Spring-heeled Jack and the President's Ring

By D. L. Mackenzie

Phineas Magnetron is an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor and former Union soldier whose war injury has unaccountably bestowed upon him a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. No stranger to peril and derring-do, Phineas is asked to join a secret organization of crime fighting adventurers by none other than Society founder, Dr. Yngve Hogalum.

Traveling the globe in their Luftigel electric airship, Phineas Magnetron and his Hogalum brothers encounter mistrustful policemen, mentally ill criminals, wood-craving aliens, a witch doctor, a mad oracle, and a cross-dressing female matador, among many others. However, this "steam dream team" always manages to triumph over impossible odds and improbable obstacles as they preserve order in a disorderly world—with all the Steam Age weird science they can muster.

The Magnetron Chronicles is a serialized steampunk tale re-envisioning the future of generations past with all the breathless melodrama and tumult of that Victorian-era pulp fiction staple, the "penny dreadful." The narrative harks back to the grandiose style of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but gently satirized with a sprinkling of purposeful anachronisms, double entendres, tongue-in-cheek inventions, and droll Twainian humor. Adapted from "The Secret Journals of Phineas J. Magnetron," a web serial characterized by short chapters with cliffhanger endings, the story builds chapter by chapter, volume by volume, as quirky new characters join the fray and perplexing new mysteries and situations arise.

The Magnetron Chronicles is a planned 12-volume series of novelette-length volumes. In this second volume, the Hogalum Society is drawn into political and supernatural intrigues as they investigate the disappearance of President Grant's West Point ring. Their investigation becomes intertwined with the mystery of Spring-heeled Jack, the shadowy terror of England, and takes them from Calais to London, and back to America for a bizarre encounter with the notorious General Southwick.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. L. Mackenzie
• Release date: May 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476007984

D. L. Mackenzie

D. L. Mackenzie pounds on a computer somewhere in the desiccated cultural wilderness of Phoenix, Arizona. When he's not writing or more gainfully employed elsewhere, he enjoys hiking the valley's surrounding mountains, traveling, listening to obscure music, and performing unremarkable household chores with his hyperactive wife. He has a love/hate relationship with American politics and is known to bore and annoy anyone within earshot with his radically sensible political ideas. He has written scads of scandalously intemperate opinion pieces and a short story or two, but remains smitten with classic fiction by such authors as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. His new (2012) series "The Magnetron Chronicles" brings eccentric inventor Phineas J. Magnetron out of mothballs for new tongue-in-cheek neo-Victorian adventures in the heady Age of Steam.

Book preview

The Magnetron Chronicles, Volume 2:

SPRING-HEELED JACK AND THE PRESIDENT'S RING

By D. L. Mackenzie

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

D. L. Mackenzie on Smashwords

Spring-heeled Jack and the President's Ring

Copyright © 2002-2013 by D. L. Mackenzie

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This electronic book is licensed for your individual enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. All fictional characters portrayed are completely fictional and any similarity to real people living or dead is unintended and purely coincidental. Events portrayed may include real historical figures, but since the events themselves are fictional, any statements or actions by those historical figures may also be understood to be fictional.

* * * * *

All contents copyright © 2002-2013 by D. L. Mackenzie. All rights reserved.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1~ Magnetron Reads All About It

Chapter 2 ~ Magnetron Satisfies his Curiosity

Chapter 3 ~ Magnetron Unravels a Ruse

Chapter 4 ~ Magnetron Takes to the Skies

Chapter 5 ~ Magnetron Flies Non-Stop

Chapter 6 ~ Magnetron Gets an Earful

Chapter 7 ~ Magnetron Encounters the Absurd

Chapter 8 ~ Magnetron and the Fighting Toms

Chapter 9 ~ Magnetron and the Dinner Theater

Chapter 10 ~ Magnetron and the Puzzling Pieces

Chapter 11 ~ Magnetron and the Black Obi

Chapter 12 ~ Magnetron Digs Deeper

Chapter 13 ~ Magnetron and Compost

Chapter 14 ~ Magnetron Meets Mangaliku

Chapter 15 ~ Magnetron's Rude Awakening

Chapter 16 ~ Magnetron Returns to America

Chapter 17 ~ Magnetron and the General

Chapter 18 ~ Magnetron Parries

Chapter 19 ~ Magnetron's Masquerade

Chapter 20 ~ Magnetron Feels the Heat

Chapter 21 ~ Magnetron in Motion

Epilogue ~ Magnetron's Black Presage

Afterword

Historical Background Notes

About The Magnetron Chronicles

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Prologue

In the previous volume of The Magnetron Chronicles, Phineas Magnetron has defied his brothers in the secret society of crime-fighting adventurers known as the Hogalum Society, embarking on a speculative emprise to give new life to his dead mentor and Society founder, Dr. Hogalum. Reunited once again with his Hogalum brothers, Magnetron is being drawn into compelling new mysteries: Was Dr. Hogalum's death truly an accident, or was he the unwitting victim of foul play? What has become of Anders, Magnetron's faithful servant? And what is the nature of the next mission of the fabled Hogalum Society?

In this second volume of Magnetron's journals, many questions are answered, but still more are raised. As the story opens, Phineas Magnetron is preparing to visit Dr. Glockenholz, one of the two men to last see Dr. Hogalum alive, unaware that his investigation will soon be disrupted by a new Hogalum Society mission. Nevertheless, some clues will fall into place in a most unexpected way in this thrilling continuation of the only known historical account of these brave, uncompromising, and unconventional heroes: The Magnetron Chronicles.

Chapter 1~ Magnetron Reads All About It

Even now, nearly twenty-five years afterward, the heartbreak of those horrific black words thrums anew, a cackling, bilious affront to my life’s work.

As I was once a voracious reader of newspapers, I was not merely keen on keeping abreast of current affairs but was in fact fearful that critical knowledge might escape me should I fail to feed this craving. On extended journeys I often found myself yearning for dispatches from the world around me, and was known to embark on lengthy discursions in search of any reputable periodical. During lengthy periods of deep occupation in such absorbing matters as I have described in the previous volume of these journals, I regretfully eschewed reading apart from those materials containing information directly pertinent to the matter at hand. And yet the appetency persisted, as did the peculiar anxiety that some occurrence requiring my attention would pass unnoticed. In this I would not be disappointed, as my abstract anxiety would soon take terrifyingly concrete form.

Now, in the case of Dr. Hogalum’s death, I knew that the truth I sought would most certainly not be found in newspapers, as their combined reportage of that sad event had been utterly refuted by the good doctor’s own first-hand account of it. I would have to investigate this matter myself. As previously arranged, I made ready to travel by rail to visit Dr. Wilhelm Glockenholz, who was not merely Dr. Hogalum’s physician, but one of the two men present when he died.

Before purchasing my ticket to Richmond, I was obliged to question the ticket agent about Anders’ trip approximately one month