It was Jack Thacker who spoke next.
“Professor sir?” he asked, in his nasally brogue. “Don’t we get dessert?”
The automaton’s hand lowered. With a noise of moving chains the mechanical head turned from side to side, as if seeking the speaker.
“Certainly you do,” came the eerie metallic voice, “and you have earned it. On the patio you shall find vanilla cake, sugared almonds and some very fine bottles of Chateau d’Yquem. My best for my best.” The head nodded slightly, and the voice added, “And I shall say goodnight.”
Sirki had wrapped the gory knife in double napkins. Now he came around behind the automaton and threw the lever that presumably turned it off. The noise of gears and chains ceased. The figure was motionless, returned to exactly the posture in which it had first appeared. Sirki put the tarpaulin back over it and wheeled it away toward the concealed door.
Gentry’s face had ceased its spasms. The good doctor had gone, quite messily, to either the Celestial Apothecary or the Hellpit of Incurable Diseases. Matthew pressed his napkin against his mouth, realizing how much blood had spattered his suit. It seemed that Pendulum Island was not only death to people, but murder on men’s wear. He realized also who and what had severed the heads from the two bodies in the house on Nassau Street. The neck stump was similarly ragged to those. A point of observation that only he would have made, and yet he clung to his powers as a problem-solver to make certain he did not completely fall into the tarpit that was the soul of his masquerade.
Said Mack, with a hand to his belly, “I’m for gettin’ me some vanilla cake.”
Evidently this drama had caused the Thackers to, for the moment, put aside their animosity toward Spadey. They got to their feet, hauled Fancy up between them, and sauntered up the stairs as if they’d just witnessed a particularly stirring ballroom dance…or, in their case, barroom fight.
Somehow, and he didn’t know how long this took him to do so, Matthew got out of his chair and, slipping on the bloody floor, made his way to the steps. He didn’t care to look at anyone else, nor did they care to look at him. He did have the impression that Adam Wilson wore a barely-concealed grin of delight, for it seemed the invisible finance-man had a taste for gory violence. On his ascent, Matthew wondered who was going to take the head off the table, remove the corpse and clean up the Godawful mess. One would have to need a job terribly much to do such work as that, it seemed to him.
Or possibly the servants in this house were used to anything.
Matthew’s knees were weak as he walked unsteadily toward the main staircase. He had no taste for vanilla cake, sugared almonds and dessert wine. Halfway up the stairs he felt something break within him and very suddenly his skin prickled with cold sweat. He had to grip hard to the bannister for fear of being flung off the world. Then he righted himself, as strongly as he was able, and pulled his body up the stairs using the bannister as much as any man would haul himself up a lifeline.
He entered his room and, still sweating and with the smell of blood up his nose, closed the door at his back. He latched it. He noted on the white dresser the three tapers of the triple-wicked candelabra still burning, as he’d left them. His first impulse was to relieve his bladder in the chamberpot, but instead he staggered toward the louvered doors to breathe deeply of sea air and perhaps clear his head of the bloodied fog.
And that was when he saw the automaton of Professor Fell sitting next to the bed in the white high-backed chair with the black stitching. The automaton had one thin leg crossed over another at the knee.
“Hello, Matthew,” said the construction, in a voice no longer metallic or high-pitched yet still eerie in its quiet, mechanical delivery. “I believe we should talk.”
Twenty
DID the earth cease its spinning? Did the floor give way beneath Matthew? Did a firepit of demons laugh, or a wing of angels cry?
No. But Matthew nearly fell down, all the same, and his heart nearly exploded and his mind reeled with the knowledge that Professor Fell’s automaton was not a machine at all but the real version.
The creature was dressed exactly the same, in the white suit with the gold trim and decorative gold whorls. The head was topped by the gold-trimmed tricorn. Same as well were the flesh-colored cloth gloves, covering long-fingered hands, and the flesh-colored cowl over head and face that showed the faintest impression of nosetip, cheekbones and eyesockets.
When the figure spoke again, Matthew saw the barest fluttering of cloth over the mouth. “Yes,” Professor Fell said, “I do enjoy my games.”
Matthew could not speak. As much as Gentry’s bodiless face had struggled to make sense of the where and the how and the why, so did Matthew’s face contort with the exact questions.
“You’re so young,” said the professor. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Matthew gasped a few more times, and then he found his voice. “I’m…as old…as I need to be.”
“Older, perhaps, than you ought to be.” The gloved fingers steepled together. “You have seen some disturbing sights.”
Matthew forced himself to nod. He didn’t have to force his reply. “Tonight…was possibly the worst.”
“I would apologize, but that scene was necessary. It served many purposes.”
His mouth dry, Matthew said, “It certainly served to spoil my appetite for dessert.”
“There will be other dinners,” the professor answered. “Other desserts.”
“Other heads to be sawed off?”
Did the cowl hide a quick smile? “Perhaps. But not at the dinner table.”
Dare he ask the question? He did: “Whose?”
“I don’t yet know. I will wait for you to tell me.”
Matthew thought he had walked into the middle of a bad dream. Was this real, or had he eaten a corrupted clam? He wished for more light in this room, though the candles burned merrily. He wished for more distance from Professor Fell. He wished he might be anywhere but here, with the emperor of crime and the nemesis of Katherine Herrald sitting four paces from him. “Me?” he asked. “Tell you?” He already wore a frown, and now it deepened. “Tell you what?”
“Who is to be executed,” said the professor, “as a traitor.”
“A traitor?” Matthew wondered why in moments of extreme stress he wound up sounding like a drunk parrot. “Doctor Gentry was just executed as a traitor.”
“That is correct…yet not entirely correct.”
Matthew couldn’t make heads or tails of this. His mind felt overwhelmed. He backed away from the masked figure in the chair. When he bumped into the iron legs of the ceramic washbasin he reached back at a clumsy angle, scooped water up in his hands and wet his face. Water dripped from his chin and he blinked like a sea-turtle.
“Take your time,” the professor advised. “I’m sure you have questions.”
Matthew found his way to the chair at the writing-desk and sank into it. He certainly did have questions…so many, in fact, that they were tangled together like a multitude of fast carriages trying to jam themselves through a tunnel.
“Let me begin, then.” The cowled head tilted a fraction to one side. “My little game at dinner. Pretending to be an automaton. I’m fascinated by those mechanicals. Sirki knows the truth, as does Mother Deare…and now you. My charade is useful in keeping a suitable distance between myself and my associates.”
Matthew thought he nodded, but he wasn’t certain. “May I ask…how that works? I heard the machinery…and your voice.”