Twelve Minutes to Midnight (14 page)

“Gentleman, if we are all quite ready to begin.”

XX

“As President of the Society of Illustrated Periodicals and Literary Magazines, I am pleased to see such an array of distinguished guests gathered here this evening.” Gripping the sides of the lectern, the grey-whiskered gentleman peered out at his audience, who were now listening with a respectful silence. “Before me are the finest voices in English literature and I have brought you together, gentlemen, to hear news of a dazzling new literary prize.”

Across the meeting room, there came the sound of creaking benches as the assembled authors leaned forward in their seats.

“In the past week,” the president continued, “the Society has been approached by an anonymous benefactor, who, in these last days of the nineteenth century, has proposed a thrilling literary challenge, a unique competition which comes with a breathtaking reward.”

His solemn features flushed as though he could 
barely contain his own excitement at the news he was sharing, and his hands cut the air in flurries of motion as he spoke.

“As we stand on the brink of the twentieth century, the challenge I lay down before you this evening, gentlemen, is for you to write and publish a story about the wonders of the new century that is to come. The author and magazine who are judged to have produced the winning story will share a prize of twenty thousand pounds.”

A gasp rippled through the room, nobody having dared to believe until that moment that the size of the prize was true. Apart from a few of the literary giants seated in the front row, most of the authors gathered in the room were more used to scratching a living, selling their stories for tens of shillings not thousands of pounds. It was an incredible sum of money.

From her hiding place, Penny’s nerves started to jangle. The competition, the prize – it was all too good to be true. Something wasn’t right here.

“What’s the catch?”

The call from the floor of the meeting room echoed Penelope’s own thoughts.

“The Society will publicise the competition,” the president replied. “We have taken out advertisements which will be printed in all the daily newspapers tomorrow to inform the reading public of this exciting literary challenge. However, the competition itself has only one 
important rule – the winning story must be written and published before the new century dawns.”

The room erupted in a chorus of protest, the authors’ clamouring voices shouting out their concerns.

“But it’s New Year’s Eve in two days’ time!”

“Impossible!”

“It can’t be done.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” The president raised his hands to calm the uproar. “If you don’t think you can rise to the challenge then that’s perfectly all right. However, think about the prize at hand if you do.”

The room fell silent as his words hung in the air, all minds turning again to dreams of unimagined wealth. Then, from the back of the room, a portly man of about fifty rose to his feet, his face set in a suspicious expression.

“Who is going to judge this competition then?” he demanded. “I don’t want to see another
stitch-up
like the Fraser Prize fiasco. Every single book on the shortlist was published by John Fraser himself!”

The president solemnly shook his head as knowing snickers of laughter rippled along the long oak benches.

“Our benefactor will judge the competition herself,” he replied.

At this comment, Penelope’s vague feelings of 
unease began to sharpen into a sense of dread. The pieces of the jigsaw slotted into place at last: the challenge to write a story about the century to come, the impossible deadline, the astounding prize and the mysterious lady who was behind it all. Her fingers whitening as she gripped the heavy velvet curtain more tightly around herself, Penny knew who had brought them all here tonight.

Back in the meeting room, the doors to the side of the stage swung open. From the wings, a long line of waiters emerged, their brimming trays replenished with drinks again. Moving along the rows of oak benches, they presented each of the gentlemen sitting there with a tall glass of fizzing champagne. Monty snatched his glass from the tray with an enthusiastic hand as, from behind the lectern, the president began to speak again.

“And to celebrate the inauguration of this grand new prize, I propose a toast, gentlemen.”

He waited until every single guest in the meeting room had a charged glass in their hand, and then as the waiters filed out of the room once more, the president brought his own glass aloft.

“Here’s to the twentieth century and your stories that will bring it alive.”

“Hear, hear!”

As one, the assembled audience stood and raised their glasses aloft before taking a swig of the sparkling liquid. From the galleried window, 
Penny watched on aghast as a strange silence suddenly fell across the room.

Every figure was standing motionless, the authors frozen in position with the now-empty glasses fixed to their lips. At the front of the stage, she could see the president of the Society, his pinched features now as grey as his whiskers. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes were glazed and unfocused as though held in some kind of trance. Then the glass slipped from his fingers and crashed to the floor where it shattered into countless pieces.

As the sound of the splintering glass echoed through the silence, a dark figure stepped from the shadows at the side of the stage. It was a tall woman, dressed in a flowing black gown, her shoulders muffled in a black fur stole and her face shrouded by a thick black veil. Arriving at the front of the stage, she carefully stepped past the circle of shattered glass and then pulled back her veil to gaze out at the audience beneath her.

Penelope gasped.

A stray lock of dark hair fell across the fur stole, as from beneath the veil the strikingly beautiful features of Lady Cambridge were revealed. Her face was deadly pale, the hard red line of her lips set in a disconcerting smile whilst her blue eyes shone with an unnatural fire.

“So this is the cream of literary London?” she sneered coldly. “The finest imaginations of our 
generation snuffling like pigs in a trough in search of the prize. I knew that the promise of twenty thousand pounds would be enough to bring you all here tonight.”

Lady Cambridge stared out at the rows of silent authors, still frozen, seemingly hypnotised by the cold beauty of her glare.

“However, I’m afraid that the rules of this competition have changed somewhat. The drinks with which you have just toasted your own success were laced with a special preparation of the venom of the dream-weaver spider.” She glanced down at Monty’s spellbound figure in the front row, icy daggers in her eyes. “The last of my supplies thanks to the meddling of that niece of yours. This will give you all the inspiration you need.”

Monty stood perfectly motionless; his ruddy cheeks now pale as the glass in his hand trembled slightly. From her hiding place, shrouded in the heavy velvet curtains, a cold shiver crept down Penelope’s spine, fearful that at any moment, Lady Cambridge could turn her gaze towards her.

“This special preparation is twenty times more potent than the venom I used to dose the patients at Bedlam. Their minds were already broken, but yours need to be bent to my will, so I’ve mixed the solution to complete saturation with the mesmerising venom of the flat-sand scorpion. 
With the power of your words, I want you to hypnotise the entire city.”

Her chilling gaze glittered with menace.

“The stories that will flow from your pens will not only chart the future to come,” Lady Cambridge continued, her aristocratic voice cold and imperious, “but will send everyone who reads them spiralling into the same madness that possesses you now. Under my command, you will weave subliminal orders into the sentences you write, hypnotic triggers to take control of your readers’ minds. These subliminal orders will bear the imprint of the dream-weaver spider; a parasitic code spreading its poison like a plague. Soon every reader of your penny dreadfuls and shilling shockers will be haunted by the same visions that stalked the cells at Bedlam. All across London, they will pick up their pens with twitching fingers and write for me the answers that I have been seeking. With the power of all these minds working together, I will be able to unlock the secrets of the next thousand years. The prophecy will be fulfilled. As the New Year dawns, your words will seal my destiny as the most powerful woman in history. Already, the agents of a dozen enemy powers petition me for the secrets I hold. The auction of the century will commence on January the first.”

She brought her black gloved hands together with a thunder crack. 

“Now get back to your Grub Street offices and filthy writers’ garrets and set down for me the stories that will make my fortune.”

Roused from their stupor, the audience turned as one and silently began to file out of the meeting room, shuffling their way past the long lines of benches and out into the lobby beyond. Penny glimpsed Monty and Wigram in the midst of the crowd, their faces still frozen, emotionless, and their eyes oddly glazed. As the Society’s president slumped forward over the lectern, Lady Cambridge swept the train of her black gown behind her as she disappeared back into the shadows at the side of the stage.

Penelope was torn, her mind still spinning at what she had heard. Should she follow Lady Cambridge or try and break this spell that she had cast over Monty, Mr Wigram and the rest of literary London? She shivered. Lady Cambridge had come back from the dead once already. She needed help before she faced her again.

Darting back behind the curtains, she hurried down the dimly-lit corridor. Pushing her way through the doors, Penny stepped out into the crowded lobby. A mob of top hats and evening suits barred her path; the entranced authors, editors and publishers milling silently as they waited to leave Burlington House.

“Wake up!” she cried out as she pushed her way through the throng. With sharp elbows, she 
battled her way forward, the glazed faces of the men she pushed past glancing down at her with deadened eyes, as though she was an apparition out of a dream. Nobody tried to stop her; they just carried on walking towards the exit like sleepers in the night. Penny caught a glimpse of Monty and Wigram ahead of her, the two men departing through the ornate double doors into the darkened street outside.

In desperation, Penny launched herself forward, squeezing her way through the crowd. She felt the heel of her boot jab into a foot, and glancing back in apology saw Arthur Conan Doyle’s face crumpled in pain. The press of people around her was reaching a bottleneck as the entrance lay only a few feet away. With one last shove, Penelope barged her way past them and out through the doors.

The cold night air hit her like a slap across the face; thick fingers of mist swirling across the courtyard of Burlington House. Squinting into the gloom, Penny tried to determine which way Monty and Wigram had gone. Through the archway to her right, she could see a line of hansom cabs, the light from their lanterns straining against the night. At the steps of the nearest cab, she saw two familiar silhouettes, one tall and lean, the second rather broader in beam, climbing up into the carriage.

“Monty! Mr Wigram!” 

Penny raced towards the cab, her heels clattering across the misty cobbles. As she reached the footplate, a shadowy face appeared at the cab’s window; the thin, pinched features of her guardian dimly lit by a street lamp.

“What do you want?”

Her guardian’s bark echoed out into the night, wreaths of smoke clinging to his lips as he stared down at her with unblinking eyes.

“After Lady Cambridge appeared, I didn’t know what to do.” Penny spoke quickly, the words tumbling over one another in her confusion. “When you all drank the champagne, I thought you had been—”

“We don’t have time to listen to the girl’s nonsense.” Monty’s voice boomed out from the interior of the cab. “My mind is crawling with stories – I need to feel a pen between my fingers.”

With a distracted expression on his face, Wigram half-turned and nodded his agreement.

“Yes, of course,” he sighed. His voice was distant, as though he was listening to the scratching inside his own mind. “The stories must be written.”

He turned back to face Penelope, his stern features wreathed in shadows.

“Go home, young lady,” he told her. “Mr Flinch and I have a magazine to publish.”

Penny watched horrified as, with a gesture towards the driver, her guardian briskly turned 
away from the window. As the driver whipped the horses, the hansom cab rattled across the cobbles and disappeared down Piccadilly, the thick fog soon swallowing even the sound of the horses’ hooves. Standing alone in the darkness, she felt lost, trapped in a huge web spun by Lady Cambridge’s cunning. The nightmare wasn’t over – it was only just beginning.

XXI

“So they just left you standing there in the middle of Piccadilly?”

Alfie shook his head in disbelief as he trotted by Penelope’s side, the two of them turning left off the Strand as they headed for
The Penny Dreadful’s
office. An early morning mist was still clinging to the streets as they dodged past the empty barrows pushed by costermongers and street traders on their way back from Covent Garden Market. At a newsstand on the corner, a billboard proclaimed:

Penny nodded. Her own face was as grim as the grey December dawn.

“It was like they were in some kind of trance. I don’t think they even knew who I was. Mr Wigram didn’t return home at all last night, and there’s been no sign of Monty at his club. They 
must have come here.”

They were nearing the broad stone steps that led up to the office.

“And you think Lady Cambridge is behind all this?”

“I saw her, Alfie,” Penelope replied. “Lady Cambridge is still alive. She must have started that fire just to cover her tracks, burning down her own home and disappearing into the night with the prophecies of the century to come in her possession. And now she plans to write the final chapter.” Penny shivered as she recalled the icy gaze of the black-veiled widow staring out from the stage. “She drugged them all – the minds of the finest writers in London bent to her will. And if her plan works, she’ll soon have the whole of the city under her spell.”

Alfie’s face paled as he started to climb the steps, but when he reached the top, he threw his shoulders back in a resolute stance.

“Maybe it’s worn off by now,” he said confidently as his hand grasped the door handle.

Penny hung back, suddenly frightened at what they would find. Since her parents had died, Mr Wigram had been like a father to her – a strict and unsmiling guardian for the most time, but someone who cared for her nonetheless. If he didn’t recognise her again…

“It’s locked.” Alfie turned back to Penny, the handle rattling uselessly beneath his fingers. “But 
there’s someone in there – I can see them.”

Shaking off her nagging sense of fear, Penny stepped forward and peered through the frosted glass at the top of the door. She could see the soft glow of the gas lamps lighting the office. Beneath these, two shadowy silhouettes sat hunched behind facing desks, the faint clicking of typewriter keys the only sound that could be heard through the glass.

“Mr Wigram!”

Alfie rapped on the door knocker, its sudden thump causing Penny to jump in surprise. She turned towards Alfie with a hiss.

“Don’t!”

Alfie froze with his hand in mid-air, the door knocker dangling from his fingers. Mouthing an apology, he gently laid the knocker to rest. From behind the door, the noise of clattering keys came to a halt. Then there was the shrill shriek of a chair being pushed backwards followed by the sound of footsteps approaching.

“Someone’s coming.”

The heavy door slowly swung back to reveal Wigram’s haggard features peering around the frame.

“What do you want?” he asked in a low growl.

Penny took a nervous step backwards, shocked by her guardian’s sharp tone and his shabby appearance. He was wearing the same rumpled evening suit as he had been the previous evening, 
its starched collars now wilting and the white bow tie hanging unfastened around his neck.

“We were worried, Mr Wigram,” Alfie replied, swallowing hard as the lawyer turned his venomous gaze on him. “Penny said you didn’t come home last night and with everything that—”

“Too busy, too busy,” Wigram hissed, snapping Alfie into silence. His fingers twitched and twisted, weaving invisible webs in the air. Deep in the gloom of the office behind him, Monty was hunched in front of a typewriter, his shadowy fingers pecking at the keys like nervous crows. The actor didn’t even acknowledge their presence as he sat lost amongst the dreams that dripped from his fingers.

Penny took a step forward to enter the office, but Wigram quickly pulled the door towards him, blocking her path.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Her guardian’s frown tightened, his face creasing like an angry troll’s. His eyes were still set in the same unblinking glare, a
thousand-yard
-stare that seemed to peer straight through Penelope without seeing her at all.

“To work,” Penny replied, her voice shaking. “
The Penny Dreadful
is my magazine, remember?”

Wigram shook his head with a scowl.

“
The Penny Dreadful
belongs to Montgomery 
Flinch,” he hissed in reply. “Now leave us alone.”

The door slammed shut in Penny’s face. Despairing, she turned towards Alfie, who looked back at her with a bewildered expression.

“This isn’t right,” he muttered. “There’s got to be some way of getting through to him.” Alfie grabbed the knocker and started hammering it against the door with a heavy fist.

“Mr Wigram! Monty! Please let us in!”

He paused, waiting for an answer. But the only reply that came was the sound of several bolts being slid across the door.

With a sinking heart, Penny shook her head.

“It’s no use,” she told Alfie, as he lifted the door knocker again. “They’re in her power. Lady Cambridge is running
The Penny Dreadful
now.”

Alfie let the knocker fall back into place with a hopeless clunk.

“What can we do then?”

“I don’t know,” Penny replied, shaking her head as she stared at the locked door, the name of
The Penny Dreadful
etched across the frosted glass. This was her magazine – Montgomery Flinch was her creation. A cold, creeping fury rose up inside her, Penny’s fingers whitening as they slowly clenched into fists. She wouldn’t let Lady Cambridge take this away. She was going to find a way to stop her.

“Come on,” she said to Alfie, turning away from the door and heading down the steps to the 
street below. “Let’s go.”

A confused expression clung to Alfie’s face as he scrambled to keep up with Penny’s brisk stride.

“But where are we going?” he asked.

“Most of the authors in London were at that meeting last night,” Penny replied, her face set in a determined frown. “We’re going to find out if they’re under Lady Cambridge’s spell as well.”

“I’m so sorry, sir, but these two young imps just barged right past me.”

Framed in the doorway, the butler bent his head in apology as Penny and Alfie stood defiantly in front of him, just inside the threshold to the study. Through a long sash window, thin streaks of sunlight fell across the mahogany writing desk which sat beneath it, its surface crowded with manuscripts and papers. Turning in his chair, the hunched figure of a middle-aged man looked up questioningly at the interruption, the pen in his hand still racing across the page with scarcely a pause for thought. The plump walrus moustache perched on his top lip made him instantly recognisable to anyone who read his bestselling stories of scientific romance –
The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds
and
The Invisible Man
– but the author’s eyes were distant and glazed. He muttered under his breath as he turned back to his desk, scribbling frantically across the sheets of paper strewn there. 

“I’ll get them to leave right away,” the butler reassured him.

“We’re going nowhere,” said Alfie, his arms folded tightly across his chest. “Not until we’ve spoken to Mr Wells.”

Oblivious to their presence, H. G. Wells sat bent over his desk, his pen continuously scratching across the page as he talked to himself in a low mumble. Penelope strained her ears to try to make out the words.

“Secrets of the flying machine … the land ironclad triumphant … a calculating machine the size of a thimble … the first men in the moon … the spiral of life … the end of the world.”

“Now come along.” The butler laid a firm hand on Penny’s shoulder, breaking her concentration. “I’m really going to have to insist that you both leave.”

Penny turned to face him, her eyes wide with concern.

“You know that something is wrong,” she said. “Anyone can see that – so why won’t you let me help him?”

The butler’s mask of reserve cracked, and Penny glimpsed for the first time the glimmer of doubt in his eyes.

“How long has he been like this?” she pressed.

The butler glanced nervously over Penny’s shoulder as though fearful of betraying his master’s confidence, but Wells was still hunched 
over his writing desk, his pen scratching across the page without a pause.

“Since he returned home last night,” the butler confided in a low voice. “He’s not eaten, slept or even changed his clothes – he has just sat there at his desk filling endless pages with his scribbles. I’ve never known him like this, even when he is writing one of his stories to a deadline for the monthly magazines.”

Alfie glanced down as, from the edge of the desk, a loose sheaf of papers teetered and fluttered to the floor, but Wells carried on writing regardless.

“Can’t you get him to stop?” he asked.

The butler shook his head firmly, a horrified expression fixed to his face.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s not my place.”

Penny stepped forward into the heart of the study, her slight figure dwarfed by the towering bookcases that lined the walls.

“Well, I’ll make it my place.”

She reached out and rested her hand on the author’s shoulder, trying to rouse him from his entranced state.

“Mr Wells, Mr Wells, can you hear me?”

Her voice was soft but insistent, yet Wells gave no sign that he heard it as the pen in his fingers scratched without a pause across the page. Penny peered down at the words spilling from the pen. 

Taking a deep breath, she gently caught hold of Wells’s hand, trying to pluck the pen from his fingers.

“Mr Wells,” she pleaded. “You need to wake up.”

His hand still grasping the pen, the author looked up at her. For a moment, beneath his bristling eyebrows, Wells’s grey eyes swam into focus, seeing Penelope as though for the first time.

“Unhand me, child,” he hissed. “My eyes have seen the glory – I have glimpsed the shape of things to come. Flickering visions of the future – they come so quickly – the triumphs and disasters, the inevitable and the unforeseen. There are the ideas for a thousand books swirling around my brain. I must get them down.”

Snatching his hand away, Wells turned back to the page.

“You’ve been poisoned,” Penelope told him, her sharp tone trying to break through the cloud of delirium that held the author in its grip. “These aren’t your words – they’re a dream of madness.”

With an anguished howl, Wells turned again to face them. His eyes rolled upwards, his features contorted with rage. With a barely suppressed 
anger, he slammed his fist against the desk.

“Get out! Get out!” he roared. “Kenton – get this creature out of here. They come to take my ideas – thieves and plagiarists all. Get her out!”

Almost apologetically, Penny felt the butler’s heavy hands rest on her shoulders. He steered her firmly towards the door as Alfie skulked out of the room in front of her. They could hear the sound of Wells raging behind them as they stepped into the corridor. The last thing Penny saw before the study door closed was the author bent weeping over his writing desk, the pen in his hand still scratching across the page.

It was the same story everywhere else that they went. From Fleet Street to the Strand, from Bloomsbury to Pall Mall: all across London, on every door that they knocked, they found authors indisposed, magazine offices locked and bolted. But at every window, they could see shadowy shapes hunched over desks, the pens in their hands scratching endlessly across the page.

As the charcoal grey sky finally faded to black and street lamps flickered into life, Penny and Alfie sat slumped on a bench in the shadow of the British Museum. The look of determination had slipped from Penny’s face and, as Alfie blew into his cupped hands to keep them warm, she shook her head in despair.

“It’s hopeless. Lady Cambridge has the whole 
of literary London under her spell. There’s no way of stopping her. When the magazines start to publish their stories, the whole of London itself will fall prey to this madness. What are we going to do?”

Alfie frowned.

“Maybe it won’t work,” he said, his wistful tone showing that he was clutching at straws. “Imagine Monty trying to write a story – he wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Penny shuddered. She could imagine it only too well. The months she’d spent building Montgomery Flinch’s reputation, the
exquisitely-crafted
tales of terror that she’d written under his name – she could lose it all if Monty managed to put pen to paper.

The heavy clatter of horses’ hooves and the sound of a wagon unloading pulled Penny’s thoughts away from this misery. At the
newsstand
on the corner, she saw a young boy carrying heaped bundles of papers from a delivery wagon. The news vendor, a tall, thin man, was crouched, stacking the newly-delivered papers on his stand. As he finished, he turned and, with a bold hand, chalked a new headline across the newsstand board.