My Clockwork Muse (30 page)

The carriage stopped. Even from the base of
the wide stone steps, we could see that the front door had been
ominously left ajar. Gessler drew his revolver, and I mine. Then we
started carefully up the steps.

"Inspector," I said, halfway to the top. He
turned. "If anything happens to me... That is, if I don't make it,
you must promise to burn my body." Oh, the words that I had been
forced to utter since this affair began! I would never have dreamed
to hear myself say them. But the image of Mrs. Landor rising from
her coffin was seared in my memory. That such a creature should
bear
my
face—

"You'll be fine, Mr. Poe," Gessler said. But
I saw in his eyes that he did not believe it, either. "Don't give
up hope. We may have stopped him before it was too late for
you."

"It
was
too late for my Virginia. And
Mrs. Landor. I only hope it is not too late for Olimpia."

We crept up the remaining steps. Gessler
placed his palm on the door and pushed it open.

The house was dark and cold. It felt empty. A
bright flash of lightning illuminated the foyer. A great crash of
thunder followed. Gessler pushed the door closed behind us. I heard
the soft click of the latch. To my mind, the sound bore a chilling
finality. An oppressive darkness assailed us and I felt sealed
inside the house, as if in my own coffin. The wind howled forlornly
through the cracks. Rain began to patter against the door and
windows. We stood for a moment, frozen, listening for any sound.
But the old house was silent as the grave.

"We are too late," I whispered. "Clearly, the
man has fled."

"Quiet!" Gessler snapped, and he cocked his
head, listening.

"What do you hear?" I asked. But he merely
waggled a finger at me and I followed him inside.

A door to our right stood half-open. The
library. Gessler gestured towards it and I poked my head in. A
flash of lightning coincided with the sudden chiming of a clock.
Startled, I leapt back. For an instant, I felt myself shuddering
uncontrollably. I nearly dropped my revolver. Then, realizing what
had happened, I smiled sheepishly. Gessler was watching me calmly,
a solid presence. We waited for the clock to finish.

Bong! ... Bong!

Then all was quiet as before. Two o'clock. We
moved on.

We passed the hall that contained the grand
staircase. Then we moved through a pair of open doors to our left
and found ourselves in the dining room. It had a desolate,
abandoned feel to it. I was saddened to see the long empty table
where Olimpia and I had spent at least a few lighthearted moments.
To my ears, the air was full of her spectral laughter. Gessler,
however, heard only the crack of thunder directly over our heads.
He ducked slightly at the sound.

"My men are nowhere to be seen," he said,
recovering from his start. "I fear the worst."

I more than feared the worst—I was certain of
it. We moved into the parlor and the melancholy that filled me made
me realize that I believed it a foregone conclusion that Olimpia
had been lost to me forever. Everywhere I looked I saw traces of
her. Here was the slender, gracefully curved harp she had played so
beautifully. I could hear her flawless voice singing still. I
remembered the gaiety of the evening we had spent in this room. I
would always recall it as one of the happiest days of my life.

But where I saw Olimpia, I also saw
Coppelius. His self-playing pipe organ was a shapeless hulk under
its concealing cloth. I viewed it with suspicion, almost with
dread. My mind conferred upon it a malevolent consciousness. If
Gessler had not been in the room with me, I might have dashed past
it. As it was, I quickened my pace only a little and my skin
crawled as I strode out of its reach...

...and smack into Gessler's back. He whirled
instinctively. I saw the barrel of his revolver flash and I was
afraid he was going to shoot me. I immediately leapt away from the
pistol and landed against Olimpia's harp. It teetered wildly. My
own instinct caused me to grab at it. Doing so, I must have
triggered the hidden mechanism that caused it to start playing. The
room was instantly filled with the most angelic—though
intrinsically mournful—music I had ever heard.

Gessler cursed me mercilessly as I groped
blindly along the frame for the lever or switch that must have been
there. Somewhere. But I could not find it.

"Oh, just leave it!" Gessler said after a
moment of useless groping. I could see the building fury in his
eyes. Whatever stealth he had felt was necessary had been blown
beyond recovery. The entire household—if indeed there was a
household—knew of our presence now. "Blast it!" he cried at last.
"Come along, Poe. We'll find Coppelius and put an end to this once
and for all!"

Chords of ghostly harp music followed us out
of the parlor and into the hall of the grand staircase.

"Coppelius!" Gessler shouted, his voice
filling the emptiness. The sound faded away without reply, leaving
only the ethereal chords of the harp behind. The house felt emptier
than before.

"I'll look upstairs," I said. But Gessler
stopped me before I could get started.

"Wait!" he said. "There's something there." I
followed his gaze and then I saw it too. Something lay in a small
heap on the floor to one side of the staircase. I took it to be a
rolled up carpet or a mislaid piece of baggage. Certainly something
forgotten by Coppelius in his haste to abscond. I followed Gessler
to the place where it lay, and even if lightning had not flashed
through the windows at that moment, my mistake soon became
clear.

It was not carpet or baggage, but a
policeman. One of the men Gessler had sent with Olimpia.

The inspector quickly knelt at the man's
side.

"Is he—?" I asked stupidly, for it was
obvious he was.

"Dead," Gessler said. "His head has been
crushed."

I leaned in close to see in the darkness. The
man's eyes were open, bulging even. He looked terrified. For a
moment, I fancied he was still alive, but then I saw the dark
patches on the side of his head. Blood. Though the wound was hidden
in his hair, I could see that the black mass of his scalp glistened
wetly.

"A fall from above?" I asked, almost
hopefully. I wanted it to be an accident. In his search for the
missing Coppelius, the man had crashed through the balustrade from
the landing above in the darkness. Certainly not an unreasonable
proposition on such a dark night.

But Gessler shook his head. "Feel here." He
prodded the wound with his fingers. "This is the mark of a hand.
You can feel where the fingertips actually penetrated the skull.
Look! My four fingers fit exactly." The way Gessler placed his hand
over the policeman's head, he looked like he meant to crush it
himself.

"I'll take your word for it," I said.

Gessler turned the dead man's head and
examined the other side. "Oh, this would have required great
strength," he muttered.

I felt a drip on the back of my head. Rain
from a leaky roof, I supposed. Annoyed, I brushed at the drop and
my fingers came away damp. Rubbing them together, I found the
moisture to be sticky and thick. Not rain water. I felt another
drop. Then another. I had pulled back my head and this one missed
me. It made a soft splat on the dead man's face. A spot of black
appeared on his pallid cheek.

Blood.

I looked up and saw a shape above me. I could
not make it out, but then a flash of lightning revealed a man
dangling from a broken baluster above. I leapt to my feet, thinking
the man was hanging there for dear life fifteen feet above the
floor. I called out to him. "Hold on!" I cried and I made to race
up the stairs to assist him. But a second flash revealed that I
needn't hurry.

The man was quite dead. He wore a policeman's
coat. His dead arm had gotten snagged somehow on the broken
woodwork. He was hanging there, just above the spot where his
colleague had apparently plunged before him.

"What can I do for you gentlemen?"

I looked up and saw the familiar form of
Dansby standing at the top of the stairs. He seemed unconcerned
about the darkness of the house, the policemen, the harp music, the
storm outside. So relieved was I to see him that none of this
registered with me in more than a vague manner.

"Oh, thank God, Dansby, it's you! These men
have been murdered!"

"Have they now?" he asked.

I expected him to rush down the stairs in
dismay. But he did no such thing. He looked placidly to his right
towards the dangling cop and then peered over the railing at the
man on the floor.

"Yes," I cried. If anyone could shed light on
this mystery, it was Dansby. "And Olimpia is nowhere to be found,
though her bodyguards lie dead around us."

Panic gripped me as I uttered my fear aloud.
I was about to run up the stairs, but Gessler pressed his palm to
my chest. "Hold on, Poe," he said. "Something's not right here." I
paused and Gessler gazed up at the butler. "You don't seem very
surprised to have two dead policemen on your stairs, Mr.
Dansby."

Dansby started down, step by deliberate step,
laughing. "Why should I?" he asked. "Doesn't everyone?"

The truth suddenly dawned on me. "You did
this," I said as Dansby continued to descend the stairs towards us.
"Damn you, Dansby! You're a murderer!"

"Oh, I'm quite incapable of murder, Mr.
Poe."

"Two dead cops say otherwise," I
countered.

"What happened to them is more in keeping
with ... Oh, shall we say, an industrial accident." He held up his
hands and we could see that they were smeared with blood. "I'm
afraid you gentlemen are next."

Gessler raised his revolver and fired. We saw
a spark and then a little trickle of steam where the bullet had
entered his chest. Dansby merely laughed.

"You see, only a human can commit murder, Mr.
Poe. I was one of the doctor's first designs. You will find me far
more durable than the unfortunate Mr. Burton."

He was at the bottom of the staircase now. He
reached out with a lightning quick thrust and swatted the revolver
from Gessler's hand. Spinning into the darkness, it banged off the
wall and fell into some shadow unknown. I used the distraction to
race past him up the stairs. Dansby turned and followed. I could
hear his footfalls behind me. He was unnaturally swift. Before I
reached the top, I felt his fingers brush the tail of my coat. I
lunged the last few steps to the landing, barely eluding his
grasp.

But my escape was short-lived. He grabbed me
by the scruff of my neck and lifted me off my feet. I felt like a
helpless cur. The pain was incredible and I cried out. I saw stars.
My feet danced inches above the floor. I was powerless in his
grasp. I groped for my revolver. I couldn't remember if it was in
my pocket or in my hand—or had I dropped it? I had already seen the
result of a bullet in Dansby's chest, but in my desperation, I felt
it was my only chance.

I screamed again when he thrust me hard
through the balustrade. The wood snapped with a sharp crack just as
it must have when he had flung the cop through before me. With a
laugh, he dropped me over the edge.

I feared Dansby's mechanical laughter would
be the last sound I ever heard. I could feel myself begin to
topple. Blindly, I grabbed for anything within my reach. To my
surprise, I found my fall suddenly arrested. By pure good fortune,
my hand had snagged one of the snapped balusters. Weakly
constructed, I could feel it immediately begin to pull from the
wooden base to which it had been secured. Each time I struggled to
raise myself, it gave a little more until I dared do nothing but
dangle, limp as a dead man. I was only happy that my skull had not
been crushed. At least I still had a chance.

That chance came in the form of Inspector
Gessler, who had raced up the stairs after Dansby. He had to know
it was suicide. I shouted at him to forget about me and run. But my
voice was lost in the din of his attack. He flailed madly at the
powerful automaton, landing blows that seemed to have no other
effect than bruising and bloodying Gessler's knuckles. Laughing,
Dansby snapped off a section of the top rail of the balustrade as
if it were balsa and not three inches of solid oak. He reared back
and swung. The club glanced off Gessler's shoulder and I could hear
the sharp crack where it struck his head.

I did not know if he was living or dead as he
went tumbling head over heels down the stairs. I only knew that if
he was dead, I would now soon be joining him.

Dansby turned his attention back to me. I
clung desperately with one hand to my broken baluster. But I knew
that a single kick would loosen my grip and send me plunging
helplessly to the bottom.

I saw that Dansby was preparing to do just
that as he looked down at me and me up at him.

"You don't have to do this," I pleaded with
him. I saw out of the corner of my eye Gessler laying motionless in
an awkward heap at the bottom of the stairs. "Your master would not
want you to kill me."

"I am my own master," Dansby said with some
irritation.

A spark of emotion. I decided to pursue this
line. It was my only hope. My fingers were weakening. "You are a
machine. You do only what you are told."

Dansby smiled down at me. "And what if I was
told to kill you, Mr. Poe?"

"Then let Coppelius do his own dirty work,
Dansby. Is this why you were constructed? To kill?"

"I was constructed to ... to serve."

"To serve," I scoffed. The baluster gave an
inch. I could actually hear the nails creaking out of the wood
base. I uttered an involuntary cry of fear. The sound of the harp
continued to spill from the open parlor door. To me, it was the
music of the angels. Unless I could appeal to Dansby's clockwork
heart, I feared I would soon be hearing it for real. "Is this how
you serve Olimpia? She is in mortal danger and yet here you
stand—"