Fiendish Schemes (38 page)

“Wait—we cannot—” She managed to raise one limp hand and point to a room at the end of the hallway. “There is another—we must save—”

There being no ready escape in the opposite direction, I bore her with me toward the door she had indicated. I had no idea of whom she spoke, but with any luck, it might be someone who could somehow assist us in making an exit from the burning townhouse.

The door was already ajar; I kicked it farther open and peered inside. The room, previously unvisited by me, seemed to be some sort of private parlour, of the sort employed when a small group of individuals seek to converse amongst themselves, separate from whatever larger gathering might have been taking place downstairs. A claw-footed oaken table was littered with gentlemanly paraphernalia, half-empty glasses of port, grey-ashed cigars stubbed out or still emitting tendrils of smoke combining with the suffocating haze that hung low from the ceiling. The disordered state of the furniture, with chairs scattered about or knocked backward to the floor, indicated the hasty flight of whoever had been there. No doubt they had taken to their heels when the rioters had first besieged Featherwhite House.

I spied the person of whom Evangeline had informed me. The possibility of aid from this source now seemed remote—the figure lay face downward before the room’s fireplace, a widening pool of blood seeping around his head. The edge of the stone mantelpiece above him was similarly reddened, as though it had been in some manner the cause of the man’s injury.

Leaving Evangeline for the moment at the room’s doorway, I hurried into the room and knelt at the man’s side. As I rolled him onto his back, I found myself gazing with astonishment into the face of none other than Stonebrake. How he had been transported here, rather than having been annihilated, as I had presumed, in the explosion at Westminster Palace—such, I could not conjecture. However, it was quickly obvious to me that while he might have evaded death then, it had caught up with him now. The blow he had received to the corner of his brow had been sufficient to lay open his skull; no breath or other indicator of life was perceptible.

Leaving Stonebrake’s corpse where it rested unmoving, I ran back toward the hallway and grasped Evangeline about the waist, before she could slip unconscious to the floor.

“The servants’ access . . . there . . .” With a tilt of her head, she indicated a door, narrower than the rest, at the very end of the corridor. “That is how . . . I made my way up here. . . .”

I carried her to the door and pushed it open with my shoulder. A pent-up billow of smoke escaped from it, driving me back, gasping and coughing. As the fumes partly dispersed, I managed to take a further look down the twisting stairway that had been revealed. No doubt it led to the kitchen and other service areas, from which the needs of the house’s proprietors had once been met. Sparks flew up into my face as I futilely attempted to discern the stairs’ terminus through the swiftly rising smoke.

There was no other way. Glancing behind myself, I saw a column of flame roar upward where the house’s central staircase had been. It would be perhaps only a matter of minutes before the structure was completely engulfed, the hallway’s floor collapsing out from beneath our feet. I held Evangeline closer to myself and pulled her into the narrowly winding passage. She pressed her face to my chest and struggled to breathe, as we fought to make our awkward course to whatever safety we could find. . . .

My eyes, stinging with smoke and heat, caught a fragmentary glimpse of sinks and carving tables, the appurtenances of domestic labours, when we at last stumbled out of the stairwell. The smoke was even thicker here, rolling in like a choking tide from what had been the house’s more elegant chambers. I spied an open exterior doorway, the night’s dark revealed beyond, and dragged Evangeline’s unresisting form through it.

Fresh, cold air was gratefully received into my lungs. Evangeline raised her own face from my chest, and I could see her reviving as well. With my remaining strength, I half carried, half dragged her to the farthest reach of the overgrown garden to which we had escaped. I lowered Evangeline onto a stone bench at the end of an ornamental pond, then collapsed beside her.

From here, we could both see the flames consuming Featherwhite House. The widening column of smoke obscured the stars above our heads. Without doubt, Stonebrake’s lifeless body was even now in the process of cremation within.

Then, for a moment, I believed myself wrong about this and that somehow the miscreant had retained some trembling thread of life, sufficient to escape the building. I pushed myself upright on the bench, witnessing in astonishment a figure wrapped in fire and smoke, crawling with grim determination from the blackened margin of Featherwhite House’s walls. Within seconds, though, I realized that it was not Stonebrake I beheld, but the animated Orang-Utan of previous unpleasant encounters. Its tatty orange fur had been reduced to ashes, revealing the intricate mechanisms of its limbs and torso. Steam hissed from various apertures, as well as the hose trailing behind it. Damaged by the fire, the latter burst, ragged ends whipping about like beheaded snakes, then falling limp and inert to the ground. Deprived of motive force, the Orang-Utan seemingly died as well, its jointed metal paws curling into rigid fists. The entire device rolled onto its side, the now lidless spherical eyes casting one last glance toward me before its interlinked apparatuses shuddered to an agonized halt.

Another’s voice came more graciously to my ear.

“I am indebted to you, Mr. Dower.” Rendered somewhat hoarse, Lord Fusible’s daughter reached over and squeezed my hand. “If not for you . . .” She left the remainder of the dire thought unspoken.

“Anything I did—” I broke off my words, seized by a spasm of coughing. I then managed to speak the rest. “Was but that which any would have done.”

“Then the world is not such an entirely wicked place as I had believed.” She gave me a wan smile, quickly extinguished by some more troubling consideration. “Though I fear that it is still sufficiently so, as to render all my chances of happiness beyond my reach! Better that you had left me where you had found me, or that my father’s faithful servants had let me drown, rather than saving me from the capsizing of that little boat in which I last conversed with you. If they had not aided me so, I might have continued on to a more felicitous realm.”

“You are speaking nonsense.” To my own ear, my words sounded sterner and less sympathetic than I had intended—though perhaps they were better so. “You are young and with the greatest part of your life still before you. Time enough to think of the grave, and what lies beyond it, when you have reached my age. Though I must confess that I no longer contemplate those matters with as much enthusiasm as I formerly did.”

“It gladdens my heart, to the degree that anything can, to hear you say as much, Mr. Dower. I had been somewhat grieved that in my unthinking self- concern, I had added to your cares. Please be as cheerful as is still within your power, as I cannot.”

“For God’s sake, why do you persist in speaking that way?” The urge was strong to seize her frail form by its shoulders and shake some sense into her. “Wait—make no attempt to answer that question. Merely tell me instead why you were here at all, in such precarious circumstances?”

“I thought . . .” Her grasp upon my hand tightened. “I thought I might be able to save my beloved, Captain Crowcroft.”

“How so?” Her words perplexed me. “Was he here?”

“Indeed so—as was my father, in company with the rest of Phototrope Limited’s owners and directors. Unbeknownst to my father and his fellow conspirators, I followed them here, in the hope of ascertaining at least some news of my
fiancé
’s whereabouts.” She sadly shook her head. “As it turned out, I discovered much greater than I had bargained for. Horrible things, Mr. Dower—I can scarcely believe that which I eavesdropped upon, from outside the door of that room by which you found me.”

“I would very likely be able to. I am not encumbered by your tender feelings toward either your father or humanity in general. Such being the case, please do not hesitate to inform me of what you heard.”

As the fire continued to wrap itself about the walls of Featherwhite House, Evangeline proceeded to relate all that she had so recently discovered.

“My father, Mr. Dower—would that there were no cause to tell you of such things!—he is involved in far darker conspiracies than those of which you have been led to believe. I know, for such things cannot be concealed from as attentive a daughter as myself, that you were told that all his efforts were turned toward some sordid gambling scheme, by which wagers upon the movements of various competing lighthouse corporations would be assured of pouring money into their pockets. Is this not so?”

“That is indeed what I was told—by your father, Lord Fusible, himself.”

“Such a dishonorable charade! I blush to hear of such sins committed by one so closely related by blood to me. You should never have believed him in this regard—and for this simple reason. However such helpful information was to have been gained, by conversing with whales or any other equally fantastic method, there would have been no need for it. There are no competing lighthouse corporations—Phototrope Limited has secretly bought them all up, thus bringing them under its control. My father and his fellow directors know well ahead of time what decisions those other corporations will make—indeed, they are in fact the ones who decide! So they are aware in advance of what operations those puppet corporations will undertake, and to what remote craggy shores they will send their walking lights. If my father’s intentions had been no more than to hoodwink the bookmakers and with his accomplices reap the rewards of such chicanery, he already possessed all the information that was required.”

“I see.” This revelation did indeed place a vastly different complexion upon the affairs in which I had become embroiled. “So if it were not to ensure the success of their wagers, then to what ends were your father and his associates intent?”

“Have you heard of a man named Duncan MacDuff? And his accomplice, a woman who goes by the unfortunate pseudonym of Valvienne?”

“They are well-known to me,” I said. “Both by those names and by others, which might possibly be their true ones. You can never be certain with such types.”

“I am not surprised by your knowledge,” said Evangeline. “Though secretive in the conduct of their affairs, they are rightfully considered to be the worst of rogues by all who have had the misfortune of coming into contact with them.”

“Yes.” I gave an emphatic nod. “That has indeed been my experience.”

“Then I hope that it will not cause you to think even more disparagingly of my father, for me to inform you that he is in league with this infamous pair.”

By now, I was beyond all capacity for surprise. Merely to have discovered, as I so recently did, that Scape and Miss McThane were here in London—such a fact inevitably raised the possibility that they had inveigled themselves into what other sordid dealings were under way.

“You have my sympathies,” I told her. “I doubt if your father will have other than regret ensuing from his association with them. Am I correct in assuming that by extension, your father and his associates are also involved in the various schemes of the Prime Minister, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“Exactly so,” said Evangeline. “And I fear that he will suffer more from her intrigues than he could ever have from the merely sordid and greedy ones concocted by MacDuff and his female companion. For Mrs. Fletcher’s ambitions are of a vastly greater and more sinister variety.”

“Well . . . they’re not small,” I allowed. “Seeing as she wishes to overturn everything upon which British society rests, one could hardly accuse her of a limited scope to her visions. I do not see, though, how the activities of your father and his associates have any bearing upon Mrs. Fletcher’s schemes.”

“This is astute of you, Mr. Dower, to make that observation. For in fact, Phototrope Limited and the illicit gambling operations connected to it, ostensibly pursued by my father and the other corporate directors, is a sham. It is nothing but a front, to employ the criminal jargon, for Mrs. Fletcher’s larger conspiracy. Even the lighthouses they have constructed and set in motion, those technological wonders known as the ‘walking lights,’ are not what they seem. The reports of the assistance they have allegedly provided to the nation’s various mercantile seafarers, preventing their valuable cargoes from being lost upon the coastline’s forbidding rocks, are largely fictional, concocted by paid hacks in order to impress a favourable impression in the minds of the public.”

“To what purpose?”

“To the obfuscation of the appalling use for which the lighthouses were actually designed and constructed, and to which use they will be shortly turned.” Evangeline’s voice was tinged with a righteous disdain. “You are aware, I take it, of the Prime Minister’s desire to cast off whatever limitations she believes are imposed upon her by the strength of the Steam Miners’ Union?”

“Yes.” I gave a nod. “I have been informed of her desires in that regard, and how they motivate all of her tumultuous campaigns, including the fomenting of these riots sweeping the city.”

“She seeks more than the lessening of their grasp upon the engines of power. Nothing will suffice for her designs but to turn the locale of the steam mines into one vast prison, in which those condemned to labour will have no chance of either escape or hope of struggling against that vision of the Future which she seeks to impose upon all of us. That is what the lighthouses were created for; they are an essential element of the oppressive regime being readied to be set in place. The lighthouses, mobile as they are, can easily be relocated for their new role in keeping the rebellious steam miners safely pent up. Not as lighthouses, but
guard towers
—their powerful beams will light up the ravaged landscape as though in perpetual daylight, harsh and revealing enough to prevent any from slipping past to freedom.”

“And your father agreed to be a participant in this horrifying scheme? I would have thought better of him—or of almost any man!”