The Firebird Mystery

  Darrell Pitt began his lifelong appreciation of Victorian literature when he read Sherlock Holmes stories as a child. He quickly moved on to H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and others. This early reading led to a love of comics, science fiction and all things geeky. Darrell is now married with one daughter. He lives in Melbourne.

  DARRELL PITT

  A JACK MASON ADVENTURE

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © Darrell Pitt 2014

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in 2014 by The Text Publishing Company

  Book design by Text

  Cover illustration by Eamon O’Donoghue

  Author photo by Darren James

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Pitt, Darrell

  Title: The firebird mystery: a Jack Mason adventure / Darrell Pitt.

  ISBN: 9781922147752 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781922148759 (ebook)

  Target Audience: For young adults.

  Subjects: Steampunk fiction.

  Detective and mystery stories.

  London (England)—Juvenile fiction.

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  To my parents

  THE FIREBIRD MYSTERY

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Get him!’

  Jack Mason turned to see Charley Spratt and his cronies—Alfie and Felix Smithers—emerging from the fog. Beyond them the metrotower soared into the heavens, airships crisscrossed the sky and steamcars belched smoke into the mist.

  Bazookas! Jack thought.

  He broke into a run as the other boys gave chase. Jack was small but fast for his fourteen years. Someone had once described him as a monkey. And though he didn’t think any monkeys could be found with brown hair and blue eyes, he was certain none could move as fast as him—with the right motivation.

  ‘You’re gonna be sorry, ya little maggot!’ Alfie yelled.

  Jack raced down the street. They were all inhabitants—some would say inmates—of Sunnyside Orphanage, surely the most inappropriately named organisation in all London.

  If there was a bright and sunny side to the institution, Jack had yet to see it. He’d spent the last two years at Sunnyside, where there was never quite enough to eat and the clothes provided to the children were little better than those worn by the homeless. Jack’s coat was tattered and thin, his shirt and pants had a dozen holes, and his boots were brown—although what colour they started life was anyone’s guess.

  The people who ran the institution were generally decent, but the children who lived behind its high walls ranged from kind and clever to cruel and evil. Charley and his friends definitely fitted into the latter category. Away from the eyes of those in charge, Charley made it his mission to inflict pain on the smaller children. This ranged from bashings in the middle of the night to stealing the meagre allowance allocated by the orphanage director, Mr Daniels.

  That morning, before leaving for school, Jack had decided to pay back Charley, and his friends, for some of those evil acts. All three boys found their boots right by their bedsides where they had left them the previous night. Dragging their boots on, however, their feet sank into mud.

  Jack’s revenge was simple but effective. The boys were forced to clean the boots themselves, much to the amusement of every kid in the orphanage. And despite their efforts, the footwear would never be quite the same again.

  Charley may have been dumb, but he knew who had made a fool of him. His eyes met Jack’s as he dragged off the sodden boot. Jack stared back with steely resolve. He feared Charley and his henchmen, though he would not allow himself to be crushed by them.

  ‘No-one makes a fool out of Charley Spratt!’ Charley yelled out from down the street.

  They were getting closer.

  I’ve got to shake them off, he thought. He had to lose them and circle back to Sunnyside some other way.

  Jack raced past a line of steamcars. Most were the old Fullner 45s, and among them sat a Stephenson 77. Larger and more powerful than its predecessor, it boasted a ten-foot-high chimney at the front. Behind it the barrel-shaped steam chamber tilted up to meet the cylindrical carriage. The front wheels were twice as large as the rear.

  It was a thing of beauty. Normally Jack would have stopped to admire the car, but now was not the time. He reached an abandoned factory and spotted a few missing boards in the fence. Climbing through, he saw an empty parking area. Beyond this lay a pair of huge double doors leading into the plant. Racing across the yard, Jack glanced back to see his pursuers squeezing through the fence.

  The double doors were ajar. Jack elbowed through. The building had once been some sort of iron works. Huge pulleys and conveyor belts ran overhead from one end to the other. At the rear lay the foundry where ore used to be smelted. The interior was dusty, but not ramshackle. It almost looked as if workers could come back at any moment and resume their jobs.

  The interior spread out before him. Unfortunately, there were few places to hide. His only real place of refuge lay…

  He looked up.

  …above.

  A set of stairs led to a mezzanine. Jack raced up. Pieces of machinery and discarded metal lay in half gloom on the next level. He hid among rickety shelving.

  Voices drifted up to him.

  ‘I saw him come in here.’

  That was Felix!

  ‘Well, I can’t see him now,’ Charley said.

  ‘Maybe he found a door?’ Alfie suggested.

  Jack started to breathe easier. He leaned against the timber wall. People like Charley and his gang had little interest in learning about the world or becoming better people. They were more interested in making themselves feel powerful by walking over those who were smaller and weaker.

  Jack liked to read. It made him stand out from many of the other kids at Sunnyside. His parents had instilled a love of books in him and he enjoyed nothing more than reading classic adventure stories. Charley and the others didn’t even know how to read. Jack had once seen Charley staring at the words in a book as though they were a foreign language.

  The bullies had a short attention span. Jack thought if he stayed where he was the gang would eventually lose interest and leave. Then he would find another way back to Sunnyside.

  Crash!

  Jack jumped. He had knocked an old pot of paint off the shelf.

  ‘Up there!’

  Blimey, he thought. That’s done it.

  He raced along the mezzanine, diving around pieces of equipment. He heard the boys coming up behind him. Bazookas! There had to be an escape route down to the floor. He would be safe only if he could find it.

  ‘You’re gonna die, you little rat!’

  Charley’s voice sounded close. Very close. Jack reached the end of the building. He hurried between mountains of metal pipes to see if he could find stairs leading to the ground.

  Oh no.

  Jack caught a glimpse of movement among the piles of junk stacked high on the mezzanine. Alfie had come around the other side to cut him o
ff. In a matter of seconds Jack would be caught between the two bullies.

  He stumbled to a halt. There were no stairs leading down. No way down at all. He glanced over the railing. He was about twenty feet above the floor. Below lay machinery and jagged pieces of metal. A jump from here would lead to serious injury. Maybe worse.

  ‘You little piece of sludge!’

  Jack turned. Charley had caught up with him. He had a piece of pipe in his hand. At his side stood Felix Smithers, grinning with malicious intent.

  ‘You’re gonna regret what you did,’ Felix said. ‘You’ll be real sorry.’

  ‘Not likely,’ Jack said.

  He turned around to see Alfie appear from between two mounds of junk.

  Now he was hemmed in. He would be helpless as they proceeded to exact their revenge. Jack swallowed. They had beaten some of the children at the orphanage black and blue, but they had never actually killed someone.

  But there was always a first time.

  There was no way to escape. Except…

  ‘How about we make a deal?’ Jack suggested.

  ‘What sort of deal?’ Charley asked, suspicious.

  ‘How about you learn how to read and write, and I won’t call you dummy?’

  Charley’s eyes widened with rage. ‘You little grub. I’m gonna...’

  The bully started forward. Jack ran at the railing. Just before he reached it he jumped, and pushing off with all his might he leapt into the air.

  For a moment Jack felt like he was back with his parents. As a team of flying trapeze artists known as The Flying Sparrows, they had amazed circus audiences all over Britain. But one day all that had changed. His parents had tried to defy chance too many times and it had taken its revenge. They had fallen from the trapeze bars to their deaths.

  Since becoming an orphan, Jack carried his two most precious belongings with him every day: a tiny locket photograph of his parents and a compass his mother had given him. The items served to remind him that no matter how dire the circumstances he was never alone.

  The picture and compass now rattled in his pocket as he flew through the air, reaching out for a metal hook hanging from a chain. The chain was part of the conveyor mechanism that ran the whole length of the building. Propelled by his momentum, the hook slid along its track, taking Jack away from the bullies and back to the entrance.

  The chain reached the end of its track and Jack came to an abrupt halt. Now he swung back and forth a couple of times before leaping onto another chain. Balanced by a counterweight, he descended until he found himself only a few feet above the floor.

  Jack let go of the chain and landed. He looked back to the far end of the workshop. Charley and his henchmen stood on the distant mezzanine, staring at him, open-mouthed.

  ‘I’ll see you back at Sunnyside,’ he called. As he turned away, he muttered under his breath, ‘Rotters.’

  He hurried outside. The bullies would not catch up now. He allowed himself a moment to relax as he weaved through the narrow streets. Steamcars and horse-driven vehicles fought for supremacy. This was a world of steam, but many people still preferred the old-fashioned methods of travel. Peering up, he saw lines of airships crisscrossing the firmament. The balloons were hydrogen-filled. Every schoolboy knew it was a combustible gas—one spark spelt disaster—but airship design had improved so much over the last twenty years that accidents were rare.

  The skies were busier than ever now the express route to Europe had opened. In the distance the London Metrotower cut the horizon, rising from the heart of what was once Nortley. It reached taller into the sky than the eye could see, punching a hole through the clouds like a mighty elm tree as it soared into space.

  From its upper reaches planetary steamers navigated the globe, facilitating trade and commerce with other countries as well as maintaining a military presence at the edge of space.

  As the Prime Minister, Horatio Kitchener, had famously said, ‘Whoever controls the heights controls the world.’

  Jack half jogged the last few blocks back to Sunnyside, the picture and compass jangling in his pockets. He stopped at the great stone entrance. From here the place looked even more like a jail than an establishment for raising children.

  Home sweet home, he thought dismally. What did I ever do to deserve this?

  He was halfway across the courtyard when he heard a voice from behind.

  ‘Jack Mason!’

  He turned to see Mr Daniels standing in the doorway. The emaciated owner of the orphanage always reminded Jack of a funeral director. His black clothes hung off him. The ebony top hat, jammed onto his bony skull, only served to accentuate his sombre eyes and gaunt face. The man waved Jack over with a scrawny forefinger.

  Surely he doesn’t know about the boots, Jack thought. Someone must have ratted on me.

  ‘We need to speak.’ Mr Daniels peered down at him. ‘You will be leaving Sunnyside within the hour.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘This is your new home,’ Mr Daniels said. ‘221 Bee Street. You’ll want the top floor. Ask for Ignatius Doyle.’

  Before Jack could utter a single word, Mr Daniels tapped his driver on the shoulder with his stick. The steamcar chugged off down the street, leaving Jack stranded on the footpath, and after a moment it merged with the traffic, disappearing into the smoky haze.

  Jack gazed up at the building. Ten storeys high, the old brick structure showed obvious signs of wear. Black soot stained the exterior. Most of the windows were either cracked or boarded up. Even the front steps slanted downwards.

  Jack wanted to turn and run. But where could he go? He had no family and Mr Daniels had already said his farewells.

  ‘We have found you gainful employment,’ Mr Daniels had explained in the steamcar. ‘You will be an assistant to a man with an infirmity.’

  Jack was unsure what an ‘infirmity’ was, but it didn’t sound like fun. Still, the promise of a new life had appealed to him. He would not have to deal with Charley and his cronies any longer, and the food might be better.

  The hardest part was leaving his friend, Harry Stoker. The boy had been his closest companion during his time at Sunnyside. After a quick goodbye, Mr Daniels bundled Jack into his vehicle and escorted him across London to this rundown location.

  Jack sighed.

  Overflowing rubbish bins lined the pavement. A dead horse lay in the gutter on the other side of the road. Fullner 45s wheezed smoke and steam as they chugged along the street. The open doors of workshops revealed men forging metals and assembling goods for sale. Altogether it was an unremarkable street in a shabby section of London.

  Still, anything had to be better than Sunnyside.

  Jack gripped the wrought-iron railing and mounted the tilting stairs. He pushed open the front door and entered the hallway. A glass frame listed the tenants. Mr Doyle’s name appeared next to Level Ten, the top floor. The stencilled letters did not display the name of his business.

  The elevator shaft lay opposite, and to its right the staircase. A man occupied the bottom three stairs, sprawled out as if dead, a bottle in a paper bag under his left arm.

  Blimey, Jack thought. Not exactly the best house in town, is it?

  He decided to take the elevator.

  Jack pressed the call switch and waited. A clanking sound filled the shalf until the chamber heralded its arrival with a blast of steam. Jack climbed in. Pulling the iron door shut, he pushed the button marked ‘10’. The elevator shuddered—as if about to suffer cardiac arrest—and started to ascend. Jack caught glimpses of the other floors through the small glass window. He heard people arguing, saw a fist fight, witnessed a man and woman in a passionate embrace and heard someone singing opera.

  The elevator stopped with an uncertain groan. Jack climbed out. A short hallway lay before him with a door at the far end. A pane of glass in the middle had some words inscribed upon it. Jack touched his pockets, making certain he still had his picture and compass, before walking the length of the hall, feelin
g all the while like he was marching to his execution. A single, spidery crack ran diagonally across the bottom of the glass. Two lines of text were written above it.

  Ignatius Doyle

  Consulting Detective

  Jack stood reading the words for a moment, then summoned the courage to knock.

  ‘Come in,’ a female voice responded.

  Jack entered a small dusty office. Empty chairs lined the walls. A woman sat at the desk. She wore a ladies walking suit with a white blouse and a blue leg-o’-mutton jacket. But it wasn’t her clothing that caught Jack’s attention. It was her heart-shaped face, full lips and mess of blonde ringlet curls that made him mute.

  Bazookas, he thought. I’m in heaven.

  Her eyes gave a mischievous twinkle as she smiled at him. ‘Hello. You must be from the orphanage.’

  He nodded.

  ‘No words? Cat got your tongue?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jack Mason.’

  ‘I’m Gloria Scott,’ she introduced herself. ‘You can call me Gloria.’

  ‘Hello Gloria.’

  ‘And you’re an orphan.’ She got up and, before Jack knew what was happening, gave him a hug. Jack was amazed. No-one at the orphanage had ever embraced him. The last woman he could remember hugging him was his mother. A strange sensation welled up in his chest and he felt ridiculous, as if he was about to burst into tears.

  Gloria drew back and held him at arm’s length. ‘It must be so hard losing your parents. Ignatius lost his a long time ago.’

  ‘Ignatius?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Mr Doyle.’

  Of course.

  ‘So you two are orphans together.’

  Nothing could be said to that. A bell sounded on Gloria’s desk. She opened a door behind her and leaned through.

  ‘Yes, Mr Doyle.’

  ‘Is the young man here from Sunnyside?’

  ‘He is, indeed.’

  ‘Well, send him in. We have work to do.’

  ‘You have work to do,’ Gloria said, turning to Jack with mock sternness. ‘Mr Doyle will see you now.’