Maddie rolled off the chair, gasping for breath. By the time she got to her knees, Muster had stalked Sarah halfway around the parlour. As he reached for the bulging velvet bag that had held the mask, blood oozed from the scrapes on his hands and wrists. Any moment now, he would grab Sarah instead of the bag. Maddie stretched to grasp the brass urn. Ignoring the feathers that fluttered to the floor, she struggled upright again. Staggering forward, she raised the pot and swung with all her might at Muster’s swollen ear. Another off-key bong and his dark glasses flew off. He slumped sideways, bleeding from a gash on his cheek. As he collapsed to the carpet, groaning, Sarah scuttled out of his reach.
“Thanks,” she told Maddie. “Are you okay?”
Maddie grabbed Sarah’s arm to hold herself upright. “I think so. Just dizzy. You?”
“Just terrified.” Sarah led Maddie to a chair by the dining table. She pulled a linen napkin from the velvet bag, dampened it from the spilled flower water and wiped the smears of Muster’s blood from Maddie’s throat and fingernails. “He’d have killed either of us for that mask.”
Her neck aching from the colonel’s assault, Maddie nodded cautiously. “He must have killed the baron for it, maybe right on top of Bodmin Manor before moving the airship. He was one of only two people who could have been told Bodmin was back in England. He may have thought the mask was hidden on the airship. When he couldn’t find it, he set it adrift to confuse the trail, and searched the manor.”
Muster groaned again.
Sarah twisted the blood-streaked napkin in her hands, staring at the bright streaks of red on the carpet around the colonel’s head. “Had we better tie him up? I don’t dare be found here, but I can’t leave you alone with him. And I don’t suppose you’ll let me leave with the mask, either.” She looked around. “Where is it?”
Colonel Muster rolled to his feet, dragging the mask from beneath the chair in the same movement. He staggered out to the balcony.
“He’s getting away!” Maddie wavered as she stood up but went after him, with Sarah close behind.
Outside, the sun bounced off something bright. Beyond the railing, still tucked in its sling, bobbed one of the airship’s messenger craft. Its wings were already extended, its central gear ticking gently over. It waited only for a pilot.
The colonel stumbled toward the railing, his bloody fingers clutching the mask. Chirps and whistles filled the air. TD and TC, metal wings churning madly, darted around the murderer’s head. His blood-smeared hand flailed at them. Maddie called the birds away lest they be damaged. They zoomed through the doorway to perch on her shoulders.
“Images,” she told them, determined to get proof that she, herself, had not stolen the mask.
One of Muster’s feet was up on the rail. Both feet. The mask winked in his hand. A red gleam tickled the huge diamond. A trick of the light?
A beam of red shot out, angled toward the colonel’s face. It grabbed his unprotected gaze. He flung his free hand over his eyes, splattering more blood. The mask blazed with unholy fury. As the watchers cringed away, Muster screamed. He dropped the mask.
Its red glare winking out, the black face floated down to land on the outstretched wing of the messenger craft. Muster scrambled after it, crawling forward on his knees. He touched it again. The light blazed up.
He reared upright in the red glare. He mouthed something that might have been, “Help me.”
As Maddie and Sarah ran forward, the mask’s hellacious glow ballooned. Their limbs slowed, their breath seared. Eyes burning, they barely saw Muster stagger. He skidded over the wing and tumbled right off. His scream blew away on the breeze.
The mask, its glare winking out again, floated down after him.
Released from their temporary paralysis, the two women ran toward the railing. The mask was a black dot whisked hither and yon by the stiff sea winds, its diamond winking where the sun caught it. Beyond it, falling faster, was Colonel Muster. Beneath him was only the blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, overseen by a rocky shore still many miles distant. He had stopped screaming.
Maddie watched, willing him to pull a cord, make a canopy appear to save his miserable life. For all his evil deeds, he was a man, and had once been a war hero.
Chapter Twenty-Two
COLONEL MUSTER WAS so far below when he hit the water that they didn’t see a splash. As Maddie clutched the railing, shaking in every limb, Sarah pulled her arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
It was too late. As they stepped into the parlour, Mrs. Midas-White entered like a tornado, her skirts whirling and voice shrieking.
“Thieves. Murderers. Arrest them.” Behind her filed half a dozen crewmen. They spread out across the doorway and stared at the wreckage, then at the women. Obie was among them. Maddie let go of Sarah and curtsied, simultaneously straightening her cap and smoothing her apron.
“It was Colonel Muster, Ma’am. I came in to freshen the tables and he was here, on your bed, pulling stuff out of your wall safe. He choked me and said he’d kill me. I screamed, and this lady ran in from the hall and beat him off me. Then I had to hit him with the urn when he tried to kill her. He pulled something out of the bag, a black thing, and ran out to the balcony. Oh, Ma’am. He lost his footing and fell into the sea!”
Mrs. Midas-White stared at her, narrow gray-black eyes growing wide with horror. “He fell? With my mask? Noooo . . .” She rushed to the balcony railing and stared over.
Obie hurried forward. “Young ladies, you must be very distressed. Here, let me help you to a chair. Would you like a cup of tea?”
The other crewmen took his lead, albeit with a few uneasy glances at the balcony, where their employer was waving her brass claws and uttering imprecations as she peered down. Two officers went into the bedchamber and began making an inventory of the safe’s contents. Soon a tea service appeared, in the hands of a wide-eyed parlourmaid. She served the two girls, mopped up the table, and went to her knees to begin smudging up the blood from the sky-blue carpet. Mrs. Midas-White would not be happy at having to replace that carpet, Maddie thought irrelevantly, and then the lady herself returned, and the moment of calm was over.
“They are lying. They stole my mask and murdered my head of security. Search them and throw them in the brig.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
IN THE NARROW passage outside Maddie’s dormitory, Obie beckoned with his head. Maddie pulled Sarah along as he moved a few paces from the open door. Muffled sounds of a search could be heard within, and Maddie kept her voice barely above a whisper.
“Quick thinking, Obie. Thanks. If anyone else had taken charge, we’d be sitting in the brig now. Are there really ugly drunks in there?”
“Just Professor Jones. He was waving his gun during Plumb’s lecture.”
“I thought until the last possible minute that he might be the murderer.”
“You forgot he’s afraid of flying, didn’t you? He’d never have been able to jump out of an airship.”
“Murderer?” Sarah joined in. “Why would he kill Baron Bodmin? And why are you helping us?”
“Long story,” said Maddie and Obie together.
Maddie went on, “After losing the mask to Sarah, Muster came aboard this ship with Mrs. Midas-White, maybe just to escape England and maybe to steal whatever he could. I don’t see how he could have known where the mask was.”
“He came after me this morning,” said Sarah. “He saw my picture in the aether-news. I told him I’d given it to Mrs. Midas-White already. When I crept in here, I made sure he was attending her inspection. I thought I was safe until New York." A self-deprecating laugh escaped her. “The worst mistake I made on this job was underestimating him.” She glanced over her shoulder, but the designated crewmen were still searching every bunk in Maddie’s dormitory. “You said someone else could have known the baron had found the mask. Who?”
“Professor Jones,” said Maddie. “He was a temporary member of the same club where the baron sent a telegram on
his arrival home. As well as being too afraid of airships to jump out of one, he would never have parted from his trunk full of research. But the mask was in the manor the whole time. How did you know where to look?”
“Hints from Bodmin in Cairo. His mother guarded his secrets, he said. I didn’t know that old bat over the fireplace was his mother until Ambrose said. It wasn’t a stretch to realize she was the girl in the parlour too.”
That explained that. Maddie looked at Obie. “How do I get out of this one?”
“Once your dorm is confirmed clean, I’ll have you searched and leave you there. We’ll repeat the process with Miss . . . Lady . . .” He shrugged. “Sarah. Then I’ll report to Mrs. Midas-White that you’re both innocent of the mask’s theft. Did Muster really go off the balcony?”
“Oh yes. TD and TC captured it all. But we can’t use them to prove Muster was the villain.”
“That we can’t.” Obie understood without her explaining: they could not expose Madame’s lovely little birds with all their secret skills. “Unless . . . I might be able to rig something plausible about a hidden security camera ordered installed by Muster as his excuse for going to her quarters while she was out. Assuming the gorgon leaves that stateroom long enough for me to put one there.”
“That’s you fixed,” said Sarah with sudden fierceness. “But she’ll have me in chains before she’s through. The jewels from Cairo are in my luggage. If she claims I stole those, who will believe me that she owes that much and more? I can’t fight her in court. I don’t have a Steamlord papa to make it all go away, Lady Madeleine.”
Obie’s eyes opened wide. “You told her?”
“She guessed, when I demanded my cards back.”
Sarah bit her lip. “I hate to do this after you saved my life today, but since you’ve got a friend on board and I don’t, you’re both going to help me out of this mess or I’m going to tell the world where Lord Main-Bearing’s missing daughter is.”
“Obie?”
“Up to you,” he said. “If you want me to help her, I will.”
They’d barely settled on a makeshift plan when the two officers returned to the hallway. One shrugged, holding up empty hands. Obie gave Maddie a nudge toward her quarters. “You’ll stay there until the inquiry is concluded. Miss. I’ll make sure you’re let out and no mark on your record.”
He escorted her inside, and Maddie slipped TD to him. Then she opened the ventilator above the door as wide as it would go, sat down on her bunk, and waited for the little bird to come back with news.
Why had she acquiesced so readily to helping Lady Sarah escape? The woman had threatened all her freedom and financial security.
But it was only too plausible that Mrs. Midas-White refused to pay Sarah for her time because the results had not been profitable. She had refused to pay Hercule Hornblower, too. And Sarah had been ready to deal reasonably with Maddie over the false ID. And, when it came down to it, she had returned to draw Colonel Muster off Maddie when she could have cleaned out the safe and run away, leaving Maddie to be murdered. Whereas Maddie’s vengeful article and image in yesterday’s news had led Colonel Muster straight to Sarah, and put them both in peril of their lives. Yes, Sarah was owed some consideration. If she gave up those visiting cards and never mentioned Maddie’s name again.
It seemed hours had passed, but it was not quite lunchtime when TD fluttered in the ventilator. “Speak,” she told him.
Obie’s voice said, “Retrieved your cards from Lady Sarah’s stateroom. The images came out great. I’ll leave one with the ship for evidence of Muster’s death and keep the rest for your articles. They’re bound to be sensational. The gorgon will be in the cockpit during mooring. She likes to watch the approach to any port, likely to make sure they’re not wasting fuel. I’ll fix a recorder above her balcony then and fly Sarah away on the messenger craft that Muster left ready. She can’t carry much so can you go pack up the rest of her gear and bring it off with yours once the ship is moored? Hiram’s cousin will come to let you out soon. Once you’re in port, he’ll bring you safe to a rooming house run by his aunt, and then we can worry about our next jobs. Because I doubt the White Sky Line will take either of us back. See you in the Big Apple, Maddie!”
There was a scraping of key in lock then. She stuffed TD into her pocket and stood up, smoothing her apron, ready to resume for these last few hours her role as Maggie Hatley, airship parlourmaid.
EVIL EYE STRIKES! HORROR IN THE SKIES!
The cunning murderer of Baron Bodmin met a terrible fate off the shores of America yesterday. Our intrepid investigative reporter, W.Y. Knott, has been on his trail for weeks and witnessed his horrifying end.
While stealing a legendary diamond from a passenger’s safe, disgraced Colonel Bilious Muster fell to his death from a White Sky Line airship en route to New York City. During the theft, the colonel violently assaulted a maid and a passenger who came to her aid.
A close friend to Baron Bodmin, Muster was the first person to learn of his success at tracking the Nubian mask known as the Eye of Africa. This mask’s third eye is a large diamond, reputed to glow red when touched by evil, and some scholars claim the black face was streaked with the blood of murderers to enhance its power.
With his reputation and finances in chaos, Muster first absconded to Cornwall to greet his victorious friend. There, by devious means, he lured the exhausted explorer aboard his own airship and killed him. However, finding the mask was not aboard, he threw the baron and all evidence of his successful quest into the sea before escaping the vessel himself. The Jules Verne was found adrift off Cornwall a few days later, and brought in by the Coast Guard.
Muster then hid out at Bodmin Manor, searching for the mask. His unfruitful hunt was interrupted when the body came ashore and the baron’s heir and investors arrived to claim their due. One of the latter found the mask and smuggled it out of England on a trans-oceanic White Sky Liner.
Muster may have overheard plans for the export of the mask, or simply hoped to evade the noose. However it came about, he talked his way into a position on the same ship, and departed England for America.
Waiting on opportunity, the erstwhile high-altitude scout set up a daring aerial escape route and, as the coast of the continent approached, assailed the safe that held the Eye of Africa.
Circumstance brought a maid into the room during his robbery. Although brutally flung about and half throttled, she was able to scream and a passerby rushed in to draw off her attacker. Muster turned his rage onto the newcomer and the maid, recovering her senses, rescued the unfortunate Good Samaritan.
In the struggle, Colonel Muster retrieved the mask and ran to his getaway craft. By then this reporter was on the scene and what follows is an exact accounting of the murderer’s demise:
Colonel Muster carried the mask in one scratched and bleeding hand as he climbed onto his craft’s wing. The diamond glowed red, faintly at first and then with a blinding heat. Muster flung up a hand to shield his face and lost his grip on the aircraft. He staggered and fell toward the sea, a thousand feet and more below.
The mask fell with him and is presumed lost to history. This reporter has no explanation for the red glow of the Eye, and must allow the images here shown to stand as surety for the truth of this account.
Author Biography
Jayne Barnard is best known in Steampunk circles as the twisted mind behind Parasol Dueling. Her award-winning short fiction spans past, present, and alternate futures in mystery, history, and tales for children.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
News Article
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Author Biography
Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond Page 15
