Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper (7 page)

Elmwood coughed and glanced at his wife. “I am sorry, Mr. Smith, but this is very delicate, and there is no easy way to tell you. Mesmer hypnotized her into believing she was nothing more than a common whore.”

A small, strangled cry escaped Mrs. Elmwood’s lips, and her shoulders began to shake. Elmwood placed a hand on her and said softly, “Control yourself, Martha.”

“It was a terrible sight!” Mrs. Elmwood blurted out. “She cavorted around the room, approaching all the fathers of the other girls and propositioning them! We shall never show our faces in society again!”

“But did Mesmer not fix the hypnosis?”

“The scoundrel claimed his so-called Hypno-Array was suddenly broken!” said Elmwood with barely contained fury. “A scaffold of lights and lenses which he wore upon his head. He took me into the corridor and said that it would be costly to fix, and he would require funds to be able to return Charlotte to herself.”

“You refused?”

“He wanted five thousand guineas, the villain!” spat Elmwood.

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Gideon said, “So…?”

“Mesmer left and gave me a card with the name of the hotel in which he was staying should we change our minds. We took Charlotte home, of course, and locked her in her room—she made overtures to the cab driver and even our butler. She was like … like an alley cat, Mr. Smith! Our beautiful, sweet daughter, swearing like a dockworker and—and rubbing herself against any man she met!”

“You consulted a doctor?”

“Several. They could do nothing. We went to the police, but would you believe there is no crime on the statute books that deals with hypnosis? It is something I shall be writing to my MP to have him remedy at the earliest opportunity.”

“And Charlotte…?”

“On Wednesday,” said Mrs. Elmwood tremulously, “she slipped out of her room when the maid forgot to lock it behind her. She hasn’t been seen since.”

“Obviously, given her state of mind, she could be … well, anything could happen to her,” said Mr. Elmwood. His wife sobbed wildly, and he looked imploringly at Gideon. “Please, Mr. Smith. Can you help?”

Gideon felt at a loss. If the police couldn’t intervene, then what could he do? He said carefully, “You will appreciate that this is not my usual purview, Mr. Elmwood. I have no jurisdiction greater than the Metropolitan Police, and—”

“I have brought a photograph of Charlotte,” said Mr. Elmwood quietly, the fight seeming to have gone out of him. “Perhaps if you will just look at it…”

Gideon took the picture and said, “I still cannot … oh.”

He stared at the photograph: Charlotte Elmwood in her Sunday best, holding a parasol in a photographer’s studio, a painted backdrop of a sun-drenched park behind her. He stared at it for a very long time.

“Mr. Smith?” asked Mr. Elmwood.

“Yes,” said Gideon eventually. “Yes, I’ll help you.”

He held the photograph in his hands and could not stop them from shaking.

Charlotte Elmwood, said her parents.

But the photograph was the image of Maria. The
living image
of his beloved Maria.

I
NTERMEDIO
: N
OT
E
NOUGH
, N
OT
E
NOUGH

He sat in candlelight in his rooms, the leather bag on the table, its clasp shut tight. Beside it was a newspaper, freshly bought.

J
ACK THE
R
IPPER
S
TRIKES
A
GAIN!
screamed the black ink. It was the late edition, detailing in lavish, grotesque language the scene in the alley where he had stood earlier that day. The victim had a name: Emily Dawson, a young woman in the employment of Professor Stanford Rubicon. He shrugged.

He was bored already. And so was the blackness in his soul. Where once he—and it—had thrilled at such murders, now they were old hat.

Not enough,
the imaginary ghost had said.
Not enough.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Man cannot live on bread alone. Variety is the spice of life.

He reached forward and unfastened the bag, the candlelight glinting off the metal that scraped and shrieked together as he lifted the leather case onto his lap. One by one he took out the items.

His hungry soul received no succor anymore from the clean, clinical swipe across the forehead. It thirsted for sweeter blood, that which was torn with greater violence and passion from its host. It had to be fed, lest the blackness grow and consume him from the inside. It had to be quieted.

He turned the saw, which had tiny, vicious teeth and a wooden handle, this way and that, the dancing candlelight glancing off its wide blade. For the severing of bones. He laid it on the table and took out a pair of long-handled tongs, each of the jointed grips ending in a rusting spike. To spear and hold slippery internal organs that needed to be removed. A wooden-handled corkscrew ending in a sharp-edged tube, for swiftly slicing a circle of flesh, fat, and muscle to allow access to the abdomen. And so on, each one more cruel and exciting than the last.

Instruments with which to create a symphony of pain.

Not enough,
had said the ghost, which he now recognized as his own black soul, not the departed spirit of a murdered girl at all.

It wanted more. It wanted sweeter blood. He would provide.

He picked up the newspaper. He was so very far from home, from the heat where his black soul was birthed. London shivered beneath snow, and he found it hateful and frozen, a sluggish dead thing, almost. It was fear that iced London’s heart as well, fear of Jack the Ripper. The lurid description of the latest killing elbowed out all other news, as though there were only London and its dead in the entire world.

And what a world. He turned the page, and his attention was snared by a report on Freedom, the fledgling township rising from the blood and dust of the savage lands controlled by the slaver-warlords in Texas. An escapade involving the Crown’s hero, Gideon Smith, had resulted in San Antonio, popularly known as Steamtown, being blown to smithereens. A brass dragon was mentioned—whether it was the same as that which had attacked London that summer, or of a similar design, the newspaper could not hazard a guess. But there was some connection, the editors were sure, and if Mr. Gideon Smith was on the case, then there was surely little to fear. This town called Freedom, though … the newspaper writer confessed to some misgivings about this evidently burgeoning settlement somewhere in the wilds of Texas and not far from the border with New Spain. Was there room for yet another faction in much-fractured America? Where would their loyalties lie? With England’s interests on the East Coast? New Spain to the south? The Californian Meiji? Or would they be conquered by one of the Texan warlords eager to take the now-destroyed Steamtown’s slice of the pie?

He laid the newspaper down. He was thinking of Spain, of a family holiday to Madrid when he was a very small boy. His mother had insisted they all go to watch a play, an earnest, boring affair that lasted all day and into the night. He had lost track of the dull story almost immediately, and would have fallen asleep but for the
intermedio,
a series of brash and energetic short musical productions that filled the gaps between the acts of the main play. They were designed to allow the theater-goers to stretch their legs, visit the bathrooms, or buy food; he had been rapt with delight, coming alive for those brief intervals, rousing from his torpor at the loud music and hilarity.

He picked up the saw again. Intermedio. He studied its cruel teeth. Life was like the play, long and boring and interminable.

But there were flashes of clarity, shrieking music, splashes of red.

He smiled. It was time for another intermedio.…

5

T
HE
G
RAVITY
OF
THE
S
ITUATION

Apep burst through the layer of low, gray cloud that hung over Bodmin Moor into a spotless blue sky flooded with brilliant sunshine. Maria heard noisy, messy vomiting behind her and allowed herself the smallest of self-satisfied smiles, before pulling the brass dragon into an even steeper ascent. Above her she could see the ghostly imprint of the moon. It was said that Queen Victoria wanted to put an Englishman on the moon and claim the satellite for the British Empire. Others said it was impossible, it was too far, man could not fly so high. And beyond the moon … why, beyond was the black emptiness of the universe. She felt something inside her subtly shift, like tiny cogs fitting together, bearings settling snugly, rods and pistons smoothly aligning. But she knew, distantly, that it was something more than that. Those were the only reference points she had, the mechanical marvels that Professor Einstein had used to assemble her body, greater than the sum of her parts. The shift was in that part of her shrouded in mystery, that which she doubted she would ever fully understand. Her human brain.

“Maria.”

Moisture formed and then rolled off the glass windows in front of her—the circular “eyes” of the crocodilian brass dragon—as she pushed Apep on, and up. White trails whistled from the batlike wings and on the long snout in front of the windows, and beautiful, treelike ice formations began to crawl along the brass nose. She studied them as they advanced.
Dendritic,
that was the word.

“M-Maria! In the name of God, you’re going to kill us!”

Ah. Yes. The formation of ice on the nose of the brass dragon meant that the temperature was falling. She hadn’t felt it, but it was good that Doctor Augustus had managed to stop vomiting long enough to point it out to her. The brain inside her head had put up with a lot—she had been dragged across half the world underwater, and lived, as much as the word “lived” could be applied to one like her—but she had not yet subjected herself to extremes of temperature that would kill a normal human being. She brought Apep to an abrupt halt, waiting as Doctor Augustus first thumped against the ceiling of the cramped cockpit then flopped to the floor, groaning to indicate he was still conscious.

“Down, down,” he begged. “S-so cold … how high are we?”

Maria cocked her head to one side and considered. “36,798 feet. And a few inches.”

She glanced over her shoulder at Doctor Augustus, a ruddy-faced man with a bulbous nose and a shock of white hair that protruded from beneath the leather flying helmet he was wearing. Over his white laboratory coat he had zipped up a leather and shearling jacket. She always found him a somewhat comical figure, but now she paused. Were his eyes bulging more than usual?

“Thirty-thir-thir…,” he said. Maria tittered slightly. “Imposs-imp-imp…”

Suddenly, Doctor Augustus keeled over, his hands scrabbling at his throat. Oh, dear. Perhaps there was such a thing as too high, after all. She turned Apep in the bright blue sky, enjoying the way the unfettered sunlight glinted off its wings and snaking, jointed brass tail, then began to descend in a tight spiral toward the carpet of cloud far below.

*   *   *

Bodmin Moor had been subtly cordoned off for an area of around sixty square miles centered on a cluster of temporary huts and tents at the foot of Rough Tor. Soldiers, police officers, and agents of the Crown had quietly been keeping anyone from entering the area for the past week. Maria had been given quarters in a small building made of curved metal, with the most basic of comforts; whether this was because they considered her not quite human, or because luxurious living was not high on their agendas, she wasn’t sure. It was in her quarters—windowless, and lit by oil lamps—that Doctor Augustus found her, sitting on her bed and placing the last of her personal effects into her valise.

“You are packed already,” he said, his white hair standing upright now that it was freed from the confines of the flying helmet. He had kept the jacket on, though. It was terribly cold on the moor.

“It is Saturday,” said Maria. “My time here is thankfully at an end. And you, Doctor, seem much recovered.”

“A spot of … well, I suppose we should call it altitude sickness. At least we know man’s limits now, Maria.” He chuckled. “Always nice to make a fresh scientific discovery.”

He paused as Maria closed the valise. She smoothed her skirts and said, “I suppose I should apologize, Doctor. I didn’t intend to fly quite so high. I certainly didn’t mean to cause you harm.”

Doctor Augustus flexed his muscles beneath the lab coat and jacket. “No lasting harm done. Next time I think we’ll perhaps rig up some kind of breathing apparatus, such as the divers wear.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Next time?”

Gideon had been dead set against her coming, of course. But Mr. Walsingham had been most insistent. He still considered Maria and Apep to be what he termed “assets” of the British Empire, and there were many questions to be answered about the brass dragon, Maria’s control over it, and just what it was capable of. Besides, she burned to know the answers to those questions herself. There was much of Maria’s existence that was a mystery, not least her unique relationship with a brass dragon forged in the furnaces of ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, answers seemed to be in short supply—either because the assembly of scientists, engineers, and doctors who had spent the week examining her, examining Apep, and examining her and Apep at the same time were keeping their findings to themselves, or because, as she suspected, they just did not have the first clue about what they were dealing with.

“There is much still to learn, Maria,” said Doctor Augustus gently. “We have barely scratched the surface of Apep’s—your—capabilities. Every problem solved raises a hundred more questions. I would relish the opportunity to work with you again.”

“I suppose that will be up to Mr. Walsingham, and I doubt he will take my feelings on the matter into account,” she said, standing up. “How am I to return to London?”

“I will accompany you,” he said. “We have a Fleet Air Arm aerostat on standby to fly us to Highgate Aerodrome. I just need to get my things.” He paused at the door to her hut. “The pilot says it is snowing in London, my dear. You might want a shawl…?”