“Balloon!” was the last battle cry needed to spur Peebs into action, and he took the stairs three at a time to catch up to the girls.
Peebs’s wet shoes slid on the attic floorboards, a spatter of mud from the girls’ boots having already laid a path to the window. This had been closed by Mr. Franklin, and the sill was slightly swollen from rain. Mary tugged at it to get it to open, but it was no use.
“Allow me,” said Peebs, who put both hands under the small half-moon of brass at the bottom and hauled with both his shoulders. The window stuttered up a bit, but held fast.
Thinking quickly, Ada plucked the fish knife from Mary’s hand and thrust it into the gap between window and sill. Using it as a lever, she pushed down with all her weight, Mary joining in, as Peebs continued to pull up. After a moment of grunting and puffing, they had it open, and Ada was the first over the sill and onto the windy roof, rope firmly in hand, squinting against the rain. The others followed.
“Ada! Get in and work those ropes there! I’ll untie the ones down here!” shouted Mary against the wind. “And, Peebs! Use the wrench to loosen those bolts! We need to get off the roof!”
“No!” yelled Peebs, trying to be heard above the howling of the storm and the creaking of the great ropes. “It’s too dangerous! Let me go alone!”
“My balloon, my rules,” said Ada with a grin. “Bolts!” And with that, she disappeared into the wicker basket. A moment later, a small side table was tossed out the top hatch, bouncing perilously off the roof and tumbling into the street below. Two chairs followed. “Now there’s room for you!” she shouted in triumph.
Peebs worked on the bolted struts that connected the balloon to various chimneys—it was this tangle of pipes and funnels that had reminded Mary of the balloon when she saw the engine of the steamboat. After a few squeaks and grindings, all that connected the balloon to the roof was a single rope, and as Peebs clambered aboard, Ada sliced it neatly with the fish knife.
Mary had imagined they’d soar to the sky, but the weight of the three of them merely dropped the whole thing with a thud to the roof, where it went sliding down the black tiles like a sled on a snowy slope. A slope with a cliff at the end of it.
Peebs didn’t fit completely in the basket, so his head poked out as the balloon and basket went over the edge of the house. Mercifully, a gust of wind swept them up and over the roof of the neighbors, the gondola catching and cracking the clay of their chimney. They headed south with the wind.
“Go on!” shouted Mary to Ada.
“Go on where?” asked Ada, puzzled.
“Drive! Steer us to the river!”
“It’s not made for steering, just for staying put!” yelled Ada over the wind.
Mary blinked at her. “Ah,” she said. And then, “Well.”
But the wind was pushing them south toward the river, which is where they wanted to go. At least, Peebs thought that was what they wanted.
“What’s the plan?” he asked Mary.
“To be honest, I only got as far as this,” she admitted.
“Will this float?” asked Peebs.
Ada looked down, through the sliding piles of books and rolls of paper, at the wicker at her feet and at the gaps between the wicker weave. She tried not to look too carefully as the glimpses of ground flew past at a dizzying rate.
“I doubt it,” said Ada.
“I can see the docks!” cried Mary. Indeed, they were fast approaching the warehouses that lined the boardwalk alongside the busy river.
“There!” Ada pointed at a black pillar of soot that trudged along the Thames. Beneath that was the round-bellied steamboat, and the escaping thief. They all leaned out to look, and this had the happy effect of guiding the balloon in the steamboat’s direction.
However, the balloon was descending quickly, and too sharply to clear the warehouses. At this rate, they were going to crash into the long brick buildings.
“I have a plan,” said Peebs, although he wasn’t entirely convinced he did. He grabbed a stout rope dangling from under the balloon’s inner ring, and pulled himself up and out of the gondola, his shoes on the top of the wicker deck.
“What are you doing?” asked Mary.
“He’s giving us some altitude,” said Ada approvingly.
The three of them paused, taking in what Peebs was venturing to do. But the only other weight in the balloon belonged to the books, and clearly they could not be sacrificed, so the matter was settled wordlessly and with a shared shrug.
“If you’d be so kind as to calculate the timing, Lady Ada …,” said Peebs calmly.
In her imagination, Ada turned the whole thing into a diagram. The balloon, with its altitude and weight as variables; the rate and angle of its descent and the proximity to the warehouse, Thames, and target; the speed of the steamboat and the force of the wind. Simple enough.
“Ready!” said Ada, counting under her breath. “NOW!”
Peebs pushed off from the gondola, swinging on the rope like a pirate boarding a ship. With perfect timing, he stepped crisply onto the roof of the warehouse closest to the river and let go of the rope with a smart salute to the Wollstonecraft girls.
Without Peebs’s weight, the balloon shot up into the sky before steadying and beginning to descend again, although more slowly this time.
“That was brilliant!” cried Mary. “Now what?”
“It’s your plan, remember?” said Ada. They were closing in on the escaping steamboat, the gray-green of the Thames looming ever closer with each wind-whipped and rain-spattered second.
The wind was pushing them southeast, but gravity was pulling them to the froth of the water, and the steamboat’s wake. The closer they got to the water, the faster they seemed to go, until they were practically right on top of the boat.
Mary was sure they were going to crash, and grabbed a rope and Ada’s hand, cringing. She did indeed feel a lurch, but one upward, not down. The soot and steam from the fleeing boat’s engine pushed hot air into the balloon, so they hopped up and ahead of the boat, coming down again with even more force and violence.
“HOLD ON!” shouted Ada, watching the gaps between the wicker. The boat’s bow came into view right in front of the toe of her boot.
The thief could not possibly have been prepared for being bashed in the head with a giant wicker basket inhabited by two remarkably clever and resourceful girls, so he wasn’t. The gondola clocked him at a decent-enough speed so as to knock him out cold before it crashed into the engine, tipping the girls over sideways and spilling them to the deck. Sparks and soot flew, and despite the rain, the balloon’s tattered fabric soon was in flames.
“Help me!” shouted Ada, scrambling to her feet on the slippery deck. She began pushing the basket to the deck’s short railing. “If the fire spreads, the whole boat will go up!”
Ada cracked open the unsettlingly fragile basket bottom, and the pile of books spilled out like fish from a net. By now, the wicker itself was alight.
Mary rallied herself and came alongside Ada, rolling the basket, fiery balloon and all, up and over the rail, overboard into the quenching Thames. The fire was quickly out, and the basket bobbed about a bit as it took on water, and soggily sank.
Mary watched Ada watch the basket go without expression.
“I’m sorry, Ada,” said Mary. She reached out and hugged Ada tightly to comfort her, although tears were trickling down her own cheeks. Ada was utterly silent for a full minute, there in the wind and rain and the puff and thump of the engine.
“We needed a bigger one anyway,” said Ada at last. “And a way to steer. And,” she said, looking admiringly at the steam engine, “one of these.”
“Speaking of steering,” said Mary, wiping her tears away with a smile. “Do you know how to pilot a steamboat?”
Less than an hour later, the Wollstonecraft girls and their spy—tutor, Mary reminded herself—were once again in a carriage, but this time a slow, safe, sedate one, returning to the Byron house.
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br /> Peebs had found his way down from the roof in time to greet the girls at the dock. Through some trial and error, they had managed to guide the steamboat to its rightful spot (and captain), enabling one very sore constable and one very wet constable to once again, and with a mix of embarrassment and gratitude, take charge of their prisoner, who was still out like a snuffed candle.
They rode in silence for a moment, allowing the events of the day to settle themselves. It seemed that every variable was accounted for, every question answered. Except.
“Who are Albé and Shiloh?” asked Mary suddenly.
“I beg your pardon?” said Peebs.
“Albé and Shiloh. In the inscription in my mother’s book, in Ada’s library.”
“Ah,” said Ada. “That’s how you knew he was a spy.”
“That’s terribly clever of you, you know,” said Peebs.
“Well, you were acting suspicious in the library, so that gave me a sneaking suspicion, and I decided to investigate. But what does it mean, Albé, and Shiloh?”
Peebs smiled, first at Mary, and then at Ada. “Those were our names for each other. Ada’s father, Lord Byron, and me. I called him Albé, and he called me Shiloh.”
“Like Ribbon and Newdog,” said Mary to Ada. “Clandestine names.”
“Did you know him well?” asked Ada.
“Well enough to have, as you say, clandestine names for one another. Yes, I knew him well. He was a good friend, a brilliant man. And he would have been tremendously proud of you today.”
“Mother says he was ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know,’ ” said Ada.
“Well, he was mad, certainly. Not angry mad, but clever in a way that seemed … eccentric to many.”
Mary flashed Ada a knowing smile.
Peebs continued. “But he was not bad. I daresay he was the best man I ever knew. As for dangerous to know, well, I must admit some truth to that. Of course, all the truly interesting people are.”
Peebs reached across the carriage to take Ada’s hand. “Much has been said of your father, Lady Ada, and much will continue to be said. You’ll discover in time that some people are so large, so full of life, that others simply cannot help themselves from making some kind of comment. Yet that comment nearly always reveals far more about the speaker than the subject.”
Ada watched Mary’s face as he spoke, and saw something in the way her eyes mirrored Peebs’s words—a little sad, but strong somehow. Sweet, even. She couldn’t quite catch all of it.
Ada thought it must be a useful kind of cleverness to notice how people notice things. She could tell Mary was clever in this particular way, and made a note to herself to notice Mary noticing other people notice things. She could probably learn something.
“You know what else I want to know?” said Mary. “Who told your mother about Wollstonecraft? I don’t see how she could have found out.”
Ada shrugged. She was used to her mother knowing impossible things. “Spies. Everywhere.”
“Your secret is out with more than just the baroness,” added Peebs. “It was out the moment that Ada sent her letter to the magistrate. It won’t be long until half of England knows about the Wollstonecraft detectives.”
“It can’t be as bad as all that,” Mary objected. “One magistrate, two constables, and the baroness? I’m sure we’re still quite clandestine.”
Peebs was unconvinced. “Never underestimate the power of a good secret, hungry for the telling. While it may be the grandest city in all the world, London is a village as far as gossip is concerned.”
Just then, Ada froze. Something clicked in her brain, like the spindles of the bleh, although she didn’t know what it meant.
“Ada?” asked Mary. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. I’m not certain. I may have missed … something.”
“About the case?” said Mary. “I can’t imagine what. The acorn is in the hands of its rightful owners, Rosie’s out of prison, and the criminal has been apprehended. The constables are at Verdigris Manor now, explaining everything.”
Ada nodded slowly in agreement. It all added up neatly.
“And yet,” said Ada, staring out the window, “our thief doesn’t strike me as the very cleverest of criminals.”
“It seemed like a very clever crime to me,” said Peebs.
“And I have no doubt Mr. Abernathy will be in the newspaper tomorrow, where he belongs,” said Mary.
It pleased Ada to think he undoubtedly would.
And yet.
The carriage containing Ada, Mary, and Peebs arrived safe and sound at the Marylebone house, which now seemed plain without its comical balloon hat. Mr. Franklin stood by the open door, taking the girls’ capes and bonnets as they entered. There was the smell of baking, and the marble of the floor was gleaming, freshly mopped. A teakettle whistled in the upstairs kitchen, only to have its shriek spin down to a sigh as it was taken off the stove. Mary breathed deeply of the house she had been sure she’d never see again—first from banishment, and then from balloon crash.
Peebs excused himself to attend to the drawing room, and the girls marched upstairs to take their tea in the miraculously restored-to-order library.
Cozy in the familiarity of books, Mary reached for the stack of letters that had been placed upon the small reading table, presumably by Mr. Franklin.
“No, leave those,” said Ada. “That’s enough for today, I should think.”
“Oh, they’re not all from the newspaper,” said Mary, rifling through the envelopes. “There’s something here from Rebecca.”
“Mmm?” asked Ada.
Mary cracked open the seal. “It’s a wedding invitation,” she said, delighted.
“Mmm,” replied Ada, indifferent.
“Oh, something else too. One for you, and one for me.”
Ada couldn’t recall getting letters, except the occasional dressing-down from her mother. She reached for the paper, noticing carefully the unfamiliar writing as she unfolded the note.
“Good heavens,” said Mary, at her letter.
“Good grief,” said Ada, at hers.
“My sister,” said both girls together.
“My stepsister, Jane, actually,” explained Mary. “It seems she’s on her way—right now—to join us as a Wollstonecraft detective. She says something about it being a perfect opportunity to meet the right sort of people in society.”
“My half sister, Allegra,” added Ada, “says she was going to run away from the convent to join the circus, but when she thought about how angry my mother would be, she decided to run away here and be a detective instead.”
There in the heart of the Marylebone house, a hundred sounds from all of London reached them ever so faintly through the windows: the cawing of crows, the shouting of vendors and merchants, the cries of babies unwilling to nap, the barking of dogs one to another across Regent’s Park and down Baker Street. But in that instant, all sound fell away, except for the clatter of an arriving carriage, and then another.
Eyes wide, the girls leapt to their feet and nearly slid down the stairs to the front door and opened it.
Ada saw two girls step out of two separate carriages in unison. The first girl was about Mary’s age, pale with a mass of curly hair piled up fashionably high on her head, walking elegantly toward the house. A step behind her was a girl of about nine, half running; a wiry and sun-bronzed girl with her clothes in disarray. Ada wondered if she herself looked like such a wild thing, from a distance.
Mary was unsure as to what to say, and even more unsure as to what Ada would do. It was exactly this sort of sudden change that often made Ada incendiary.
Standing there on the doorstep, Ada continued to look off into the distance. She breathed deeply and pulled back her shoulders, standing tall under the portico before speaking.
“We’re going to need more crime.”
NOTES
The year 1826 itself is practically a character in the book. John Quincy Adams was president o
f the United States. The prince regent of England had become King George IV just six years before, and the future Queen Victoria was only seven years old. By 1826, the world had seen a recent flurry of inventions: Volta’s electric battery (1800), Fulton’s submarine and torpedo (1800), Winsor’s patented gas lighting (1804), Trevithick’s steam locomotive (1804), Davy’s electric arc light (1809), Bell’s steam-powered boat (1812), and Sturgeon’s electromagnet (1824). It was an exciting time of technological advancement, and it brought forth two very bright girls who changed the world through their intellect and imagination.
The lives of women—and particularly girls—were extremely limited and under constant watch. Women were not allowed to vote or practice professions, and were widely thought to be less capable than men. A girl’s value to her family was in her reputation and her service, and she was expected to obediently accept a husband of her parents’ choosing. Any threat to that reputation—like behaving unusually—was often enough to ruin a family.
However, because a girl was not expected to have a career and compete with her (or anybody’s) husband, upper-class girls were free to read or study as they wished, for few took them seriously. Because of this rare freedom, the nineteenth century saw a sharp surge in the intellectual contributions of female scientists and mathematicians, with Ada foremost among them.
AUGUSTA ADA BYRON (1815–1852) was a brilliant mathematician and the daughter of the poet Lord Byron (who died when Ada was eight). Largely abandoned by her mother, she was raised by servants (and sometimes her grandmother) at the Marylebone house and was very much cut off from the world as a child.
With her legendary temper and lack of social skills (a modern historian unkindly calls her “mad as a hatter”), Ada made few friends. Her mother insisted that young Ada have no connection to her father’s friends or even his interests, so Ada turned to mathematics. She worked with her friend Charles Babbage on the tables of numbers for Babbage’s “Analytical Engine”—a mechanical computer—which was not built in his lifetime. But Ada’s contribution to the work, as well as her idea that computers could be used not only for mathematics but also for creative works such as music, has caused many people to refer to her as the world’s first computer programmer. Babbage called her the Enchantress of Numbers. She really did have an interest in mesmerism.
The Case of the Missing Moonstone Page 10
