I lit the gas lamps of my room. I’d want to say for a better look, but the truth was she spooked me. I needed the light for comfort, like ancient men gathered around the campfire.
Her eyelids were open; one socket black and empty where I’d destroyed the orb, the other lifeless glass, like a neglected doll blown up to man size. I rang the bell for the night porter. By the look of the stars fading against the sky, I’d guess it was four or five in the a.m.
Around the Swan lay screws and cogs and all the little bits and pieces I’d ripped from her god-forsaken body. The night porter let himself in. A little rat man, suited for his place and purpose.
“Get Jacques Nouveau; bring him here as fast as you can. Tell him Jacob Fellows did his job. You’ll find him here.” I pressed a scrap of paper with Nouveau’s address into his little rat hands.
The porter looked like he was going to mount a protest, probably something about leaving his post or blah blah blah. I silenced dissent with hard currency.
“Get on your wagon, then.”
The porter went on his merry way and I went back to my study of the Swan. I was baffled as to her nature. What causes ivory and brass and glass and steel to up and kill a man? To try for two? I didn’t want to delve into the spirituality of it all. If God could induce life into clay and mud, had Saxon found the equivalent for clockwork? If he’d found the secret to life, why had she turned? Is it in the nature of all living things to destroy, to turn on their makers? I let my mind fall into these questions, these terrible, unanswerable questions. In the midst of my ponderings, something caught my eye. Specifically, one of the Swan’s master cogs, an item I’d torn out form her back, an item which had traveled from crime scene, to evidence storage, to my lovely and seedy room at the Piece Work. It looked like polished brass, but when I lifted it, the weight told me it was a gold-based alloy. The disk was slightly bent, rimmed with half-inch teeth, and covered in etched symbols. I ran a finger down the etchings. They were crosses and triangles and X’s neatly placed in straight lines, maybe some foreign script, maybe a code. The flip side of the disc revealed a different set of symbols, though similar in their placement of triangles and crosses. I checked another loose cog. Same material, different symbols, and it was the same with another cog, and another. What the hell? The symbols were yet another unknown factor, like the Swan’s life, like Mr. Safari, like Nouveau’s boss.
I stood up but the room spun out. I realized for the first time since waking that my body was covered in sweat and my hand throbbed worse than ever. I left my room and stumbled down a dimly lit hall. My own shadow played the wandering scarecrow; bed springs and passionate callings accompanied the early hours and covered the sounds of my steps from closed doors of nearby rooms. I shut my eyes and clutched the wall.
Things turned surreal, like my body was melting into the ethereal. I remember clutching a door knob. I remember collapsing in front of the fireplace in the opulent lobby, retrieving bits of charcoal. At some point Mary was at my side, guiding me back to my room, and then I fell far, far away. I was in my father’s shop. He was sharpening a leather knife on a whetstone. The sounds of that knife against the rock, long and shrill. Over and over he pressed the blade and let it slide. Shirk. Shirk. Shirk.
“Father,” I said. I suddenly realized that I was a child. That father’s shop was too large and my place in it was the corner. Always the corner where I watched him trim leather and nail soles and stitch the finer points of boots. Father stopped his sweeps, his shirk, shirk, shirking.
“Boy,” he said. “What did you do to your hand?”
I looked at my hand; it was black and inflated like an American football.
“I cut it climbing,” I said.
Father nodded at this, like it was something he already knew.
“Of course you did, boy. Did you clean it?”
“No.”
“What did I tell you about being smart?”
“You said I need to be a smart boy.”
“What would a smart boy have done with that laceration?”
“Cleaned it in soap and water.”
“And what happens to dumb boys?”
“Dumb boys get the strap.”
Father stood and retrieved his razor strap from the wall.
“You know what comes next.”
I woke to a needle stabbing my hand. Mary was standing over me. A man in his late twenties, smart looking with a handle bar mustache, jabbed my hand again with a large medical syringe.
“Sorry, friend,” the young man said. “Stay calm, I’ll be but a minute.”
He jabbed my hand again. Then he put a needle into my wrist and filled it with some cold solution, or at least I imagined it cold. I passed out again and came too with the morning sun and Mary and her friend looking down at me.
“That’s quite an infection you got there, Mr. Fellows. You’re lucky your friend came to me when she did.”
I pulled myself up to a sitting position. The Swan Princess was gone. Nouveau must have come during my convalescence. Shite.
“Thanks for your help, Mister…?”
“Doctor. Doctor Conan Doyle.”
The young man extended his hand and I shook it with my uninjured one.
“I’ve put a lot of penicillin in your system, and a little morphine, too. You’re not going to feel right for quite a while. At least few days, I recommend you stay put until that hand heals.”
I put my feet on the floor.
“I appreciate your assessment, Doc. Now help me find my shoes.”
Dr. Doyle got a sour look on his face but had the good sense not to say anything about it. Mary found my shoes and helped me up and out of bed.
“Look friend, my advice stands. If you need to work something out, this will give you a short boost.” The doctor handed me a capped syringe. “Extract of the coca leaf. Seven percent solution. That syringe has two doses. Only use half at a go. And remember what I said about taking it easy. I’ll show myself out,” the young doctor said.
“What do I owe you, guv?”
“The lady paid your bill.” The doctor gave a curt nod to Mary and left us to ourselves. I put a hand on her shoulder, more out of support than affection.
“I owe you one, Mary.”
“I know, you’ll pay in good time.” She kissed me on the corner of my mouth again. Christ.
“I need to see a Frenchman. Was he here last night?”
“Yes, he came while you were out. He took the broken lady statute.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Yes, but it was in French. I don’t speak French.”
“Fair enough. Did he leave anything?”
“No, he took his statute, said those slick weird words, and was on his way. Not soon enough. That man is a creep.”
“Says the prostitute.”
She took offense.
“I still have standards. And I still don’t like creeps. I’m not numb to the world around me and all the people of the world.”
She looped her arm around mine and walked me to the door of my room.
“He took her and left. I kept your rubbings for myself, though.”
“Rubbings?”
“Last night, in your delirium you demanded I make charcoal rubbings of two of the cogs.”
She reached into her bodice and withdrew a thick folded paper. One side was covered in black reproductions of the cog symbols, the strange foreign letters.
“I love you,” I said.
Mary smiled at that. “Don’t be a fool, Jolly. For at least once in your life, don’t be a fool.”
I took hold of both her shoulders, hollow bird-boned shoulders. I could have lifted her off the ground and cradled her in my arms.
“What’s your day rate, love?”
“You know what I charge, Jolly. Hasn’t changed.”