A Conspiracy of Alchemists

by Liesel Schwarz

  “We are not going to do anything. I am going to make sure that you are safe, and once that is accomplished, Patrice and I will find these men. We have ways to make them tell us what they’ve done with your father. And once I have established your father’s whereabouts, then he and I will rescue him.”

  “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

  “I don’t know. Staying alive might be a good start.”

  “Very well, then, I shall go back to work and ask for a new assignment. I am taking my ship back.”

  His face grew stern. “Absolutely not. I forbid it.” He placed his palm on the table.

  Elle’s temper raged. “How dare you forbid me to do anything? You are not my father or my husband!” So much for the model of poise and sensibility.

  “I might not be, yet here I find myself in charge of you. Again.” He gestured in exasperation. “What will you have me do? Shall I marry you so I can force you to listen to me?”

  “I’d rather eat my own foot than marry a man like you.”

  He leaned toward her. “I should propose to you right now, just to see you try.”

  She leaned forward to reply, but realized her mistake almost immediately. Her face was suddenly only inches away from his.

  His eyes darkened. The reaction was animalistic, almost predatory. Very gently he reached over to trace the line of her jaw, lifting her face even closer. His touch made little tremors sift through her. She closed her eyes, lost in the sensation.

  The sound of Mrs. Hinges thumping down the stairs, humming loudly, tore the moment apart.

  Marsh let go of Elle and sat back in his chair. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Please forgive me. That was entirely inappropriate. It has been two days since I’ve slept properly and my patience is worn somewhat thin.”

  She stared at him, too mesmerized to speak.

  “I am not a man who was blessed with deep reserves of patience. You would do well not to provoke me like that again.”

  Elle blinked, breaking out of her trance. “Right, then. We will rest a while and then set out to find my father. But I am still coming with you, Mr. Marsh, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  A shuffling sound preceded Mrs. Hinges as she made her way toward the dining room. “Let’s not upset Mrs. Hinges any further by fighting. She’s had quite enough shocks for one day, don’t you think?” Elle said.

  “Agreed.” His voice was soft, intimate.

  Elle turned back to her now cool eggs and toast just as Mrs. Hinges entered the room.

  “My lord, I just wanted to let you know that Mr. Chevalier is resting. He says he should be back on his feet in an hour or two.”

  Marsh smiled. “That’s wonderful, Mrs. Hinges. But let him rest. I think we are all a little tired.” He cast a quick look at Elle.

  Mrs. Hinges nodded. “Indeed so, my lord. Indeed so.”

  “And, Mrs. Hinges …”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Thank you for taking us in. That was very kind of you.” He gave her one of his special smiles.

  A red flush crept up over the housekeeper’s cheeks. “Oh, no need to thank me, my lord. It’s the least we can do. But I did think that once your lordship is finished with breakfast, we should take a look at the professor’s study to look for clues. The police have already been , but I insisted the constable leave everything the way he found it. I read that this is what one should do in the papers.”

  “Excellent work, Mrs. Hinges. That is exactly what I intend to do, as soon as Miss Chance has finished her toast.”

  Elle swallowed the bite of toast she had been chewing. Did he have to sound so assured? It really was most annoying.

  CHAPTER 10

  Elle’s father’s study was on the other side of the house—away from the domesticity, as he liked to call it. It was a well-proportioned room, dominated by a large drawing table that stood in the middle of the parquet floor. The tabletop was littered with rolled-up bits of wax paper and drawings. Schematics were pinned open on it, held down by brass gear disks or hunks of metal that looked had once been part of a machine at some point. A morose fern sat in a brass bucket on a pedestal in the corner.

  Someone had picked up the overturned chair, but papers were still strewn all over the floor. But then again, the professor was so messy, it would have been entirely possible to ransack the place without anyone noticing.

  Elle watched Marsh survey the professor’s clutter. He made a note in his pocketbook as he examined the rows of leather-bound books neatly lined up along the shelves. He looked over at the plans on the table. “Interesting,” he murmured.

  “Oh, he’s been working on those for years.” Elle ran her fingers over the papers with affection.” He has this theory that it is possible to build aerodyne flying machines. You know, ones that propel themselves and don’t require a float like the dirigibles do. He keeps his research secret though. There are many who want to know his ideas.”

  Marsh leafed through the plans. “I believe this is not dissimilar to the work of Mr. Wright and his brother in America.”

  “My father corresponds with them. I think the current topic of debate is steering mechanisms.”

  She sat down in her father’s battered high-back leather chair. The professor had modified the seat at some stage so it could swivel round. Little brass pistons could be manipulated to achieve the correct height and pitch of the chair. He had also replaced the feet with brass wheels so he could move across the room without getting up. The chair wobbled and skidded as it adjusted to Elle’s body. The leather smelled like her father, a mixture of engine grease and tobacco. She felt very lonely and small.

  Marsh was staring down at her. “Are you all right?” He looked concerned.

  “I’m so worried about him. Do you think his abductor might have been someone who wanted the designs for the flight machines?”

  “I don’t know. But we will find the professor. I promise.”

  She nodded and bit her lip. It was proving to be quite difficult to hate Mr. Marsh when he was being this kind to her. Her eyes prickled with the urge to cry again.

  “Do you think he’ll mind if we go through his papers?” Marsh opened one of the drawers in the professor’s writing desk.

  “I’m sure he won’t, given his current plight.”

  “You take that side. I’ll take this one. We might find something among all this stuff.” He swiveled her chair around so she faced the desk.

  The desk was crammed with bits of paper. Old accounts and invoices and scraps of paper with mathematical equations scribbled over them were shoved into every conceivable crevice.

  “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Elle said after a few minutes of rifling.

  He nodded and pulled out another wad of papers from one of the cubbyholes. “I think your father might need an assistant.” He leafed through the sheets.

  “The state of this study is a lost cause. Trust me, we’ve tried.” She sat back in the chair. “It’s always been like this. I remember, when I was little he used to pull out the side panels of the desk so I could sit next to him. We would do sums together for hours.” Those had been the days when her father could ignore the fact that she was a girl. “Look. It opens up if you undo this latch.” She reached over and unhitched the latch that held the wood panel of the desk in place and slid it out. An envelope fell out and onto the floor.

  Marsh picked it up. “I believe this might be for you.” He handed her the envelope.

  Her name was scrawled on the face of it in her father’s eccentric copperplate handwriting, along with the words In case they come. She stuck her finger into the corner and ripped the paper open.

  “Bravo, professor,” Marsh said.

  Inside was a key. She held it up and examined it. “I know what this opens!” she said with a sudden wave of inspiration. She jumped out of the chair. It wobbled dangerously, but stayed upright.

  “Come with me. It’s this w
ay.” She opened the French doors that led from the study into the garden. At the bottom of the garden was a stone wall with a gate. In the middle of the field that lay behind the gate was a barn. Elle ran across the garden and opened the gate. Marsh caught up with her outside the wooden doors of the barn.

  “This is my father’s other workshop.” She was out of breath from running in her skirts and stays. She slid the key into the padlock and swung the doors open.

  Elle and Marsh blinked into the windowless gloom. “There is a switch over here somewhere.” She fumbled around until she found the lever that activated the spark lights. “Ta-daa!” she said with a flourish. The barn filled with dusty light. To one side were a workbench and a lathe. Rows of tools and instruments lined the lime-washed walls.

  “What on earth is that?” Marsh pointed at a contraption that was partly covered by a large piece of canvas. It took up more than half of the workshop.

  Elle pulled away the canvas. “He’s built it! He’s actually finished one of his flying machines,” she said as the canvas slid off to reveal a set of sleek brass brass-and-steel rotor blades that drooped ever so slightly as they hung from the cockpit.

  “Do you know how to fly one of these things?” Marsh said.

  “I’m not sure, I don’t think anyone has ever flown one before, but I am familiar with its dynamics. I’d certainly love to try.” She walked round the machine and stared at the exposed engine, situated between the tail and the cockpit. “Just look at those spark reactors!”

  “And how far do you think it could fly?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. As far as we want it to.” Elle ran her hand over the polished surface and smiled to herself. She had a plan.

  CHAPTER 11

  “His lordship said for me to tell you that he had some business to attend to in town and that he’d be back later. The fishmonger’s been round this morning and I’ve got a nice bit of plaice for tonight’s dinner.” Mrs. Hinges said when Elle wandered into the kitchen shortly before noon. She was furiously scrubbing potatoes in a bowl of water. Elle felt a little sorry for the poor potatoes.

  Elle sat down beside her. “Mrs. Hinges, are you all right?”

  The older woman gave her a sad smile. “Busy hands make the time pass. There is no sense in sitting around feeling sorry for oneself, now is there? It won’t bring the professor back, now will it? One must carry on, no matter how hard it might be sometimes.” She picked up another potato and plunged it into the basin.

  “Why do you think they took him?” she said.

  Mrs. Hinges stopped working and looked at her. “I honestly don’t know, dear.” There was a slight tremor in the older woman’s voice. “There are many who would pay a lot of money to be privy to his work.”

  Elle felt a profound sense of anxiety and dread as she considered this. There had to be more to it than that, and she didn’t like the direction her thoughts were taking.

  She picked one of Mrs. Hinges’ excellent strawberry tarts off the plate before her and straightened. Sitting here at the kitchen table brooding wasn’t going to make matters better. “Mrs. Hinges, I will be in the workshop if you need me.”

  “Oh, do be careful, my dear. His lordship said that we shouldn’t go wandering off by ourselves. He said to stay indoors, where it is safe. It’s best not to take any chances.” Mrs. Hinges sounded quite distressed at the thought.

  “Blast what that man says. I have some business of my own to attend to,” Elle said as she left the kitchen.

  The reassuring smell of engine grease and dust greeted her as she opened the doors of the workshop. She was keen to have a closer look at the flying machine, but the first order of business was to see if she could do something about the bracelet around her wrist. She picked up a pair of sturdy pliers. It seemed a pity ruining such a fine piece, but needs must. And the sooner she was rid of the creepy thing, the better. She tightened the pliers around the metal, close to the clasp, and pressed down with all her might. The bracelet started writhing and wriggling as if it were in pain. Startled, she let go of the pliers and examined it with her optic, but apart from a soft green glow of the diamonds, there was not a mark on it—not even a scratch.

  She tried again to separate the clasp, this time by clamping the bracelet in the vice and hitting it with a hammer. Once again it started vibrating, and this time also let out a bolt of energy, which was so potent, it nearly knocked Elle off her feet.

  “Ow!” She rubbed her wrist, where the skin was now red, and promptly dismissed the use of her father’s spark-welding torch . Clearly the bracelet had no intention of going anywhere for the foreseeable future. She sighed and stood up from the workbench. She was going to have to ask her father for help with this as soon as he was home safely. And finding him was her first priority now.

  She glanced over to the other side of the workshop. The flying machine glowed brown and bronze under the light of the naked spark globes. Disturbed dust particles shimmered in the light around it.

  Elle picked up a wrench and eyed the fuselage critically. The brass-smiths her father used to manufacture his inventions had done good work here. It was a beautifully crafted piece of machinery. She could hardly believe that her father had built the entire design without telling her about it.

  The elegant lines of the machine reminded her of a dragonfly ready to take flight. It sat on four small wheels that could move independently from one another in order to maneuver the machine about on the ground. A glass-paned dome with red velvet seats inside rested on top of the wheels. At the back of the dome a metal cage held the spark reactor and water tanks. The cage tapered off into the tail. On top of the glass dome, with the seats, a large propeller drooped downward in a slight curve. Another smaller propeller sat the tail end.

  “Let’s see what’s inside you,” she said to the machine. She opened the engine compartment and started tinkering with the reactor. The faint blue-green of a spark reactor under her hands always had a way of soothing her. This was the heart of the machine—its essence. And this one was particularly lovely. Her father had used a configuration she had not seen before.

  Elle liked working on machines. They had specific rules, and best of all, they were predictable. Safe. Unlike people, who were just the opposite.

  With her curiosity aroused, she started following the brass tubes and connectors to the various parts that made the engine work. Within minutes, she was under the spell that only a finely made machine could cast.

  She was so deeply engrossed in the inner workings that she did not hear Marsh approach.

  “Now, that’s something one doesn’t see every day,” he said behind her.

  Elle froze. She was bent over with her head inside the spark reactor, trying to reach a connection at the bottom of it. In a pang of acute mortification she realized that her bottom was, at that very moment, raised up and poking out of the cage. The gentle curves of her derrière would be quite clearly visible through her coveralls that were drawn tight from stretching for the connection she was inspecting.

  She clipped the connection into place and dragged herself out of the machine with as much dignity as she could muster.

  “Lord Greychester. Good afternoon to you,” she said, tucking an escaped strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Ah, now it’s ‘Lord Greychester.’ ” He adjusted the angle of his head to meet her gaze. “What happened to ‘Marsh’?”

  He was enjoying the moment far more than was appropriate, Elle thought. She crossed her arms across her chest and raised her chin. “And how may I assist you?” she said, cooling her tone. It was all she could do to hide her embarrassment.

  His smile faded and he shrugged. “I am pleased to see that you have recovered from last night’s ordeal. Mrs. Hinges was most concerned about you. She asked me to tell you that it is time for you to dress for dinner. I felt like a bit of a walk, so here I am. I find that fresh air does wonders for the constitution. It has been lovely weather we’ve been having of late.” He looked up at t
he darkening sky. “Most unusual for this time of year, don’t you think?”

  “Is it that late already?” She glanced at the clock on the other side of the workshop, ignoring his strange comment about the weather.

  He walked up to the machine and ran his hand over the gleaming brass-work, not unlike one would when inspecting a finely bred horse. Elle found herself distracted by the elegant taper of his fingers as they glided over the gleaming wood.

  “Any news?” she said.

  “The police know very little.”

  “So where do we start?” She put down the rag she’d used to wipe the grease from her hands.

  “I have a few suspicions, but I honestly don’t know. I suspect we will have to wait until we hear from the kidnappers.” He looked troubled.

  Elle ran her hand over her forehead. “Surely there must be more we can do?”

  Marsh sighed. “At least we know that they want him alive. They wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of taking him if they didn’t. So all we can do for the moment is wait.”

  To distract herself, Elle picked up the wrench and screwdrivers she’d been using and put them back into the toolbox.

  “That really is a fascinating-looking machine,” Marsh said, pointing at the contraption.

  Elle nodded. “I’ve decided I shall name this machine a gyrocopter.”

  “A gyrocopter,” he said. “Nice name. How far do you think you would be able to fly this thing?”

  She turned her head to one side and contemplated the question. “I think I might need to practice, but if the mechanics are sound and there is enough water for steam, I see no reason why we couldn’t fly as far as we wished. And look,” she pointed at the wheels. “It’s designed to be maneuverable. It can go and land wherever one wants. No more time tables or delays.”

  “Miss Chance, you are truly a most surprising woman.” He touched the rim of his hat. “Mrs. Hinges says dinner is in half an hour and I shall leave you to finish your examination of the mechanics in private.” He turned away and left the workshop.