Fiendish Schemes (6 page)

“For God’s sake, man—” A hand grasped my shoulder and pulled me about. I found myself looking into Stonebrake’s face again. “What is wrong with you?”

“Oh, that’s a fine question, all right.” My white-knuckled hand remained balled into a fist, the muscles of my arm aching to drive a blow between his eyes. “After all your easy boasting about how much you know about me, and about my circumstances.”

“And so I do. Haven’t I indicated as much? You’re valuable to me, Mr. Dower; I’d be a fool not to have made a study of you.”

“And fool you are, then.” I spat out my words. “If in all your picking at another man’s private affairs, you managed to overlook as salient a fact as this.”

He blinked in confusion. “I’m not following you. . . .”

“Evidently not. You come to me with some daft plan, spinning fantastic reveries about the vast sums in which we’ll soon be wallowing. I admit I was intrigued, more fool I. You caught me at a weak moment, when my thoughts were easily beguiled. But then, having thus ensnared me, when pressed as to the actual details of this grand scheme of yours, all that you can tell me is that it centers upon laying bets with those bookmakers who track who’s up and who’s down amongst the lighthouse corporations.”

“So it does,” admitted Stonebrake. “If you’d but allow me to impart the full details to you—”

“What need is there? As God is my witness, your opacity astounds me. Are you not aware that wagering with the Sea & Light Book is what reduced me to these wretched circumstances?”

The reader’s forbearance is requested. If, in the furious pace of my narrative, I write of matters unfamiliar to those whose lives have been more circumspect than mine—which I assume would encompass most of the population, there being so little effort or good fortune required to achieve that happy condition—my apologies are extended. So sunk in misery had I become, that it would be only natural to assume that everyone was as acquainted with such sordid matters as myself. No great charitableness is needed to recognize that others lead, in general, more virtuous lives than mine.

To elucidate, in pursuit of understanding amongst those curious about such things:

For the British nation, so thoroughly dependent upon oceangoing trade as we are, the awareness of the surrounding oceans as living creatures—with its accompanying effect upon navigation— gave rise to more than Phototrope Limited and its competitors. Scarcely a bale or crate of goods is loaded or unloaded at a British port, but that one of the lighthouse corporations receives a share of the merchants’ proceeds, for having guided their vessels safely about the hazards that ring our island. No business as large as that can stride upon the scene, like some valiant commercial hero, without other money-making endeavours trailing behind. The opportunity to profit from the activities of the new lighthouse corporations is not limited to those who had invested so wisely in them.

The rivalry amongst the different lighthouse corporations, and between the walking lights and their celebrity captains, such as the much-admired Captain Crowcroft whom I had so recently met, is so exciting to certain easily impressionable minds that it is little wonder that interest in such matters has swept through so much of our society. The more genteel of our house holds limit their indulgence to reading about the latest exploits of Crowcroft
et al.
in the popular journals of the day. No doubt there are many tender-hearted maidens who catch their breath at the portraits that accompany such deathless prose, and who murderously envy Lord and Lady Fusible’s daughter, Evangeline, for her betrothal to the heroic lighthouse captain who had captured her heart. Such diversions are essentially innocent. The darker aspect to enthusiasm for walking lighthouse exploits is to be found in the betting shops and bookmakers’ parlours, in particular that constellation of the same that has become known under the general rubric of the Sea & Light Book.

Perhaps the reader has heard of such things, but has spared himself intimate acquaintanceship. I wish I could speak the same of myself. For I had allowed myself to become caught up in the betting mania, to my moral chagrin and financial detriment, the combination seemingly terminal.

In the remote English village in which I had established my abode, there had been little opportunity to lay a bet upon the outcomes of the various corporations as their landbound fleets of walking lights competed against each other, pursuing those coastal locations where they could render the most navigational assistance to the ships at sea. In this, their captains’ decisions were much like those made by players at a game of chess, though one on a colossal scale and whose squares shifted about at the whim of the surrounding oceans, moving their depths and shallows and sweeping currents from place to place at but a moment’s notice. Word had reached my ear, though, of this grand sport, and of the gains that could be made from the bookmakers’ purses, by one who could correctly guess the winners amongst this ongoing struggle. Rumour had it that some such lighthouse gamblers had managed to enrich themselves to fortunes greater than those of captains of industry such as Lord Fusible and the other owners of Phototrope Limited and its competitors.

Perhaps it had been mere folly on my part, that I had thought I could emulate the success of those sporting types. Certainly I had never been given to placing a bet on the turn of a card or on which horse could nose out another at the race-course.

“But you thought”—Stonebrake’s voice forced its way amongst my bitter memories—“that since you were your father’s son, and that one of his creations had been found to possess utility in the operations of the walking lights—therefore you had some particular insight that would assist you in your wagering.”

I turned from my brooding regard of the ocean, and coldly regarded him; I found his ability to discern the course of my thoughts to be irksome in the extreme. “Yes,” I said. “So I had thought. I soon learned that I was wrong about that.”

Even more embittering was the knowledge that I had been warned, before ever I had placed a wager. The last words of my aged servant, Creff, as I nursed him upon his death-bed, was such:
Please, Mr. Dower . . . don’t bet on them unnatural things. ’Twill be the ruination of you. . . .
He had been aware of the interest that had been sparked in me by various overheard accounts, and had been perceptive enough to see past all my disavowals. To my shame, I heeded him not; scarcely had I thrown a handful of earth upon the lid of his coffin, than I had turned from his newly dug grave and headed to the nearest town large enough for a betting shop that met my requirements. I had returned that evening; loath to enter the now cheerless cottage that we had shared, I had come again to the churchyard and sat down beside the mounded dirt, packed tight with the flat of the gravedigger’s shovel. Another had been there, though its spirit had likewise gone before me. Greyed head upon its paws, the small dog whose master, my servant, had named Abel—the companion through so many of my own trials—slept the unwaking sleep of one whose devotion had earned such rest. I had gathered the cold form into my arms and had wept into its fur, realizing how friendless and abandoned I had at last become.

“Wretch—” I spoke aloud, unsure whether I was castigating Stonebrake or myself. “Have you no human sympathy? Would that kindness have been beyond you, to let me be? If ruin I achieved, then perhaps it was ruin I pursued. And deserved.”

“You are too hard upon yourself.” Stonebrake stood unperturbed by my wrath. The dark waves continued rolling toward us. “If you wish to grovel before the immensity of your self-assumed sins, you might as well do so in comfort. Which you would have achieved, if you had not insisted upon betting ‘wrong,’ as the bookmakers term the practice.”

I stared at him. “You are aware of the nature of my wagers?”

“As I have said, to the last shilling.”

“I made those wagers in confidence!”

“And in so doing, you trusted a bookmaker to keep your secrets. Imagine,” marveled Stonebrake, “an oddsman who would divulge his client’s account, for no more than a pound note in exchange. Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“Sarcasm scarcely serves one who seeks another as his ally. As to my wagers, I merely laid down what I believed, at the time, had the best chance of succeeding.”

“And in every case,” he replied, “you wagered against Phototrope Limited and its walking lights, and any other corporation that had seen fit to use your father’s creations. And in every case, Phototrope and those others went on to glory, pipping their competitors past the post, as it were. If all you had wanted to achieve was to sneer at your father’s posthumous success, you might easily have found a less costly way than throwing your capital down a betting shop’s gullet!”

I had no desire to debate the matter. The initial flush of my anger had ebbed, and the wind off the ocean resumed setting ice in my flesh.

“This is a useless discussion,” I pointed out. “Whatever the motive or other details of my involvement with the Sea & Light Book, the result is the same. Destitution, simply put. I gambled away every penny of that modest sum, which with modest husbandry might have maintained me to my demise. And somehow you believe that you can inveigle me into some scheme that revolves around more of the same?”

“Ah, but you see, Dower—before, you wagered foolishly. You believed that you had some particular insight, sufficient to make you wiser than the other bettors. In that, you were incorrect.”

“You tell me nothing of which I am not already aware.”

Stonebrake’s sly smile appeared again. “But this time, in league with my associates, you and I would actually be the possessors of that information, which would make sure things of all our wagers. Thus we would decimate the bookmakers, and reap those fortunes that those clever as we deserve.”

“This,” I said, “sounds dishonest.”

“Only to a slight degree, and not one easily discovered. Criminality is in the eye of the beholder.”

“And when the beholders are the police, the consequences can be serious. I speak of imprisonment.”

He dismissed my concerns with a wave of his hand. “Have no fear. My backers are rich and powerful men, who—as with all such—merely wish to become even richer. Your value to them will protect you.”

“And what value would that be?”

“You see? You’re interested, aren’t you? Despite yourself.”

“Merely curious,” I insisted.

“That is how it begins. But allow me to explain. The Sea & Light Book, as you have learned some time ago, accepts wagers on the operations of the various lighthouse corporations, the successes or failures of their various endeavours, and the profits earned or losses suffered thereby. And of course, those operations reflect the lighthouse corporations’ best efforts to anticipate and accommodate the actions of the living, active seas by which we now find ourselves surrounded. Agreed? Very well. Obviously, a lighthouse corporation that could acquire advance knowledge of how and where the oceans might shift would have a competitive advantage over its rivals. If Phototrope Limited or any other lighthouse corporation knew ahead of time that the ocean waters were going to recede from a certain section of the Scottish coast, and flood another area so that passing ships would need navigational assistance, it could have one of its lighthouses immediately uproot itself and head off for the newly desirable location, beating out the other corporations. Similarly, I am confident you would also allow that anyone who knew ahead of time about where the sentient ocean organisms would be shifting and moving, as well as having information about how much the various lighthouse corporations knew about that, would be able to make the seemingly riskiest bets—the type that the bookmakers describe as ‘long shots’— yet be absolutely sure of winning vast sums of money. Such a person would in fact be undertaking no risk at all, for his wagers would be based on that reliably predictive information.”

“If such information existed,” I said. “Which would seem to be the problem.”

“Granted.” Stonebrake gave a nod. “But bear with me. I have come all this way to inform you that this possibility of beating the Sea & Light Book has become real—or tantalizingly close to real— due to the means having been developed to actually communicate with the sentient oceans. That worthy organization of which I had previously informed you I am a member, the Lord’s Mission to the Cetaceans, was originally created to minister to sailors on board ocean-going ships. But now the organization has an altered name and a different purpose: having determined that whales are intelligent enough to convert to Christianity, Father Jonah—our Mission’s leader—believes as well that since whales are actually mammals, complete with vestigial legbones inside their rear flukes, they might actually be one of the lost tribes of Israel mentioned in the Bible.”

“This Father Jonah individual seems to be a lunatic.”

“He might well be,” conceded Stonebrake. “I have been associated with him for some time, and many of the things he proclaims have begun to give me pause. So much so that I and others have come to believe that there is not much future for us in the Mission. Its operations had been funded in the past by certain wealthy and pious patrons in Clapham Common, who had been swayed to open their purses by the Father’s charismatic fervour. However, his notions about the whales have, quite frankly, put some of those people off. Many of them feel that their moneys might better underwrite charitable endeavours such as transporting hundreds of indigent families to some place known as Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger, there to cultivate coffee and educate the natives in the Church of England’s basic catechism.”

“If I had funds for charity, I would be more likely to give it for that purpose than for Christianizing whales.”

“Exactly. As other Mission members have decided in concert with me, high-minded pursuits are all very fine, but at a certain point one must look out for one’s self. I do not intend to starve to death aboard Father Jonah’s evangelical ship; that being the case, I might as well be rich.”

A frown set upon my face. “I still don’t see how that is to be accomplished.”