The wailing stopped. The body part wisps vanished—mist gone to aether. All that remained was the clanking sound of Madame Lefoux’s machines in motion and the empty air.

“May you find your stillness, Formerly Lefoux,” said Alexia.

She looked ruefully at the mess before her: broken glass, fractured tank, dead body. She abhorred such untidiness, but she had no time to see to the cleanup. Best to contact Floote on the matter as soon as she found some time.

With that, she turned away and waddled back out of the chamber and into the passageway. She hoped the clientele above her was still arguing over hairmuffs, for she had no time to scheme her way around exposing Madame Lefoux’s secret entrance this time. She must stop her friend from imprudent action. And, more importantly, she desperately needed to find out why. Why Madame Lefoux, such an intelligent woman, would try to do something so dull-witted as mount a frontal attack on Buckingham Palace in order to kill the Queen of England.

Fortunately, the hairmuff obsession was still in full sway. Almost no one noticed Lady Maccon scuttle, like some kind of gimpy goose, out of the door in the wall. She then made her way through the myriad of dangling hats and out of the shop. A few remarked upon the smell of formaldehyde, and one or two noted her ladyship’s undignified ascension into the depths of her fancy carriage, but few thought to connect the two. However, the head shopgirl did, and made a note to tell the mistress everything, before returning to the sudden increase in hairmuff orders.

Lady Maccon remembered what Madame Lefoux had said about relocation. She’d arranged to utilize space in the Pantechnicon. Alexia was unaware of the location of the warehouse consortium. Being a matter of trade, it was not something Lady Maccon ought to know. Sometimes Madame Lefoux’s engineering interests led her into the most peculiar parts of London. Alexia had, of course, heard of the Pantechnicon but had never had occasion to visit such a thing as the facility in which Giffard’s Incorporated housed and maintained its dirigible fleet. The Pantechnicon stored and distributed a good deal of furniture as well. The very idea of a lady of good breeding visiting such a place. There would be tables lying about, on their sides, naked! Not to mention flaccid dirigibles! Alexia shuddered at the very idea. However, sometimes the muhjah had to go where Lady Maccon would not, and so she gave the order and trusted her driver to know the location, which turned out to be Belgravia, a deeply suspect part of London.

After clattering for some time down one cobbled street after another, having passed through the worst and most raucous crowds of the West End and moving toward Chelsea, the carriage drew to a stop. Lady Maccon’s speaking tube rang imperiously.

She picked up the listening trumpet. “Yes?”

“Motcomb Street, madam.”

“Thank you.” Never heard of it. She looked suspiciously out the carriage window. What Lady Maccon had never quite fathomed was how extraordinarily large the Pantechnicon had to be in order to accommodate both flaccid dirigibles and naked tables. She was in front of a massive caterpillar of warehouses. Each one resembled a barn, only bigger, being several stories high with arched metal roofs. Alexia assumed these must somehow open or come off in order to accommodate the dirigibles. The street was dimly lit by the flickering yellow glow of torchlight rather than by the steady white of gas, and the area was bereft of humanity. This was a part of the city that catered to day dealers, workers of transport and industry who loaded and unloaded their contraptions and carriers under the light of the sun. It was not a place for the likes of Lady Maccon to be traipsing about on full moon.