The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (34 page)

“A case could take weeks, or months, to crack. It’s not a case of roughing up the bystanders and accusing people of crimes. It’s a methodical thing, filled with suppositions and theories that need to be validated or checked. One must be cool and moderate, and uninvolved.”

“By then your trail will have gone cold.” Ixtli sipped the coffee. Passable. Very passable. He smiled for the first time in the last two days. “I think, Mr Doyle, that you and I have something in common.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re both children of the enlightenment.”

Gordon stiffened. “I wouldn’t say that around here. French revolutionaries and colonialist terrorists were the children of the enlightenment.”

Ixtli laughed. “Not politically. I am speaking of your reverence for the truth, the interest in where the trail will lead. And now I have the greatest mystery in front of me: someone wants me dead. I admit, I’m very curious.”

Gordon didn’t look so sure. Ixtli kept a mask of geniality on. It was not quite true, what he’d said. Underneath he simmered to find the true assassin behind all this.

“Okay,” Gordon said. “But you are unarmed, right? I don’t want you causing any trouble.”

“I am unarmed.” Ixtli spread his arms.

Gordon slapped the loom card on the table. “Then we visit the makers of this. And tonight we’ll switch you to a new hotel.”

The giant brick building near the docks of New Amsterdam, chimneys looming overhead, was the HOLLERITH MACHINE COMPANY. A Mr Jason Finesson waited for them, resplendent in tails and a tall hat, spectacles clamped down over his nose hard enough to leave a welt.

“Detective.” He shook Gordon’s hand, and then turned to Ixtli. “And sir.”

Ixtli gave a nod of the head and turned to Gordon, who pulled out the offending card. Ixtli wasn’t sure why they were at a machining company, but he declined to say anything out loud. If a card could control a loom for weavers, maybe it could control other kinds of machines.

“Ah.” Mr Finesson looked at the card. “A punch card. Your message, you do say you found it at a crime scene?”

Gordon nodded. “Yes.”

“How curious.” Finesson held it up to the gaslight in the corner of the room. A bored-looking secretary with perfectly slicked-back hair in a black suit sat poring over a ledger laid out across his desk by the entrance. “Well, I can tell you the very machine it was made on.”

“Excellent.” Gordon looked elated. The thrill of the hunt.

“But that won’t help you much,” Finesson continued. “Our customers use these in bulk for all sorts of things. I couldn’t tell you which customer this comes from.”

Ixtli had been staring at the man. He looked assured, confident, and as if he were telling the truth. “You are the manager here?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly do your customers use these things for?”

“Ah, let me show you.”

Finesson escorted them back through the dim hallways of the building into a large room several stories high that looked like it was the lovechild of a swiss watchmaker and a train engineer. Massive gears and wheels strained, clicking away on bearings the size of a man. All throughout pulleys and shafts spun, and a massive steam boiler, fit to power a transatlantic ship, squatted in the center of the room, steam hissing lazily out the pipes connected to it.

“Last summer we were commissioned to count the census of the colonies, sirs. Since then we’ve processed merchant accounts, calculated the mysteries of the universe for leading scientists, and been available for engineers.”

“That’s a mechanical adding machine,” Ixtli said. “I’ve heard of these.”

Finesson pranced around the entryway like a circus grandmaster. “Oh, but it’s so much more. Complex maths, instructions, this is a computing machine, gentleman. One of only four or five like it in the world! I’ll wager you, sirs, that if you could take the mathematics of policing, and reduce it to calculations and variables and insert it into this machine, we could run your police force.”

“Another child of the enlightenment, I presume,” Gordon said out of the side of his mouth to Ixtli, who was still gaping at the machine.

“Even better,” said Finesson. “I’ve talked to your counterparts, the Dutch constabulary here in New Amsterdam. Yes, the British do an excellent job of co-ruling this tiny island, but why be so reactive? You know the study of physiognomy, wherein you can determine a person’s character merely by studying their unique facial characteristics?”

Both Ixtli and Gordon nodded.

“Indeed, well I suggested to his Excellency Mr Van Ostrand that we take sketches of all the criminals encountered by his forces, load them into our device to find points of similarity, and then begin sketching in all manner of our population to load into our machine to find criminals
before
they commit their crimes. It would revolutionize your jobs, men.”

Gordon and Ixtli glanced at each other. Ixtli spoke first. “And what if you were fingered by the device?”

“What? I’m no criminal,” Finesson said. “How dare you! I have nothing to fear.”

“I take it the Dutch have not invested in this idea?” Gordon changed the subject quickly.

“No,” Finesson looked down at his shoe. “More’s the pity.”

“Indeed.” Ixtli picked up a stray punch card and looked at it. It made no apparent sense to him, hundreds and hundreds of tiny pockmarks.

A man at the table held out his hand. “The order in which we feed them into the machine is important, it tells them what to do.”

“Well, Mr Finesson, we would like your customers’ records.”

“And do you have a writ?”

Ixtli glanced at Gordon, who shook his head. “Not yet, sir.”

“If my customers found out I turned over my books so easily, I could lose a great deal of business. There are forms and numbers and calculations being done by businesses here that would not want their information spread about the city.”

“I understand.”

And with that, a frustrated Gordon and Ixtli were outside again, headed back to the hotel.

“That was a waste,” Gordon said, stuffing a new pipe and looking annoyed. “Physiognomy …”

“Maybe that isn’t so.” Ixtli held a mirror in his hand, as if checking the makeup on his face. Behind them dashed an urchin, doing his best to keep up. In these crowded streets it was feasible. He rapped the roof to get the driver’s attention and handed him paper money. “Stop here. I need you to wander off to one of these stores and purchase something. Take your time.”

“Yessir.” The driver’s large sideburns rippled in the wind as he leapt out and strode past them.

“What on earth is this about?” Gordon asked.

“Observation, Mr Doyle. There is an urchin following us, and that same creature was outside the Colonial Museum when we last left it. Is it coincidence that the very same urchin following us now, and during the previous time I saw him, seemed to have one of these punch cards on his person?”

“I would think not,” muttered Gordon.

“Me neither.”

Gordon looked around. “This is not a part of New Amsterdam for strangers to tarry in. Particularly ones in colorful capes such as yourself.”

“Exactly the reason I chose it,” Ixtli said, scanning the crowds pushing against street vendors, people dodging carriages. A tram thundered by, ringing its bell furiously. He pointed a young man out to Gordon. “Call that one over. The one selling those rotten-looking apples.”

“Boy!”

The boy in question jogged over with the box of apples in front of his stomach, suspicion embedded in his glare. “What you want?”

Gordon showed his badge and grabbed the boy before he could turn and run.

Ixtli handed the boy a thick wad of paper money. “We have a job for you. That’s half what you’ll get if you succeed.”

“It’d beat selling dodgy apples, you’ll make a couple weeks’ worth from us,” Gordon said, catching on. “And you don’t want me asking where you gone and got them from, now do you?”

The struggling ceased. “What you wanting then?”

“There’s a mangy sort following this vehicle – no, don’t look– and we want you to follow him in turn. No doubt he’ll spring off to inform someone of where we are when we reach our hotel. Follow him, but don’t let him see you. Find us back at the Waldorf Hotel. Ask for Doyle.”

The boy tugged on his cap. “Yessir.”

“And here is our driver,” Ixtli said. “Take the apples so the urchin suspects nothing.”

Gordon did, and the driver, taking it all in his stride, just asked, “Shall I restart the cab, sirs?”

“Yes, let’s move on.”

The driver disappeared behind them. The cab shook as he climbed into his perch looking over the cab, and then the hansom jerked into motion. Ixtli settled back in.

“Clever,” said Gordon.

“If it works.” Ixtli looked down at the rotted apples. He was going to gibe Gordon about the hungry on the streets of New Amsterdam, and then decided to leave the man alone.

“So now we retire to the hotel and wait.”

“You told me this was a pursuit for the moderate and patient.”

Gordon sighed.

Their urchin showed up outside the hotel just as they were setting in to dine. Ixtli spotted the hotel doorman confronting the young boy as he maintained his need to see them right away.

Ixtli and Gordon walked out to the street. “What do you have for us?”

“I know where the boy went.” The urchin was still out of breath from his run.

“Take us there!”

“What about my money?”

Ixtli felt around in his cape, pulled out enough for the cab fare, and looked at Gordon, who patted his pockets. “I left what I had on the table for the meal.”

“We’ll get to a bank, but after you show us where the boy went.”

“Dammit, I knew you was going to gyp me.”

“Look at us, do we look like the sort to play games like that?” Gordon yelled.

The boy looked him up and down. “I guess not,” he conceded. “But I’m going to get my money.” On that he was dead certain.

They hailed a hansom. “East River Waterfront,” the boy said. They piled in, squeezing the boy between them. He reeked of sweat and body odor, and he grumbled about their lack of payment all the way.

As the great East River Bridge loomed and they slowed, the boy crawled up to poke his head around to the back and guide the cabbie towards a set of large brick warehouses.

HOLLERITH WAREHOUSING.

“Hah,” Gordon said. “Nothing to fear from physiognomy indeed.”

“Finesson could be innocent but unaware.” Ixtli jumped out of the hansom and paid the cabbie.

Gordon agreed, and handed the driver a card he’d scribbled something on. “The constabulary will triple your usual if you hang around at the ready.”

The driver nodded and accepted the promise of payment.

“Look,” the boy said. “Be careful. The boys I followed was Constitutionalists. You don’t want to tangle with that lot.”

“Thank you,” Ixtli patted him on the shoulder. “If we’re not back in fifteen minutes, call the police.”

“Like hell,” the boy said.

“They’ll pay you,” Gordon said.

“I’ll consider it.”

And then he was gone, watching them from the shadows. No doubt ready to rabbit off on a moment’s notice, but held there by the desire for his money.

“So what are we looking for?” Gordon asked as they circled the building.

“An easy opening,” Ixtli replied. There was a rumbling that seemed to permeate through the ground all around.

“We don’t have a writ to enter.”

“But I have diplomatic immunity.” Ixtli found a window that was loose, and with some persuading, forced it open. “Care to accompany me lest my life be threatened and an incident between our respective countries occurs?”

Gordon licked his lips. “Damned if I do …”

Ixtli waited for the second part of the sentence. None came, so he pulled himself up and over into the warehouse.

Gordon scrabbled in after him. The warehouse was dark, shadows of pallets and crates looming all around them. Gordon took out an electric torch and clicked it on.

The entire warehouse lit up, gaslamps all throughout springing up to full flame. A crowd of very serious-looking childlike faces started at them, and at their head, a giant of a man, a dockworker, reached with a long coil of loop.

“Welcome to these United Peoples,” he growled. Ixtli stared at the long tattoo of a chopped-up snake on his left forearm. Don’t tread on me, it said.

Ixtli doubted anyone would be able to, not with all that muscle.

Three more dockworkers stepped forward, surrounding them.

In short order both men were tied up, Gordon handcuffed with his own cuffs, despite both giving a brief struggle.

“May I ask why we’re being detained?” Gordon asked. He had a purple bruise over his left eye, and Ixtli admired his cool in the situation. Ixtli himself considered a prayer to the gods.

“You damn well know you was trespassing,” the giant of a man growled. “Don’t play coy, eh?”

“Okay. So what are we waiting for?”

“Who.”

The three men melted aside, giving way to a man in a stovepipe hat and long tails. A craggy face regarded them both. This was interesting. They weren’t dead yet.

“Mr Hollerith?” Ixtli asked.

The man removed his hat and handed it over to an urchin. A stool was presented for him to sit on. “Justin Hollerith. Are you here to assassinate me?”

“We’re here to find the killer of that boy at the Colonial Museum,” Gordon said.

“Well huzzah,” Hollerith said. “You have found the killer.”

Gordon tensed in his chair. “You?”

Hollerith shook his head. He snapped his fingers and the mass of urchins shifted. A massive curtain slowly rolled aside to reveal a machine that made the one at Hollerith’s offices look like a toy.

The entire warehouse was filled with rotating shafts that went on and on, and thousands of gears. Young boys ran from station to station with armloads of punch cards.

That explained the vibrating floors and roads outside. Ixtli glanced around, wondering how it would be explained to his family that he had died, strapped to a chair in some dirty city up north.

No honor in this, he thought. None at all.

“Here is your killer,” Hollerith said. “How do you plan on bringing it to justice?”