Befogged, a Steampunk Short Story

(for those of you who bought my Indulge collection a few years ago – it’s no longer available, sorry – you may remember this story)

Nate Everett turned up the collar of his coat, tugged down the brim of his hat and looked enviously at the dandified fellow across the park who’d had the sense to wear a dashing dirigible pilot’s scarf. Not that Nate wanted to be dashing or emulate the idiocy of the daredevil pilots, but he’d discovered that England was cold and London’s pea-soupers were hideous. A scarf was a darned fine idea. He coughed into his gloved hand and cursed his decision to turn private detective. He could be dozing in a warm law office back in New York.

But the Civil War had interrupted his life as it had so many others. He’d lost more friends than he cared to count to its horrors. After leading cavalry charges into the mouth of hell, there was no way he could return to his fledgling legal career.

So here he was, lurking in a London park and on the watch for the handover of the stolen round-the-corner gun blueprints that his client had hired him to recover.

Mist rose from a small pond in the center of the park. Ducks quacked invisibly within the shroud of fog, the tendrils of which reached out to twine around stately oak trees and bare, thorny rose bushes. Nate knew they were rose bushes: he’d stumbled off the path and snagged his brown wool trousers on one.

Inside his scuffed cowboy boots, his toes were turning slowly to ice. He wriggled them, trying to promote a flow of blood. What he really needed was a brisk walk or better yet, to be inside somewhere in front of a roaring fire.

The appetizing aroma of roasted chestnuts carried on the fog towards him. The dandy was sitting contentedly on a park bench, cracking open the nuts, eating the sweet meat and discarding the shells.

From Nate’s left came a faint, rhythmic squeak that grew louder and gradually added an echo of footsteps until a perambulator burst out of the shifting fog.

The perambulator dwarfed the nursemaid pushing it. The contraption was the size of a pony and in place of the usual wicker frame, solid steel bars crisscrossed. It had to weigh a ton. Brass gleamed dully at its joints and black oil cloth enclosed the whole. The ostentatious display proclaimed the importance of the babe inside.

Except, surely this was not the weather for a promenade.

The nursemaid smiled as she caught him watching. A typical English lass, her fine fair skin and red-blonde hair showed in the gap between the perambulator’s high handle and oil cloth hood. She wore a heavy cape with the hood pulled up, but it was insecurely fastened and showed an admirable figure clothed in dark grey.

“Good afternoon, sir.” She paused beside him, jiggling the perambulator back and forward. “A terrible day, isn’t it?”

She had a Londoner’s ready friendliness.

He leaned forward to see the baby, but a veil of dark fabric defeated him. “I wouldn’t have thought it any weather for a little one.”

Her pretty pink mouth twisted in agreement. “This one has a horror of a grandma, don’t you, ducky? Fresh air whatever the weather. But I make sure he’s all warm and snug.”

She seemed willing to stand chatting with him all day, and flirting with a nursemaid would be a useful cover for his presence in the park. He smiled at her. “The kid’s lucky to have you.”

“Robbie is a perfect love.” She looked around the park, her gaze dwelling on the dandy occupying the park bench.

Assertive London women were quite capable of shooing away a man and claiming a park bench or anything else they wanted. Since Nate needed the dandy to stay precisely where he was—in plain view—he sought to distract the young woman. “I’m Nate Everett.”

“An American.” She dimpled at him. “I recognized you by your funny talk.”

He grinned at her. From his perspective, it was her jaunty, unfamiliar accent that sounded foreign. “Would you be willing to listen to more of my funny talk? Miss…?”

“I’m Alice.”

“Pleased to meet you, Alice.” But his attention was distracted. The fog was thickening and there were footsteps coming up behind them. Furtive footsteps that scurried, then slowed, then veered off the path to be muffled by the grass before hurrying back onto the gravel.

Nate shifted casually.

A middle-aged man appeared in glimpses through the fog. He was dressed in faded black, like a clerk, and blended in with the dreary weather. His head jerked up as he spied the dandy on the bench and he plunged two steps off the path before pausing and looking suspiciously in all directions.

“Have you ever been to a Wild West show, Miss Alice?”

She giggled.

Heaven bless the coy laughter of a flirting maid: the clerk’s nervous gaze passed over them, dismissive.

“I’ve seen one of them shows. The knife thrower’s lady assistant was ever so brave. I could hardly bear to look.”

The clerk sat on the bench beside the dandy. Their backs were to Nate, but he saw the newcomer’s shoulders move. He was reaching into his coat.

“Would you like to see another trick?” Nate readied the rope coiled within his leather coat sleeve.

“Ooh yes.” Alice jiggled the perambulator faster.

The clerk stood to leave.

Nate pulled the release cord on his sleeve. The thin, strong rope coil fell into his hand, and as he’d practiced, the loop of the rope flew through the air and settled around the dandy’s shoulders. Nate pulled and the dandy kicked desperately but found himself pinned to the bench.

“Help! Thieves!” the clerk bleated.

Hypocrite, Nate thought, but he had no time for more. The dandy was proving unexpectedly strong, and his eel-like wriggles meant Nate had to act fast before he escaped. Hauling on the rope, Nate ran to the bench.

The clerk yelped and ran. He made it three steps from the bench before a sound like a child’s firecracker exploded on the path behind Nate. An unidentified projectile hurtled past him and thudded into the clerk’s chest, knocking him onto his back.

Staying focused, but determined to prevent any misunderstanding, Nate pulled his knife and pressed the blade to the dandy’s throat, just below the ear, which was the only skin the fashionable pilot’s scarf left exposed.

The dandy ceased struggling.

The nursemaid ran forward, her skirts hiked high to reveal solid boots.

“It’s all right, Miss Alice.” Nate slipped his hand in the fellow’s coat and located the rustle of blueprints. “This gentleman has something that belongs to a friend of mine.”

“Indeed.” There was a crisp note to her voice.

Nate glanced up.

Miss Alice stood with one foot on the clerk’s chest and a pistol held competently in her right hand. The pistol wasn’t, quite, pointing at Nate, but its message was clear. She was mistress of the situation.

He released the dandy and stepped back two paces. Everyone knew pistols lacked accuracy over a distance. Whereas he could throw his knife…at a nursemaid?

Her pistol stayed pointed at the dandy. “Gerard, I should have guessed it would be you.”

“Mais oui, ma belle.” Gerard, the dandy, shrugged out of the lasso. “I am the courier par excellence.”

“Is there any point asking who you’re working for?” Alice asked.

Nate frowned. He disliked being ignored, especially by a beautiful and dangerous lady. He restored the knife to its ankle sheath. “Since the two of you are old friends, would you mind exchanging prisoners, Miss Alice?”

She frowned down at the man under her foot. “And why would you want Elias Duff, Mr. Everett?”

Interesting. She knew the clerk’s name—and in naming him, confirmed his identity as the thief.

“When Duff stole the blueprints from his employer, my client had already purchased them.”

“Ah, a matter of justice. Stand up, Duff.”

“Please, miss,” the small man whimpered.

“I wouldn’t precisely say we’re friends, Lady Alice and I,” Gerard began. “Sir, if you could see your way to…”

But Nate had had enough. He gripped the dandy by his scarf and collar, hauling him up. The man stumbled into him and Nate pushed him towards Miss Alice.

While the thieving Duff was still unwillingly scrambling to his feet, Gerard staggered close to Miss Alice and her pistol. His arm moved.

“Atishoo! Hades and hog swill. Atishoo!” She sneezed.

Gerard dashed into the nearest, thickest bank of fog.

Miss Alice sneezed three times in quick succession, then blew her nose determinedly. “A pepper bomb. An old but effective ploy. We must hurry.”

“Stay where you are.” Nate collared Duff before he, too, sidled into the fog.

“How important is he to you?” She indicated Nate’s dreary prisoner.

“I’m not contracted to produce him, but I can’t abide thieves.”

“Understandable. However, in this instance you may want to apply rough justice. Say, throw him into the pond.” She stuffed her handkerchief into a pocket and unclasped her cape. With a flap of the fabric, she swung it inside out over her shoulders, enveloping herself in grey rather than navy and merging into the fog. “I could do with your assistance in recapturing Gerard.”

“I’m sorry I let your prisoner escape,” Nate said, gritting his teeth. It was galling, but true. Her prisoner was still here. It was his prisoner that had escaped.

“I’m sure you’ll be sorrier yet.” Her voice floated back as she walked up the slight incline to the perambulator waiting on the path. “Gerard picked your pocket before he ran. He has your client’s blueprints.”

Nate slapped his pockets. “Damnation.” The blueprints were gone.

So was Duff. The brown man took Nate’s moment of inattention and ran for his life.

The day just got worse and worse.

Up on the path, Miss Alice pulled a lever on the perambulator. Something twanged, then a series of creaks accompanied the transformation of the infant vehicle. The hooded cover collapsed and the oilskin sides retracted, revealing a rectangular steel box on wheels.

Nate squinted. There was a faded sign on the box, ‘Tip Top Timing’.

From inside the contraption, Miss Alice extracted a heavy, green canvas apron. “Here, put this over your coat. You’ll be less remarkable as a Tick Tock Man. Londoners aren’t used to wild men in fringed leather coats.”

He could take offence at her mockery of his coat or he could accept the apron and the offer of joining forces.

The travelling repairers of the city’s many automata were a common enough sight. Their clockwork chimes played the annoying tune that announced their profession. Da, da dee-da. Householders and shopkeepers would then bring out their broken automata, be it kitchenalia or pickpocket-finger-slicers, for repair.

A Tick Tock Man with his barrow and his best girl wouldn’t be looked at twice. It was the perfect disguise.

Nate shrugged the apron over his head.

***

Alice released the brake on QV’s modified barrow and pushed forward.

“Allow me.” The American’s gloved hand nudged hers aside—or tried to.

She tightened her grip.

“Ahem.”

He could ahem all he liked. QV would chop her head off—metaphorically speaking—if she allowed anyone else to pilot the specially designed barrow. The thing could be lethal.

“We’ll have to gamble,” she said. “There are two coffee houses close by.”

“As much as I’d like to get out of this fog.” He easily matched step with her. “I don’t think we have time for coffee.”

She snorted. “Gerard always waits in the nearest coffee house to check that he’s thrown off any pursuit. No one has ever managed to follow him back to wherever it is he resides. I intend to change that, today.”

“No offence, Miss Alice, but I’m not waiting to follow the man. As soon as I sight him, I’m retrieving the blueprints.”

“Of course.” She was counting on Mr. Everett’s straightforward, muscular approach. He was a fine figure of a man. A good ally. “I believe we’ll find Gerard at the Hooded Owl. It is the coffee house nearest the chestnut vendor and it has two entrances, unlike its competitor’s narrow hole-in-the-wall premises. Blast this fog!” She switched on the barrow’s fog lamp and the eerie green pierced the swirling grey wall for about three feet. It was sufficient to keep the barrow on the path. She didn’t want to think of how hard it would be to tug it out of soft sand if it strayed. QV kept promising a go-anywhere vehicle, but had yet to deliver the plans to Smithy.

“That is an amazing contraption,” Mr. Everett muttered.

She liked his alertness despite the shrouding, muffling fog, and she had to admit that it felt nice to have a tall man walking close and protective. Somewhere deep inside her independent soul something woke up, stretched and smiled. She moved an inch closer to his side so her cape brushed the fringes of his remarkable coat.

“All right, Miss Alice.” A note of command entered Mr. Everett’s drawl. “I’ve been patient, but I’d like to know who Gerard is and who you are. There’s no baby in this contraption and I reckon you’re no nursemaid.”

Alice had been braced for questions and she was prepared to answer them. The price of an alliance was trust. “Gerard is a courier. He could be French or Swiss or even English. He works for anyone and is as elusive as a ghost. Whoever wants the blueprints Duff stole hired Gerard to deliver them.”

“And you want to know who that person is?” Mr. Everett prompted.

She hesitated, but a trust half-given was worth little. “Not particularly. My interest is Gerard himself. As I said, I wish to know where he resides.”

“So you’re using me to flush him out?” The American was sharp.

“Yes.”

“Fair enough.”

They walked in silence a minute or two till they reached the park gate.

“But you haven’t told me who you are, Miss Alice.”

Even with the fog, the coffee house was no distance from here. Alice summarized. “I am a Lady in Waiting. Queen Victoria has many advisers, but they inform her of what they wish her to know.”

“How they want her to act,” Mr. Everett said.

Alice nodded. “So my queen started her own network of information gatherers.”

“Her Ladies in Waiting.” He stopped and stared at her. “Gerard called you Lady Alice.”

“My father is an earl. He wanted me to marry advantageously to restore the family fortunes, which my brother would then gamble away. I preferred to commit myself to serving Queen Victoria and my country.” She fidgeted with the barrow, switching off the fog lamp that might attract attention. She was cross with herself for sharing her personal story. Such intimacies went well beyond professional confidences. “The coffee house is around the corner. The fog should work to our advantage, finally. Its second entrance is down a narrow alley. I’ll point it out to you. I’ll use the barrow to block the front door. You can retrieve the blueprints from Gerard. Then when you release him, I’ll follow.” There was, after all, a limit to the information she’d trust Mr. Everett with. She bit off further confidences and started rattling towards the coffee house.

“I don’t like the idea of you trailing a desperate man in this confounded fog.”

“Gerard isn’t desperate. He’s a businessman.”

“A businessman whose livelihood is threatened by your persistent pursuit. I’ll go with you.”

“That will not be necessary.” She squashed down her warm feeling at his concern. “Although it is good of you to offer. Now, hush. This is the coffee house and there is the alley.”

The yellow light of whale oil lamps shone in the bay window and reflected off the fog that pressed in. Within the coffee house, only the blurred silhouettes of its customers were visible. Out on the street, passers-by loomed suddenly out of the fog to vanish again within a few steps. A clockwork fiddler at the door of the gambling house opposite scratched a ragged polka, the notes falling flat.

“Two minutes.” Mr. Everett shed the canvas apron and moved silently into the fog. In the blink of an eye, his shadowed form disappeared into the mouth of the alley.

Alice breathed shallowly of the thick air heavy with coal smoke. Try as she would, her pulse insisted on sky rocketing with the excitement of imminent action. She pushed the barrow forward and positioned it across the coffee house’s doorway, swiping the magnet within her left glove over the hidden mechanism that locked the barrow’s wheels.

One store away, outside the grocer’s, a sturdy housewife stood on the step and watched Alice with bored curiosity.

Alice angled her body to hide the pistol that was a familiar and comforting weight in her right hand. She had to make the attempt to capture Gerard look authentic and she had to make him discard his usual practice of hiding out in coffee houses. He had to have a reason to run straight home.

“Sir!”

“I protest such violence.”

“What on earth?”

The startled and outraged male voices within the coffee house blended with the thud of boots, scrape of chairs and a cut-off shriek.

The bored housewife trotted down into the street.

Alice smiled. She’d known Mr. Everett would be effective.

The next instant, Gerard rocketed through the doorway and rebounded off the barrow blocking his path. “Bloody hell. Lady Alice!” His panicked blue eyes met hers. She had a moment to register the blood seeping from a cut at the corner of his mouth, then he turned his head sharply to register the threat coming up behind him.

Alice raised her pistol

But evidently Mr. Everett scared Gerard more than her pea-shooter for Gerard ignored it and scrambled up, onto the barrow. He’d be betting on her unwillingness to shoot a man in cold blood.

She pulled the trigger.

Then she backed off hastily.

Gerard tumbled down the far side of the barrow, falling onto the cobbled street.

The capsule she’d plugged him with exploded.

QV did have a love for explosions.

Bright yellow dye splattered the street and a whiff of a smell so pungent, so overwhelmingly rotten and vile wafted toward the coffee house door and set the customers into hurried retreat.

Alice hastily unlocked the brakes on the barrow and pulled it back.

Mr. Everett exited as the coffee house proprietor slammed the door on the stench and on his troublesome customers.

The watching housewife drew her skirts away and, basket bobbing, hurried off.

“Do you have the blueprints?” Alice asked.

Mr. Everett patted his coat. “Yes, thank you.”

They observed Gerard.

The man sat on the cobbles looking stunned. His face dripped a saffron dye that not even the fog could dim and he frankly stank.

“I’d fetch him for you,” Mr. Everett said. “But to be honest, I don’t want to touch him.”

Nonetheless, the American’s drawl acted galvanically on Gerard. The dandy swiped his long pilot’s scarf over his face, then dropped its glaring yellow mass onto the street as he stood. He wavered a moment on his feet.

“Be sensible, Gerard,” Alice said. “Tell me who your client is and I’ll take you somewhere to clean up. The dye is terribly staining.”

But Gerard was gone. Hunched over and with his hat brim tucked low he darted down the foggy street. Muttered curses from the people he bumped into marked his progress.

“Leave the barrow, here,” Mr. Everett said. “It’ll slow us down.”

A messenger boy’s whistle rent the air.

“Yes!” Alice cried. She turned and hugged the nearest person, who happened to be Mr. Everett.

You had to give him credit for fast reflexes. He instantly hugged her back. “Why are we so happy? This place stinks and Gerard is getting away.”

“No, he’s not. That whistle means Maryanne is on his tail. He won’t notice her. She impersonates a housewife perfectly. Everything worked out just wonderfully, even if I had to modify the plan to take into account your presence. I knew he’d underestimate us ladies.”

Stinking and glowing yellow, Gerard had to go to ground fast. That meant, he had to run home. They had him!

“You devious angel,” Mr. Everett said admiringly as the details of her plan clearly unrolled for him. “You set him up.”

“Absolutely.” She beamed at him.

“Lady Alice, you are a delight. May I have the pleasure of your company for luncheon?”

She studied his face, scandalously close to her own.

The firm mouth twitched, but his eyes were a warm, intent hazel. He wanted her to say yes.

A man like him, a man exciting, ingenious and handsome could be very important in her life.

“Mr. Everett, you may.”

***

If you’re interested in reading more of my steampunk stories, you might want to try The Icarus Plot or Clockwork Gold.