Murder in the Spook House: A Tor.com Original by Michael Swanwick

Author:Michael Swanwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

When Ritter returned to the carriage, the sun was coming up. The motorman leaned over from his perch and reached down with gloved hand to open the door. Ritter got in and the engine sputtered to life. When he had settled himself into the cushions, he turned to the dark figure sitting beside him and said, “You will need to have the cook transferred elsewhere if you hope to keep up the pretense that you are dead.”

Sir Toby sighed. “I will miss Lillian’s cooking. The girl was a dab hand at Bengal toast. Still, all must make sacrifices if the war is to be won. You uncovered the murderer, of course. I can see it in your comportment. Did my doppelganger last long enough to be removed from the mill?”

“According to a messenger who arrived just minutes ago, the body disappeared shortly after being placed in the morgue.”

Sir Toby sighed deeply. “Then my timeline is the stable one, not the corpse’s. I will confess, the possibility it would go the other way had me worried. And my assassin?”

“Using my best judgment, I executed him.”

Scowling, Sir Toby said, “You were supposed to arrest the man.”

“I wanted to plant uncertainty in the enemy’s mind as to whether the assassination succeeded or not. I ordered the witnesses not to share any of the details of the execution or your death. Thus ensuring that there would be rumors. The Mongolian Wizard’s people will hear you are alive and not know whether to believe it. Their assassin will not return as he was foreseen to do. Your every action will be analyzed twice—as something you might do and as the act of an imposter. It will, however briefly, drive them mad.”

“Why, Ritter! I begin to believe we shall make a proper spy of you yet,” Sir Toby said, with an approving smile.

“Also, there was an even chance he had killed a man I esteemed and admired. That called for revenge.”

The expression soured. “Or perhaps not.”

“I would like to point out,” Ritter said, “that your lie-detecting machine did not render me redundant, as MacDonald boasted it would. In the end, all your shiny machines were inferior to one man, one wolf, and one talent.”

Sir Toby drew a cigar case from his jacket, selected his victim, bit off the end, and, striking a match, puffed it to life. At last, with great solemnity, he said, “Considering, Ritter, that all our hopes of winning this war are hinged on machinery and all the Mongolian Wizard’s on talented men such as yourself, you had best pray that you are wrong.”

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