Airship Hunters Page 6

  He’d been accompanied by Walker. Chief Barker had harrumphed at stepping into the county sheriff’s business, but had waved Walker out with Cabot and told Williams to send a message to the sheriff about the happenings at the Brecker place.

  Cabot and Walker had searched the ruins of the Brecker structures and found nothing of use. Even the pail of rotten milk had disappeared. And the force of the explosion had wiped out any tracks Cabot’s pursuer might have made.

  But in the timber, they found signs where the creature— the beast—the thing—had broken through undergrowth during the chase. Cabot tried not to use the word monster. He had no tangible clues and no real description of what he’d encountered, and tagging it with a word like monster based on fears fed by the stories he’d heard from Mrs. Howard—well, Yankee Bligh would have said he was being influenced by hearsay, not discovered facts.

  Walker pointed out a gap in the tree canopy. Limbs broken, branches shattered—it was about ten feet across. Cabot thought it was the place he’d heard the beast bellowing when the piercing blast of light blinded him.

  They also found Mrs. Brecker. Like the other adults, she was rent limb from limb, as if by a raging giant. But she was buried in a shallow grave, not far from the tree Cabot had climbed, and her parts were assembled and arranged in their proper places.

  That accounted for all the adults. But the children were still missing.

  That bothered Cabot. He stayed in Broken Toe several days. He asked questions. He learned the Smiths were hard, callous people and used their boys roughly. They would strike the boys in public and berate them loudly and at length with coarse language.

  James Kelly, a recent widower, had taken solace for his loss from a jug. Gossip whispered, while eyes were averted, suggested he might have been seeking comfort from his fourteen-year-old daughter.

  Mrs. Brecker and her son, Sam, doted on one another. She was kind. He was obedient and good-humored.

  Cabot reported to Assistant Director Hammond Gallows all he’d learned upon his return to Washington. In his Treasury Department office, Gallows had nodded, and then raised a hand. In the half-circle formed by index finger and thumb was the gold coin Cabot had found in Kansas.

  “You can still see the minting date,” Gallows said. “1861. There was a plan at the beginning of the War Between the States to strike a limited number of gold coins specifically for trade with foreign powers for material the Union might need during the conflict.” He opened a small hinged box made of walnut and lined with green felt. “However, that plan was never carried out.” He placed the coin on the felt, closed the lid, and latched the box with a brass clasp. “I’ll take charge of this.” He placed the box in a drawer of the ornate desk behind which he sat. He shut the drawer and locked it.

  Gallows patted the stack of papers of Cabot’s report. “This is fine work, Agent Cabot. A decision has been made to change your alignment within the Department. From this moment, you are re-assigned as an operative for the United States Secret Service.” Cabot just stared in surprise as Gallows plucked a badge from a waistcoat pocket and placed it on the desk before the young man.

  That was the news Cabot had received this morning. Gallows had told him a meeting had been scheduled for Cabot at the War Department. With whom, the Assistant Director didn’t say.

  Now Cabot sat alone on a leather loveseat in a well-appointed office. Red seemed to be the dominant color scheme for the room, although its paintings and fixtures exhibited nautical themes. Wouldn’t blue and green be more appropriate for a marine setting?

  The door opened. Cabot stood as two men entered. Both were in Army dress. The older of the two strode forward and nodded crisply to Cabot before speaking: “Lieutenant Michael Valiantine, this is Agent William Cabot, of the Secret Service. Cabot, Valiantine.”

  Cabot extended his hand, and the two men shook.

  “Get to know each other,” the older officer said. “You’ll be working together.”

  Valiantine gave voice to Cabot’s thoughts: “I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.”

  The major smiled. Cabot detected no warmth in it.

  “Agent Cabot is your new partner, Lieutenant.”

  THE MISTS OF MORNING

  Jim Beard

  July 1897

  Rubbish!”

  Lieutenant Michael Valiantine slammed the small metal badge down on the table and sat back. Staring at the object where it lay among the dinner dishes, he wished it every kind of ill.

  After a moment, he picked up the badge again and fingered its embossed surface.

  “‘Aero-Marshal,’” he read aloud. “What in hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Agent Cabot leaned forward across the table, wagging his head slowly. “That we’re very, very special, I’d wager.”

  “Or just very foolish,” Valiantine added, unsure if the man was being facetious. “It’s hard to credit it. The two of us, from different departments, thrust together to form... whatever this is.” He held up the badge. “I’m not afraid to tell you I don’t like it. Not a bit.”

  The lieutenant glanced over to take in his new companion. He knew Cabot’s own badge had already been secured in the agent’s wallet, ready to be shown at a moment’s notice. Cabot was young, certainly, and capable, no doubt, but Valiantine felt he had much to learn yet about the other agent. He only hoped Cabot was smart enough to never completely trust his superiors; he himself had lived through many a scrape by relying on himself far more than his orders.

  “Do you want to know what I think of it?” Cabot asked, sitting back in his seat and fingering his hat, which sat next to him on the table.

  Valiantine nodded somberly. “Absolutely.”

  “It’s a series of tests.”

  “On that we agree, then.”

  The lieutenant looked out the window at the landscape hurtling by and wondered how much of his immediate future would be spent traveling on trains. He’d always been indifferent to traveling by rail, but decided he could soon grow to hate it.

  They’d been charged not two days before by Major Wellington to make all haste to Detroit, in Michigan. Some inventor there had supposedly announced he’d solved that nagging problem of sustained human flight, and not by balloon. How the major had come by this news he didn’t say, but he’d ordered Valiantine and Cabot to go to Detroit, make contact with the inventor, and “see what's what.”

  “Too much of a coincidence,” Wellington had said. “Find out if he has anything to do with the airships. And, if so, bring him in. Quietly.”

  Valiantine had his doubts as to how quiet they could be about it if the man was demonstrative in his pursuits, so he hoped their target was of the shy, retiring type.

  He looked up from rearranging everything on the table to see Cabot staring at him. He’d seen that look of curiosity over his peculiar habits before on others and forced himself to still his hands and concentrate on the situation.

  “How do we operate?” Cabot inquired.

  “Eh?” Valiantine said. “Oh, I see your meaning. Since it’s simply the two of us, my opinion is that there’s no need for a ‘leader,’ if you will. We weren’t given orders for any structure to this whole ‘Aero-Marshal’ business, so let us agree neither one of us is superior to the other. Offer what you have at the time and inform me of what you’re doing or will be doing. I promise to do the same. Agreed?”

  Cabot nodded earnestly. “Agreed. That suits me. We should also consider setting up a base of operations, something more centralized to the area we’ll be covering. We can’t be wasting time traipsing back to Washington after every assignment.”

  Valiantine conceded that it was a good point. Securing his badge in a pocket, he checked his watch. “Cabot, listen: as I said, you’re right to feel this is a test we’ve been given, though if true, Heaven knows why. But we have our orders and shall make the best of it. This business in Detroit with the inventor should go quickly and we’ll be on to the next wild goose chase. It won’t be the
first for me, and probably not the last, so let’s just allow it to play out, eh?”

  The young agent nodded, picked up his after-dinner brandy, and finished it off. “So, what do you make of it all? The whole ‘airship’ flap, I mean. Foreign military? Domestic crackpots?”

  “Or mass insanity,” Valiantine said, smiling slightly under his moustache. He flashed back to the strange evening in Indiana. “That must be added into the equation. Or perhaps it’s the sole answer.”

  He looked out the window again, not wanting to meet his new partner’s eyes as his face flushed from the memory of the unfathomable blackness in the sky over Lake Manitou. Valiantine could feel Cabot’s gaze upon him, scrutinizing him.

  The young man stood up suddenly, dropping his napkin on top of his dishes. “Going to catch a few winks before we arrive, if you don’t mind.”

  The lieutenant nodded and turned to watch Cabot walk toward the door of the dining compartment. The agent spun around to face him before exiting.

  “Valiantine, I...I know there’s something you’re not telling me. That’s your prerogative, of course. But, I feel as if I understand it, though I don’t know what it is. And I hope you come to trust me in time.”

  He turned to leave. Alone at the table, Valiantine smoothed down his moustache for the hundredth time and contemplated the wrinkles in the tablecloth before him, counting each fold and line.

  There was something his companion wasn’t telling him, also, something to do with his own experiences and their new status. He felt sure of it. But if he himself wasn’t forthcoming about everything, why would he expect anyone else to be?

  They hopped an electric railcar not far from the train depot in Detroit and made their way to their target. Valiantine looked around at the city while Cabot filled him in with a few particulars on the man they’d come to see.

  “Andrew Carnavon. More an engineer than an inventor, really. Doesn’t seem to be a native of Detroit, but we’re unsure of where he was born. Kept a low profile in his work ’til now, which is mostly in the carriage trade. Made a few advances in load bearing, structural integrity, that sort of thing. Unmarried, as far as we know, keeps a small staff and has owned his current residence for almost fifteen years.”

  “That’s not much, all told,” the lieutenant remarked. “But I guess it will do. Let’s assume that he hasn’t had much contact with the law, let alone federal agents. Easy does it, until the point where we must insist he cooperate.”

  The Treasury man nodded. “I’m familiar with such situations. The velvet glove before the cestus.”

  “Perhaps you should take the lead on this one, then,” Valiantine said with a slight smile.

  The lieutenant began to point out the various businesses they were passing to his partner. Detroit’s diversity of industry and manufacturing astounded him. Since they’d boarded the railcar, they’d passed plants manufacturing bicycles, paint, beer and other spirits, and pharmaceuticals, as well as lumber yards, iron and steel foundries, and what appeared to be a place that produced entire railroad cars.

  Over it all hung the smell of tobacco. Cabot informed him that one of the city’s major outputs was tobacco products.

  “I once heard it called the ‘Paris of the West,’” Valiantine said with a smirk. “Can’t imagine what they mean by that with all this.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence, enjoying the gorgeous early June day and the wide expanse of clear blue sky overhead. Valiantine liked that; you could see anything that was coming with such a sky.

  Disembarking from the railcar, they walked roughly a mile to Carnavon’s compound. The part of the city upon which they alighted was dirty and rough, occupied by several low buildings and dotted with smokestacks. The two agents passed few people on the streets, but those they did appeared to be tradesmen and laborers, going about their business and taking no real notice of the duo.

  We may be able to walk in and walk out of this easily, Valiantine mused to himself. He’d never visited Detroit previously, but so far as he’d seen, the city wasn’t going to top his personal list of favorites. The assignment’s culmination would help him place it.

  They rounded a corner onto the street they sought. Across it and a hundred feet away stood a long wood-slat fence, some six feet high. Beyond it sat a two-story brick building with two large smokestacks standing like sentinels on either side of it. In the middle of the length of fence was a gate. It was closed and padlocked.

  In front of the gate, and spilling out into the cobbled street, a throng of men in suits and hats milled about. In all, Valiantine counted at least twenty of them.

  “Reporters,” he said grimly. “It had to be reporters.”

  The duo stood where they’d stopped at the corner of a building across the street from the compound and assessed the small crowd in silence. Valiantine noticed the agitation that flitted about the group and wondered at it. Competition would cause that, of course, but there seemed to be an extra layer of unrest present. He turned to Cabot.

  “Word’s gotten out, apparently. This will make things more difficult.”

  “Carnavon doesn’t appear to have satisfied their curiosity,” Cabot remarked. “Can’t really blame him. Nasty creatures.”

  He appraised Valiantine with a raised eyebrow. “Back entrance?”

  “My thought exactly,” the lieutenant said.

  They turned and walked back the way they came, making a circuit around the block and coming up on its far side. From their new vantage point they could see a small alleyway that bordered Carnavon’s place, down which the high wooden fence continued.

  Crossing the street quickly yet still casually, they entered the mouth of the alley and made their way down it, looking for another way into the compound.

  “I suppose the reporters have already tried this,” Valiantine grumbled. He hoped all their missions would not be like this. He could see what was coming: roadblocks and hurdles. The writing was on the wall.

  “My guess is that they have,” Cabot said, “but perhaps they’ve been told they must wait outside the main gate.”

  “There.” The lieutenant pointed up ahead of them to a break in the length of fence. Sure enough, when they approached it, they saw it led to a small door in the side of the building. The door was metal, with one window set into it at eye level and darkened with crepe paper.

  Valiantine made a mock-graceful gesture at the portal. “After you,” he said to the Treasury man. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  Cabot strode up to the door and applied a confident knock to it. Behind him, the lieutenant brushed lint off his coat and trousers.

  They waited a full minute before knocking again. Finally, the sound of someone approaching the door from inside came to them. A muffled voice called out.

  “Front gate! Not going to tell you again!”

  Cabot turned his head slightly to Valiantine and nodded, as if to say, I told you so.

  “Federal agents with credentials,” the young agent called out in return. “Please open this door.”

  After the sound of latches being thrown and a bolt pulled back, the door swung inward and a face materialized from the darkness beyond. It was a bespectacled man, his features sweaty and grimy. He blinked at the two agents, clearly confused.

  Both Cabot and Valiantine held up their new badges. The man squinted at them, trying to read the words embossed upon them.

  “Department A-13,” the Treasury man said soberly. “Aero-Marshals. We’d like to speak to Mr. Carnavon.”

  “He’s not seeing anyone at the moment,” the man said with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry, but I have it directly from him.”

  “And why would that be?” Cabot asked.

  “Why,” the man said as he blinked convulsively, “he’s about to speak, of course!”

  Back out on the street, they joined the crowd of reporters, feeling relatively certain they wouldn’t stand out much.

  Chewing on his distaste for the press, Valian
tine discovered one pleasant surprise in the throng: a woman.

  Before he could study her comely features beyond a glance or two, a man came out from Carnavon’s building and, reaching between the gap between the gates, unlocked the padlock and removed the chains that held the gates in place.

  The lieutenant received an even greater surprise when another man stepped away from the building, approached the crowd, and introduced himself as Andrew Carnavon.

  “What the hell...” Valiantine hissed, and began to move forward, shouldering past a reporter in front of him.

  Cabot’s hand shot out in the blink of an eye and caught his partner’s arm. His grip was tight, but only enough so to force the lieutenant to pause and think.

  “Steady, old man,” Cabot said. “What’s it all about?”

  Valiantine’s head shot around to glare at him. “I know him. I know the bastard!”

  Andrew Carnavon was a dead ringer for Awanai, the Indiana bandit.

  The Treasury man did not release his grip on his partner. “Wait a moment. Let him speak.”

  Carnavon sauntered up to the open gates and stopped, holding up his hands in a gesture to ask for silence. He was dressed in a simple suit with a large, white coat over it. The coat was smudged with oil and grease and other substances.

  “I thank you for your interest, gentlemen,” he said, raising his voice to be heard, “but I beg you to be patient with me. I regret that I am not yet prepared to make a full accounting of my discoveries.”

  A collective moan arose from the reporters. They all looked at each other with various degrees of disappointment and disgust.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Carnavon said, frowning. “I... might have been a tad... premature in my initial release, but I never assumed that it would cause such a stir. Again, I appreciate that you all have a job to perform, but you must indulge me and wait a while longer, if you can.”