The Pinocchio Factor: The Alexander Legacy, #2

By Sophronia Belle Lyon

Oliver Twist attends a costume ball that ends with parliamentary 
candidate Trevor Newsome disappearing days before the election. 
Pinocchio, the Blue Fairy, and Puss in Boots occupy a Swiss castle 
where immortality may lie hidden. When Long John Silver arrives, 
Oliver has to do some fast thinking to protect more than just his own 
life from the pirate who says he only cares about rescuing his daughter.

Marooned on Crown of Thorns Island, Oliver must defeat enemies old
and new and deal with a tentacled monster and a human one.
Child slaves who think they are going to school create automatons
for a mastermind who plans to eliminate the Legacy Company's
interference once and for all. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Findley Family Video
• Release date: Aug 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513018782

Book preview

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Praise for The Alexander Legacy Series

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Sophronia Belle Lyon gives us a great story. I heartily recommend it. ...If you sit down with this book, sit back and let it entertain and tell its tale, I can’t imagine you being disappointed.

Sophronia you’ve done it again.…Keeps you guessing with a wonderful message of hope woven throughout. Loved getting to know the awkward Oliver a little bit better. Keep it up.

Not my usual genre, but I really enjoyed…Unique characters and excellent writing kept me turning the pages. I think this may be a classic unto itself…

Favorite characters, young and old, from all around the world ... I am visually overwhelmed…exciting and there is always something happening on every page.

…Wondering what will happen in the next installment … Delightful addition to the body of Christian fiction, and will be a very… fun read for anyone who enjoys that genre.

"…The inventions are fun, the characters memorable, the mystery engaging and the writing enjoyable.…

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The Pinocchio Factor

The Alexander Legacy Book Two

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by

Sophronia Belle Lyon

© 2013 Sophronia Belle Lyon

Published by Findley Family Video

The Pinocchio Factor: The Alexander Legacy Book Two

© 2013 Findley Family Video

No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. Exception is made for short excerpts used in reviews.

Findley Family Video

Speaking the truth in love.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons living or dead is coincidental

Scripture references are from The Holy Bible: The King James Version, public domain.

Note to the Reader:

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Readers may or may not recognize some of the literary characters in this series. Readers who do recognize some/all of them may note that some of the character portrayals, ages, and other details may not be strictly accurate from the standpoint of when the stories were first written, the timeline for how the books they come from would relate to each other, and just plain reality. (For example, Doctor Moreau from H.G. Wells’ book The Island of Doctor Moreau is said to have died on his island, but I have changed the ending of his story for my purposes here, as well as that of Alec d’Urberville from Tess of the d’Urbervilles.)

I have modified characters to make them fit my story, but I hope I am at least true to the spirit of the great 1800s classics this work was inspired by. If you have not read The Alexander Legacy Book One: A Dodge, a Twist, and a Tobacconist, or just need a refresher course on the main members of the Legacy Company, they are briefly described in the Afterword.

Book Two of the Alexander Legacy Series takes up the story from the point of view of Oliver Twist, as the first one did from Prince Florizel of Bohemia’s perspective. It also goes back a little in time from the ending point of the previous book. Join our Company members atop the Bronze Cascade Hotel. The time is shortly after the end of the battle in the Clockwork Menagerie Garden.

Chapter One

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London’s lights glittered all around below us, peeking in and out of the dissipating smoke from the cannon fire and the explosion of the Dragon’s Maw, the pirate airship that had crashed on the banks of the Thames below. I knew the name of the ship because Sluefoot Sue, that madly clever American cowgirl with a bronze clockwork Catfish submarine as big as a house, had sent a message up about finding a piece of the bow draped over the Catfish’s dorsal fin when she had surfaced after the battle.

I remembered what poor Gertie the washerwoman had said to me before she disappeared forever into the black hole of Dodge’s rampage. I pulled up the moving images on my tablet and played it back against a white sheet somebody had spread to protect some evidence or other. Grimy little Gertie grinned at me again.

‘Allo, lovey. Lookey you, tricked out loik Saint George! Goin’ t’ save this loidy fair from a dragon?

I stood in my mountaintop sculpture garden of bronze on top of the Bronze Cascade, my hotel in the heart of London, and wanted to feel more like Saint George, to imagine I really had slain the dragon and set everybody free. My creatures whirred and clicked through their preset clockwork-driven motions. We’d made them look as real as we could, my apprentices and I, and it was even niftier now that some of them walked about the garden like living things.

Now that it was quiet I could listen to the recirculating waterfalls flowing through their gold crystal and blue gaslit tracks. The building had bronze clockwork animals throughout, stags nodding, trout jumping out of streams, with fountains and bronze trees and bushes with every leaf and root etched in detail as real as we could engrave it.

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Why would you pay for a funeral for this man? Jessica Fagin advanced across the roof in the middle of the clockwork menagerie and stood with the body of Jack Dawkins between us. I had to give her credit for single-mindedness and composure in the middle of my animated garden and the mayhem just coming to an end there. It should have made sense to me that she was focused on her work. I’d been rapped more than once for focusing on a mechanical project that filled my head and not paying attention to the world around me. Rapped, literally, because back when I was ten and supposed to be picking oakum in the workhouse, I was already designing mechanicals, scratching diagrams in the work table with the separating tool, until the foreman came around and hit me across the knuckles with that rod he carried about.

Oliver Twist, get about your task! His voice still echoed in my mind, and my knuckles still ached with the memory. Nothing could stop me from planning mechanicals. I had to be putting together gears and cogs and sprockets and chains. Nothing could keep me from figuring out just what steam could make go. Turned out it could be lots and lots of things, with more occurring to me all the time. In fact, three or four were trying to crowd into the front of my thoughts as fast as I tried to crowd them out and concentrate on the here and now.

Jessica Fagin still stood there, looking at me, waiting. Some of the other Alexander Legacy Company were scattered about with constables, Scotland Yard inspectors, and hotel crew, trying to clean up the mess. More of them were down on the street and about the banks of the Thames, dealing with the crashed pirate airship. There were live prisoners and bodies aplenty, but I didn’t care much what became of them. I stared down at Jack Dawkins, whom I’d once called friend. Now I didn’t know what to call him.

I just want to, that’s all, I said, looking up at her. I had to look up at mostly everybody, but when I looked up at her I couldn’t help remembering Fagin, the fence who was our pickpocketing master. She certainly didn’t resemble that filthy old man. Jessica Fagin was a truly handsome woman, redhaired like Fagin had been, brown-eyed like he’d been, but she was so clean she squeaked, and dressed mighty fine, in sparkly blue and black and silver, and done up like a fairy-tale queen.

I want a regular funeral and service, like you did with Charley Bates, I said. Just the same. We’ll all be there, and whatever visitors come. That’ll be tomorrow night, right? I checked the time. After midnight again, was it? Well, this evening, anyway.

As you wish, Jessica Fagin nodded. The police have said they are not as yet finished with their investigation, so I cannot remove the body now.

I’m sorry, I should have thought about it being too soon to send for you. I just — I don’t want him lying there like that a moment longer than absolutely necessary. I’ll make sure you’re informed the minute they’re done with him. Have you brought your men and your cart? You can wait down in one of the hotel conference rooms, or leave your barrow there and go have supper in one of the dining rooms, or whatever you wish. You’re my guest.

She bowed again and departed. I dispatched a staff member to escort her down and make sure she was taken care of. After she was gone I stood there looking around at my menagerie again. I’d made everything here to be peaceful and glorifying to God. Yet over to one side my smashed clockwork stag lay, still steaming and clanking its legs as if it wanted to get up. I walked over, turned the shutoff lever, and sighed along with it as it went still.

Tod played Charon, helping the authorities ferry down the dead and the living. I had no intention of letting them drag any evidence of this battle through the hotel. I wanted to keep things peaceful for the guests if it was at all possible.

Most of the garden was still intact. The trees hid a lot of the destruction and the dead, actually. It was all quiet now, and could have been pretty, except that Jack Dawkins lay there right in front of me, staring up with the one good eye he had left. He was just as dirty as he’d always been. He was dressed almost the same way he’d been as a teenager at Fagin’s. A too-big overcoat with the sleeves rolled up lay spread open around him. A too-big top hat lay beside him. He’d grown some mutton-chop whiskers, but he looked so much the same to me. He’d always been a bulldog of a fellow, shoving his way through life and takin’ nuffink from naobody, nivver.

That ruin someone had made of his right eye was a horrible thing. I could see why he’d adopted the bronze goggles. It was like him to want a badge of honor, though, even if it was his own eyeball, as if it didn’t matter to him that someone had treated him so vilely. It was part of the thieves’ code, the law of the underworld, not to cry about anything that happened to you, but rather to pretend your life was a lark and you were the king of the mountain. Those trial transcripts of his day in court burned in my mind. He’d not had the lark he’d expected in prison. His mountain couldn’t have been anything better than a garbage heap.

You need not stand vigil over him, Twist. Prince Florizel of Bohemia came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. He looked so fine, even in his borrowed finery, outfitted in black velvet and gems as befitted a wealthy patron of Trevor Newsome’s MP campaign. He was always a soldier, though his black hair and beard had got a bit mussed with all the fighting and chasing that had gone on.

Alongside of him came Kera Mion, she as was once known as Visha Kanya, the Poison Maiden. She was our newest Legacy member, a mighty attractive Indian lady inclined to wear blue silk and neck chains and pretty handy with a broad flat sword she called a Khanda, carried strapped to her back. Florizel had charmed her away from Jack Dawkins’ service. It amazed me how she had become saved and jumped right in to be a faithful helper alongside of us. Rigid and proper Florizel had fallen in love with her just as I had with my Tatiana.

If you would have let me in on your plan, perhaps we could have spared him. But you have no cause to grieve over him. There is no childhood friend lying in his own blood before you. Ask your sweet little Tatiana if you doubt he deserved to go meet his maker. And remember what he did to you. Spare no pity for this dead monster.

He said it wasn’t him, Florrie. I shook my head stubbornly. Florizel was the sort to hide his emotions, maybe from his upbringing as Prince of Bohemia. But I’d never be the one to criticize him. He was the one to come to my rescue after that night when the world seemed like it ought to end. Someone had attacked and sodomized me. Florizel was the one to talk me back into this world and remind me of what I owed to Jesus Christ. Speaking of larks, it was hard to think of how I’d gone off in search of Professor Polidori as if it were an exciting adventure and found out it was a nightmare. It still pulled a shudder out of me.

D’you think that was what Jack meant — that someone else was dressed as him, and did the deed, so he’d get the blame? He said he’d been set up, as if he were blamed for things he never did. What if Kera was right when she said there could have been automatons dressed as him, or even another man, and he wasn’t guilty of all we thought he did?

Who is that lying there before you, Doctor Twist? Florizel could be almighty stern when he wished. He was at the top of his form just now, grey eyes flashing.

Jack Dawkins, I muttered.

Who kidnapped Madame Phoebe out of the backstage of your own theatre?

Well, he did, I admitted. But in a way it’s true that we set him up for that, Florrie. Langham dangled the bait Lady Phoebe said to set out for him.

Did anyone force him to come here? Florizel demanded. "Anyone put a gun to his head and say, ‘Drag that beautiful, good, innocent woman —’ He threw up his arm and indicated our leader, Phoebe Moore-Campbell. She stood under the clockwork moose and described the night’s events to a Scotland Yard detective. The moose seemed to nod in agreement. I wondered how I could notice that silly nodding moose and find something funny in a night so full of serious stuff. I saw how Lady Phoebe’s tall, blond husband Archie Campbell kept his arm close round her and remembered something I still needed to do, not funny, but surely a different kind of serious, tonight if possible, about my Tati and me.

But Florizel was still going on and I snapped back to listen to him. Did someone force him to drag Madame Phoebe out of the theatre and into one of your infernal bubbles to blast up here and escape in a pirate airship?

I choked back a laugh at Florrie’s description of my observation bubbles. I knew he’d hated his trips in them but I loved that hurtling sensation and seeing the artificial cave walls fly past, nestled in pillows and surrounded by a bright golden ball. Why I liked that mode of travel and got vertigo in my airship was anybody’s guess. Tod said it was because I never looked out and kept my nose buried in my tablet. Maybe that was it.

No, of course not, Florrie, and in my head I know you’re right. That’s Jack, certain-sure, and he did it all, or a lot of it. Maybe what he said to me at the last was just one more dodge, one more attempt to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. I just—I wonder why he let go of Lady Phoebe like he did instead of going on trying to drag her away. I wonder why he said it wasn’t him, instead of crowing like a cock over snatching Lady Phoebe? Seems like he would have taken the opportunity to punish me any way he could because he got such a harsh sentence and suffered so much in prison.

You bear no blame for what happened to him, Florizel insisted, making me look him in the eye. He made his choices. He lived his life. And he bore the consequences.

I just nodded. Florrie was always like that, never seeming to have any doubts or questions about things. His mind was a wonder to watch at work, not for making things like I do, of course. But he could listen to bits of clues that were like puzzle pieces dumped in a heap to anybody else. He’d sort ‘em out proper and say, Hey, presto, and they’d be put together as they ought to be. We’d all scratch our heads and say, How’d he know that?

Inspector, can we not have this thing removed? Florizel snapped at the Scotland Yard man in charge, gesturing at Jack’s body. The man bustled about to his sergeants, the sergeants barked a few minutes more, and then the inspector gave us a curt nod. I pulled out my tablet.

Langham, have Lady Fagin come up to remove the body, please, I said into it.

At once, sir, my hotel manager’s voice answered me. I slid the tablet back into my pocket and deliberately walked away from the body to meet the lift when it came up.

Oliver, you must get some rest, now, Lady Phoebe urged, caressing my face as she joined me beside the lift. She was looking a bit pale and her brown eyes had dark rings under them. Her thick black hair was all mussed over the shoulders of that lovely green satin and gold lace gown. Her crossbow was back to being a parasol and she sort of dragged it as if it were too heavy. Archie saw that and snatched it way from her. You and Tod and Sararati, too. You’ve all worked yourselves to death. The net to catch the Dodge-fish succeeded. It’s over.

Spring-heeled Jack said it wasn’t over, I argued.

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Chapter Two

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What about all that research we did into the Mechanicals School? What about Polidori? What about Switzerland?

Very well, it’s over for tonight, for you, she said with a smile. For once, you should be able to sleep, at least knowing that man who was never your friend will trouble you no more. Please, Oliver, try to make the gears stop turning and the steam stop hissing in your poor little head.

She ruffled my hair as if I were a little boy, and it made me realize my leather and bronze top hat was lost somewhere in the garden. I was about to say so, and excuse myself to go in search of it when Mowgli appeared with it in his hand and clapped it atop my head.

How he’d skinned out of his black silk jammies and turban that he’d worn to the concert and into that tiger skin loincloth of his so fast I’d never understand. I pulled the hat back off and checked the image-capture stone, but of course it was cracked, so I’d have to repair or replace it. All I could see in it was a faint, magnified reflection of my own blue eye. I sighed, and Lady Phoebe petted me again, tousling my blond hair some more. Her touch had a way of unruffling a fellow’s spirits, like I imagined my mother might have been able to do if she’d lived.

Give yourself permission to rest, Oliver. We will see by daylight what can be learned about all of those other things, and what we must concentrate on next.

I nodded. My airship appeared over the parapet and landed. It was so different from that double-bagged monstrosity, the Dragon’s Maw, sleek and ovoid; the compartmented air bag above made of gold leather and fitted into the woodgrained bronze passenger compartment and underbody. Portholes let people inside see all around. It had proved itself a lot more maneuverable than the bigger craft, even with the addition of the guns Tod and I had retrofitted. Still, I had seen some things I could adapt that might give me a larger ship that was still more streamlined.

I had thought Tod was done ascending from that River Styx of London’s street levels, until Jessica Fagin and her men emerged with the death cart for Jack. She was quite a woman — unflappable. Most folk didn’t look so composed after their first trip in my airship but she was just as calm as when she’d stepped off the lift. The two fellows, swathed in black up to the eyeballs, lifted Jack Dawkins’ body off the rooftop and set it atop the cart. They closed the curtains and trundled off to the airship.

Thank you, I said to her, digging in my coat pocket and pulling out a handful of bank notes. Without counting it I held it out to her. She looked at it without taking it.

I have not yet presented my bill, she demurred.

Good, I said. Don’t bother. I hate a mess of paperwork. If that isn’t enough, you can have more.

Do you even know how much you have given me? She began to straighten and sort the crumpled notes as she counted through it.

Two hundred and twenty pounds, I answered immediately. I had almost winkled a smile out of her. I could see it wriggling behind her lips but she kept it in check.

So that is what you keep as pocket change?

No, I keep around seven-fifty as pocket change, I shrugged. I just know by the feel how much I’ve pulled out.

It will be two hundred and eighty-five pounds, she said. But it is not —

I handed her the remainder before she could finish the sentence. Thanks. We’ll see you this evening.

You are a savant.

Yeah. Idiot savant’s what they called me in school, emphasis on the idiot.

She just bowed and departed into the airship.

You’ll see she gets back to the mortuary safely, right, Tod? I asked my pilot, who sat twitching his fox-tail whip against his spats as he tried to hold himself upright in the seat on the front of the airship.

Too right, Doc, he nodded. And then I’m off to the sack, and you better not be sayin’ there’s more to be done tonight, or may the powers save ya.

No more tonight, Tod, I grinned. I could see he was done in, his wiry red hair limp and his little black eyes bleary. He’d got the nickname Tod because of that foxlike look he had, but today he more resembled one of those dead fur wraps around a fine lady’s neck. Get your beauty sleep, but we’ll likely be off again soon, maybe to Switzerland.

Yeah, he grunted.

Say, give me a lift down, will you? I haven’t even had a look at that pirate airship. I want to see —

Her highness says I carry you nowhere, and we get to go to bed, doc, Tod growled, fixed his tan leather goggles into place, and lifted off in the airship. I turned around to see Lady Phoebe giving me a look almost as stern as the best Florizel could muster. I shrugged and signaled for the lift.

Down in the penthouse sitting room, I stood alone for a full minute, trying to think what I should do now. The big, fancy drawing room in the centre of the four penthouse suites got me a bit dizzy, drawing my eyes around the amber-glassed-in lift and garden area in the center. I’d had such fun making this waterfall, getting it to cascade around the lift without ever getting anybody wet. I stared down at the transparent flooring and almost went straight away to the next floor where I could access the main elevator and staircase. Something made me stop, though.

My brain was absolutely fogged with fatigue. We’d spent almost two weeks straight doing research on the Mechanicals School for the Gifted, Polidori’s brood of vipers, as Spring-heeled Jack had called them. When not at that, we were modifying the airship for weaponry and the bronze creatures in the rooftop garden to move and defend against the attack we knew would come. There had been fireworks, all right, when Jack Dawkins had kidnapped Lady Phoebe from that benefit concert for Trevor Newsome’s MP campaign down in the Grotto Theatre. Now there really didn’t seem to be anything left to do except sleep. Could I actually do that? Sleep?

Ollie…I almost jumped out of my skin. Tatiana slipped out from alongside the fieldstone fireplace and stood rather close to me, her dark eyes big and searching, her cloudy black hair a little messy, as if she’d been twisting and pulling it. Cinnamon and yeast were such good smells, and my Tati always filled my nose with them. Oh, Ollie, you look so tired. What happened? There was such a lot of noise on the roof.

She really had no idea about all that had gone on tonight? Uncle Vanya, the keeper of a little coffee shop and bakery by the same name, and his daughter, this sweet girl here with me, hadn’t gone to the concert, of course. I tried to make my brain work like Florizel’s and sort the jumble of events into a sensible story, but my brain was done being sensible, if it had ever been such. I stuck a hand in my pocket and felt a little box under the rest of the pound notes. I decided there was really only one thing I wanted to explain to Tati.

Tati, I know you’ve been worried about me, I began, and probably about us — I had to stop there because she burst out crying, just an awful flood of tears, and I had to hold her and pat her back and wait until all that slowed down some. I was so glad Tati was one person I didn’t have to look up at.

I thought — she started to say, but hiccupped, and I patted just a little harder. I wondered if Uncle Vanya and his rolling pin were anywhere about, but I hoped we were past his desire to bash in my head for touching his daughter. You have been working and working up there, not eating, not wanting to talk to anybody. I thought — that perhaps you were not healed at all, and that the thing that was done to you — That you were too hurt, and too sad to — to — She was doing more hiccupping than crying, now, but it was interfering with her talking too much for me to let her go on. So I kissed her, first on the forehead, then on the cheek, then on the lips, all the while with an eye on the shadows.

Still no Uncle Vanya or rolling pin, and Tati was getting calmer, and smiling more, and snuggling into my shoulder, fitting so nicely. I pulled the little box out of my pocket, opened it, and took out the ring I’d asked Lady Phoebe to help me pick out. I got hold of Tati’s soggy little hand and slipped the ring onto her finger. I wasn’t even sure which finger was the proper one, but when she saw the little white-gold butterfly with blue diamonds she didn’t seem to care. She started hiccupping again but threw her arms around me and snuggled a lot tighter.

Tati, please marry me, I whispered into her ear. But not tonight, or tomorrow, either, because I really think I can sleep now, for the first time in about ten years, and I think I’ll sleep rather a long time.

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Chapter Three

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The pirate airship got transferred to Nancy House in the early morning hours. My apprentices and staff there had apparently sent to my tablet some reports on their examination of the thing. I heard it chiming beside me on the nightstand now and then but I was not ready to be awake yet, even though it was nearly noon.

Nancy House was the training facility I’d set up a few years ago, just after I got out of undergrad school. The name was in memory of the prostitute who had found the courage to tell Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Grimwig evidences that helped me get free of Fagin the