Still she said nothing. Her bottom lip started to quiver.
“Had you noticed him behaving strangely of late?”
“But of course,” the woman said, her back straightening. “I mean a man in his right mind would never have sent his daughter away to another man’s house.”
“You have a point, but were there any other signs leading up to that moment?”
“He wasn’t quite himself again after the abduction, even when Miranda had been returned safe and sound.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean he hardly let her out of his sight and we certainly weren’t allowed out of the house. That was what was so strange about the events of last night. Not only did he send us across town to here, but he did so without coming with us.”
“I see.”
“And then there was the time I walked in on him destroying his notes.”
“He was destroying his notes?” Ulysses’ face was suddenly alive with excitement.
“He didn’t see me; I left before he noticed I was even there. He was burning them, in the grate in his laboratory.”
“Why would he do that?” Ulysses asked, his mind working as fast as a Newcomen engine now.
“I didn’t think it my place to ask,” Miss Wishart said.
“No. No, of course you didn’t.”
“If there isn’t anything else...”
“Of course, please feel free to go,” Ulysses said.
The young woman rose and made for the study door.
“You’re welcome to remain here as long as you need to,” Ulysses added. “You and Miranda.”
The governess paused and then turned back, regarding him with large, soulful eyes.
“But Mr Quicksilver, you have done more than enough for us already.”
“I insist. And while we’re at it,” he said, flashing her a broad smile, “if you are to be my house guest, please call me Ulysses.”
The governess blushed. “Very well.”
Opening the study door, she paused at the threshold and looked back one last time.
“Good day to you, Ulysses.”
ALONE AGAIN, ULYSSES took out Gallowglass’s hand-written letter and re-read it for the umpteenth time.
In the light of that morning’s gruesome revelation, it seemed obvious to him now that Gallowglass had feared something might happen to him. And yet it almost seemed that Gallowglass believed his daughter Miranda to be in danger too. Had his seemingly erratic behaviour been intended to divert attention away from her, eliminate the danger he foresaw coming her way? Had he gone knowingly to his death?
Ulysses resolved that if he was ever going to find out why his friend had been murdered, he had to know what he had been working on. Then he might be able to work out who had been behind the kidnap and the cajoling, and that in turn might lead to, if not the killer himself, then at least the individual that set the killer on Victor Gallowglass. And the only way he was going to be able to do that was if he paid a visit to the Gallowglass family home, to see if he might uncover any further clues.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After the Fire
THE FIRE HAD completely gutted the upper storeys of the house and it had only been thanks to the sterling work of London’s noble fire brigade that none of the surrounding buildings had in fact been damaged.
But within number 14 Elizabeth Street the fire had burnt fierce and strong. Even from outside the property, Ulysses could see how the fire must have started in the front corner room on the first floor. From there it had quickly spread to the second storey, the airy attic allowing the fire to seize hold within the roof space particularly effectively. As far as Ulysses could see, the ground floor remained intact but the roof and top storey had fallen into the rooms below.
Ulysses found himself wondering again at the state of Gallowglass’s mind in those last hours of his life, that he could so rashly destroy not only his family’s home but, by his actions, put his neighbours in danger.
With cautious steps, Ulysses ducked under the safety cordon, flashing the constable on duty his ID, and – ignoring the young officer’s words of warning – approached the property. A hulking fire-suppression droid – not so unlike the indefatigable Limehouse Golem in form – squatted by the front steps, motionless, having been deactivated for the time being.
On the ground floor everything was coated in a sticky layer of wet soot and ash. The furnishings had been ruined by the drenching the fire brigade’s hoses had given the burning building. Family portraits still dripped with water, while a large coat rack glistened with moisture. Ulysses wrinkled his nose at the smell of the place – an acrid combination of smoke and damp.
Watching where he trod and where he put his hands – as much to avoid ruining yet another suit, as anything else – he made his way upstairs.
At the top of the stairs, Ulysses found himself in the open air again, the filthy smear of Smog clouds the only roof above his head. Water dripped from the sodden rafters and what remained of the roof-beams. Ulysses grimaced as a sooty droplet of water splattered against the lapel of his jacket.
Ulysses had never visited Victor Gallowglass at his Belgravia home but Miss Wishart had been able to tell him all he needed to know to find the location of the doctor’s lab. This fact only added credence to Ulysses’ belief that Gallowglass had set the fire himself.
The door to the laboratory stood before him, its paintwork black with smoke damage, blistered and peeling. Ulysses put a cautious hand to the door handle. It had partially melted and was still warm. Beyond, he could see the scorched internal walls of the room; plaster cracked and flaking, the bricks exposed beneath, the wallpaper having burnt away.
The devastation within the lab was total. Everything was covered in the same cloying black mush, the once carpeted floor flooded with a soupy mixture of ash and water. The laboratory was open to the sky. He could distinguish the shapes of tables, stools, workbenches, scientific apparatus, even a Babbage engine, through the incomparable mess. As he advanced into the room, he cleared fallen pieces of timber from before him with his cane.
His heart sank. Finding anything amongst all this mess was going to be a challenge.
He picked his way through the smouldering ruins, heat radiating from the bricks of the walls that still stood, until he came to what was left of the house’s central chimney stack. The top portion had collapsed under the stress of the fire, bringing down the floor of one of the rooms above. Ulysses poked at what he found within the grate but it was nothing more than black paper and grey ash. And yet, amidst all the devastation there was something, some rumour of an earlier intrusion. Someone else had been here since the fire had been brought under control.
Ulysses could feel his hackles rise, the familiar itch of prescience at the base of his skull. He shifted his weight onto his back foot, the mulch, paper and crumbling charcoal crunching uncomfortably loudly.
He froze. Had the sound he had just heard been him or something other?
Ears straining for any sound, Ulysses reached for his revolver. He made to leave the room, the sounds of his footsteps noisy in the mess of sludge that covered the floor.
When the other finally revealed itself, it made no sound but Ulysses sensed its presence nonetheless. He darted glances all about him. He sought the watcher in the reflections revealed in the dull mirrors of rippling grey puddles.
At that moment, giddy with adrenalin, a host of thoughts paraded themselves through Ulysses’ agitated mind. There were a whole host of concerns regarding the child, her governess and even his brother Barty, but there was one thought his overwrought mind kept lingering on and that was the body on the pier and the nature of its killer.
Victor Gallowglass had been savagely slain with cruel efficiency. In fact, practically any one of the brutal wounds that had scored his flesh could have killed him but their proliferation suggested something else to Ulysses; that his assassin – and he was sure that Gallowglass’s death had been an assassination and no
mere random murder – had toyed with Gallowglass right until the end. The dead doctor’s slaughter might have been sanctioned by another, but its perpetrator had taken great satisfaction in its gory work.
That same killer was watching him now with unflinching interest.
There came the skitter and scrape of metal claws on the beams above and a light shower of ash rained down.
Body tensed, Ulysses slowly looked up into the face of Gallowglass’s murderer.
The devil smiled back at him.
“Slice and dice, little red bag,” it gurgled. Scissors flashed. “Slice and dice.”
And then, bladed fingers springing wide as gin-traps, the killer pounced.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ripper Jack
FOREGOING HIS GUN, Ulysses unsheathed his sword-stick and brought it to bear, putting his weight onto his back foot to absorb the shock of the assassin landing on top of him. But despite parrying its initial strike and preparing himself, it still felt as though he had been hit by a steam-wagon. Ulysses gave in to the crushing weight and, curling his body, rolled onto his back amidst the mess and the mulch covering the floor.
As he did so, the spider-thing’s steel limbs arresting its fall as its hooves hit the filthy floorboards, Ulysses kicked upwards, the momentum of his roll pushing him up onto his shoulders as, thighs aching, he focused all his strength towards his feet. As he pushed upwards he unbalanced the thing, pitching it forwards so that it came crashing down in the mess of the fire and water-ravaged ruins.
But he had only earned himself a temporary respite. Even as he was struggling to his feet, so too was the assassin. However, the killer righted itself with much greater ease, flipping itself upright with a twist of its telescopic limbs.
It faced him on all fours now, its arms and legs projecting from either side of its cloak-draped body, splayed at right angles. It scampered towards him, grinning; its face the wrong way up.
As it scuttled towards him the head rotated owl-like about its distended neck joint, smiling all the while. And then it unfolded itself and leapt.
But Ulysses was already running. He knew that in the confines of the ruined house he didn’t have a hope against the spider-like stalker. But if he could get clear, and lure it out into the open, then just maybe...
He flung himself through the door and slammed it shut after him, even as the arachnid assassin hauled itself over the top of the doorframe, pulling itself through the fire-weakened lathes of the wall.
Ulysses threw himself down the stairs, the spider thing landing on the top rail of the banister behind him. He didn’t dare look back as he fled from the monster. In his mind’s eye he could see it hauling itself along the rungs of the banisters, crawling down the stairwell.
Another scissoring kick took it to the final turn of the stair, only moments after Ulysses made it into the hallway. As he ran for the front door, he pulled the coat rack and hat stand over behind him. The furniture slowly toppled over like a felled tree, crashing into the wall opposite and creating an obstacle for the giggling killer.
The assassin leapt from the stairs directly onto the obstruction, squeezing itself through the triangle formed by the toppled stand, the wall behind it and the smoke-blackened ceiling, twisting its body into impossible shapes.
Ulysses stopped, looking back, watching the leering killer as it crawled from shadow to shadow in its relentless pursuit.
As long as they remained in the house, the assassin had the advantage. With that in mind, he pulled open the front door and threw himself down the front steps.
Hearing the crash of the front door and then Ulysses’ sprinting heels, the on-duty policeman turned, rudely roused from a waking dream in which he was tucking into a plate of lamb chops, creamy mash and steaming onion gravy.
“Here, what’s going on? You alright, sir?”
Hearing a second crash, the constable looked back towards the house and saw what it was that had just punched the same door from its hinges, and was now coming after him.
“Good lord!” he gasped, the colour draining from his cheeks.
“Get out of here!” Ulysses shouted, as he ducked under the police line and headed off up the street.
In the open at last, now he felt that he might actually have a chance against the relentless assassin. Ulysses sheathed his sword-stick and reached for his pistol.
“But, sir, my orders –”
“My advice would be bugger your orders. Get out of here now!”
The policeman gave Ulysses an appalled glance and then turned on his tail and ran, his helmet clattering onto the cobbles behind him.
Ulysses turned back to the house and, in the cold light of day, saw the killer properly for the first time.
It was moving like a dog or a wolf now, racing towards him, where before it had rearranged its body to move like a spider to negotiate the broken beams and other obstructions within the fire-ravaged house. Much of its body was hidden by the black cloth of its cape, which rippled behind it like the wings of some great bat.
Ulysses raised his pistol and fired.
There was the spang of metal on metal and the galloping killer stumbled. But the very next second it recovered itself and resumed its charge. Ulysses fired again. The bullet found its target, but the thing didn’t even miss a pace.
Ulysses was reminded of the Limehouse Golem with its granite-hard carapace, utterly resistant to his bullets, and how it had taken a magnetic mine to bring it down. Even then the vigilante Spring-Heeled Jack had been able to re-build it.
Gallowglass’s killer unfolded itself, rising on its backward jointed hind-legs. The fore-legs of the creature became arms and hands again as it brought its cruelly-sharp bladed-fingers to bear.
The thing now looked like a man who had suffered the attentions of some brutal medieval torture device and yet – no matter how impossible such a feat might seem – had survived. Every part of its spindly body was longer than it should be, its limbs made up of more joints than was natural, and atop a flexible, telescopic neck the leering face of a man smiled down at him. And it was only a face, stretched taut across the gleaming chrome dome of an artificial skull beneath.
As the killer continued to bear down on him, eating up the yards between the two of them, Ulysses holstered his pistol and unsheathed his rapier once more. If dead lead couldn’t stop the thing, then he would have to resort to cold steel.
Ulysses saw the killer’s hands were of soft human flesh, the slicing scalpel claws inserted into the necrotising tips of its fingers. He brought his blade up towards the killer’s serpentine neck.
Metal rang on metal and Ulysses’ nerve-endings burned as the jarring sensation rushed up his arms to his shoulders. It was all he could do not to drop the sword-stick.
The killer struck out with the five blades of one hand; Ulysses only just managing to parry the attack. His blade singing, he spun it in his hands and laid a counter-strike across his body, aiming at the thing’s head.
The assassin was just as fast as he was, one arm folding impossibly at both elbow and shoulder so that another steel taloned hand might deflect the dandy’s blow.
Metal rang as the two traded blows, but both were evenly matched. If they continued like this, Ulysses knew that it would be the one who’s stamina lasted the longest would ultimately be the victor, and he didn’t appreciate that realisation one bit. If he was going to best Gallowglass’s killer he was going to have to try something else. The question was, what?
Ulysses put all his strength behind another thrust of his blade and, as the assassin pulled itself backwards to avoid the attack, the dandy turned and ran. Behind him the clockwork killer hissed and, in the very next instant, set off after him.
Adrenalin giving him the burst of speed he needed to put some distance between himself and the automaton, Ulysses suddenly found himself in the crowded confines of Buckingham Palace Road. But the bustling throng wouldn’t save him now. Besides, he didn’t want to complicate matters by having the
blood of innocents on his hands.
“Get out of the way! Get out of here!” he screamed, waving his hands furiously. But the shambling masses merely looked at him with unimpressed or disgruntled expressions on their faces.
Then a woman screamed, and Ulysses knew that the killer had caught up with him again.
A man swore, his unabashed burst of expletives attracting Ulysses’ attention. The moustachioed man was standing beside what appeared to be a Penny Farthing bicycle enhanced by the addition of a Trevithick steam engine. In three strides, the dandy had crossed the pavement, sheathed his blade, and mounted the contraption before the man could let fly with a second vitriolic tirade.
“Crown business!” Ulysses shouted to the man as he kicked the engine into life and activated the throttle with his right hand. “Queen and country, and all that. Report to the nearest police station and you’ll be fully reimbursed in due course!”
The steam velocipede sped away up the road as the automaton bounded over the heads of the bewildered crowd and landed in the middle of the road with a clatter of iron-shod hooves.
Horses whinnied and shied. Children howled in terror and a trundling steam-wagon slewed to a halt across the road, narrowly avoiding a costermonger’s barrow.
But Ulysses didn’t stop; he didn’t even dare look round. He simply gunned the throttle again, bracing himself, shoulders hunched, leaning low over the handlebars of the bicycle as the vehicle roared on up the road.
Even over the purr of the Trevithick, Ulysses could hear the clattering gallop of the unnatural thing chasing him up the street in broad daylight. Their passing provoked gasps of surprise and unadulterated horror from those going about their everyday business, and left stock-still, gawping statues in their wake.
His getaway by velocipede had only bought him temporary respite. The automaton was still in pursuit and still had to be dealt with, and Ulysses knew that to do that he would have to get off the road eventually.
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