The Doomsday Vault Read online

  “A year is a good engagement,” Alice said, picking up the ring and slipping it on her forefinger. “How large a wedding do we want?”

  “I’m not much for ceremonies,” Norbert said. “I have no relatives—or rather, none I’d want to invite. You?”

  “Just my father. And Louisa Creek, I suppose. She could be my maid of honor.” The emerald made a heavy weight on Alice’s finger. “I wouldn’t mind a small ceremony.”

  “Splendid!” Norbert rubbed his hands together. “I’ll draw up the announcement for the Times and handle the other details, and you can eat all your lunches here without distress—or Mrs. Leeds. A fiancée doesn’t need a chaperone.”

  “True,” Alice said dazedly. “True.”

  Mrs. Leeds continued to knit.

  “And, just so you know, once we’re married, you needn’t worry about your father’s debts. You will, of course, move here afterward and take over running the household. It’s so difficult to manage both the factory and this home. You can manage a large household, can’t you?”

  “I can look after household accounts, entertain, and supervise servants, yes,” Alice said. “I did attend the correct schools. But are all your servants automatons?”

  “At this house they are. Your skill with machines is one reason I pursued you, after all. I can hire a hundred engineers at my factory, but in my private home”—he leaned forward—“certain aspects of my life require delicacy and privacy.”

  “I see,” Alice said, though she didn’t. The maid didn’t move.

  “My country estate, on the other hand, is staffed with living servants—the villagers mistrust automatons. We’ll spend autumns and winters there, and when our first son is born, he will inherit both your father’s title and my lands, meaning the Michaels family will once again be landed nobility. Is that satisfactory?”

  “Perfectly, Mr. Williamson,” Alice said.

  “You must call me Norbert,” he replied with a smile. “We are engaged.”

  “Oh!” she said again. “It’s still sinking in. Norbert. And you must call me Alice.”

  “Alice. Dear Alice.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “You’ve barely responded. What do you think of all this?”

  A dozen responses flicked through Alice’s mind. She had accomplished her goal, that of persuading Norbert to propose to her. Father would be elated that he wouldn’t have to worry about her fate, and those horrible, crushing debts that had dogged them for a dozen years would vanish with a flick of Norbert’s pen. She should feel ecstatic, or at least happy. And she was happy. Quite glad. Relieved. Well, relieved wasn’t the same as glad, and glad wasn’t the same as happy, but she did feel this was a positive step. With a start, she realized Norbert hadn’t actually asked her to marry him and she hadn’t actually said she would. Yet here they were discussing banns and estates, children and heirs, business and machines. It certainly wouldn’t be politic to point out the omission.

  “It’s so much to take in.” Alice squeezed his hand. “But I’m thrilled, Norbert. Absolutely thrilled.”

  “Congratulations,” Mrs. Leeds said. Alice started. It was the first word the woman had spoken, and Alice had quite forgotten she was there.

  “We must celebrate!” Norbert said. “It’s a bit early in the day for a mixed drink, but it’s never too early for champagne, eh?” He pressed another button, and the footman arrived with a dark bottle in a silver ice bucket. Behind trotted a familiar figure.

  “Click?” Alice said. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  Click jumped up to the tabletop, nearly upsetting Alice’s salmon plate. He opened his mouth, and a man’s voice said, “ ‘Dear Miss Michaels: I hope this letter finds you and your father in good health and good spirits. I am solicitor to your esteemed aunt Edwina, and I must request your presence at a most urgent meeting. It is with great hope I request that you come to my office with all haste at your earliest possible convenience. Your dutiful servant, Harold Stoneworthy.’ ” An address followed, and Click closed his mouth. Alice stared in mute astonishment.

  “Extraordinary,” Norbert murmured.

  “I didn’t know he could do that,” Alice said, curiosity and surprise both warring for supremacy in her breast. “Norbert, I’m sorry, but this appears to be an emergency and I must leave. Can your footman call me a cab, or—”

  “Nonsense! I’ll accompany you in my carriage.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said, “but I think this is a private matter, and although you’re my fiancé, we aren’t yet married, and I suspect Mr. Stoneworthy won’t speak with you. It would be silly for you to ride all the way down there and then sit in his waiting room, darling.”

  “Hm. I suppose you’re right,” Norbert said, apparently mollified by Alice’s use of the word darling. “But I shall send you in my carriage, nonetheless. And now that I think of it, I should have one built for you, as a wedding present, perhaps.”

  “Oh! I’m overwhelmed.” Alice got to her feet, and Norbert leapt to his. Mrs. Leeds finished a row and unwound more yarn. “And I really must go.”

  “Do I get a good-bye kiss?” he asked, moving around the table.

  “My goodness, I suppose you do. Darling.”

  Her first kiss. Norbert cupped her face gently in both hands and leaned in. Alice waited, not knowing what to expect. She had read a number of romantic novels, of course, and she had long come to suspect that, lurid descriptions to the contrary, real kissing couldn’t possibly transport either party to the gates of ecstasy and back. Still, she found herself hoping, even through the soft click of Mrs. Leeds’s knitting needles. Norbert’s lips softly brushed hers

  —and then he pulled away. “Thank you, darling. Let me know what the solicitor says, would you?”

  The horse and carriage delivered Alice and Click to the offices of Stoneworthy, Marvins, and Lott, a tastefully small brownstone with an equally small sign hanging near the door. As Alice alighted, a flicker of motion caught the tail of her eye, and she glanced upward. On the roof one building over from the law office was a familiar figure. It wore a long brown coat, and a white skull mask covered the upper half of its face. The figure grinned its wide, dreadful grin and waved at Alice. A cold finger slid down Alice’s spine. She cast about, but no one else on the street seemed to notice the figure, and no policemen were in sight. Before Alice could react further, the figure threw a small package into the air over the street. Alice shouted a warning, but it was lost in a loud boom as the package exploded. Horses reared in harnesses. People screamed and covered their ears or ran for cover. Alice ducked into the doorway of the law office with Click hiding beneath her skirts as a shower of little papers fell like snowflakes. She caught one.

  Written on one side was a musical staff with a single interval: a C and an F-sharp. On the back were the words I REMEMBER.

  Alice gasped and looked up at the rooftop, but the figure was gone. Heart pounding, Alice hurried into the law office, where a clerk who seemed oblivious to the goings-on outside immediately showed her and Click into Mr. Stoneworthy’s private sanctuary, an office laid with carpet and lined with books. The desk was piled so high with papers that Alice could barely see the round figure of Mr. Stoneworthy on the other side.

  “So good of you to come so quickly, Miss Michaels,” he said in a surprisingly flutelike voice. Someone so rotund and white-haired should have a deep voice. “Are you quite all right? I heard some sort of commotion outdoors.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It was nothing.” But she couldn’t help wondering what the figure—the clockworker who had controlled the zombies—meant by I remember. A warning? A simple greeting? If he had wanted to harm her, he had every opportunity while she was walking obliviously past. And how had he known where she would be? Perhaps he had been following her or spying on her in some other way. The thought turned her stomach.

  “You’re looking positively peaked, Miss Michaels,” said Mr. Stoneworthy. “Would you like some refreshment?”<
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  “I’ve just come off lunch, but thank you,” Alice said, pushing thoughts of the clockworker away, which only allowed the reason for her visit to catch up with her. A call for an emergency visit to Aunt Edwina’s solicitor could only mean dreadful news, and although Alice hadn’t seen Aunt Edwina in more than a dozen years, she still felt a certain fondness for the woman, strange and estranged though she was. Nausea gave way to dread. Click sat next to her chair, his tail curled nonchalantly about his legs.

  “Then I won’t keep you in suspense,” Mr. Stoneworthy said. He coughed into a handkerchief, belying the promise he had just made. “Pardon. I’m afraid it is my duty to inform you that you are the sole heir to the estate of your aunt Edwina.”

  The chair rocked beneath Alice’s body, and she gripped the arms tightly. Tears welled in her eyes, and her throat thickened. Surprised at the strength of her reaction, she could only murmur, “Good heavens.”

  Mr. Stoneworthy looked supremely uncomfortable. “Yes. Perhaps you would like some brandy?” Without waiting for an answer, he raised his voice. “Dickerson! Some brandy for Miss Michaels!”

  A glass was pushed into her hand, and Alice drank without thinking. The brandy, her first, burned all the way down and pushed away the tears. She felt more able to speak. “How did she... pass away? And when? And why wasn’t my father notified?”

  “She hasn’t died, exactly,” Mr. Stoneworthy said. “She’s missing.”

  “Missing? I don’t understand.”

  Mr. Stoneworthy coughed into his handkerchief again, and this time Alice caught him peeking at the contents. She hoped he didn’t have consumption, or worse, the clockwork plague. “You’re probably aware that your aunt was a bit... eccentric, yes?”

  “She has her ways,” Alice said, feeling suddenly defensive.

  “One of those ways was to send a letter to this office every month. I was instructed that if the letter should fail to arrive for twelve consecutive months, I was to execute her will. It names you as the sole heir to her estate.”

  “So she’s definitely not dead?” Alice demanded. Click made a mechanical mew at her feet.

  “I frankly don’t know,” Mr. Stoneworthy replied blandly. “I’m merely following her instructions.”

  “But I’m... I can’t inherit her estate!”

  He put on a pair of reading glasses that made him look like Father Christmas and examined a long piece of paper. “You are Miss Alice Michaels, daughter of Arthur, Baron Michaels, of London?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have reached the age of majority?”

  Was that his way of asking if she were a spinster? Slightly affronted, she said, “Yes.”

  “And you are unmarried.”

  “Now see here—”

  “Meaning,” Mr. Stoneworthy said, “you have no husband who would take over the property in your place?”

  Her thoughts went to Norbert, but he wasn’t her husband yet. “That’s right. But my father—”

  “Is specifically banned from having any part of this,” Mr. Stoneworthy finished for her with another cough into the handkerchief. “That part took some legal work, but it’s all arranged. The house and grounds are yours. Unfortunately, there is no monetary portion to the estate, but once the final legal hurdles are cleared, you could sell.”

  “How long will that take?” Alice asked faintly.

  “Four or five months, if no one contests the will, but you can take possession now, if you like. Here are the keys and a card with the address. Have you ever visited the house?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Do I need to sign anything?”

  “Indeed. Dickerson!”

  Alice signed a number of papers she didn’t quite understand, though she did read them to make sure she wasn’t accidentally signing over her firstborn child, and later found herself outside the law offices with a ring of keys in her handbag. Norbert’s carriage was nowhere in sight—apparently it had some sort of command that called it home—so she hailed a cab and let Click jump in ahead of her.

  With a nervous glance up and down the street for the grinning figure, Alice handed the address card to the driver and sat back to think. In the space of a few hours, she had received a marriage proposal (of sorts), intercepted a strange message from a rogue clockworker, learned that her aunt Edwina had been missing for months and had managed to declare herself dead, and inherited a large house she had never actually visited. It was all a bit much. And oh yes—she had discovered that Click could talk, after a fashion.

  “When did you visit Mr. Stoneworthy’s office so he could give you that message?” she demanded of the clockwork cat. “I quite forgot to ask him. And how long have you been able to reproduce a human voice?”

  Click looked out the cab window with phosphorescent nonchalance. Alice made an exasperated sound as the cab rolled over the stony streets. Exasperation was easier to deal with than fear, uncertainty, or sadness. Aunt Edwina was dead. Actually, she was merely missing. Actually, she had failed to alert Mr. Stoneworthy’s office in a prescribed way for one year. Perhaps she wasn’t dead or truly missing at all. Perhaps she had forgotten or grown tired of the arrangement.

  After twelve months? she thought. Unlikely.

  The ride took more than an hour, and it was nearing dusk by the time the cab arrived at a high stone wall well outside of town, in a place where houses and factories gave way to trees and meadows. The wall ran nearly a hundred yards down the road before curving away and out of sight. Presumably it surrounded Aunt Edwina’s house, of which only the top half was visible. Alice couldn’t see much of it except the roof, or roofs. Several of them poked upward in odd places and directions. A large gate of wrought iron guarded a long driveway, and a smaller entry gate stood beside it. Coming up the road toward them was a barefoot girl of twelve leading a pony. The driver halted near the gate and helped Alice down from the cab with Click jumping down beside her. It occurred to Alice that she had no way of getting home.

  “Can you please wait, driver?” she asked, paying him from her meager supply of coins. “I had no idea it would take so long to get here.”

  “Not unless you’ll only be a moment, mum,” he said. “I have to put the ’orse up for the night.”

  Flummoxed, Alice stared at the set of gates. She would have to go back right now. A long ride for nothing.

  “Mum?” The girl leading the pony had approached. “There’s a train station, mum. Less than half a mile up the road. Trains run at night, too.”

  “Why, thank you.” Alice gave the girl a farthing from her handbag. “What’s your name?”

  “Gwendolyn, mum. My dad calls me Gwenny.”

  “Do you live nearby, Gwenny?” Alice asked.

  The girl remembered herself and curtsied. “All my life, mum.”

  “What do you know about this house, then?”

  “I’ll just be going, then, mum,” said the driver, who had climbed back onto the hack.

  “Yes, thank you,” Alice said. “If you could just—”

  At that moment, beautiful violin music floated by. It pushed the air ahead of itself, floated and rippled, shivered and sighed. All three people listened, entranced. The tune was even lovelier than the music Alice had heard in the mists of Hyde Park. After a moment, Alice realized her heart was beating quickly and her mouth was dry. Click touched noses with the pony, which whickered.

  “Where is that wonderful song coming from?” Alice asked.

  “The house, mum,” said Gwenny. “Strange lights used to flash in the windows, and we heard odd noises when I was little, but those stopped a year gone. The music is new, something like two weeks old. I don’t like it. It’s ghosts.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Alice said. “It’s a person. Or an automaton.”

  “The house is empty, mum. No one lives there.”

  The music continued, soft and insistent. The driver clicked at the horse and the hack jerked into motion, temporarily ruining the violin. Alice was seized with a desire to
slap the man for interrupting the instrument’s perfection.

  “What about the lady Edwina?” Alice said. “The woman who lived here?”

  “The strange lady, mum? I only heard about her. She never kept no servants, and we always stayed away.”

  “Hm. Would you consider coming inside with me? I might have a coin or two for you.”

  “Me, mum?” The girl backed away. “I’m sorry, mum, but I couldn’t. Not ever.” And she fled, taking the pony with her and leaving Alice alone on the road.

  The sweet strings continued to play. Alice couldn’t think where she’d heard anything more perfect for a spring evening in the country, odd and unexplained though it was. If no people were in the house, it must be an automaton or perhaps a reproduction. Click had come from this house, and he had recently shown an ability to reproduce a human voice. It stood to reason that whoever had created him could do the same with music.

  Alice drew the key ring from her handbag and sorted through the cold bits of iron until she found one that would open the little entry gate next to the large main one. When she tried to use the key, however, she discovered the entry gate’s lock twisted and broken, the gate itself slightly ajar. Mystified and a little nervous, she pushed through with Click at her heels and followed the crunching gravel driveway toward the manor.

  The house was a rambling affair, clearly put together and added to over at least a hundred years. A stone building squatted in the center with wooden additions piled all about it. Several outbuildings dotted the overgrown gardens, and an attached tower rose up behind. The cool evening air smelled of damp grass intermingled with decaying flowers. The violin music continued, but Alice couldn’t pinpoint the source. She climbed the uneven front steps to the main doors and found them ajar as well. What on earth? Hesitantly, she pushed them open and entered the darkness beyond.

  The moment she crossed the threshold, lights blazed to life, revealing a huge room three stories tall. It was filled with machinery that swooped to life with a great, grinding hum. Giant gears whirled; pendulums swung; huge pistons dipped and soared. Spidery automatons far more complex than the ones Alice had at home skittered everywhere on mysterious errands. In the corner, a giant arm swung back and forth with a loud, steady ticking sound. It was like standing inside a three-story clock. Alice glanced down at Click, who was watching the intricate metal dance with twitching tail and glowing eyes. Only one sort of person could have built all this.