Addleton Heights

by George Wright Padgett

  “Well, glad to clear that up,” I said. “I’ll scratch your name off my Founder’s Day gift list. Since you’ve told me what you’re not, why don’t you enlighten me on what you are and why you’re here?”

  He adjusted his bowler. “I was serious, what I said about Mr. Montague, that he knows of you.”

  “How could he? The population of Addleton Heights is well above twenty thous—”

  “Trust me, he knows you through a mutual acquaintance, and you’re going to do a favor for him if you know what’s good for you. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”

  I wasn’t too keen on being told what to do, but I was dumbstruck by the notion that the most powerful man in the city—the de facto leader of the Commonwealth—knew my name. “I just figured it was a bluff to scare off Densmore’s men.”

  “I don’t bluff, and I would never joke about Mr. Montague. We are due at his personal bassel by 3:00.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked. “His sky ferry, tonight?”

  “Technically, this morning.” He closed a silver pocket watch with his good hand. It made a sharp clink. “That’s a little over an hour from now.”

  “We’ll never make it in time, not to the center of the city,” I scoffed. “The bassel lines stopped running at midnight.”

  He sighed. “You know, Mr. Kipsey, for someone reported to be a reasonably intelligent man, a Jack worth his coin . . .” He motioned to my collection of books with his mechanical hand. “You certainly come off as a bit nickey.”

  Though I wasn’t accustomed to being called stupid in my own home, I let it slide. What choice did I have? I gently massaged my swollen lip.

  “Who told you I was a good detective?”

  He shook his head. “You’ll see.”

  I didn’t like the way this ogre of a man bullied me about. “So, if we really are going to see him—Mr. Montague—what does he want with me?”

  “Judging from the looks of this place, he wants to do you a favor.”

  “A favor for a favor, huh?” I asked.

  He glowered at my response. “No more questions. I want a drink.”

  I decided the pistol in my desk would even out the balance of power. Words are cheap, and I wasn’t about to go unarmed into the night with someone just because they claimed to be the magistrate’s representative.

  “Where’s it hidden?” he asked. “You micks always have a bottle of daffy tucked away somewhere. We’ve got a few minutes, and all this talking has me thirsty.”

  “In my desk drawer.” I made my move. I might not have another chance to grab the weapon. “Here, I’ll get it for you.”

  The man moved remarkably fast for his bulk. He arrived at the drawer as I slid it open. His metal hand clamped down on my wrist, shooting pain through it. He lifted my pistol out with his other hand and scowled at me.

  “My dear Mr. Kipsey, you wouldn’t want me to infer the wrong idea here. I’m beginning to think you might be a bit ungrateful about me helping you out with the little gathering of your photography appreciation club.”

  He effortlessly shoved me backward, releasing me. I rubbed my wrist and examined my newest injury. It wasn’t broken. I thought of how easily the clockwork appendage had snapped Big Virgil’s club.

  He slid the drawer closed, the gun back inside, and sat in my chair. “You see, Mr. Kipsey, fate has cast me in the role of a . . . well, let’s just say that I’m like a delivery man. I am to fetch you back to Mr. Montague, but be warned of this fact: provided I get you to the transport station alive and reasonably conscious by 3:00, I will have satisfied my task for the sir. And that is exactly what is going to happen.”

  He adjusted his bowler and then the strap that held his night scope over his eye. “You know why?”

  In an effort to buy time, I answered, “Because though you’re the size of a small water buffalo, you’re still good at delivering things to Montague?”

  He ignored the insult. “That’s ‘Mr. Montague,’ and yes, that’s exactly it.”

  “Well . . . all right, since I don’t really have a choice,” I said, still just buying time.

  “Ah, that’s a good lad, and you always have a choice.” His wolfish smile disappeared. “Now, where’s the drink?”

  “Aristotle . . . the cabinet, behind the Aristotle bust.”

  He surprised me by abandoning the desk. Shifting the limestone bust to the side, he remarked, “Ah, Aristotle. Great thinkers make great drinkers, huh?” He examined the whiskey bottle and gave an approving nod to the philosopher’s image. “Too bad about the hemlock.”

  “Socrates,” I corrected him. “It was Socrates, not Aristotle, who was forced to commit suicide. Aristotle is known for Causality, the four causes, among other things.”

  Hennemann found two glasses and returned to my desk. He gave me an indifferent shrug. “Well, either way, they diddled little boys.”

  I felt uneasy about the man. He was unpleasant enough, and he had made it clear that we weren’t to be friends, but it wasn’t that. I thought he was holding something back.

  I decided that if Mr. Montague truly did want me for a case, a few hours wouldn’t matter. I’d clean up, travel across the city, and present myself in the morning, not be handled like a prisoner by this brute.

  I tried a different approach. “Mr. Hennemann, I really appreciate what you did with Densmore and the brothers, but I must respectfully decline Mr. Montague’s request. I’m not taking on any more cases.”

  The one visible eyebrow raised. “Really? That would be a mistake. When did you determine this?”

  “A few minutes before you came in, actually,” I quipped.

  He chuckled. “Those guys really got to you, huh?”

  “It’s not just them.” It was none of this stranger’s business that I was weary of the work that had trickled in of late. For the last six months, nearly all the work that had come in had been like the Densmore case: more professional peeping Tom than detective. Each case left me feeling dirty. I’d begun fighting down recurring thoughts of leaving the city altogether, though I had no prospects down on the mainland and not enough gumption to make it happen.

  Hennemann offered his wolfish smile. “Look, like I told you, I have a job to do, and that job is to get you to the Montague estate. You don’t want to get me sacked because I wasn’t able to do my job, do you? We’ll take a ride up there, you’ll listen to Mr. Montague’s proposal. If you like what he offers, great. If not, I bring you back. Either way, I’ve done my job for the sir. Deal?”

  “You said there was always a choice. Do I have a choice?”

  “You can decide if you want to use your fingers ever again and whether I will break both your arms.” The sick smile grew, showing off all his teeth. “Now we drink.”

  When he filled the glasses, I waved mine off. I thought of running for the door but remembered how quickly he could move.

  He tsked me. “Not being very friendly.”

  “You said you didn’t want to be friends.”

  “It’s a figure of speech, you stupid twit.” He closed my fingers around the tumbler. I winced at the thought of his threat to mangle them. “Come on, it’s New Year’s. You don’t know it yet, but destiny has favored you for the new century. Things are changing, and you’re too thick to even know how lucky you are.”

  This was the third time in five minutes he’d called me stupid.

  “Yeah, I’m lucky . . . Whatever. Happy 1901.” I took a sip.

  He gulped his drink down and hastened to refill the glass. “Here’s to Addleton Heights, may her flag soar high, never tattered.”

  I raised my glass but didn’t drink.

  “Not drinking, eh? Suit yourself, but when you see what I’m taking you to, you’ll wish you had a belly full of this rot.” He poured a third glass as he mumbled, “What an odd little man he was.”

  “Who’s odd?”

  He burped and blew the foul aftereffects in my direction. “You’ll see. If you’re not going to drink, you
should go ahead and clean up. You can’t go into the Montague estate with blood all over your shirt, wouldn’t be proper. Go change.”

  Maybe we really were going to Montague’s after all. “You’re not afraid I’ll escape out the window?”

  He scoffed as he took my half-empty glass from me and swigged it down too. “You won’t escape. The window in there hasn’t opened in a good while.”

  Before I could ask how he’d seen it in the dark, he tapped at the scope over his right eye.

  “Why do you have that? I thought only Charon wore the red eyes.”

  “Maybe there are still a few things left to learn, Aristotle.” He burped again.

  “How does that thing work anyway?”

  “Thoughts,” he said, tapping his forehead. “Just like the arm here. Mr. Montague’s got a tink that can do some amazing things with brainwave machines.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Just things,” he said and scowled at me as if I’d done him wrong. “Enough chit-chat. Get ready.”

  I lit the gaslight in the darkroom that doubled as my sleeping area and unhooked one side of the hammock so I could get a look in the mirror. The fight had gone worse than I’d realized.

  Normally, my boyish face looked more like twenty-five instead of my actual thirty-three. Tonight, the busted lip, cuts, and swelling under my eyes distorted all of that. My chest looked and felt like a span of oxen had tread across it.

  Splashing unused water from a basin normally reserved for camera work, I slicked my sandy-brown hair into a presentable fashion. I put on a clean shirt and the only necktie I owned.

  I heard Hennemann lumbering around the other room and regretted leaving my office vulnerable to this stranger. “Hey, what’re you doing in there?”

  “Waiting for you, Mr. Kipsey.”

  “Almost done,” I said, grabbing my hat.

  Just so you know, brothel investigative work doesn’t really suit one to be all Johnny Camera. So before the old tink that lived below me, Mr. Schaumberg, passed away, I had him construct a flashless camera bud in the hat.

  Since tipping one’s hat is never out of place, I had the inventor place the triggering mechanism right in the brim of the hat. I tell you, it’s as easy as falling out of a tree. I simply say, “Good day to you, sir and ma’am,” and click-click, their rendezvous is captured on film.

  I stuffed the secret compartment with a roll of film—five shots in all—and snapped it to the ready position. I doubted Hennemann would ever suspect a device like this.

  I returned to the office area, buttoning my vest. What a mess the Densmore brothers had made of the place. I didn’t relish the idea of cleaning everything up.

  “Much better,” Hennemann said, back over by the bust of Aristotle.

  “Glad you approve.”

  “I suggest you lose the sarcasm. Going to see Mr. Montague isn’t a commonplace event. He’s a man of greatness, a shaper of destiny.”

  The big man’s single visible blue eye glossed over as if his mind were far away.

  I sensed an opportunity to try again. I asked gently, “What does he want me for?”

  The question snapped Hennemann back to the present. “All I can say is that someone very important to Mr. Montague has gone missing, and you’d better find him, and fast.”

  “A missing persons case, huh?”

  “Yes, that and a couple of murders.”

  “Whoa, wait . . . a couple of murders?” What was I being snookered into? I had visions of them pinning the crime on me.

  “Don’t get your gears stripped. Mr. Montague simply wants someone like you to look around a little bit before the bulls are contacted.”

  “Are you kidding me? The constables don’t know yet? When did the murders take place?”

  His response was as indifferent as if I’d asked him for a weather report from Spain. “About an hour or so ago. A lousy way to ring in the New Year, huh?”

  “Are you serious?” My mind formed a dozen questions, but I held my tongue.

  He raised his hand with the same annoying nonchalance as before. “You have to appreciate Mr. Montague’s desire to enlist an independent investigator.”

  “I don’t have to appreciate anything,” I argued.

  His words became terse as he resisted the obvious urge to smash me with his metal hand. “There are certain . . . elements that make the situation a little complicated for a routine police investigation.”

  I tried to rearrange the information until it made sense. If he weren’t trying to frame me, why would a magnate of Montague’s stature call upon a private investigator? Were the victims political . . . or famous. . . or was a constable involved? That would explain the need to keep it hushed from the police.

  I laughed bitterly. “If Montague’s involved in a double homicide, that’s anything but routine.”

  The empty glass in Hennemann’s clockwork hand shattered. “Let me make it abundantly clear, Mr. Montague is not ‘involved’!” he shouted. “The shootings simply occurred on his property.”

  Now we were getting somewhere.

  “At his estate in the sky?”

  “Too much talk. Mr. Montague will explain when we get there.” Hennemann stood. “Come on. It’s time to go.”

  In a surprise gesture, he returned the remaining bottle of whiskey to the hiding place behind the bust and flicked a silver coin that landed next to the statue.

  I made my way to the desk drawer, removed my pistol, and started to holster it.

  “Leave the iron. You won’t need it.”

  I ignored him and continued fastening the straps until I heard the unmistakable click of a gun hammer.

  “I said you won’t need it.”

  I looked up at the barrel of a weapon that matched Hennemann’s size. “Whoa there, settle down,” I said, my heart beating in my throat. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

  He motioned with the gun toward the drawer. “That’s right, you’re not. Now put it away.”

  “You want me to go unarmed into a place that’s had two shootings within the last couple of hours?”

  “Guns make me nervous.”

  “What is that, a modified Colt SAA? How can you point that at me and say that with a straight face?”

  He conceded. “All right, other people’s guns. Other people’s guns make me nervous. “ He thumbed the trigger to the final position and adjusted his stance. “Now put it away. I’m not supposed to kill you, but you may find it most uncomfortable solving the case with a bullet hole in your foot. Do we have an understanding?”

  I held my hands up and then slowly lowered them to take the gun out of my holster. “All right, calm down.”

  “I’m as calm as a napping babe.”

  I used my boot to slide the drawer open from the underside. Fighting every instinct within me, I forfeited my derringer. The drawer shut with a resounding click.

  I was relieved to see him holster the weapon. He praised me like I was a schoolboy. “That’s a good man. See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  I forced a smile.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Three

  The snow had stopped falling, but the frosty air bit at my cheeks and nose, making my eyes water. We walked beneath long, dripping icicles that stubbornly clung to the steel girders of the bassel transport rail. They hung low enough to touch if one was inclined to jump to reach them.

  Contrasting the derelict structures of my borough was an out-of-place steam carriage parked across the street. The vehicle’s hood reflected the plumpest gibbous moon I’d ever seen, looking like a light-grey disc balanced upon a tranquil, motionless pond. I’d read about the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motorwagen and the wide-scale debut of later models at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, but this was something altogether different.

  At first, the cigar-shaped metal shell of the vehicle appeared black, but as we crunched through dingy ice on the ground toward it, I realized it was more of a midnight blue.
An intricate network of steel tubing intertwined and ran over the roof of the cab like the mane of a stallion blowing in the wind. The tubes connected to several reservoir drums in the back that were even taller than Hennemann.

  Coils of thick, black hoses appeared from side grommets at seemingly random intervals and formed unexpected junctions before diving under the chassis. There were as many rivets as the sky had stars. Very few modern machines possess the elegance to take one’s breath away, but this one did so without even trying.

  I was dumbfounded when Hennemann briskly rounded the front of the vehicle and opened the operator’s door.

  “This . . . this is yours?” I asked.

  Maybe he was in Montague’s employ after all.

  Vapor rose from his mouth like a factory chimney. “Shut up and climb in.”

  I approached with trepidation.

  “Hurry up!”

  Everyone on the platform either rode bassels or horse-drawns or walked to where they needed to go. I’d never seen a steam carriage up close, much less ridden in one, so you can understand my reluctance. I didn’t relish the notion of sitting on something that could scald me to death at any second, but I climbed into the cab anyway. It was after midnight, the bassels were shut down, and another standoff with my new companion would likely end with lumps to the head or maybe even a bullet through my vest, despite what he’d said about not killing me.

  “It’s the same as a bassel trolley or locomotive,” he said.

  I protested as I opened the carriage door and took my place on the bench inside. “It’s not the same. Passengers of those vehicles aren’t required to sit directly above massive tanks of compressed steam. What if the tanks blow? I’ve read about how—”

  “It’s not going to blow. I operate this often.” Because of his size, he was forced into a hunched-over position that made him look like a gorilla bowing his head to pray. His bowler rested in his lap, and due to his height, he could only peer out of the top of the glass. I had to press against my door to allow room for his bulky right arm. What had I done to deserve this?