Penny Dreadful and the Machines

"Women!" exclaimed Sir Bernard Appleby, Chairman of the Robotic Mining Equipment Consortium, waving aloft the contentious letter the moment he sat across from his Chief Executive, the suave Ambrose Lister, in his corner office at 39 Cornhill, in the City of London.

"Calm yourself, Sir Bernard," said Ambrose, wondering for a moment whether to offer the man a sherry. But no, a tipsy Sir Bernard Appleby was orders of magnitude worse than one sober. Instead, he whistled through the speaking tube, and upon receiving his private secretary's attention, ordered a cup of tea for his Chairman.

"Calm myself!" spluttered Sir Bernard, his florid features growing more crimson by the second, "but it is insupportable!"

"As I understand it," said Ambrose calmly, "the lady has the perfect right to..."

"'Right' be damned! Upon which planet is it conceivable that a woman would attend the meeting of a board of directors?"

"Well, I grant you it is unusual," said Ambrose, ignoring the snorts from the other side of his polished walnut desk, instead perusing the letter that Sir Bernard had now set down, "but as I understand it, our Mrs... ah, no, Miss Dreadful, holds ten percent of our stock inherited from her uncle, Lord Cornelius Dreadful..."

"And an evil day it was that we accepted his wealth for our initial funding. Lord Dreadful was a blight..."

"A blight who paid for our first two years' operation, let us not forget, and had a seat in the Lords," said Ambrose, rising and standing at the window, gazing down at the top-hatted brokers striding past in the spring sunshine, back to their offices and the far-flung financial concerns of Empire, "though I grant you his personal life was somewhat..."

"It was a publicity disaster in the making. If he hadn't died when he did..."

"And yet he did, and no harm done. Except to him."

"But now his niece, a woman of all things, wants to," and here Sir Bernard quoted the letter, "'acquaint myself with the ins and outs of our estimable company, and perhaps understand the nature of robotic mining equipment, such that my grounding in the sciences might suggest improvements to our products.' It is inconceivable. What are we to do?"

"Perchance, she is bored," mused Ambrose, "for she is unmarried, and has not the concerns that ought properly to occupy her."

"Then let her to Burlington Arcade to buy shoes, or something. Not infest our deliberations."

"Sir Bernard, I fear we must admit her," said Ambrose, "and more, I suggest we flatter her, we give her the tour, we involve her in every piece of minutiae, and we pander to her apparent interest in the technical nature of our concern by introducing her to Professor Patterson."

Sir Bernard shuddered at the mention of the Professor.

"Let him describe his research in detail," Ambrose went on, "and soon..."

"And soon she will be a-slumber," smiled Sir Bernard, "and upon awakening will be so benumbed by the monotony of our good Professor and his investigations into the mechanical nature of all things, that she will never darken our door again. By George! She might even sell us back her holding. Ambrose, you are a genius."

"Just so, Sir Bernard," said Ambrose, "I will extend our invitation to the lady forthwith."

Meanwhile the subject of the discussion, Miss Penelope Evelyn Dreadful, aged twenty-three and quite simply astoundingly beautiful, was relaxing in the first-class gondola of the Paris-to-London Express Airship. Liveried waiters in white mess jackets silently glided between the tables, bearing trays piled with exotic luxuries, while her other passengers, if male, struggled to disguise their lustful glances in Penny's direction. Their wives, however, were not fooled, and more than one hushed domestic incident was playing itself out.

Penny herself paid no attention to the subdued altercations, perhaps because she was unaware of them, but more probably because she was mesmerised by the sight of Paris from the air. The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, The Invalides, The Bois de Boulogne, all slid silently past beneath her as she gazed from the window, more convinced than ever that the end of the nineteenth century was the very best time in history for one to be alive.

Sitting opposite Penny, in another comfortable armchair, was the red-headed Roxanne Poule, a woman hardly less striking than Penny herself. Though she was, in actuality, Penny's lady's maid, Penny also counted her a friend and companion in danger, as she had proved in the affair of Count Sebastian von Lipschitz. And thus, Penny would no more have thought to have relegated Roxanne to travelling in steerage as she would herself.

Roxanne, resplendent in the flattering, form-fitting grey dress appropriate to her role, looked across at her employer, and did not begrudge her the admiration the men so poorly concealed. Indeed, she felt it, too, and every evening she felt a little tremble as she began to brush Penny's long, golden hair, and as they laughed gaily together, she would gaze at Penny's cornflower blue eyes in the mirror.

"So," said Penny, smiling as she turned to Roxanne, "how did you like Paris in the springtime?"

"Not a patch on Cork," said Roxanne with a jaunty wink, "for the Tuileries is all very well, but it's hardly the same as perambulating along Patrick Street on a fine May morning, hearing the barrow boys cry out their wares."

Penny stifled a snorted giggle, and Roxanne chuckled as she saw that a young moonstruck French cavalry officer thought Penny was giggling at him. It had been the same wherever they had gone in the French capital, with men staring at her, or trying to talk to her about the weather, or offering her riches to become their mistress. There was even a subset, a clique of dangerously handsome, yet profoundly impoverished art students who clamoured to paint her portrait. Yet Penny had replied to everyone with such open unworldliness that the men had been quite disarmed, their supposed sophistication utterly undone by her innocence. And then, defeated, they had retreated from the fray.

Although... Roxanne had come to wonder about Penny's jejunity, since her mistress had single-handedly out-witted Sebastian von Lipschitz and torpedoed his plan to undermine the British Empire. Penny had been nothing except vague in her descriptions of how she had bamboozled von Lipschitz and, well, was she really so naïve, so untainted by life, as to utterly confound so worldly-wise a man? Roxanne was going to keep a closer eye upon Penny, an objective in which she would no doubt take a singular joy.

"Will you accompany me this evening?" Penny broke in upon Roxanne's reverie.

"I..." and here Roxanne was torn, despite her newfound resolution. Spending time in the company of Violetta Burlington no less, was always an enticing prospect. There was, though, Martin Proudstaff, Penny's manservant at her Mayfair lodgings to consider. And he had much worth considering...

"Oh, I apologise, Roxanne," said Penny, an apologetic shadow flitting across her perfect features as she totally misread Roxanne's response, "you haven't had a day off from me for near three weeks."

"Oh, no..." began Roxanne.

"No," said Penny, "I have exploited your good nature. You will have an evening off, I insist. I will to Dulwich on my own, and I am sure that Major Virtue will ensure my safe return to Mayfair at the end of the evening."

"Thank you," said Roxanne, and Martin Proudstaff it would be that night, but woe betide him if she found he had been dallying with the doxies on Drury Lane.

"Ah, listen!" said Penny suddenly, and through the address horns came the first bars of Satie's Gymnopédies, played on one of the new shellac recording discs, so apt for watching Paris from above and relaxing into the four-hour flight.

* * *

The tumult of London was a thrilling contrast to the peace of the airship. With a west wind much of the London smoke was blown away over the tenements of the East End, and Penny could look down upon the seething masses on Fleet Street and Grays Inn Road as the airship turned north towards the Aeroport at Alexandra Palace. Once docked they were all a-bustle, rushing down with the others to catch one of the new electric trains to Euston, and from there a carriage through the clogged streets to Berkeley Square, Mayfair, where Penny kept her London lodgings.

Martin Proudstaff, the worst servant in Mayfair, seemed as pleased to see Penny as all the other men, though now Penny looked, she wasn't sure that he wasn't even more pleased to see Roxanne. Was he sweet on her? Thrilled, Penny couldn't wait to suggest this possibility to her maid. She knew that Roxanne and Martin had formed a tolerable working relationship, and she had even stimulated a certain, albeit vague, level of pride and efficiency in his conduct, but surely Roxanne would find the idea that he had formed romantic hopes in her direction most entertaining.

There was also a suggestion about him that he might have been exercising, an extra firmness to his legs as they visibly filled his trousers when he knelt to lift Penny's trunk on to the bed. It added to his general good looks, for he was tall, and dark haired, with marvellously soft brown eyes, and Penny could see that if he weren't so insolent, so familiar, and she weren't of noble stock... well, if he could perhaps learn some application, she was sure some shop girl or other - or even a lady's maid - would be lucky to have him.

"I hope none of those French chappies were making eyes at you," he said to Roxanne as she hustled past him into Penny's room to begin unpacking.

"And you'd better not have been turning your gift of the gab towards those hussies in the music hall. Just because they can sing tra-la-la doesn't make them fine ladies," said Roxanne, but she was only mock-serious.

Penny hid her smiles, for she was certain now of her manservant's affections in Roxanne's direction. Oh, how they would laugh when she alerted Roxanne! For his part Martin withdrew to whatever tasks he had still left undone -- polishing the potatoes, or ironing the carrots, or whatever it was that servants actually did. And if his thoughts turned to stripping and mastering both young women currently in Penny's bedroom, well, the responsibility for that immoral thought should best be placed at the door of the racy fiction he currently had stowed under his pillow.

It was time, however, for Penny to set her musings to one side and be away south across the Thames for her soiree at Violetta Burlington's house. With Roxanne's help she changed into a faded pink jacket and walking skirt, Roxanne apologising more than once as she placed her hands in inappropriate places, accidental-like. Soon, however, Penny was ready, and feeling well-disposed towards her maid, and so she bid her farewell for the evening, taking the stairs down to Berkeley Square, capering like a schoolgirl in her pleasure.

She stepped up into a waiting hansom cab, and the cabman whipped up, heading off south towards Victoria Station. Unseen by Penny a man detached himself from under a tree in Berkeley Square and hastened to flag down another cab. The man, of perhaps forty years, was clad in a tweed ulster and a dark bowler hat, and carrying a silver-topped cane. He leaped athletically into the hansom cab, and with the promise of a guinea, urged the cabman to follow and not lose sight of Penny's cab.

The man needn't have been so free with his currency, though, for despite the opening of the underground railways and the provision of electric trolleybuses, London's streets were as gridlocked as ever. As soon as Penny's cabman turned into Grosvenor Street they slowed to a walk, and along Park Lane they veritably crawled, the evening traffic only getting heavier. The cabman fretted around Hyde Park Corner and down Grosvenor Place, apologising to Penny who refused to become disheartened but only smiled and looked about her, happy as always to be in amongst the life of London. Behind them, the whole way, the other cab followed, the passenger keeping a clear eye on his target.

At Victoria Street there was no further progress to be made, though, for a grocer's wagon had overturned, filling the highway with half a ton of Jersey Royals. Penny paid the cabman, and tipped him too with a pretty shrug, for it was only a short step across the road to Victoria Station.

On the corner she stopped a moment by an organ grinder in a tattered khaki uniform jacket, from which hung the Abyssinian War Medal on its crimson and white ribbon. He played My Old Dutch on his barrel organ as his monkey capered about, and Penny fished inside her reticule for a penny to drop in the cup the capuchin held. Beside her was a governess and two children, and Penny smiled as the woman tried to restrain the boy from likewise giving a penny to the monkey, he telling her that it was his penny to do with as he wished, and his sister telling him to be good and listen to Miss Diana.

The boy harrumphed, and Penny caught the eye of the governess with some sympathy, then she hurried between the stationary vehicles, across the street into the grand entrance of the station, the man in the ulster alighting from his cab and following her, the cabman shouting in vain for his guinea. Upon entering the station, to her disappointment Penny found that the sluggish journey had caused to miss her train to Dulwich, with the next more than half-an-hour hence.

"Sorry, miss," said the cheery porter, keen to exchange a word or two with such a lovely vision as Penny, "but you could take the tuppeny tube across to Blackfriars. It'll only take you ten minutes, and there's a Dulwich train from there in twenty minutes. The District's newly electrified, bloomin' marvellous, the eighth wonder of the world."

Penny thanked the porter and tipped him a tanner, then headed for the stairs down to the District Railway that ran beneath London's streets. She was privately unconvinced of the porter's laudation of the electric underground as something quite so auspicious, particularly given that she had just that very day been transported from Paris to London by air, of all mediums, which was surely the sensation of the age. Or there was the Marconi machine, sending signals through the air from England to America...

The need to find some coins for her ticket interrupted Penny's internal monologue, and she smiled so sweetly to the ticketing clerk that he quite forgave her dithering. Immediately behind her the man from the cab stood silently, monitoring her every move and ensuring he had the correct change to hand. Upon buying his own ticket he hurried after Penny onto the eastbound platform, only to find that just as above ground, so below, London was a crowded city in the rush hour, and the waiting passengers stood three-deep. A train approached in the vermillion livery of the District Railway.

Much then happened in a brief moment. Penny was ahead, at the edge of the platform waiting for the incoming train. Her follower, the man in the ulster, was stood behind and to one side, four feet from her. A policeman stood at the rear, having come through the archway and onto the platform only a moment before, and it was his late entrance on the scene which no doubt caused young Alfie Butcher, pickpocket and general ne'er-do-well, not to see him.

Alfie had noted Penny as a possible mark, but there was such a throng waiting for the train that he wasn't able to get near her. There was, however, a closer mark, a well-set-up cove in a tweed ulster, and Alfie had only to reach out... He slipped his hand into the man's pocket and felt something hard, metallic. He closed his fingers around it as the train barrelled into the station, its brakes beginning to screech, and he eased out his prize as the train stopped and the passengers moved forward to board as the gatemen at the ends of the carriages flung open the gates.

"Bloody hellfire!" Alfie exclaimed loudly, looking down at the revolver he had pulled from the man's ulster pocket.

The man turned at the sound, as did several other passengers. Seeing the revolver in Alfie's hand he swore in Portuguese and made a grab for it. Many of the passengers had fearfully pulled back, leaving a growing circle around Alfie and the man, whilst Penny had already boarded the train. She looked out from the window to see Alfie, frozen in shock, as the man snatched back his revolver. Only then did the man register that he had a growing audience, and that audience included a uniformed policeman.

The gatemen crashed closed their gates, and the driver applied the power as the policeman took an authoritative step forward towards the man in the ulster. Wild-eyed, the man looked at him, their eyes locking, and he extended his arm, pistol pointed at the policeman's chest. Penny couldn't believe her eyes, but the policeman, as calm as could be, merely held out his own hand for the man to surrender his weapon. The man fired, and the crowd screamed, and the last that Penny saw as the train pulled away and the scene was lost to her view was the policeman slumped down and a pair of burly English workmen leaping upon the man in the ulster, wrestling him to the floor.

* * *

At Violetta Burlington's house on Talavera Avenue, in the suburb of Dulwich, Penny Dreadful's friends were agog when she related the terrible events of the shooting at Victoria Station. Major John Virtue, tall, broad and permanently tanned from his service with the Nyasaland Rangers insisted on supplying Penny with fortifying liquor for the shock. However, his choice of crème de menthe, of all things, went untouched, Penny privately wishing instead for a glass of Glenlivet.

Commodore St George, in turn, waxed voluble on the general degeneration in society as the nineteenth turned to the twentieth century. Violetta Burlington rolled her eyes surreptitiously at that, though only Penny noticed, and she held Penny's hand and soothed her, reluctant to let her go.

"I am most dreadfully sorry you had to see such a terrible thing, Penny," said Miss Burlington, "we cannot insist upon continuing the evening after this horrendous shock."

"Oh no, no," said Penny, "I insist that we do. I have been away this last month and one of the things which made Paris bearable was knowing I could come back and see you all. I will not be deprived."

On the mention of Paris, Miss Burlington insisted on a complete report of the international astronomical conference Penny had attended, and Major Virtue looked noble as he tried to understand. Meanwhile, the Commodore simply tried to stay awake as Penny related the debates that were had over Annie Jump Cannon's new spectroscopic classifications of stars, and Tsiolkovsky's work on rockets in a vacuum. Miss Burlington, at least, appeared to understand.

"But if rockets work in a vacuum," said Miss Burlington, her eyes glistening, "then we may travel to the stars."

"But not, I think, in our lifetimes," said Major Virtue.

"Oh, I am sure of it," said Penny, "before this coming century is out, I feel that we shall be living in, and off, the world that Monsieur Verne describes so divertingly."

"I wonder if I might interrupt," said Commodore St George, quietly desperate to steer the conversation to something, anything, that he felt some understanding of, "for we have something of an ulterior motive for gathering, Miss Dreadful."

Penny looked from one to another of her acquaintances, but given they were all smiling it was, perhaps, not the beginning of a new, arduous assignment to rescue the Empire.

"Indeed," said Miss Burlington, still holding on to Penny's hand as they sat beside each other on the crimson sofa, "we are actually here together in part to celebrate your victory over the Austrian, Penny dear."

"I wonder," said Penny, "but what happened to the Count after his defeat? Was he arrested? I have seen nothing in the press about his case."