“Let them fight!” said Smythe, with a satisfied grunt. “Give us some entertainment while we wait!”
Matthew was the only one who saw Minx Cutter slide the knife out from under her waistcoat. He was feverishly fixated on something he was trying his damnedest to recall. It was Walker’s name. Something…something…
He caught it. Walker In Two Worlds had not been called that when the Indian crossed the Atlantic. As a child, he’d been known as—
“He Runs Fast, Too,” said Matthew, staring at the girl. And then, realizing he sounded like a complete fool but not caring very much: “Speaking of Indians.”
Fancy lifted her head, and she looked not only across the table at him but across a divide of space and time. For a brief few seconds their eyes met and held, and he thought he saw something within hers awaken like a brief flicker of flame or the dance of a spark. Then she gazed down upon the table once more, and whatever there had been—might have been, Matthew thought—was gone.
The Thackers appeared about to climb over the plates and glasses to get at their victim of the evening. They glared at him like dumb beasts, their faces reddened and eyes glinting green. They were done with fish, and now they wanted meat.
Matthew lifted his chin and awaited what was to come. He was ready to do whatever was needed to survive, which meant using a knife, a broken bottle, a chair, a candelabra. But he thought that indeed Fancy had shown a reaction to that name, and if this was the same girl who had crossed the ocean with Walker he reasoned that he owed his departed friend a final favor.
He decided that if it was the last thing on earth he did, he would free Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone from these two animals.
The room shook.
Just a fraction, perhaps. Overhead the chandelier swayed an inch or so, back and forth. Matthew saw the wine in his glass tremble. It was over and done within a couple of seconds, but Matthew was left with a sick feeling of motion in his gut.
“Damn it!” growled Smythe. “There’s another one!”
The concealed door in the wall at the far end of the room opened. Sirki emerged, pushing before him something covered up with a brown tarpaulin. There was the noise of rollers on the chessboard floor.
“Gentlemen!” Mother Deare was addressing the unruly Thackers. Her voice was hard, the voice of a woman who has known plenty of hardship and has dealt it out aplenty herself. “Be seated before Professor Fell!” she commanded.
Nineteen
SIRKI pushed the covered object to the head of the table. By the time he’d reached it, the Thackers had grumbled curses at Matthew and resumed their seats. Matthew saw Minx return the knife to its safe place beneath her waistcoat. Jonathan Gentry poured the last few drops of Juice of Absence into his wine and drank the concoction down, thirsty perhaps for a sense of removal from the scene before him. Cesar Sabroso quietly cleared his throat. Adam Wilson seemed to be there even less than before. Fancy darted a quick glance across the table at Matthew. Toy blotted Augustus Pons’s lips and whispered something into one of the blackmailer’s ears, which surely had heard their share of secrets.
Matthew waited, his eyes slightly narrowed and his jaw set.
Sirki whipped the brown tarpaulin off. Revealed underneath was a man in a chair, set upon a polished wooden platform with rollers on the bottom.
But yet not a man, Matthew realized.
It was the image of a man. A portrayal of a man. A facsimile, and that was all.
The chair was made of red leather, with gold-colored nailheads decorating the armrests. The man was made of…who could say? Certainly not flesh and blood, for the stillness of the figure. It was a dummy, Matthew thought. A life-sized poppet. Likely stuffed with hay and sawdust?
This figure of Professor Fell sat stiffly upright with its arms upon the rests and its feet spaced equidistantly upon the platform. It was a thin and wiry-looking construction, dressed in a white suit with gold trim and whorls of gold upon the suit jacket and breeches legs. It wore also a white tricorn, likewise trimmed in gold, white stockings and shiny black shoes with gold buckles. It wore flesh-colored fabric gloves and—most remarkably and startling—a flesh-colored fabric cowl that covered the face and head, yet showed the faintest impression of nosetip, cheekbones and eyesockets.
Matthew’s thought was: What the hell is this about?
He was answered in another few seconds, when Sirki removed a rather large key from a pocket of his robe. He inserted it into some opening at the back of the chair and turned it a dozen times. He threw a lever. With a sound of meshing gears and the rattling of a greased chain, the figure in the chair began to move.
It was a smooth motion, for a machine. For Matthew realized it was a majestic and almost-unbelievable creation he’d read about in his newspapers from London but had never seen or thought he would ever see. It was something called an automaton.
The right hand came up to press an index finger against the chin, as if measuring a thought before speaking. The right hand came down again, upon the armrest. Was there a twitch of the head, as a few ragged gearteeth moved through their circles? Yes, now the head was turning…slowly…left to right and back again, taking view of everyone at the table.
“Welcome,” spoke the automaton, in a tinny voice with a hint of a rasp and a whine, “to my home.”
No one responded. Did the machine have human ears? No.
Matthew realized he was gripping his wine glass so hard he was either about to break the glass or his knuckles. Everyone else was taking this in stride; they had been here before and obviously seen this machine in action.
The left hand rose, fluttered up into the air with a racheting of gears and then settled back once more. “There are important things to discuss,” the machine said, with a slight tilting of the masked face.
Did the mouth move behind that opaque cowl? It was hard to tell in the flicker of the candlelight. The voice was high and metallic and otherworldly, and Matthew felt a chill skitter up along his spine.
“I shall hear your reports at the proper time,” spoke the automaton, as Sirki stood several feet behind it and to one side. “For now, with you all together, I have a request.”
A silence stretched. Had the gears run their course? Then the chain rattled and the head moved again and the right hand came up to press the index finger a second time against the chin, as if in studious contemplation.
“I am searching for a man,” said the image of Professor Fell. “His name is Brazio Valeriani. He was last seen one year ago in Florence, and has since vanished. I seek this man. That for the present is all you need to know.” The finger left the chin and the head moved slowly from left to right. “I shall pay five thousand pounds to the person who locates Brazio Valeriani,” said the voice of the machine. “I shall pay ten thousand pounds to the person who brings him to me. Force may be necessary. You are my eyes and my hands. Seek,” it spoke, “and ye shall find.”
“Pardon, sir,” said Mack Thacker, suddenly a docile child, “but who is he?”
“All you need to know I have told you.” Once more the faceless head tilted to one side. “That concludes my request.”
Matthew was amazed. It appeared the construction had human ears after all. And the figures the machine had just offered were incredible. At once new questions burned his brain. Who was this Brazio Valeriani, and why was he so immensely valuable to Professor Fell?