CHAPTER 12: IN WHICH MR. COPPER'S APARTMENT IS SEARCHED AND A TRAP IS SPRUNG

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Despite his prestigious career at the Steamwork, Basil Copper had long been burdened by a family debt that had left him destitute. This meant he lived in the only place where a man could manage to get by on a handful of pennies and a quick smile: The Rookery.

For Snips, it remained nothing more than a visit home. She had spent most of her childhood here among the dirty faced street-urchins and fast-witted card sharks—cheating and being cheated, stealing and being stolen from.

Snips sucked in the Rookery's stink as if it were a breeze of fresh country air. Meanwhile, William covered his nose with a handkerchief and did his best not to retch.

"Sweet as treacle, eh? It'll put hair on your chest."

"I'm not exactly looking for a hairy chest, Miss Snips,"

William mumbled. "Now I remember why I've only visited Mr. Copper once during my time at the Steamwork. This way."

They arrived at Basil's apartment just as the sun was tipping its hat and making its way for the door, ushered on out by the indignant splutter of gas lamps. The beggars and con-artists didn't bother to ply their trade this deep in the Rookery; everyone here knew all their scams backwards and sideways. It was a relief to William, who had grown quite distressed at the sight of dirty-faced swindlers struggling to coax a tarnished coin from his pocket.

Basil's apartment was a three story slum rudely crammed into a niche between a pawn shop and a dilapidated warehouse.

Curiously, it was also the only building on the street that remained well lit. Snips stepped up to open the door, but found it locked. She paused, glanced back at William, shrugged, then knocked.

A metal slot slid open, revealing a pair of glaring eyes. A woman's voice (one could only assume it was female; it sounded like what you'd get after smoking thirty cigarettes and swallowing a wad of sulphur followed up with an acid chaser) growled. "What y'want."

"Why, to see the face that eyes as lovely as yours must belong to."

The growl turned into a snarl. "You with the gas company?"

That threw Snips off. "Eh?"

"You have to tell me if yer with the gas company," she said, eyes bobbing away from the slot long enough to spit. "It's the law. I looked it up."

"We are not with the gas company," William said, stepping forward. "Miss Snips is looking into a matter concerning Mr. Copper's recent demise, and—"

"S'all right, but if yer with the gas company, I'll clock y'both," she rumbled. The slot slipped closed. Locks rattled, followed by the sound of a chain clinking to the floor and several deadbolts being released. Snips threw William another shrug.

The door opened. The woman behind it was a solid brick of chocolate-colored muscle and fat; she looked as if she were a jigsaw puzzle made up of iron fused together with a blow torch and slapped with a layer of spackle. She wore a coral pink evening gown that had gutted and devoured the remains of several competitors on its way to her closet.

"Name's Marge," she said. "I'm the landlord here. Gas company's been trying t'hook us back up." She waved a frying pan at them as if she were herding cattle into their pens. Snips and William followed her prompting.

The apartment interior was surprisingly clean. The walls and floors were built of cheap lumber and showed the scars of long use, but several of the doors had been replaced and reinforced by a skilled craftsman. The gas lamps still remained in the hall, left dusty from disuse.

But it was neither the competent carpentry nor the unused lanterns which caused both Snips and William to stop in their tracks. That honor belonged to the newly installed lighting fixtures.

Tear-shaped dollops of pearl-white glass were arranged neatly beneath the metal braces that lined the ceiling. Each was no larger than a fist, and produced a steady near-blinding glow; the illumination they provided left the hallway basked in light to rival the sun.

"That's—what is that?" William asked, voice quivering with sudden excitement. "This isn't a gas lamp." Despite his better judgment, he found himself dragging a chair beneath one of the fixtures and hopping up for a closer look. "Miss Snips! Have a look at this! These are absolutely remarkable. How do they work?"

"Electricity," Snips said. "Galvanized filaments contained in glass bulbs. The entire apartment's probably strung up on them."

She threw a look back at Marge, who now traded her harsh expression for one of surprise. "Basil's work, I assume?"

"S'how he paid for his rent," she said, nodding. "Worked as a handyman. Fixed th'doors, got the plumbing working, and got us light too."

"And the gas company—" Snips began.

The woman's grip on the frying pan tightened. "Ever since he cut off them pipes—bloody buggers! They been sendin' boys down here, tryin' to turn it back on. But we told 'em, we don't want any. They keep sayin', 'it's fer your own good, missus'. For our own good!" She spat. "Like we're all babes who can't figure out what's good fer ourselves."

"Could I—might I perhaps have one of these?" William asked, reaching to touch the glass.

"Don't touch it!" The woman barked with enough force to nearly send him tumbling off the chair. "They're hot. And we ain't got many left. They burn out after a long while, 'afta be replaced."

She paused here, before adding: "You're lookin' after Basil's things? Gonna find out who scragged him?"

"Yeah," Snips said. "Yeah, something like that."

"Since you're anglin' to find some justice fer Basil—you can 'ave one. But just one," she added. "I'll take you to his room."

Snips and William followed Marge as she strode down the hall towards the stairs. As they walked, William started peppering Snips with questions.

"How did you know about the bulbs, Miss Snips? Are you familiar with the fundamentals of galvanization?"

"Eddington mentioned it as one of Basil's side-projects,"

Snips said. "Called them a silly idea. Completely useless."

William frowned. "Mr. Eddington seems to have gotten it wrong. They don't appear useless to me."

"No," Snips agreed. "Provide better light. No spluttering, no vapors, no explosions."

"Of course, electricity is still a dangerous element," he confessed.

"Is it explosive?"

"Hm? Oh, no. Electrical currents alone could not cause an explosion. The danger is in contact; electrical currents cause seizures and burns."

Marge drew out a ring of keys from beneath the neckline of her tattered dress and counted down from the first brass one. She jammed it into the stout iron-plated door ('In case he blew 'imself up,' she said) and opened the way to the basement.

A wild jungle of geometrically arranged chaos greeted them. Pipes zigzagged every which way, veering off into perfect right angles at the drop of a hat; strange machines with rolling metal coils sat in dark corners, gathering dust as they patiently awaited their deceased master's return. Suits and pants were hanging from one high pipe, with Basil's mattress spread between two that ran into the wall at hip-level. All about the room were brass fixtures with bright bulbs that extinguished all but the most clever of shadows; at its center was a looming steam-engine that steadily chewed away at a feast of coal and wood. The smell of grease clung to every surface.

Snips pressed forward into the room, hopping across pipes and furniture on her way to Basil's workbench. Meanwhile, William did his best to fight through his amazement and ask Marge questions. "How does the electricity—"

"Through the pipes," Marge cut him off. "He said he dipped

'em in rubber. Turned the gas valves off, fed the wires through.

S'got a generator hooked up to the engine on the level above."

Basil had arranged several planks of wood atop of a heated pipe to serve as a makeshift table. Atop it were several of his experiments; while Snips scavenged his work desk for information, William inspected each device in turn.

"There's a bulb, you can 'ave that one," Marge said, pointing to one of the bulbs on the table. William politely thanked her and placed it inside his coat.

One device in particular caught William's fancy: a small metal lever had been attached by insulated wire to a light bulb that was fitted into an iron frame. He pressed the lever down and watched with rapt fascination as the bulb immediately hummed to life; when his finger left the trigger, the bulb instantly turned off.

He repeated this action several times, puzzling over what the device could mean. Then he looked up.

"Miss Snips."

"Where did he put his blueprints? Nothing like that in any of these drawers," Snips said. "Just tools, tools, more tools—what is this? Is this a screwdriver? This doesn't look like a screwdriver."

"Miss Snips."

"It's got a spring on it. What sort of screwdriver has a spring on it? We're dealing with a deranged mind here. I think—"

"Miss Snips!"

Something about his tone drew Snips away from the desk.

She turned, looking at William. His head was tossed back, his gaze glued to the ceiling. Snips followed his eyes and noticed just what it was he was staring at.

The insulated wire that ran from the lever to the light bulb did not travel directly to its target. Instead, the wire went from the trigger to the ceiling—where it curled over itself in several dozen bundled loops, cluttering the ceiling in coiled bundles that must have been at least a mile's worth of cord. The wire eventually dropped back down, leading up to the bulb.

Staring up at the extraordinary length of wire, William pressed the trigger again. The light bulb reacted instantly.

"Miss Snips," he said, his voice stark and quiet. "Do you know the stories of Professor Hemlock?"

"Bits and pieces," Snips said, eyeing the bundles stapled to the ceiling. "I've heard them, anyway."

"A brilliant inventor so far removed from the common day that his creations resemble magic more than science," he said, voice hushed with awe. "A man who, driven by the fear that his genius would be misapplied, sought to hide it from the world."

"An absurd bedtime story." Snips stepped forward, detaching the trigger from its battery with a snap of her fingers.

"It's hogwash. Besides, I don't see the big deal. So Basil invented a light you can turn on from far away."

William's head slowly dropped back into place. "He proved that electricity travels instantly. He invented a way to communicate across vast distances with impossible speed."

"And so Hemlock flew down in a steam-powered chariot and blew Basil to kingdom come to protect us from the horrors of reliable mail service," Snips shot back. "By Jove, I think you've done it, Mr. Daffodil! Excellent work!"

William's distant look was dispelled by a flash of anger.

"Simply because you do not understand the significance of Mr. Copper's invention, Miss Snips—"

Marge cleared her throat. Both Snips and William turned, their faces flushed with frustration.

"Yer lookin' for blueprints, right? Because if you are, they're right over there." She pointed the frying pan to the far wall, where several blueprints and notes for Basil's various inventions had been plastered.

"Yeah," Snips said, glaring at William. "Yeah, that's what I was looking for."

"If there's nothing else you need, Miss Snips," William began, gritting his teeth and stepping up to the wall to snatch the blueprints up. It was only then that he noticed the small niche that had been hidden behind the documents. "What on earth—"

He began, but never finished; at that precise moment, the device that was contained within the hidden space activated. The string that had been carefully hooked to the back of the posters was snapped by the violence of his motion, which caused it to wind back into the contraption. It produced a hiss followed by a distinct and unpleasant odor.

And then it exploded.

They had less than half of a second to react. William did nothing but stare with blank-eyed surprise at the blossom of flame that belched forth from the alcove; it was Snips who darted forward and snatched the umbrella out of his hand, unsnapping it as she thrust herself between him and the device.

A wave of fire splashed across the parasol's iron-reinforced canopy, rushing around its edges to eagerly tickle at their shoulders. William coiled an arm around Snips' waist as the force of the explosion repelled them violently back into the room, tumbling toward the exit; when they at last came to a rest, they were left bruised and dazed.

"Oh dear," William muttered in confusion.

"Fire!" Marge roared. "Fire!"

They looked up. The explosion that had been designed to kill them had ignited several small fires throughout the workshop.

Bulbs of glass began to pop; tools were engulfed in the rapidly spreading blaze. As they watched, the grease-soaked room went up in a brilliant flash of heat—and the fire showed no signs of contenting itself merely with the basement.

"The rest of the building," William panted. "We need to evacuate it immediately!"

Marge charged out of the room at once. William carefully disentangled himself from Snips, glancing back at the table full of Basil's work.

"We cannot leave his machines," William said, and Snips caught the quivering reluctance in his voice—as if he were under great spiritual duress. "We must—"

"No time. We've got people upstairs we need to warn."

They ran.

~*~