The Falling Machine

by Andrew P. Mayer

  And yet here she was, inside her father's inner sanctum, searching for clues that she hoped would help her to uncover something in her father's notes that might reveal who the thief actually was.

  So far she had found nothing of interest beyond a few stacks of papers and certificates. From what she could tell, they seemed primarily to concern her father's business dealings and other investments. They were, she had to admit, neither interesting nor revealing of anything beyond the fact that Alexander Stanton, a man who found satisfaction charging into battle against monstrous villains with guns blazing, seemed to harbor an equal passion for the most minute and boring details of the business world.

  She was sure that had he been given access to the same information, the Sleuth would already have discovered some curious notation, an out-of-place decimal point, or some other detail that would have allowed him to construct a conspiracy of people, places, and things that would have led to a clear answer as to who the thief must be.

  But even if Sarah wasn't a master detective, that didn't mean she was completely unable to understand the numbers in front of her. Under the tutelage of Sir Dennis she had already learned far more about mathematics than was considered proper for a lady. And Sarah had shown more of a natural flair for numbers and mathematics than Nathaniel ever would. Even so, there was a difference between being able to understand the figures, and recognizing that the spreadsheet in front of her actually pointed to something nefarious. “If,” she said out loud, to remind herself, “there actually is anything there to be found at all.”

  She began to organize the papers she had looked through back into a tidy stack. She had to admit to herself that she wasn't the Sleuth, and never would be. If there was something to find, then it would need to reveal itself to her in a far more obvious way.

  When she had decided to raid her father's office, Sarah had made a promise to herself that she would only search what was open and available. But the thrill of being in here, of being surrounded by the forbidden, made her want to uncover more. “And who knows when I'll get another chance, or manage to find the courage to take it?”

  She rattled the desk drawers again, just to see, but they remained locked.

  Trying to decide what to do next, her eyes wandered to the safe standing on the sidewall by the window. It was an impressive-looking black box, with the requisite brass locks and hinges, and a large dial that sat in the claw of an eagle painted across the front of it—wings spread menacingly.

  The safe was obviously the place where big secrets should be kept. But the few times she had been invited into the office, her father had left it open. It usually contained an impressive amount of money and stock certificates, but neither of those were valuable information.

  What Sarah was looking to uncover were deep, dark secrets—the kind that would be kept in deep, dark places—and she had a very good idea where those would be hidden. It was somewhere she had been before.

  When the Industrialist had first appeared to the world, wearing his smoking hat and holding an automated pistol in his hand, no one had known who the man behind the mask really was. The enigmatic “Capitalist of action” quickly became the talk of the town, with artist's renderings of him appearing on the front pages of all the newspapers, along with a torrent of fanciful novels that had imagined all sorts of lurid origins and ridiculous secret identities.

  But despite all the attention, for the first few years of his career the flamboyant hero managed to maintain his anonymity. Politicians, newsmen, and other villains had all been unable to uncover who the man behind the mask really was. And it probably would have remained that way, if not for a curious nine-year-old girl stumbling onto her father's secret and revealing it to the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  It was a sequence of events that had begun with Sarah sneaking into the same room she was in now. They had ended, three years later, with the Industrialist, revealing his identity to the world, hoping to save the life of his wife and child from the dastardly villain who had kidnapped them. Only Sarah had escaped with her life.

  As she pulled her thoughts back to the present, Sarah caught herself looking up from the desk and letting her gaze rest on the gas lamp coming out of the wall behind her. That was the exact spot where the trouble had begun, and looking at it now it was a wonder that such a little girl had ever managed to reach it at all, let alone manipulate it in exactly the proper way to cause the wall to open up.

  She walked over to it and dragged her fingertips across the long brass tube. It was the first time she had touched it in eleven years, and it felt smooth and cool to the touch. She had often wondered if her father had modified the mechanism since she had opened it. He had had Darby help him remodel his sanctum a few years ago, and he certainly could have created something far more—

  The familiar click surprised her. She had pushed it in without even thinking about it, or at least without thinking about thinking about it. She caught her distorted image in the clear blown glass of the lamp and saw that there was a trace of a knowing smile on her lips.

  It dawned on Sarah that secretly this had been her plan all along. Her promise to herself that she would avoid coming back to the scene of the crime after all these years was a lie, and the curious nine-year-old girl who still lived inside of her was thrilled.

  The adult, however, was not so sure, and she hesitated for just a moment before twisting the lamp to the side—but only for a moment.

  There was a heavy “thunk” as the chained weight behind the wall was released, and the panel behind the desk started to rise. It was still exactly the same. Her father was nothing if not a traditionalist.

  As she watched the oaken wall behind the desk disappear into the ceiling she realized that one thing had changed: there was a large portrait of Alexander Stanton dressed as the Industrialist hung on the wall that was rising up, and there was no place for it to go.

  Sarah dove for the picture, tripping over her heels as she went. She bumped into the rising wall, managing to find just enough purchase to push her hands upward and slip the picture off its hook before the panel passed the point of no return.

  Freed from its stable hook, the large portrait wobbled in her hands and then began to topple over. She managed to make a desperate twist to the right, driving her corset into her ribs. The top edge of the gold rococo frame banged into the track where the wall had lifted away, and stopped.

  She breathed a sigh of relief as she slid the picture to the ground. She looked up and realized that there was a spring-loaded flap in the ceiling perfectly sized to let the painting slip through.

  “Damn,” she said. So far her attempts at being a master detective revealed that Sarah was far better at being clumsy and desperate than she was at being clever. She wondered if the Sleuth's true special powers were simply that he had the patience to consider all the possibilities before he acted.

  Her mother, she was sure, would have reminded her that lack of attention was a weakness of her gender.

  But Darby had never had any patience for those kinds of excuses. When he had first created the Turbine costume for Nathaniel, she had asked the old man why he couldn't make her into a Paragon as well. “My mother said it's because I'm a girl.”

  The scientist had laughed at that. “My dear child, it isn't your gender that makes you a hero,” he had told her. “And it isn't a costume either. Any fool with a gun can already perform acts beyond those of an ordinary man. It's having the strength of will needed to overcome your own inabilities that makes you special.” But in the end it had still been Nathaniel whom he had chosen to give the ability to fly.

  Sarah stared into the open closet in front of her. The secret room had changed very little in the years since she had first peeked inside. Laid out on a large central table were multiple sets of the Industrialist's red-and-blue leather costume, each with its own version of the ridiculous steam-spewing hat that her father seemed convinced was the pièce de résistance of the entire suit.
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  A frame in back held up his shield along with the mechanical bandolier that allowed her father to feed a seemingly endless stream of bullets to his guns. Bolted to the back of it was the small metal bottle that acted as a reservoir for the fortified steam that propelled them with such terrifying power.

  It was all far more advanced than it had been when she had first discovered her father's secret. Before Darby had gotten his hands on it, the weapon had simply been a mechanical device created by one of Alexander Stanton's brilliant young engineers using a series of clockworks and springs, along with a crude gunpowder mechanism. According to her father it had been bulky but effective, although it often froze at inopportune moments, a weakness that was almost fatal when it ignited during a battle with Dr. Phlogiston.

  After that he had worked with Sir Dennis to reengineer the suit completely, and anyone familiar with the old man's style could see the inventor's handiwork in every element of the device. It was compact, streamlined, efficient, and beautiful in a way that revealed a true artistic skill.

  Looking at it now, it felt as if a part of Dennis Darby were here in the room with her. She felt a pang of loss in the pit of her stomach stronger than anything she had felt since the funeral.

  The other, less conspicuous element that had been “updated” since she had first stumbled onto the costume was that the waistline of the suit was larger than it had been a decade ago. Aging was something that her father had great difficulty accepting, although she had often assured him that he was still very fit for a man of his years.

  Maybe next time he complained about getting older she could just tell him what Darby had told her. “You must remember, Father,” she would say to him, “it is a person's ability to overcome their inabilities that makes them special.”

  She smiled at the thought of what his reaction might be to that, although the image was soured by the fact that his response would be something both withering and sarcastic.

  She thought she could hear his stern tones now: “She must be in this house somewhere. I want you to find her and bring her down to my office right away.”

  Sarah gasped. The words, along with some very determined footsteps, were more than just in her imagination—they were echoing from the hallway outside of the door! And although the size of the house made it easy enough to hear conversation coming from almost any of the main halls, the fact that the words were so clear meant that it would only be a matter of seconds before Alexander Stanton burst into his office and discovered his fully grown daughter reenacting the exact event that had stolen away his secret identity and almost killed his family.

  The panel, the lamp, the painting, the wall…Possibilities flashed through her mind, but each option seemed more useless than the last. The door.

  Desperation gave wings to her feet as Sarah bolted across the room. But her constricting garments made her graceless, and her hip grazed the edge of the massive oaken table as she tried to clear it. Pain lanced through her, but she still managed to finish bolting across the carpet, landing on her bustle with a thump before she wedged the heel of her shoe against the lower corner of the door.

  A moment later the lock shifted, and she felt her father's strength pushing against her foot. The pressure was ferocious, and she half expected the wood to flex, bulge, or crack.

  She held her breath and prayed that she would be strong enough to hold him back. Even if the door only moved the tiniest bit he would be able to guess that it wasn't jammed….Sarah shuddered to think what her father would do if he imagined that some intruder had invaded the security of his office.

  But the quality of the door allowed it to remain as unmoved as an Englishman hearing a ribald remark.

  “Damnation!” her father swore as he gave it a second mighty shove. She imagined that he would not have cursed so loudly if he knew that it was his daughter that was the obstacle on the other side of the door. But then again, Sarah thought to herself, if he knew that he would be doing a great deal more than simply attempting to shove his way in.

  Even through the excitement, her hip was beginning to ache from where it had smashed into the desk. It was painful enough that she wondered if she might have broken the skin. Creating excuses to explain bruises to the housemaids was difficult enough, but at least they were used to her clumsy, boyish ways. But actual bloodstains were sure to give rise to questions that would be almost impossible to answer.

  “Ungh!” her father exclaimed as he shoved against the frame one more time. “What is the matter with this blasted door?” Her foot was aching now, too, ready to give up in its war against Alexander Stanton's legendary stubbornness.

  Then the pressure was gone.

  “O'Rourke!” her father cried out, his voice fading as he turned away. If he was calling for the butler that might mean he was giving up. She waited for another moment, then heard his footsteps fading as he moved down the hall. “O'Rourke!” he shouted again, louder this time.

  For a moment she considered opening the door and attempting to slip out. But with all the commotion going on in the house, there was no way that Sarah would be able to make it to the stairs without being caught and questioned. There was only one way out….

  Sarah scrambled across the rug, barely managing to get to her feet as she grabbed for the mechanism that controlled the secret panel. She turned it again, and the panel in the ceiling began to descend.

  As Sarah prepared to duck inside the secret room, her eye caught the dropped painting that still sat on the floor.

  A fresh wave of panic flooded through her, although with less force than it had a few minutes ago. Perhaps it's the pain in my hip, she thought to herself.

  Sarah considered her options: she could drag the canvas with her into the secret closet—but that would only postpone her troubles. Her father would find the painting where it shouldn't be, and Sarah would be the only suspect.

  Despite the fact that his daughter had revealed to the world that her father was a Paragon, the existence of the secret room was still known only to a few select members of the household. After he had saved her from danger, Alexander Stanton had sat his daughter down and made her promise to never again enter that room. “You are,” he told her, “its special guardian. You must help me keep it safe from prying eyes, as well as the ever-hungry dusters wielded by the housemaids!” It had been a long time since they had shared a moment together like that.

  The ceiling continued its relentless downward slide. There would be no way to get the painting back onto the wall and still sneak inside the room. She would need to quickly find a hiding place.

  The painting was too tall to hide behind the couch, and neither the fern nor the globe was a genuine option.

  “The safe!” she exclaimed with relief. Sarah wrestled the frame into her arms, trying not to notice the dent in the gilt where it had banged into the wall. She carried it over to the side of the cast-iron monstrosity and placed it on the floor next to the wall. She gave it a shove, sliding it behind the squat metal box. At least the safe was tall enough to hide it. As it disappeared from view, her father's painted eyes seemed to be giving her the most disapproving look in the history of pigment.

  Once it was completely hidden, she ran for the back wall. She scrabbled underneath the falling panel just as it was about to reach the floor, her hip loudly reminding her of the indignity that it had already been subjected to. It was followed by a popping sound as some of the boning in her corset snapped from the pressure. “More questions from Jenny,” she whispered to herself.

  The wall closed behind her, and the clanking mechanism dwindled away into silence as it wound down. Sarah's sigh of relief was interrupted as it dawned on her that she was surrounded by utter darkness.

  Through the wall she heard the sounds of her father entering the room.

  “Damnation!” The day had already been going badly by the time Alexander Stanton found himself vexed by the door to his office. He supposed he should have expected it. Since taking over the leadership
of the Paragons it seemed that every time he turned around there was another bit of bad luck attracted by all the others. The feeling of having a dark cloud hanging over his head was, he had to admit, more than a bit ironic for a man that wore a chimney for a hat.

  But superstition was nonsense for the weak, and Alexander Stanton had spent his entire life attempting to define himself through the power of rationalism, reason, and science. Whatever was going wrong had to have an explanation beyond being a curse. But reason also said that if the handle turned, the door must be unlocked.

  Mumbo jumbo or not, it was an annoyance—every moment spent was a moment wasted. There were papers that needed to be signed and a million things that needed to be done—things that were not going to get done in the hallway. He gave the door another hard, sustained shove.

  “Ungh,” he exclaimed loudly as he enlisted his shoulder into the effort. The door didn't budge.

  “O'Rourke!” he shouted as he turned and walked down the hall, trying to see where the old manservant had gotten too.

  When it came to yelling, the acoustics in the house were spectacular, and most of the time he didn't need to bother with the bell. But lately, he had to admit, his butler had started to act as old as he looked, and his hearing clearly wasn't what it used to be. More and more often he would send the Irishman off on some specific errand only to find that O'Rourke had forgotten the task entirely and fallen into some old habit—plucking up balls of wayward dust from behind the settee or strapping on his apron in preparation for scrubbing away at a previously unnoticed bit of tarnish on the silver tea set. Although, Stanton supposed, finding out where his daughter had hidden herself was as much of an old habit around this household as anything else.

  “O'Rourke!” he cried out again, louder this time. If he was being honest with himself, it was long past time to let the old man retire. And under normal circumstances he would have worked out some kind of acceptable pension and sent O'Rourke off to live out his remaining days in relative comfort. But he currently had neither the time nor the inclination to break in someone new. Just the thought of attempting to find someone who could anticipate his habits sent a chill down his spine.