Fiendish Schemes (17 page)

“That would seem to be rather more your doing than mine. I have only recently enlisted in this scheme, the overseeing of which has been your responsibility.”

“You draw a finer distinction between ourselves than Fusible and his associates are willing to entertain.” Stonebrake pointed a gloved finger toward me. “As far as they are concerned, their expenses have gone into a single pocket, shared jointly by us. That is why your unfortunate antics reflect so poorly upon myself. Like it or not, we will be considered equally to blame for the loss of whatever money they have expended so far. I very likely have had greater experience with the wealthy and powerful than you have had in your life, so you will perhaps have to take it on faith when I inform you that, from what I have witnessed in this fallen world, the more money an individual possesses, the more viciously he holds on to every ha’penny of it. These are people with enormous fortunes, and they are virtually demented on the subject.
And
ready to inflict their wrath upon anyone they come to believe has lightened their wallets to any degree. Vindictive murder is not beyond them, and would be considered merely as an unfortunate but necessary business expense, to forewarn anyone else who might have designs upon the contents of their pocketbooks.”

For the moment, I was at a loss to speak. I turned from my unfortunate companion and gazed bleakly at the view of the London streets disclosed through the opposite window. I could see a few hunched-over figures shambling upon their nocturnal errands, the very embodiments of poverty and regret, passing like slow, grimy wraiths through the leaking clouds of steam. As any reasonable persons would, upon finding themselves in my position, I pitied myself more than I did those wretches passing by. They at least were not tormented by the cruel irony I suffered, of having fled the prospect of my own self-destruction, only to greeted by persons willing and capable of putting me in my grave with even greater dispatch. If I were to die, I would just as soon have achieved the state with less inconvenience and embarrassment than I had suffered recently. Much of the sinister glamour of one’s own death, and the cessation of the world’s continually nagging problems, is abated and the attractive force lessened when it is someone else’s finger on the initiating trigger and not one’s own.

Was it too late to flee from the city and return to the sheltering obscurity of my foolishly abandoned rural village? The dark streets faded from my thoughts as I pondered the matter. The irrevocable loss of my anonymity, and the dependent nest of my private affairs, seemed to have been accomplished now, with Stonebrake’s latest pronouncements merely the epitaph on its headstone. If he were the only person who wished to do me evil, in pursuit of his own mercenary designs, there might have been the possibility of some evading avenue open to me; however, his having brought me to the attention of Lord Fusible and his associates, with their vastly greater resources and vindictiveness, put paid to that notion. For which, of course, there was no-one to blame other than myself. My own cupidity had been the motivator for setting my foot upon this narrowing path; having done so, I had no apparent choice for the moment, except to take the next few steps along it, however dire the likely destination now seemed.

“Very well,” I addressed my co-conspirator, having come to my own bleak determination of my circumstances. “It would appear that as a matter of practicality, we are little worse off than we were before. The concerns that Fusible so strenuously expressed to you centered upon the diligence of our pursuing those schemes upon which we are already engaged—did they not?”

“Exactly so,” concurred Stonebrake. “It wasn’t pleasant.”

“There is no doubt in my mind about that,” I continued. “You were chastised upon this occasion; likely it will be my turn next, to which I am not looking forward with any great anticipation. The less I have to do with Fusible and that crowd, the happier I will be. Therefore, it would seem the wisest course to ameliorate their fears of financial loss, by applying ourselves with greater determination to that scheme upon which we have already launched ourselves.”

“Oh, yes; a bloody marvelous idea, that is.” His sullen voice was of a match with his darkened expression. “More easily said than accomplished, I fear.”

“How so? You and your associates have already scoured the length of Britain for those previously unearthed creations of my father, amongst which should be found that great
Vox Universalis
device, upon which depend the next stages of your plans. From what I’ve seen, Featherwhite House is stuffed with the contraptions. As to why you believed that one covered in ratty orange fur and bearing a simian grimace might be the machine for which you search—that is beyond me. But it seems that you merely need to complete your inventory of the devices, rigging them up to the steam pipes and activating them as necessary, and thereby determine which is the
Vox Universalis
. To do so would greatly dispel Fusible’s concerns as to where his others’ money is going, and propel us all toward that wealth which is our goal.”

“There’s the rub,” Stonebrake spoke moodily. “I didn’t have Royston and his subordinates work upon that bloody Orang-Utan because I believed its gears and pistons constituted the device we are actually seeking; I had them do so because there are no other of your father’s creations left to bring into operation.”

“Pardon me?” I blinked at him in befuddlement. “Are you saying—”

“You heard me aright. The ape was the final one of the lot. We have activated all of the other devices, and none of them were any closer to being the
Vox Universalis
than was the Orang-Utan.”

“Good Christ.” The implications of his statement appalled me. “Did you inform Lord Fusible of this?”

“Of course not. Do you think me an idiot?” Stonebrake shook his head with a scowl. “He and the others voiced their concerns strenuously enough, without me causing them to doubt the eventual outcome of our quest. Their present impatience with the speed at which matters are proceeding would turn to something rather angrier—perhaps fatally so—if they were to determine that their money had been wasted on some wild goose chase, now concluded with no apparent results worth mentioning.”

“This is terrible news.” Bleaker and bleaker consequences unfolded to my inward vision. “If this is true, then all—” I broke off my words, another realization forming in my thoughts. “Wait; I believe I see now.” My companion in the carriage took on a more sinister aspect as I regarded him. “This was known to you before; before you recruited me into your schemes. All that you related to me, in order to induce me to join up with you—all that was based upon a heinous deception.”

“You speak harshly.” The man apparently had some remaining capacity for shame; he slumped down in the carriage’s seat. “I did no more than was necessary.”

“Necessary to inveigle me into what I now realize are hopeless complications.” My voice grew louder, my heated words expelled with growing force. “That was low of you; I was led to believe that your discovery of the
Vox Universalis
device was imminent, and that as soon as it was in your hands, my involvement in its operation was all that was required to deposit vast fortunes in our hands.”

“Your involvement
is
required,” Stonebrake maintained steadfastly. “Just not for the purpose I had previously described to you.”

“Indeed?” I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And what other purpose would there be?”

“As I have indicated to you—but certainly not to Fusible and that well-heeled crew—my associates and I have not been able to find that device, created by your late father, which is essential to our plans. I very much doubt that there is a garden shed or lumber-room in all of England into which we have not poked our noses—alas, with no success.”

“Have you ever considered that this device, as with many others supposedly issuing from my late father’s workshop, no longer exists, if it ever did? I am hardly the first person to have been inconvenienced— indeed, bodily threatened—by one of his dreadful machines. It seems entirely reasonable to me that a number of them were dismantled to their separate parts with the judicious use of a sledge-hammer.”

“Such might be the case.” Stonebrake’s face set grim. “And if that were so, then we are both, to use a term I’ve overheard from Royston’s uneducated mechanics, royally screwed.”

I had not heard the precise phrase before, but could divine its illomened meaning easily enough. “More so yourself, than I. You were the one who made all those grand assurances to Lord Fusible. The responsibility for their failure would seem to lie upon your shoulders.”

“If we were dealing with reasonable men, true; but we are not. Their wrath would extend to anyone who they believed was to the slightest degree involved with their personal embarrassment. You fall within that number.”

“That hardly seems fair. I was inveigled into this scheme, as duplicitously as anyone. I am the victim of your base chicanery.”

“Perhaps so,” said Stonebrake, “but I doubt if you will be allowed to plead your case anywhere short of the afterlife. Whatever the justice of the matter, we are allied in this as in so much else.”

Rankled by the man’s thorough exposition, I brooded for several moments before speaking again. “As the author of the predicament in which we find ourselves, what then are your thoughts on how we should next proceed?”

“Much as they were when I first enlisted your coöperation.” Stonebrake resumed the confident, energetic manner that seemed usual for him, whenever he was expounding his schemes. “As you have reasoned out for yourself, when first I spoke to you there on the Cornish coast, the extremity of my situation was already known to me. While I assured you that my possession of the
Vox Universalis
device was speedily imminent, I was aware that my agents had already come a cropper in that regard. Indeed, that was my motivation in enlisting your aid: not to bring whatever resources you possess as your father’s son to the operation of the device, but to find it for us.”

“Find it?” I gaped at the other in amazement. “You and your agents have not been able to do so. What makes you believe that such a task is within my abilities?”

“If I were to tell you,” said Stonebrake, “that nothing formed this notion beyond sheer desperation, and the lack of any other hope, however small, I would be only halfway honest with you.”

“That would be rather more than you had previously been. We are making progress.”

“Speak as waspishly as you wish, my dear Dower. Our situation is not altered thereby.” He gestured with one wearily upraised hand. “We still have need of your father’s
Vox Universalis
machine; therefore I have need of your locating it.”

“And how do you propose I should accomplish that?” I pointed beyond the carriage’s window to the city’s blackened shapes, shrouded in night and clouds of steam. A few human-seeming figures slunk past, intent on their own mysterious errands, or merely wandering in the inward deserts of remorse and inebriation. “Searching about, as though I were some rifle-toting expeditionary on the dark continent, would have been difficult enough for me in the London of my memory. This city has been completely transformed from the one I remember.”

“Much of it remains unaltered,” said Stonebrake. “The changes you observe are mere surface phenomena.”

“Rather more than that, I believe. What seems minor and ephemeral to you are things to which you have become accustomed, all the more so because they came about one little piece at a time. Men can grow used to the greatest abominations, when they are introduced on such a sneaky and incremental basis. I, however, am at a disadvantage regarding the modish world, all hissing and clanking; sequestered as I had been in my rural retreat, I see the changes composing one great mass, almost literally thundering down upon my poor head—as one might view with justifiable apprehension a tidal wave hurling itself upon what had been only a moment before a placid seaside strand, upon which one strolled as upon many previous occasions without such newly arisen dangers.”

“You wax philosophical.” Stonebrake dismissed my observations with a wave of his hand. “If our present situation was less urgent, I might derive some amusement by passing the hours with such trivial debate. Its relevance seems a little strained at the moment, though.”

“Not at all,” I protested. “My assessment, of both my own nature and that of today’s London, is completely
apropos
. Things being as they are—and you seem to concur by default in my description of them—I fail to see how you could entertain much faith in the notion of my brazenly sailing out into the city’s maze of boulevards and alleys, bold adventurer I, and succeed where your more skillful minions failed. Do you propose I should knock on every door in London and enquire,
Dear sir or madam, do you happen to have an enormous talking device on the premises? Might I borrow it for a day or two?
I can well imagine the reception I would receive.”

“Perhaps not just London’s doors.” A corner of Stonebrake’s mouth lifted in an unpleasant smile. “The scope of your investigations could be considerably enlarged. Have you considered the possibility that the machine might be anywhere in England?”

“Might have been shipped to the bloody Raj, for all we know.” I was nettled by his evident amusement. “If this
Vox Universalis
is capable of conversing with whales, as you believe, it could just as well jabber away in the tongues of the Indian subcontinent. Perhaps you could put the touch on Lord Fusible for funds sufficient to ship me over on the P and O line, and I could wander about wearing a pith helmet, and poking a walking stick into every rude hut while making my enquiries.”

“I hope not to put you to such an inconvenience. Due to their mass and delicate complications, evidently few of your father’s creations were shipped abroad. And if it is any comfort, I do believe that the one we require is here in London. What references to the machine we have come across in your father’s invoices and other documents all indicate that upon its completion it was delivered to somewhere in this city. So the necessity of your traipsing about the wilds of York or Lincolnshire would seem to be slight.”