. At modern English manors, a retracting cover spread itself out automatically over the carriageway during rain. Footmen stayed under that, ready to accept parcels and offer aid.

  Waiting to alight, Maddie gazed up at four solid stories of New York town mansion. The building was sturdy rather than beautiful, constructed of large blocks of limestone with squared granite pediments over doors and windows. Pink granite half-columns flanked the high entrance. She followed her hostess into a marbled hall furnished with ormolu clocks and gilded mirrors. The stir of air from the open door faded quickly, pressed down by the silence. At the peak visiting hour for New York ladies, not a single calling card lay on the long marble-and-gilt glove table. No butler was in sight, indicating possibly that no callers were anticipated. How did a vibrant girl like Miss Gauge thrive in a house that felt almost un-lived-in?

  The butler arrived when the girls were halfway up the stair. Over her shoulder Miss Gauge said, “A guest for lunch, Woodrow,” and kept going. He stared at her back, and at Maddie. Luncheon visitors were clearly not common here.

  Her hostess brought her to a sizeable bedchamber with a large pink bed, a sitting area, and a writing desk. The walls were hung with pale green silk painted with trees abloom in blush-pink magnolia, so lifelike that Maddie automatically sniffed for the heady scent. It was a room out of a past century, with not a brass fitting or clockwork to be seen save the hands of a walnut mantle clock. For all America’s reputation for embracing the future, in this private home it clung firmly to the past.

  “Do make yourself comfortable,” Miss Gauge said, and unpinned her pretty blue hat before the dressing table mirror.

  “A charming room.” Maddie smoothed her serviceable navy suit as she perched on the watered-green loveseat. “Did you select the colours yourself, Miss Gauge?”

  “The house came this way. Mama refuses to change anything. And you might call me Emmeline, after all we’ve been through together.” She settled into a chair brocaded in pink silk. “My name, my whole name, is Emmeline Gatsby-Gauge. Emmy Gat is, well, a useful character I cooked up when I could no longer tolerate the stifling formality of this house. I was called Emmy as a child. Papa added the Gauge to our name when he made his fortune, not long before we moved here. We had a modest home before, nearer his factory. I miss it.”

  “So you invented, or restored, the name of Emmy Gatsby to return to your old neighbourhood?”

  “Precisely.”

  “The outrageous costume serves to distract anyone from looking too closely at your face?”

  “You are quite perceptive. I’d heard that about you.”

  “You’ve heard more of me than I have of you. Although I did hear something about strangling a man with your silk cravat.”

  Emmy, or Emmeline, shook her head. “That silly song. It has a dozen verses that I know of. The cravat story sprung from when I broke up a brawl between street kids. One boy had a cut on his neck. I bound it for him with my cravat and sent him off to get it looked at. A bloody neck, a black cravat.” She lifted her hands. “An irresistible tale.”

  “One that grew in the re-telling, I’m sure.” Maddie considered the deceptively dainty girl. “And where did you hear of me?”

  “Someone mentioned the daring lady reporter who sometimes stays at that boarding house. I thought you might be helpful.”

  At last they were getting down to it. “Exactly what story is it that you need a daring lady reporter to expose?”

  Emmeline smiled ruefully. “It’s not the reporter I wish to consult. It’s the investigator.”

  “Your family is not short of resources. You could hire anyone. Why choose me, and why all the rigmarole of the midnight duel?”

  “I need someone unknown in New York City, who can move across the class divides between my old neighbourhood and this one. Someone well able to look out for their own safety, and help with mine if needed.”

  “Did you stage that attempted abduction outside the coffee room as a test?”

  “Absolutely not!” Emmeline rubbed her sore wrist.

  Ransom was Maddie’s first thought. It was always a concern where rich men’s children walked. “Who do you think was behind this attempt?”

  “I don’t know. But they seem to know me in both my characters.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I was followed first as Emmy Gat.”

  It had started a few weeks ago, late one evening on the edge of the East Village, near the old Gatsby house. The moon was nearly gone, leaving deep shadow between the sparse gas-lamps. Being watched from a darkened doorway or alley was not that unusual. Sometimes a mugger followed a short ways, hoping to see her falter. The swaggering walk and the swish of her dark, dangerous brolly told them she was not easy prey. This night, though, the tingle of a watcher had not faded. Footsteps had stopped and started, whispering against the high, brick walls a scant half-second after hers. Sidestepping down an alley had lost them.

  The following week, the footsteps found her sooner, as if they’d been waiting, and followed from further back. She took a quick corner to change her appearance, first by discarding the top-hat she had then favoured. Walking on, she removed the mask with its glittery gilt trim, tugged her black cravat up higher on her face and even pocketed the shoe buckles. Again, she lost the watcher. The next time she went to the garment district, she left the tram two stops early. Yet still she was marked, and followed.

  “How did you get clear that time?”

  “I had to send out some children to cause a distraction.” Emmeline’s dainty lips pressed together. “It goes against my code to imperil youngsters, but I could not risk being followed all the way home.”

  “You were quite clearly on edge at Madame Lavinia’s,” Maddie pointed out. “Both days as you were leaving. And today someone attempted to abduct you. As Miss Gauge, not as Emmy Gat.”

  Emmeline nodded. “After my last visit, only done to reward the children for their distraction, I began to feel watched in this neighbourhood too. But my best observations from the windows cannot pick out a face that does not belong on a street like this one, or a workman lingering too long. I can no longer risk going out unescorted. I need a bodyguard until the danger is past, one who can pass unremarked in both my worlds.” She sat up, stretching to clasp Maddie’s hands.

/>   “Will you do it? Will you be my incognito bodyguard and help me investigate who is behind this outrage? I’ll pay handsomely.”

  In Maddie’s head, Knott’s typewriter began again: I immediately offered to trade my service as a bodyguard for any eventual story that might unfold.

  Chapter Six

  “I’LL TELL MOTHER you’re a social secretary,” said Maddie’s new employer. “If I’m to go to Europe next year, I’ll need to know about dukes and counts and how to curtsey to royalty and all those things Americans don’t much bother about.”

  “And parasol dueling customs?” Maddie suggested. She was halfway to regretting her impulsive acceptance. Still, she liked this girl, and could spare a week to follow her on any social rounds. How many New York fashions could she catalogue for her columns back home?

  “Yes, and dueling.” Emmeline giggled, giddy perhaps with relief. “Where would Emmy Gat go in Paris?”

  “Montmartre. She’d hardly stand out there, but yes, she might get challenged to a duel. I’ll teach you what I know of French street duels, as well as formal ones.” She would, too. That part of her cover story would not be a lie.

  Before collecting her belongings from the boarding house, Maddie met Emmeline’s mother. Seated alone in an impersonally ornate parlour, Mrs. Gatsby-Gauge was half a head shorter than her daughter, with severely braided fair hair. The eyes were the same amber as her daughter’s, though lacking sparkle. The skin surrounding them was creased with worry. She looked uncomfortable in a heavily embroidered and beaded green gown with a scalloped hem over a quilted eau-de-Nile petticoat. House of Worth, or a good facsimile. Too fussy by half, it quite overpowered Mrs. G-G’s faded beauty.

  The mistress of the house murmured a greeting in a barely audible voice and led the way to a small, formal dining room. The dark wood panelling, massive sideboard, and an outsized oil painting of a hunting scene all reminded Maddie of the family dining room belonging to her Old Nobility grandparents back in England. So, in fact, did the supercilious butler. Some facets of her old life Maddie did not miss at all. Give her the lively informality of the boarding house any day, with its boisterous boys and their silly jokes.

  Afterward, driving to the boarding house to retrieve her clothing, Maddie questioned Emmeline further. “As Emmy Gat, have you made enemies? Or as Emmeline Gauge?”

  “I don’t see that anyone could hate Emmy. Not in the East Village, the only place she’s known. I mostly do good there, you see, warning the workers about business rumours that might affect their earnings. And I feed orphans, and help them find work.”

  “Your father is a wealthy man. Perhaps they want you for ransom?”

  “Not in that district. They’re good, hard-working people.” Emmeline stared out at the passing buildings that gradually altered block by block from the Upper East Side’s stately stonework to Midtown’s commercial brickwork and beyond, to low tenements and factories. The sky-lanes above grew as crowded as those of London, with airships of many shapes and descriptions all going about their business. “As for ransom,” Emmeline went on after some time, “there are many girls of wealthier families. Until today I believed I was safer amongst them than out on my own. Now I cannot be sure.” Her blue gloves twisted in her cerulean lap. “Truthfully, I fear someone seeks me for leverage over my father.”

  “Leverage? To make him do something he doesn’t wish to?”

  “Yes.” Emmeline bit her lip. “It concerns the gauge he invented, the one that made his fortune. He is in delicate negotiations right now to license his secret design to European interests. That’s what his trip to California is all about: taking potential investors around to see his gauge in operation, and then bringing them back to New York for final negotiations. Any of them might seek control of me to coerce a favourable outcome from him.”

  “I see.” Maddie’s own great-grandfather, the founder of Britain’s Third Steamlord family, had established his fortune and peerage on one small invention that he licensed across Britain and then the Empire. “Your father appears to be what we in Britain would call a Steamlord, although I realize you Americans don’t have lords.”

  Emmeline smiled. “We have captains of industry. Or robber barons. Their wives and daughters are my biggest social bane.”

  “And only a generation further than you from the factories?”

  “Exactly. Papa says if you look close you can still see railroad grease under Vanderbilt fingernails. But Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt married a duke when she was my age. Perhaps you have seen her in England? I believe she is often in the Society pages.”

  “Indeed she is.” The American Duchess, as Consuelo Vanderbilt was often called, had been a guest at Maddie’s own debutante ball. “Vanderbilt daughters are well guarded. You are not. Yet you don’t wish your father to know you are at risk?”

  “Absolutely not. The first thing he’d do is telegraph Sneero Fawkes to investigate, and the secret of my alternate identity would be exposed.”

  “Is Mr. Fawkes truly a great detective?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s the man the robber barons all seek out for assistance.” Emmeline shrugged. “Or maybe they don’t all, but he makes sure that when one does, it’s mentioned in all the newspapers. Anyway, Papa would surely cut short his trip. Any trust built up with these investors would be destroyed.” Her pixy chin firmed up. “Much as I dislike those snooty society girls and their even more snobbish mothers, I refuse to stand in the way of Papa’s dream.”

  “He hopes to see you married into an older noble—sorry, robber baron—family?” Maddie had been in precisely the same predicament before her precipitous departure from the aforementioned debutante ball.

  “Oh, no, that’s Mother’s dream. Papa’s is to see his invention installed in factories all over the world. That gauge contains a fail-safe, which directs the boiler to start a self-cooling procedure rather than blow up. Boiler explosions are terribly dangerous for workers and lost wages during factory repairs further hurt their families.”

  “If the common people can only benefit from his invention, then the threat must come from higher up. Who stands to lose if your father succeeds in licensing his gauge? Is another Steamlord peddling a similar invention?”

  Emmeline shook her golden curls. “His gauge is unique. He’s already sold it all over the northern States, all the way to California. There are simply no American rivals to it. He maintains tight security around his factory, and is taking care that negotiations will be kept far away from industrial spies. It is difficult to eavesdrop unnoticed on an airship a thousand feet in the sky.”

  “Difficult, but not impossible.” Early in her escape from home, Maddie had been tricked into transporting an intricate spy-spider, hidden in a bouquet of yellow roses, onto a British Admiralty airship. The spider had hidden in the officers’ wardroom for three weeks, sending who knew what secret information back to its creator. “I hope your father has a security officer who can tell a clockwork insect from a real one.”

  Emmeline’s amber eyes widened. “There are such things?”

  “Indeed. But that is not our problem. How might I discover the names of your father’s potential rivals?”

  “His secretaries know,” said Emmeline. “One travels with him, but the other is at the factory. We could go there tomorrow.” As the rocket-car coasted to a silent stop before Mrs. Darling’s boarding house, she sank into her corner. “I’ve been seen around here often as Emmy. I’ll wait in here.”

  As the rocket-car’s passenger windows darkened behind her, Maddie hurried into the boarding house. While she hastily re-packed the drawer side of her steamer trunk, she explained the new job to Mrs. Darling. There was no need to hide her investigative sideline from Hiram’s aunt. The lady had welcomed Maddie and Obie after last Spring’s precipitous arrival in New York, and knew about their adventures on the trans-Atlantic airship.

  “You’ll do your best for the girl, I’m sure.” Mrs. Darling folded the trains of Maddie’s two resp
ectable evening gowns in tissue paper and tucked them up in the trunk’s hanging side. “Send word if you need Hiram to escort you, and try not to run headlong into danger before our Obie returns from his charter run.”

  “Safety first,” Maddie assured her, and together they rolled the trunk to the hall for Bryson to load into the gleaming rocket’s cargo compartment. Although she questioned Emmeline further during the return journey, no other leads presented themselves. They agreed to visit the factory first thing the next morning.

  After tea, Emmeline showed her around the stifling mansion, room after grand room that seemed frozen in the 1860s craze for European palace decor. Mrs. G-G, she explained, was afraid to alter its original décor, fearing her middle-class tastes could not withstand scrutiny by higher Society. The only room that had been visibly modernized was the industrialist owner’s study. While the old, dark panelling remained, the furnishings were modern, chosen for function rather than beauty. An aethernet receiver squatted in one corner, its walnut casing closed up tight. Its extruded-steel sending coil was wound down almost level with its flat top, a sure sign it wasn’t in regular use. The desk, also of walnut, was inset with brass-and-glass housings for gauges and also bore rows of dials and switches that, Emmeline explained, controlled the temperature and humidity in every room in the house.

  “Don’t open a window on the ground floor,” she cautioned, “or a siren will alert everyone in the house. A security feature, although I’m sure Papa likes saving money on the heating too.” The stone fireplace, though original, had been filled in with a brass front from which protruded pipes that carried steam heat under the marble floor. “All the floors have heat now, but most pipes are hidden, so as not to draw attention.” She pointed to a blank oak panel above the mantle, such as might have once held a family portrait. “Up there is where Papa’s prototype gauge hangs when he’s at home. It’s the exact one that led to all his money, except that every part is coated in solid gold.”