Fiendish Schemes

by K. W. Jeter

  So late was my return from the launch party that the public rooms’ hearth was nothing but cold ashes, the candles extinguished upon the rickety, beer- soaked tables. The inn managed to turn a small business amongst the few sodden locals, who nightly hunched over their tankards, growling in a dialect as coarse as dogs barking; I preferred to take meals in my room. Though that arrangement appeared to have come to an end. The landlord had initially been content enough to deposit upon the dresser a battered pewter plate bearing a greasy chop and some squat root ostensibly boiled to edibility, but he had ceased this practice on the previous evening. From the squint-eyed glare he bestowed on me, I deduced he had formed the suspicion that he would be somehow illuded of full settlement of his bill.

  In which uncharitable notion, alas, he would have been completely correct. As I mounted the stairs toward the room housing my meager luggage, the few coins rattling in my trousers pocket represented nearly my entire worldly capital. If I had been able to wangle some sort of commission from Lord Fusible, my first act would have been to plead for an advance against my wages. Approaching the landing, I heard a door creak partway open below and could feel the innkeeper’s darkly assessing glare upon my spine. I unlatched the door to the room I had engaged and silently slipped inside, grateful for what little refuge it provided.

  The bed groaned beneath my weight as I extracted the half- empty packet of Swan Vestas from inside my waistcoat. I managed to coax to life the lantern on the small deal table, turning the flame as low as possible, not for reasons of economy but to spare myself a brighter examination of the circumstances to which I had been reduced. The room’s wobbling chair was fit for nothing but draping my rain- soaked coat upon. I leaned back against a thin pillow and contemplated the speckled copperplate etching that hung framed upon the opposite wall, its depiction of the bombardment of Taganrog being the room’s only decoration.

  “I rather suppose,” I murmured aloud, “that I should not have returned here at all.”

  Speaking aloud is, of course, a sign of derangement. That I had lapsed into such came as little surprise to me, nor did I make any great effort to abstain from the practice. What skills or even desire for sociability that I might ever have possessed, my rural exile had eroded. But my journey here to Cornwall had placed me amongst natives whose dialect seemed to possess even fewer and odder vowels than did the Welsh. The innkeeper, for purposes of trade, no doubt, managed to emit a few sounds resembling the Queen’s English; but that much had been the limit of my spoken intercourse with others until I had arrived amongst Lord Fusible’s guests.

  “Having gotten away without confrontation”—an intelligible voice, even though my own, provided a measure of comfort—“I should have taken advantage of that.” My nod was emphatic, however late my decisiveness. That the landlord was brooding upon the demand of payment from me, I had already been sure; thus my departure before the sun’s rising. I had naturally not wished to carry my slight luggage with me to the launch party, my arrival on foot rather than by carriage being unprepossessing enough. Taking a bunk, as low slang expressed the notion, would have entailed abandoning the one bag that now sat at the foot of the bed. “No great loss,” I judged. What garments I had that could be described as other than threadbare, I had worn upon my back this day.

  It had hardly been for the comb and mirror and other gentleman’s accessories, arranged beside the room’s bowl and pitcher, that I had returned to the inn. But there was one other object, of sinister but needful purpose, that weighted my luggage.

  “Now’s the time.”

  Sitting cross-legged upon the bed, I unlocked the bag, threw it open, and drew out the final article of my father’s legacy to me.

  That the device was a pistol, I had no doubt, though of typically eccentric design. Guns of every size and variety could be manufactured in the rudest foundry, comprising the simplest workings, and they would all be roughly equal in lethality. Such would never have been sufficient for an inventor and craftsman such as my father. The weighty metal contraption now resting in both my hands was of an intricacy that rivaled what one might have viewed upon prying open a montre à secousses from the clever cantons of the Jura Mountains, with all of its whirring, ticking escapements and complications. As to why a pistol would require that much clockwork for the elementary task of propelling a bit of lead toward its target— as ever before, the cogs and wheels of my father’s mind remained equally as baffling.

  However elusive its design might be, that the weapon was capable of accomplishing that which I would ask—namely, propelling the aforementioned lead through my skull—I also had little doubt. It possessed a fearsome gravitas, as fine guns often do, combining their etched beauty with the darkly oiled scent of those machines which so easily throw open the doors of Eternity for all comers.

  My father had seen fit to craft curved plates of Gaboon ebonywood for the pistol’s checked grip, which added to its fatal allure in the way that mourning jewelry carved of black jet, draped about the snowy throats of certain smiling widows, makes its owners the objects of men’s desire. Two barrels—one octagonal in cross section, the other rounded—extended nearly a foot in length, similar in arrangement to the nine- shot LeMat revolver I had briefly glimpsed in the offices of the London Arms Company, while making a minor mainspring adjustment to the corporate treasurer’s wall clock. The functions of the miniature engagement rods and piston-like mechanisms festooning the barrels were lost on me, as were those of the interlinked constellation of escapements and ratchet-mounted balances extending through and above the central rotating cylinder. Even the cartridges inside the cylinder were of intricate design; though unable to find a method of removing them for closer inspection, I was still able to peer through a circular lens mounted before the hinge of the cocking hammer and marvel at the exquisite details just as would an entomologist dissecting a scarab beetle beneath a microscope.

  Technically, by letter of the law, the device did not properly belong to me. Years before, at the conclusion of those travails that had once made my name a popular synonym for disaster and iniquity, I had turned over all the creations of my father still in my possession to the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, that august scientific body having pledged to make a complete examination of them, with the hope of benefiting society by a revelation of those secrets that had been my father’s stock-in- trade. In exchange, I had received a not inconsiderable sum of money. It had only been some time later, after the last of the carts laden with the boxes and hammered crates of these treasures had rumbled off to the Society’s Collection of Curiosities, lately relocated from Crane Court, that I discovered the pistol. In gathering up the few sentimental items I wished to take with me in my flight from London, I had accidentally put my elbow through what I had always assumed to be a solid wall in the storeroom of what had been my Clerkenwell watch shop, and before that my father’s shuttered laboratory. After examining the revealed hole more closely, I had soon extracted the pistol, my breath blowing the dust from its surfaces and my sleeve burnishing the metal to its original gleaming.

  While I possessed no more of the virtue of honesty than the average man, thievery was still not a vice that could be attributed to me, likely due to cowardice more than stern morality. Yet even while initiating a communication to the Society’s officers, requesting them to return to the now abandoned shop and claim this last bit of the properties they had purchased, I found myself instead laying down my pen and picking up the heavy, hand-filling device from the desk before me.

  Some magic in its silent gears had lured me, and thus had made the decision, separate from the ratiocinating centers of my brain. It wasn’t thieving, I had reasoned, in that the Royal Society had received more than ample value for their money, carting away a collection that generations of their Newtons and Babbages might analyze and tinker with, before answering all its riddles. What was one more piece to that grand, inexhaustible puzzle? Surely a loving son—or as close to one
as I could simulate being—was entitled to one memento of the man whose name I bore.

  Thus I thought, and thus I sealed my fate. . . .

  Which I had unlocked now and weighed in my hands.

  Granted, I had had no notion of suicide at that time, when I had removed myself and my few belongings to that remote rural village, where I had hoped to live unnoticed while enduring the slow ebb of my infamy. My affairs had been in order then, or at least their financial aspect. A stuporous future had been laid out for me, much desired in that regard after all I had endured. But Man—or at least George Dower, it seems—cannot evade his destiny. However innocent of cause I had been in my first ruination, the second one was all the result of my own folly. The thought provided scant satisfaction.

  Now, in this bleak Cornish inn, I raised my father’s pistol and examined it with care greater than that which I had undertaken upon previous occasions. I had made attempts before to fire the thing, aiming it at some bottle placed upon a countryside boulder. Some subtlety in its operation eluded me, though. I had discovered a tiny key that could be withdrawn from a repository in the pistol’s black grip and had further discerned that this simple gilded piece, not much bigger than a mouse’s forelimb, could be inserted into various points about the device and used to wind its coils and mainsprings to readiness, much as one attended to the single driving force in one’s pocket watch. On the occasions when I had done so, the pistol’s inner gears and escapements had immediately begun their busy whirrings and tickings, just as would similarly be the result with the aforementioned timepiece. A perceptible vibration had coursed out of the supposedly dead metal, as though my hand had seized upon a living creature, the pulse of its minute heart racing faster than my own. The first time I had experienced this sensation, I had immediately dropped the pistol, so startled was I by the impression of it having sprung to the same vibrant animation Man shares with the beasts of field and branch. And if brass and tin and iron could be possessed of life, it also seemed that they could own that degree of mulish stubbornness that Man has heightened to the level of Principle. For try as I might, forefinger tightening upon what was self-evidently the pistol’s trigger, I could not get the blasted device to fire. Various latches and levers protruded from the mechanism, all of which I had prodded and adjusted, singly and in combination, but to no avail. The shivering release of the clockwork pistol’s wound-up mainspring was as much liveliness as it had been willing to display. The cartridges had remained entombed inside, rather than bursting forth with a martial roar to spang upon the nearest stone wall.

  That had been frustrating, but only to the idle curiosity I had roused to break the monotony of the agrarian existence to which I had resigned myself. Now, I was rather more motivated.

  Having once again wound the pistol’s various springs and coils, I returned the key to its niche. Optimism is a desirable virtue in all pursuits, but never so much as in suicide. A host of considerations form impediments to the wished result, from the dreaded pain of the bullet’s impact, however brief, to a vision of the ungainliness of one’s body, limbs splayed at the sort of comical angles that would provide amusement to callous onlookers. (No doubt the latter prompts the enthusiasm for quick-acting poisons amongst women committed to self-annihilation, the efficacy of such compounds allowing for a more decorous arrangement of the corporeal remains, free of repulsive gore. The last scene of the Bard’s Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet would hardly have seemed so tragic, though perhaps a bit more exciting to the groundling rabble, if it had included a gunshot to the head rather than a maidenly swoon upon the sarcophagus—though my fragmentary memory of the classics does recall something about a dagger as well.) If the soi-disant suicide entertains notions of failure in the attempt, he is likely to give up altogether and pessimistically resign himself to his miserable life.

  Having decided my course, I was determined to see it through. I had never conceived of myself as a figure of heroic resolve, but then, better late than never.

  I swung my legs over the sagging bed’s edge, the better to bring the clockwork pistol close to the lantern’s illumination. My experience in the past had always been, as others wiser than myself have remarked upon, that a problem’s solution might elude the enquirer upon first and most forceful application, as a drop of mercury darts away from a fingertip brought square upon it. Whereas inattention—a skill I had seemingly developed to a high degree—often brings the answer unbidden. Such proved to be the case in this event, or so I assumed. It had been some time since last I occupied myself with my father’s eccentric clockwork pistol. The same small levers and catchpoints that I had manipulated before to vain effect, I now pushed and prodded in differing order. This produced some edifying results: one such lever, the largest and most prominently situated behind the pistol’s rotating cylinder, swung through its arc to a position unobtained on previous occasions. Other novelties seemed to ensue thereby: the pistol’s ticking and whirring grew louder, as might a small captured animal’s heart beat faster and breath pant with more avidity, perhaps upon spying some route of escape. I instinctively tightened my grip upon the device, some fanciful part of me apprehending that it would indeed bolt from my hand.

  “Yes!” These developments gratified me enormously. I continued my addled soliloquy. “You haven’t taken the better of me this time.” Though my words might better be considered as a dialogue, in that I seemed to be addressing my dead father. “Now I’ve got you!”

  I have no surety that all suicides experience the same emotions I did, those having succeeded in their attempts being no longer available for interview, and the failures hardly reliable in this regard. But excitement surged in my breast as I sensed the opening of that escape I had imagined for some trembling hypothetical creature. I raised the pistol, now the most gratefully received portion of my father’s estate, and brought its cold circular snout to my temple—

  Just then, someone knocked at the room’s door.

  An expletive escaped from my lips, which I immediately regretted. Not that I feared any lapse in polite vocabulary might offend the overhearing party, but that the mere act of speaking would confirm my presence to this unfortunate visitor. At times such as these, one values one’s privacy—understandably, given the delicacy of the procedure at hand. There’s precious little opportunity to acquire practice at killing oneself, at least if one is serious about it.

  If the person on the other side of the door’s thin panels were the inn’s landlord, arisen from his own bed and re-trousered for the mere purpose of demanding his payment, I could hardly put him off—if for no other reason than that he could unlock the door and enter at his pleasure. In such a situation, waving about a pistol— however remarkable its design—would scarcely improve my prospects. If he snatched it from my hand—and he was thug enough to do so—I would have little recourse for carrying out my self-destructive intent, other than rushing from the inn and casting myself from the nearest cliff. The prospect of drowning in Cornwall’s cold and mucky waters filled me with justifiable distaste.

  With my mind racing from corner to corner of my hemmed-in thoughts, I found it difficult to conjecture who else might be at the door of the shabby, slant-floored room. Whatever business I might have had with Lord Fusible and his Phototrope Limited associates, which had brought me to this terminal extension of the British Isles, had come to a conclusion once their lighthouse’s launch party had ended. Fusible was hardly more likely to have considered offering me a position with his firm when he was sober than when drunk— and in either state, the chances of his sending for me in the middle of the night were virtually nil.

  As I pondered, the knock sounded again. “Mr. Dower? Are you there?”

  So not the landlord, as the person enquiring had sufficient teeth to enunciate consonants and diphthongs, a dental condition not often encountered outside London, and rarely enough there. I decided to accept a temporary hiatus in the course of the project upon which I had embarked and slid the clockwork pistol beneath
the bedpillow.

  “A moment, please.” The room was so cramped that I had but to stand in order to reach the door. I shifted the latch and pulled it toward me—

  At that moment, the past surged over me. As though I had indeed wandered down to the moonlit shore, and one of those tidal monsters that the Japanese term tsunami had towered above me like a shimmering wall, then struck me full force.

  So many trials I had endured! Abyss of violence and deceit, so narrowly escaped!—as might one crawl over the lip of that fiery Pit into which one had been cast, blameless before, castigated and reviled afterward. I gaped at the swarthy visage of the apparition in front of me and heard again the long-forgotten voice of my manservant, Creff, speaking those words which had initiated my fall from Grace, headlong into Chaos and Despair:

  Mr. Dower, sir, there is a crazed Ethiope at the door, presumably to buy a watch.

  For indeed it was that author of my misfortunes who stood there in the glow cast by the room’s lantern, the figure I had once known only as the Brown Leather Man.

  CHAPTER

  3

  On the Ecclesiastical

  Tendencies of

  Sea-Going Mammals

  OR perhaps not.

  As I regained consciousness—for I had swooned in a dead faint and fallen backward—I discerned a fairer face hovering above me, possessing thin, blondish whiskers and skin no darker than my own or any other Englishman’s. He seemed at least a few years younger than me.