The Immorality Engine (Newbury & Hobbes Investigation) Read online

  Veronica saw her opportunity. She could move faster than this strange man-machine. She backed away, drawing it farther into the room, biding her time. Then, just when it seemed as if she had nowhere else to go, she turned and bolted for the door.

  She felt the thing’s fingers brush her collar as she squeezed past it, but she was driven on by fear and her desire to get away, to find Amelia and get her to safety. She darted out into the passageway, flinging herself around the corner, and then on into the depths of the house. She was still weeping, tears streaming down her cheeks, blurring her vision. She didn’t know what to do. She had to find Newbury. But Newbury was with Fabian.

  Veronica blundered around another corner, banging her arm painfully against the wooden panels. She just needed to get out of there. Out and back to the cab. Newbury would help her after that. He would. She knew he would. Newbury wouldn’t let it go on any longer.

  Veronica ran on, away from the man with the white face, and away from the dreadful room. She prayed that she was right, that Newbury would help her save her sister. He was, after all, the only hope she had.

  * * *

  Newbury turned at the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside the door. Carrs had returned, escorting Dr. Lucien Fabian, that old master of invention, the Queen’s personal physician. The man who had ensured Her Majesty’s survival and, indirectly, Newbury’s own.

  Newbury rose to greet the doctor as he entered the room.

  “Sir Maurice Newbury! Now, here’s a surprise. It must be, what, four years since you last had reason to pay me a visit?”

  Newbury nodded. “Yes.” The date was emblazoned on his mind. He’d come to Fabian in the aftermath of the events at Fairview House and the death of his previous assistant, Templeton Black. He’d hoped Fabian would be able to help, to do something miraculous, to somehow restore the young man to life. But Newbury’s actions had been motivated by his grief, and of course, Fabian had only been able to turn him away. “Yes, it’s been a while.”

  Fabian waved Carrs away, instructing him to fetch tea, and then gestured for Newbury to return to his seat, dropping into the chair opposite him. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose with his left index finger. “How’s that shoulder, Sir Maurice? I understand the Fixer made good use of my medical machinery when he put you back together last winter. During that whole Lady Armitage scandal, wasn’t it?”

  Newbury smiled. It had not yet been a year since that first case with Veronica, but already it felt like a lifetime ago. “I’m very well, thank you, Dr. Fabian,” he replied. “The Fixer did a superb job, not least because of the equipment he had at his disposal. Aside from a few scars and the occasional twinge, the shoulder is as good as new.”

  “Wonderful news!” Fabian clapped his hands together with a wide grin. “Most excellent news.” Newbury couldn’t tell if Fabian was pleased that the Fixer had successfully mended his shoulder, or because it was his machines that had made the operation possible. “It was an interesting case,” the doctor continued. “I was saddened by what became of Villiers. He might have proved useful. I examined one of those ‘affinity bridges’ in the aftermath of the events. A quite remarkable device.”

  Newbury frowned. This was news to him. He’d understood the devices had all been destroyed. “Do you still have it?” Newbury asked pointedly.

  Fabian shrugged. “Yes. It’s in the archive. Her Majesty thought I might be able to learn something from it. I believe it was your assistant, Miss Hobbes, who helped us to obtain one.”

  Newbury stifled a gasp. Layers upon layers, he realised. Betrayal upon betrayal. He didn’t know what to make of it all.

  “So.” Fabian ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I gather there must be a reason for your visit? Another case?”

  Newbury attempted to order his thoughts. He was still trying to work out when Veronica could have found time to procure the affinity bridge, or had the means to do it. She was resourceful, if nothing else. “Yes, indeed. I’m hoping you can help to shed some light on it.”

  “I am at your disposal, Sir Maurice. I shall do what I can.” Fabian smirked. Did he already know what Newbury was about to ask? That knowing look suggested that he did. Or perhaps it was simply arrogance, a sign that he was enjoying being asked for help.

  “Thank you. I would be obliged if you could enlighten me as to the nature of your relationship with Sir Enoch Graves and the Bastion Society.”

  Fabian’s jaw clenched. He visibly stiffened, then took a deep breath.

  So he hadn’t expected the question after all. That was an interesting fact in itself. Newbury watched him attempt to regain his composure.

  It took a moment, but nevertheless, Newbury was impressed with the way in which Fabian calmed himself. He leaned back in his chair, the smile returning to his lips. “Ah, so you finally managed to catch up with Graves. How interesting. I wondered how long it would take.” Fabian laughed.

  Newbury gave him a confused look. “What exactly has Graves been up to that should have brought him to my attention?”

  Fabian frowned. “Well, it’s your sort of thing, isn’t it?” he said. “All that occult business. Secret societies, black magic, resurrection … an unhealthy pursuit of the supernatural. That sort of thing.”

  “And that’s what Graves and the others are up to?” It suddenly dawned on Newbury that if what Fabian was saying were true, the case had just become a lot more serious … and potentially a lot more dangerous.

  Fabian looked perplexed. “You tell me, Sir Maurice. Isn’t that why you’re here?” He seemed reluctant to elaborate all of a sudden, as if he feared he might incriminate himself if he revealed any more.

  “I’m here because there’s been a murder,” Newbury stated. “And we have reason to believe there is a connection to the Bastion Society.”

  Fabian nodded. “I don’t doubt it. I would imagine Graves has been connected to any number of miserable deaths over the years.” He paused, eyeing Newbury, as if weighing him up. “Have you worked out what they’re up to, Sir Maurice?”

  Newbury chose to leave the question unanswered.

  “I see not,” Fabian continued. “Well, allow me to enlighten you a little. The Bastion Society is more than simply another gentleman’s club. It’s an ideal. A way of life.”

  “An ideal?” Newbury said.

  “Yes. Its members must swear to uphold the glory of England. They believe it is their duty to preserve the English way of life. They believe the English race to be morally, intellectually, and physically superior.”

  Newbury raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh yes, Sir Maurice. This is the stuff they don’t publish in their charter. They’re extremists, and they are highly political. They have people in the government, and they count judges, barristers, policemen, and soldiers amongst their members.” Fabian smiled, folding his arms behind his back as he talked. “They have a chivalric code by which they all abide. It’s like something out of the Dark Ages. A medieval code of honour. They consider themselves to be the knights of the modern world, and they go forth for the glory of England. And Graves sits at the centre of it all, dreaming of Camelot.”

  “And you, Dr. Fabian. You were part of all of this, too?” Newbury wondered how much of this was Fabian’s bitterness talking. He’d have to dig a little further to discover the truth about why the doctor was ejected from their ranks.

  Fabian waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. “Perhaps. At least, I went along with their little games for a while.”

  “And what was in it for you?” Newbury ventured.

  Fabian grinned. “Funding,” he said, “for my … projects. This was before I was granted the honour of serving Her Majesty. Understand that the type of experimentation and invention I am involved in, the scientific endeavours in which I engage myself, are a costly business. I needed patronage, and Enoch Graves had the means to grant it to me. The Bastion Society is very free with its wealth.”

  Newbury didn’t like the sound
of where this was heading. “Why should a society of political idealists be funding the work of a highly regarded scientific engineer such as yourself?”

  “As I said, Sir Maurice, the Bastion Society is more than just a gentleman’s club. Their rituals are ancient and arcane. They believe in the permanence of the spirit and the transient nature of life, the idea that the spirit transcends the flesh and is reincarnated in a new physical form at the point of death. A very Eastern philosophy at its core. Graves could never see the irony in that.” He chuckled. “To answer your question: I provided them with the means by which to carry out their more bizarre rituals. Particularly the ones pertaining to karmic debt.”

  “A death cult?” Newbury said.

  “No, not quite,” Fabian corrected. “Their belief is that each physical body is simply a vessel, a chapter in the life of a soul. They argue that an individual’s life, therefore, should not be extended beyond its natural means. That it causes an imbalance if the soul remains shackled to the body for too long. Graves, for example, truly believes he is the reincarnation of an ancient chivalric warrior.”

  “I understand,” said Newbury. He could see now why Fabian’s work had put him at odds with Graves and his cronies. Fabian had saved the Queen from almost certain death by installing her in her life-giving chair. Graves would never have tolerated such an outrageous flaunting of the society’s beliefs.

  “I see that you do, Sir Maurice. It is an admission of my weakness that I was only ever party to their strange beliefs when it provided me with a fully stocked laboratory. I don’t generally associate myself with cults of that sort.”

  Newbury couldn’t help but wonder what sort of cults Fabian did, then, associate himself with.

  “Tell me a little about this murder case, Sir Maurice. I may be able to help in some small way.”

  “A notorious jewel thief, Edwin Sykes, who it later transpired was a member of the Bastion Society, was found dead in the gutter a few days ago. That, in itself, wouldn’t really be enough to concern me, but when Sykes then continued to commit felonies, it piqued my interest.”

  “Go on,” Fabian said, clearly engaged.

  “This morning I attended the scene of another burglary. But this time there was a body, a murder victim. And it soon became clear that the corpse was none other than Edwin Sykes. The second body was identical in almost every way to the first. Even now, we have two near-identical corpses in the police morgue.”

  “Fascinating,” said Fabian. “How was he killed?”

  “It seems as if he was attacked by his own mechanical automaton, a spiderlike machine that he used to force entry onto the premises.”

  Fabian laughed out loud at this and sat forward in his chair. “Ha! About the size of a small dog? That’s one of mine. One of the first things I built for Graves. I was never quite sure what he wanted it for, but I tried not to ask too many questions in those days.”

  “How many of them did you make, Dr. Fabian?” Newbury asked.

  “Of the spider? Oh, just the one.” He paused to push his glasses up his nose once again. “Have you seen it? Was it still operational? It was a difficult machine to handle. It would have taken someone months, if not longer, to master.”

  Newbury nodded. If Fabian had created only one, who had made the others? “Yes, I’ve seen it. I’ve also seen what it can do to a man. He had a hole as large as a dinner plate through his chest.”

  Fabian grimaced. “Well, I can’t say I ever encountered Edwin Sykes at the clubhouse. I fear that I can shed little light on your mystery. Two bodies, you say? That’s quite extraordinary. Twin brothers, do you think?”

  Newbury decided to keep his cards close to his chest. He still didn’t know how much he could trust Fabian. Or anyone else, for that matter. “Quite possibly. The birth records suggest otherwise.”

  Fabian shrugged. His tone was dismissive. “You never can rely too heavily on that sort of thing.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Newbury looked up as Carrs bustled through the door carrying a large silver tray. He realised that signified the end of their discussion on the Bastion Society. He wondered how Veronica was getting on elsewhere in the building. Hopefully she’d be out by now, back in the hansom waiting for him.

  Fabian rose from his seat and took the tray from Carrs. “Ah, tea. Let me pour you a cup, Sir Maurice, and I’ll give you a progress report on young Amelia Hobbes’s recovery. I’m sure her sister would like to know how she’s getting on.”

  “Thank you,” said Newbury. “I’m sure you’re right.” But in the back of his mind he was already plotting how he could gain entrance to the Bastion Society and find out more about exactly what they were up to.

  * * *

  In the meantime, Veronica, distraught, had fled to the coach. She’d done so almost in a daze, knowing only that she needed to put some distance between herself and the foul things she had seen inside the building, the … things that looked and sounded in every way like her sister.

  Now, however, she regretted fleeing the scene. She stood, and then sat again, squeezing her hands together in anguish as she tried to decide what to do. Should she go storming back in there and demand to see Newbury? Should she remain out here in the hansom and wait for him to return? Should she leave, taking the cab to find Sir Charles so they could return later in force?

  She stood again, reached for the door, and then returned to her seat in the stillness of the cab. The horses stamped their feet on the gravel, sensitive to her nervousness. The driver had already been well tipped by Newbury to turn a blind eye to anything out of the ordinary, so she knew she wasn’t going to be disturbed, no matter how much she paced around or banged her fist against the door in anguish.

  Veronica stepped over to the window and drew back the curtain once again. He was still there, that bizarre, nightmarish creature with the white face, staring out at her from inside the doorway of the house. His freakish appearance had startled her in the house, and now she didn’t know what to think. Was he a man or a machine? His blank, staring eyes were definitely those of a human being, but parts of his body—including both legs—were evidently mechanical. And why was he wearing the mask? Was he another patient, or one of the staff? More to the point, why hadn’t he raised the alarm? And why was he watching her now from the doorway?

  These and other questions were buzzing around inside her head. But she couldn’t think straight. All she wanted to do was scream. She simply couldn’t shake the horrifying image of Amelia’s face, crying out in the darkness as she spun on that strange wheel, electrodes trailing from her temples. Or the dark, bruised eyes that stared up at her from the chair in which that other Amelia had been lashed, or the pale look of the dead one on the table.

  Then there was the sound … the muttering, the murmuring, the garbled insights into what was yet to come. She had talked about the horrors in the darkness, the impending storm of death and destruction. She had whispered about machines that walk like men, and a siege that would bring about the end.

  Veronica reached for the door. What was she doing, waiting here in the cab? She had to get back inside! She had to get Amelia out of that horrible place. Whatever Dr. Fabian was doing, it was evil, unspeakable. Somehow he was copying her. Duplicating her so he could torture those pitiful copies, lashing them to strange machines to induce seizures so that they might predict the future. She wondered if the Queen knew about it. Or even if the Queen was behind it.

  Veronica had to find the real Amelia, who was clearly in danger. What if she were being tortured, too? Unsure what she was going to do, other than storm back inside the institute and demand to see her sister, she flung the door of the cab open—and found Newbury standing there on the gravel driveway, staring up at her in surprise.

  “Veronica? Are you quite well?”

  Veronica didn’t know how to respond. Exhausted, confused, and incandescent with rage, she fell out of the cab and collapsed into his arms, beating her fists against his chest in barely contained rage. H
e held her while she wept on his shoulder, allowing the worst of it to pass.

  Then, gently, he prised her away, holding her by the shoulders so that he could look into her eyes. “Was it that bad?”

  Veronica could hardly speak. She wanted him to see what she had seen. She knew that words could never describe the horror of it. “Worse than you can possibly imagine.”

  Newbury clutched her to him once again. He stroked the back of her head. “I’m so sorry I asked you to go through with it, Veronica.”

  “No!” she shouted emphatically. “No. Don’t you dare apologise. If it wasn’t for you, I would have stayed away, just like they wanted me to.”

  Newbury tried to coerce her back into the hansom. “Come on. Let’s get out of here, and you can tell me all about it.”

  Veronica stepped back from him, blocking the way into the cab. “We can’t go,” she implored him. “We can’t leave her here. You don’t understand.”

  Newbury put his hand on her arm. His voice was low and firm. “Veronica? Veronica. Look at me. We’re being watched. We need to leave now. I promise you we will get to the bottom of this. We’ll do what’s best for Amelia. But right now, we have to go.”

  Veronica looked over his shoulder. The man-thing was still hovering in the doorway, watching them with his strange, unblinking stare. But now she saw that Dr. Fabian was also watching them intently from the window of the house. She wanted to rush over and confront him about what he had done. But instead, drained of energy and unsure what best to do, she allowed herself to be bundled back into the cab. Newbury jumped in on the other side and slammed the door, then rapped loudly on the wooden frame to inform the cabbie they were ready to leave.

  Veronica heard the crack of a whip. Then, horses neighing in protest, the hansom juddered and rocked into motion, sending a spray of gravel into the air as they shot off into the hazy afternoon.

  Veronica looked back through the window, watching the Grayling Institute recede into the distance. She felt nauseated, hollow. She felt like she had abandoned Amelia to a fate worse than death.