Fiendish Schemes Page 16

  “Well, they do seem rather intent in that regard.” The woman struck a thoughtful pose with a fingertip placed prettily to her chin. “I mean, even before they arrive on our doorstep here. That rather indicates to me that if we didn’t accommodate them in their desires, they’d likely find someone else who would. And perhaps that other one would not possess the same high ethical standards as we do.”

  “I doubt if the word ethics is one that many people would employ in this regard.” I shook my head in dismay. “You may eulogize your business however you wish—and likely there are others who would agree with you, or at least pretend to, for reasons of their own—but if there were still high-minded organizations such as the Society for the Prevention of Carnal Vice going about their work, this newly energized London might not seem quite so demonic.”

  “Ah, yes the fine Mrs. Trabble and her do-gooders. I rather miss them.” She spoke with more evident nostalgia than rancour. “That was such a long time ago! Though of course, I tend to remember her by the other name she went by then: Mollie Maud.”

  “As I’m sure Dower recalls her as well,” Stonebrake drily added. “He had his own encounters with the woman, in both her guises.”

  “Yes, I do believe I heard something about all that.” Miss Stromneth gazed upon me with a refreshed avidity. “It was one of the reasons I was so looking forward to making your acquaintance, in a rather more sedate manner. You’ll have to forgive me, if I cannot yet place you amongst my treasured reminiscences. I was but a mere slip of a girl back then.”

  “You worked for her?” I instinctively recoiled.

  “Which? Mrs. Trabble the reformer, or Mollie Maud the procuress?”

  “Either.”

  “The latter, actually. Though not as I’m sure you’re imagining, you dog.” Her manner grew even more effusively cheerful, as a lamp might increase its glow by lengthening its wick. “I was a timid, scholarly little creature then— wouldn’t have said Boo! to a goose, as the saying goes—but cast adrift on the currents of an unsolicitous world by the inconvenient deaths of my parents. Good with numbers, though—and still am—so I considered myself fortunate to wind up keeping the accounts for Mrs. Trabble’s various enterprises, both respectable and otherwise. At the beginning, I thought it rather notable as to how many of the same persons of good society I encountered in both spheres—in one ledger book I would inscribe the amount of a worthy gentleman’s donations paid to virtuously combat the identical practices that in another ledger I marked as services received by the same individual!” She shook her head in a display of mock exasperation. “At one time, I made the suggestion to Mrs. Trabble—or Mollie; we had become such dear friends by then—that the accounts would be greatly simplified if we merely had patrons make payment for both suppression and enjoyment at the same time, with just one cheque drawn upon their banks. To her credit, as a businesswoman she saw the logic in my proposal—but she clung to the old ways, sentimentalist that she was. Working both sides of the street, one might say. It must have made some sense to her, to at least pretend that her right hand didn’t know much if any of what her left hand was up to.”

  I confess I experienced some fleeting relief at Miss Stromneth’s biographical exposition, learning thereby that she had not been an actual member of the piscine stable of harlots that the notorious Mollie Maud had set combing through the streets of East London, in search of degenerates both moneyed and jaded of normal pleasures. Her mercenary attitude might have been similar to that of the “green girls,” but the absence of those ichthyic details in her features had caused me to doubt the integrity of what I remembered concerning them.

  “But all that is neither here nor there,” continued Miss Stromneth, “when we address ourselves to the present day’s concerns.” With a slighter smile, of the sort that she herself would likely have acknowledged as foolish, she wiped the tear of fond remembrance from her eye with a silken handkerchief. “Why speak of the past, when it is the present world of which you seek knowledge?” She brought herself up straighter, leaning above the tea things and toward me. “Your good friend Mr. Stonebrake—”

  “He is my business associate.”

  “No need to quibble; we are all friends here. When he spoke but a moment ago, he said that you were of course aware of the nature of this establishment—to some degree. One would have to be rather a dunce not to have deduced as much, as soon as one had walked through the door. But you remain ignorant of its entirety.” Tilting her head, Miss Stromneth gazed up through her eyelashes at me, her smile once again wickedly confiding. “That is where you have a few surprises as yet unrevealed. Give me your hand, Mr. Dower—oh, do. There is no need to be shy; I won’t hurt you.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t be all day about it.” Stonebrake’s voice prodded me from his station at the mantelpiece. “Time advances, even if we do not.”

  Against my better judgement, I allowed my upraised hand to be captured between both of Miss Stromneth’s. Her smile broadened as she laid my palm against the embroidered bodice of her gown.

  “There,” she said. “How does that feel to you, Mr. Dower?”

  “Good God—” My immediate reaction was to snatch my hand away from this unexpected proximity, as though I had come into contact with a roaring stove. Literally—the heat radiating from her bosom would have been enough to set a kettle boiling. With a surprisingly forceful grasp upon my wrist, she prevented me from escaping the fiery sensation. “What is the meaning of—”

  “Oh, bother meaning.” Perceptible through the heightened temperature, the pulse of her heart accelerated. “We are in the realm of the sensations now; how pointless to chase after mere logic!”

  “You very likely believe that to be the case—” I struggled to free myself, at risk of capsizing the table at my knees and the tea service upon it. “But I am of a differing opinion.”

  Miss Stromneth unexpectedly let go, allowing me to fall backward; I scarcely managed to retain my balance. Regarding her with increasing dismay, I watched as she reached behind herself to undo some tiny fastening at the back of her gown.

  “Ah! That is ever more comfortable!”

  I had closed my eyes, expecting the worst.

  “Pay attention—” With a flattened hand, Stonebrake clopped me in the back of the head. “This is why we are here.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Mr. Dower.” The woman’s voice was all solicitous and kind. “There’s always a first time.”

  “I would rather it were the last.” What remained of my discernment now lay in shards about my equally fragmented power of will. “But that doesn’t seem to be up to me—”

  “Indeed not.” The cunning amusement was audible in her voice. “Which is precisely that for which our customers pay.”

  Opening my eyes, I beheld first her smile and now wildly licentious gaze, fastened upon me as some predator of the African plains might survey a trembling gazelle. From there, my perception expanded to include the bared flesh of her arms and shoulders, revealed by the discarding of the gown that now lay puddled about her feet. She stepped backward, a kick from one of her equally disinhibited legs launching the garment across the teapot and into my lap.

  “You see?” If anything, the woman was even more relentlessly cheerful. “Nothing is ever so bad as one fears.”

  It seemed less than chivalrous to argue the matter, given Miss Stromneth’s state of déshabillé. In addition, I was distracted by what seemed to be the sound of a nest of snakes that had been subtly introduced to the room in which I sat. Previously, I had thought the sibilant noise to be nothing more than that emitted by some iron apparatus employed to bring the chamber to a pleasant temperature. My dismay over the situation in which I found myself vaulted to a crisis as I realized that the hissing sounds came from the constricting undergarment in which Miss Stromneth’s torso was encased.

  “Don’t fret yourself,” she cooed. Having stepped around to my side of the low table, she fondly stroked my hair. This close to the combin
ed radiance of her skin and the steam-powered corset cinched about it, I felt as though I were positioned beside a blacksmith’s forge, newly enflamed by a hearty application of the bellows. “Consider the economy of the matter.”

  “Pardon me?” I had no earthly idea whereof she spoke.

  “Others have paid, for that which you enjoy gratis.” She performed the gesture of a theatrical impresario, her outspread hands raising her snowy bosom to greater prominence. “Count yourself fortunate, Mr. Dower.”

  “Small chance of that.” From behind me, Stonebrake spoke with a sour intonation. “Given how little interest he displays in the, ahem, fi n e r things this world affords, I’ve begun to wonder upon exactly what he will spend the riches he is engaged in securing.”

  The exchange between the two provided me with an uninterrupted moment, which I employed in scrutiny of Miss Stromneth’s abbreviated garment, my interest being more technical than lustful in nature. If the darkly glistening corset were one of my father’s inventions, it was of a variety previously unknown to me. I could see now that much of its elaborate construction comprised thin India rubber tubes, interconnected with small brass fittings, a few studded with pressure gauges complete with trembling black needles upon their glass-covered dials, the whole laced tightly about her ribs and abdomen. With each breath she managed to take—requiring some deliberate effort on her part, given the unrelenting compression forced upon her—small jets of steam vapour shot from various apertures. A braided hose of slightly greater diameter trailed from a mechanical juncture at the small of her back, tethering her to a motive source in a farther room of the house. Alerted to its existence, I could now detect the sighing and hissing noises emitted by the entire assemblage.

  “Have a pity for the innocent,” chided Miss Stromneth. By her easy manner, she seemed accustomed to engaging in conversations while less than fully clad. “It’s hardly poor Mr. Dower’s fault if he’s unacquainted with such things. It’s not as if Fex has set up branch operations in every English village. Though upon further reflection . . .” She gazed up at the room’s ornately plastered ceiling, then nodded slowly. “It’s not such a bad idea. Given that we expect an influx of capital from our participation in the matters under discussion. I will have to suggest it to senior management.”

  The woman’s last comment took me by surprise. “It had been my impression,” I said, “that you were the proprietor of this establishment.”

  “Heavens, no.” An uplifted hand airily dismissed the notion. “Merely a trusted employee. It is the entrepreneur Duncan MacDuff— such a visionary!—in whose business concerns I am engaged. It is he and his distaff companion who have created all this you see about us.”

  I frowned, my thoughts piqued by the memory of having heard that name before. At last I recalled that it had been spoken to me by Stonebrake himself, in reference to the financing of the Mission to the Cetaceans’ sea-going ministry.

  “The enterprise has grown to such fiscal dimensions over the last few years,” continued Miss Stromneth, “that those who commenced its operations must now bend their efforts to ever higher levels of society—some of whom might surprise you, were I to reveal their names and positions.”

  “Nothing,” I vouchsafed, “surprises me anymore.”

  “I am sure we could put that to the test.” She spoke with a renewed mischievous delight. “Do you believe I didn’t notice your reaction to my own ensemble?” The fingertips of one hand traced delicately across the hissing tubes of her corset. “Of course, I would wish to flatter myself that the degree to which your eyes widened was due to a normal man’s salacious interest in a woman’s bared and bound flesh, but alas, it is only too well-known to me that I am no longer as young and fair as the latest to be hired by our business.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Stonebrake offered a chivalrous protest. “You’re still an extremely attractive specimen of your gender.”

  “How kind of you to say so.” A sweetly tender smile was bestowed upon her defender, before she turned back to me. “Whether your friend’s assessment is true or not, what remains incontestable, Mr. Dower, is that your discomfiture was occasioned by that which in fexual terms would be considered rather mild and modest—”

  “Pardon me?” The one word had snared my attention, if not comprehension. “What is meant by fexual—I’m afraid that’s one more item with which I’m unacquainted.”

  “You have my apologies. I forget that one of your apparent education and polished manners might not be as familiar as I am—or virtually any other modern-day Londoner—with what has become our common currency of discourse. Though I do suppose that there are likely a few elderly and shut-in residents who have not kept up on the latest developments in human desires. After all, it wasn’t that many years ago, when the Fex establishment had not yet even come into commercial existence, and the word and its derivatives introduced to our English language. So rapidly has our vocabulary increased, it would be difficult for even the most assiduous of lexicographers to keep up, just with our contributions. Who could have foreseen that even the simple word fex would come to denote not just our humble little endeavour, but a whole new world of carnal delight?”

  “Who, indeed.”

  Miss Stromneth’s smile continued, but her eyes narrowed with the perception of my dry sarcasm. “Jest if you wish, Mr. Dower, but the facts are unassailable.”

  “If you say so, I’m sure it is true.” I raised my hands to indicate my helplessness before the rhetorical onslaught. “Why would I cavil as to a word’s meaning, when I am ignorant of even its etymology?”

  “Oh, that’s simple enough. I hope you haven’t been tormented by as simple a question as that.”

  “Likely not,” came Stonebrake’s interjection. “Given how many other things Dower finds to worry about.”

  “Allow me to provide it to you in a nutshell.” Miss Stromneth bent down, bringing her darkly constricted bosom to the level of my sight, in order to pat me comfortingly upon the hand. “As our world changes—as it must!—so too does our language, which is the tool used by our minds to grasp hold of that transmogrified world, to turn it about and examine it, to make sense of it. Does that seem too abstract a notion for you?”

  “Perfectly understandable.” Indeed, I thought reflections such as these all more or less twaddle, but refrained from saying so. “Pray, proceed.”

  “So with this word which intrigues you, and its derivatives . . . ,” she continued in her schoolmistress fashion, the effect rendered somewhat more captivating by her lack of outer garments. “As I am sure you have already noted, the present day’s inhabitants are possessed and obsessed, as it were, with the advent of Steam.” She spoke with exactly such emphasis as might the devotee of some outlandish foreign cult, waving a gold-bangled arm in the direction of its vaporous idol. “There was the world before—a poor, trudging sort of place, unaided muscles straining against every weight placed upon them—and now this one that has been revealed to us. In which every effort is multiplied and enhanced with this new force, and accomplishment is only limited by imagination and daring, and the degree to which one dares to incorporate this hissing spirit into the essence of one’s being!”

  “Yes . . . of course. Fascinating.” I attempted to shrink back into the sofa as far as I could, not from any aversion to her naked skin, glistening with either ladylike perspiring or condensation from the various heated emissions from her elaborate corsetry, but rather from aversion to her maniacal gaze. Her eyes had widened even further, the coy cheerfulness exhibited before by her now replaced by something rather more intimidating. “As you say, this has come to my attention.”

  “You see only the surface phenomena.” Miss Stromneth brought her dampish hand to my brow and rested it there. “As one might, who watches the waves ripple across a sheltered cove, and believes thereby that he knows the ocean entire. But”—she locked her fervent gaze with my rather more appalled one—“there are depths yet unknown to you. No doub
t you regard my present state as somewhat extreme.” Having drawn her hand away, she traced her fingertips down the trembling elements of her exposed undergarment. “Do you not?”

  “It’s not,” I allowed, “the sort of thing that I have encountered before.”

  “I rather expected such to be the case. Which is, of course, half the amusement to be derived.” She rested her hands upon her glistening hips. “But this—I assure you, my dear Mr. Dower—is nothing. Compared to those others, of whose existence I had intimated to you. My allegiance to Steam”—once more, that oddly inflected emphasis—“is, I confess, less apostle-like than that maintained by its more faithful adherents. I derive my living from an aspect of it; surely that convicts me of . . . which sin is it?” She frowned, briefly musing. “Simony, I believe it is.”

  “You would be better off enquiring of Mr. Stonebrake.” I pointed to my companion beside the mantelpiece. “He has more of an ecclesiastical background than I do.”

  “The benefits of this world,” he observed, “are of more interest to me than the punishments of the next.”

  “Then we have nothing to fear, do we?” Miss Stromneth resumed her previous cheerful manner. “Our wickedness is but a trifle now, thanks to the modern world. For if we have become enthusiasts for that which emerges from the steam mines in the north of England, we are hardly likely to be discomfited by finding ourselves in a deeper and hotter place, after we have been laid in our graves.”

  Once more, the conversation had veered onto what I judged to be a demented course. I wondered if perhaps the hissing and seething corset had produced a deleterious effect upon the balance of the woman’s mind, as though the heat had transferred to her blood and been sufficient to poach the contents of her skull.