“Your brother was also killed in the blast?” Wilde asked.
Arkwright hesitated a long moment before answering, “My brother, Solomon, also died that day.”
Conan Doyle pondered a bit and then calmly asked, “Do you mean he literally died, or that he died to you?”
The engineer drew a breath; his mouth opened, ready to answer, but then he caught himself and the iron returned to his voice. “Who are you to question me? Who the bloody hell are you two?”
“People interested in thwarting an assassination plot which I believe you are somehow involved with… however tangentially.”
The engineer’s nostrils flared; his lips compressed to a thin line. When he spoke, his voice shook with anger. “Get out. Bloody well get out of my factory.” He stalked around the desk and Conan Doyle’s heart quickened as it seemed Arkwright was about to physically attack them.
But instead he stooped over and bellowed in their faces. “GET OUT!”
“The grandly named Ozymandias need not fear assassination,” Wilde said. “The man is likely to succumb to a fit of dyspepsia at any moment.”
The two were once again in the hired hackney trundling back toward London. Conan Doyle toyed with the shiny gear in his hands. “Did you happen to see the object on his desk? When we entered the room, he hurriedly threw a cloth over it, but I managed to catch a glimpse. Did you?”
Wilde shook his head. “I saw the cloth and the rough outline of something beneath it. What was beneath it?”
“I cannot be certain, but it looked to me like a mechanical arm.”
Wilde furrowed his brow. “You mean, a mechanical human arm?”
“Yes, a skeletal armature made of shiny metal. It looked as though it articulated in precisely the same manner a human arm would.” He raised his own arm and flexed it to demonstrate. “The shoulder, the elbow, the wrist, and the fingers, down to the individual phalanges — all articulated.”
“Quite a departure for Mister Arkwright, who seems to specialize in all things enormous and loud: giant steam engines, locomotives, ships. Perhaps he is pursuing a new field of endeavor.”
“Having recently seen what I believe to be a mechanical heart, I find it an unsettling coincidence.”
“There’s that word again: coincidence.”
“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed. He paused to remove his pocket watch and held it up to the light to check the time. Although it was scarcely three, the skies were darkening ominously.
The two fell silent. Contemplative.
Ahead, the road dipped in a long, downhill sweep of cobblestones. On the distant skyline hung the brooding silhouette of London. Monochrome. Colorless. A city formed of soot and shadow wrapped in a tattered gray shroud of clouds. From this elevated perspective, they looked out over housetops and chimney pots, factory chimneys, steamships churning the Thames and fiery locomotives chasing along steely rails, all of them releasing black plumes that rose into the hazy skies and were soon drawn up into carbonaceous clouds so bloated with soot and smoke they dragged their furry bellies across the church spires, unable to rise any higher.
“Good Lord, Arthur,” Wilde breathed as the two friends observed the dark spectacle, “what are we doing to the world?”
And then, as sooty drops lashed the cab windows, the city melted and ran, one darkness bleeding into another, a charcoal sketch left out in the rain.
CHAPTER 17
A DROWNED OPHELIA
The Mutoscope flutters and goes dark. The toy maker draws his face away, a hand clamped to his eyes. His shoulders heave. Noiseless sobs rack his body. He fights to compose himself. Abruptly, driven by a sudden resolve, he abandons the Mutoscope and strides across the empty toy store to the open trapdoor. His feet stomp down the bare wooden steps and he crosses the cellar workshop to the workbench set against the bare brick wall. He pulls the hidden handle and the door to an adjacent cellar springs open.
He takes a lantern from its hook and enters the space, passing the hulking restraining chair, and moves to a door at the far end of the space. He keys the lock and steps into a smaller room where his breath fogs the air. In previous times this was a larder for keeping meat; the thick walls are built from massive stones rendered smooth to hold in the chill. Large blocks of river ice sit stacked beneath a scattering of straw, and the flagstones underfoot shine wet from melt water. Dominating the center of the room are two tanks, one large, one small, like metal coffins clamped shut with iron straps.
He moves to the larger tank, unfastens the metal straps, and flings open the lid. The tank is filled to the brim with a glass-clear liquid that could be mistaken for water were it not for the astringent smell of alcohol rising from it. He lofts the lantern and stares rapturously into the depths. The naked body of a young woman hangs suspended. Her eyes are closed as though lost in her dreams, and in the subtle eddies of the turbid liquid, her long blond hair writhes like underwater weed.
“My beloved,” he whispers in words that fog the air.
He plunges an arm into the liquid. It is breathtakingly cold, but before his hand goes numb and loses all feeling, his searching fingers catch and cradle the slender curve of a neck. He carefully lifts and the face of a drowned angel surfaces from the liquid, the plastered hair streaming, the skin marble white and etched with a tracery of fine blue veins. As he draws the face closer, an arm floats up and a hand breaks the surface, revealing torn flesh and the chewed-off stubs of missing fingers.
“Our long years of separation are almost over. Soon, we will be reunited with our child, and we will walk together in the light.”
And then he leans close and places a tender kiss upon the stiff, gelid lips.
CHAPTER 18
INVITATION TO AN EXECUTION
“Oscar! Oscar! Awaken at once!” A strong hand gripped Wilde’s shoulder, shaking him awake. He reluctantly surfaced from sleep to find himself in his room in the Albemarle. Conan Doyle was standing over him, fully dressed in hat and coat, having just cabbed over from his own gentlemen’s club, the Athenaeum.
“Dash it all!” Wilde moaned. “Why did you awaken me? I had just discovered a secret closet within my house that I did not know existed. The closet was filled with shoes. Thousands of pairs of shoes. And when I tried them on, they all fit perfectly. It was the most profoundly moving experience. It was so vivid.” He sniffed the air. “I swear I still have the aroma of butter-soft leather in my nostrils. Have you ever in your life had such a dream?”
“We all have those dreams, Oscar. Now, I am sorry to awaken you so early, but I have shocking news.”
“News in any way related to footwear?”
“I’m afraid not.” Conan Doyle flourished the morning paper, opened it to the front page, and thrust it under Wilde’s nose. The banner headline read: “Murderer of Lord Howell to Hang!”
The Irish playwright’s mouth fell open. “How is that possible? Vicente was arrested but four nights ago!”
Conan Doyle was equally flummoxed. “Arrest, trial, and execution in a handful of days? The British judicial system has never in its history worked with such expediency.”