Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Guage

by Jayne Barnard

  Thus, as the night wore on and the chill seeped through the worn velvet coat, Maddie walked up street and down, circling the area around the orphanage and, at the last, behind it. Cat led her through the twisting mews. By now Obie and Hiram were simply following, a block and more behind. She had no idea where Rabbit and Hare might be. Tucked up in their stable loft, maybe. She’d be passing it soon, though how she’d tell one tumbledown shed from the next in this black alleyway she had no idea.

  Cat’s soft footfalls had stopped. She might be standing five feet ahead, unseen in the inky night, or vanished through a fence. Here, if anywhere, abduction would be a cinch. Alerted by the distinctive thunk-thunk of Emmy’s clunky heels, kidnappers had only to wait in ambush until she passed, and grab her. But nobody did. How much longer must Maddie stay out here, clumping around in the dark and cold? She flexed her tight shoulders and walked on, past the orphanage fence with its sticking-out board, around to the trolley stop in front. Still nobody leapt out at her.

  The church clock struck midnight. She had been walking these streets for an hour without a hint of trouble. Either her protectors had been spotted or her abductors had taken the night off. Blast! She would have to do all this again tomorrow, and tomorrow after that, as well as observing the Steamlords and their secretaries unwaveringly during daylight hours, until she found the source of Emmeline’s peril. She clomped over to the trolley stop and parked herself under the glow of the lamppost.

  Obie and Hiram arrived separately a few minutes later, one from the alley by the orphanage and the other coming along the street, three strangers keeping their distance from each other, waiting for a midnight streetcar. The trolley came and they all clambered aboard, still not talking, for the long, rattling ride uptown to the district of wide avenues, imposing mansions, and plentiful streetlights.

  Maddie glanced over her shoulder and saw Obie’s head sunk onto his chest, bobbing slightly as the streetcar rolled over the cobbles. Fatigue all but claimed her too, as the car swayed gently. The day had been long, with a lot of walking and stair-climbing, and she had a blister on one heel from Emmy’s shoes. More stairs awaited her at the mansion, not the wide ones in the hall but a narrow, hidden passage that climbed two floors from the scullery by the back door to the second floor beside Emmeline’s bedroom. It was only a disused servants’ stair, covered over in some earlier renovation of the old mansion, but the exits were left accessible, although cunningly disguised. Emmeline had made use of it often to leave the house unseen. She would be waiting by the back door at one a.m., ready to let Maddie in and sneak her up the passage again. And again tomorrow night, if they could find no other clue to her attackers before then.

  Obie roused, or Hiram elbowed him, in time to follow Maddie off the trolley. At the mews behind the Gatsby-Gauge mansion, where it met the street, Maddie bade them both good night. Hiram turned away but Obie paused.

  “Tomorrow night same time?”

  “I’ll let you know. Right now I just want to sleep.” She perched on a ledge and watched them go back to the trolley stop, striding through the pools of gaslight along the avenue. The night settled once more into rustlings: half-dead leaves on the boulevard trees, scratching of a rat’s feet near a garbage bin. Unwinding the black cravat, she let TD out to sit on her finger, stroking his brass head with her other hand, waiting for the cathedral bell a few blocks over to toll the hour. An owl hooted in the distance. She yawned. “Don’t worry, little bird. I won’t let the big, bad owl get you.”

  When the bell struck its lonely note, she wiggled her toes in the clunky shoes and set off into the gloomy, silent alley past grilled-over cellar windows. The avenue lights did not shine far into the mews. With every step the darkness grew. The corner mansion’s service door was barely visible, the Gatsby-Gauge one not at all. She felt her way along the row of bins toward it, hoping no rats would run over her hands. Where the bins ended was a deeply inset porch, where the servants left their boots on rainy days. She stepped into the Stygian black under the overhanging roof and raised her hand to tap the agreed signal. Something swooped over her head, knocking off her hat. The owl coming after TD?

  The thing swooped back. It fell over her head, down her cheek, soft as feathers or . . . linen? A huge hand pressed against her mouth. She clutched at a rough sleeve, dragging it away from her face, and sucked in a deep breath, all set to yell the mansion awake regardless of consequences. Before she was quite aware of the strange taste of the air coming into her lungs, it was stinging the back of her throat. Chloroform!

  The night spun away, dragging her down.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SOMEWHERE METAL CLANKED on pipe, a persistent, piercing racket that echoed in Maddie’s head. She looked around for the source. There was only darkness, swimming across her eyes. Her stomach spun. Slowly she put her hands to her face. Cloth covered it. Tight-woven linen, by the feel. She pushed it from her mouth, her nose, her eyes, dislodging Emmy Gat’s mask.

  Light stabbed through her closed lids. She covered them with her palms, hiding in the new darkness while her fog-filled brain struggled to identify her location. Not in the Statue of Liberty, despite the noise that still clattered nearby. Experimentally she cracked one eyelid open. Light limned her fingers, not bright like gaslight but faintly blue, like shadow. This told her nothing, so she cracked the other eye as well. That was no better until she’d adjusted the mask properly over her eyes. When that much light didn’t stab into her skull, she carefully separated her fingers and looked without moving her head.

  Ceiling: steel beams and concrete. Deep, grated window-space to the left. No glass, since the air was moving, bringing odours of trash and horse droppings. To the right were stone-block walls. Not a large room. Where had she seen dressed stone walls and grated windows lately? After gradually introducing her eyes to the full, gloomy light, she slowly turned her head. Now she could see more. She lay a few feet off the floor, at one side of a room not much larger than her bathroom. The deep window embrasure slightly above her was closed off by two curlicue ironworks anchored into the stone. She was in the new mansion, in one of the storerooms off the laboratory.

  The noise, therefore, was of men working in the laboratory. Were some of them in on the plot?

  On the opposite wall was a metal door. If it was locked, she was trapped indeed. Emmy Gat’s bowler hat had no convenient hatpins with which to pick locks. She made a mental note to never again leave home without the means to pick a lock.

  As she lay there, pondering and discarding escape plans, she took a mental inventory. Headache but no bumps or bruises. All her limbs moved. She was thirsty. Apart from a foul coating inside her mouth, presumably from breathing chloroform, she seemed in good shape. One foot was cold. She raised it, noting that the black-and-white stocking was dirty, and the clunky shoe was missing. If she had to run anywhere, one stocking’d foot would be a handicap.

  She had been abducted, but by whom? As herself, or as Emmy/Emmeline? Her father would have had her taken straight to his yacht. Countess Olga might use a cellar for stowing prisoners, but why this one? At least Lord Main-Bearing and the countess were known quantities. If someone thought she was Emmeline, though, they’d be in for a rude surprise. What use would they have for the wrong girl? They might dispose of her where nobody would ever find her.

  And let Father think forever that she had run out on a job rather than face him every day? Never. She would risk TD against every one of New York’s hunting birds to send a distress call to Madame’s hawks. He would fit through that grillwork just fine.

  Where was TD?

  She groped through the linen that had covered her head, then ran her fingers through Emmy Gat’s wig. Unwound the cravat. Checked the pockets. He wasn’t there. Had her abductors taken him away to study his abilities? He might be in pieces already, scattered over some clockwork mechanic’s workbench. She must find him.

  Heedless of her pounding skull, she swung her legs over the edge of a long, steel table.
She kicked off the other shoe, stood on the chilly stone floor in her thick stockings, and waited for her head to stop whirling. Then she crept soundlessly across the room and put her hand on the cold metal knob. It turned under her cautious hand. Not locked. It eased outward by a finger-width. Not bolted. She pushed it further by fractions until she could see into the room beyond. It was wider and deeper than this one, with racks of metal shelving. In the far wall was another door, closed, through which the workmen’s clatter came. Out there was escape.

  Only one thing held her back from an immediate dash for freedom: the man asleep on a cot across that door. She could not get past without his waking. No wonder the kidnappers had left her in an unlocked room. Silently closing her door, she retreated to the steel table and examined the window opening. Although she stretched an arm as far as she could through the grillwork, it wasn’t far enough to be seen in the alley. Even with her shoulder twisted tight to the first grill and her face pressed against a wrought-iron leaf, her fingers did not quite reach the outer ledge of the sill. Not that it would do her much good to be waving her hand along a deserted alleyway. Tradesmen and servants would use the shorter route to the street, at the other end.

  Surely Emmeline would be hunting for her now that daylight had come. How to get her attention? The shoe. One old-fashioned buckle shoe outside the window could be a signpost. She inched her arm back through the grillwork, retrieved the shoe from the floor, and slid it through the curlicues of iron, pushing as far as her arm could reach. When it dropped with a thunk to the alley floor, she wiggled her arm back and lay down to wait. Would she hear noises from the next room when the guard left? Should she be sitting right by the door? But her eyes were heavy, and her head throbbed, and if this metal table wasn’t as comfortable as the kidnapper’s cot, at least it was not the chilly stone floor.

  Chapter Twenty

  DESPITE HER WORRY about TD and her own predicament, Maddie dozed off. She woke to a loud click, glanced sideways to see the door opening and slitted her eyes behind the mask. The moment of revelation was upon her.

  Whoever was looking in didn’t come any further. Apparently satisfied she was still sleeping off the chloroform, the person pulled the door shut. Would he leave now for lunch? She forced herself to lie still, counting slowly to ninety lest he be waiting to pounce. But eventually she forced herself to her feet and slithered to the door. Cracking it open, she saw the cot, empty now and shoved aside. She had her door halfway open when the other one moved. She hurriedly closed hers and leaned against it, waiting for someone to press from the other side.

  Nobody came. Whichever man was out there, he was settling onto the cot with a creak of springs. Tantalizing aromas of hot pork and fresh bread seeped into her chamber. Her stomach rumbled. Breakfast was long overdue. Was this his lunch? Would he feed her? She retreated to the long table again and sat down, ready to pretend sleep should the door open.

  The next sound she heard, however, came from the alley behind her head. Someone whistled the first two lines of the chorus from “Her Majesty’s Airship Corps.” Obie! She scrambled up to the grill and whistled the next line. He whistled it back. Soon a shadow fell over the deep window embrasure.

  “Miss Mad? Dat you?” A child’s voice.

  “It’s me. Which are you?” In answer a head bent right down to the grill. Drink-me began to wiggle through. “No, stop. You’ll get stuck.”

  He didn’t listen, and in a few moments was stretched toward her on the deep windowsill, his feet sticking out into the alley and a grin on his freckled cheeks as wide as any Cheshire Cat smile.

  “Mornin’, Miss Mad. What’s the angle?”

  She shushed him, explaining quietly about the man in the next room. “How did you know to look for me here?”

  “Didn’t. That Irish fella said you couldn’t have got far before the distress went up, so we was to search these alleys whistlin’ his song, and you’d answer if you could. You got a secret signal, like?”

  “Secret,” she agreed, although she was dying to know if “distress” meant Obie had found TD. “Did you tell anyone when you found me?”

  “Will when I get out.” He looked at her expectantly. “What’s the plan, Miss Mad?”

  “Next time that man out there leaves again, I’ll slip out. I know the lay of the house and can get to the alley if nobody sees me.”

  He grinned. “Distractin’ we can do. Lure ’im out for you.” His body seemed to shrivel as it wriggled backward, and in a remarkably short time he stood once more in the alley, framed by growing daylight. “Be ready.”

  “How will I know when he’s distracted?”

  “You’ll ’ear us, no fear.”

  Hear them she did, about a quarter hour later, when her neck was stiff from keeping her ear pressed to the door. A foghorn blast echoed around the vast laboratory, followed by yells, crashes, and general cacophony. She counted to five and opened her door a crack. The far door stood wide. The man was gone. She darted across to the next door and peered out.

  Far away across the space, the urchins’ motor-contraption was speeding up a ramp laid over one side of the main stairway. She couldn’t tell who was driving but kids hung off the machine at all angles, chucking hunks of brick and what looked like brightly-coloured balls down at the workmen who scrambled up after them. She couldn’t tell if her guard was among those slipping, staggering, and cursing on the wide treads, but there was nobody between her and the nearest upward stair. She fled.

  Up the narrow stair she ran, leaping three steps at a time, thankful for the knee breeches in place of her usual long skirts. The light-pipes at each landing showed a scant gleam of dawn rather than their full daytime brightness. At the third landing she listened. No sounds of pursuit came up this staircase, at least none audible over the distant shouts and foghorn blasts. This was far more of a distraction than she’d expected, and she hoped the kids would not get themselves cornered. Meanwhile, she had to get herself out of the house.

  The dim-lit outline of a door was before her but her groping fingers could find no springs or catches to open it, so she hurried upward. After another two flights she came to a doorway lacking its door. She slowed, edging up to the empty doorframe, and strained her ears for any footfalls, shuffles, or clank of tools. Hearing nothing, she peeked into the room. From the placement of the windows she guessed this was, in the old house, Mr. G-G’s bedroom, at the far end of the second-floor hallway, above the library. Now she knew where she was.

  Creeping along the empty hall, she crouched behind a balustrade and peered through, into the foyer below. It was deserted, although distant yells and trumpet-blasts told her the urchins were on that floor somewhere. She could run straight out the front door—if it was unlocked—but then she’d be on the open street with a long run around the block to get back to the old mansion. However, if the hidden passageways in this mansion matched as well as the rooms did, somewhere on the far side of this wide-open gallery was the stair leading to a scullery right beside the servants’ door. From there she’d be only a short dash to the safety of the other house.

  Keeping her head down, she backed away from the railing and scuttled across to the other wing. The stair was exactly where it should be, although door-less and littered with enough scraps of wood and plaster to make footing treacherous. She scrambled down as quickly as she could, paused in the little room at the bottom, and slipped out the back door. Above her the sun’s early rays were creeping down the west wall. Not so late as she had feared. The work day must have barely begun.

  She scuttled along behind stacks of building supplies, wincing as her stocking feet met shards of brick and other debris. As she reached the end of the courtyard, the scooter sped down the loading ramp from the breakfast room. With a final foghorn salute from its smokestack, it whirled past her to swing wildly around the corner in the direction of the old mansion. She tucked in her elbows and pelted after it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE SCOOTER SAT idling
not ten feet from the old mansion’s back door. Grinning children waved at her as she came panting up beside it. Cat leaned out an arm from the driver’s seat. “Don’t go in. Obie said to bring you south.”

  Maddie paused, fighting her urge to rush indoors where she’d feel safer. She wasn’t eager to charge into the Gatsby-Gauge kitchen during the servants’ breakfast, looking like she’d slept in these outlandish clothes. She looked over her shoulder. No pursuit. She looked up, examining crevices where TD might be hiding.

  Cat added, “I’m to say he’s got what you’ll be looking for.”

  “Oh.” Obie must have found TD. The relief made Maddie dizzy. “Then let’s be off.”

  The March twins tilted the keg backward, exposing a second seat behind Cat. Maddie swung her leg over, clutched the smaller girl’s shoulders, and away they went. Bursting onto the avenue, they startled an elegant older lady and scared her two tiny dogs—their fur dyed to match her gown—into furious yapping. The scooter slowed for the turn and the March twins leaped off. They gave Maddie crooked grins and steady thumbs-up, and dashed across to the next alley.

  “Goin’ to round up the rest,” Drink-me yelled in Maddie’s ear as the scooter careened across the northbound lane of Fifth Avenue under the noses of two plunging black horses. While their driver shook his whip after her, Cat veered fearlessly into the stream of south-bound traffic, dodging past plodding drays and trundling cargo trucks. When she came up behind a long, sleek, steam-powered cargo van, she pushed a button on the handlebar. A cable shot out from the Gatling gun and attached with a splat to the vehicle’s rear bumper. The van’s driver was making good use of his air-horn and his accelerator, and the blocks fairly flew past. Cat reeled in the cable when he turned west, and soon hooked onto another vehicle that took them the rest of the way.