The Daemon Device

by Jeri Westerson

  He scanned the photograph with the lens, going over it meticulously, wondering what it was he was supposed to see. It was a crowded street scene, for all he could tell. The legend at the bottom written in the detective’s hand said it was right outside the Ripper’s victim’s abode. He examined the buildings, the street, and finally the crowd. And there, in the back was the bespectacled Franz von Spiegel.

  He snapped up straight. “Is that…?”

  “What did you see?” Her eyes sparkled and crinkled from her knowing smile.

  “You know what I saw. Professor von Spiegel.” He looked again. “But it could be someone else. Perhaps it merely looks like him. An elderly man with a cane, a white beard and mustache, round glasses…yes, it could be anyone.”

  “How about here.” She placed another photograph over the other.

  Reluctantly, he put the glass over the photo and looked again. This was a better, closer angle. It was definitely the professor.

  “And this one,” she said, doing the same. It was a different victim but the same professor.

  He lowered the glass and looked away. “What does this mean?”

  “You tell me.”

  “It is mere coincidence…” But that rang hollow to his own ears. “Scientific curiosity… Look here, what are you trying to say?”

  She leaned back in her chair and gave him a steady gaze. “Don’t you find it odd that he is present at each of these killings?”

  “After the fact.”

  “Even so.”

  He frowned. “Are you implying that he is somehow connected to these killings?”

  “I don’t know. There is no evidence to suggest it. I simply find it highly irregular that he is in these photos at all of the killings.”

  Even Leopold had to concede to that. “He said he used to work for Waldhar,” he said slowly.

  “But what exactly is it that he did?”

  Moving away from the desk he paced. “He never told me.”

  “I think it time we have a long chat with Herr von Spiegel, don’t you?” she said, rising. She shrugged into a top coat and grabbed her umbrella from its stand by the door.

  “Miss Zhao, do you think that’s wise? We don’t truly know the circumstances. And it could very well be perfectly logical. Perhaps I should go alone…”

  “If you still think I am working for Waldhar this will dispel any misconceptions, will it not? Come along, Leopold.”

  “Miss Zhao,” he said, scrambling after her. He went back for his hat, stuck it on his head, and ran to catch up. “Miss Zhao, these familiarities,” he said out of the side of his mouth, flicking his glance at a smirking Thacker. “They are uncalled for.”

  She glanced back at him over her shoulder in a most fetching manner. But she said nothing.

  “It is far too familiar,” he whispered harshly after she waved her hand for a hansom.

  “Is it because I am Chinese? These are old-fashioned ideas, Mr. Kazsmer. I am as English as you are.” There was that twinkle in her eye again. For just how English was he with his Jewish-Gypsy background?

  “I am not ashamed of your Oriental heritage,” he said and was surprised he meant it. “It is your brass, your abruptness that gives me pause.”

  “Oh.” She was silent until the cab arrived and they climbed in.

  “Winterpark Hotel,” Leopold told the cabby, and they fell back into the seat as the horse drew ahead.

  “I wonder if I can get that far,” said Thacker, head and torso popping through the back, making Leopold and Mingli keep a decent distance from each other.

  Mingli gazed thoughtfully out the window, chewing on the finger of a glove, dampening the leather. “Is it that you do not like forward women?” she asked suddenly after a long silence.

  Leopold caught Thacker’s eye, but the ghost looked as if he wanted no part of this conversation. “Oh, I er…think I’ve reached my limit…” He slowly sank through the carriage wall and disappeared.

  “Precisely,” said Leopold quickly, in case Thacker changed his mind. He scooted closer. “A man likes to make the overtures. It is his role to woo, not to be wooed.”

  She angled her head in such a way as to give him only the curve of her cheek, the sliver of an eye. “You don’t want to be wooed?”

  “N-no. It’s not proper.” He sat primly, his hands clasped in his lap.

  She turned toward him. “So you don’t want to kiss me?”

  “I…I...”

  “Because…” She inched closer. “If you were to take me in your arms and lead the kiss, you would then be in the superior position.”

  Leopold glared at her and noticed the cabby’s bright eyes staring at them through the roof’s trap door before the man quickly looked away.

  “This is not the place, madam.”

  Her hand curled around his arm. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was also the warm swell of breast pressed against that same arm. He felt his cheeks heat with fire. He wanted to shake her off but determined it might be too rude. Instead, he sat stiffly, his back barely against the seat. He nearly flew out of the carriage when it came to a halt outside the hotel and charged toward the front desk just inside the lobby. The hotelier smiled at him from behind his round glasses.

  “How can I be of assistance, sir?”

  “I am looking for Herr Franz von Spiegel. What room is he in?”

  The clerk shook his head and looked down at his registry. “Oh, I am very sorry, sir. But Professor von Spiegel checked out some time ago. He left no forwarding address, I’m afraid.”

  Mingli and, surprisingly, Thacker joined him at the desk, and the clerk eyed only her with obvious disdain. “What happened?” she asked.

  Leopold looked at her. “Gone. No forwarding address.”

  “Dear me.”

  Leopold’s eyes suddenly widened. “The Lock!” He tore back through the lobby and hailed the same cab they had just left at the kerb. “Whitechapel!” he called to the man. Mingli leapt for the door just as the hansom pulled away.

  She settled in, fixing her hat. “Mr. Kazsmer…”

  Leopold clenched his hands. No, he couldn’t have been so stupid. He trusted that man! But on what evidence had he trusted him? A story told by a pitiful old man? A faded photograph? He was a fool a thousand times over.

  The ride seemed to take an eternity and he bounced a leg nearly the whole way in his anxiety. When they reached Whitechapel, he nearly tumbled from the carriage in his haste to get to the mew. He unlocked the padlock, threw open the door, and lit the lamp.

  Thacker was standing in the middle of the lockup. He’d obviously flown ahead. Looking around him, he gave Leopold a sad glance.

  No sign of the Lock or the plans.

  Leopold pushed his hat from his head and grasped his hair. Why? Why have Leopold create the Lock only to steal it before it was complete. “It makes no sense!”

  “Perhaps he feared discovery,” she said, coming up from behind him. “He feared what Waldhar might do to him.”

  “Yet it does not explain his appearance in those photographs.” Brooding, he walked across his mostly empty mew. The debris had been cleared away, leaving behind only a few tables, chairs, books, the Proteus cabinet, some assorted tricks and costumes, and a silent Raj. He stared at his friend.

  Mingli came up behind him again on soft steps. “Your automaton is unusual, no?”

  “Very unusual.”

  She stepped forward and examined Raj but did not touch him. “Very unusual,” she murmured. She stayed but for a moment.

  When he heard the door close and the scent of lilac with it, he knelt before Raj. “I’m going to fix you, old friend. I recall enough of that incantation for the Lock that might help you. Let us see what can be done.”

  * * *

  AS FAR AS Leopold knew, there was not a soul in the world who could help him fix Raj. Yet someone must know, for someone had created him. Leopold did not know how or when, but by the look of the mechanisms themselves, Raj couldn’t be old
er than a few hundred years. He believed that the earliest could have been in the eighteenth century, when such clockworks were able to be properly machined. Any earlier and it was simply not possible.

  “I wish I could help you, old sod,” said Thacker, pacing in his strange gliding manner.

  “Just your presence is a comfort, Spense. You don’t know how much.”

  Thacker smiled weakly and continued his pacing but slowed to a stop to watch what Leopold was doing.

  Leopold drew a careful pentagram on the floor around Raj with a piece of chalk he had warded by rolling it in salt. He sat Indian style on the floor before him, studying the empty crystal cylinder. He had inspected it numerous times before for any signs of a crack. It was in perfect condition and all the components that attached to it were also in fine form. Its internal gases had simply been made inert and Leopold surmised that it had to have been by magical means. And so by magical means would he be restored. He hoped.

  He sat quietly, meditating on the incantations he had memorized from the Lock’s plans. Of what he understood from it, it was very close to the summoning charms he had been taught in Gehenna. Only he wasn’t summoning daemons, but their power. An infinite power source since it derived from the universe itself. It had to be the same that powered Raj, but even if he could restore his power source, would Raj be the same?

  He pushed those disturbing thoughts aside and worked on rumbling the incantation through his mind, until he was ready to speak them. Just to be on the safe side, he laid his sharpest knife before him. Should he need to summon a daemon—don’t think about Eurynomos. He wanted to be ready.

  “Do you think,” said Thacker quietly, “that maybe you shouldn’t be doing all this, Leo? I mean…summoning daemons. It ain’t right is it. It ain’t Christian.”

  “Well, neither am I, not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Oh. But…Jews. They’re the Old Testament. Same thing, ain’t it?”

  Leopold offered a smile. “Not quite, old man. Just different enough to matter. Besides. I’ve already been to Hell.” He closed his eyes and began. The words stumbled over his tongue. He was unfamiliar with R'lyehian and he hoped his pronunciation was sincere enough for that most ancient and foreign of languages. Once complete he began again. Somehow, he sensed that the drone of the incantation was more important than completing any one ritual. He had a feel for this kind of magic. Eurynomos had said so. Even his father had said so.

  He snapped his eyes open and stopped speaking. A thrum began vibrating up through the solid floor and climbed up his body, subtly at first and then with more insistence before the first sounds emerged.

  A rumbling, like an earthquake blending with the distant moans of many voices in chorus, rose all around him. He’d heard those voices before and though it filled him with dread he stayed rooted to the spot. He looked up at Raj, and the automaton began to glow.

  Light shimmered and darted all around him, like living embers, shooting in ever faster circles. The brass shone with a greenish light, sliding up his silent porcelain face. One piston moved and wheezed. A wheel squeaked into movement and stopped. His head jerked and Leopold leaned forward, mesmerized by the activity, the balls of energy suddenly rolling around the automated man. It was as if it was testing each joint and gear, each piston and tube. Another piston surged and the empty cylinder began to glow with a supernatural light. A fog appeared within, roiling like a thundercloud, complete with little bolts of lightning feathering up the sides of the glass. Raj’s head jerked again as the glow brightened, flashed, fluctuated.

  Leopold wanted to jump up, embrace him, but the event hadn’t finished. The lightning in the bottle made each contact shimmer and spark. A pop, a cloud of smoke, and the light in the clear crystal cylinder settled to a stable glow. The smoke dissipated, the thrum died away, and all lay quiet again in the dim space.

  Leopold looked down, and the pentagram had been completely burned away leaving nothing but scattered ash.

  That familiar sound of whirring gears and clicks accompanied Raj moving his head from side to side. “Leopold…” His voice was weak but there.

  Leopold did jump to his feet this time and laid a hand gently on his friend’s arm. Giddy relief flooded his being. “Raj. Are you all right?”

  “I…I think so. My goodness. That was extremely unpleasant.”

  “I’m so sorry, Raj. So sorry I wasn’t here to protect you.”

  “You couldn’t have protected me from that, Leo. It was too much power, too much…evil.”

  He knelt beside him, balancing between examining the clockwork within and looking at his friend’s expressionless face. Expressionless to the punter, but Leopold could always detect more in those glass eyes. “Tell me.”

  “How much time have I lost? How much?”

  “Since you were incapacitated? Over a week.”

  “Śāpita kamīnē!” Raj blinked and flailed his arms. “Is it too late? What of the Lock?”

  “Stolen. Along with the plans.”

  “By von Spiegel! He did this to me.”

  “He did!”

  “Yes. That insufferable kuttē kamīnē—forgive my language, Leopold. I am naturally upset. I watched Herr Professor rooting around in your things when you were gone. I tried to discover what he was about, spying as much as I could, but it wasn’t long until he recognized my nature. He tried to get me to speak, to move, but as you well know, when I chose not to, I am like a stone. This didn’t seem to trouble him. Instead, he removed a small device from his coat pocket, inserted it into my spine just under the back of my head, and I felt myself shutdown.”

  “Oh Raj.”

  “I was helpless to stop him. But I was aware, my friend. I was still aware and I watched what next he did. He summoned the Cloven-Hoofed One and gave it instructions in German. And that damned beast began to destroy your goods, Leopold, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.”

  “I lay no blame on you, old friend.”

  “Nevertheless.” The automaton shook his head in a comforting whir and click that Leopold had sorely missed. The glow within the man’s brass ribcage shone as strong as ever. “I tried as hard as I could to do something. To no avail. I feared I would be trapped this way for all eternity. But Leopold, you saved me.”

  “I…I didn’t know what else to do. I took a chance…”

  “It was the right one.”

  “It could have just as easily destroyed you.”

  “And that would have been a better death than endless limbo, I can assure you.”

  Leopold dropped his head, hiding his tears. The squeak of the wheel as Raj approached made him lift his face.

  “Ah, Leopold. Thank you. You are a true friend…and a very powerful mage. Never forget that.”

  “It’s the daemons…”

  But Raj shook his head with a squeak and a click. “No. It isn’t.”

  Leopold rose and dusted off his trouser knees.

  “I keep thinking I can’t be amazed anymore,” said Thacker, bowler hat pushed nearly to the back of his head.

  “Ah, Inspector!” said Raj. He bowed his head. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last.” Raj lifted his child’s hand.

  Thacker cautiously approached and tried to take the offered hand to shake but his ectoplasmic hand passed through it.

  “You must be a new spirit,” said Raj sagely. “I can help train you to touch objects in our world.”

  “You can?” He glanced at Leopold. “Cor blimey. You know the most interesting people, Leo.”

  “I like this one,” said Raj. “He calls me ‘people’. And I like your new assistants as well. Round and pretty.”

  “Not as pretty as that Mingli,” said Thacker. “I think Leo’s gone and fallen for her.”

  “You don’t say! Leo!”

  “No, I haven’t,” he said petulantly. “If I had known the two of you would join forces against me…” He rolled down his sleeves, hiding his reddening face. “So von Spiegel was not who he s
aid he was,” he went on. “But why have me make his Lock only to steal it away before it was complete?”

  “I am not so certain that this Lock is what he professed it to be,” said Raj. “I think it was something more. He assumed I was gone, you see. He likes to talk to himself and his imps that did his bidding, stealing this and that. I think the Lock is more and he needed not only your dexterous skills but your magic, for as you worked upon it you imprinted your magic within. With each scribed sigil, with each whispered incantation, it absorbed you.”

  “He knew, then. I didn’t need to say the incantation. He knew.” He stared hard at the floor. “But why my magical signature? What does that gain him?”

  “Power,” said Raj. “Deadly power.” The automaton wheeled slowly as he thought. “Still, there was something odd about this professor. He seemed very determined. But…not quite right. Not as I expected. Something about him…”

  Thacker put a hand to his stubbly chin. “Perhaps he was scared of Waldhar.”

  “That could well be,” Raj went on. “Yes. He seemed to fear him. But…I had my misgivings. I had a great deal of time to observe him and to think about my observations. And something else. He said one incantation that perplexed me.”

  “What’s that?” asked Leopold.

  “He said, ‘Beschwöre sie.’”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It is German, my friend. It means, ‘Summon them.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  LEOPOLD WANTED TO kick himself. He had been used. It was as simple as that. He had trusted the frail old man and his stories. Why? Why had he fallen for it like some punter off the street? Surely his experiences should have made him wiser, less trusting. But that photograph. Was it even real? It could have been manipulated. But it had seemed real. Or was it just that he had wanted it to be so, wanted to know someone who had known his father in a good light?

  Eurynomos would have said that his trust was his strength, but he was certainly in no mood to hear such platitudes. Because what Raj said disturbed him. Von Spiegel was also nervous, frightened.