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hair. As Dr. Watson knelt to address the lock, she saw a movement in the shadows by the door of the building—a misty figure in a white nightdress of antique cut stained down the left side from bosom to hem. It was a figure Tacy had not seen since Angharad had possessed the automaton, and the sight of it filled her with dread.
    She seized the bars and called out: “Angharad! What has that Cantrip done to you?”
    Angharad waved her question aside impatiently. “Around to the yard with you—there’s a door open. ’Ware the rats. Hurry , child!”
    â€œIs it Arthur?” Tacy gasped.
    Dr. Watson looked around, alarmed. “What is it, Miss Gof? To whom are you speaking?”
    Impatiently, Tacy grasped Dr. Watson’s sleeve and pulled him towards a narrow and noisome alley that ran along a brick wall to an even more noisome yard. And there she halted, overcome with horror. For between her and the half-open door was a heaving grey swarm of rats the size of small dogs. As if moved by a single mind, they lifted their noses and advanced upon the intruders.
    Dr. Watson snatched his revolver from his pocket, pulled back the hammer, and shot the foremost rat between its shining eyes. The resulting explosion of fur, springs, and cogs did nothing to halt the gray tide, which rolled forward, chittering shrilly.
    Shuddering with disgust, Tacy drew the willow whistle she’d whittled that morning from her pocket, put it to her lips, and blew. It made no audible sound, though her ears rang slightly.
    The rats fell over and were still.
    Dr. Watson gaped at her. “Mechanicals,” Tacy explained briefly. “I’ve jammed their mainsprings. Come on!”
    Much to Watson’s credit, he forbore to question her, but kicked a path through the disabled rats to the door. Soon the pair were standing in a bare and ill-lit corridor, cold as a tomb and smelling strongly of damp and machine oil. At the far end, Tacy could just see Angharad floating above the steps of an iron staircase and beckoning urgently like a specter in a penny dreadful.
    Tacy sprang towards her, heart thundering. As she set her foot upon the bottom step, a metallic clatter reached her ears from above, followed by a shriek that froze her to the spot.
    Watson dashed past her, straight through Angharad, who swore dreadfully and disappeared.
    Shaking off her paralysis, Tacy caught up her skirts and sprang after the doctor. She heard Watson shout, “Stand back, or I shoot!” and then she was at the top of the steps and running down a shadowy hall. When she reached an open door, she plunged through it into an atmosphere permeated with metal, spermaceti oil, and high drama. Under the bright cone of an outsized clockwork lamp, Dr. Watson was holding two tall figures in long leather aprons and magnifying goggles at bay with his revolver. They were surrounded by a dizzying array of machines and devices and at their feet lay the bust that had housed the Illogic Engine, open and empty and dented. Behind them, on a metal table, a figure draped in white linen lay ominously still.
    Tacy rushed to the table, her heart clacking like a gear train, and pulled back the sheet to reveal a pair of terrified eyes, lambent as pearls, staring up out of a long, pale face half-obscured by a cloth gag.
    She whirled to confront the aproned figures and addressed them furiously. “What is Mr. Holmes’s Reasoning Machine doing here? Which of you is Mr. Cantrip? And what have you done with Arthur ?”
    After a moment’s hesitation, the slighter of the figures cautiously removed the goggles masking its face.
    â€œHullo, Tacy,” said Sir Arthur Cwmlech.
    In the sentimental romances her mother favored, Tacy had often read of a heroine’s heart leaping in the presence of her beloved. She had doubted, as a scientifically-minded and rational individual, that an actual human heart would do any such thing. Yet, at the sight of Sir