The Mysterious Case of Mr. Strangeway (The St. Croix Chronicles) (8 page)

Chapter Twelve

In the end, events unfolded with precious little adventure—exactly the opposite I’d expected.

I found a door in the back, held fast by a large padlock. With the help of an errant hairpin and a few minute’s effort, I cracked the lock and set it gently down upon the worn and creaking stoop.

The door opened with some exertion, sticking to the doorjamb so that when I finally managed to pull it free, it sent a terrible sound of wood scraping against wood throughout the long hall. It echoed briefly, then died, swallowed by the shadows filling the far end.

I could barely see, so dark was it in the narrow corridor. My small lantern did little to push the clinging black away, managing only a circle of light immediately about my person.

It was enough. Doors lined the unpainted wall, each held in place by a similar padlock, and I passed four before I heard a noise from behind another.

I stilled, the traitorous creaking of my steps fading.

When the noise came again, a scratching sound, whisper-soft, I dared a call. “Hello?”

The noise stopped.

Had it come from the door just before me? I approached it, wincing with every groan of old, water-damaged wood. “Hello?” I called again, a harsh whisper to penetrate the wood. “Is anyone there?”

From within, an echoed creak. The door beneath my fingertips shifted ever so slightly, as if a body on the other side leaned against it.

I frowned. “Are you there?”

A sharp gasp. “Who are you?” The voice was low, feminine, but the accent thick and unclear.

Relief attempted to spark a fire to burn the lingering haze of uncertainty away, but the first wash of wrath banished all such thoughts when I recognized the fear in that faceless voice.

I may not have been had, but that only meant Mr. Strangeway’s cause was real.

Like him, I refused in that moment to leave a single girl behind.

“I’m a friend,” I assured her softly. “I’ve come to let you out.”

“No!”

In surprise, I lifted my hand from the door.

“You mustn’t,” said another voice from within, this one tinged by the same lilt that colored Mr. Strangeway’s own dialect. “We’ll be in ever so much trouble.”

Then, from behind me, a third girl, her voice high and strained. “Please! Help us!”

“Shut your mouth, Mary!”

And soon, the hallway filled with the echoes of voices, too many to fit comfortably in each room, all pleading, threatening, angry and frightened.

My teeth gritted as waves of something hot and bitter-sharp crashed within me. Anger, indeed. Sympathy.

Fury, more like.

Hairpin in hand, I seized the closest lock and went to work on it. These were somewhat smaller, a shade more difficult, and it took me near five whole minutes to undo one. It came apart with a loud
click
, then clanged loudly as I dropped it to the floor.

All at once, silence reigned. As if every girl held her breath, waiting for the earth to split and swallow them.

I seized the door, pulled it open.

Nine pairs of eyes blinked rapidly in the sudden light. Nine girls clad in filthy dresses, gray-stained kerchiefs over their hair, huddled together in a room barely large enough for two.

I turned away, seizing the next lock. While I worked, I whispered, “Come on, then. We’re all going home.”

“What of the guard?” asked a girl brave enough to step outside her prison, a girl whose skin was nearly as dark as the night and whose accent I recognized as the first who’d spoken. Hers was the rhythmic cant of the Caribbean, her eyes dark as pitch and her full lips pink where they’d cracked from lack of water.

I had never wanted to commit murder so much until then.

I reined it in, lest the rage filling me scared the girls I attempted to save. “I’m sure my companion has it well in—”

As if on cue, a large
boom
sounded from beyond the hall, startling the knot of girls I’d already freed. They screamed, clutching each other, tears forming in the eyes of some.

I noted that three of the nine—the oldest, I think—placed themselves squarely in front of the youngest. They did so with such efficiency that I could not help but wonder how often they had been forced to do so already.

Anger is not conducive to fine motor skills. My hairpin bent in the lock, earning a hissed uncivility mimicked from Hawke’s own vocabulary.

Now, other hands were pounding on the doors, rattling the locks as voices begged for help, to be let out, not to be left alone.

Tossing the useless pin away, I found another in the blackened mess of curls my hair had become, tangled into a knot, and ripped it out. I bent my head to my task, my tongue firmly between my lips.

I am not certain how long I struggled, but it seemed only moments before the girls I’d freed let out another startled fit of noises—a warning, a scream of fear, a wail as the youngest gave in.

And then an armored hand wrapped around the lock I held. “Step back,” Mr. Strangeway ordered me, his voice taut in his helmet. He ignored the girls, likely deeming this the better principle. A man who looked like a mercenary bent on murder wouldn’t have much success calming already frightened children.

I allowed him his intent, moving away to gather the girls freed into a close group. “It’s all right,” I assured them, though at least two were taller than I. I forced a smile. “He is my companion in this venture to rescue you.”

This had at least a bit of a calming affect, which meant they were less frightened when Mr. Strangeway shouted, “Back away from the door, as far as you can!”

“Why?” I asked.

“You may want to cover your eyes,” was his answer, and he withdrew the weapon at his hip. The light struggling valiantly from the lantern I’d left on the floor caught on a mass of copper and brass, throwing back a reflection that burned like fire.

I wasn’t certain what that bulky weapon would do, but I hastily ordered, “Look away,” seizing a girl who couldn’t be older than ten years of age, and clapping my hands over her eyes. I squinted mine, but did not entirely close them.

I should have. The rifle-like device, wider than any rifle I had ever seen and squatter at the muzzle, was now bound to the copper pack-shaped device on his back by one black tube and one twisted mass of copper wire. It discharged a blue flash that turned red at the tips, then gold as it vanished.

The lock fell to the ground in seconds, so much molten metal crisped to black at the ends. The door creaked open.

I blinked as ghostlight phantoms of the flame sparked in my vision, turning my sight into a speckled mass. “The devil was that?” I demanded, struggling to shake the echoes away.

“I warned you,” was his mild reply, followed by a firm, “Come, lasses, out you go. Mind where you step.”

It took some time, but by the last melted lock, my sight had returned, and I had my hands full herding over thirty girls outside into the cold night. Fortunately, and to my everlasting gratitude, some of the oldest or more cognizant had taken their own groups well in hand, allowing Mr. Strangeway and I the opportunity to convene.

“Did you run afoul of Mr. Chattersham?” I asked, my back to the small crowd in the courtyard we’d started in. “I heard a rather loud noise.”

“Just a guard,” he told me, but his gaze was not on me. Instead, his helmet’s direction indicated he studied the girls, all filthy and dressed in tatters of cast-off dresses, each wearing the same head kerchiefs.

I turned to do the same. “Which is your niece?”

“I...am not sure.” The wretched admission seemed torn from him, caught by his helmet but not softened. “I haven’t seen her since she was but a wee thing.”

Understanding softened to compassion. “What is her name?”

“Nettie. Nettie O’Connor.”

Right, then. Without asking his permission, I turned to the courtyard and called, “Nettie O’Connor?” For a moment, all were still. I looked upon a sea of grimy girls, frightened eyes set in faces that ranged from black as the sky to pale as porcelain, and saw no recognition in any.

Until one, a small, thin girl with hair dark as a raven’s wing, stepped out from the others. “Aye, marm,” she whispered.

The raw sound from the man behind me earned a startled, wary stare, and she seemed poised to run—a fragile deer who knew what it was to be hunted.

“Take your fool helmet off,” I hissed to the man who had made no move to do so. “She’s frightened.”

As if by rote, his hands lifted. Hesitated.

Nettie, bless her dear little heart, clasped her callused, blistered hands to her chest and did not move. Until I heard the creak of leather, the click of armored fingers against the tooled helmet, and I watched her eyes widen to large pools of green in her too-thin face. “Uncle John?”

“Aye, bless Mary,” he breathed.

I moved to the side as little Nettie leapt into a sprint, flinging herself at Mr. Strangeway with a wild sound of girlish joy and heartbreaking relief. Her kerchief slipped off, floating to the ground, a discarded smudge of gray.

The girls about us burst into a cacophony of murmurs and whispers.

He caught the girl before she hurt herself upon his armor, but then hugged her tightly, gently, burying his face in her dirty hair with such obvious, abject affection that my heart broke.

“All right,” I said briskly, the efforts of a girl of fifteen with no clear understanding of how to bear a reunion of family that she, herself, would never know. A pang had created a knot inside me; a bitter wound that would never truly heal.

After all, orphans such as I could never understand. All we could ever do is wish.

Blinking back tears I assured myself came from the stinging fog, I marshaled the lasses all together and waited for Mr. J. F. Strangeway to gain control of himself.

Chapter Thirteen

I waited, exhausted and finally left to my own devices, by the gates of the Midnight Menagerie. From here, I could look beyond the iron trellis and see the red circus tent, darkened for lack of use that night. This far away, it did not bother me overmuch. I made a note to myself to remain as far away as possible, if ever I returned to this place.

It seemed unlikely. Hawke had made his demands clear, and I had no reason to visit now that Mr. Strangeway intended to leave London for Ireland’s green shores. From there, he’d told me as we shepherded weary lasses across the borough, he would return to America, and abandon his ties with the Fenian Brotherhood.

I respected his choices—after all, I could not condone an act that would leave dozens of innocent men, women and children injured all for a statement—but I admitted to myself that I would miss him.

Mr. Strangeway was certainly a character. Together with his friend, I rather thought that we would have made a wonderful crew of collectors. Perhaps the first to ever work as a band for the sheer pleasure of it. We could have started a collector gang, and ruled the streets of London low.

Easy dreams for a child.

“Ah, well,” I murmured, kicking at the street beneath my booted feet. I would be forced to go it alone; the safer route, to be certain, given my identity remained a secret.

Footsteps tromped down the open lane, and I looked up to find a familiar silhouette approaching, a girl cradled in one arm. She was asleep, her dirty face angelic as it nestled against all that brass and striped cloth.

I smiled at the display. “She’ll sleep soundly, now.”

Mr. Strangeway nodded, features tight with emotion. “Thank you, little sparrow.”

“For what?” I jammed my hands into my overlarge pockets. “You didn’t need my help after all. One lone guard wasn’t nearly a threat to you.”

“Perhaps not,” Strangeway murmured, smiling kindly over his niece’s head, “but ’twas your fierce determination that finally earned me Chattersham’s identity. I am in your debt.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You aren’t a wealthy bloke, are you?”

“Afraid not, lass.”

“And you don’t own your own sky ship, do you?”

“That’s Smoot’s expertise,” he replied, amusement in his green eyes.

I wrinkled my nose at him. “Then I’ve no use for your debt, sir. If you should ever come into possession of a working sky ship, do let me know.”

He chuckled softly. “Aye, that I will.” He shouldered his precious burden with great care, firmed his grip on the helmet he held just under the girl’s supported posterior, and said to me, “You might have the makings of a good collector, you know.”

I puffed out my chest. “I know.”

“But you’ll be a ripe little target if you don’t learn some basic skills,” he added, eyebrows beetling at my confidence. “Work on that.”

It was all I could do not to swell up like an air balloon. “Aye, that I will,” I assured him, borrowing a bit of his lilt for show. It faded, though, as I asked, “What of Captain Smoot? Is he leaving too?”

“Aye. He found all the evidence he required regarding Chattersham’s duplicity. Enough to bury the man, and close Smoot’s interest.”

“Is he a privateer?” I asked, curious.

“Of a sort,” he said, but shook his head. “Best not to ask, now. Some things are better left to curiosity. Suffice to say that Smoot has room aboard for homesick little girls and then some. He awaits us even now, engines likely primed.”

“Before the Veil has a say, yes?”

He grinned. “That’s the right of it.”

I nodded.

Nettie shifted in his arm, murmuring. Strangeway nuzzled her hair, invoking another pang of something I recognized as jealousy. And wistfulness. Sweet girl that she was, I envied her the affection of family. “Well,” I said, aimless and trailing off to nothing.

“Well, indeed.” He bent faintly at the waist, a gentlemanly bow as courteous as he could with his burden. “You had best run off, now, before the Veil takes notice of you. I have a promise to keep.”

“Naturally.” I nodded in amicable agreement. “I’ll wander straight away. And Mr. Strangeway? Sir?”

“Aye?”

“I am very glad you found your niece,” I said, even as red climbed into my cheeks. He wouldn’t be able to tell, not with the grime clinging to my skin, but I didn’t meet his gaze.

“As am I, lass.” He turned, and over his shoulder added, “You’re a good girl, little sparrow.”

I smiled like a fool at his back, cheeks creaking with the weight of it.

He strode away into Limehouse proper, a silhouette I watched go with something warm and happy uncurling in my heart. Praise, the kind that did not come with demand—fearful or simply tedious—was a rare thing. Fanny praised often, certainly, but it always seemed to me as if it came only when I bent to the demands of my tutoring.

I found myself staring at the ground with wistful regard for a lengthy time, running the events of the night through my mind and smiling foolishly at the culmination of it all. I’d done all right. Even if I had failed in my duty as a collector, the greater threat had been quaffed, had it not? I would consider that a victory, if even just privately.

A blue silk satchel hit the ground before my toes, clinking loudly.

I looked up, surprise and wary mistrust combining to lift me to the balls of my feet, prepared to scarper off at a moment’s warning. Such instinct does not easily fade.

Micajah Hawke leaned against the open gate, his shirtsleeves now covered by a fine coat in purest black. Nipped in at the waist and tailored as if purely for his physique, he looked the very model of fashion, but for the night-deepened color of his golden skin and the long plait left over his shoulder. His gloves were not white but crimson red, the waistcoat beneath his jacket matching.

But his eyes were flat, his mouth set into a thin line. “I assume you have spoken your farewells.” Not so much a greeting as a simple declaration; with my accidental companions now gone, I had no reason to be where I was.

I lifted my chin. “What will happen to the remaining children?”

“You mean your peers.” It wasn’t a question, but it was every bit a taunt. I set my jaw before I retorted something rude enough to end the conversation. “They will be sent home, if they’ve a home to go to.”

“And if not?”

“Then they will be put to work.”

Unbidden, my hands curled into tight fists, though I barely stopped myself from closing the distance. Anger had a way of easing fear; Hawke might have scared me, but he was no match for the fury the thought of those girls engendered in me. “I will see you hung from the bridge, first,” I snarled, surprising even myself with my own vehemence.

He was silent for a long moment, his gaze trailing over my form, covered in soot and worse; so tense as to be practically vibrating. Finally, he let out a sigh—the sort reserved for adults who have no time for the antics of children. “You may be appeased to know, little black cat, that the Menagerie does not enslave those who do not ask for it.”

Whatever bollocks that was, he did not allow me the opportunity to call him on it.

“They will be well-cared for, and they will earn a wage. That is more than could be said for them in the stews, don’t you agree?”

I did, and the arrogant bastard knew it. I folded my arms over my chest. “I’ll be watching out for them,” I warned him.

Utterly unconcerned, he dropped his gaze to the ground at my feet. It was as if he dared me to pick up the purse thrown so casually.

I was not sure I wanted to allow him the satisfaction. “What is this?” I demanded instead.

“There is an unspoken rule of the collector wall,” he replied, although if it was an answer, I wasn’t sure how. I raised my eyebrows at him; I’m not sure he could tell, I was so filthy.

“What does that have to do with me?” I returned, deliberately goading. “I’m not a collector, remember?”

He ignored my ill-advised attempt. “Anyone posting a notice must do so in good faith. Those caught abusing the system...” His pause was telling enough that his mild, “They earn certain lack of goodwill,” covered no truths.

“That Mr. Chattersham posted a bounty as a way to execute an opponent offends you?”

His features betrayed nothing. “The intent does not matter. If he had wanted Strangeway dead, he should have been honest about it. Of all things, the collection wall must be trustworthy if the system is to flourish. Chattersham betrayed the trust of London low. He will learn what it means to offend.”

I nodded, because even then, I knew that to ask was to invite knowledge that I was not sure I could live with. Whatever Hawke or his ilk did to Chattersham for his machinations was not my business. I was left with the distinct impression, however, that something
would
be done. Menagerie justice.

I nudged the silk with my toe. It clinked again. “Why the purse, then?” I asked, but cautiously. My fingers itched to swoop upon it, to pocket the coin inside before it slipped away.

Hawke’s features did not soften. “Restitution.”

I eyed him. “You mean a bounty?” Smug satisfaction filled me when a muscle just by his cheek jumped. “So I’m to be paid for collecting Mr. Strangeway, am I?”

“Not my doing. The Veil has decided that your efforts are to be rewarded properly, for fear that the collection wall lose efficacy.”

“But ’tis not the Veil’s wall,” I said, frowning. “Is it?”

“It is not. That does not lessen its usefulness for us all.”

It was a strangely neutral view on things—one of many such cogs that kept London low working as it did. The Veil did not crush what it had a use for, the gangs kept to territories they carved by right of power and numbers, the soiled doves earned their keep in flesh and the bobbies tried to stay on top of it all.

It would take me a few years to get a handle on it, but it would make for a spectacularly interesting time.

“I am to be bought off, then?” I asked, raising my chin as if I were too good for the coin. A play, only. I would take it, but only after I protested just enough.

“Regardless that your reckless behavior and childish demand for attention will one day land you in more trouble than your large eyes may bat clear of, that is your promised purse.” Hawke’s tone implied that offering it to me offended him on some level.

“Charmed,” I said, meaning anything but. “So, I
am
a collector, am I?”

Hawke straightened, though I may have imagined the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth. “It is custom,” he said, not so much an answer as reprimand, “to take one’s chosen collection off the wall.”

I frowned. “Why?”

He turned his back, as I was learning he was wont to do, and said over his shoulder, “Because collectors will knife each other in the back as soon as share a purse.”

He left me contemplating this gem of wisdom, staring at the silken satchel at my feet.

Neither pride nor caution could keep me from this, my earned bounty. When I was positive that Hawke was no longer in sight, I knelt, snatched the purse in hand. With the clink of coin came the rustling of paper, and curious, I opened it just enough to withdraw a torn bit of parchment.

The original notice. It had been removed.

I could not stop myself from smiling. This, I would keep for a memento, and a reminder that things could have been so much worse. Shoving it once more into the purse, I plunged it all into the pocket of my battered, stolen coat.

My first collection wasn’t as successful as it could have been; not according to the letter of the law, as it were. I did not, in fact, run my quarry to ground, and I did not turn him in. By sheer luck—and no small amount of greed, for I have since learned that pots too good to be true are often just that—I picked the notice that was nothing more than a trap set for a cunning man on the edge of desperation.

The coins I earned went to more laudanum, acquired in modest amounts so as not to alert Fanny, and some new tools that I smuggled into my room to work with later. Abandoning the trappings of science for the time being, I spent time working on plans inspired by Mr. Strangeway’s armor and Captain Smoot’s fog protectives.

There were other collections, of course, more carefully selected and taken down from the wall as I accepted them. I earned more coin for more things—leather, glass and all the back-issues I could acquire of periodicals I’d never gotten to read.

And it was not the last time I would be forced to deal with Micajah Hawke.

Yet my reputation as London’s only female collector grew, and while Hawke was the only man left in London who knew the truth, he never shared the tale. I believe to do so would, as he’d indicated, damage the worth of the collectors as a whole. Or perhaps he would use it against me later, though I wasn’t sure how.

As for Mr. Strangeway or Captain Smoot, I did not hear from them again. I did not expect to, of course. Neither man could move freely in this society, and I don’t believe London could offer them much by way of the freedoms both sought. The Fenian Brotherhood would continue their dynamite-fueled campaign until 1885, and for some time after, Irishmen were viewed with singular suspicion.

Although I never made any effort to locate Mr. Strangeway or the devil-may-care Captain Smoot, I often wondered what it was they had turned to in the intervening years. Sometimes, I thought of hiring Pinkertons to find them—deliver a message of well-being, ask them of their adventures—but I never had the coin to do so. I spent it nearly all, more on laudanum than anything else.

But I dreamed often. Of inheriting at twenty-one years of age, of taking all of my mother and father’s wealth and acquiring my own sky ship. Traveling the world, seeing what I could only read about. Perhaps one day, I would meet Mr. Strangeway or Captain Smoot again. Perhaps, when I could be free, I could share with them
my
adventures.

It was this dream that would carry me. This aspiration, and the desires carved into me by a childhood lost to opium dreams.

Empires had been carved out from less.

* * * * *