The Lazarus Curiosity: Michael Magister & Phoebe Le Breton, #2

By Colin Edmonds

BAFFLED by a severed arm, dangling from the centre of a locked door in the Bank of England…

PANICKED by a satanic portrait painter, determined to disgrace the Royal family…

TERRORISED by a deadly gas, primed to wipe out the Government…

With great reluctance, what else can Superintendent William Melville of the Special Branch do but, once again, send for … THE MAGICIANS!

When not performing two sold-out shows every night, Music Hall Steampunk illusionists and consultants to Scotland Yard, slick-talking Michael Magister and the feisty Phoebe Le Breton, must solve the crime of the century, while saving the nation from a conclave of fiendish psychopaths led by the crazed renegade Jesuit known only as 'The Black Bishop'.

In the sequel to their acclaimed debut in 'Steam, Smoke & Mirrors', who dare Michael and Phoebe trust in this dark Victorian world of weird science, conspiracy and the occult?

Murder and malevolence, treachery and tragedy – all must surely be inevitable!

Especially when the Tarot predicts – DEATH.

"THIS IS A MUST FOR ANY STEAM PUNK JUNKIES... COLIN EDMONDS CAPTURES YOU FROM THE FIRST PAGE, HAVE JAR OF SUPER GLUE REMOVER HANDY.....YOU WONT BE ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN.... AND YOU'LL NEED TO SLEEP."  Joe Pasquale
           
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caffeine Nights Publishing
• Release date: Oct 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781910720844

Book preview

Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2017

Copyright © Colin Edmonds 2017

Colin Edmonds has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.

CONDITIONS OF SALE

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication – other than the obvious historical figures! – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published in Great Britain by

Caffeine Nights Publishing

4 Eton Close

Walderslade

Chatham

Kent

ME5 9AT

caffeinenights.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-910720-84-4

Cover design by

Mark (Wills) Williams

Everything else by

Default, Luck and Accident

Also by Colin Edmonds

~Steam, Smoke and Mirrors – Volume 1~

~The Windsor Curiosity~

A Steam, Smoke and Mirrors short story eBook

Dedicated to the courage and memory of two dear friends

Bobby Bragg 1953 – 2016

Paul Daniels 1938 – 2016

Thank you for the laughter

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

~THE LAZARUS CURIOSITY ~

THAT NIGHT

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THE NEXT DAY

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THE DAY AFTER

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THE DAY AFTER THAT

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THAT FINAL DAY

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A MONTH LATER

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ADDENDA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coming Soon

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My apologies for the delay in completing this follow up to the original ‘Steam, Smoke & Mirrors’. It was more to do with significant interruptions than simple inertia; but had it not been for the time, generosity and relentless badgering of the following advisers, consultants and friends, my ‘Steam Team’, the delay would have been far greater.

Darren Laws at Caffeine Nights is the most inspiring and supportive publisher imaginable and I am enormously grateful for the encouragement and faith he continues to show in ‘Steam, Smoke & Mirrors’. Angela Ryder, my eagle-eyed proof reader, whose friendship, and far greater knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammar, is a constant source of reassurance while I try to make sense of the Professor’s overwrought ramblings.

Sincere thanks also to the indefatigable Lorraine Surridge, who, along with her team of enthusiastic volunteers including Susan Goode, Derek Hooper and Jacqueline Bennett, at the Gerrards Cross Community Library in Buckinghamshire, has been such a magnificent supporter. Also, a big tip of the top hat to those multi-lingual genii, James Watts and Lisa Wheat who kindly ensured any baffling Latin tenses were eventually correct.

John Orchard, the keyboard king and ‘Steam, Smoke & Mirrors’ theme music composer, was one of the first to read the final draft of ‘The Lazarus Curiosity’ and offered sensible sound advice, as did Ric Sanders of Fairport Convention, who kindly set aside his violin to fiddle instead with his new reading device.

My American researcher, Annika Firn shared so much of her time and knowledge and, with Sherrie Firn, remains steadfast at the vanguard of the ‘Steam, Smoke & Mirrors’ cheer-leading campaign in the U.S.

Jackie Balchin’s support has been unstinting and, through her husband Charles, I am thrilled to maintain a tangible connection with one of my literary heroes, his father Nigel Balchin.

The British entertainers Debbie McGee and Joe Pasquale kindly shared their magical experience of the art and craft of stage presentation, ensuring my illusions never strayed too far from the realms of impossibility, and Denise Kelly proudly shared her research ensuring the memory of her great, great uncle, the Music Hall star Arthur Tinsley lives on.

Joan Prichard afforded me unlimited access to her late husband’s voluminous show business library, and if Peter didn’t possess a certain book, Abigail Williams knew that her late father Bob invariably did.

My gratitude to David Tyler and Geoffrey Posner, whose faith in the original notion goes without saying, but I want to say it anyway.

Finally, a huge thank you to Lucy and Mark, for their uncanny knowledge of all things digital, and understanding the all-consuming obsession this book required; and to Kathryn, for her calm patience and unflagging support, without which none of this would have been possible. They know they have my love. And your sympathy.

To the Steampunk community the world over: once again I hope I have done some justice to the genre we love.

steamsmokeandmirrors.com

Colin Edmonds 2017

~THE LAZARUS CURIOSITY ~

That’s better.

Now then. If you were gracious enough to read my first volume of memoirs, welcome back and you’ll know how we finished up last time. But if you didn’t read my first volume... and I do know who you are... here’s how we finished up last time:

Following that glorious morning of honesty and reminiscence with Constance Dill, Michael and Phoebe boarded the Steamo and chugged east, towards London, the great epicentre of the British Empire; the grand metropolis of horses, carts, industry, architecture, design, invention and Victorian era majesty. The new century was looming large and who knew what glories that would bring. Certainly Connie had convinced Michael and Phoebe that working with William Melville’s Special Branch, and making sense of the most bizarre mysteries of the age, would be a rewarding and exciting experience. Michael warmed to the idea of the reward and Phoebe was particularly attracted to the prospect of further excitement; the strange, the mysterious, the bizarre, solving the unfathomable, explaining the inexplicable. Yes, that would make a fascinating addendum to their careers on the stage of the Music Hall. As if it wasn’t enough being Michael Magister, the Industrial Age Illusionist and Phoebe, the Queen of Steam and Goddess of the Aethyr.

And, regarding this new diversion, there was one very puzzling peculiarity which Phoebe felt the need to address right there and then. She turned to the handsome, stylish, glib, brilliant, protective and utterly infuriating magician sitting next to her, and asked:

Michael. Who is President George W. Bush?

And so now we continue:

George W. what? Michael looked puzzled.

Bush. That was what you said.

I did?

Phoebe nodded. Back in the cottage. When we were talking with Connie. Following an immensely frustrating pause she really felt the need to snap: So, who is he?

Truthfully, Pheebs, I have no idea, Michael frowned and stared straight ahead. Seriously. I’ve never heard of such a man. But apparently... it’s not the first time I’ve mentioned his name.

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC Ocean, over in Colorado Springs, the night sky was cool and clear, a star gazer’s twinkling dream. Well, it was until the clouds, violent thunderous bubbling swirls of black and grey, tumbled in from the east. The atmosphere was suddenly heavy; ionised, sizzling with that sharp, bleachy smell of ozone. The spiteful fork of white lightning split through the air, stabbing down and striking the metal antenna on the green cupola.

The substantial single-storey barn shuddered, shaking loose fresh dust from the wooden rafters. Sparks fizzed from the thick-set, heavy-duty transformers either side of the room. Needles on white gauges danced and peaked. A crackling stream of white and purple power zapped from one side of the building to the other.

The slight man in the rumpled black suit looked up from the diagrammatic blueprint on his desk and sighed. In the midst of this vicious maelstrom of sharp light and deafening sound he actually sighed. "Now, Octopus? You think now is the most convenient time?"

With resignation he tossed his fountain pen onto the paperwork, straightened his tie and strolled to the centre of the barn. Above him, the effervescent arcs of energy made his scalp and face tingle, just as they had a dozen times before. The man swept back a curtain to reveal a trio of huge clear glass domes, each braced within green metal frames, topped with a copper cap and served by thick black cables, winding high and across to a tall grey-metal control cabinet. The uplink to the antenna lashed on the roof was trunked within a conduit of copper piping.

One dome contained a wooden chair. The man swung open the glass door, ducked inside, sat down and latched the door, shutting out the noise. Immediately he was bathed in deep warm yellow light, tracing his form from feet to head.

Only half a minute later, within one of the two domes opposite, the one over to the left, there was a splutter of fiery combustion. Then the image began to form. Stripes of sepia energy circling, building; line by luminous line from the floor upward. Amid the spits and sparks, the image was at first of translucent boots, then trousers, waistcoat and collarless shirt, and finally the pulsing facsimile of my appalling face was complete. There, in Knob Hill (I promise you, that was its name!), Colorado, the great Nikola Tesla was looking at me, and I – sitting here 3000 miles away with my equivalent set up in the roof space of The Metropolitan Theatre of Steam, Smoke and Mirrors in Paddington, London – was looking at him.

Octopus! he shouted. That was what he called me; his Slavic accent always struggled with the pronunciation of ‘Artemus’. Added to which he regarded me as some kind of agitated cephalopod, with my slithery tentacles slopping about the decks, probing and collecting. Insults apart, we are very close friends and scientific associates working to the same end.

What is it you want!? He waved his arms furiously.

Take no notice, he can sometimes be given to testy.

Do I always have to want something, Nik? I demanded, over-acting my offence, in much the way my old French friend Georges Melies emphasises everything when performing in his glorious movies.

Being in the case of yourself, Octopus – yes!

He was quite right, of course.

Nik, I have to tell you: it’s Michael.

Nikola Tesla settled, took a long pause, then nodded. So...it has started...

THAT NIGHT

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Charles H. Duell, Director U.S. Patent Office, 1899

~1~

SHLUPP!

Flatus Knosh was lying hidden in a pile of freshly chewed rat filth when he saw it. The man walking through the locked door. Yes, through it. A tall, solid door, all locked up, bolted and barred; and this Oriental fellow, not so much ‘walked’ as ‘pushed’ his way right through as if it was... jelly.

Gadzooks. Now there is a thing one dun’t often see, I’ll wager, whispered Flatus Knosh to himself. "Dun’t often see ever."

Though he lived the wretched hand-to-mouth life of a vagrant, you’ll notice with his ‘Gadzooking’ that Knoshy spoke ‘terribly-terribly’. His used-to-be-smart black suit was now faded, worn and shabby. Almost all those unfortunates, the ‘mumblecrusts’ and ‘toshers’ struggling to survive on the fetid streets of London, knew ol’ Flatus Knosh had been educated at Eton and Cambridge, he’d told them often enough, so they always deferred to Knoshy in any matters requiring ‘knowledge’. But in all his life, sober or not, and for all his posh-type learning, Flatus Knosh had never known anything like a man walking through anything even remotely solid, let alone a locked door.

So, he peered, blinked, rubbed his rheumy eyes with the rheumatic knuckles of his grime-encrusted hands, scratched his tobacco stained beard with his blackened fingernails and peered again. Was he even awake? Perchance ’tis the swirl of grey mist and the creamy light of the moon that oft bewitches me with such night time visions?

Knoshy often waxed what he thought was lyrical.

Now, some might claim the Chinaman is a phantom. To which I say – pish.

In this late Victorian era there was many a whimsical type, mostly idle and well-to-do, who believed the sole purpose of the dead was to entertain the living by knocking on tables once for yes and twice for no, while discharging their ectoplasm in a most unseemly fashion, during candle-lit séances. But Knoshy had little truck with the supernatural. Since being forced from his livelihood, he had witnessed the real world; most of it foul, little of it legal, and all of it a damned sight more frightening than any specious spectre could ever be.

Still, Knoshy needed to be certain he was lucid so he stabbed himself in the thigh with a rusty nail. It burned like a poker and oozed thick and warm, so that was all right. He was far from delirious and he was certainly looking at a Chinaman. Then came a second man, this one big and black, with a wooden box strapped to his chest, and pushing a sack barrow. SHLUPP! Out he stepped, straight through the door onto Bartholomew Lane.

Truly such a bizarre impossibility has never ever been witnessed before, pronounced Flatus Knosh, little realising that five miles over to the west...

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The human hand thrust out from the middle of the solid wall. Long, elegant fingers broke through the brickwork and once free, flexed. Then the forearm emerged.

Far from a misty city side street with an audience of one, this version of the miracle was occurring on the stage of a smoky London Music Hall and watched by a thousand.

In the yellow glow beaming down from ‘the flies’, the impossible was there, vivid and clear: the handsome, shirt-sleeved Bronx-born magician standing on one side of the double thick wall, while the hand of his right arm was poking out of the other side. And it was a solid brick wall according to the foul-breathed toff and the bearded bruiser the magician had invited onto the stage to confirm the fact. The audience, packed sweating into the Metropolitan Theatre of Steam, Smoke and Mirrors, gasped. How could this marvel possibly be?

The young woman facing the wall, a slinky beauty in white, stroked his hand and announced loud and clear: I, Phoebe, the Queen of Steam and Goddess of the Aethyr, grant Magister the celestial power to not only breach this solid barrier... but to pass directly through it! Come to me, Magister. Come to me.

The words of this apparent Goddess, along with a grand sweep of her gloved arm, convinced the magician that he could achieve the impossible. He pushed again deeper into the red London stock brickwork, his shoulder, then his head, easing into the wall, as if the bricks had become a kind of viscous gel. The mood of the crowd became uneasy. Some screamed, as Magister’s chest and hips were absorbed. But not so easily now. As if the laws of physics were not prepared to be abused without putting up a fight.

The magician’s muscles tightened as the brickwork closed in. Fear twisted in his stomach. Vicious flashes, fearful images exploded into Michael’s mind. The sky. The shadow. The cabinet. The dreadful roar.

Phoebe watched as the contours of Michael’s features stretched the skin of the brickwork thin and white, like an agonised mask of death. With supreme effort, his nose and chin finally breached the membrane. His face emerged, gasping into the open air. The wall was becoming dense and unyielding. Enclosing. Refusing to give him up. The strain was sapping the magician’s strength. This was not how they rehearsed it, thought Phoebe. Something is going rather wrong.

The face of the Goddess betrayed nothing as she slunk forward, took Michael’s hand and pulled, then hauled, then with all her might heaved until every joint in his body screamed.

Oh my days, do not let this wall topple, she thought. With a final desperate heave and a sticky GLOOP! Michael’s face, followed by the rest of him, lurched and staggered free.

For plenty more than an hour the audience had watched in awe as a man risked his life to achieve the impossible, but this was the best. The finale. The highlight. And they loved it. The stalls, the pit, the fauteuils, the balcony, all erupted with a great crack of applause and wild cheering. Women wept, men whistled, one even collapsed clutching his chest. They had never before witnessed Guignol this Grand.

Michael and Phoebe held hands, beamed and bowed. The approval was sustained and overwhelming.

Dear God, Michael, are you all right? whispered the smiling Goddess.

All good, groaned the beaming magician as he waved modestly at the adoring fans. Men tossed rose stems to Phoebe. A woman hurled something worn and grimy at Michael. The magicians waved their goodnights and in a cloud of green smoke they were gone.

Beneath the stage, in the void we called The Dungeon, Michael dragged himself to his feet, stepped off the Lift’n’Shift platform, dusted off his shoulders.

Phoebe told me the wall solidified very quickly.

Michael added: I think that’s what they call premature coagulation.

~3~

In the murky quiet of that City of London side street, Flatus Knosh considered the facts. Often it was the drink. Sometimes it was hunger-driven delirium which produced the visions, usually of axe-wielding chickens or talking vegetables. Men walking through closed doors were certainly a welcome change from murderous fowl and chatty brassicas, even if he was becoming passably fluent in cabbage. Knoshy squinted. No, there were definitely two of them standing across the street. The chubby Oriental wearing moleskin trousers, a grey shirt and flat cap, consulted his fob watch while the mighty black man, wearing moleskins and the wooden box strapped to his chest, a leather waistcoat giving accent to his muscular frame, counted the yellow bricks stacked neatly on his sack barrow.

God’s truth, thought Knoshy, as suddenly SHLUPP!, a third figure burst quick and smooth out through the door. This cove, a short, runtish, skinny type with a shock of hair like a feather duster, was clearly a good deal flustered, because he jigged and gestured as if a nest of fire ants had suddenly taken residence in the gusset of his long johns. He was panicked and distressed about dropping ‘it’ – whatever ‘it’ was – and complaining that the weight had gotten too much. The giant looked at the scrawny man, grinned, then turned and plunged back through the door and into the building.

No! The time! warned the Oriental, firm and deep, but the big man was already gone.

It was only when the smudge of passing cloud properly cleared the moonlight that Knoshy noticed the shimmering amber arch in the centre of the dark brown door; the portal through which this strange trio had slipped with such ease. But as he watched, the glistening began to lose its lustre. It was rippling heavier, like those filthy waves on the Thames at Blackfriars. The arch in the door was becoming darker, browner, more like... wood.

Then, not with a SHLUPP! but more a struggled GLOOP! the giant forced himself back through – triumphantly holding a golden brick! But then he jerked to a halt. The big man’s broad grin became a puzzled frown. He tried to pull, but seemed to be restrained. He heaved again. And again. This time with all his considerable might, but still he could not move. It was then that Knoshy realised the giant’s huge trailing arm was stuck from the elbow down. Snagged within the now restored wooden door.

Oh, Lazarus! Chriiist, wailed the thin man in horror. He looked at the giant’s arm, then the door, and joined in trying to extricate the one from the other. His contribution had exactly the effect you’d expect from someone with no physical strength whatsoever. The human skeleton turned in panic to the Chinaman.

Dr. Phunn, use the contraption, the contraption! Chriiist... He danced and jigged then stiffened, urgently pointing at the box strapped to Lazarus’s chest.

The Oriental shook his head, calm and controlled. From his belt he drew a curved blade. Knoshy saw it and whimpered. Lazarus nodded as Dr. Phunn raised the sword – then with an arcing, forceful swipe brought the blade down upon the giant’s arm SHLANG! – and sliced it clean through!

Knoshy, from his hidey hole, stifled a cry with his hand. Lazarus stepped forward, freed from his wooden entrapment. But there was no agonised scream. No staggering and slumping to the floor. The big man simply looked at Dr. Phunn with some strange kind of approval before lobbing the recovered golden brick at the scrawny fellow to catch, which he barely managed, trying not to buckle under the weight.

Dr. Phunn whistled. A covered wagon clattered from the misty shadows of the tiny side alley called Capel Court. Hauled by a pair of bay steeds, it had barely skidded to a halt before the tailgate of the wagon was smoothly lowering itself onto the surface of the cobbled street to form a ramp. It took all of the available three pairs of hands, well two and a half, to push and shove the laden barrow up the wooden incline and into the wagon. The chimney on the wagon roof wafted a brown fetid swirl, not that Flatus could smell it, he was quite fetid enough. With cargo and men aboard, the ramp raised itself while the driver cracked the horses back into motion. As the wagon rattled away, Knosh read the words stencilled on the side of the covered wagon: ‘London County Council Fatal Disease and Miasma Control’. Perfect. Who in their right mind would want to go near that?

It was a good while after the vehicle had veered a sharp right into Threadneedle Street that Knosh summoned up the gall to press his tingling legs into service and limp across the narrow street. He really didn’t want to but felt he must, you know, take what he considered a closer scrutiny of this scene of brutal insanity. Praying now it really was just part of a demonic nightmare.

He tapped the wood of the door. Where it had previously rippled, it was now structurally sound and looking as if nothing had happened. Save, of course, for the one gruesome detail: in the centre of the door, around about eye-level, a roundel of soft mauve flesh, set around a bone of what looked like clean-cut metal. Knosh scratched a black thumb nail against the metal in the middle, then prodded at the still-warm muscle. It wept a tiny tear of deepest red. Knoshy’s face became clammy and his world started to spin. Black dots floated as the poor vagrant slumped in a dead faint onto the pavement of Bartholomew Lane.

Outside the east door of The Bank of England.

~4~

I’ll give the TiMiD the once over, sighed the curmudgeonly dwarf. Wicko was my work-shy technical associate and engineering protégé, a genius whose preferred instrument of scientific precision was the 10 lb hammer.

With the ‘iron’ safety curtain down, sealing us from the auditorium, Wicko, Michael, Phoebe and I were standing on the stage of The Metropolitan Theatre of Steam, Smoke and Mirrors, scratching our heads and conducting the inquest.

The wall seemed to lose viscosity rather more quickly than ever before, enunciated Phoebe in her exquisite English rose voice.

I explained it might have been a singularity malfunction, or some midstream degradation. Neither of those phrases actually meant much of anything, but it was better than admitting I too had not the foggiest idea what went wrong. For the past month, in tests and rehearsals, the bulky device had worked passably well. TiMiD, by the way, stands for ‘Tesla’s integrated Molecular integrity Disruptor’. I know Nik hates the acronym, but it was the irony of giving so brutal a device such a timorous nickname that appealed.

Tesla built three versions of the TiMiD. The prototype we had shipped from Nik’s laboratory in Colorado was the size of a large upended travelling trunk so