Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (13 page)

"No!" he roared, leaping up from his stool, knocking it back over.

He leapt up onto Victor before I could stop him, kicking his heel into the man's face and chest.

"No!" he repeated in desperate denial, a sorrow and frustration I'd never heard in his voice before. "No! No! No! No! No!"

Each denial was punctuated by a wet crunch as my partner beat the aged Victor Von Frankenstein halfway to death. I reacted as quickly as I could, pulling Bartleby off of the old man, holding him at bay while he struggled to relaunch himself. Whatever it was that he had figured out was so wrong, so obscene that it had turned my cool and collected partner into a raving madman.

"Finish me!" the old man begged. "End me!"

Bartleby slipped free from my grasp enough to point an accusatory finger at the doctor. "No! No! No, you monster! You live! You live with what you've done!"

I let go, and Bartleby straightened his waistcoat, a snarl on his lips.

"You live and you know that you've done it, what you've done, and what it means. You live every day while your jailers keep you alive, trotting you out like a museum exhibit when they need you, bringing you back and letting you stay in this dark dreary room."

"You know!" Victor begged, struggling to get back up. "You know why I have to die! You know what I did!"

"I know," Bartleby's voice was low and full of icy venom. "And I know that when you do die, when your old black heart finally gives up, when your wretched lungs draw their last breath – I know that they'll do it to you, too."

"Please!"

"And that's why I'm going to let you live."

With that, Bartleby knocked on the door and Johnson returned to let us out, Victor crying in his bed all the while. The sound of his wailing followed us all the way to the base of the Tower, and I fancied I could hear it even as we reached the street. When we'd reached our coach, Bartleby stopped and spoke. Not to me, but to the air, as if addressing the world.

"Don't ask me. Don't ask me what he did or by God I'll tell you and you'll hate yourself forever for not letting me beat the poor old bastard to death."

I nodded. I trusted Bartleby. God help me.

***

We rode back to the townhouse in silence, Bartleby lost in thought on his side of the carriage. I knew better than to disturb him – whatever Victor Von Frankenstein had shared with him was weighing heavily on his mind. As we neared home, he sat up a bit more attentively, staring out the window, gloved hands moving on his walking stick, tapping a staccato rhythm. His lips moved silently, and the causal map that his mind was constructing out of the case's data was almost visible in the air before him. We were but halfway home before Bartleby suddenly called for the driver to stop.

"I've got something to see to," was all the explanation he would offer me. "See you tonight."

I sat back in frustration, watching him disappear into the afternoon. I contemplated returning home when a better idea struck me. "Driver. St. John's Wood."

Aldora met me in the drawing room of her family's estate, a neutral expression on her face. "Where's Alton?"

"Wandered off. Working."

She nodded, understanding her fiancé's ways. "Are you here to see Xin?"

"Who?"

"The little girl. Xin Yan."

"That's her name?" Xin Yan. I liked how it sounded.

"Yes, Mr. Wainwright."

"Then, yes."

She lead me to a playroom where Xin Yan was playing with a set of building blocks and talking to herself in melodic Chinese. When she noticed me in the doorway she rushed over and hugged my legs. "你還活著, 你還活著, 你還活著, 你不能死!"

"She's happy to see you." Aldora translated, though I could certainly infer that on my own. "Happy that you're okay."

"Tell her that I'm happy to see her, too."

"他很高興看到你."

Xin Yan didn't respond, burying her face into my side.

"She seems quite attached."

I picked her up, carrying her over to her blocks. "Can you ask her what she's building here?"

"什麼是你?"

"我們房子住!" Xin Yan cheerfully replied. She pointed at one part of it. "老房子壞了!"

"She's making a house for the two of you to live in. Because your old home was destroyed?"

I chuckled. We continued like that for a while, Xin Yan showing me different parts of the playroom, asking me questions, Aldora translating the answers, until I noticed that it had grown dark.

"Are you going to be staying for supper?" Aldora asked. It was, perhaps, the first time she'd extended an invitation to me that wasn't entirely out of courtesy.

"No." I put Xin down. "I need to rejoin Bartleby. We need to put this business to an end."

The little girl stopped me as I turned towards the door. "你要來找我?"

"She..." Aldora seemed, I noticed for the first time, sad. Aldora's moods are as subtle as Bartleby's and I'm far less adept at picking them up. "She wants to know if you're going to come back for her."

"Tell her," I paused, not sure of the answer myself. "Tell her I'll see her again soon."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Mr. Wainwright."

"We can handle the killer, now that I know what I'm facing."

"I'm not talking about your case."

Not knowing how to answer her, I simply tipped my hat, grabbed my jacket, and left.

***

When I returned I found Bartleby in his study. He'd been busy – stacks of police documents were affixed hither and yon, and a large map of the city had been stretched across the back wall. Colourful pins had been inserted, representing the sites of the murders, and providing a general overview of the killer's range. Bartleby swung from the railed ladder spanning his bookshelves, cackling, as he examined first one book and then another. Those he deemed useful he dropped onto the floor, while those he didn't need were re-shelved.

Noticing me he dropped from his ladder and sprinted over, almost tripping over a pile of map folios. He grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me slightly. "Ask me how it's going. Go ahead, James. Ask."

"How's it going?"

"Smashingly! Look!" He strode proudly to the map stretched across the wall. "See? Here's the range of the killer's actions. The households he's been targeting."

I glanced at the map. Somewhere in Whitechapel, some Spitalfields, some Southwark, some Paddington. "I don't see a pattern."

"Neither did I, at first. I took a circuit of the murder sites again, talking to the neighbours, talking to the children. Do you know what I found?"

"I cannot begin to imagine."

"The surviving children. They'd been beaten. Abused. Neighbours do gossip, and almost universally they spoke of fathers and mothers with terrible tempers."

"Your joy at this news is unseemly."

Bartleby waved a hand in irritation. "No, see, that's the pattern. The killer was targeting abusers of children."

"Do you mean that Xin Yan was an abused child?"

"Who?"

"The girl. The Chinese girl."

"Probably!" He caught my expression. "That is to say, statistically speaking. I'm sorry to say. Sorry."

I simply nodded. The poor girl.

"Afterwards I went back to Scotland Yard and started digging through their files, looking for similar cases. I found a number of unsolved slayings – single men and women, travellers and vagrants, found dismembered. Pieces missing. The very poor and destitute, mostly, so there were no real investigations performed."

He turned and practically leapt across the room to his map. "See the green pins? Individuals slain. All previous to the first reported family killing in Spitalfields. So...?"

"So," I followed his prompt. "The killer started killing lone individuals and then progressed to multiple murder. What caused that shift? Why abusive families? Why spare the children? Why spare us?"

"My theory is as follows:" he turned from the map, arms folded, head tilted back. "His creator, the Resurrectionist, orders him to fetch fresh body parts from indigents. For some time this is what he does, and nobody much cares. Whitechapel and Spitalfields are rough neighbourhoods. These things happen."

"Right."

He turned back to the map, indicating one of the red pins. "Here's the first family slaying, well within the area where he's been killing until now. He sees something that triggers one of those drives that Frankenstein was going on about. This overrides his creator's dictum that he strike at transients. He still has to kill and collect parts, but he can channel that into this twisted desire to protect the abused. He murders the families, leaves the children safe. He widens his search parameters to find more abusive families–"

"Hard to believe he'd run out in the East End."

"Well yes... but he needs to catch them in the act, right? Witnessing the abuse is the only way he can possibly know who to target."

"Ah, that makes sense."

"So after his creator sees we've been hired, the Scissorman is sent after us. But wait! He sees your Xin Yan, and he sees you protecting her – nice job on that, by the by – and he cannot strike at you. You are a protector like he fancies himself. The conflict drives him away, sends him back to his master."

"So now what?"

"Now we can narrow the killer's likely base of operations based on the initial transient slayings." He took green thread, stringing it along the pins representing the individual slayings.

"Here. This section... border of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. The slayings seem to centre on this area, so the Resurrectionist is likely based somewhere here."

I took a careful look at the map. "Blast, Bartleby, it's like a warren there. High-density low-income housing. A maze for all intents and purposes – he could be anywhere."

"Yes." Bartleby deflated somewhat. "I'm not sure how to narrow it further."

"I may be able calibrate my Forensic Viewers and attune them to his particular N-Ray signature."

"I don't know what that means."

"My science goggles can track him."

"Brilliant!"

***

We had no time to spare. If the Scissorman chose to attack again we were without a child to defend ourselves, and if he chose to hunt again another family would die. After calibrating the Forensic Viewers to the Resurrected's profile I developed a pair of Galvanic Siphons, which had the appearance of over-sized syringes with serrated tips. If embedded into the creature's spine or skull, they'd drain away its animating force, rendering it so much inert meat.

"The trick is, of course, getting close enough to insert the Siphon."

He took the device from me. "Oh, is that all?"

My goggles cast an eerie green glow onto the fog that shrouded the night, bathing everything in their radiance. I can only imagine what I must have looked like I as I stole through the darkness, looking for the Scissorman's trail, glowing green eyes, hunched form, jagged Siphon in hand. I scoured the streets, I scoured the sky, I focused on walkways and up at the rooftops. We were well into Spitalfields when I found the trail – faint at first, but as I followed it the images resolved themselves as glowing after-images of the Scissorman's figure. The trail met up with another, and another, growing stronger as they combined. I surmised that each trail was a path that the killer had taken, and that by following the more visible and thus more travelled paths we would find the killer's base of operations.

Bartleby followed after, Siphon in one hand and pistol in the other. Gone was the manic high of his cognitive rush, instead he was cautious and careful, almost fearful, no doubt remembering how our last encounter had ended.

The paths resolved themselves at an old warehouse off of the docks. Through my goggles it seemed as though endless streams of N-Ray paths converged here, coagulating into a diffuse glow that nearly blinded me. This had to be where it was operating from. I removed the goggles, slipping them into my pocket, and nodded towards the warehouse. "There."

Before we entered I made sure to crank the Electric Filament Wand I'd brought as a light source. A recent invention of mine, it took the form of a short stubby baton with electrical filament woven above the hand-grip. The electricity was generated by a simple hand crank, and when charged it was very hot – so much so that I wore thick insulated gloves to protect my hand. In a pinch it made for a back up weapon should the Galvanic Siphon fail me – the Resurrected, I understand, are vulnerable to heat and fire.

Shadows within the warehouse were long from the electric glow of the Filament Wand, and the only sound at first its cranking as I recharged it and our footsteps. A quick survey of the warehouse floor picked up nothing of import – the walls were bare and all present crates empty, but I could not miss the heavy ozone smell in the air. It smelt of science. Bartleby's keen eyes spotted a trap-door in the floor where the warehouse foreman's office had once stood, and after he'd deftly picked its lock we descended down rickety steps to the darkness below.

The ozone was stronger in the limestone-walled basement, mixed in with rotting carrion and formaldehyde, and accompanied by an angry nasal voice. We crept towards it, becoming aware of the sound of repeated heavy thudding impacts. Each was followed by a muffled cry and another tirade from the angered speaker.