How Beer Saved the World

Beware the Nine ^{Laurel Anne Hill}

An icy chill shot through Eleanor, clear down to her bones. She paused at the open doorway to Master Harte’s library. Still as a statue, the Master stood, wearing his smoking jacket and Sunday trousers. The play of light and shadows on his sand-colored hair and mutton chops revealed no vitality, like he was one of them mechanical blokes with fake whiskers and skin. Not only that, the gas-lamp flickering above his portly hulk—barely a good spit away from a bookcase—refused to reveal his right arm. Well, most of it. Did she need spectacles? The steady tick of the mantel clock grew louder than it should. Things was wrong here. Eleanor could feel that in her bones, too.

Regardless, she ought to serve Master Jeremy Harte his late-night libation although he’d mostly ignore it. ‘Twas one of her duties, one she’d best perform right and proper. Eleanor stepped forward. The beer she carried sloshed a bit. Wouldn’t do to spill spirits on the plush Persian carpet. She gripped her silver serving tray tighter. Blimey. If the Master didn’t fancy brew, why request such a brimming-full tankard? Another shiver crossed her shoulders, it did. What a strange place, Brighton House.

Master Harte remained half-turned toward his largest bookcase and only partially faced her. How unusual for him not to notice her presence. He was an inventor. Noticed all manner of things. Something must have put him off. Maybe she’d done a mistake.

“Yer stout, sir,” Eleanor said. She should have said “your,” but certain words from her childhood vernacular kept slipping out. “Shall I leave the stout on yer desk, sir?”

Why didn’t he answer? Eleanor glanced down at her starched white apron and the ankle-length skirt of her gray dress. She hadn’t reached her twenty-third year without learning basic facts of class and life. Men of Master Harte’s station didn’t need to justify their eccentric behavior. Servants like her bloody well did.

“Did ye hear me, sir?” Eleanor asked.

“The tankard,” Master Harte said, his voice flat. He still didn’t turn. “Hand me. Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

He’d just spoken with all the polish of a ten-year-old stable boy talking to a hound. Did the Master play a little game she didn’t understand? Eleanor set the tray upon the desk. She moved nearer to him, gripping the tankard’s cool sides with both hands. The handle remained free for him to grasp. Nary a muscle, he moved.

“Closer,” Master Harte said, his voice firm. Silvery threads in the collar of his smoking jacket shimmered. “To me.”

A warm tingle raced across the backs of Eleanor’s hands. This strange speaking had to be a bit of sport he made with her. In a minute she hoped he’d give her an affectionate pat on her shoulder and send her on her way for the night.

“Handle,” Master Harte said, still not looking at her. “In my left hand.”

In his left hand? He was right handed. An odor, like dried-out bogwood and sulfur heaped onto a smoldering fire, wafted out of nowhere. By Our Lady! Even flatulence couldn’t generate such a disagreeable stink.

“Step,” Master Harte said. His hand—chilly as an eel packed in snow—brushed her own and grasped the vessel by its handle. “Back. Now.”

Eleanor edged backward. A long stream of warm breath purged its way out her mouth. She must have been holding her air all in, afraid to exhale. Her eyelids raised as far as they could. Master Harte tilted his tankard and poured the stout down the top of his right arm near the shoulder. Had he gone balmy?

Liquid dribbled on the carpet. Now the Master turned his face toward her, his wide eyes shiny as polished agates. Her gaze shifted downward. His black shoes moved and pointed straight toward her own. Eleanor tilted back her head, lifting her chin. Master Harte stood fully before her. Except it wasn’t there. His right arm really weren’t all there. Just ended at the blooming elbow, it did. Holy saints and Trinity! Eleanor let out a high-pitched shriek.

“Quiet, woman,” Master Harte said and shoved the empty tankard into her hand.

“What’s happened to ye?” Her heart raced. A man missing half-an-arm might need a tourniquet. She must help him now. “Should I fetch a doctor?”

“Hush.” His thick eyebrows blended into a single black, blurry line.

Master Harte leaned back against the glass doors of a bookcase. No mangled stump gushed blood or even dripped. He didn’t seem in pain, neither. Inch by inch, his lower arm appeared—sleeve and all—as if he pulled the half-limb out of a magician’s top hat. The sulfur stench receded.

His fingers wiggled, pink and healthy. There he was, all put back together. Blimey.

“For now,” he said. He rubbed his regained arm. “Safe.”

What did he mean, for now? First, no arm. Then plenty of arm. What the bleeding heck had happened? Why was he safe only for now?

“That will be all for the evening, Eleanor.” He glanced down toward the soiled carpet. “A good stain to mark the spot, don’t you think?”

The grandfather clock chimed the hour from the hallway. Eleven o’clock. Eleanor couldn’t move. Speak. Do anything.

“I said that will be all.” His piercing brown eyes stared into hers. “Be a good girl now and get some rest. It tried to get me again, that’s all.”

Eleanor inhaled the aroma of cooked bacon and served Master Harte his breakfast eggs and rashers. A morning greeting squeaked its way out of her mouth. The Master appeared to lavish the majority of his attention on the morning newspaper. Just as well, after last night’s unnatural events. They’d deprived her of sleep, they had. Did the other servants know about them strange happenings? Her fingertip itched to tap the sleeve of Master Harte’s suit coat. Surely real flesh and blood now lay below.

The newspaper rustled. The Master turned another page. Black-and-white headlines facing Eleanor declared the latest goings-on in and around London. The temperance ladies stirred up a fuss in Kensington. Parliament argued about the cholera outbreak in Whitechapel. Anarchists had rioted near Hyde Park. No obvious front-page reports of unexplained disappearances of hands or arms.

“I have a research project in the library this morning,” Master Harte said. “It can’t wait until Parker’s return.” He folded his newspaper, until it matched the size the delivery boy had left upon the front door stoop an hour ago. “You would be of great service to me if you kept notes.”

“The library, sir?” The room had to be daemon possessed. Why couldn’t the Master wait until his valet got back from London? ‘Twas him who sent Parker to the city in the first place. “Yer sure about going in there so soon?”

“Most definitely,” he said.

“Then,” Eleanor said, “I’d be… pleased to take notes for ye.”

She was not at all pleased. Not anyhow, but wouldn’t say so. Her fingers rubbed her elbows. What if one of her arms disappeared? Best she bring along a tankard of beer?

“The stroke of nine it will be then,” Master Harte said. He cleared his throat and slipped a folded piece of paper—the size of a calling card—into Eleanor’s hand. “In the library.”

A message? Eleanor dropped the paper into her apron pocket, then poured Master Harte more tea. Dared she read this note in the kitchen? She didn’t want Mrs. Blake, the cook, to start rumors about special attentions. The upstairs and downstairs maids, neither. She was a good girl, she was.

“Nine’s a civilized hour for a project, sir.” She curtsied. Better than eleven at night.

Master Harte grinned, like he knew a secret she didn’t. That note? Serving tray in hand, Eleanor hurried toward the kitchen.

“Beware the nine.” The warning scrawled on that piece of paper from Master Harte still rang in her brain like parish bells before a funeral. He hadn’t written the message. The pen strokes wasn’t bold enough to be his. She patted her apron pocket and opened the library door. What was the nine the message mentioned? The hour of nine?

“It’s safe to enter,” Master Harte called from across the room.

“Yes, sir.” How could he be so blooming sure? Regardless, she wouldn’t step anywhere near that stain on the carpet.

Inside the wood-paneled library, a variety of brass and wooden instruments rested upon the drafting table. Compass. Level. Only an inventor could know what all them other items was. Master Harte motioned her toward the desk, which held a typewriter.

Brenton Parker—the most accomplished gentleman’s gentleman in Brighton—usually served as his scribe. Parker was attending to an errand up in London, but he’d taught her a little shorthand so she could fill in when necessary. She hadn’t mastered the letter clacker, though. Her fingers was so slow.

Master Harte picked up a stick with a wheel on one end. He paced this way and that, the wheel of the upright stick clicking as it rolled across the floor.

“Bookcase to desk,” he said, “three feet seven inches.”

Oh, the thing was a measuring device. Now Master Harte called out the size of several angles. He stepped on the stain and gave her another reading. An estimation of where half his arm had gone the night before?

Beware the nine. A shiver crossed the back of Eleanor’s shoulders. Might the number of feet, inches and degrees add up to a multiple of nine? How could any sum of numbers make a body part appear to vanish? How could spilled stout set things right?

“That’s enough, I think.” Master Harte rested his clickstick against a bookcase.

Eleanor translated her shorthand, her two index fingers typing on a sheet of paper. She removed the sheet from the clacking machine and laid it on the drafting table. Master Harte cupped his palm around his chin. Over and over, he mumbled what she’d recorded. The first finger on his other hand traced imaginary lines on the table’s surface.

“Just as I thought,” he said. “No theme of nine in my measurements. Wasn’t in the other place either.”

In the other place that tried to get him?

“In what place, sir,” she said, “would that be?”

“Our London house,” he said. “In my bed chamber.”

“Oh.” A blush warmed her face. A good thing he’d not asked her to take notes there.

“Holes, that’s what caused it,” the Master said. “Rare cavities in the air around us. Something like painted-shut windows suddenly opened.” His finger tapped the typed paper on the table. “The holes can be closed when nothing blocks the way. Stout seems to have the right combination of alcohol and organics to do the job.” He frowned. “Trouble is, I don’t know if those openings lead to individual little pockets or to a huge foreign world in a separate dimension.”

Such talk of a separate dimension. More likely, the matter involved malevolent spirits or a passageway to the devil’s den. May heaven protect all the folks at Brighton House—even Mrs. Blake, whose scolding voice reminded Eleanor of crows.

“Mrs. Blake knows a medium, sir.” Actually, the cook knew a variety of odd folks who might prove helpful. A strange one, that woman was.

“We’re dealing with science.” Master Harte scratched his mutton chop. “Not the supernatural.”

“Science, sir?”

“Chemistry and physics.” He gestured toward his instrument table. “I suspect someone plots against me, but I don’t have the foggiest notion why. Unless they think I’ve stolen one of their inventions.”

A plot to do him in? A mystery, this was. Eleanor straightened her apron. At the market square, she’d overheard talk about Scotland Yard. Inspectors solved mysteries by asking questions. If she came up with clever questions to help Master Harte, maybe he’d reward her with important responsibilities.

“That warning about the nine,” she said. “Where did it come from, sir?”

“A stranger,” he replied. “One of the temperance ladies outside the liquor shop up the street from my club. About your age.”

“Do any of the other servants know about all this?”

“I doubt they know much.” He winked. “We ought to keep things that way.”

A bell clanged. The front door. The noise gave Eleanor a start. Master Harte hadn’t mentioned expecting visitors. Her fingers inspected her bun. Her hair seemed in place. Footsteps and voices grew louder.

“I’m relieved to see you, Jeremy,” the gentleman in the library doorway said.

The stocky toff—still wearing his elegant woolen greatcoat and leather gloves—brushed past the household footman and entered the library. Pallor covered the stranger’s face, as if he’d seen his own specter in the hallway mirror.

“I’m sorry about barging in this way,” the visitor said, his voice shaky. “But I’ve some rather untidy tidings to report.”

“My God,” Master Harte said. “You look appalling.” He ushered his visitor to a leather chair, then turned toward Eleanor. “Fetch a shot of brandy.”

Eleanor hurried over to the liquor cabinet, all the while straining her ears to catch tidbits of conversation. Had someone else misplaced an arm?

“Your valet,” the visitor continued, “brought those drawings of yours to the club yesterday evening. We were all quite eager to study your proposals for protecting the city water supply from cholera contamination. I fear the epidemic spreads beyond Whitechapel already.”

So that’s what Parker was up to. Eleanor carried the snifter of brandy to the distressed gent, careful to avoid the untrustworthy patch of space near the main bookcase. She set the tray on the table beside him. He had two hands visible and could jolly well pick up his own glass.

“Get to the point,” Master Harte said. His hands, tensed as wound-up clockwork, clutched the lapels of his suit.

“Parker,” the gentleman said, “set your document case down on a table. He poured himself a pint of stout.”

The toff raised the brandy toward his mouth. He drank not a drop and returned the glass to the tray.

“And?” Master Harte said, his voice pinched.

“Parker vanished,” the visitor said, “as the clock struck ten.” His palms pressed against his lowered face. “‘Twas like the poor chap was never there.”

Parker gone? Not just half his arm but all of him? Done in forever? Eleanor let out a wail. Blimey. She was loud enough to jelly live eels.

A live eel was the last thing Eleanor wished to drag about London today, but that was the way it worked out. Mrs. Blake had a favorite market and a mouthful of reasons for her to buy an eel there. Master Harte, off to investigate Parker’s disappearance, had ridden with her on the train into the city. Thus Eleanor now stumbled along cobblestones while cart vendors in her path hawked their wares. Her burlap sack wiggled. She sighed. Poor Parker. Most likely dead, he was. How could the cook care about stewing an eel?

Flies buzzed everywhere. The stench from rotting fish in passing carts overpowered even the stink of manure. Eleanor’s head and feet throbbed. Would be nice to visit Master Harte’s inventors’ club and rest in an overstuffed chair. A pity the place didn’t welcome women, except to do the cleaning. You’d think the wallpaper would peel from floor to ceiling if a lady crossed the bleeding threshold and sat down to sip a cuppa tea. Rules was rules, though. Nothing to do but wrestle with this eel while the Master sought clues about Parker.

Parker was—or had been—a clever sort. Well, not clever enough. Had whoever nabbed him expected Master Harte instead? Then raced down to the Brighton coast upon discovering the mistake? That was over forty miles. Nobody could have traveled from the club to Brighton House in an hour. And no God-fearing magician would make a man vanish into another world. The blame had to rest upon devilry or evil spirits, no matter what the Master claimed. No wonder he hadn’t brought the bizarre details straight to Scotland Yard.

Eleanor reached the train station, the eel in her sack still thrashing about like a cat in the wash. Some eels could live for days out of water. At least she’d picked out a right fresh one.

“Ticket to Kensington Station,” she told the station clerk.

She set down her sack on the floor and fumbled in her purse for money, giving the man in line behind her—a fellow with a greasy black beard—a wary glance. His shabby houndstooth greatcoat fit like it belonged to a shorter bloke. Stolen? A good thing she’d sewn that secret money pocket into the lining of her coat. She paid the clerk. Her purse was empty now, except for her handkerchief. She tucked her ticket inside.

Time to pick up her sack and board the train. Her hand reached for the drawstrings. Spiny teeth snapped at her. They missed. Almighty Lord of Heaven. The eel’s slimy head protruded from the top of the burlap bag, the beast’s lower jaw longer than the upper one. Them drawstrings had come loose.

“Need ’elp, Miss?” the houndstooth man said. He reached toward the sack without waiting for a reply.

“Do take care,” Eleanor said. The swollen cut on his brow suggested a recent scrap. He’d better not make a grab for her purse.

Something about this bloke was familiar. Had she seen him in the fish market? Had he followed her? God, she was jumpy as the eel. The business about disappearing arms and people unsettled her senses.

“Ye just got teh know,” the stranger said, “how teh ’andle a wiggler righ’ and proper.”

His meaty hands grabbed the sides of the bag and shook the eel back into place. He pulled the drawstrings tight and knotted them. His dark complexion made him look part gypsy. Was he in this for a tip?

“I don’t have money to spare,” Eleanor said, accepting the bagged eel from the man. She smiled even as tension clenched her innards. “But thank ye, nonetheless.”

“Oh, I got me reward enough,” he said, and stepped up to the ticket window.

What an unexpected reply. Eleanor lifted her squirming charge and boarded the train to Kensington. A faint ticking sound puzzled her. A fellow passenger’s pocket watch? Now something whirred. She glanced behind her. No one followed.

The underground train rumbled toward Kensington Station. Only a couple stops left to go. Eleanor would meet Master Harte on the front steps of his inventors’ club. They’d return to Brighton by carriage, as planned.

On the seat beside her, the eel sack wiggled. That stranger in the ill-fitting greatcoat still unsettled her. All manner of evil characters roamed London. Whatever took Parker likely had wanted Master Harte instead. Could the houndstooth man have bewitched this eel-in-a-sack in order to do the Master in? She should jolly well leave the bleeding thing on the train when she got off. Then tell Mrs. Blake to buy eels only in Brighton.

“Ye got no righ’,” a woman’s brash voice said, “teh take up two seats when a lady needs one of ’em.”

Eleanor looked up. A pair of round blue-gray eyes separated by a thick nose glared down at her. Two painted lips, redder than holly-berries, pinched together. The thick powder on the woman’s face crinkled. A tart. Despite her fashionable ostrich-plume hat and fur-trimmed coat, this woman wasn’t no lady. Not at all.

“Ye best take the window seat then,” Eleanor said. “I’m getting off soon.”

She stood and moved to the aisle. The tart claimed the seat by the window and hoisted a small valise onto her lap. Did Eleanor really want to hold the eel or have it dance atop her feet on the floor? The train rocked. Maybe she ought to sit down before she fell down.

“Ain’t I good enough,” the tart said, “teh sit next teh the likes a ye?”

“‘Tis nothing to do with ye,” Eleanor said. “The eel’s the problem. He popped out in the station and nearly bit me.”

“Oh, is that all?” The tart reached for the eel sack and shoved it under her side of the seat. “Me and eels, we get along fine, we do.”

Eleanor nodded. She gathered her skirt and sat down. The tart opened her valise and removed a silver hip flask. Her gloved hands unscrewed the lid, producing a yeasty aroma but no spurt of foam. Flat beer. This woman prepared to tipple on a public train? How ill mannered.

“Well, ye don’t expect me teh drink water, now do ye?” The tart tossed back her head and took a swallow. “Water in London ain’t fit teh drink these days, if ye ask me. Will be the end of the empire if somebody don’t stop this bloody epidemic.”

“London’s seen cholera before,” Eleanor said. That had been in the 1850’s, hadn’t it? When London’s drinking water had mingled with its sewage. She’d heard about Master Harte taking sick back then. Luckily, she’d not been born until 1864.

“This cholera ain’t nothin’ like the old one, mark me words.” The tart took another swallow. “Everybody down in the East End’s sayin’ anarchists started it. Them blokes got a secret way of spreadin’ it, ye see. Tis the beginnin’ of the end of our world, I’m afeared.”

End of the world? Cholera wasn’t the plague. Not anyhow. Eleanor’s muscles tensed. There was that wretched odor of sulfur and bogwood again. Like in Master Harte’s library last night. She bolted to standing and surveyed the surrounding passengers. The ladies across the aisle pinched their noses. Where did the stink come from?

Eleanor moved into the aisle, clutching a seat back as the train swayed. Several high-pitched voices shrieked from behind her. She spun half-way around to face the tart. Only an empty window seat was there now. No tart. No eel. No valise. All three was blooming gone.

Men in Eleanor’s train car barked conflicting orders. Ladies wailed. A young woman swooned. Only minutes had passed since the tart had dissolved in mere air. The panic around Eleanor spread faster than cholera ever could.

Now a whistle blast sounded. The underground train rolled into the Hyde Park station.

“Ladies and children out the door first,” a man shouted.

Several women carrying closed parasols jostled Eleanor and pushed their way around her toward the train’s exit. Did they think she was a blasted turnstile? She wanted off this train, too, even if this wasn’t Kensington Station.

“Excuse me,” Eleanor said. “A bit of order is in order.”

Her ears caught a muffled noise. She glanced behind her, where the tart had been. A round trinket lay on the seat. The color of gold, it was. Had the woman worn a lapel pin?

The thing moved, walking on tiny metal limbs. This was some sort of miniature clockwork toy: a beetle automaton with ruby eyes. Expensive looking. She grasped the bejeweled beetle and turned it over in her palm. No engraving. Just a tiny clockface rimmed by several pairs of limbs and an unmatched extra. Insect limbs always came in even numbers. One limb must have broken off. Master Harte sometimes built small automatons. This would interest him. She slid the trinket into her purse and followed the other passengers.

Eleanor climbed down from the coach car. The station clock chimed the hour of five. A memory bubbled up but she couldn’t yet grasp it. She headed down the platform. A crowd of passengers yammered at the conductor. She skirted around them. A shudder shot through her, the same as when entering Master Harte’s library the night before. The houndstooth coat man. She’d caught a glimpse of him on the train up from Brighton today. The bleeding rogue had followed her most of the afternoon.

Why hadn’t he followed Master Harte? Maybe the knave figured the Master would notice him. Too bad the eel and its secret was gone. One thing for sure, the rogue’s magic could pry windows in the air open. The tart’s beer must have closed the cavity. Why had the woman and Parker vanished when Master Harte had not? Where had their bodies gone? A passageway to Hell wouldn’t have swallowed up Parker, a good chap. Eleanor climbed the staircase toward the street. Nothing made sense.

A staircase was like a passageway. Could the world have secret passageways? Only a spirit or a devil would do well in using them, all stinking of sulfur and bogwood. Crikey. Master Harte could be in danger right now. Eleanor reached the street. At least them anarchists today’s newspaper reported about had left. She set off in the direction of Kensington.

A hansom cab waited beside the lamppost ahead. A cab was a luxury for her. Brighton House money sat in her hidden pocket. Eleanor hailed the driver. He passed her an odd look as she prepared to climb inside.

“Ye haven’t been over near Whitechapel,” he said, “now have ye?”

“No,” she replied. No doubt the epidemic of cholera concerned him. She gave him the address of the inventors’ club. “Please hurry.”

Once inside the cab, Eleanor leaned back in her seat. The horse trotted, shod hooves clicking against cobblestones. It would be best to transfer cab money to her purse. She unbuttoned her coat and slid her hand into her hidden pocket. Next, her fingers loosened the drawstrings on her bag. Something tickled the side of her finger.

Her fingers plucked up the clockwork beetle. The trinket had a soft tick and whirr. A murky memory ruminated in the back of her mind. Fading daylight filtered in through the window. She turned the beetle on its back and counted its moving limbs. Well, this was no proper beetle. The bejeweled bug would have had ten limbs if one hadn’t broken off. A beetle with nine limbs, indeed!

Nine legs? Wait a bleeding minute. Eleanor sucked in a quick breath of air. The message Master Harte had given her had said to beware the nine. This was a “nine.” Plus she’d heard the same faint whirr and ticking after she’d purchased her train ticket. Eleanor swallowed hard. The houndstooth bloke must have planted this beetle in her eel sack. What evil was the automaton designed to do? Could the thing open windows in the air? Did the clock mechanism determine when? Holy saints and Trinity! Eleanor’s heartbeat sounded in her ears.

The hansom cab lurched one way and then the other. Eleanor thrust the beetle back into her purse and pulled the drawstrings tight. She’d heard no whirring in Master Harte’s library last night. Still, the cavity could have opened earlier in the evening before Parker unknowingly carried the beetle to London. No, someone would have noticed the offensive odor.

Maybe the beetle only unlocked the air’s window. A person might have to step in the proper place to vanish. Yet why had a fermented beverage helped Master Harte but not Parker or the tart? Eleanor clasped her hands together. Did the closeness of the beetle to the beer trigger the violent swallowing action? After taking Parker, had the beetle returned to the houndstooth knave through a secret passageway in air?

The cab slowed. It would be time to pay the driver soon. Secret passageway—them words wouldn’t leave her mind alone. A clockwork beetle… a cholera epidemic. The tart had claimed anarchists had a secret way of making cholera spread. What could be more secret than invisible holes in the air?

Earlier, Eleanor had wanted important responsibilities. Now one had crawled her way. Something was wrong in more than the Master’s library. Even the Queen wasn’t safe. For the sake of Her Majesty and the Master, Eleanor must turn wrong into right.

Master Harte wasn’t waiting on the pavement in front of the inventors’ club when Eleanor arrived. Stern-faced temperance ladies was, clad in starched black dresses. Nary a one of the old shrews looked Eleanor’s age. The woman who had warned the Master wasn’t here, probably got found out. A shiver cut between Eleanor’s shoulder blades.

“Down with daemon beer,” the shrew ladies shouted to the beat of their leader’s drum. “‘Tis as evil as rum.”

In other words, down with whatever might seal up them holes in the air and keep good folks from disappearing. At least when clockwork beetles wasn’t around. Had Master Harte been targeted because he knew so much about science and inventions?

Eleanor pushed her way through the temperance throng. A matron with a beak nose and black eye moved in front of her and blocked her way to the front door.

“Go home,” the shrew said with a thick accent Eleanor couldn’t identify. “While you still can.”

Eleanor’s reply caught in her throat. This menacing matron couldn’t know about the automaton in Eleanor’s purse. Still, Eleanor clutched the drawstrings tighter.

“Go home yerself,” Eleanor said.

Eleanor dodged to one side. The shrew reached for her but missed. A forward lunge brought Eleanor to the club’s front door. It was locked. Her fist pounded against the wooden barrier.

“Master Jeremy Harte,” she cried. “Help!”

Two hands grabbed Eleanor’s shoulders from behind. She hurled herself at the door with all the might she could muster. The front door to the inventors’ club opened. Freed from her pursuer, she lunged into the dim entryway. Her toe stubbed against something firm. She flew in the direction of a gray-haired gentleman. She thrust her arms in front of her. Her body collided with his. The monocle popped out of his eye. Blimey.

“Excuse me, sir,” Eleanor said.

The front door slammed behind her. She turned. The doorman shoved a wide wooden bolt in place. He must have opened the door. At least the temperance shrew couldn’t get her now.

“Please direct me to Master Jeremy Harte,” Eleanor said to the doorman. “It’s urgent, it is.”

“This is most irregular,” a man said behind her.

Eleanor wheeled around. A clerk in a blue uniform dashed from behind the registration desk, then planted himself in front of her.

“Highly irregular,” the clerk added.

“Indeed it is,” Eleanor said to him. “Some rogues are trying to do the Master in.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait here,” the clerk said. “Women aren’t allowed beyond this point.”

This chap worried about some stuffy rule? She could bleeding well vanish any moment. The world could start to end. She needed to tell Master Harte what had happened to her today, at a bit of a distance, that is. She thrust her hand into her purse and pulled out the clockwork beetle.

“Beware the Nine.” Eleanor brandished the beetle like she held a dagger. “Let me by or I’ll make the likes of ye join Mr. Parker.” She’d better not be near a pint of beer.

Eleanor pushed her way by the clerk and ran down a dim corridor with a musty odor. Master Harte and the others could be in the gentlemen’s smoking room. Was that room on the main floor or one level above?

“Master Harte,” she shouted. The thud of footsteps behind her grew louder.

“Eleanor,” the Master’s voice called. “What on—”

Up ahead, he stood just outside the doorway to a side room. She raced toward him.

“Don’t step near me,” she said. “No time to explain.”

He motioned her into a large mahogany-paneled parlor. A cluster of gentlemen wearing tweed suits gave her disapproving glares. A silver-haired toff in black set his tall glass on the book table next to a high-backed leather chair. The rich amber color of the liquid—the foam on top. The glass contained beer. Would the nearness of the beetle trigger instant disappearance? What could she do to make sure she stayed in this world and the beetle didn’t?

“Move back,” Eleanor said, “the lot of ye.”

Several steps brought her to the book table. She dropped the beetle into the beer. She dove in the opposite direction, knocking a gentleman off balance. ‘Twas the fellow with the monocle again. This time he crashed into the seat of an overstuffed chair. Eleanor landed on top of him. He groaned.

The stink of bogwood and sulfur flashed out of nowhere, so strong her stomach retched. Eleanor belched. She’d blooming never hear the end of all this embarrassment. Not anyhow.

“Excuse me, sir,” she whispered, her chest still flopped against his. “So sorry.”

“By God,” the voice of Master Harte boomed. “It’s gone.”

“Extraordinary,” another man exclaimed.

Mumbles sped through the room. The men was saying it’s gone, wasn’t they? Not he’s gone or she’s gone. Eleanor sat up in the pudgy gentleman’s lap. Her hands touched her nose and shoulders, her upper arms, waist and knees. She seemed all here. Facing Master Harte’s back, she pulled herself to her feet. The Master and another gentleman blocked her view.

“What’s gone, sir?”

“The side table,” Master Harte said. He turned to face her, his brown eyes wide. “The table. The pint. And whatever you tossed into it.”

The men stepped aside. Four ruts in the blue-and-gold Oriental carpet marked where table limbs had pressed. The table wasn’t there, though. A deep breath of air filled her lungs. The odor of bogwood and sulfur had subsided. The window in the air must have closed. For now?

“Are you,” Master Harte said with an uneven voice, “all right, Eleanor?”

He took a few steps toward her, then stopped. He motioned for the other inventors to see to their colleague, the poor fellow still wedged in the overstuffed chair.

“I think I’m all right,” Eleanor said.

“What about other things?” Master Harte added.

No doubt that temperance shrew and houndstooth bloke still mucked about, up to no good. Was they anarchists, bruised from yesterday’s riot in Hyde Park? Did they want the cholera epidemic to spread beyond control? Regardless, they could cause a lot of mischief smashing beer kegs and setting loose an army of clockwork beetles. All sorts of important people who might oppose them would disappear.

A spell of dizziness came on. Eleanor clutched the side of a leather chair. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She glanced toward the floral wallpaper. Firmly anchored, it was. Not the slightest hint of peeling from the shock of what she planned to say next.

“I’d be most grateful, sir.” Eleanor smiled. “If someone would please fetch me a cuppa tea and a crumpet.” She curtsied, then sat down on the leather chair. “Before ye—you—get back to stopping the cholera, I’ve some knowledge about other things you’d best consider.”

The gaslights in the room flickered. Master Harte folded his arms against his chest. One of his eyelids twitched.

“I suppose you’d fancy both sugar and cream,” the Master said.

“And lemon curd for the crumpet,” Eleanor replied. “If you please, sir.”

Master Harte grinned, although something remained wrong in England—and still would after he filed their report with Scotland Yard. Beer could save the world or destroy it. To stay on the saving side, she and the Master had best tote a pint about, even to church.

A teacup rattled in a saucer. Master Harte himself served her a cuppa.

“Thank you, sir.” She sipped her tea.

She ought to begin her story with what had happened at the fish market. Odd, how the houndstooth knave had known she’d shop in London today, then meet up with the Master. It was almost like someone— The backs of Eleanor’s hands tingled. When Parker’s death had shocked all of Brighton House, Mrs. Blake had insisted Eleanor travel with the Master and go buy a blasted eel. May Britannia rule forever! Mrs. Blake must have let the knave know. That shrew might even have handed him the reward he’d referred to.

“I think, sir,” Eleanor said, “you’ll need a new cook by sunrise.”

No doubt Master Harte would soon agree.