Angels of Music Read Online Free PDF Page B

who had paused to have a cigar, though no red glow-worm showed. She hoped it was not some inconvenient fool intent on suicide – they did not want attention drawn to their night-work, with lanterns played across the water’s surface or the decks where they were hiding. The figure did not move, was not apparently looking at the barge, and might as easily have been a scarecrow.
    Irene slipped away from the lifeboat, did a gymnast’s roll, and found herself next to the housing of some sort of marine winch. Heart beating fast, she looked up at the bridge. The possible spy was gone. There had been something familiar about him.
    The Persian joined her.
    The Countess Cagliostro’s barge was armoured like a dreadnought. That was why it sat so low in the water. Aft of the ballroom were powerful engines, worked by humming dynamos. The barge was fully illuminated by electrical Edison lamps, and mysterious galvanic energies coursed through rubber-clad veins, nurturing vast sleeping mechanical beasts whose purposes neither of Erik’s operatives could guess.
    ‘She could invade a country with this thing,’ said Irene.
    ‘Several,’ commented the Persian.
    ‘Do you think it’s a submersible?’
    The Persian shrugged. ‘I should not be surprised if it inflates balloons from those fittings, and lifts into the skies.’
    ‘You’ve an inventive turn of mind, pardner.’
    ‘That is true. It is part of the tale of how Erik and I became associates, back in my own country… but this is not the time for that history.’
    ‘Too true. Let’s try and find the lady’s lair.’
    Beyond the engines, the deck was a featureless plate but for several inset panes of thick black glass. Irene reckoned this was Erik’s trick again – transparent for the sitting spider, opaque for the unwary fly.
    From the pouch slung on her hip, she drew a cracksman’s tool: a suction cup with an arm, attached to a brutal chunk of diamond. The tool was worth more than most of the swag Irene had used it to lift – the cutting gem had been prised from a tiara and shaped to order by a jeweller who nearly baulked at the sacrilege of turning beauty into deadly practicality.
    Irene cut a circle out of the glass, and placed it quietly on the deck.
    The space below was dark, a pool of inky nothing. Working silently, the Persian unwound a coil of rope from his torso and made a harness for Irene. After a tug to test the line, Irene stepped into the hole and let herself fall. The Persian, anchored strongly, doled out measured lengths of rope, lowering her by increments.
    Once inside, the hole above was bright as the moon, and all around was cavernous dark. Irene blinked, hoping her eyes would adjust – but the gloom was unbroken, the dark undifferentiated.
    Then there was a musical roaring, as if a steam calliope were stirring, and a thousand coloured jewels lit up, dazzling her. Incandescent lamps fired and Irene found herself dangling inside what might have been the workings of a giant clock. Gears and wheels, balances and accumulators were all around, in dangerous motion, scything through the air. She had to twist on her rope to avoid being bashed by a counterweight.
    Music played – mechanical, but cacophonous, assaulting her ears.
    The Persian began to haul her upwards hastily, out of the potential meat-grinder, and she climbed, loops of rope dangling below her. A razor-edged wheel whirred, slicing through loose cord.
    Irene was pulled up on deck. By more than two hands.
    Light streamed upwards from the hole.
    Men in striped jerseys caught her. Their faces were covered by metal half-masks. The Persian, scarf torn away and hood wrenched off, was held by a stranger character, one of the ten-foot toy soldiers from the ballroom, miraculously endowed with life. Its tin moustache bristled fiercely and its big wooden hands gripped like implements of torture. Slung on its back was an oversized musket with a yard-long bayonet. Stuck out of its side was a giant key. The