Two constables in starched dark navy suits with bright brass buttons rushed past Zan on the stairs up to the Museum. She looked up to the doors where the two men went through and squinted at the stony, classical façade which gave nothing away.
Earlier, she had finished patching together the skeleton for the machine in her uncle’s last notes. The pulleys had moved smoothly when she had attached a bit of linen cloth around them to test for their movement. She had taken a round copper bowl from the kitchens—with much grumbling from Boreas about having his favorite sauce bowl being commandeered for science—and an amber comb from her jewelry box to attach to the apparatus. There was still the matter of the battery which she had yet to rig to the bottom pulley to help turn it, but for the moment, she had added a handle which she turned. Some electrical charge had been transferred to the copper bowl which had been mounted to the top pulley, but in the end, it had fizzled.
So she had sent Simkins out to obtain more materials—specifically the chemicals needed to make the battery, bowls made of other metals, and a bit of silk, long enough to wrap around the pulleys. Boreas had been overjoyed when she had returned the copper bowl to him, although there were two holes on the edges where she had pounded some nails in when she had initially attached it to the machine.
Visiting he Museum again had been a last minute decision. It was on her way to the Academy, she reasoned, and hopefully now, the Museum director was back to show her what he had stored of her uncle’s things in the Museum archive.
Entering the lobby, Zan noticed that the constables were joining two other uniformed officers questioning the young man who was in charge of greeting Museum visitors. He was answering the questions in a calm, modulated voice, but he continually blinked nervously and occasionally tugged at the collar of his shirt.
“Ma’am?”
She turned at the voice and found herself facing a tall distinguished looking gentleman with a moustache. He wore a plain brown suit coupled with an atrocious looking plaid waistcoat. “Yes?”
“Parts of the Museum are off-limits today for visitors. I suggest you come back on another day.”
“Another day?” said Zan, frowning. “I’m here to see the Museum director, Mr. Kruntz. I was told that he would be back. I have some inquiries for him. Who are you to tell me the Museum hours? It is open, is it not?”
“I’m Detective Moren,” he bowed to her and raised his hat for a moment before continuing, “There has been a robbery here. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I am positive that the Museum is off-limits for visitors today. My men and I are questioning the staff and taking evidence. Mr. Kruntz, unfortunately, is unavailable. We were informed by some of his staff that he is out of town on some sort of business—an acquisition for the Museum, I believe.”
“Huh. And I was assured that Mr. Kruntz would be back to speak with me. What are you taking evidence for?”
“I’m sure he will be back in due time once the news reaches him. A robbery occurred sometime last night. Some valuable Museum pieces were taken. Paintings and sculptures and that sort of thing. I’m sure some intrepid reporter has already ferreted out all the details. So you are better off reading a newspaper while the authorities do their job.”
“Newspapers! But…” She shut her mouth when one of the constables called for the detective to come over. Moren excused himself, leaving Zan standing in the lobby rather dumbfounded. She turned on her heel and marched back out of the Museum, feeling peeved and frustrated. Yet again, the Museum director had managed to make himself unavailable and on top of it, a robbery.
She stood on the bottom step of the Museum step thinking. But the timing did seem rather suspicious. What sorts of things were stolen besides those paintings and sculptures? And if she had taken the main road last night to get to Old Amanthus rather than Caradon’s shortcut, would she have noticed a burglar breaking into the Museum?
“Oh, Miss Hu, fancy seeing you taking a stroll out here on this fine day!”
Zan looked up to see two figures, arm and arm, passing by on the street. One was Greta Del Rassa—this time she was wearing a frilly pink confection that looked more like a cake than a dress and her dark hair was pinned neatly underneath a hat with feathers dyed to match her outfit. One of her hands held a pink parasol and the other was on the arm of her Lord What’s-His-Name who she had seen at the tailor’s, Danaides, for her meeting with her friends.
“Good morning, Miss Del Rassa. And, er, you must forgive me. I never caught your name before, sir.”
“Hyssop,” Lord What’s-His-Name supplied, giving her a benign smile.
Zan nodded. “Lord Hyssop. I must admit that I am terrible at names. I must be reminded every day or I shall forget them.”
Del Rassa twittered in her version of an amused laugh and fluttered her eyelashes in an attempt to enhance her gypsy green eyes. “Oh, Miss Hu, what an odd little habit you have! Tell me, have you just come back from the Museum? I had heard that it was closed for today, and possibly for the entire week.”
“Yes, it is closed today. But if you excuse me, I must be on my way to the Academy…”
“That’s wonderful,” Del Rassa interrupted. “That is our destination as well. We are going to visit Mr. Pendergrast as he is working on his latest project and requires some of my advice. We three can go to the Academy together.”
“All right,” Zan replied, thinking that Del Rassa was delusional if she thought she would be able to provide even the incompetent Pendergrast advice. The woman didn’t even know the right end of an egg.
“The newspapers say that the Museum was robbed last night,” said Hyssop as the three of them walked down the street in the direction of the Academy. “Two valuable paintings, a sculpture, a sarcophagus, and a golden scepter studded with sapphires were all taken.”
“The scepter used to belong to the Great Emperor about three centuries ago,” Del Rassa added. “I saw it on exhibition the last time I visited the Museum. It was a magnificent thing. I do hope the authorities catch the thieves quickly and recover those valuable treasures to the institution.”
“It was also reported that the Museum archives were also ransacked,” Hyssop added. “From all accounts, the archives were not well organized and not all of the items were catalogued, so who knows what else was stolen from the Museum that might not even be recovered?”
Zan felt a shiver, having a premonition that when the Museum staff got around to finally cleaning up the archives, her uncle’s machines would be missing.
* * *
She found Henry Tarlton in his basement laboratory after Del Rassa and her titled beau gave her a farewell in the foyer of the Academy that made her grind her back teeth. The Academy Fraud had a way with words that made anyone who wasn’t so polished or fashion-conscious seem like backward idiots. The condescending laugh that Lord Hyssop gave her was no consolation either. But she put these annoyances to the back of her mind when she found the door to his laboratory open and stepped inside.
“Damn it, where is it?”
A tin can went flying through the air and Zan ducked as it went crashing through the doorway.
Tarlton’s assistant, Erasmus, was sitting at a table serenely writing in a notebook despite a suspicious looking smudge on his tie. “It’s on the next to the top shelf on the far right.”
“Ah ha!”
“Mr. Tarlton?” Zan called out. “Have I come at a bad time?”
“What?” Tarlton turned around and shoved his spectacles that had drooped downward on his aquiline nose closer to his face. “Ah, Miss Hu! Another visit so soon!” The object that he had retrieved from the shelf was a bow tie of indeterminate color. It could have been burgundy or brown, but Zan wasn’t quite sure, and she wasn’t about to ask. He put it around his neck to secure it to his collar. “What brings you here?”
“I have a few more questions,” she replied. “You were busy the other day and didn’t have time to go in depth with what you told me.”
“You were busy as well, as I recall,” said Tarlton as he went over to take a seat next to his assistant and to fiddle with a strange coiled contraption that was lying on the table top. “Didn’t a beau of yours come looking for you that day? Nice looking young man. Didn’t catch his name, though.”
“Mr. Caradon,” his assistant supplied.
Zan felt her cheeks coloring. “I don’t have a beau. Mr. Caradon is my patron.”
“Huh,” said Tarlton. “Odd behavior for a patron. Say Erasmus, do we have some nickel wire version of this?” he asked, waving the contraption in his hand under his assistant’s nose.
“No sir,” Erasmus replied. “But we do have the materials. There’s quite a bit of nickel wire stashed in the corner over there…”
“I have some questions,” she interrupted. “Before you had to continue on your own experiments, you said something about my uncle investigating some places in the old part of the city.”
“Oh, that,” Tarlton gave a sigh and began juggling the contraption in his hands. “Well, Elliot did say that he was going to test some of his theories about certain places being more powerful—that is, having a greater energy potential—than others. His electricity prototype had to be grounded for it to work, so I suppose he did have a point. There is some energy in the ground. But more in certain places? Why would there be more? It doesn’t really make sense to me.”
“Did my uncle mention to you what particular places he would look into?”
Tarlton tapped a finger to his chin. “Elliot did mention that he was looking into the works of Walter Bittenburg. You do recall him?”
She shook her head.
“Bittenburg was before your time. He worked his entire life at the Academy and passed away about thirty years ago. His experiments were devoted to proving the existence of magic. Some people thought he was a complete crackpot, but there were many patrons about willing to pay for his research. At one time, even the Great Gallic Despot sent him funds—in hopes that he might find a reliable way to see into the future.”
“That sounds like poppycock,” said Zan.
“That’s what I told your uncle, but he just dismissed my comments and said that there is always a grain of truth in everything. Do you know how Bittenburg got into the who subject in the first place? He got married.”
“Married? What does that have to do about anything?” she asked.
“His bride was from the Isle of Eire. They said that she was a fisherman’s daughter in a small coastal village and she was accounted to be a great beauty. And then there were rumors that she was a selkie—a seal shifter—and somehow old Bittenburg had captured her. But he was knowledgeable about those mythic creatures, you see. He had stolen her seal pelt and had hidden it so she was forced to become his bride. It was no secret that she was terribly unhappy in that marriage and longed to go back to the sea. It was said that she walked the coasts of Amanthus every morning, trying to call back to her own kind.”
“How sad for Bittenburg’s wife. But I still don’t see how that relates to his study in magic.”
“Well, Bittenburg lived in constant fear that his bride would find the pelt and leave him so he was always trying to find a way to destroy the pelt. The thing can’t be burned or cut up for some reason. So he went into the study of magic. In one of his projects, he measured the amount of magical energy each place in the city held. In his reports, he discovered that certain places definitely had more energy—particularly those places where the Ancients had built their religious places of worship. Elliot thought this was quite telling for some reason.”
“I see. But how on earth did Bittenburg tell quantitatively that one place had more energy than the other. As far as I can remember, there aren’t any measuring devices for that sort of thing. Perhaps psychics and mediums could be used, but they aren’t very reliable.”
Tarlton shrugged. “I don’t have the answer to that question, Miss Hu. I’m not a scholar of Bittenburg’s work and Elliot never told me the specific details of what he did find in that crackpot’s results. But whatever he was up to, Bittenburg failed in his initial goal. After about twenty years of marriage, his wife disappeared after one of her morning walks by the sea, never to be seen again.”
“She found her pelt?”
“I’m not sure I believe in selkies,” Tarlton replied. “Shifters, ha! That’s physiologically impossible. But Bittenburg’s wife definitely was unhappy. My hunch is that she was finally fed up with living with him and ran away.”
Zan frowned. “Anyway, I do have another question. Did my uncle ever mention using resins? And if so, what sort of resin did he propose on using?”
“Sir?” the assistant piped up. “It’s five till noon.”
“Ah!” Tarlton got up from his chair and tugged at the lapels of his jacket. “The weekly Academy seminar. Are you attending, Miss Hu?”
“Yes, I suppose so…”
“Of course you are! In answer to your last question—no, Elliot did not mention anything about resins to me. Perhaps he talked to one of the botanists about that. Today’s lecture will be by one of those electricity experts. It might help you answer some of your questions as I dabble more in magnetism and a bit of chemistry than the electric field.”
