Maddie accepted a dainty demitasse from him. “Anyone from outside? Or the guests?”
“No visitors to the staff quarters on a weeknight, Miss. The German secretary, he came down to give his employer’s compliments on the strudel. Mr. Pennwiper was in to repeat your instruction about Lord Main-Bearing’s whisky. The master’s own secretary complained of his soup being served cold.” Woodrow’s lip slid into its familiar sneer. “He was served last, naturally, after the guests and the family. Ideas above his station, he has, since the master took him along on the journey. That’s what comes of letting him stay in the house.”
“He doesn’t usually live in?”
Emmeline, who had been brooding over her coffee, said, “What does he matter? He’s often here late into the evening anyway. Besides, you heard Woodrow. The German secretary was down there. You know he’s a slippery one. Don’t leave him alone with any food or drink, Woodrow.”
“You may be assured I will not, Miss.” Woodrow bowed stiffly and departed, closing the bedroom door behind him.
Maddie set down her cup. “You may be glad to know Mr. Sneero Fawkes is not such a fool as his man. He called Reggie a useful buffoon.”
“You didn’t tell him about me, did you? Or being kidnapped? Papa would be frightfully peeved that I had not informed him.”
“I mentioned neither. I allowed him to understand you hired me to help protect the gauge while your father was away. He confirmed my information on the Steamlords’ good reputations and agrees that Herr Gehirn bears watching. It’s likely he will instruct Reggie to harass that man instead of us in future. Where is the buffoon now? In the study with the Steamlords?”
“Gracious, no. They wouldn’t have an outsider in their conference. Only themselves and their secretaries.” Emmeline set down her cup and wandered around the room, trailing one finger along the painted branches on the walls. “I haven’t seen Reggie since he and Mr. Coggington engaged in a minor skirmish in the main hall.”
“They fought? Whatever for?”
“More like two dogs, circling each other and snarling. Mr. Coggington invited me to drive out with him in his marvellous new machine, saying the fresh air of the park would clear my head. I was about to refuse when Reggie muscled in. He said on no account was I to leave the house until his investigation is completed. Ulysses said I was a victim of the offense, not a suspect, and free to go as I choose.”
Ulysses? Mr. Coggington was making inroads into Emmeline’s disdain. “And did you agree to go with him?”
“I was fully prepared to,” said Emmeline. “Then Reggie said it wasn’t I who was suspected; he didn’t trust a carpetbagger to escort any well-bred young lady. Then Uly—Mr. Coggington called Reggie a ruffian, unfit for decent company, and said he would escort me everywhere before he’d let Reggie within arm’s length.” She stamped one dainty primrose shoe onto the carpet. “Am I a bone to be fought over by snarling dogs? I told them both I’d go nowhere with either, and they could drop themselves into the Hudson River for all I cared.”
“That seems quite definite.” Maddie drained her coffee cup. “And what of your mother? Is she recovered from the drug yet?”
“Yes, she is downstairs making lists, for she has invited Mrs. Handy and some of her friends over this very afternoon to begin planning the library benefit. You will sit with them, won’t you, and try to restrain Mother’s wilder ideas? The new house will have room for prancing ponies and steam calliopes but here we’re limited to serving tea and having a dramatic reading. Or a singer. There’s not the height for rope dancers in our receiving rooms.”
What a time for Mrs. G-G to start up a social life! Maddie needed a nap, and to retrieve TD from the study, and to send a message to Obie about the night’s events, and to figure out how to investigate both Pennwiper and Herr Gehirn without them suspecting they were being watched. There were likely other tasks she was forgetting, but those would do to start.
“I’ll do my best to keep her plans within reasonable bounds,” she said. “Will the Steamlords be joining us for luncheon?”
“No. They’re heading off to some businessmen’s do, and then to the factory. The only man about will be the odious Reggie. He can eat in the kitchen, or go away hungry.”
Returning to the main floor, Maddie hovered in the games room, hoping to see the Steamlords depart. They did not leave before Mrs. G-G sent for her to review the menu for afternoon tea with the library benefit committee. Almost as soon as she settled in the parlour with the menu in hand, a commotion in the main hall announced the men’s departure.
Not until luncheon was announced could Maddie slip away, on pretext of needing to wash her hands. Darting from the under-stair cloakroom to the study, she saw the gauge gleaming golden in its usual place on the wall. She whistled for TD and, when he fluttered down from his hiding place behind a picture frame, tucked him into her skirt pocket and hurried to the dining room. After the meal, she would get away upstairs with him and empty his curious clockwork brain.
After the meal, though, Emmeline dragged Maddie straight back to the study. “We’ve got to think up something to get rid of Reggie. Did you see him peeking into the dining room? Three times! He’s not getting anywhere with the investigation, I’m sure. Not with Herr Gehirn out of the house. But Papa said he must stay here all day, to guard us and the gauge. Tonight men from the factory will be stationed around the house. No more sneaking out as Emmy Gat by night, and Reggie underfoot by day. Bah.”
“Set him to discover how the intruder was able to evade us last night. There’s a hidden stair beside the games room, right?”
Emmeline stared at her. “Us? You were chasing the intruder with Lord Main-Bearing? He never said so.” One slim eyebrow rose.
“What did he say? I had no time to find out before I was hauled away by Reggie.”
“That he heard a noise, came down to investigate, and was bowled over by someone fleeing the study. He tried to wake Papa, and then the secretaries, and then sat up the rest of the night on guard in the study. What were you doing up at that hour? You should have been exhausted, even if you weren’t drugged.”
“Too much coffee at supper,” said Maddie. “I fell asleep too fast to bother with the chocolate, and came wide awake at midnight. It was me who heard the noise. I tried to wake your father, and then you. When I realized you’d both been drugged, I remembered Lord Main-Bearing drinks whisky, not chocolate. So I woke him.”
Emmeline frowned. “Why did he not say so? You need not have been hauled off to Sneero Fawkes at all.”
“Very likely he was protecting my dignity. It is not at all the done thing for young ladies to run around at midnight with older men, while wearing their dressing-gowns and slippers.” That was as much of the truth as Maddie was prepared to share now.
“Hrmph. That’s just silly. So many restrictions on women that are not laid upon men. But you mentioned the games room. Did the intruder flee in that direction?”
“Yes. I thought he would be making for the servants’ door, and took Lord Main-Bearing through the main hall and kitchens to wait for him. But no-one came that way.”
“He may have waited in the old passage until all was quiet. Or perhaps he got lost with all the ups and downs and arounds, and is still in there.” Emmeline giggled. “If we send Reggie in to find out, he may be lost in there all day. But come down to Papa’s workshop and see what I have been up to this morning.” She led the way to the library and slid aside a bookcase to reveal another hidden stair. ‘This goes up to Papa’s chamber, and down to the basement. He had it replicated in the new house and will have his new study where the library is here, so he can go between all three easily.”
Maddie recognized the placement: identical to the stair she’d fled up when escaping the new mansion. She followed Emmeline down to the workshop and found it very much resembled her father’s: long tables and shelves crowded with sockets, gears, cogs and shafts, wrenches and pliers and coils of wire. The air was thick with th
e mixed scents of old oil, sawdust, and paint. It smelled like home.
Emmeline lifted her pretty hem above the clutter on the floor and led the way to a cleared patch of table. On it lay a Gatsby Gauge: three sturdy rings linked by wires, in the middle section of a long copper cylinder from which protruded valves, taps, flanges, and bits of pipe.
“You got another gauge from the factory?”
“No, I mocked up this one from parts lying around. The cylinder’s empty so it’s lighter, but good enough for a thief in a rush. I’ll spray it gold and hang it in place of the other. If anyone succeeds in stealing it, they won’t get anything useful out of it.”
“That’s brilliant,” said Maddie. “We’ll track whoever steals it to whoever they’re working for.”
Emmeline grinned. “I thought you’d like it. I had to do something while you were gone, or I’d have gone crazy with wondering if you’d been arrested, and how I could induce Papa to have you released. I might have had to tell him you’d already been kidnapped once in my place. He’d never let me out of the house again.”
“I’m glad you weren’t forced to confess all. Now, let’s get dear Reggie out of our hair before the tea party.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“YOU DON’T NEED a hand light,” Emmeline told the over-eager detective a few minutes later, as he gaped at the gap in the hallway wall. “There are light-pipes at every landing. Just do, please, be cautious. The intruder might still be hiding in there, and you know he was able to bowl over Lord Main-Bearing, who is twice the size you are.”
Reggie pulled himself up to his full height, a scant half a head taller than the girls. “If he’s in there, my fists will account for him.” He charged into the narrow stair. Emmeline waited until he was halfway up the first flight before shutting the panel decisively.
“That’s him out of the way. Come back to the study. If everyone else knows how the gauge’s hiding place works, I may as well show you too.”
Maddie closed the study door behind them to keep the secret although, if all the Steamlords and their secretaries already knew it, the old adage about barn doors and horses applied. Leaning over her father’s desk, Emmeline lifted the glass cover on one row of temperature gauges. With her finger, she set all the needles to correspond with the quarters on a clock. Behind her head the gauge’s wall panel moved. It tilted forward at the top and then, accompanied by a faint clicking noise, began to rotate downward. Another wall panel, identical but for the gauge, rotated into view, settling into place with a mild thunk.
“Go ahead,” said Emmeline, grinning. “See if you can shift that panel by hand, now that you know where it is.”
Maddie tried. She tapped, fumbled, even took the small ash shovel from the fireplace and pried. All to no avail. The panel simply did not move.
“That certainly seems secure,” she admitted. “Does it reverse to bring the gauge back?”
“Not quite. First you have to close this glass lid, to reset the temperature gauges to the temperature. Then you put them all on the quarters again, and the panel rotates again.” She did so, watching not the wall but Maddie’s face as the next panel rotated into view. On it hung a clown mask, all white face and red nose, with the tongue sticking out and white-gloved hands poking out by each ear. “Papa’s sense of humour. Go pull the clown’s tongue.”
“Truly?” Maddie did as instructed and watched the panel rotate. The clown face glided downward, the gilded gauge came duly back to its place, held by its platinum brackets. “That is quite ingenious. Any intruder getting so far as moving the panel once would see the clown face and assume they’d triggered a security feature, one that might be connected to an alarm. If they dared stay around after that, they’d only try the gauges again.”
“That’s what Papa thinks. And trying a third time, if you haven’t pulled the clown’s tongue, sets off the siren just like opening the windows does.” Emmeline closed the glass cover on the desk and checked that the temperature gauges were once more indicating temperatures. “There must be something else we can do before Papa and his guests return. Can we lay a trap for Herr Gehirn?”
“Or for Pennwiper,” Maddie added, although she very much hoped her father’s secretary was not implicated.
Before they could pursue a plan, Woodrow tapped on the door. Opening it, he said, “Your mother awaits you in the parlour, Miss.”
Maddie exchanged a glance with Emmeline. Much as they would like to pursue plans to catch the intruder, they must pretend for the next hour to be proper young ladies with no more on their minds than planning an entertainment.
Barely half an hour later, Maddie was waiting with pen poised for someone to say something they had not said a dozen times already when one of the secretaries crossed the main hall. He still wore his black top-coat and hat, and she was sure the door’s bell-pull had not rung. Who had come back alone: Gehirn? Pennwiper? Waving her quill slightly to attract Emmeline’s wandering attention, she pointed the tip toward the mirror over the mantle.
Emmeline’s eyebrows went up as she too saw the secretary, reflected backward and too distant to make out. She shifted in her chair for a better view across the hall. Maddie drifted over to the tea cart for the same purpose. The secretary’s hair was barely visible between the upturned collar and the down-turned hat brim, but she thought it was Mr. Gnave, mainly by the way he walked. He went down the corridor toward the study. Fetching forgotten paperwork, no doubt, or checking figures needed for the afternoon’s negotiations.
Mrs. Handy asked for a review of what they’d discussed thus far, and Maddie flipped back a few pages in her notebook. As she read aloud the agreed-upon points for the library benefit, she could not quite dismiss Mr. Gnave’s presence. Because he already worked for Mr. G-G, he had not been investigated by her or, likely, by Sneero Fawkes. Yet he could come and go in the mansion at any time, and thus had access to the keys for the new mansion. He was often in the house evenings and might have glimpsed Emmy Gat slipping in or out. True, he had been far away across the country when the first kidnap attempt was made on Emmeline, but he might orchestrate a plan to kidnap her before her father returned. Nobody would suspect Mr. Gnave of involvement if he wasn’t in the city when it occurred.
Maddie finished reading the list and set down the notebook. She paused with her teacup halfway to her lips, seeing suddenly cocoa instead. What had Woodrow said? That the master’s secretary had come down after supper to complain that his soup was cold. Mr. Gnave, too, had an opportunity to drug the pot. If she’d had a moment to empty TD’s image-cache from the previous night, would she have seen the secretary searching the study?
She placed the cup carefully back in its saucer and carried both to the tea cart, gazing across the hall to the opposite corridor. Gnave was out of sight. Was he even now lifting the gauge from its brackets? How would he get it out of the house? Seizing on the pretence of offering him tea, she filled a spare cup and hurried out.
She was halfway across the hall when the sound of breaking glass came from the study. Crash, tinkle. Once, twice, three times. A siren whooped.
She raced along the corridor, with Emmeline close on her heels. Mr. Gnave came from the other direction, almost colliding with them at the study door. They crowded in together and stood gasping for breath, staring at the window-glass strewn across the floor. Three large paving stones lay before three smashed windows. Three sets of eyes turned to the panel behind the desk.
The gauge was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
MADDIE RAN TO the nearest window and leaned out, careful to avoid the shards sticking up from the frame. Among the nearby pedestrians were a number with parcels approximately the size of the gauge. Any of them might have clambered into the room, seized the gauge, and fled. But it wasn’t that easy to scramble up to a window higher than a man’s head. They’d have cut themselves climbing in, or snagged their clothing. And why not open the window when they left, to ease their exit? She looked closer at the glass still
sticking out from the wood. No blood here, no threads. The other broken windows were equally clean.
The siren stopped. Her ears rang in the sudden silence. She turned to see Emmeline fiddling at the desk and Woodrow in the doorway, gaping at the destruction. He raised horrified eyes to her.
“Send for your master at once,” she said. When he hurried out, she told Emmeline, “The windows are a decoy. Nobody in or out. Could the gauge be behind its panel? Check, quickly.” While Emmeline raised the glass panel on the desktop, Maddie hurried back to the window. As she was opening it to lean out further, an apple came whistling through, narrowly missing her head. “Hey, stop that!”
A boy’s voice called back. “Miss Mad, Miss Mad. ’Zat you?”
“Rabbit?”
“Hare, Miss Mad.” She looked down and there he was, not quite clean enough to live up to the Darling boy’s second-best clothes.
“Hare, did you see anyone climb in or out through one of these windows?”
“No, Miss Mad. Just a feller chucking rocks.”
Maddie looked over her shoulder. The clown’s face was disappearing and the panel beyond it was bare save for two empty platinum brackets. The gauge was gone.
“Did anyone throw something out?”
“Yes, Miss Mad. Down that way.” He pointed along the building toward the library. “A heavy sack. Rock feller grabbed it and run off. Cat’s after ’im.”
“Thank you, Hare. I’ll be right out and we’ll follow.” Maddie glanced to the right, saw the library window swing in the breeze, and turned back to Emmeline. “Where’s Gnave?”
“He went to tell Mother what’s going on.”
Maddie ran to the parlour, narrowly missing a collision with maids bearing brooms and dustpans. Interrupting the tea party, she asked, “Where’s Mr. Gnave?”
Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Guage Page 15