Clockwork Stalker: The Dirty Heroes Collection

by Silverwood, Cari

  The man at the door was far too cheerful and farmer-like to be his captor, and the door wasn’t locked. A breeze from the window at his back also said he was no prisoner.

  The card? This was his own handwriting.

  He read it and looked up. “You’re a pig farmer?”

  “Yes, sir. I am that. Horace Windle is the name.” He ducked his head. “You asked me to tell you when you woke—and I heard you stirring, sir—to tell you that you did this to yourself and to read the card. But I see—”

  “Yes. I already did. Thank you.” He waved the man away. His head needed time to settle. The ache between his temples and this horrifying feeling that he’d lost control was bothering him.

  “I also tried to order the steamcab for you, sir, down at the village, but it ain’t to be. They won’t come here. But I have prepared my cart. Providing there is a monetary reward?”

  “Oh. Hmmm. Yes.” Sherlock massaged his forehead. It seemed he’d thought ahead and had known he’d be groggy. He must trust himself. “That will do then. Thirty minutes to wash and so on. Then we’ll go.”

  “Of course, sir. It’ll be only…ohhh… two hours to the outskirts of London where you can catch a cab to your rooms.”

  “Yes.” Once more, he stared at the writing on the card. The door clicked shut.

  One. I injected myself for a good reason.

  Two. Watson is gone. Forget him for the moment.

  Three. Remember Miss Wilhelmina. Her machine she’s taking to the World’s Fair may be important.

  Four. Resist.

  “Forget Dr. Watson?”

  He remembered thinking about disposing of him. Surely, he’d not followed through? This card was written by himself when he’d known more and had carefully calculated what should be done. Miss Wilhelmina, that female he remembered too much of. He’d been severely attracted, and she was related to the enemy.

  He would return to London, and no matter how distasteful the cart might be, he’d use the travelling time to get his mind in order. Besides, he’d ridden in far worse contraptions in the past.

  The case was always more important than any discomfort. Besides, he could question Horace about pig farming and whether he’d seen anyone else parachuting down in the vicinity. His own parachute was nowhere in sight.

  Had he killed Watson? He rather hoped not.

  A small case waited in the corner—at least there would be clean clothes inside it. Sherlock stood, straightened his trousers and shirt, then smoothed down his unruly hair.

  Hair… he recalled touching her hair, then an instant later remembered the cages and the naked women, and his animalistic arousal.

  He’d considered creating a criminal empire.

  He picked up the revolver, and the lethal weight of it made cruel impulses crowd in, like rats raising their noses at the first sniff of death.

  This pig farm was clearly a bad beginning.

  And what was the case he was following up? The missing wife?

  Resist, he’d written.

  He carried the suitcase to the bed and opened it. Inside was another card: Do not give in to these wicked impulses. Find out why they are happening.

  That explained the resist.

  And there was his case. No longer was it a missing wife. He had a more important one—himself, those missing hours and his impulses. But was he correct to assume that giving in to them was wrong?

  Maybe it was his destiny? Maybe whatever had happened to Watson was meant to be?

  “Never!” Sherlock scoffed, pulling a fresh shirt from the case and shaking it out. Destiny was rubbish. “I make my own destiny.”

  As soon as he reached London and had everything in order, he would be paying a visit to Miss Moriarty, wherever she had found lodgings. He would merely watch her at first… as he had when she’d slept on the desk, with her red hair curling over her eye, and her breasts spilling from her dress.

  2

  Willa

  Willa woke groggily at the hand shaking her shoulder to find the men guarding the cargo in the small study with her, and they were alarmed and angry. They seemed suspicious of her involvement in an event that had left one of them concussed. Her answers were slurred and a little incoherent due to the after-effects of the laudanum. Perhaps that was why they eventually left her alone?

  With her hand propped on the corridor wall, she’d blinked as they hauled away the guard from outside this very door… and realized she was clutching a business card.

  Sherlock Holmes, Investigator.

  That scared her.

  A threat. It was a threat.

  She knew of his existence, of how he’d harried her family. It was partly why her father had gone overseas to seek employment. The man was a bloodhound and a terrier combined, a person with influence in high places in the British government… and why had he left his card under her hand? It announced his presence on the airship and clear as day said he’d been responsible for the assault on the guard.

  He’d been close enough to tuck the card under her fingers. She flushed hot and cold then stuck the offending bit of cardboard into a pocket. Was he really trying to threaten her? Why had he then vanished? Was he planning to get the law to intercept the airship in London?

  If she told anyone of this, they might regard her as their enemy. She would say nothing, yet.

  The airship landed at a deserted field and unloaded the cargo—a cargo she knew was not right. Acceptance of the bill of lading was her responsibility due to Foxx having arranged this job in exchange for a free ticket across the channel. She signed where directed, handed over the paperwork to a man who’d emerged from one of the trucks. She took the papers given her in exchange and didn’t look at any of the cages as they were removed, even though each was big enough to contain a human.

  Soon after they took off in France, she had worked out what was in the hold.

  “’Ere, you ever want a job, a good one, I was told there’s one for you here.” He tapped the letterhead on a piece of paper he held out and let her read it—a London address. “One that suits your skills, I was told to tell ya. Whatever those are.” He winked.

  “I’ll think about it, thank you.”

  “Course you will.”

  “Is this from… Mr. Ramsey Foxx?” she asked.

  The truck driver grinned, tipped his hat to her then walked off.

  Did he think her stupid? Though if they’d wanted to stuff her in a cage, they would have, could have, easily. How low would she have to be to chase a job with whoever this was?

  The other drivers started their steam-electric engines and whistled some sort of signal to each other, banging the side of their doors. They knew what they carried, as did the armed guards hopping into the cabins of their trucks.

  This was blatantly awful, yet if she told the authorities, Foxx would be implicated and so would she. That is, assuming Foxx was involved? Just because he helped her get on the airship, it didn’t mean he had to know what was inside it?

  She had little money. No one to turn to for advice. And she’d signed those papers. She blamed the laudanum for her poor choices. Damn.

  As the trucks drove away, she limped back to the airship, boarded, and found her room above the hold—that terrible place where those women had been held captive—and sat on the edge of the bunk all the way to London, staring at the wall and torn as to what to do. She had always thought herself a good person.

  Surely Mr. Foxx, the family friend, couldn’t possibly have known what the ship had truly carried?

  London would herald a new beginning.

  Or so she told herself as she marched up the stone steps into the Bank of England to claim the money her father had deposited many years ago. The interest might not have added much to the sum, considering the ups and downs of trade, but nearly ten thousand pounds was more than enough for her to buy an entire house and begin her career.

  She would forget this one mistake, erase this error she’d made from her history by becoming a goo
d, no, a great person from this day forward.

  The clerk smiled at her identification papers and her letter from her father that set out his will. He took note of the will itself, shuffled back his chair, and beckoned her into one of the offices deep inside the bank.

  “Come. Mr. Fitzgerald will see you, Miss Moriarty.”

  “Thank you.” She followed, her heart singing at the prospect of a good future where she would amaze the world with her creations.

  It took no more than ten minutes and soon she was outside again, with her one suitcase of clothes and the second one with her machine. The driver of the horse-drawn cab seemed exceptionally pleased to see her return, though she’d paid him a coin to wait. Perhaps he’d thought she lied.

  As she gave her cases to the driver, her fingers felt utterly cold and numb from the shock of what Mr. Fitzgerald had said to her. Her stomach sank again as she contemplated the difference between her previous joy and her true situation. Everything had changed.

  “There is no money left, Miss. I’m sorry but our records show it was all withdrawn six months and five days ago.”

  He’d showed her the date of the withdrawal—it had been two days after the death of her father.

  Someone had sent a telegraph. Someone had stolen all the funds she was relying on to live here in London. What was she going to do? How could she recover the money? The man had been no help at all, telling her to engage a solicitor if she wished to complain.

  Her future had shrunk down to what she could afford with the money in her purse. A solicitor? How? She’d need one who would work for the promise of payment.

  With her heart shredded and her stomach urging her to throw up the bread roll she’d nibbled on in the airship, she thought hard, swallowing her sorrow. Decisions must be made. Use what she had, think. Perhaps there was a way?

  As long as she did not sell her machine.

  The cab driver found her cheap lodgings, instead of the hotel she’d planned to use until a house was purchased.

  The façade of the building was stained with mold. The alleyway to the left was littered with rat droppings and rags. The door the landlady emerged from was a dingy gray and crooked.

  “This is Mrs. Loaf.” The cab driver nodded at both of them, shoved his hands in his pockets. “She’ll be good to you, Miss uhhh…”

  “Wilhelmina Moriarty.” She picked up the smaller suitcase with her clothes, and the driver grabbed the machine suitcase. He grunted at the weight and sagged sideways.

  The woman bestowed a gap-toothed smile on Willa while a jumpy little brown-haired dog wound between her legs, wagging its tail at Willa.

  “I’ll take care of her as long as she pays her bills.” Mrs. Loaf winked. “Come on! You got the downstairs room with a view of our grand street.”

  Her skirts swept the cobblestones as she turned to lead them inside. The little dog yapped and ran in mad circles.

  “Thank you.” She smiled hesitantly at the young, dark and tousle-haired driver.

  Truly, she was thankful. Her stomach was full of a sick sludge of anxiety, and at least this was somewhere to stay. Until her money ran out. She must get that World Fair entry submitted and approved… somehow.

  “Just be careful flashing about any of your money, Miss,” the boy-driver told her from the side of his mouth. “If you want finer lodgings, you tell Mrs. Loaf to get hold of me, and I’ll come running.”

  “Yes. I will. Thank you.”

  Finer lodgings. He thought her rich because she’d been to a bank.

  In her room, once she was alone, Willa unpacked slowly, meticulously, well aware these were the sum of her possessions. She found the card of Sherlock Holmes in the pocket of her dress and laid it on the bed. With a strange satisfaction, she chose the pistol in her suitcase as the next thing to unpack and laid it on the tattered mattress pad next to the crinkled card—crinkled because she’d crushed it in her hand.

  She lifted her head. Had it been him? Could it be?

  Had he stolen the money from her account? If anyone had the ability to forge documents and gather the correct information needed to fool a bank, it was Sherlock Holmes. Anger heated her, and she had to sit down on the bed to calm herself.

  How dare he. Maybe she was wrong? She could never prove this, could she? Again, the pistol drew her eye. There was always revenge. Except…

  Revenge was the last resort of the wicked.

  She might be wrong. Though her mind liked to do little leapfrogs of logic, and she’d often found it was right when she thought it wrong, especially when it came to engineering machines. This was similar?

  Sherlock Holmes had always hated her family. The card was a taunt. It was a sneer, a goad, a blatant come and get me if you dare.

  3

  Sleuthwork

  Finding Miss Moriarty once he returned to London would not be simple, but Sherlock had resources. From the first day, he employed the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of urchins who would hunt down clues for pay. No doubt they found her by their usual methods—by listening to the gossip on the street.

  She had been to the Bank of England after arrival and judging by where she had chosen to stay, she’d found her funds to be low.

  That could be turned to his advantage.

  Mrs. Loaf’s Lodgings for Respectable Women seemed about the bottom of the barrel. The white-painted sign on the brickwork front of the building was faded out by weathering and fungal growth. Disguised as a health inspector, he’d checked the place closely before retreating and renting a second-floor flat across the street.

  Money greased palms, and from the feel of the change he’d received after paying the man renting his room, the palms around here were pre-coated with grease and dirt.

  The interior was empty except for a few pieces of ancient furniture. He unpacked a small packet of oily food, his binoculars, and a pen and notebook for recording Wilhelmina’s comings and goings.

  Night fell. Dark things now lurked in the alleyway opposite. The rats here grew bigger than dogs, and a few were blacker than the inside of a grave.

  He raised the binoculars and focused down, finding the calibration, for the alley was a similar distance to her window.

  Something had slithered into a drain in the alley, and rats did not slither. It was food for thought. London had always been prone to weirdness, and the underground structures beneath the city went back to the Romans, if not further—there would be buried villages down there.

  It was interesting but not relevant this night. He had a female to observe.

  Sherlock took a bite from the cold sausage he drew from its paper wrapping on the floor—one not prepared by his housekeeper but bought from a street vendor. His housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, would’ve recoiled at the appearance of this so-called food. She would probably have removed it from his rooms at 221B with a pair of tongs.

  Sleuthing demanded sacrifices.

  After swallowing the bite of sausage and grimacing, Sherlock leaned back in the moth-eaten armchair. He lifted his binoculars again to peer through the parting in the thin curtains and across the short distance to his target’s street-level room. Lamps flickered inside. Nine at night, and Miss Willa was still awake and tinkering with her machine where it was laid out on a table.

  “Malignant Energy,” he murmured then rolled the word around in his mind, wondering at the quackery behind it.

  If there’d been a balcony outside his room, he’d have had difficulty seeing to the lower level. Since she had her lamps on, and her curtains were also thin, he could see into her room with ease. At ground level, a brick fence would have been in the way. She laid aside the machine—placing it on the floor from the shadows and angles, and now…

  She was undressing for bed. Riveted by the process, though annoyed at being tempted, he observed her become utterly naked. The dark silhouette of female curves with all its arousing dips and bumps wandered about the room before she slipped a night dress over her head.

  The lights in her room
were extinguished, and Sherlock sat back and sighed.

  He would not relieve the ache now occupying his trousers. No. Instead he would write out a note to her.

  Dear Miss Wilhelmina Moriarty,

  You are cordially invited to visit upon Mr. Sherlock Holmes tomorrow, or today, as the case may be since this will no doubt reach you then. No need to RSVP. I expect you for afternoon tea. There will be financial matters discussed I feel would be to your benefit.

  Please refrain from wearing that pirate dress from the airship.

  My housekeeper will provide the sustenance.

  Yours,

  Sherlock Holmes.

  He folded the paper into a neat rectangle.

  He’d been polite yet firm. His address was inscribed at the top. Now to see what happened after he delivered it to the letterbox of her lodgings.

  A few days went by and nothing happened. No Miss Moriarty paid a visit to 221B Baker Street, at either afternoon or morning teatime.

  He took a day off from this new obsession of his to find the countryside landing field the airship had used, and to interview the locals about what they’d seen that day. Once he’d extracted the description of the vehicles, the Irregulars used footwork and their street eyes to discover the destination of the trucks that’d taken away the human cargo.

  It was a house in London.

  Some of his older and more criminally inclined associates told Sherlock that address was a bordello. He paid the house a visit and found it’d been recently and hurriedly vacated. Dead end there.

  Why would a brothel vanish unless there were dreadful secrets? Most of them paid the coppers to ignore their trade.

  Why bring in women from overseas when prostitutes were as common as raindrops on the streets of London?

  The airship owners were even harder to track due to the recently passed Official Secrets Act. Their names were locked away.