Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices

come.”
    “Squat? Whatever for?”
    “He’s got a house, Lady. A real house, wiv a door and chimbley and everything. And rugs, so I hear. We’ve got to get there and claim it afore the rats come out’ the woodwork and take it.”
    “What has his house to do with us?” Her mind felt like cotton wool. She could not connect sentences into meaning.
    Snouts took her arm—the one not cradling the gun—and walked her back into the warehouse where the landau sat. “Here’s how it works. You kilt him—”
    “I didn’t mean to, Snouts. The gun went off by accident.”
    “Beggin’ yer pardon, Lady, but you just keep mum about that. Story is, you disarmed Lightning Luke and shot him for stealin’ your property. Maybe you knifed Billy Crumwell, too, for all I know.”
    “Luke’s man did it. It was shocking.”
    “That’s neither here nor there, and neither are they. Point is, he who takes down Lightning Luke gets his property, see? Jake!” he called into the dark. “Round everyone up. We’ve got a body to get over to Vauxhall Gardens for proof, soon’s we get this landau going.”
    Ah, here was something solid to count on. Something she knew how to do. With the smoothness of long habit, she pulled her duster from its niche and buttoned it over her suit. By the light of the lamp the thieves had lit to admire her property, she saw her goggles lying on the floor where they had evidently been flung when the thief had run for it. She settled them over her eyes and began the ignition sequence. When the indicator needles jumped, she lit the headlamps. Snouts dumped Lightning Luke’s rigid body on the canvas and rolled him up in it, then tied the bundle to the rear guard with a length of rope.
    “What about—him?” She indicated Billy Crumwell’s inert form out in the square. “We can’t just leave him there.”
    “Pickers’ll do fer ’im before dawn,” Snouts said with chilling brevity while he divested the man of his perfectly usable leather coat. He and Maggie squeezed into Gorse’s usual seat, and Jake, Tigg and Lizzie piled into the rear compartment, which was meant only for parcels.
    As smoothly as though she were driving to Regent’s Park, she applied steam and they rolled out the warehouse door, leaving behind the deserted square—empty except for the silence of the grave and the smell of bridges well and truly burned.

Chapter 24

    Vauxhall Gardens was not nearly as picturesque as its name might suggest. Claire guided the landau down one narrow street after another at Snouts’s direction, winding deeper into the neighborhoods of the working poor. At least they had proper roofs over their heads, unlike the children packed all around her, who had to make do with a warehouse loft.
    “There.” Snouts pointed to a stone house nestled against the bridge abutment. Possessed of two storeys, its windows were intact and even at this hour, light glowed behind the ones downstairs. “It fronts on the river, so Luke can move his cargo.”
    “What cargo?”
    “Dunno. Whatever he lifted that day, I suppose. He started out a rag picker like us, they say, but bein’ the enterprisin’ sort, he moved up in the world. I figure piracy and theft, but them’s the sorts of questions a man don’t ask down here.”
    “I hope his associates don’t expect those activities to continue.” Claire appraised the house as the landau coasted to a stop in front. It was a solid little place. Nothing was broken or abused—in fact, if a criminal could be said to be house-proud, then Lightning Luke was that. Even the head-high stone wall around what could have been a front garden was sturdy and well kept.
    Just how sturdy, they discovered as soon as they approached. “There’s no gate,” Maggie said. “’Ow are we to get in?”
    “On the river side,” Jake said. “Best scout it first.”
    The Mopsies took their duties very seriously, and even if Claire had wanted to protest, her voice would have had less effect than the gurgle of the river against the stone arches of the bridge. On the house’s other side was a tangle of brambles and what might have been a toll shed for the drawbridge, now fallen into disrepair. So Luke’s house might once have belonged to the toll keeper.
    The Mopsies returned with silent suddenness. “Watch is posted,” Lizzie said. “There’s a platform above the people door an’ a bloke wi’ a bl—er, a dirty big gun. Water door’s shut and locked tight. Windows too.”
    “We