The Humbug Murders (32 page)

“OH, LOOK,” ADELAIDE
said frostily. “A steam bus. How very interesting.”

She was nodding across the street as we shrugged off the theatre's cozy warmth and stepped outside into the cold. Only pockets of attendees from the packed audience remained huddled on the sidewalk out front. Most had dispersed while we were backstage. I looked about, disappointed that Dickens was not waiting for us with guardsmen; I'd given him the address in the note I sent over.

I cast anxious looks about for Sikes, Shen, or any suspicious-looking types, then peered at the steel contraption that had arrested Miss Owen's interest. “The Silver Flash”—painted along its sterling flanks—was built to hold twelve, but the so-called engineers of these ungodly devices routinely crammed in twice as many to increase their profits. The engineer—or driver—stood next to the bus, which was left running, as he attempted to romance a pretty girl who might have been in the chorus.

“Come on now, let's go!” someone hollered. A crowd waited at the bus stop. Young lads with the look of Fagin's gang circulated among them, no doubt relieving them of wallets, watches, and whatever else the opportunistic urchins might nab. The well-dressed crowd was so intent upon the gleaming new vehicle that they paid little notice.

“Not time yet!” shot back the driver. He glanced to the empty cab where a gigantic wheel waited. Beside it, a steel column rose to the roof with a spout for venting smoke. It chugged much like a locomotive—or a panting beast readying to spring.

“How fascinating,” Adelaide said, her voice surging with barely contained fury. “I've never been on one.”

“An abomination,” I grumbled.

“Really? This from the man who preaches about the future brought by technological advancement? How is this any different from the rails? Or is it just that someone beat you to it and peppered these through the city before you could?”

I leaned out into the street, waving my hand at the glowing lantern of an approaching horse-drawn carriage.

“So, you want to have this conversation now?” I asked.

She looked away, hugging herself against the cold. It was all the reply she would give. I grasped her arms, shook her, forced her to look my way. “Answer me.”

Her eyes filling with dark bursts of anger, she cried, “I don't even know what ‘this conversation'
is
! I've been
trying
to talk to you, but you keep shutting me out. So yes, Mr. Scrooge. By all that's holy, tell me why you're acting so cruelly!”

I snorted. “I'm not sure which performance was better. Nellie as the Lady of Shalott or you as the outraged innocent.”

“You're a foul man,” she said, her voice faltering as she stood with her back to me.

“And you're a liar!”

She whirled and slapped me, eyes flaring. I grabbed her arm and suddenly, the ruby ring was being waved before my eyes. I unhanded her at once. How had she gotten ahold of it? I didn't think even Dodger could have snatched it from my pocket without my knowledge.

“It looks like neither of us has been entirely forthcoming,” she said. “A lie of omission is also a lie, or so I was always taught.”

I snatched back the ring. “Perhaps you were right with what you said before. That we should pursue this matter separately.”

“You coward,” she spat. “You can't even say it, can you? You act high and mighty and level accusations, but when it comes down to putting some meat to the meal you—”

“It was Dyer!” I roared. “Thomas Guilfoyle was raving about Dyer coming to save him. Not some long dead and drowned father. Lord. Dyer. You broke trust with me. And if you lied about
that
 . . .”

Trembling, she said, “Then I must have lied about everything. Tell me, am I the killer as well? At very least, the Lady?”

“You tell me.”

The carriage drew up before us and the driver swooped down to open the side door. I gave him money and told him to take the young woman wherever she wished to go. I would get the next one. He flew back up to his perch, holding a lantern high for us. The nearest of the stallions was a nightmare black, the pair beyond a rich chestnut. They chuffed and wheezed, whinnying uneasily. They sensed something electric, some palpable danger in the air. As did I.

Lips pressed together tightly, she gave me an icy glare and took my hand as she placed one booted foot into the carriage's side stirrup. She settled onto the leather seat, and I was about to command the driver to remove her from my sight when heavy boots kicked at the snow behind me.

“Madam, Monsieur,” said a heavy voice as a trio of men peeled from the shadows. “Have you the time?”

I sighed, fished out my pocket watch, and gazed at its face. Before I could speak, Adelaide gasped. My gaze whipped upward, right into the smiling faces of Roger Colley, Baldworthy, and the man with the claret mark. I should have detected his rough voice under the clearly fake French accent.

“You don't know dung from wild honey if you think you can escape us,” Roger promised.

“Go!” Adelaide hollered as she held her hand out to me.

I leapt onto the stirrup and grabbed a leather strap above the open door, which waggled and creaked in the stiff December wind. The driver hooked the lantern in place on a sturdy golden pole, and with a crack of whips, we lurched forward, hooves stamping wildly to smash the ice already forming on the cobbles. Adelaide caught me by my suspenders as I bowed outward, nearly losing my grip as we barreled forward. Then I was scrambling inside, reaching for the open door even as a shot rang out and the flapping door's window exploded.

At the sound of the shot, the team of horses catapulted forward, and we nearly swept another hack.

“Sirruh, what's the meaning of this, eh?” yelled the driver.

“The meaning is be silent and drive if you want to live!” I yelled to him, and at that, he turned and smacked the whips again.

I heard distant screams and looked back to witness Roger and his boys driving off the crowd before the steam bus while ushering the terrified engineer up to his perch. Baldworthy and the man with the claret mark hopped inside.

“They can't catch up to us,” Adelaide said, hope sparking in her eye.

“Not strictly true,” I muttered, recalling an investment brochure I'd read from that annoying Frenchman who brought these monsters to our city three years ago. In seconds, the bus was barreling ahead spewing a giant plume of black steam into the air from its spout. White steam billowed from its flanks, firing then quickly dissipating. It chugged much like a Cornish steam engine and gained on us with merciless speed. “Twice as fast as a horse-drawn, blast it all!”

Our carriage swayed as our blurring wheels dug ruts in the street. We clung to each other, bracing ourselves in our seats as best we could against the mad jostling bounces, crashes, and thumps. The beasts were in a heavy lather, froth and sweat flying as easily as their spit.

“Lucifer!” the driver cried, whipping the horses into a gallop that was just short of a frenzy. “Belial! Azazel! Faster, or it will truly be the pits of hell for all of us!”

Buildings flashed past us. Brilliant lights blurred. Long-legged youths crossing streets ran in terror from our hurtling carriage. A bobby blew on his whistle and chased us, fast falling behind into the whistling dark abyss at our backs.

“Roger Colley?” Adelaide managed, barely able to catch her breath.

I nodded. Though why he should be after us
now
 . . . I thought.

A golden light swept over us, twisting our shadows forward. Another shot struck the still wildly flapping side door beside me. I looked back to see the bus's lanterns burning a trio of suns at our back while Baldworthy hung half-out the vehicle's side flank, pistol aimed squarely at my head.

An old drunk stepped into the street, and the bus's engineer jerked the wheel, swaying the bus wildly to avoid him even as the shot was fired. I heard a window shatter somewhere, followed by a shrill scream.

“Turn there, turn there!” I hollered, pointing at a side street. I prayed the bus could not corner as well as a carriage.

We flew about the corner, and another flash of yellow light appeared from Baldworthy's hand. A surprised grunt burst from our driver, who had half-risen to guide the precarious turn. The carriage swung madly to one side and righted, jolting us and sending shrieks of exertion from the horses. The reins slipped from his fingers as he stood, one hand covering a nasty wound to his shoulder. Then the wheel closest to him struck a pothole and the carriage bounced, the shock of it sending him jerking fully upright and swaying off-balance. For an instant he looked like a teetering tin soldier, spine stiff and straight, as he fell from the cab and was swallowed up by the night.

The horses were runaways!

Trading desperate looks with Adelaide, I forced a thin smile into place, then climbed half out of the speeding carriage, my foot miraculously finding the stirrup, my hand the strap. Sharp stinging winds seared my eyes and cheek. My hat was picked off my head and flung into the black and frozen abyss. Adelaide surged forward, again grabbing my suspenders, helping to steady me as I tried to find purchase on the driver's box. Only the pole upon which our lantern was secured offered any chance at all if I was to wrap around and take the driver's spot—and the reins. Springing off the stirrup, I thrust my free hand up, missed the golden shaft, and hollered as Adelaide lost her grip on me and my foot missed the stirrup.

I held onto the strap, gripping it now with both hands, as my body was pounded by the swinging door. The carriage swayed as I was arced back and away from the carriage, then I was smacked against it once again with a fiery jolt, a macabre dance.

The steam bus whipped out from behind us, flew to our side, and, as the engineer yanked his wheel hard to the right, smashed into the side of the carriage. The impact was brutal, terrible, a hammer that smashed into my entire skeleton, sending a shattering vibration through my muscles, my brain, along with a shrieking shower of agonized sparks.

What happened next was a blur. I felt the strap yanked from my hand. The carriage angled crazily, the wheels on its opposite flank rising off the cobblestone street. Adelaide screamed and flew towards me.

Empty air, a floating, just for an instant, then impact with something massive and mercifully soft. A snowdrift? An ash pile? I didn't know. Adelaide and I spun and tumbled, arms and legs akimbo, and we heard a cacophony of thunderous crashes from somewhere near, coupled with cries of fear and pain.

My every nerve jangling, burning, I climbed onto my side, lifted myself up, and saw a horror unlike any I'd ever imagined: The carriage had drawn down the stallions when it capsized, and the beasts—those that survived, were a pile of screaming, quaking limbs. The carriage's lantern had set fire to the carriage's remains. Only a mercifully slight separation of the harness to the carriage's body—one wheel defiantly still spinning—kept the broken creatures from being roasted alive.

The steam bus had been knocked about. It was parked up onto a sidewalk beside an accordion-like array of tightly pressed together office buildings. Something seemed to be stuck half in the bus, half-smashed against the wall, and fully pulped into something that only vaguely resembled a man. Except for the face.

Baldworthy.

Another body lay in the snow past a shattered window. The glass shards dripped crimson. The dead man had been sliced to bits in mid-flight by the jagged jaws of shattered glass.

Roger hauled the engineer out of the bus, shoved him down on his knees. “My men—my only men left—both of them dead. This is your doing!”

“No, no, guv'nor, please, I did everything you asked,” the engineer pleaded, his hands raised, his body shaking with fear. “Got a family, two little boys—”

“Stop bleatin', you bloody sheep,” Roger replied. And he punctuated that reply with a single roaring gunshot that brought an end to the engineer's words—and his life.

I fell onto my side, searched for Adelaide. Found her near the curb, bruised and bloodied, her chest rising and falling in quick, frightened breaths. Still alive.

For now.

Screams sounded as men and women out for strolls scattered and sought refuge from the chaos and mounting horror as Roger Colley stalked towards us, smoking gun tapping the outside of his thigh.

“You two!” he yelled. “You two, then this is well and truly done!”

His boots crushed snow, smashed ice as he drew closer. I heard horses, running footsteps, carriages braking and skidding on ice. But all I could look at was Roger Colley as I climbed to my knees and crawled in front of Adelaide, attempting to shield her with my body should the madmen fire again. I acted on instinct, my fiery anger cooled by this mortal danger.

Roger raised his gun. “My brother Jack sends his regards, you
fucks
!”

I shook my head. “No! We had nothing to do with your brother's death.”

“Everything!” Roger spat. “You had
everything
to do with it. I thought Smithson had betrayed me, that he'd got the filth to come raid us and bring us down. So I lashed out at him. Did things to hurt him; hurt his precious business. And in return, he had my Jack done like a filthy dog. But it wasn't him at all, was it? It was the two of you all along!”

“It was me,” Adelaide snarled, shoving me away, rising to tottering feet. “I have no regrets. You'd have killed Ebenezer that night if I hadn't brought the police to stop you.”

Colley's eyes were hollow and dark. He smiled slowly and waved his gun between us. “I wonder, should it be ladies first? Then I might see the fine gentleman's grief before I end his miserable life. Or I could let him die wondering what I might do with his fair bit of crimp before I send her down to hell for Jack to enjoy. That's agony, ain't it? The not knowing of a thing?”