The Providence Rider

The sawblade met bone and scraped with a noise that made Matthew’s hair stand on end. There was a crash as Minx Cutter’s chair went over; she had risen to her feet and was backing away. It appeared that she had reached her fill of this particular dinner.

“Leave here if you’re going to be ill!” Mother Deare snapped at her, in a not-very-motherly way at all. Minx took the stairs, but she did it at her own speed: a deliberate and almost disdainful walk.

Sawblade on bone. The kicking of Gentry’s heels against the bloodied floor. Matthew nearly rose to his feet and also departed the room, but it seemed to him that the tough-minded and grim-hearted Nathan Spade would have stayed it out, and so then should he.

But by the hardest effort did he remain in his place, for in the next excruciating moments Sirki cracked through the vertebrae and cut through enough flesh to tear the head off its streaming stalk. Sirki deposited the head of the formerly-living Jonathan Gentry upon the table in front of its former body, and as the sallow and sunken-eyed face continued to grimace and contort in its agonies of dying nerves the body slithered down under the table with all the boneless grace of a raw oyster.

There was silence, but for the dripping.

“Thus endeth the lesson,” said the automaton, its right index finger pointed into the air.

It was Jack Thacker who spoke next.

“Professor sir?” he asked, in his nasally brogue. “Don’t we get dessert?”

The automaton’s hand lowered. With a noise of moving chains the mechanical head turned from side to side, as if seeking the speaker.

“Certainly you do,” came the eerie metallic voice, “and you have earned it. On the patio you shall find vanilla cake, sugared almonds and some very fine bottles of Chateau d’Yquem. My best for my best.” The head nodded slightly, and the voice added, “And I shall say goodnight.”

Sirki had wrapped the gory knife in double napkins. Now he came around behind the automaton and threw the lever that presumably turned it off. The noise of gears and chains ceased. The figure was motionless, returned to exactly the posture in which it had first appeared. Sirki put the tarpaulin back over it and wheeled it away toward the concealed door.

Gentry’s face had ceased its spasms. The good doctor had gone, quite messily, to either the Celestial Apothecary or the Hellpit of Incurable Diseases. Matthew pressed his napkin against his mouth, realizing how much blood had spattered his suit. It seemed that Pendulum Island was not only death to people, but murder on men’s wear. He realized also who and what had severed the heads from the two bodies in the house on Nassau Street. The neck stump was similarly ragged to those. A point of observation that only he would have made, and yet he clung to his powers as a problem-solver to make certain he did not completely fall into the tarpit that was the soul of his masquerade.

Said Mack, with a hand to his belly, “I’m for gettin’ me some vanilla cake.”

Evidently this drama had caused the Thackers to, for the moment, put aside their animosity toward Spadey. They got to their feet, hauled Fancy up between them, and sauntered up the stairs as if they’d just witnessed a particularly stirring ballroom dance…or, in their case, barroom fight.

Somehow, and he didn’t know how long this took him to do so, Matthew got out of his chair and, slipping on the bloody floor, made his way to the steps. He didn’t care to look at anyone else, nor did they care to look at him. He did have the impression that Adam Wilson wore a barely-concealed grin of delight, for it seemed the invisible finance-man had a taste for gory violence. On his ascent, Matthew wondered who was going to take the head off the table, remove the corpse and clean up the Godawful mess. One would have to need a job terribly much to do such work as that, it seemed to him.

Or possibly the servants in this house were used to anything.

Matthew’s knees were weak as he walked unsteadily toward the main staircase. He had no taste for vanilla cake, sugared almonds and dessert wine. Halfway up the stairs he felt something break within him and very suddenly his skin prickled with cold sweat. He had to grip hard to the bannister for fear of being flung off the world. Then he righted himself, as strongly as he was able, and pulled his body up the stairs using the bannister as much as any man would haul himself up a lifeline.

He entered his room and, still sweating and with the smell of blood up his nose, closed the door at his back. He latched it. He noted on the white dresser the three tapers of the triple-wicked candelabra still burning, as he’d left them. His first impulse was to relieve his bladder in the chamberpot, but instead he staggered toward the louvered doors to breathe deeply of sea air and perhaps clear his head of the bloodied fog.

And that was when he saw the automaton of Professor Fell sitting next to the bed in the white high-backed chair with the black stitching. The automaton had one thin leg crossed over another at the knee.

“Hello, Matthew,” said the construction, in a voice no longer metallic or high-pitched yet still eerie in its quiet, mechanical delivery. “I believe we should talk.”

Twenty

DID the earth cease its spinning? Did the floor give way beneath Matthew? Did a firepit of demons laugh, or a wing of angels cry?

No. But Matthew nearly fell down, all the same, and his heart nearly exploded and his mind reeled with the knowledge that Professor Fell’s automaton was not a machine at all but the real version.

The creature was dressed exactly the same, in the white suit with the gold trim and decorative gold whorls. The head was topped by the gold-trimmed tricorn. Same as well were the flesh-colored cloth gloves, covering long-fingered hands, and the flesh-colored cowl over head and face that showed the faintest impression of nosetip, cheekbones and eyesockets.

When the figure spoke again, Matthew saw the barest fluttering of cloth over the mouth. “Yes,” Professor Fell said, “I do enjoy my games.”

Matthew could not speak. As much as Gentry’s bodiless face had struggled to make sense of the where and the how and the why, so did Matthew’s face contort with the exact questions.

“You’re so young,” said the professor. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”

Matthew gasped a few more times, and then he found his voice. “I’m…as old…as I need to be.”

“Older, perhaps, than you ought to be.” The gloved fingers steepled together. “You have seen some disturbing sights.”

Matthew forced himself to nod. He didn’t have to force his reply. “Tonight…was possibly the worst.”

“I would apologize, but that scene was necessary. It served many purposes.”

His mouth dry, Matthew said, “It certainly served to spoil my appetite for dessert.”

“There will be other dinners,” the professor answered. “Other desserts.”

“Other heads to be sawed off?”

Did the cowl hide a quick smile? “Perhaps. But not at the dinner table.”

Dare he ask the question? He did: “Whose?”

“I don’t yet know. I will wait for you to tell me.”

Matthew thought he had walked into the middle of a bad dream. Was this real, or had he eaten a corrupted clam? He wished for more light in this room, though the candles burned merrily. He wished for more distance from Professor Fell. He wished he might be anywhere but here, with the emperor of crime and the nemesis of Katherine Herrald sitting four paces from him. “Me?” he asked. “Tell you?” He already wore a frown, and now it deepened. “Tell you what?”

“Who is to be executed,” said the professor, “as a traitor.”

“A traitor?” Matthew wondered why in moments of extreme stress he wound up sounding like a drunk parrot. “Doctor Gentry was just executed as a traitor.”

“That is correct…yet not entirely correct.”

Matthew couldn’t make heads or tails of this. His mind felt overwhelmed. He backed away from the masked figure in the chair. When he bumped into the iron legs of the ceramic washbasin he reached back at a clumsy angle, scooped water up in his hands and wet his face. Water dripped from his chin and he blinked like a sea-turtle.

“Take your time,” the professor advised. “I’m sure you have questions.”

Matthew found his way to the chair at the writing-desk and sank into it. He certainly did have questions…so many, in fact, that they were tangled together like a multitude of fast carriages trying to jam themselves through a tunnel.

“Let me begin, then.” The cowled head tilted a fraction to one side. “My little game at dinner. Pretending to be an automaton. I’m fascinated by those mechanicals. Sirki knows the truth, as does Mother Deare…and now you. My charade is useful in keeping a suitable distance between myself and my associates.”

Matthew thought he nodded, but he wasn’t certain. “May I ask…how that works? I heard the machinery…and your voice.”

“Oh, there is machinery in the chair. I operate it by pressure on the nailheads in the armrests. As for the voice.” The right hand slid into a pocket and emerged with a small metal object that resembled the miniature pipes of a pipe organ. “This fits my mouth. Not so comfortable, and yet a challenge. I had to learn to alter my breathing. It is designed to give the effect I wished.” He returned the mouth-organ to its pocket, and then he sat without moving or speaking for a time as if to demonstrate his ability to mimic a construction of gears and chains.

“I don’t…” Matthew shook his head. The fog was closing in again. Surely the gray kingdom had not followed him here. “Am I drugged?” he asked.

“Only by your own mind,” came the reply.

Matthew was trying to examine the voice. What age? It was hard to tell. Possibly a man in his late forties or early fifties? It was soft and smooth and entirely without malice. It carried the sheen of education and abundance. It was supremely confident, and had the power of pulling the listener toward the speaker as any warm flame would pull a moth from the dark.

This was the man who had wished to kill him, Matthew thought. This was the man who never forgot, who ordered death like a delicacy at dinner and who had organized a criminal parliament beyond Matthew’s comprehension. This was the destroyer of lives and fortunes and souls. This was Fear Itself, and Matthew felt terribly small in its presence…and yet…this was an educated and literate man behind that mask, and Matthew’s curiosity—his innate need for answers—had burst into an absolute conflagration.

“You remind me of someone,” said Professor Fell, quietly.

“Who might that be?”

“My son,” was the answer, delivered more quietly still. “Well…who he might have been, had he lived. Did you note the stained-glass on the staircase? Of course you did. That is a depiction of my son, Templeton. I named the village for him. My dearest Temple.” There was a soft laugh that held a sad edge. “The things a father will do, to perpetuate a memory.”

“What happened to him?” Matthew asked.

There was no immediate response. Then the masked figure released a sigh that sounded like the wind at the end of the world. “Let me tell you why you are here,” he said. “You call yourself a problem-solver. I call you a providence rider, for I need a scout to go ahead. To find the trail that shall be followed. Much depends upon this, Matthew. Much expense and…difficulty…has been paid to bring you here, as you certainly know.”

“I know many people have suffered.”

“They have, yes. But that was your doing. You declined an invitation to dinner, did you not? You must realize, Matthew…that no one says no to me.”

Spoken like a man who believed himself to be in no need of a greater god, Matthew thought…but he decided it unwise to turn that thought into words.

The professor said, “You are here now. That is the important thing. You’ve seen part of my world. What I have achieved. And me…from academic beginnings. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Sensibly agreed. I have brought you here because there is a fly in the ointment of what I have achieved. A small little fly that bothers me, day and night. Jonathan Gentry was not a traitor. At least, not to me. To himself, possibly, with his worsening addictions. I persuaded him some time ago to fill a notebook with his formulas for poisons and other drugs of usefulness, and therefore he became useless. Except…tonight, he was very useful.”

Matthew said nothing. Better not to walk upon a garden made of quicksand.

“He was useful,” Professor Fell continued, “in that his death may have made the real traitor think he’s gotten away with his sin against me. There is a traitor among them, Matthew. I suspect three men, one of whom is the irritating fly: Adam Wilson, Cesar Sabroso and Edgar Smythe. Any one of them had opportunity—and perhaps motive—to do what was done to me last summer.” The figure leaned slightly forward, gloved hands gripping the armrests. Matthew had the impression that behind the mask the face was still calm yet perhaps the mouth had drawn tight and the eyes held a seething ferocity.

“I need your abilities to uncover this traitor,” said the mouth, which fluttered the cloth ever so faintly. “I could in my rights as their lord execute all three of my suspects, but that would be counterproductive. Therefore…I need one name. Better still, I want to see some proof of this treachery, if it exists and is in the hands of its creator. So, as you ask…there is only one more head to saw off, and you will tell me whose head that is to be.”

Matthew almost laughed. Almost, but then he imagined his own head sitting on a table. “What you’re asking…it’s impossible. I would have to know so much more. And I’m not sure I want to know, just as I’m sure you wouldn’t wish to tell me.” In spite of his predicament, a sudden heat flamed his cheeks. He stood up. “I can’t believe this! You’ve brought me here to uncover a traitor, yet I have no way of knowing even how to begin! All right, then, tell me this: what did the traitor do?”

“He caused a ship to be seized off Portsmouth by the Royal Navy. It was on its way to a meeting at sea with another ship.”

“And I’m presuming the cargo was important? What was it?”

“You have no need to know that.”

“Of course not!” Matthew gave a half-crazed, half-terrified grin. “What was the nationality of the ship being met at sea?”

“You have no need to know that, either.”

“Oh, certainly not!” Matthew threw out a line, angling for a different fish. “What’s the Cymbeline you mentioned at the table? You said, This involves the Cymbeline. Was that the name of the ship?”

“It’s the name,” said Professor Fell, in his maddeningly soft and calm voice, “of a play by William Shakespeare. You know his work, perhaps?”

“I do. And that play, as well. But you see, you tell me nothing. How can I uncover a traitor without knowing the details of the betrayal?”

The fingers steepled again. The masked face aimed at Matthew for a long while without speaking. Then: “You call yourself a problem-solver, is that not true? And you indeed have solved quite a few problems in that little town of yours? Don’t you by now have an instinct for lies? Can’t you read a face or a voice for the truth? Can’t you read guilt or innocence in a man’s teacup? In the way he holds himself before others? In the way he handles questions, and pressure? I give you leave to ask questions and to apply pressure. Knowing, of course, that you must maintain your disguise as Nathan Spade, for your own safety.”

“My safety? I think the Thacker brothers would treat Matthew Corbett a shade better than they do Nathan Spade.”

“They’re testing you. That’s their nature.”

“Oh, all right.” Matthew nodded, with the distorted grin still on his face. “Just so they’re not killing me!”

“Their enthusiasm for bullying will pass, if you stand up to them.”

“I say this is impossible,” Matthew told him. “How long would I have for this traitor-uncovering? A week or two?”

“Three days,” said Professor Fell. “After the reports are given, the conference comes to an end.”

Three days, Matthew almost repeated incredulously, but he wished his emulation of a drunk parrot to cease. “Impossible,” he breathed. “No one could do what you’re asking!”

“Do you think Katherine Herrald couldn’t do it?” the professor asked, silkily.

Matthew was silent. He stared at the floor, which seemed their board for this grand game of chess they were playing. Unfortunately he could think of no brilliant move.

“Let us talk of money,” Professor Fell said. “Let us talk of rewards, Matthew. Here is what I propose. If you fail to produce the traitor in the next three days, I will pay you three hundred pounds and send you, your lady friend and the blackbird back to New York. If, however, you do produce the traitor and some evidence of treachery, I will pay you three thousand pounds before sending you home. Also, your death card is burned to ashes and so is the death card of your friend Nathaniel Powers in the Carolina colony. All grievances against you and Powers will be forgiven. Does this still sound impossible?”

Matthew had to spend a few seconds recovering from the sound of that much money. And the fact that ex-magistrate Powers would no longer fear the man who never forgets. “Maybe not impossible,” Matthew answered. “But nearly so. What would I have to work on?”

“Your instincts. Your intelligence. Your experience. Your…guess, if it comes to that. I will provide a key for you to use in entering the rooms of our three suspects. Sirki will inform you when the time is right to do so. I also will empower him to answer any further questions, within reason. Perhaps you’ll discover for yourself what the betrayal was, but I shall inform you of this: if I sat here and told you exactly the facts of the matter, I should have to prevent you and your charges from ever leaving this island again. So…I am asking you to use your skills, Matthew. Are they sufficient for this task, or not?”

The answer was truthful enough. “I don’t know.”

“Know by morning. Sirki will come to your door before breakfast.”

“Give me this, then,” Matthew said. “Does this involve the man you’re seeking? Brazio Valeriani?”

“No. That is a different matter. Yet I will say that if you are successful in this situation, I should think of sending you to Italy to search Valeriani out. And if you found him I would pay you enough to own that little town of yours.”

“Ownership of a town is not my ambition.”

“Hm,” said the professor, and Matthew thought that small unspoken comment was Ownership of the world is mine.

“I’ll come to some decision by morning,” Matthew replied, though he knew what the decision must be. He was going to be working blind, but he had to try.

Professor Fell suddenly stood up. He was about two inches taller than Matthew and nearly frail but he moved with graceful strength. “I shall trust that you trust yourself. I know what you’re capable of. After all, we have a history, don’t we?”

The Black Plague had a history too, Matthew thought.

“I’ll speak to you again,” the professor promised. He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the polished knob. “This is important to me, Matthew. It is vital. Find this traitor, and you may be assured of a very bright future.”

As Matthew hoped to be assured of any future, he chose to let that observation pass. But he had another question: “Before you entered the room, there was a small…jolt, it felt to be. A movement. What was that?”

“An earth tremor. We get them occasionally, but nothing to be alarmed about.”

“This castle is on the edge of a cliff and you say an earth tremor is nothing to be alarmed about?”

“The tremors are mild and the castle is sturdy,” said the professor. “I know, because I had it rebuilt when I claimed the island as my birthright. This is the house I was born in. My father was the governor here.”

“The governor? Of Templeton?”

“It is time for you to rest,” came the soft reply. “I wish you pleasant dreams.”

“Thank you, but aren’t you worried about running into one of your associates in the hallway? That wouldn’t do for your pretense as an automaton, would it?”

“No, it would not. That is why the vanilla cake, the sugared almonds and the wine have been treated with a potent sleep drug. I believe the others are likely resting in the comfortable patio chairs by now. I doubt that Miss Cutter will be leaving her room to wander the hallways tonight. Madam Chillany is also behind a locked door, and she won’t be coming out either.”

“But you knew I wouldn’t want any of that dubious dessert?”

“Not after the dinner, no. But just in case, Mother Deare was watching you, ready to intercede, and Sirki was going to summon you from the patio. In any case, I did not come up by the main staircase and I shall not be going down them.”

“No secret passages here?” Matthew dared ask, with a trace of improvidence.

“None,” said Professor Fell, “that you shall know about. Oh…you do realize you have wet your breeches, don’t you? Leave your suit outside the door. I’ll have it cleaned for you.” Matthew didn’t have to look. It was a little too late for the chamberpot. “Goodnight.” The cowled figure opened the door, paused only briefly to regard the corridor, and then left Matthew’s room. The door closed behind Professor Fell with nearly the same sound as the breath leaving Matthew’s lungs a few seconds later.

Matthew got his legs moving. He went out onto the balcony to listen to the waves against the rocks. Stars filled the sky in the utter black. It was majestic but also seemed desolate and dangerous. Many things whirled through his mind. He concentrated on keeping the vision of Jonathan Gentry’s yellowing face out of his brain, but it was a hard order. He knew that when he attempted sleep it would all come back upon him, and therefore he would surely end up flaming the eight tapers in the overhead chandelier as well as keeping the candelabra burning all night.

What a day this had been! He wondered how Berry and Zed had survived it, and what their present situation was. He wondered at the mysterious fort and the brightly-colored skulls that served as warnings of death. He wondered at the fate of Captain Jerrell Falco, and how he was going to deliver Fancy—if she was indeed who he thought she was—from the rude clutches of the Thacker brothers.

He wondered who Brazio Valeriani was, and what was the Cymbeline. He wondered how he was going to uncover a traitor in three days. And mostly he wondered how the hell he’d gotten into this predicament.

But the fact was…he was here. Up to his neck in a sea of predators, and him wearing a suit that smelled of blood.

I wish you pleasant dreams, the professor had said.

Not to be had this night, Matthew thought.

But in another moment he would take off his blood-spattered suit, fold it and put it outside the door and he would stretch himself out in the bed in the room in the castle of Professor Fell, and he would seek some kind of rest because he needed a fresh mind in the morning when Sirki came to call.

He was who he was. And as Katherine Herrald had once told him regarding his position at the Herrald Agency: We need you, Matthew. You’ll be well-paid and well-challenged. Probably well-travelled too, before long. Certainly well-educated in the complexities of life, and of the criminal mind. Have I frightened you off?

Matthew stared into the deeper darkness, and he answered aloud as he had answered the woman in person.

“No, madam. Not in the least.”

But then again, there was always tomorrow.