The Daemon Device Page 2

  Jaelle. It had been a long time ago, but sudden memories rushed in on him. Of a young girl with wild dark hair, of a small hand holding his when the thunder frightened him, of cuddling under a smelly wool horse blanket before a smoky campfire, and shared secrets and dreams…but it had only been after the real nightmare had begun.

  He had told Yanko he could do nothing, even though Leopold had worked with Scotland Yard many times. But Leopold knew—even at his urging—they would not bother with one missing Gypsy girl.

  He rubbed his marked wrist, fingers twitching over the cursed tattoo. If only he hadn’t done it that first time, then perhaps his father would still be alive. And he wouldn’t have to have been raised by Yanko and his ilk.

  He stopped, sagged against his dressing room doorframe, and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets.

  “You’re troubled,” said Eurynomos, suddenly at his elbow. He’d shrunk again so that now he was the same height as the magician…except for his tall horns.

  “You’re damned right I’m troubled.”

  “I’m here, old friend. How can I help?”

  “I doubt you can.”

  “I have the whole dominion of Gehenna at my beck and call. Of course I can help.”

  He glanced at the daemon speculatively. “How did it happen, Eurynomos? How did my life become so befouled? I thought I was moving forward. But I seem to be falling behind. First that blasted manager said my act was getting stale, then Rose failed to show, and now I’ve ruined it. What’s to be done?”

  “You need a girl,” the daemon pressed. “I mean Raj and I are fine company, but the soft embrace of a lady…ah!”

  Leopold blushed again. “I…I don’t have time for that. Especially now.”

  “My friend, a man always has time. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard, not being a man myself.”

  The sound of a door opening and feet shuffling gave Leopold pause. It sounded like the stage door. He glanced at his daemon friend. “You’d better go.”

  “I think I shall remain, just to make certain you will be all right.”

  “At your pleasure. But stay out of sight.”

  Eurynomos bowed. “Don’t I always?”

  Leopold checked his clothing to make certain he looked fit for company. There was no blood on his shirt. A good thing. He’d left his frock coat, gloves, and hat on stage. No matter. He was certain if he was to be arrested, they would allow him to gather his things.

  When he turned the corner and spied the man in the bowler, he realized with some alarm that he was to be arrested. The man seemed to move with the tactless effort of a policeman. And when he raised his head toward Leopold’s step, he was certain of it.

  “Inspector Thacker.”

  “Kazsmer! What goes on here? Shouldn’t you be in the midst of your act or show, or whatever the hell you call it?”

  “Oh. You hadn’t heard?”

  “Heard what? Where is everyone?”

  He sighed. He felt the sting of his own stupidity. The losses started adding up silently in his head. “You’ll hear about it soon enough. I’m afraid my newest trick went awry and frightened both audience and stagehands away. There might have been injuries. I was certain I was to be arrested. I shall certainly be sued. I suppose I must call my solicitor straight away.”

  “Arrested? Blimey! What in hell did you do?”

  “I’ll show you.” As he walked the inspector to the stage, Leopold concentrated and waved his hand surreptitiously, hiding the elaborate movement with his own body. He felt the magic tingle in his hand. It would be efficient, this he knew, by virtue of Eurynomos’ presence, for the magic was always strongest when the daemon was near or when Leopold had just summoned him.

  As Leopold bent down and reached for his cloak, he pulled it away, revealing a pedal on the stage floorboards that had not been there before.

  He paused and turned back to the inspector. “These are ancient secrets for which I will hold you personally responsible should the general public get wind of them. My very livelihood depends upon secrecy.”

  “You well know, sir, that I am the model of discretion.” There was the barest tinge of a slur to his voice. Thacker’s discretion was easily achieved from a bottle.

  “Very well. During tonight’s disastrous performance, I removed my cloak, let it fall here, thus hiding this pedal, you see?”

  Thacker bent over a little unsteadily to look.

  “When I compressed this pedal with my foot, it set a series of mechanical devices in motion. Below the stage, a bellows began to fill a most amazing fabrication. Observe.” He stepped on the pedal and only the faint sound of a mechanism churned below their feet, all the more amazing because there was nothing there to make a sound. And though the stage was full of trapdoors for his routines, a trapdoor that had not been at that exact location, sprang open, and out popped an inflating replica of Eurynomos, complete with horns and without his breechclout. As it inflated, it rose, filled out, and stood tall.

  “With the addition of smoke and noise, the conjure was quite astonishing.”

  Thacker eyed the anatomically correct nether regions of the inflatable. “Quite.”

  “And quite terrifying. The audience believed it. Indeed, so did the orchestra and stagehands, all of whom had no prior knowledge of this new addition to my show. So you see.” He released the pedal and the daemon shrank and disappeared once more into the stage floor, to disappear from existence, he imagined. “It was much too good a trick.”

  “Indecent, is what it was,” said the inspector, pushing back his bowler and scratching his thatch of brown hair. “Why did you make that fellow…well…in the all together?”

  “He had a breechclout but it must have fallen off. The fabricator of this particular inflatable was most strict in his adherence to detail.”

  “I should say so. Bloody hell. Well, you are in a fix, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I’ll lose my job, that’s a certainty. But at least now you can vouch for me.”

  “Indeed. You and your devices.” He shook his head.

  Leopold folded his cloak over his arm. “Then if you are not here to arrest me, Chief Inspector, why are you here?”

  Thacker’s face grew solemn and he doffed his hat and held it before him in both hands. “For unhappy business, Kazsmer. Most unhappy.”

  A tickle of fear itched his chest and he raised a brow.

  “I fear you would have had to close your show at any rate. Your Rose…aw Christ, Leo. You’d best come see for yourself. It’s horrible. Horrible!”

  Chapter Three

  CASTING A GLANCE toward the immobile Raj, Leopold donned his coat and hat and followed the inspector out the door. It looked as if Raj would get his whist game with Eurynomos after all. Though there was no telling if the stagehands would suddenly return.

  It seemed Leopold’s days consisted of London’s misty cobblestoned lanes and the faint glow of its new electric lights powered by steam generators, competing with the old gas lamps. Dim shadowy figures of street hustlers, prostitutes, and gambling men, staggering either to or from their local public houses completed his society.

  Above the rooftops, a slow-moving dirigible chugged through the sooty skies. It belched puffs of black smoke behind it as it trundled along, its dim lanterns hanging fore and aft glowing fitfully in the gloomy air. Another one, moving perpendicular to it, soared slowly overhead like some wheezing leviathan, its pistons squeaking with each turn of its huge gears. Leopold heard the faint clang of two bells ring from its nether gondola, and he watched the airmen through its lighted windows move steadily about.

  Despite the fact that Parliament had declared that they weren’t supposed to sail the dashed things at night after a certain hour, the dirigible companies flouted the laws. They had Parliament in their pockets, so it was said. Or at least the hearty seal of approval from the Prince Consort. After all, many of the dirigible concerns were owned by men whose surnames were Saxe-Coburg.

  Leopold sh
ivered as the dark shadow of the flying machine passed over him. He turned away from it and followed Thacker down the dimmer streets of the East End where he knew his former assistants Ruby and Rose shared a flat. They made careful their comings and goings, as they didn’t want anyone to know that there was more than one of them. Twin assistants were crucial to any magician’s routine. How else was an enchanter to dissemble, that he could make a woman disappear in one place only to have her reappear in the next? Two flexible girls to fit into tight spaces was the secret.

  Leopold asked no questions as they made their way down an alley. An undertaker’s carriage waited at the mouth of the narrow passage, nearly blocking their path to the street beyond to the boarding house Thacker was leading him to. Uniformed police, smart in their long blue coats and custodian helmets, milled about below the steps.

  Leopold studied the brick building, much like any other sooty brick structure along any London street. A sign hung above the door: “Morningstar Boarding House for Ladies.” Women in dressing gowns were leaning out the windows in the upper floors and looking down with tired faces and wary eyes.

  “What has happened here, Thacker?” asked Leopold.

  “It’s best you see. Come along.”

  The policeman didn’t stop Thacker from climbing the steps, but he did eye Leopold with a narrowed expression.

  They emerged onto a checkered-tile entry and followed the noise of weeping to the open doorway down the corridor, where another uniformed copper stood guard.

  Leopold smelled it before seeing it, but it still gave him pause. The metallic tang of it hit the back of his throat first. He was well accustomed to blood, its smell, its sticky wetness, for he had bled himself so many times over the years, summoning Eurynomos, that it had become as familiar as his shaving potion. But to see so much of it all at once…

  He noticed the patterned wallpaper first. The dingy flowers were smeared with one long swipe of bloody fingers. The window sill was likewise smeared as if someone had taken a mop drenched with it, and carelessly sopped the sill and window glass.

  A table sat in the center of the floor and on it was a shrouded body. The sheet was blotched with blood. It could only be Rose. For a moment, Leopold thought that there was a red rug beneath it, until more of the blood from the table dripped into the pool.

  He swallowed. What was this horror? Did they expect him to look at the…at her?

  A man in a white surgeon’s coat approached. He was bald but had white mutton chops curving up his face into a broad mustache. He gestured toward the body. “Chief Inspector?” he queried.

  “Yes.” Thacker was not unmoved. He wiped his dingy handkerchief down his sweaty face. “This is my associate, Mr. Kazsmer.”

  “Sir,” said the man with a bow. He did not question Leopold’s credentials. “I am Doctor Woodbine. What you are about to see may shock you.”

  “Go on,” said Thacker, unsteadily. Leopold nearly grabbed his arm in protest. He glanced desperately at Thacker but the man’s attention lay with the body on the table. Woodbine approached the corpse, grasped the edge of the sheet, and tossed it back.

  Leopold gasped. Several things accosted him at once. For one, it was indeed the missing Rose. The other was that she was nude, and at this, he inhaled sharply. The Romani who raised him were a strict lot, and for all the outward wanton sexuality the women sometimes exhibited when they danced, any state of undress was strictly forbidden. And Leopold’s own inexperience caused him constant frustration backstage. Actresses, it seemed, had very loose morals.

  He tightened his jaw and girded himself. His collar felt hot and he gulped down the bile that threatened to rise. The third thing he noticed was that a perfectly rectangular hole was cut into her abdomen where one surely should not be, leaving it open and exposed, the skin peeled back like a book cover. The fourth thing was that there was nothing inside her empty exposed ribcage but a few yards of folded and coiled intestines.

  He yanked a handkerchief from his pocket, shoved it into his face, and raced from the room. He barely made it outside before he vomited over the side of the stoop, nearly splashing the copper.

  “You all right, sir?” asked the uniformed man as Leopold heaved once more.

  Leopold wiped his lips, held tight to the railing, and breathed through his mouth. He’d seen a great deal in his young life, but he had never seen anything quite so vile.

  He steadied himself and took a breath. “Yes, constable. I’m quite…recovered.” He tucked the kerchief away and trudged back up the steps, down the corridor, and into the room once more. He had hoped the doctor would have covered the body, but she still lay exposed and torn apart. He braced himself and pushed forward.

  “You look green, Kazsmer,” said Woodbine. “You all right now?”

  “I think so,” he said, voice unsteady.

  Thacker gestured toward the corpse. “Is that your assistant, Leopold?”

  Leopold nodded. “Yes. She…she never arrived for rehearsal or for the show.”

  “See the precise cuts,” said the physician, moving his finger a few inches above the incised flesh. Leopold winced, but could easily see the many layers of the epidermis at its edge. “Very precise.”

  “Was she alive at the time?” Leopold surprised himself by asking it aloud. Both Thacker and the doctor stared at him. He raised a brow. “I merely wondered.”

  “Yes, she was,” answered the doctor dourly.

  “But why then did she not thrash about? Struggle and foil such precision? I noticed she is not now nor was she bound.” He gestured to her wrists. “No markings.”

  Woodbine shook his head. “Drugged, no doubt. God willing. I will know more when I get her to the laboratory. She may have felt nothing. But her face…”

  They all looked. She wore an astonished face, eyes still wide open, mouth slack as if caught in a soundless scream.

  “She was aware,” said the doctor. “It’s horrific.”

  “Was she violated?” asked Thacker, handkerchief over his mouth. He was pale as Leopold felt.

  “I made a cursory inspection,” said the physician, his white thick brows lowered, nearly obscuring his shadowed eyes. “But I found no evidence of that. The skin of the abdomen was incised, the organs were removed with skill, and she was left to die. Indeed, without these vital organs there was no question of a swift death, not to mention the shock and loss of blood. But…under the circumstances, the latter was the least of it.”

  “Quite,” said Leopold, feeling suddenly exhausted. “What are the missing organs?”

  “Heart, lungs, spleen. The stomach was also removed but was left over there.” He pointed toward a splotch of red in a corner by the hearth where the aforesaid organ appeared to have been tossed, discarded. “I have already collected it,” said the doctor.

  “The next question, of course,” said Leopold, wiping the back of his neck with a clean handkerchief, “is why would someone do this?”

  Woodbine tossed the sheet back to cover her. It was a relief not to look at the expression on her face. “The work of an evil criminal mind,” said Woodbine. “I am not versed in such devilry. That I leave to Scotland Yard. Or to God’s vengeance.”

  “Her sister told me she had a new gentleman friend.”

  “Oh?” said Thacker. “And his name?”

  “She never said. Said he was an older gentleman.”

  “I suppose I can talk to the sister when she arrives.” Thacker pulled Leopold aside. “We’ve seen this before, you know. The Yard has records, photographs.” Even as he said this, a man in a black coat and carrying a large camera on a tripod, bustled through. He looked around, caught sight of Thacker, and tipped his hat. Pale, he stepped carefully over the blood, set his tripod down at the foot of the table, swallowed a few times, and set to work.

  “What are you saying, Thacker? That Scotland Yard has dealt with this murderer before?”

  “It has all the earmarks of someone we had hunted not too long ago.”

&n
bsp; Leopold frowned. “The Ripper,” he whispered.

  Thacker nodded solemnly.

  “But he hasn’t killed in years.”

  “But it’s the same modus operandi. Young girl, eviscerated with precision. When this hits the papers…”

  “As I recall, the Ripper’s victims had been prostitutes, women of loose morals. Rose was no such thing.” But even as he said it, something else was gnawing at the back of Leopold’s senses, making him uncomfortable as if something was crawling over his skin. He reached into his coat and drew out a pair of brass spectacles. To most, they looked like ordinary glasses, with smaller, thicker glass except for the extraordinary addition of other colored lenses. These were on their own stalks with hinges, splaying from the outer frame like antennae.

  Leopold put on the spectacles and looked about the room through the plain glass. He flipped another clear pair of lenses over those which served to magnify.

  There were bloodied smudges on the floor and Leopold bent over to peer at them.

  “They might be footprints.” Thacker’s voice startled him, so concentrated was he on his inspection. “But they go nowhere,” Thacker went on. “They merely go into the next room and then stop. But they don’t even look like normal prints.” They were scattered and looked very much like the pattern of footprints yet left no shape of shoes.

  Leopold followed them into the next room as Thacker mentioned. It wasn’t until the magician flipped two more red lenses before his eyes that they took form. Not shoes, no. But one large bare foot with long toes and one…hoof. A cloven hoof.

  He flipped the lens back and forth, just to be certain. Yes, the whole floor was pocked with the set of foot and hoof prints, even going up the wall. But none of the marks were human.

  His uneasy stomach completely forgotten, Leopold searched around the room and suddenly looked up. A small winged daemon sat high in the corner on a wardrobe, giggling.

  Leopold sucked in his breath and tore off the glasses. The daemon was invisible again. Turning to Thacker he gestured back out the door. “Have you checked the stairwell? Looked for blood?”