Chapter 23
Chapter
He was a fool. A foolish sap with rosy-hued spectacles.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Charles groaned.
It was never a good sign when Benjamin’s voice took to bantering with his thoughts of self-deprecation.
He shook his head and resumed pacing outside the Invention Factory, where he’d been awaiting Lady Margaret’s arrival these past ten minutes.
By the looks of him, one would think the woman was running late.
Never mind that their appointment wasn’t for another five minutes, and Lady Margaret was always punctual.
He just couldn’t abide staying indoors. Not when Reverie was expected.
Hector Berlioz, how he’d missed her! Fool that he was, Charles had spent the entire week reflexively looking for Lady Margaret when the clock struck two.
One day, he’d even taken the elevator, only to recall as the doors opened on the main floor that she wasn’t there for him to greet.
After finalizing his selections for the gala displays, he’d wanted to show her every invention, curious if they’d make her smile or laugh or light up with wonder.
He’d wanted to know how her investigation progressed.
See her. Be with her. A desire that only increased as he came to know her better.
After discovering they’d both been at the Swan Lake premiere, Charles couldn’t help but wonder if her presence in his life was fortuitous.
To think, while he’d been warming up with the other musicians, she’d been in the audience! Could their meeting again be more than serendipity? Might he dare hope it was an occurrence of providential orchestration?
Foolish sap with rosy-hued spectacles.
Charles kicked a piece of gravel. Shut up, little brother!
The crunch of approaching carriage wheels set his heartbeat to playing in staccato.
Charles raked fingers through his hair. Straightened his tie.
Brushed nonexistent lint from his jacket.
Keep calm and quit fidgeting, man. She’ll think you have fleas.
He stilled as the carriage rolled to a stop in front of the factory.
Soon, though not nearly soon enough, Lady Margaret was poised in her wheeled chair, smiling at him as the carriage clattered back up the gravel drive.
Leaving them quite alone. Heat poured over Charles’ face and neck, and he resisted the urge to tug at his collar. “It’s good to see you, Miss Knight. I hope your week has been productive.”
“Indeed, it has, thanks to a little help from my friends. Though the results were not wholly as expected.” From a pocket of her flowing blue gown, Lady Margaret withdrew the notebook he’d grown accustomed to seeing with her on her visits.
She flipped through it and indicated a particular page with a point of her forefinger.
Charles took the proffered notebook. It was the list of inventions attributed to J. Dawkins, the ones she’d intended to cross-reference with rejected applications at the patent office. Beside each invention had been added a crisp check mark. His eyes widened at the implication. “All?”
Reclaiming her book, Lady Margaret nodded. “All.”
Then inventor J. Dawkins had never invented a thing. Surely this was sufficient evidence to eliminate Harrison as a suspect. “This narrows down the items on your other list, does it not?”
“It might have done. Except another friend of mine went shopping and learned one of the . . . items on my list,” Margaret continued, employing the same euphemism, “may not be acquirable.” From another pocket, Lady Margaret produced a dingy old paper, once crumpled and likely stomped underfoot, now neatly folded into fours.
Unfolding the paper, Charles discovered a pamphlet advertisement for a pawnbroker’s shop.
There was an illustration of the establishment, featuring rows of handkerchiefs hanging in the front window, and printed below in bold letters was an address.
The very same address listed in Dawkins’ personnel file as his place of residence.
“My friend spoke with the proprietor. The man’s grandfather established the place in 1785, and according to his recollection, the shop never had the item on my list in stock.”
Then Dawkins wasn’t merely a thief, but a fraud.
Though why the man would lie about his residence, Charles couldn’t begin to fathom.
“Do you think another shop will have the item in stock?” The man had to live somewhere, and since his time with the company predated the construction of Innovation Park’s employee housing, his residence must be located somewhere in the city.
“Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if the item I seek even exists.” The way Lady Margaret spoke that final word, with an emphasis as gentle as it was emphatic, gave him pause.
Charles returned the advertisement to her keeping, studying the nuances of her tone and expression.
She believed Dawkins was a false identity.
That the man had never existed. That the man was the creation of .
. . Mr. Harrison. His heartbeat transitioned into legato.
Harrison, a thief and a fraud? No. The notion was out of tune with everything he knew of the man.
Granted, he’d not known the man overlong.
“There must be something we’ve missed. What of the . . . payments already made on that particular item?” Dawkins had a bank account on file, which received monthly royalty checks from Alvan T. Harrison, Incorporated. Those funds had to be going somewhere.
To someone not Mr. Harrison.
“I’ve a friend tracking the route of those payments, but I must caution you to prepare yourself.” Compassion tinged with concern softened the plains of her face. “The answers my friend uncovers may not be to your liking.”
Charles nodded. He’d observed Lady Margaret long enough to trust she’d follow the evidence.
While there might be an uncomfortable truth on the horizon he’d have to reckon with, nothing was settled yet.
There was still information to obtain and people to question.
He consulted his pocket watch. Five till one.
“I’ve arranged for us to interview some of the inventors at the conclusion of their lunch hour.
We’ll be collecting testimonials for the gala and stories for your articles, Miss Knight.
I do believe our first interview will be of the most interest to your readers.
Mr. Tinkerton’s the only inventor on staff who’s been with the company since the very beginning. ”
Making him the only employee who might recall a colleague by the name of J. Dawkins.
As they entered the Invention Factory, the pair was greeted not by the rhythmic clanking of tools or the frenetic whirring of machinery, but by a familiar voice warbling a lively tune one would expect to come staggering out of a pub.
Lady Margaret’s eyebrows rose, and Charles failed to suppress a grin.
He probably ought to have warned her, given that she’d never visited the factory during the employee lunch break when Harrison made his daily rounds, but a puckish part of him had wanted to see how Lady Margaret would react to Mr. Harrison’s unique manner of interacting with his employees.
Venturing into the heart of the building, they found Mr. Harrison dancing a jig in time to the clapping and knee-slapping of the assembled inventors. Nimbly, the gray-haired gentleman cavorted on legs long and lithe, his smile as warm and contagious as his song.
“I’m just a wench from Bristol,
in my knickers I carry a pistol.
If you come at me,
it’s the barrel you’ll see.
You’ll be six foot under,
afore my cuppa tea!”
The ditty concluded to raucous applause, and Mr. Harrison laughed, none too little winded. “All right, lads. The lunch hour is spent and so am I. Let’s have a look at what you’re working on today. MacGyver, how’s that multipurpose pocketknife coming along?”
As Mac led Mr. Harrison to his workstation, a cluster of men following behind, Lady Margaret watched the procession in bewilderment. “Does this sort of thing occur often?”
“Indeed. It’s Mr. Harrison’s habit to make an appearance on the floor at this time of day while the men are on break.
He likes to boost morale with a casual exchange of story and song, often regaling the men with tales of his youth.
Then he checks in with the inventors individually—praises their work, offers advice for improvement, that sort of thing.
He’s especially fond of mentoring the younger inventors.
” Perhaps now Lady Margaret would understand his reluctance to think the worst of the man.
Lady Margaret’s countenance grew thoughtful, and she gnawed her bottom lip, turning it a deeper shade of pink, one so alluring that Charles’ heartbeat stumbled over a sharp accidental. Foolish sap with—
“Look, there’s Mr. Tinkerton! At his station.
Aw-waiting his interview. We’d best get a move on.
‘Tardy is tardy, and those who think otherwise are naught but foolhardy.’” Richard Wagner, had he just quoted Barton?
He grimaced, face nigh scalding as he practically fled across the factory. “Right this way, Miss Knight.”
To his great relief, Lady Margaret didn’t acknowledge his sudden awkwardness. Instead she merely rolled ahead, greeted Mr. Tinkerton, and introduced herself as a writer for the Dispatch before commencing the interview with the aplomb of a seasoned journalist.
One could always tell how Mr. Tremaine Tinkerton’s day was going based on the state of the octogenarian’s mustache.
If it was pristinely waxed into a pair of defined upward curls, Tinkerton was having a productive and pleasing day.
If the mustache shot straight out on either side with the frazzled appearance of a startled cat’s tail, Tinkerton was having an unproductive and most unpleasant day, indeed. Most likely involving electrocution.
As a result, holding Tinkerton’s attention for any span of time was quite the feat, but Lady Margaret managed to do so with ease, taking copious notes all the while.
She gleaned details about how he’d come to work for the company and listened patiently as he explained the formula he was developing for a protective coating for copper wire that could withstand high voltages of electricity.
Judging by Tinkerton’s intent focus and immaculately flourished mustache, the day’s work was going rather well.
Lady Margaret looked up from her notes. “It is my understanding, Mr. Tinkerton, that you’re the lone remnant of the Invention Factory’s initial hires. Do you keep in touch with your colleagues from those early days?”
“I do. With those that are still living, leastways. Some reside here at Innovation Park in the retirement housing quarter, though a few have moved away to be near family in other parts of the country.”
Turning to a clean page, Lady Margaret placed her notebook and pencil on Tinkerton’s workstation. “Would you mind giving me their addresses? If possible, I’d love to gather that first band of inventors at the anniversary gala and take a commemorative photograph for my article.”
“Aye, I can do that, miss.” Beaming a smile that spanned the breadth of his voluminous mustache, Tinkerton scribbled away for a few moments before sliding the notebook back across the table to Lady Margaret. “Here ye are, miss. That’s the lot.”
Lady Margert perused the names thoughtfully. “Are you certain? According to my research, you’re missing an inventor called J. Dawkins. Do you recall him, perchance?”
Mouth puckering in a frown, Tinkerton stroked a hand over the lower half of his face, mustache curls springing back into place. “Nay, miss. In the nearly fifty years I’ve worked here, I’ve never met a man by the name of Dawkins.”
A rock of disappointment plunked into Charles’ stomach. It seemed Lady Margaret’s suspicions of Dawkins being a fictional entity were likely on the mark. He hated to think what the accuracy of her instincts might portend regarding his employer.
“I see.” Lady Margaret closed her notebook. “My apologies, Mr. Tinkerton. I must’ve gotten my wires crossed with research on a previous—”
“Posts, everyone!” A booming shout drew all eyes toward Caractacus Potts, who was preparing a demonstration of his latest invention.
Charles had seen the device in action, though it’d been rather underwhelming.
A sort of scaled-down train track, the machine was meant to convey cutlery and steaming plates of food secured upon miniature flatcars from kitchen to table and back again by rolling them along a system of electric-powered rails, but as Mr. Harrison had kindly observed, “Further development is required, lest the gadget serve many a cold dinner for breakfast.”
It seemed young Caractacus was quite eager to show off the developments he’d made for improved efficiency and increased speed.
His colleagues and Mr. Harrison had assumed their posts at a dining table positioned at the end of the iron track while Caractacus stood at the head, one hand poised on a lever. “Three, two, one!”
Caractacus threw the lever, and the machine threw everything.
Bowls zipped down the length of track at an alarming clip.
The startled men at table zigged and zagged as dishes careened between their heads, shattering against the brick walls.
The machine crackled, hummed, popped, and whirred.
Sputtering as it spewed its cargo hither and yon.
Plates whizzing through the air one after the other.
Ducking under the table, the inventors shouted as one, “Turn. It. Off!”
A frazzled Caractacus fumbled with the lever, which appeared to be jammed.
Charles was just about to offer aid when a fork zinged his direction and sunk its tines into the left curl of Tinkerton’s mustache.
Mr. Tinkerton gawked at his impaled whiskers. “By jove!”
“Get down!” He half dragged, half caught Tinkerton as the man sank. After depositing the man on the floor, Charles whirled around and reached for Lady Margaret, but his palm grasped air. She was gone.
His heart stalled.
God in heaven, where is Reverie?