Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Guage

by Jayne Barnard

  Maddie traded her parasol for her oculex. Masses of small airships were moored at deceptively frail-looking metal-strut towers along the seawall. Over them hung the shadow of a magnificent air yacht. She need not see the crest to name the owner. She’d travelled on that yacht often enough, with Father, Mother, and the rest of her family. Well, it had to be tied up somewhere. Had Lord Main-Bearing realized he would not be able to moor at his host’s New York mansion?

  Beneath it was a large round building, from which throngs of people came and went. “I thought that was an airship customs post,” she said. “But nobody is coming out this side.”

  “That’s the New York City Aquarium. They have over a hundred species of marine life already. We can go in when we get back to shore. Nobody has come near us who shouldn’t, and we ought to give them a decent chance to kidnap me.”

  “It would be rude not to.” Maddie swung her oculex past Battery Park and onward to the immense Brooklyn Bridge. With a slight twist on the silver filigree, she could easily distinguish between horse-drawn and steam carriages crossing the spans. Small airships cruised in all directions, up the river or across the bay, while surface craft wafted along on the breeze or churned the waves with steam-powered paddle-wheels. The tall buildings of Manhattan slid across her viewer. Long, low lands gave way to miles of high piers to service ocean-going freighters. New York was truly a hub of the New World, almost as busy as the Port of London.

  “Look,” said Emmeline. “I think that’s Hiram, way down on the island. In the shade by the left foot.” Maddie turned her oculex on the man. It might easily be Hiram, although his hat-brim made certain identification impossible. He’d be no help at all if someone came after Emmeline up here. She scanned the area around him, hoping Obie was not down there, far out of useful range.

  A woman unmistakeable as Countess Olga Romanova was walking toward Hiram, her red parasol tilted far back over one shoulder. Her silvery-white locks shone in the sunlight, marking out the distinctive crimson streaks on each side. At the last moment she veered past Hiram and approached a man in brown. He took off his hat. Sandy-haired, eager expression . . . It was Mr. Gnave. What was he doing with the Russian spy?

  “We’d better get back down there,” she told Emmeline, as W.Y. Knott’s typewriter clattered her mind: A notorious Russian noble was seen soliciting conversation with a member of the Steamlord’s staff. “I don’t trust that countess as far as we can see her.”

  “I would trust her even less when we can’t see her.” Emmeline turned back to the door, and giggled. “Oh, my, we have admirers.”

  A small airship flying a British flag had circled in. Two men stood on a wedge of open deck, peering through oculexes. With a sinking in her chest, she saw the Main-Bearing crest on the hull. That was the runabout belonging to her father’s air-yacht. The officers were staring right at her. Did they know who she was? As one turned to the other, the profile and the neat white beard told her his name as surely as if he had shouted it across the sky: Mr. Fairweather, who had been with her father’s fleet all her life. He always had peppermints in his pocket for the Main-Bearing children. Given her years away, he might not know her at this distance, but he surely would if he got a good look. Maybe he knew already. Maybe he had followed her here, acting on her father’s orders. Could the crew of that small airship come in close enough to snatch her right off the Statue of Liberty?

  “We’ve got to get off this platform,” she said, and towed Emmeline inside.

  Chapter Sixteen

  NOBODY LANDED FROM the little airship. Or, if they did, nobody came down the steps behind Maddie and Emmeline save Cat, with a sleepy Muffet on her hip. The three boys scrambled down the girders. Obie was waiting for them on the waist platform, but just above it, the stair-flights appeared stuck halfway between positions, ending in mid-air. Engineers leaned from a catwalk, staring into one of the immense clockwork mechanisms. Crewmen stood ready with hammers and huge wrenches. Was the stoppage sabotage, to trap Maddie up where men from that small airship might reach her?

  She peered upward through the bronze interior, unable to see much between light-pipes in full blossom from the noonday sun and the shifting shadows of girders and staircases. No footsteps echoed down from high above. If men in dark uniforms were creeping down to snatch her, they did so silently.

  Rabbit, Hare, and Drink-me were assembled on a beam above the workmen’s heads. In a less-fraught moment Maddie would have smiled to see them earnestly looking and listening, as attentive as if they were apprentice staircase-shifters. Then Hare pointed downward, and they whispered. Drink-me dropped onto the hub of the largest stalled gear. He bent over and wiggled head first into an impossibly small gap between two giant cogs. An engineer swore. Others reached as far as they could in between the gears, trying to snatch the lad back. Emmeline clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Maddie leaned as far forward as she dared, seeking any glimpse of the boy’s worn-out trousers or too-small boots. She saw nothing until, on the side of the machinery furthest from the workmen, a little hand popped up, clutching a mangled telescope as long as the arm that supported it. Drink-me oozed up after it, seeming to expand as he emerged, until he arrived on the far catwalk fully restored to his normal size. The men rushed toward him. He dropped the telescope, ducked under the railing, and leapt down to the next girder. Soon he was far below, with no sign of stopping until he reached Lady Liberty’s folds of copper hemline.

  “Well done, laddie,” yelled a workman, and tapped his wrench on a railing. Others joined in, making a din like a thousand de-tuned brass cymbals clashing.

  In a moment the stairs began to move again. As soon as they were hooked into position, Maddie hurried Emmeline down to the waist platform. Obie did not approach, merely touched his hat as if adjusting it, and followed them down the next stair. Cat took a different downward stair, staying a bit above the girls where she could see anyone approaching. The March boys leapt and slid from girder to strut. Soon they were all on solid ground, out in the sunshine. Maddie drew Emmeline aside, waiting until Obie lounged out.

  He paused near them, whistled a few bars of “Her Majesty’s Airship Corps” and murmured, “Nobody followed you that I saw. Did you mark that Russian countess we knew from the old days? Up to no good, I bet.”

  The worry about Father’s men had driven the Russian countess from Maddie’s mind. But now she wondered, again, what exactly the woman hoped to discover: the connection between Maddie and her father, or the one between Maddie and Madame Taxus-Hemlock?

  Never in her previous investigations had Maddie been the hunted. She could leave, change her hair, change her name—she’d done it before—but Emmeline might be left in greater danger just because she had been seen with Maddie. What a coil! The sooner Emmeline’s enemy was exposed, the sooner Maddie could free herself from the web that was tightening around her.

  “Home, I think,” she told Emmeline. “We will be missing luncheon.” It was a weak excuse, but the first one she could think of.

  Obie strolled off, leading them toward the ferry. Hiram, propping up a fence further along, fell in behind. The urchins vanished into the crowd, but as Maddie stepped onto the gangplank, Cat’s voice came behind her, softly.

  “Sorry, Miss Mad. I’ll have words with them lads for getting noticed. Better next time. I promise.”

  Maddie turned, groping in her purse for coins. “You all did fine. I’ll be down your way tonight, dressed up like Emmy Gat. Can you trail me from the trolley stop across from the orphanage?” She slid the coins across, enough to see them back to their own neighbourhood and feed them for today. It was too little help for a girl barely out of childhood, who had made herself mother and father to five younger children.

  Beside the hired car, the secretary stood chatting with the driver. He tipped his hat as the girls approached, his eyes meeting theirs without guile. “Miss Gatsby-Gauge. Miss Hatter.”

  Emmeline lifted her chin. “Were you following us?”

/>   “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I had the morning off, as Mr. Gibbs is now supervising the visitors.” Mr. Gnave waited, but then addressed the scepticism still in Emmeline’s face. “My cousin, who works here on Staten Island, had something for me from my mother over in Brooklyn.” He indicated a soft parcel squished beneath one arm, its brown paper crumpled and a loose string dangling. “I suspect it will prove to be a muffler of quite unappealing hue. Knitting them is her way of worrying about my throat in the coming Autumn chill.”

  He sounded most plausible. If they had not seen him with the Russian countess, his presence on Staten Island would have gone unquestioned. As it was, Maddie couldn’t decide whether to ask him about Olga outright or wait and watch.

  Emmeline saved her the choice by snapping out, “You were talking to that woman with the red-streaked hair. What about?”

  Mr. Gnave blinked. “Er, she asked me when the next ferry would depart.”

  “Is that all?”

  Maddie spoke up. “Did she have a Russian accent?”

  “Now that you mention it, there was a hint of something not quite American. I thought perhaps European.”

  “Is that all?”

  He looked at her in some curiosity. “She remarked on a large air yacht moored over the Battery. Asked if I knew who owned it.”

  There was only one such airship, casting its vast shadow on the Aquarium. “What did you reply?”

  “That it belongs to Lord Main-Bearing, an illustrious British Steamlord who is visiting New York City.”

  The knot of worry in Maddie’s stomach tightened. The countess had used Mr. Gnave’s good manners to verify that Lord Main-Bearing had returned to New York City. Father’s words came back with a rush. If our connection ever came out, you would be perceived as my spy, planted with this family to gain me advantage. Let the countess confirm Maddie’s real identity and she could threaten to expose it unless Father cooperated with her scheme, whatever it was. Future leverage, perhaps. The Third British Steamlord had the entrée into every top-secret naval facility in the British Isles. A secret to hold over him was well worth the best efforts of a Russian spy.

  Oh, Father, she thought, I am so sorry I am becoming a hindrance to your work. I’ll be done and gone as soon as possible. I promise. This was one part of the story that W.Y. Knott would not be putting into print, whatever happened.

  Chapter Seventeen

  AFTER A LUNCHEON from which the Steamlords were thankfully absent, Maddie dragged Emmeline on a long walk through Central Park and on the streets around it. Nobody approached them, and nobody showed any interest beyond a casual glance. Obie and Hiram followed at a distance, and partook of a hearty afternoon tea at a table next to theirs in a convenient café. When the girls entered the mansion again, the young men walked off down the street toward the trolley stop, promising to be back after dark to follow Emmy Gat.

  The one benefit from the afternoon was the print newspapers Maddie had collected from the various newspaper stands they passed. In the absence of brass monkeys by which to receive the daily aethernet editions, the Steamlords were sure to want recent news from England, Germany, and other centres of industry and finance. And so it proved. Immediately on reaching the parlour after supper, the men seized on the offering. The room settled down to the crackle of the fire and the rustle of newsprint until, as usual, Mr. Coggington found reason to approach Emmeline.

  “Is the fire too warm for you, Miss Emmeline? Would you like me to move this screen?”

  “Please do,” her mother answered before Emmeline could reply. “Then sit right down and tell my daughter about your wonderful house. She will find it intriguing, I’m sure.”

  Mr. Coggington speedily joined Emmeline on her sofa. “I happen to have here,” he said, “a compendium of views of my home, Longhaven.” He drew from his breast pocket a slim brass tablet etched with a cog encircling his family motto, “Le Vôtre Sera Bientôt Le Mien.” Emmeline shifted away from the Southerner and subtly signalled Maddie to lean over the sofa back between them. Together they watched as the brass tablet’s cover separated into a dozen linked strips that crawled sequentially over the top, leaving a screen similar to those that brass monkeys wore beneath their vests. On this screen, rather than miniaturized news items, colourful images glided across in response to Coggington’s play with the dials. Here was one American Steamlord who was clearly embracing technology in his daily life.

  An eight-sided brick mansion appeared on the screen, set on a grassy plain, with two levels of white-painted porches on every quadrant. The middle section of the house was smoothly circular, as high again as the first two floors. The top, or fifth, floor was a gigantic onion-shaped dome that glittered in the sun.

  “My granddaddy bought this house from a widow woman after the War,” said Coggington. “Its interior was not finished, and the dome’s machinery had lain idle for five long years due to shortage of fuel.”

  “The machinery?” Emmeline asked, intrigued despite her determined disapproval of the man.

  “The entire central tower rotates, driven by a giant gear in the lowest level.” Coggington scrolled ahead, finding a picture of the brick-lined basement, where working men posed beside a massive central cog and its subsidiary gears and shafts. Emmeline was plainly intrigued by a house that rotated around itself. She queried the image that showed four curved stairways rising from the home’s central foyer and listened intently as the owner explained their motion. On walking up from the bottom, one arrived at the next floor directly above one’s starting point, having been around the full circuit meanwhile. “The dome is not merely decorative, but serves as an astronomical observatory. It does not rotate continuously but can be engaged with the cog to move it to a new orientation. In this next image, the tip of my new telescope is protruding toward the west.”

  Mrs. G-G leaned across from her chair. “Thirty-eight rooms, Emmeline. Pray show them the views, sir.”

  The views were lovely. One set of windows looked out over meadows to the wide, lazy river he called the Shenandoah. Farmland and lush forests graced the next view. The northwest verandas gazed up to long, blue hills that rolled away toward the sky, and on the final angle were vineyards, long rows of tended grapevines marching across the lower slopes.

  “There’s a retractable airship mooring beyond the staff quarters,” said the proud owner, “and every sort of amusement from boating on the river to spelunking in the caverns. I would very much like to show it to you someday, Miss Emmeline. And your lady mother too.”

  Emmeline rose abruptly, pushing the tablet aside. “Come, Maddie. I’m tired and I want you to read to me until I fall asleep.”

  Upstairs, with the door to her bedchamber safely closed, she fumed. “All that beauty, that amazing house, and he had nothing to do with its creation. He as much as admits his grandfather all but stole it from a poor widow left penniless by the late War. Did you see his family motto? ‘What’s yours will soon be mine.’ Well, I am not going to be his, no matter how impressed my mother may be.” She flounced over to an armoire and kicked pettishly at the bottom moulding. It promptly fell away to reveal the small, brown case containing Emmy Gat’s outlandish outfit. “If you insist on going out tonight, let us prepare.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE MOON WAS past full, casting pale, cool light only in mid-street, and the streetlamps left isolated pools amid the long stretches of shadow. A lone saloon still served, the yellow glow of its window splashed across the pavement. Its door was closed against the night-time chill, muffling the talk and laughter of the patrons. A church clock struck eleven. The trolley bell rang out, clanging back from the tall, narrow tenements, and the conductor prodded Maddie’s shoulder with his baton. “Last stop. Off you get.”

  She swung down and swaggered away, still not at ease in the clunky heels of Emmy Gat’s old-fashioned buckle shoes. Behind her, Obie and Hiram thumped down to the cobbles and wandered in the opposite
direction, singing loudly, and badly, about Her Majesty’s Airship Corps. As their voices died away, the dark silence pressed in, much as it had when she’d come to duel Emmy Gat. Her friends would be back, following from a distance, and somewhere nearby, Cat and the kids would be watching too. But for the moment, Maddie felt alone, and very exposed. She touched TD, nestled unobtrusively on her collar beneath the black silk cravat, and strolled down the block, away from the trolley, the saloon, the friends.

  Halfway down the dark street she heard the scrape of tin on tin. Not far ahead, the lid of a litter bin caught a stray gleam as it lifted ever so slowly. She gripped the shaft of Emmy’s tattered brolly more firmly and walked on, ready to smack anyone for her.

  All that came was a whisper. “I’s here, Miss Mad. An’ Rabbit’s up the corner.”

  “Thanks, Hare.”

  The lid lowered and Maddie walked on more confidently. She was not alone.

  Halfway along the next block, Cat’s white grin gleamed in the darkness as she crossed from alley to alley in Maddie’s path. At the next corner Obie sat on a stoop, arms propped on his knees and hat down over his eyes. He must have run like the dickens up an alley to get ahead of her after he’d gone the other way from the start. Several houses beyond him, Hiram fumbled at a door as if hunting for his key. She swaggered on past them all, swinging her brolly, as if Emmy Gat was the undisputed ruler of these uneven streets.

  At each turning she glanced back. There was no sign of anyone following. Had interest in Emmy Gat and Emmeline evaporated after the failed attempt at kidnapping? The only way to tell was to retrace, as well as she could, the routes Emmeline had taken those nights when she felt she was being watched.