Chapter Sixteen
“That’s all I got before Florrie shut me down,” Oliver apologized. “What happened to him, d’y’spose, Doctor Mac?”
“Whatever it was cost him an eye.” Mac got up and automatically checked my bandage. “I want to say somebody gouged it out with a knife and nobody bothered to tidy him up with tender care like we did Florizel’s rib-nick. He was just about to move the good eye into the peephole range. We might’ve had a human face for our monster if you’d kept shooting a second longer.”
“And he dodges us again, only this time I am to blame,” I said bitterly. “I told him not to draw attention to himself.”
“We can estimate a height based on the peephole.” Oliver’s clockwork ticked rapidly. “He’s just over five and half feet, just a little taller than me. We got messages from Sue and Mowgli after they searched the shop. They took some boot impressions and found a palm print on the wall. He’s bow-legged, which we’ve been told before, and hands and feet that are large for his size. What we can see through the peep-hole makes me think his face is on the wide side and his nose on the small side.
“Dark hair, no gray that I could see, and it didn’t look like any thinning, so I’d say he’s not much over thirty. He’s Caucasian, mighty pale.” A ghostly image of a man appeared on the wall, sketchy, but accurate to the observations Oliver had made about the man behind the peephole.
“Run your show again, back to when the peephole first opens.” Mac stared hard as Oliver complied. “There’s a bit of a hand, and he has a mark of some kind on the pinky finger.”
“It’s a tattoo.” Oliver switched to a close-up.
“It is a red serpent, winding around the finger.” I self-consciously rubbed my own finger. “I think it must be a prison tattoo. He was a member of some convict society. Possibly the damage to his eye was done before he joined, when he was a new inmate and unprotected.”
“I have a slew of tattoos stored in my collections,” Twist said eagerly. “I’ll figure out what group he belonged to and find out who’s been released fairly recently among members of that group.”
“The airship’s back.” Mac pointed out the window. Tod apparently did not feel the mail coach projection was necessary when airborne and I finally got my first look at the exterior of the machine. It was shaped roughly like a cigar, cast bronze closely imitating wood below and golden leather above, portholes visible all around. Gears, belts, and steam tubes covered the aft end and underside and controlled stubby wings, a dorsal ridge, and something like a whale’s fluke at the rear.
Tod sat the front in a seat behind a windscreen, nonchalantly pulling a lever, as the port side hatch hissed open and Uncle Vanya stumbled out in the company of Edward Ferrars. As they debarked a network launched out of the top and hid the ship in a leafy green canopy. Tod hopped off onto the ground, pulling down his goggles and twitching his fox-tailed whip against his boots. Edward tucked his arm firmly in Vanya’s and led him to Kera, who ran across the lawn to meet them. She cast herself on her knees before Uncle Vanya but he patted her head and kissed her hands as he lifted her up.
Tod poked his head into the flattened airship and pulled out two large baskets clearly containing sacks of flour, sugar, apples, cinnamon and other baking ingredients. He ambled after the party as they headed for the house, his whip thrust into the back of his belt and his foxtail twitching with his swaggering stride.
“Forgiveness and cinnamon,” Mac grinned. “Let’s see if the little vessel can tear herself away from Uncle Vanya while he bakes and put some more details onto our rough fellow here.”
Kera and Edward joined us in my room and so did Mr. Campbell. He was almost back to normal and very keen to help. He and Kera were still a little awkward in each other’s presence but when she saw the sketchy figure on the wall she stepped up to it.
“Yes, the height is correct. I have never seen him without the goggles, but he has a sort of bulldog look to his face, a little, pushed-in nose. I have seen this serpent tattoo you speak of. I should have realized he was lately out of prison. Any skin he shows is very pale indeed.”
“Somebody gave his right eye to him as a present,” Mac growled. “So he keeps it in embalming fluid or some such there in the goggle eyepiece?”
“He did say it was his own eye,” Kera nodded. “It must be a terribly bitter thing to him. Do you not suppose he would seek revenge against the person responsible for doing that to him?” She stared at the brief shot of the mutilated side of his face in the peephole and then her gaze slid to Oliver Twist.
“Surely with all he has done he’s already taken care of the fellow who shivved him,” Oliver shrugged.
“Dodge does not just take one revenge,” Kera shivered. “He would go down the line, the stabber, the companions who held him down, guards who turned the other way, and most especially, whoever he felt was responsible for sending him to prison and causing this to happen to him.”
“Rosie brought up the possibility that somebody would want vengeance for your putting him in prison, Twisty,” Mac nodded. “Think back through your felons list, can’t you, to somebody like that sketch?”
“I have hundreds of people in my tablet. A lot might match such a general outline. But I believe all the ones I’ve put away are still away. This fellow has to be someone from farther back. It’s a little like Monks, my stepbrother, but he died in prison. Bill Sykes would have blamed me as well as Nancy but he hanged himself trying to escape capture. Both of them would be too old, anyway. This fellow is at least close to my own age. Most of the other people I knew were older, Sowerberry, Bumble, Fagin -- I can’t imagine who it could be.”
We had to give up on the idea of identifying Dodge for the time being. Twist configured his tablet to start running through his images to try to find matches for the spare description, without much hope of success.
“Kera, can you give us any idea where to look for Tatiana?” Edward asked.
Archie nodded. “My Phoebe’s very worried she’ll be shuffled out of the country before we can do anything about her.”
Oliver posted his image of Tatiana on the wall and Kera stroked the wall as if it were the girl’s face. Tears welled up. “Dodge will have her prepared for fancy work, surely. They have different places they take the girls to, where they drug them and teach them obedience before they sell them. He will not keep her. She is too desirable, too valuable as an innocent. But he will also not waste time beginning to destroy her mind and will. I can write down directions to some places I know of, but there is no guarantee she was sent to any place I would know of.”
“At the very least we can try to scout out these places and attempt a rescue. We need to get the word to Sue and Mowgli,” Edward said.
“Tod can take the message back to London,” Oliver nodded. “He actually has fun steaming across the sky. It makes me giddy.”
I hid a smile at the little inventor’s admission. Kera sat down at the desk by the door and wrote her directions. Oliver took it from her as soon as she finished and he, Edward, Mac and Archie quickly left the room. Kera started to approach me but halted.
“I am sorry. I did not even think of your modesty. I should go.”
“You have stayed away out of respect for my--” I stopped myself. “Thank you, but I am glad to see you, and especially to see you so much better.”
Kera smiled briefly but then hung her head. “Uncle Vanya told me Tatiana is with God. Does he mean that he believes her to be already dead? Perhaps it is kinder to let him think so.”
“I think perhaps he meant that she is in God’s hands. Whatever happens to her, God will be there, loving and caring for her.”
“How can you say that? Do you have any idea what they will do to her? How could God let her innocence be destroyed in this terrible way? She might kill herself to escape. Some girls do.”
“The world is full of sin, but God is not to blame for what sinners do. Do not say that God ‘lets’ sin happen. He does all in
His power to love us, to show us the right way, to teach us from his Word, but men reject it and do evil. Until He purges away all evil, only Christ can comfort and prepare us to endure it or overcome it. I pray Tatiana truly has that comfort.”
“Can God comfort me, too?’
I twined my fingers into her hair as she knelt beside the bed. “Has He not already done so? Mrs. Campbell teaches you the Word, the children play you music and bring you flowers, and now Uncle Vanya will make you bread balls. In all these ways God comforts us, and more. Is it not comforting to know that you had the knowledge to share with us that might help us find Tatiana?”
“God has done one more thing to comfort me.” She looked full into my eyes. “He has told you again and again to put your hand on my head and bless me, my father in Christ.”
I gently disengaged my hand from the shining tresses. “Perhaps my modesty is an important thing to consider, after all,” I said with a hard swallow. “Don’t forget to bring me bread balls, too, Little Vessel.”
Oliver Twist appeared at the window while I was still trying to recover my fatherly demeanor. “How stupid can I be? But after all, it was your idea, Florrie!”
I did not attempt to respond until he almost ran off without an explanation. “Twist, what the blazes are you talking about? What was my idea?”
“A bug! A bug! I had one of my bugs up my sleeve at Uncle Vanya’s, and now it’s gone! I never even thought to wonder what became of it, but look!”
He shoved his tablet, which, of course, was blank as usual, into my face. But Kera gripped my arm and pointed at the translucent stone in Twist’s top hat. We both saw the distorted image of a woman, a slattern but one who still had traces of beauty.
“Do you know who she is?” Twist demanded of Kera. “I can’t get it to project -- remember I said I was still experimenting with the bug. I can’t see what the bug was looking at.”
“It is Carlotta,” Kera responded. “She runs a brothel at the back of an opium den only a few blocks from Uncle Vanya’s. It is the second set of directions I gave.”
Twist trotted off. Kera rose and kissed me on the cheek. She skipped away like a child. I tried hard again to remember that I was her father in Christ when I was beginning to think I wanted to be something different.
Mowgli’s Report on the Raid of the Opium Den Brothel
“A pipe, for pity’s sake, Lascar,” groaned a man on a mat at my feet. I pushed the groping hand aside with my bare foot and moved deeper into the opium den. I locked eyes with Sue, who wore travel-stained, mannish western gear and had explained she was going to play ‘Calamity Jane’ for the evening, whoever that was.
I had indeed dressed the part of the disreputable Indians who ran these ruinous places but I certainly did not mean to feed the addiction of these wretches. My soiled yellow turban, dark red vest and baggy tan trousers made me look right at home among the managers of the den. They carried pipes and money to and fro and quickly kicked out the half-conscious patrons who could no longer pay.
Sue was getting quite a bit of attention, even considering how deeply fogged with opium some of these people must be. The fascination of many British, and even the Lascars, with the whole idea of the American cowboy worked in her favor. She even fired off a shot or two, oblivious to being in the heart of London, but making sure she had blanks loaded in her revolvers. I could not but admire both her showmanship and her marksmanship.
I wondered how many of her absurd tales of Pecos Bill and her father’s outrageous inventions could possibly be true. I watched her hike up her riding skirt and proudly prop the bronze leg up on a stool, waggling it under their noses. Having seen that marvel, and having actually ridden in the catfish submarine, I could not wholly discount them.
I decided I must get Sue to share some of these stories with my son, though I feared Sararati was growing clever enough to recreate some of the tall tales at his parents’ expense. After all this time spent in the company of Sue and Twist, our son had declared his destiny to be that of an inventor. I shuddered for my beloved jungle when the naughty son began to apply himself to that career.
Sue held the attention of all those not already unconscious or too busy with transactions to notice one more Indian slipping into the den’s back room. I stepped into a dark tunnel made of curtains. Bagheera would have laughed at how slowly my eyes adjusted to the darkness, even though no ordinary man could have gotten moving again as quickly. I followed a tight maze of curtain passageways which suddenly ended in a wall with a doorway hung with beaded arras.
This was the real business of the place, I knew from the poison maiden’s description. While those Englishmen out front slipped into dark opium dreams, their children, and the children of foreigners like Vanya, who should have been able to trust to their help and protection, were spirited into this back room and forced into what the public delicately called “fancy work”. They became sexual playthings for men.
I quickly shed my Lascar disguise and moved into the back part of the rambling building clad in my tiger skin loincloth, making my hair wild to add to the unreality of a nightmare jungle man invading this domain. Darkness still ruled in the passageway behind the arras and I found, as I knew I would, a side door opening into an alley. In that alley I had left my other helper for the night’s work.
Hard-faced women and burly men guarded the slave pen. The room was crammed with beds and chairs, each occupied by a bound and gagged girl or boy, many sickeningly young. Some were even huddled on the floors. The traps had apparently been found full today, I thought with a scowl. None of the keepers could be so jaded, though, as to remain unmoved when a sleek, muscled shoulder brushed against their legs or a black, spotted tail slapped against their faces.
Discipline from long years of concealing their hideaway kept their tongues silent but their eyes went white and their feet tangled in bed frames and chair legs as they stampeded before the black panther suddenly in their midst. Bagheera snarled and swiped and showed his teeth freely, though I had strictly admonished him not to leave marks on the keepers. I wanted as little proof of the animal’s reality as possible. By the time Sue joined me with six guns at the ready, only a few remained who still needed persuading. Fun See had brought a trusted member of the London police who promised that the slave keepers would not find their way into Dodge’s early release programs.
Out into the alleyway we brought the former slaves, to Twist’s waiting airship and Sue’s sub. Tod assisted us, as did Memsahib Phoebe, Zambo, Edward and Fun See. Hastily we crowded the young people into the two conveyances and were gone before the alarm was even given in the opium den.
“Did we get the girl we come after?” Tod’s voice spoke out of the air as we in the airship frantically worked over the injured and unconscious.
Memsahib Phoebe looked up, startled. A glance around told us nothing. Many girls were pretty and small and dark-haired, all were in a stupor, utterly senseless or too frightened to speak to the rescuers yet. She activated the communication device Sue had given her to speak to the catfish.
“Is Tatiana among the ones you have, Sue? Can you tell?”
“No idee,” Sue’s voice responded. “We got our hands full jest tryin’ t’ keep ‘em calm an’ alive right now.”
All of us suddenly realized that the only people who had actually seen Tatiana were not here to identify her. There was nothing to be done but keep trying to aid the victims we had and wait until someone could inform us if our mission had truly succeeded.