The Dandy Boys Mysteries (Vengeance Book 0)

by Peter J. Wacks

  “Refraction,” was Weyland’s response.

  Rufus remained quiet. It was obvious that his two compatriots were communicating on a level that their specific fields allowed and he was loathe to interrupt.

  With an inquisitive bend to his eyebrows and a furtive darting of his eyes, Friedrich responded, “I am sure that this means something, but I am at a loss as to what specific point of refraction you wish to discuss.”

  “Light … and refraction,” brooded Weyland.

  “I still don’t know the specific context of your musings.” Friedrich glanced at Rufus with a look of amusement on his face.

  “When light strikes a thing in the air, that thing becomes illuminated, like this smoke.”

  “I am familiar with the concept.” said Rufus as Friedrich nodded.

  “A hooded lantern is somewhat unique, would you not agree? It directs the light in a specific direction and can even use mirrors to intensify the volume of illumination. This is a concept which is most certainly an origin of the Laterna Magica. Tell me, Friedrich, are you familiar with Goldsworthy Gurney?”

  “I cannot say that I have heard the name,” replied Friedrich as he took a seat, leaving Rufus to stand by the door.

  “Goldsworthy Gurney is your prototypical gentleman,” said Weyland. “I had the honor of meeting him shortly after my father acquired his services. He was working on a design for a steam carriage; it was similar in concept to a road-locomotive, except that it carried with it the comforts of civilized travel. His prototype was able to travel at a rate of nearly thirty kilometers an hour, and aside from concerns of fuel capacity, did not suffer the negatives associated with horse travel of the same speed. My father was concerned that this could, if left alone, contend with our investments in the infrastructure and design of aerostat trade and transport. He had only the deepest respect for Mr. Gurney, and so offered him funding to apply his abilities to matters beneficial to the consortium … His wife pasted this last year … but I digress. When I was child, Mr. Gurney invented a chemical flame, which has been put to good use in the theater. It uses quicklime to produce a flame of unparalleled intensity.”

  Friedrich cocked his head to one side for a moment and then raised his eyebrows with a grunt, seeing where his friend was going.

  Weyland leaned back in his seat and took a long drag from his pipe. “Rufus, I wonder if what you described to us might not be a form of phantasmagoria. One in which the differences of lighting and intensity could be solved by using a combination of standard lighting, Argand Lamps, and Limelight within modified variants of Magic Lanterns. Each lantern could be designed to protect a specific set of images which would interact uncharacteristically with the particulates in the air. The inclusion of colored films would not only add to the illusion, but it would also create a distinction of effects, making it that much more difficult to identify the true source of the illusion.”

  He thought for a moment, then continued, “A special layering and or texturing of the walls could damped the effect of the lights upon them—I can think of several methods which might work to this effect—thus further concealing the illusion of the lighting. The sparkling which you described could be achieved by spreading a light silver powder, or other similar substance, throughout the room, or perhaps in a specific area for the purpose of inspiring a desired response. In addition to these points, the use of reflective devices could be employed in order to create a web-like system of concentrated lighting, which could—if done properly—add to the disorientation of the experience.”

  “You have, it appears, put considerable thought to this,” said Friedrich.

  “Indeed.” Weyland rose to his feet and paced, his hands clasped behind his back. “The only thing that would remain is an explanation of the prophecy that has been given to us, and of the similar occurrences of which we have heard tell. Personally, I do not think that this requires too much thought, as such tricks have been the trade of many a rogue for untold years. There are simply too many possibilities for how a person or people could manipulate the perception of precognition. We could speculate at length as to how this was achieved without ever hitting fully upon the mark.”

  “So you suggest then that we leave this question aside and proclaim our conclusion?”

  “Not entirely, for while the answer may seem clear, we ought to verify the hypothesis. I suggest that we make a discreet call upon the Magi, and that we search the chamber for signs which might prove or disprove my theory. We ought, however, to keep in mind that simple machinery can conceal such devices until activated, and as such they may, and likely will not be, readily evident to a visual examination.”

  Friedrich nodded. “Do you wish to let the others know of your conclusions?”

  Weyland stopped his pacing. “No. Let them enjoy their evening. One way or another, we will be on our way tomorrow. Let them enjoy this night. We shall tell them when we break fast.”

  Entry Twelve

  Friedrich did as was suggested, and it was not until the morning that the Fellowship was properly informed of the hypothesis. Shortly after which, they returned to the Magi and, with well-timed insistence, forced their way within the chamber.

  “You cannot do this! This is not permissible!” bellowed the short man whom they had seen the previous day, the one whom called himself the Guardian of the Magi. He wore the same dark, high-collared robe which he had worn the day previous. “You have not been granted access to these chambers. I must insist that you leave at once or I shall call upon the constable to bind you for trespass!”

  “We are not here to cause you any harm," Rufus said coolly,” or to damage your business, we merely wish to verify our theory. You may discuss this with our solicitor if you so wish.” He motioned to Niles.

  The man’s face screwed up in confusion and anger as he followed them into the chamber. “I do not understand this … and it does not matter. You must leave at once!”

  It was then that an opening appeared in the far wall. It was, in fact, a concealed door, and from it stepped one of the Magi. It was the man whom had stood in the center the day before. As he entered the room, Wilson succeeded in pulling from the ground a small box within which was a lanterna magica. The device was, as theorized, operated by a system of machinery concealed beneath the floors.

  “It is all right, Mitchel,” stated the Magus. “These men have done what they will, and there is no stopping them. Calling upon the Constable will only bring attention to their discovery. Our best option is to appeal to their sense of decency.”

  Niles folded his arms across his chest, indignant. “Decency. You speak of decency?”

  “I do, yes,” the Magus said. He held out his hands to Wilson, who handed back the lanterna magica. “You are, after all, gentlemen, yes? You may look down upon me, and with reason, but I am sure that you will hold to your own ideas of decency.” He placed the device back in its recessed chamber in the floor and closed the trap door.

  “You deceive people,” said Rufus, his lips pursed in disapproval.

  “Yes. Of course we do!” The Magus threw up his hands. “We are performers of a sort. The fact that our clients do not know this is not a crime. They come to us with questions—which we then answer with common wisdom. If a quick wit does not do the trick, then we lead our clients to come to their own answers, answers which they often know before they come to us. Most of the people who come here know what it is that they wish to hear, they are only looking for validation. We provided them this comfort … for a marginal fee.”

  “But,” said Wilson, “you did more than this yesterday.”

  The Magus shrugged. “Even though people know that we are not what we claim to be, they choose to believe it. On occasion we must defend our claims in order to preserve the appearance which our clients require in order to suspend their own disbelief. It was not nefarious, it was simply business.”

  Niles took a threatening step toward the fraud. “We will report you.”

  “For what?
We have committed no crime.” Rather than retreating, the Magus waved an accusing finger at Niles. “If anything, it is I who should be calling the authorities on you for assaulting two thespians during performance.”

  “That is not …!” Niles began, then composed himself. “You know as well as I do that the law would stand on my side. Whenever the delicate female form of our species is threatened, it is the defender who is always victorious. Your—”

  The Magus cut him off. “I know that it would not stand. You acted in good faith under the perception of a threat. You did as any gentleman should, and there is no court of which I am aware who would convict you on those grounds. But still, you did break my employee’s nose.”

  Niles glanced over at Wilson for support, but the physician rubbed his own nose and looked chagrined.

  The Magus dismissed the issue with a wave of his hand. “Let us speak frankly, yes? You are wise and observant men. You have seen what you have and proven what we are. But I cannot imagine that it your purpose and goal is to defame us, instead, I venture that this is more a matter of curiosity for you. So allow me to ask what it is that you require for your silence.”

  The Fellows were taken aback by this and none spoke for a moment. It was Weyland who ventured an answer. “We do not require anything, sir. It is as you say; we do not seek to do you harm. Ours is a matter of curiosity. Your secret is safe with us, at least in that we will not divulge what we see here to the public. Although we reserve the right to discuss the matter among academics. For our part, I would like to offer you an apology for our behavior in bursting upon your chamber, and I hope that we have done no harm to your equipment. Perhaps, however, you would be so kind as to show us your secrets. I believe that I have accounted for most of your performance, but I would appreciate it if you could verify my suspicions.”

  The magus stared at him for a moment, suspicious of their motivations. As well he should be. Their societal status notwithstanding, and disregarding their obvious appearance as gentlemen of worth, the Fellows had no real means to convince these scurrilous Magi to take them into their confidences.

  A moment passed as the Magus considered their words. His face transformed from frank interest to suspicion. “You claim to be academics, but what proof do we have that you don’t intend to steal our methods and use them yourselves?”

  Niles barked a laugh as Friedrich protested. “Sir, we are academics, not con men. We have no more interest in replicating your process than we would at barking at the moon. However, by analyzing your means of obfuscation, we will be better equipped to investigate other such charlatanry in the future.”

  “Do you not believe in anything?” asked the Magus.

  “We believe, sir, in that which is real. Not in the machinations of men such as yourself,” Rufus said firmly.

  The Magus blinked first, then sighed in consternation. “Very well then. Conduct your examination.”

  As a matter of rigorous attention to detail, the Fellows pried and poked at every corner of the room, finding it much as Weyland had surmised, much to his satisfaction and Niles’ amusement. Floorboards were lifted, curtains moved, and the Magi were questioned as to the use of every item in the room. But what was most intriguing to the engineering mind was the machinery beneath, which controlled the timed release and movements of the lanterns. It was not a simple device, and in turn, evidenced a great deal of craftsmanship.

  When their examination was concluded, they remained with only one question. Wilson spoke it. “How did you begin upon this enterprise? This is not something that one undertakes merely by whim or by chance. This has the trappings of a con long in the making.”

  The Magus, who by this time had divested himself of his heavy robe and sat in a chair on the far side of the room in a simple shirt and workmanlike trousers, watched the proceedings with a sort of weary resignation. As Rufus had suspected, the hunchback was but a part of the robe. After a moment he spoke. “It seems as if it has been so long ago that it even occurred to us to try. It has been … oh, seven years now that we have been pursuing this calling, ever since the vision.”

  “Vision?” Niles frowned. Certainly the man spoke in jest, for had they not just disproved all of the Magi’s chicanery? Rufus and Friedrich exchanged glances, half in the process of putting the wall back together.

  “You mock such things, but in truth this enterprise did begin with holy intent. We were given a glimpse of the wholeness of the universe, the way in which nature intersected with future and past, how man played a role in all aspects of the world, and how the world influenced the hearts and souls of men. We saw that there could be a way to interject wonder back into a world that was rapidly losing its sense of possibility.”

  “How can you say that, with all of the progress we have made in the past century? Man can fly now, and bend the very elements to his will. Is that not possibility and wonder enough?” inquired Weyland passionately.

  “But what of the soul? What of nature, which is so rudely coerced to the will of men such as yourselves? Where is the wonder remaining in the flower that is trampled by the steam engine, the sunsets marred by the constant fires of industry, the soul of the common man trampled by the sweatshops and skyways?”

  Rufus frowned, but before he could say anything, Niles laughed. “Certainly you jest. Is this what Theosophy is? The worship of the backward and the banal?”

  “I didn’t suppose you academics would understand,” said the Magus wearily. “To you it is all scientific method and organization. There is left no role for whimsy or imagination. That explains your presence here, more clearly than otherwise. You seek to only destroy the possibility of the impossible.”

  “We seek only the truth,” said Friedrich shortly.

  “Tell us of this vision,” requested Weyland. Niles raised an eyebrow and then patted his pockets, pulling out his pipe and accoutrements.

  “I will tell you, even if you refuse to believe me. I said, as I said before, that it is our mission to reveal and to lead others to truth, whether that truth be internal or external.” The man met each of the Fellows’ gazes, from Weyland’s polite curiosity, to Rufus’ placid disdain, Wilson’s detached interest, Friedrich’s hidden sympathy, and Niles’ hostile indifference. He sighed. “It came to us on the very beach where you encountered Miss Kelly. The day had been clear, yet we found ourselves caught unexpectedly as a storm arose from off the sea. Thunder roared and lightning thrashed about us as we desperately scurried for shelter. Moments passed as heartbeats, and yet we could find no shelter from the torrential rain or rapacious lightning that struck around us as we ran, seemingly intent on our demise.

  “It was in that moment,” the Magus said, warming to his story, “between one strike of lightning and the next, that I realized the liminal balance. I stopped in the center of the storm and held my hands up high, seeing myself as the bridge between myself and nature. Lightning was the catalyst to life, and I truly wished to live.”

  “Merciful God …” Niles groaned in sotto voce. “Not this again.”

  “So you were struck by lightning and reborn?” asked Friedrich hurriedly.

  The Magus gave him a sour look. “In a short … yes. And we decided to share the wonder of my discovery with the rest of the world by subtly preaching theosophy while performing these acts of prophecy.”

  “What led you to believe that deceiving people would accomplish your goals?” Rufus asked.

  “It seemed a good idea at the time,” sighed the man.

  And so it was that the Mystery of the Magi of Liverpool was concluded, with the revelation that the Magi were naught more than a con making, who sought to make lightning strike twice with the technologies of deception.

  Journal Three

  A Fistful of Dandies

  Entry One

  Few coastal villages possessed sky-ports in the year 1838, relying instead on the traditional combination of naval and highway transport. The notable exceptions were, of course, those locals who possessed s
izable ports and for which such industry was a factor of the local or larger economy. The towering mooring masts which marked these sky harbors were most commonly seen inland where the majority of intersecting shipping routes known as skyways made the construction of such facilities viable. Furthermore, as the construction, maintenance, and operation of a sky-harbor required a sizable population, small communities had started to form around these towers, and in such cases where a community had already existed, the focus of local industry was often altered to meet the needs of the aeronautical sailors known as Skymen.

  With the exception of the previously mentioned cases in which a skyway linked with an existing naval port, few skyways approached the coastline, and most were, in fact, established with the specific intention of avoiding the high winds that commonly came inland from the sea. There were two primary reasons for this aversion, both of which were derived from the fundamental differences between aerostats and naval ships.

  The first was the simple fact that airships do not float. Whereas a sky-barge might likely survive being grounded over land, it was all but lost if it were to set down over water.

  The second was that unlike their naval counterparts, which relied upon the wind to power their sails, airships were highly susceptible to the wind and tended to avoid it whenever possible. While this is a difficult task in any scenario, the unobstructed winds that whipped across the tops of waves made aerial navigation that much more difficult, and that much more dangerous.

  Additionally, while an airship had several options for responding to a storm over land and was able to seek refuge at a sky-harbor, the only refuge that might be found at sea was a vessel with a mooring mast. Even this was a less than preferable option as mooring to a ship during a storm presented numerous unique issues, not the least of which was the danger posed to both crews. Furthermore, while some tugs existed for this purpose, few operated outside of the vicinity of major ports and crossings.