by Jim Musgrave
The image of Superintendent Kennedy came into my mind. He was the man whom I trusted to arrange this kidnapping hunt, and he was them man I now feared the most, especially when I saw that he possessed the card with the taijitu emblem on it. As I meditated upon his face, I saw a man approach the others as they were loading Seth into the hackney.
He was clean-shaven, and he was tall, and he had two of his men with him. They were the big Irish lads I had seen before. Kennedy was angry, and I could clearly hear his voice echo down the alley. “I told you not to drug them! You were supposed to bring them conscious to the Palace. She wants them awake, you fools! Get on with it!” He yelled, and the men finished storing Seth’s body into the back of the hackney.
I now knew my destination. It was the Palace Theater, the home of Jane the Grabber. I now had to run over there and lead the charge into the building to rescue the orphans. I found it quite difficult running in my dress suit, but after I dropped my hat and coat into a rubbish container, I was running much swifter. I collided with a few people as I crossed the street and ran down the block toward the Palace. It had taken me a half hour to run the distance, and I was certain Seth had been delivered.
Everything was prepared, and as I ran up to the front of the Palace Theater, I suddenly saw Becky and Doctor Foote standing together under a street lamp. Out of breath, I stopped beside them and pointed toward the building. “They have Seth inside! He was being held at the Taijitu Orphanage. The boy has supernatural abilities, but I can’t explain that now. We must get the crowds to storm the building and rescue these children before it’s too late!” My voice was hoarse, and the rain was beginning to come down in sheets now, spattering the city dwellers, some of whom rushed to the awnings of the gambling halls and taverns to stay dry.
What was left in the street were the fifty-odd people who responded to Becky’s advertisement. And, of course, there was Anthony Comstock and his bodyguard. By the looks of it, Mister Comstock had no followers. Those who came were encouraged by Becky’s efforts and not his. I took the initiative and stood up on a milk crate that was in front of one of the taverns.
“Listen to me! We don’t have much time. There are orphans being held inside this theater, and we must go in there to rescue them. I don’t think they will challenge our numbers, but please be careful. They may be armed.” After I said this, a few in my audience pulled back and wandered away down the street. They were obviously not ready to risk life and limb for a few homeless orphans.
As we charged up the stairs and into the theater, we met no resistance. Business was being conducted as usual. Drinkers were drinking at the bar, an assortment of men were dancing with prostitutes on the large dance floor, and they all watched us running past them with a curious and drunken gaze.
I did not know where to go, but I had the intuitive instinct to find some kind of door into the cellar or the lower confines of the theater. After running like a crazed cat, back and forth for several minutes under the stairwell, I found it. The double-door was hidden beneath a mammoth Persian rug. I pulled away the rug and saw two large brass rings, one on each door. Doctor Foote helped me pull, and we each opened both sides of the entryway onto the stairs leading into the lower depths of the theater.
As we stumbled down the steps, it was pitch black, and I could hear comments from some of the citizenry. It sounded as if there were only a dozen of them at the most. “I refuse to go down there! We’re walking into a trap!” As a result, there were probably only nine of us who dared venture further.
I could make out a distant glow at the end of the passageway. We all walked toward it, like hesitant moths, with slow steps, expecting the worst. What we saw as we entered the large room was beyond our expectations. The visage was even beyond what I could have expected after seeing Seth change back and forth between a ten-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy.
Kennedy and his men were there, as were John Allen and his wife, Little Susie. They were not wearing clothing from 1868. Instead, they wore an assortment of military garb the likes of which came from no army I had ever seen. In addition, several of the prostitutes were adorned with leather corsets, with wheels and gears turning on their front, and their bosoms kept inflating and deflating under steam power. Above their corsets, expanding and contracting like balloons, their breasts heaved under the steaming power inserted on the sides of their mammaries like engines of lust.
The centerpiece of this Gothic underground drama was Hester Jane Haskins or “Jane the Grabber.” As was the case with her retinue, she wore black leather, but she also wore brass wings on her back, which were fastened upon her shoulders with nuts and bolts. There were moving gears that made a noise as her wings flapped up and down while she spoke. In the center of her corset was a large round clock, and it seemed to be radiating something powerful with it, as it pulsed green, yellow and red under the gas lamps.
Standing beside her was a man wearing clothing from some other place and time. His suit was gray, and it appeared to be from an army of some kind, but it was an army I had never seen. There were also strange symbols on his black-billed cap. There was gray trimming around the top of the cap, across the visor and across the middle of the cap’s brim. On the front top of the cap was a metal bird of prey, perhaps an eagle or hawk, and below the gray band was a metal skull and crossbones. On the lapels of his midnight black uniform were images that appeared to be two likenesses of the letter “S,” but each letter looked jagged, as if it were a lightning bolt.
On the armband, just the way the bartenders had worn them, was a symbol. However, this symbol was not the taijitu. Instead, it was the symbol of the swastika, used by the ancient Hindus to evoke sacred force. It was an equilateral cross with four arms bent at 90 degrees. This symbol was also worn on the front of his uniform jacket in the form of a medallion.
Kennedy and his men, the hookers, and John Allen and his wife all had weapons. These weapons were no pistols I had ever seen. Instead, they each had hoops of brass around the barrel, and in the handle was the vapor from a small steam engine. These were weapons whose bullets were super-powered by steam in addition to the usual gunpowder inside the bullet! The velocity from these weapons must be tremendous.
As our small group had no weapons, we were forced to stand and listen to Jane the Grabber’s discourse. As she spoke, I had the feeling of mortal denial, as if I knew the truth of her words, but my rational mind did not want to accept them.
“Greetings, fellow citizens of New York City! Welcome to my dominion. We have been assured by Mayor Hoffman that our Taijitu Corporation will soon allow us to take over all the brothels in the city, and this is because of Baron Emmerich Sangfroidengruber, who is visiting us from the future. Just as your Mister O’Malley became a visiting professor from England, we have our own method of procuring visiting geniuses.”
Several members in our assemblage gulped audibly. My mind was congealing upon this new information as if it were glue covering the surface of a cancerous tumor on the human body.
“You mean you can travel into the future?” I asked.
“My, how astute of you, Detective! Just as your little child prodigy Seth Mergenthaler can envision the future, we can travel into it! Our devices are much more conducive to the profit motive, don’t you see? We make the age of machines possible! The Industrial Revolution begins and ends with us. For example, Doctor Arthur Mergenthaler was able to visit the future in his mind to create that ingenious apparatus in Tennessee, but we are able to bring an actual inventor to our city who is the most creative mechanic of his time. Look at what he invented!”
As she said this, a long black metal curtain parted just behind her, and behind it, glittering under the gas lanterns, was a gigantic, polished steam-powered machine. This machine made Poe’s Pendulum and other torture devices seem created for a nursery book for children.
It was about fifty feet across, and it was all metal, with three tall boilers made of steel at each interval of twenty-five feet, and brass gauges
and steam release valves were placed all around the bottom perimeter of the monster. This was, indeed, the huff-and-puff monster from the children’s nightmares.
At the far end of this machine was a line of naked children, and I noticed that the first one in line was Seth, and his shoulders were covered with a leather-strapped brace to keep his wings from sprouting forth from their internal source. In addition, since he had been unconscious, his invisibility would do him no good now. When he was invisible, he was still present in his human form. Behind him were ten other children, ranging in age from six to twelve years, and they each had a sleepy expression, as if they had been heavily drugged.
The children were going to be fastened to the back of the huff-and-puff machine and moved toward the middle of it, where waiting to greet them was what appeared to be a mechanical butcher knife, as it was glowing and pulsating menacingly just within its receptacle of brass. I could now see how the children’s bodies that were found in the Five Points trash bins had received the steam blisters on their backs and buttocks.
“Shall we begin? I want you all to see how the Baron’s device works out to our advantage. We eliminate the poverty-stricken children of the genetically inferior. In return, we receive a decent profit! Start the machine!” Hester Haskins yelled, and big John Allen walked over to the place just in front of Seth and pulled down a brass lever. The machine began to vibrate and then chug like a locomotive, gasping and wheezing out its steam into the air, so that it enveloped us in its mechanical haze.
In addition, there came from somewhere inside this contraption a musical song. It was Brahms’ Lullaby, the same song Cassie was singing inside the Wonderland Suite.
As Seth’s body was strapped to the moving belt, our entire group decided we should act. I yelled, “Charge!” All of us, including Doctor Foote and Becky Charming, rushed toward the machine.
One by one, I watched as each of my comrades fell to the barrage of steam-powered bullets. It was like the worst of Picket’s charges during the Civil War. We were outnumbered and outgunned, and we would all soon be dead. I felt the familiar searing pain bite into my shoulder, the same shoulder where I had earned my Congressional Medal of Honor saving the life of General Sherman.
I rolled over and looked up. Doctor Foote was holding Becky close to his chest to protect her, but she broke away from him and ran, full speed, toward Jane the Grabber Haskins.
Haskins’ mechanical wings began to whir, and she held the Baron from the future’s hand, and they both disappeared, miraculously, in a puff of steam.
“Damn ya all ta hell! In the name of God almighty, stop!” The voice of Walter McKenzie was louder than the machine and the gunfire combined. He and ten of his men were shooting as they entered the room, and the hookers in leather and Kennedy’s men fell to the floor. I saw big Bill Maguire grab one of Kennedy’s men and throw him bodily into the huff-and-puff, where he collapsed, sizzling from the heat of the engine.
Finally, from my supine position near Becky, I watched as Gator O’Neil charged toward John Allen. Allen tried to block the bigger man with his feet, but Gator took hold of Allen’s boots and began spinning him around and around. O’Neil had a maniacal grin as he finally released Allen, who landed on one of the boilers and began to fry like a piece of side pork.
“Stop the machine!” I yelled, just as little Seth was coming up to the center where the butcher knife was starting to come out of its lair. His delicately thin throat would soon be slit from ear-to-ear, as the device moved down, adjusting precisely to the height of its captive child.
McKenzie saw what I was pointing at, the lever on the machine, and he ran, all 300 pounds of hulking frame, and collided with the lever, pulling down on it like a giant angel who had just been rejected from heaven because he was overweight. The machine came to an immediate, gasping stop. The steam clouds slowly evaporated, as the human survivors gasped-in the air around them.
Little Seth Mergenthaler, the mazikeen, was directly behind the razor-sharp blade, and he had a big smile on his face. “I knew it would end this way. All you needed to do was ask me!” he said, and then he paused. “I know. It must be more exciting for you this way,” he finally added.
Epilogue: American Museum of Oddities
New York City…one week later
We were a strange group of believers who visited Barnum’s Museum on Fulton Street. Seth Mergenthaler, of course, led the way, as he seemed to now have become an expert on everything odd and peculiar. He was giving us a guided tour, as it were, but the adults were hanging back to be with me. They wanted to hear about my case and how I had solved it. In addition, I supposed they wanted me to assure them they were not going insane.
Bessie, Becky, Doctor Andrew Bliss Foote and Walter McKenzie were there. In addition, the ten men who raided the Palace Theater with Walter were also there, acting as our guardians, escorting us by dawdling, eyes as keen as hawks, around the periphery of our little coterie.
I spoke from the center of the group, a completely different center than the one we had experienced in the bowels of Jane the Grabber’s laboratory a week before. Since we had been there, the police had shut down the entire theater for the violation of the anti-vice statute that was rushed through the state legislature as a result of the citizens’ outcry after the huff-and-puff machine was discovered, and I explained how it was being used.
“It was the taijitu that gave me the final clue. It was on the armbands of the bartenders in the bordellos, and it was on the cards left inside the rooms where the children were being prostituted. Finally, all the business men, like Superintendent Kennedy and Anthony Comstock, also had cards bearing this insignia. I knew they were all related in some way, and I just needed to prove how.” I kept looking over at Seth, expecting him to disappear or to fly away at any moment.
“But they weren’t all evil, were they?” asked Bessie, revolving her black parasol slowly on her shoulder. She was still in mourning for her husband, Arthur, even though Seth had assured her he would appear again at any moment.
“No, they were not. Kennedy was the closest to the dark queen, Jane the Grabber Haskins. He knew about how this woman could travel through time and procure the evil that it held. I am certain he was aware of the deadly steam machine, but since we dare not inform the Tammany Police of this fantastic reality, he is not being held for murder. He may be convicted on conspiracy charges stemming from the Taijitu Orphanage,” I said, loosening my tie. I did not enjoy wearing city clothes. I much preferred my wool army coat and shirtsleeves.
“How was that orphanage run? Were they only providing the children to be used as prostitutes?” Becky asked, taking a powder puff from her purse and drying her nose, chin and cheeks. It was quite humid for New York City in the springtime.
“It was a corporation, with a board of directors and all the legal trappings. However, like many such corporations, these investors throughout the city were not aware of how this orphanage was making its money. They were, in fact, supplying the poor children to the brothels, and in turn, they were making the profit shared from the depraved activities that ensued. However, when Jane the Grabber realized she could up the stakes to bring in huge profits, she traveled to the future and retrieved her genius inventor, Baron what was his name?” I asked.
“Emmerich Sangfroidengruber,” came the reply from Seth. “He was a Nazi from the elite Schutzstaffel,” the boy added. We, of course, did not know anything about this future, so the political or military meaning of the boy’s words fell on deaf ears.
“These profits came when Haskins figured she could murder the children after they were used, and then she had fewer mouths to feed and thus had a higher profit at the orphanage. These children were recent immigrants, so their identities were easily wiped off the map. This resulted in the children’s fairytale, and what the child prostitutes called the ‘huff-and-puff machine.’ I really knew there was evil in our city when I heard that story from you, Becky.”
“Yes, it was quite ghas
tly. But that machine and the way Hester Haskins disappeared were much more frightening. We are now the only ones who can testify such supernatural events exist. What do you think this all means, Patrick?”
“Ye damned well best be explainin’ yerself good, O’Malley. Me boy-os have had the heebie-jeebies fer a week!” said McKenzie, hitching up his trousers.
“We have been chosen, either through fate, divine intervention, or just plain bad luck, to fight an evil that seems to have been created in order to take advantage of the backwardness of our times. Hester Jane Haskins could travel to the future, and we have our Seth Mergenthaler, half-angel and half-human. I believe people like Haskins have been given their abilities the same way we were given ours. Perhaps Haskins was a true daughter of Lilith, the way Seth described his mother. We seem to have been chosen to fight each other in a world where others reap the bounty of an underlying, sinister greed that preys upon the ignorance of the masses. Only we can fight them because we have been chosen to represent a special reality all our own.” I smiled, and the others looked at me strangely.
“Why do you smile like that, O’Malley? This seems like a living nightmare, if you ask me,” said Becky, spinning her umbrella with great force.
I walked up ahead to stand beside little Seth. The boy was peering into a display of steam engines of all varieties, shapes, and sizes. The gears whirled, the whistles tooted, and the steam poured forth inside the glass display. It was a miniature world of somebody’s creation, just as we were inside a miniature world of another entity’s creation.
“Seth is half-angel and half-human. We believe we are completely human, but with each mystery we can solve, perhaps the closer we can come to being like Seth. What do you say? Are we mad, or are we together for the good of children like this one?” I picked up little Seth into my arms and held him aloft. Like any child, he began to giggle, and his face beamed with joy.
