The Doomsday Vault

come from the balcony, and she had ignored other exits as irrelevant. Gavin gingerly opened one.

“I’m guessing this goes to the kitchen,” he said. “And that one leads upstairs.”

Alice peered inside the latter. “Nothing of interest up there.”

“How do you know?”

“The steps are dusty. No one-or thing-has trod them for months, or even years.”

“Ah.”

Alice opened another door and found a worn set of stone stairs heading downward. She caught a whiff of damp air and chemicals. “This looks promising.”

Gavin sniffed the air as well. “Laboratory?”

“That’s my assessment.”

“Let’s have a look.”

“Click,” Alice called, “light, please.”

Another pop, and Click was ready to light the way.

“You do realize,” Gavin said, “that we’re about to descend into the hidden laboratory of a mad scientist who kidnapped me and tried to kill both of us.”

“Perhaps madness runs in my family.”

“That’s not very encouraging.”

With Click going ahead to provide light, they headed down the stairs.

Chapter Seven

Gavin Ennock touched the mechanical nightingale in his pocket for luck as he followed Alice and her clockwork cat to the bottom of the stone staircase. After days of captivity on the Juniper and two weeks in the tower, he found it a blessing to talk to another human being, and especially to a woman as remarkable as this one. He supposed he should be going first down the steps, but it was technically Alice’s house, and she had taken the lead before he could say anything. His fingers were sore and a little bloody from the frantic playing earlier, and he felt tired, let down from the fear and excitement.

“Good heavens,” Alice said at the bottom. Her voice echoed in a large space, but Click and his eye beams were too far ahead for Gavin to make out what she was looking at.

“What is it?” Gavin asked. “I can’t see anything.”

“I think there’s an electric light here,” she said.

Alice turned a switch just as Gavin arrived at the bottom. Lights blazed up, revealing an enormous room with ragged stone columns. Sprawled across the space lay a maze of worktables, equipment, glassware, bookshelves, and machinery.

And it had all been smashed.

The glassware lay in shards. Books were scattered across the floor. Flasks of chemicals had been shattered. Machines had been pulled apart. A wall safe had been broken open, the door left hanging by one hinge. Alice put a hand to her breast.

“This is awful,” she murmured.

“You don’t hear me arguing.” Gavin stepped carefully around a pile of broken glass.

“It makes me want to weep, Mr. Ennock,” Alice said. “I’ve always scraped along with secondhand tools in a tiny bedroom. Now look at this waste and wreckage. And I still don’t know what’s happened to my aunt.”

Gavin wanted to put an arm around her in comfort. She had lost her hat somewhere, and her honey brown hair was coming loose from a French twist, making her look forlorn. Her wide brown eyes complemented her triangular face and small nose. Despite being disheveled, she was beautiful, and strong, and fascinating. This woman knew what needed doing, and she seemed determined to do it. Hell, she had navigated that nightmare room of automatons before he had played them into silence and had faced down marauding mechanical gargoyles. He wasn’t sure he would have had the nerve.

“I know what you mean,” Gavin said. “Losing something important is hard.”

“Yes.” Alice slipped a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. “Well. Do you suppose whoever smashed all this also kidnapped or killed Aunt Edwina?”

“It’s possible,” Gavin said, “but the timing is a bit off. You said she stopped contacting her-what was the word? Solicitor? — several months ago, except I’ve been here for only a couple weeks. If your aunt Edwina is the Red Velvet Lady, that would mean she had those men grab me after she disappeared.”

“After she stopped contacting her solicitor, you mean,” she replied. “But yes, you’re correct. And we don’t know when this damage was done. Today? Last week? Last year? And is any of it related to that bloodstain near the front door? So many questions I don’t have the answers for. It’s maddening.”

“Let’s keep looking around,” Gavin said. “Though I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m more of a musician than an engineer or mechanic.”

“You’re a very fine musician, too,” Alice said.

“Oh.” The compliment brought a warm feeling to Gavin’s chest, and he flashed Alice a smile. “Thanks.”

Alice seemed embarrassed, and she quickly turned to examine a pile of machinery. “That’s an unusual arrangement for a violin case, I have to say,” she said. “Don’t most players carry theirs by the handle?”

“Not on an airship,” he said. “You want both hands free.”

“You mentioned a ship,” Alice said. “I assumed you were a sailor. But you’re an airman.”

“Was,” he said. “Flying is the most wonderful profession in the whole damned world, pardon my language. You glide above the clouds and everything is fresh and fine and pure. You can see the whole world, and music carries a hundred miles.”

“How did you come to London, then?”

He told her while they poked through the wreckage of the laboratory, though he deliberately left out the part about Madoc Blue and his harsh hands. Blue still nipped and tore at Gavin’s clothes at night, and behind Blue stood the first mate with his heavy whip, and Gavin often woke up soaked in terror sweat. Even talking around it made his heart jerk. It was difficult enough to tell Alice about the deaths of Tom and Captain Naismith and the loss of the Juniper. As he spoke, his hand began to ache, and he realized his fist was clenched around the nightingale in his pocket, though the longer he spoke, the more he began to relax. It felt strangely good to tell someone else about it.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Ennock,” she said when he finished. “Perhaps when we’re done here, we can find a way to get you back to Boston.”

Hope touched Gavin. After the pirates and clerk at Boston Shipping and Mail and the kidnappers, the idea that someone was willing to help him brought an unexpected lump to his throat.

Click meowed and batted at a pile of metal in a side niche. It was the shell of another automaton, painted black and white, as if it were wearing a butler’s coat. Two light-bulbs formed eyes, and a metal grate gave it a sort of mouth on an otherwise blank brass face. On a table beside it lay a jumble of parts-gears, pistons, wheels, and other bits Gavin didn’t understand. Click meowed again.

Alice came over to investigate. “What is it?”

The cat swiped at the automaton with metal claws.

“What’s that on its side?” Gavin said. “Looks like writing.”

They both leaned in. Inscribed on the torso in graceful script were the words Love, Aunt Edwina. Alice went pale.

“What is it?” Gavin asked, afraid she was going to faint.

“She wrote that on every one of the automatons she sent me. And look-there’s a diagram on the inside of his front panel.”

“What do we do?”

“Aunt Edwina meant me to find him. She assumed that her attackers wouldn’t notice him or wouldn’t know how he goes together. Clearly Aunt Edwina wanted me to assemble him so he could tell me more.”

“This is the same woman,” Gavin reminded her, “who imprisoned me in a tower and set deadly traps.”