Spring-heeled Jack and the President's Ring

Chapter 15 ~ Magnetron's Rude Awakening

"'No, you idiot! Mangaliku, the witch doctor!' But Boileau had fainted and had never seen Mangaliku.  Perhaps I hadn't either."

I was only peripherally aware of Valkusian's attempts at rousing me.  "Phineas!" he shouted.  "Can you hear me?"  Slowly, laboriously, my eyes opened to groggy slits, and Valkusian and the others gained entrance to my hazy realm.  Valkusian, Cerebelli, Satyros, Coburn, Boileau—and Anders.  They gathered around me in a semi-circle, each of them incrementally more relieved as I gradually regained consciousness.

My head throbbed and I struggled to find my voice.  I had questions, but I could not yet form sentences.  "Anders?"

"Here," he said.  His head was bandaged, and Coburn explained.  "Felled the rascal with my boomerang.  Still a bit tender, eh mate?" Anders nodded.

"Compost?" I asked.

"Absconded," replied Cerebelli.  "You and Boileau were alone when we arrived."

"Where?" I asked.

"No telling," offered Satyros, shrugging his shoulders.  "He's performed quite a vanishing act."

"And Mangaliku?"

"Oh dear," said Boileau.  "He's babbling."

"No, you idiot! Mangaliku, the witch doctor!"  But Boileau had fainted and had never seen Mangaliku.  Perhaps I hadn't either.  He was nowhere to be found, and my recollection of him was tenuous, like a dream dissipating into nothingness as one awakens.

Cerebelli was growing impatient, and arrogated control of the proceedings.  "Let us take stock of what we know, shall we?  Then we shall be better prepared to contend with that which we do not know."  We adjourned to a dingy office in Compost's townhouse and collaborated for hours, discussing the facts at hand and hammering them into a cohesive portrait of the situation.

We knew that Anders had been kidnapped and the Luftigel plans stolen by Southwick, apparently at the behest of Compost.  Compost had employed the occult services of Mangaliku to exert remote control over Anders with the magic obi, and evidently had attempted to do the same to President Grant.  It seemed safe to assume that Compost had induced Anders to steal President Grant's West Point ring as reciprocation to Southwick, and that the ring was most likely already in Southwick's possession.

Corbière, Dr. Glockenholz's young medical prodigy, seemed also to be implicated, as the mask he had presented to Glockenholz was certainly of the same evil origins as the others we had seen.  Since he was present at Dr. Hogalum's ill-fated self-medication, I felt I was on solid ground deducing that he played a role in Dr. Hogalum's death.

That was what we knew, but it was minuscule compared with what we did not know.

The most vexing question was where Compost and Mangaliku had gone.  And what would Compost do—or what had he already done—with the Luftigel plans?  Was the indistinct mirror image of the Luftigel I had seen been an actual craft, a doppelgänger built by Compost?  And what about the masks?  President Grant seemed to have escaped their influence, but how many other potentates had been less fortunate was a matter open to conjecture.  Perhaps there were dozens of infected literati, statesmen, and captains of industry who might unexpectedly be mustered to Compost's involuntary army of rogues.  Perhaps even one of us.

Perhaps me.