Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (8 page)

Bartleby, of course, would not have it. We were guests of an industrialist grateful that we had dispatched an assassin targeting men of his ilk, and we were to spend our time drinking, playing cards, and playing shuffleboard. Our vacation, he insisted, was not a working vacation.

So much for that.

"Let's take another look at the crime scene," I said.

Bartleby put his drink aside and accompanied me, prattling on as we returned to the engineering section. "I've also spoken to Mr. Ives and his Pinkerton bodyguard. Wasn't able to get much out of them without giving the situation away, but I don't think they know anything. While I wouldn't put it past Ives to strike at Herbert, he's savvy enough to know the consequences of removing the stabilizer, and Johnson is too much the professional to panic and kill Henderson like that."

"Blast."

"Unfortunately all I managed to do is alert them to the fact that something's gone wrong. We'll have to play it carefully around them."

"Yes, playing it carefully is the way to go with these pesky murder investigations," I said.

"Don't be cross."

"Forgive me for being short, Bartleby, but it doesn't sound like you've been making much progress at all."

***

We returned to the scene of the murder, half-cleaned by the Chief's earlier efforts, now abandoned due to the potential, city-destroying catastrophe that hung over our heads.

"Dewit?" I called.

"He's buggered off," Bartleby said.

"Can't blame the man," I said. "Given our circumstance."

Bartleby began giving everything a good looking-over, stopping at what remained of the congealing blood on the riveted steel flooring and calling me over.

"Look here, James. This boot print. Judging by the depth of the impression I'd say that this was made while the blood was still fresh. See your shoe mark here? Same general depth. This print was made near the time you first found the body. Did First Officer Dewit step here when he came to collect you?"

"No, he called to me from the hall hatch and I approached him."

"Then this must be the murderer's print. Any innocent party would have sounded the alarm, and no one did. And look! Here, the traction implied. Your shoe print skids through the blood, but there's very little smearing here. This was a rubber-soled boot. The pattern matches that of the crew's uniform boots."

"So the killer must be a crewman. Didn't you say that Second Engineer Henderson was well-liked, Bartleby?"

Bartleby made his way over to the hatch leading to the engines. "Yes. Yes. The killer, surprised by Henderson, tries to explain away what he's doing in the engine room. Henderson – stand there, James, you're Henderson – sees the stabilizer and isn't having it. He knows what will happen if it isn't returned, so there's no way for our killer to talk his way out of this. They tussle – grab my wrists, like you're trying to wrest something delicate from me – and come to the tool locker."

"Hard to unlock the locker while engaged in scrum," I said.

"The killer must have opened it previously, to acqure a tool of some sort to wrest free the Stabilizer."

"You don't need anything. It snaps out easily," I told him. "There's a trick to it, though, and the setting did bear tool marks."

"The thief didn't know how to snap it out, and that maps with him not knowing what would happen when it was removed. So he takes some sort of lever – a screwdriver probably."

I opened the locker and looked through the hand tools. "This one's seen some roughness. No blood on it either."

"I'd have noticed that lack of blood when I was looking earlier. The killer must have returned recently to replace it."

I froze, knees bent, hands splayed out. "Bartleby, did you feel that?"

"What?"

"That lurch?"

"What lurch?"

"There was a lurch. The ship's weight shifted."

"Oh God, are we flipping over?"

"No. Not yet. We're tilting, but there won't be any dramatic slips until it's almost the end. No, this feels like the ship has dropped a load of ballast."

***

Captain Nussbaum turned from the ship's intercom. "Herr Miller reports that all ballast tanks remain at their correct levels. I felt the shift, too, though, and I have my men performing a full sweep."

"Won't that alert the passengers and crew?" Mr. Herbert asked.

"Some will have felt the lurch, Herr Herbert. If your saboteur is still trying to sink us, we should consider evacuation."

"Not quite yet. How is your investigation progressing, Mr. Bartleby?"

"Well," Bartleby said. "We've narrowed the field considerably. We think it may be one of your crew, Captain, acting as cat's paw."

"
Nein
." Nussbaum shook his head. "I know my men, and cannot believe that any are capable of mass murder on such a scale."

"He won't know the implications of what he's done," I said. "Our investigation indicates that he's ignorant of the nature of the stabilizer – he's likely either been asked to steal or sabotage it by a third party, or hopes to sell it to one of Mr. Herbert's competitors."

"I still find it difficult to believe–" Nussbaum was interrupted by a whistle from the ship's communication tube. "Nussbaum here."

"Captain." Miller's nervous voice came through the ship's tube system. "We may have found something. The laundry room's been emptied."

"Emptied?"

"Completely. Not a scrap or skivvy left."

"Come along," Bartleby turned to me. "Let's have a look."

***

Bartleby stooped in the middle of the laundry-room's tiled floor, peering under the great industrial washing machines. Powered by the engine's generated steam using its run-off to wash with, their great spinning turbines were capable of accommodating the entire ship's complement of uniforms in a single load.

"See anything?" I asked.

"Blood." Bartleby stood. "Traces of it on the rim of the machine. Henderson's, no doubt, dripped from the killer or his uniform. This proves it – the killer is a crewman."

"What did he do with the rest of the clothing? And why?"

"Our killer probably doesn't know how to do a proper wash, which points to an officer as the culprit. Perhaps the blood stained all the uniforms in his load. He discovered this, wheeled the load out in a laundry trolley and dumped the lot overboard, disposing of enough to obfuscate his identity, I'd wager. That was the shift we felt. Wet laundry as ballast."

"Why does an inability to do the wash indicate an officer?"

"Trust me, James. I was an officer once. We're rather quite helpless." He almost stumbled as he crept to the hatch. "I say, James, we'd better hurry. The tilt is getting quite noticeable."

"It's been that way. You've just been wrapped up in your investigation. Missing the obvious. Am I that way when I'm in my workshop?"

"Oh no, James. You're far worse."

***

As we navigated our way through the increasingly askew corridors an alarm klaxon began to wail.

"They've decided to evacuate?" I asked.

"There would have been an announcement," Bartleby said. "Oh, there's the Chief."

Chief Miller was weaving almost drunkenly down the corridor, rivet gun in one hand and a wild look in his eyes. As he neared us I could see that his uniform had been torn and his nose bloodied.

"Mr. Bartleby! Mr. Wainwright!" he called, "Mutiny has broken out."

"Mutiny?" Bartleby asked.

Miller spat. "It seems that the passengers aren't quite as senseless and docile as Captain Nussbaum had hoped, and a delegation – lead by Ives and his pet Pinkerton – showed up at his cabin demanding answers."

"What did he tell them?" I asked.

"Oh, you know Germans. He dismissed them entirely and ordered them back to their cabins. Americans being Americans you can hazard a guess as to how well that went over."

"Oh dear."

"They're storming the vehicle bay, trying to take the aeroboat. That's where the captain and loyal crew have made their stand."

Bartleby gave me a long look and a sigh. "Very well. No avoiding it now, is there? I'll get my cane. James, go grab a spanner."

"I have a spanner." I always had a spanner.

***

Captain Nussbaum was in sorry shape when we arrived, leaning heavily against the ship's boat, blood pooling in his boots, but still maintaining a tight grip on his sabre. It was one of the few actual weapons allowed aboard the
Rio Grande
, likely a relic from the Captain's days in the German Air Corps, and I had no doubt that the man would sooner die than surrender it. Dewit had in his hand a long knife strapped to the handle of a broom, and the Chief still had the pneumatic rivet gun.

The other crewmembers loyal to the Captain had a variety of makeshift weapons – spears made from snapped off broom-handles, belts held like whips or truncheons, lengths of chain. As Bartleby went to see to the captain I stood with the loyal airmen, spanner in hand, eagerly anticipating the brawl to come.

I am not, by nature, a brutal man, but neither do I shirk from necessary violence. What I take from such physical contests is the same primal purity I find in the engineering development process. The application of force. The breaking of resistance barriers. The stripping away of deceit and social context and all the complications that come with more subtle human interactions. It isn't the bloodshed that I love, it's the physics.

"The
Schwein
are regrouping," the Captain was telling Bartleby as Dewit bandaged the gash in his side. His accent grew thicker as his blood grew thinner. "Ives and der Pinkerton are heading the mob. Ve cannot resist another assault – Ives and der Pinkerton must be brought low, and der others will lose heart."

"What of Mr. Herbert?"

"Zat coward," Nussbaum spit a reddish globule onto the floor. "He hides mit his family in der cabin. He and his coward son."

I could hear the sound of the rabble mutineers approaching. "Ready, lads."

The loyal airmen were watching me, perhaps unnerved by my anticipatory grin, firming their grips on their weapons. We fanned out through the spacious bay, making a semicircle before the hatch leading back into the
Rio Grande
proper. We were all that stood between them and the aeroboat.

Bartleby stood by the captain, cane held loosely in his hands.

"I hate this." The Chief checking on the pressure in his rivet gun. A glance told me that it was at its lowest setting – likely not out of concern for the mutineers, who would only be hanged for their betrayal if they survived, but to prevent an accidental hull breech.

There was scant warning before our foes swarmed into the bay, easily twice our numbers, lead by the Pinkerton Johnson with his cudgel. We were ready, and crew clashed against crew and passenger alike. I waded through the crowd, swinging my spanner, uplifted by the satisfactory crunch whenever it broke a wrist or fractured some ribs.

A cook smashed me across the shin painfully with his pan, and I caught him across the cheek with my spanner, breaking his face.

A length of chain wielded by a midshipman lashed across my brow, breaking the skin and half-blinding me. I thrust the fork of my spanner into his windpipe, dropping him into a choking huddled mass.

As the redness dripped down across my eyes I sought not to kill, but to disable by the most efficient way possible. If they died, if they were crippled for life, if they would never father children again, it was all the same to me, their just punishment for daring to declare a mutiny, their just punishment for daring to face me in riotous battle. The laws of science and nature knew no mercy. Neither did I.

***

"James! James!"

I stopped at Bartleby's familiar voice, the mists receding from the corners of my eyes. I was covered in bruises and blood, some of which was my own. My hands in particular were painted a bright crimson up to the elbows – I had dispensed with my spanner at some point, or lost it, and had been pummelling my foes with my only the weapons I'd been born with.

"Calm yourself, James. They've dispersed."

I dropped the man I'd been throttling and wiped the blood from my brow. None of the loyalists would make eye contact with me save Bartleby, who'd seen it before. A deep shame filtered up from my gut... I don't like to lose control of my faculties like that. I know better. I should be better. "The Pinkerton?"

"Killed, I'm afraid, and beyond our ability to question," Bartleby responded, handing me a ragged towel to clean myself with. "The rest lost heart when Dewit struck him down. His employer Ives wasn't with them – the First Mate is leading a search party to imprison the mutineers and find him."

"The Captain?"

"Alive. Injured, but alive. You – ah, you took the worst of it."

The Captain looked up at me from the pallet he lay upon. "Get that man to sick-bay."