Fiendish Schemes Read Online Free PDF

pistol’s black grip and had further discerned that this simple gilded piece, not much bigger than a mouse’s forelimb, could be inserted into various points about the device and used to wind its coils and mainsprings to readiness, much as one attended to the single driving force in one’s pocket watch. On the occasions when I had done so, the pistol’s inner gears and escapements had immediately begun their busy whirrings and tickings, just as would similarly be the result with the aforementioned timepiece. A perceptible vibration had coursed out of the supposedly dead metal, as though my hand had seized upon a living creature, the pulse of its minute heart racing faster than my own. The first time I had experienced this sensation, I had immediately dropped the pistol, so startled was I by the impression of it having sprung to the same vibrant animation Man shares with the beasts of field and branch. And if brass and tin and iron could be possessed of life, it also seemed that they could own that degree of mulish stubbornness that Man has heightened to the level of Principle. For try as I might, forefinger tightening upon what was self-evidently the pistol’s trigger, I could not get the blasted device to fire. Various latches and levers protruded from the mechanism, all of which I had prodded and adjusted, singly and in combination, but to no avail. The shivering release of the clockwork pistol’s wound-up mainspring was as much liveliness as it had been willing to display. The cartridges had remained entombed inside, rather than bursting forth with a martial roar to spang upon the nearest stone wall.
    That had been frustrating, but only to the idle curiosity I had roused to break the monotony of the agrarian existence to which I had resigned myself. Now, I was rather more motivated.
    Having once again wound the pistol’s various springs and coils, I returned the key to its niche. Optimism is a desirable virtue in all pursuits, but never so much as in suicide. A host of considerations form impediments to the wished result, from the dreaded pain of the bullet’s impact, however brief, to a vision of the ungainliness of one’s body, limbs splayed at the sort of comical angles that would provide amusement to callous onlookers. (No doubt the latter prompts the enthusiasm for quick-acting poisons amongst women committed to self-annihilation, the efficacy of such compounds allowing for a more decorous arrangement of the corporeal remains, free of repulsive gore. The last scene of the Bard’s Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet would hardly have seemed so tragic, though perhaps a bit more exciting to the groundling rabble, if it had included a gunshot to the head rather than a maidenly swoon upon the sarcophagus—though my fragmentary memory of the classics does recall something about a dagger as well.) If the soi-disant suicide entertains notions of failure in the attempt, he is likely to give up altogether and pessimistically resign himself to his miserable life.
    Having decided my course, I was determined to see it through. I had never conceived of myself as a figure of heroic resolve, but then, better late than never.
    I swung my legs over the sagging bed’s edge, the better to bring the clockwork pistol close to the lantern’s illumination. My experience in the past had always been, as others wiser than myself have remarked upon, that a problem’s solution might elude the enquirer upon first and most forceful application, as a drop of mercury darts away from a fingertip brought square upon it. Whereas inattention—a skill I had seemingly developed to a high degree—often brings the answer unbidden. Such proved to be the case in this event, or so I assumed. It had been some time since last I occupied myself with my father’s eccentric clockwork pistol. The same small levers and catchpoints that I had manipulated before to vain effect, I now pushed and prodded in differing order. This produced some edifying results: one