Free Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper by David Barnett Page A

degrees Celsius, roughly equivalent to that of burning methane. As for altitude … just this morning I almost died, Walsingham, accompanying Maria to a height in excess of thirty-six thousand feet. That’s higher than any man has flown before. And the terrifying thing? She could have gone farther.”
    Walsingham smiled. “Excellent. That is rather the point, Doctor. And your experiments with duplicating the Apep mechanisms?”
    “Useless. Without Maria it is simply a very ornate pile of brass. When she joins with Apep, by means that thus far elude explanation, they become something wondrous. Something…” He hesitated, and Walsingham bade him go on with an inclination of his head. He murmured, “Something magical.”
    Walsingham said, “Magic is just science we cannot yet explain, Doctor Augustus. So it is not the dragon that flies, it is Maria. Specifically, it is the Atlantic Artifact within her head.”
    Augustus nodded. “We need Hermann Einstein if we are to fully understand it, Walsingham. I’ve read the notes you obtained from his house, of course, but his methodology … it was so haphazard, as was his notation. However he created Maria and what he learned from doing so, he’s kept it up here.” Augustus tapped his forehead with a thick forefinger.
    Walsingham mused for a moment, then said, “Then we must redouble our efforts to find Hermann Einstein. And failing that, if we cannot get into the good professor’s head, then I fear we must seriously consider getting into Maria’s.”
    Augustus frowned. “You mean…?”
    “Yes. What Einstein did must be able to be replicated. He is an asset of the British Crown, and if it turns out he is lost for good, then I will reclaim another British asset, the Atlantic Artifact.”
    “That would kill her, you know that.”
    Walsingham chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, you are so sentimental for a man of science, Doctor Augustus. Kill her? She isn’t even alive .”
    *   *   *
    The steam-cab let Maria out on to the crisp snow blanketing the sidewalks in Grosvenor Square. She stood for a moment in the pool of light cast by the gas lamp outside number twenty-three, feeling the soft kisses of the snowflakes on her face.
    Yes, feeling. She marveled at how her pale leather skin could detect the soft moisture as it alit and melted into nothingness on her. She’d had no use for feelings in the House of Einstein, especially not after the man she considered her father had left, and she had been at the mercy of his debased housekeeper, Crowe. But since Gideon had rescued her a heightened sensitivity had come, and she delighted in brushing leaves with her fingertips and experiencing the thick pile of carpet beneath her bare feet; she longed for the gentle caress of Gideon on her skin.
    Inside her, something welled up, something she could not rightly explain as being the proper, normal function of the pipes, pistons, rods, and gears that powered her. Gideon. Her mechanical heart beat fit to burst.
    She was home. She looked up to where the clouds had thinned and slightly parted, to allow a glimpse of black sky and twinkling stars.
    Home.

 
    6
    T HE V ISITATION
    It had taken Rowena Fanshawe the best part of four months to find the place, and she wasn’t much impressed by what she saw. Compared to Healwood, the new hospital—M IDGRAVE P RIVATE S ANATORIUM , said the peeling paint of the weathered sign, somewhat ominously—looked cramped and dark, the soot-blackened walls that reached up to gothic spires at each corner of the squat building seeming particularly foreboding. The grounds were much smaller than Healwood, too, overgrown and unkempt. She could just pick out paths snaking between the lawns, but snow covered all. No footprints. No exercise for the patients, not today at any rate.
    A much less expensive place. Not that it necessarily meant the care was of any lower quality, but … Rowena rattled the locked gate, black paint flaking off in her gloved