Free And They Called Her Spider (Galvanic Century) by Michael Coorlim Page A

to have seen her in the flesh," Bartleby said. He ran his delicate hands over the rest of the evidence the Met had given us: shattered glass, scraps of fabric, a smear of greasepaint from a curtain she'd brushed against. While ignorant eyes might have seen nothing but bored fiddling in his actions, I knew Alton Bartleby well enough to know that his mind was working, collating the data it perceived, categorising it and making inexorable progress towards an inevitable solution. His method was as singular as the Old Man's, retired these last six years, but came from a different genesis.
    Bartleby was a true savant, and while the Great Detective had always made his deductions look easy and natural, in my partner's case they truly were. Building conclusions from disparate scraps of data was easy for him as deciding what to have for lunch would be for you and me.
    Deciding what to have for lunch -- now that he found challenging.
    "And if enchantment she wove, then the death she delivered was the key to breaking it. Not that it mattered. In the chaos that followed she escaped, somersaulting through the doors from gallery to galley, and from there? God only knows. Back out the window, perhaps; gone before a single hand could be raised against her."
    For six months, the Spider had been the terror and scourge of London, an assassin without equal, a perfect murderess against whom no precaution was adequate. None could speculate at what hand it was that moved her across the board, and she seemed to strike out without prejudice against all targets, her daggers finding ready homes in the innards of Anglican bishops, Turkish ambassadors, union agitators, French statesmen, Royal Academy lecturers, and visiting American plutocrats alike. The only thread weaving together her web of victims was the exemplary security with which they protected themselves; her partners in this danse macabre were the men no other killer could reach.
    "You're fond of her enough," I said.
    "She's news. She's scandal. She's morbid entertainment for peerage and hoi polloi alike, a penny dreadful come to wicked life. I'm honestly surprised that you haven't heard of her before now, James."
    "You know how it is," I replied. "When I'm working the rest of the world fades into an annoying niggle which I can safely ignore."
    "That hardly sounds healthy."
    "The isolation helps me think."
    Truth be told, while I don't care for most people I didn't even like Bartleby coming down into my workshop. He felt wrong there, out of place, a grain of sand in my oyster; company in my working place was always an intrusion. He knew it, and most of the time respected it, sending down meals in the dumbwaiter, or calling from the top of the stairs if matters were important. This was perhaps the third time he'd been down in my workshop. It probably wasn't quite fair, considering that his wealth had paid for it.
    In this social regard Bartleby was my opposite. While I preferred the isolation of what he had playfully but accurately termed my "lair," he was a social animal, flitting about the London scene like a hummingbird, supping at the nectars high society had to offer. A gentleman forever on the cusp of the latest fashions and trends, of means, with an addictive personality and too much free time, he had fallen in love with the idea of the Spider from the moment he first saw her lithograph.
    He eagerly purchased any publication that so much as hinted her, dined and interrogated any that claimed to have witnessed her murderous performances, and had waxed melancholic at his own ill-fortune in not having seen her himself, until that fateful airship voyage. His obsession did not go unnoticed, and the expertise my dilettante partner's obsession had acquired lead directly to the Home Office calling on us.
    Bartleby was in heaven. Even to those with connections as influential as his, the evidence lockers at Scotland Yard were off-limits, and the crumbs available at auction were only those artifacts