Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices

in case any here gets ideas above their station, as it were.”
    “Quite right, Mr. McTavish.” She turned on her heel and, accompanied by Jake and Tigg, went in search of the Mopsies. Perhaps on her way to the treasury she might happen upon some food.

Chapter 25

    With Tigg in the passenger seat in charge of the lightning rifle, Claire piloted the landau back through sleeping London to fetch Weeping Willie and Rosie the chicken from the warehouse, where the former had been guarding the latter with all seriousness. On the way back, Tigg regaled the smaller boy with the story of their exploits. Willie turned upon her a look of horror mixed with admiration.
    Claire’s heart twisted with remorse. “I did not kill Mr. Jackson on purpose, Willie,” she said as gently as she could, watching the street while she drove. Drat Tigg and his stories unsuitable for tender ears. “I’m afraid the lightning rifle fired by accident. And it won’t happen again, I promise you.”
    “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Lady,” Tigg warned. “It’s a hard life, wot we got.”
    “No one knows that better than I,” she said with utter sincerity. “Which is why I shall do everything in my power to improve it for all our sakes.”
    How that was to be accomplished was unclear at present, but she possessed a mind that relished such a challenge. At the moment, though, all she could think of was finding a quiet corner in which to sleep. She asked Snouts to set a watch on the landau to prevent its being stolen again. Then she, Willie, the Mopsies, and Rosie retired to the topmost room in the house, which featured bare wood floors, rather a lot of dust—and an actual lock upon the door.
    “Tomorrow every single one of us shall clean this place from top to bottom,” she vowed. “And then I am tempted to return to Wilton Crescent to steal my own bed.”
    The remnants of Lightning Luke’s gang soon found out she was a woman of her word. And in the course of their cleaning—amid mutters of mutiny—they discovered the wage of a good morning’s work. Claire had set the mother’s helper in motion in the upstairs room, and when she climbed the ladderlike stair to fetch it down to the next floor, she found the Mopsies bent over it, murmuring.
    “What is it, ladies?”
    Maggie straightened. “This device of yours, Lady. I think it’s ’ad a knock on its noggin.”
    Claire bent to examine it. Repeatedly, it bumped against the wall, in the manner of a goldfish who does not realize it cannot pass through solid matter to escape its prison. How odd. “It is supposed to turn aside when it meets resistance,” she said to the girls. “I have never seen it do this before.”
    “’Ow does it know it’s to turn aside?” Lizzie asked.
    “With statick repulsion—rather like what happens when you put the wrong ends of magnets together.” At Lizzie’s blank face, Claire realized she would need to add rudimentary physics to the young lady’s education. “A solid object will intrude upon the statick field and cause the device to turn aside.”
    “P’raps that wall ent solid.” Lizzie and Maggie stared at one another, wide-eyed. Then as one, they attacked. Claire had no more than raised a hand to stop them when a panel tilted backward, hinged from the top, and the girls tumbled headlong into the opening.
    “Lady! Give us a light,” came a muffled voice. When Claire had fetched a lamp and Snouts, in case male assistance should be needed, they found the girls sitting on either side of an ironbound chest. “That’s why he had a lock on t’door,” Maggie told her with shining eyes. “’Ow we goin’ to open this mucky great strongbox?”
    Together they dragged it back through the opening into the larger room. “Lucky job I checked Lightning Luke’s waistcoat afore I laid ’im t’rest.” Snouts pulled a small iron key from his pocket, popped the lock open, and lifted the lid. Maggie reached in and sifted pennies, crowns, and shillings through her fingers, her face slack with wonder.
    “Well done, ladies.” Claire did not want to think about Luke’s final resting-place. She did not want to think about Luke or his demise at all. Not after the horrible dreams that had wakened her in the wee hours and stolen what sleep was left of the night. “You deserve every half-penny. Keep as much as you can carry in both hands.”
    “’Twere the mother’s helper did it.” Lizzie regarded the device, now busy with the filthy