Prologue
The door of Room 88 opened with an odd creak but stayed just slightly ajar from the frame. Ame, Ina and Gura dared to peeked out from behind the door. There was no more trace of Jackie Chadwick or the First Mate's staff member in the hall and the entire section was as quiet as a Bedfordshire winter.
That was the cue for the trio to sneak out of Room 88, close and lock the door behind them. Then, they carefully make their way back to Ame's and Ina's cabin - Room 57 - far down the hall.
On their way back, they watched the halls carefully and listened for the distinct sound of the heavy jackboots of Chadwick's staff. They were prepared to scram and flee at the drop of a hat.
However, there were no members of Chadwick's staff lurking there either. They only found Cabin-class guests loafing around, sipping fruity cocktails without a care in the world. So, the girls counted their blessings and picked up their pace - making a beeline for Room 57 without any incident.
Once they were back inside the room, Ame locked their door and made sure that it wouldn't budge. Only then did she start breathing again, causing a dizzy spell to nearly rob her of her balance. Gura, on the other hand, was the first one to slump onto a chair at the cabin's table.
"Do you crazy ladies mind telling me what the heck went on just now!?" Gura complained, baring her noticeably sharp teeth. She then glared at Ame and then at Ina, demanding an explanation.
Ina, already winded from their little adventure, plopped down onto Ame's bed. Ame, meanwhile, sat across from Gura at the table and set down her now dusty doctor's bag between them. She brought out the three envelopes - all of which bore the distinctly blue, triangle-shaped seals - that they found behind the wooden panels of Room 88.
"These are letters from the 'Cover Corporation'. There's no return address though, so we can't really dig into where they are or what their charter is." Ame explained with a cautious tone, "They're just like the one that I got in Bedfordshire a few months ago… but these ones were never mailed. Look here."
Ame tapped on the top right corner of each envelope, pointing out the lack of stamps or postage.
"So some airhead forgot to bring some mail to the post office?" Gura tested impatiently, "What's that got to do with us?"
"Well… about that." Ame took Gura's venom in stride and just wore an uncomfortable smile. She then spread out the three envelopes on the table and continued, "Two of these letters are addressed to you and Ina."
"What…!?" Gura rose up from her chair and bore down on Ame and the envelopes, "There's no way in the world… I haven't kept the same address for a long time!"
She picked up the letter that was supposedly addressed to her, hoping to call Ame's bluff. Ame wasn't bluffing, though. The letter was indeed addressed to her. The address listed there was a Post Office in West Virginia - the one in the small nondescript town that she had been staying at before she journeyed to London. That made Gura's jaw drop in awe.
While Gura fidgeted about how the mysterious sender got her address from a few months ago, Ame handed Ina the letter addressed to her.
" Humu humu …" Ina remarked calmly, "This one was addressed to the Far Eastern consulate in Ottawa. It's marked for the 'personal mail' dropbox too. Impressive attention to detail."
Once Gura had calmed down, she and Ina broke the blue seals of their respective envelopes and read through the letters addressed to them within. Meanwhile, Ame closed her eyes and recited the contents of her own letter. She had memorized that letter from Cover Corporation by heart when she received it in Bedfordshire and burned it to her memory, so she recited it word for word.
Ina and Gura then turned to Ame with shock. Their letters had the exact same contents as Ame's recollection. The letters were invitations to sit down at the English Maiden cafe in London to discuss the 'opportunity of a lifetime'. Only the recipient's name at the top of the letter was different - but everything else was the exact same.
"If your letters had been delivered just like mine was, the three of us might have met at the English Maiden cafe in London." Ame remembered the day like it was yesterday. She heaved a sigh and groaned, "I waited for more than an hour there, but nobody came… not even the one who wrote these damn letters."
"Ame…" Ina spoke softly with concern.
She recalled the expectant look that Ame had when she was asked if she knew about the Cover Corporation letters - and the poorly veiled disappointment that followed when she said 'no'.
"It's been on my mind all this time." Ame admitted bitterly, "I was hoping that the letter I got was some sort of hoax - that I could just ignore it and move on… but now? I'm curious."
Gura looked at her letter under the light of the electric lamp above them and thought out loud.
"Me too, Ame. I mean… how long have these letters been stuck in that room? Why was the room messed up like that?" The maid's blue eyes then sharpened, "And why didn't Miss Chadwick tell us staff anything about it?"
Ame nodded patiently. Then, she turned to Ina.
"So… how did you find that room, Ina?" The detective asked, "You didn't stop at any of the other doors when we tailed you. You were drawn to Room 88 specifically. Why?"
Ina's shoulders drooped for a moment, but she soon gathered up her resolve to speak.
"I had a dream last night." The librarian started firmly, "There was a smoky figure - a lady with strange glasses and black hair with a cowlick. It was just like the one described in the letter. She was walking through the halls of the RMS Teutonic and she seemed like she was in a hurry. I saw her going into Room 88 and then…"
"And then…?" Ame and Gura asked in unison.
"And then my dream ended." Ina apologized, drawing grunts of frustration from her captive audience. The librarian shook her head and insisted, "But that's why I knew I had to check out Room 88. I didn't know how to tell you about it, Ame. I mean, I didn't know if I believed it myself."
Gura leaned forward on the table and heaved a sigh. A puzzled expression lingered on her face and she looked like she was still struggling to comprehend the story.
Moments later, Ina's stomach suddenly grumbled audibly. The noise filled the room, making the librarian blush from ear to ear. Gura's stomach then answered back, rumbling louder than Ina's. The chambermaid and the librarian turned to each other in that impasse and laughed.
With that, Gura got up from her chair and made her way to the door. She laid her hand on the knob, turned back to her two guests and grinned at them.
"How about this? I'll go grab us some snacks. We missed lunch service, but there should still be some good stuff." The chambermaid cheerfully proposed. Her eyes then lit up and she added, "Oh, and we got some poppin' corn and sammiches… oooh! And some shrimp scampi for three!"
Ame and Ina thanked Gura and the chambermaid excused herself. Gura exited the room, locking and then closing the door behind her, and left Ame and Ina alone in the room once more.
Ina got up from Ame's bed and sat across from the detective. She then pointed to the last remaining envelope on the table.
"So… to whom is the last one addressed to?"
Ame picked up the envelope and looked at the blue wax seal for a moment. Then, she turned it around and read what she saw.
"It's addressed to a… Calliope Mori? The address is just… 'East'."
"East?" Ina tilted her head, "As in, the Far East? Near East? Middle East? East Coast?"
"I wish I could tell you, Ina." Ame answered with a shrug, "Whoever wrote these letters was probably on a tight schedule. The wax seal on this one was hastily done - and the address wasn't complete. They probably had to hide it in the closet panels in a hurry too… but why?"
The two girls racked their minds and shared their theories about the case with each other. They had a lively back-and-forth at first but a common thread of suspicion slowly spun through all of their theories.
"Do you think Miss Chadwick and her staff have something to do with this, Ame?" Ina then proposed.
"Probably. There's only one way to find out." Ame answered firmly. She set down the letter on the table, adjusted her hat and then declared, "We oughtta pay Miss Chadwick a visit… and we might need Gura's help on this one. This case might just be bigger than our Phoenix Expedition, after all."
Just as Ame was about to stand up from her chair, there was suddenly a loud pounding on the door. Ina's face went pale and she sheepishly hid behind the table. Ame, on the other hand, drew out her Webley revolver and then pointed it at the door.
"Who's there!?" Ame demanded, watching the door from behind the iron sights of her gun.
"It's me!" Gura's muffled voice reached their ears, but the chambermaid sounded troubled.
So, Ame steadied her breath and slowly approached the door. All the while, she kept her revolver at the ready. She then opened the door and saw Gura panting heavily behind it.
"Gura…?" Ame asked, "What's wrong?"
Gura lowered her head and stammered,
"M-miss Chadwick… and all of her staff are gone!"
AlterMyth
Marooned
Twentieth Scene - Without A Trace
Seeds of chaos started taking root amongst the passengers of the RMS Teutonic when word about the disappearance of the crew spread like wildfire. Ame, Ina and Gura were walking through the halls of the Teutonic where they heard the desperate back-and-forth between the passengers badgering the few remaining crew members.
"Miss Chadwick and her many teams were in charge of various parts of the boat." Gura nervously explained, "My department was Service and just about all of my colleagues were Miss Chadwick's direct subordinates. There were dozens of them assigned as attendants to the luxury 'Saloon' class rooms and to the standard 'Cabin' class rooms."
"Is that why those luxury passengers are raising up a stink?" Ame hummed, "They probably can't survive without a glass of brandy or cognac every hour."
When the three girls entered the central stairwell of the Teutonic, the prying eyes of puzzled Saloon-class passengers darted towards Gura and the maid's headdress that she wore. Those luxury passengers were like sharks who had sensed the presence of fresh, bloody meat in the ocean and it made Gura squirm.
"Stay calm, Gura, and follow my lead." Ame calmly whispered. She started walking ahead of Gura and reassured her, "We're going to the Bridge to see the Captain."
"Let's follow Ame for now." Ina reassured as well, walking behind Gura this time, "We'll figure out what's going on. Together."
The two of them shielded Gura from those prying eyes and cut a path for them through the crowded stairwell. A small, appreciative smile formed on Gura's lips and she followed her guests up the staircases - all the way up to the fourth floor.
Normally, Gura explained to her valiant guests, this section was closed off to the passengers and to most of the crew. However, the tuxedo-clad guards who were supposed to be posted there were noticeably absent. Neither the velvet rope barriers or the 'off-limits' sign moved to stop the trio either. Virtually unopposed, they reached the top floor and the double wooden doors to the Bridge.
Ame took both knobs in her hands and turned them together. She then opened the doors and marched into the Bridge - only to find the entire room empty. All of the equipment - from the ship's wheel to the cranks controlling the Teutonic's twin engines to the navigational sextant - were left unattended.
Despite this, there were traces of a myriad of footprints on the polished wooden floor of the deck and dozens of cigarettes snuffed out in ashtrays scattered around the room. Ame took one of the ashtrays and saw the squashed remains of a peculiar cigar among the cigarettes. It was the same brand that Captain Morrison smoked at the banquet.
"The entire crew was in here not too long ago. Maybe a little longer." Ame deduced. She set down the overstuffed ashtray, walked over to the wide panel windows overlooking the deck of the ship and continued, "But they all left in a hurry. All this tobacco didn't burn for long."
Her eyes then turned to the framed picture of Queen Victoria and the expensive-looking statuettes affixed to the corners of the room. All of those valuables were left completely untouched, making Ame hum.
"It wasn't a robbery job. It can't be a mutiny either…" She ruled out, "So, why were they here!?"
Before Ame could say anything else, the double doors of the bridge burst open again. This time, the three girls of the Lowry Expedition appeared and entered the bridge too. Ophelia Lowry broke ranks with her goons and made a beeline for Ame.
"Where's Captain Morrison!? Where's Miss Chadwick!?" Lowry demanded in a blitz, "Answer me, Watson!"
Ame straightened up her back and met Lowry head on, looking her straight in the eyes.
"Chadwick and the Captain aren't here. Open your eyes, Lowry." Ame growled, "They're gone - without a trace!"
"Bullshit!" Lowry lashed, pushing back against Ame, "Tell me where they are or else I'll beat it out of you!"
"I'm telling the truth!" Ame insisted.
All of the sudden, the light of the afternoon sun that had been flowing in through the windows of the Bridge was blocked by thick, dark clouds. Ame and Lowry looked out the windows and saw those clouds stretched out over the horizon, accompanied by heavy fog and menacing flashes of lightning.
"A summer storm… this far out at sea? My God… look at those clouds and waves!" Lowry remarked with a frown, "Didn't Captain Morrison say we would have smooth sailing to Bordeaux!?"
Strong waves started crashing against the RMS Teutonic, causing the vessel to rise and then fall dangerously. Gusts of strong winds also threatened to capsize the supposedly mighty vessel. Panicked, albeit muffled screams from the roughly twelve hundred souls remaining on board the ocean liner rose up to the Bridge.
"There's a lot of things Captain Morrison and Miss Chadwick didn't seem to tell us, Lowry." Ame interjected more firmly, "By the looks of it, we're sailing right into a storm without a crew. We have to take control of this ship, so the last thing we need is to fight each other. Otherwise, neither of us will make it out of this alive - or even catch that damn Phoenix."
Lightning flashed outside the windows of the Bridge again, followed by the deafening rumble of thunder. So, Ame and Ophelia turned to each other and shook hands.
Gura, Ina and the two goons looked on, holding back their displeasure with the arrangement.
So, with that handshake, the Watson and Lowry Expeditions would work together.
For now.
Twenty-First Scene - All Hands On Deck
For the next two hours or so, Gura and the girls of the combined expeditions worked together to take control of the abandoned RMS Teutonic. They established their headquarters in the banquet hall on the third floor of the midship, assigned tasks and then got to work.
At the top of the second hour, Ame, Ina and Gura returned to the banquet hall where Ophelia Lowry was waiting for them. The College Chairman's daughter was seated behind the fresco of the trident-wielding Poseidon and was nursing on a glass of cognac on the rocks that she had poured for herself.
Ame took the seat across from Lowry and her two companions followed suit. Lowry furrowed her brow when she saw Ame, but her expression grew bitter when her honey-brown eyes turned to Gura.
"What's a chambermaid doing here, Watson? Didn't you say the crew of the Teutonic left us for dead!?" Lowry grumbled, channeling the rage of Poseidon himself, "What if she's one of them?"
Gura shrank in her seat under Lowry's piercing gaze, but Ame promptly interjected.
"Gura has nothing to do with the disappearance." Ame spoke firmly, "She and the rest of the crew who are still on the boat weren't told anything by Miss Chadwick. They're victims here too, Lowry."
"Y-yeah…" Gura added sheepishly at first, but a small flame of courage started to burn in her heart, "There's about twenty of us crew left. Boiler room stokers. Mechanics. Maids. Cooks. We're not 'key personnel' but we'll keep the ship running. This is a big boat and we're just as scared as everyone else - but we'll keep the passengers as happy as we can if you let us do our jobs!"
Lowry tested Gura's resolve once more with another piercing glare, but the chambermaid didn't turn away this time. So, Lowry decided to back down for now.
"I dispatched my bodyguards to help keep the peace. If their words can't reach the passengers, a warning shot from their rifles probably will." Lowry folded her arms and then looked up to the ceiling, "Meanwhile, my two friends are up on the bridge trying to figure out how far off we are from Bordeaux. It seems Captain Morrison brought us intentionally off course."
"Those two? The musclehead and the stick?" Ame frowned, "Will they be able to do that?"
"That 'musclehead' was the First Mate on the bridge of one of her father's clipper ships, so she knows how to steer a boat through a storm. And that 'stick' is a genius mathematician who can do things with a compass and a sextant that you wouldn't believe." Lowry countered flatly. Her eyes then met with Ame's as she threatened, "And those two are my friends, Watson. I won't have you bad-mouthing them like this - or I'll beat you up when we get to Bordeaux."
Ame was tempted for a moment to ask Lowry what her super-power was, but she already knew the answer to that question. So, the detective just leaned back into her seat.
"At least you're still confident we'll get there. That's reassuring." Ame snorted, "Let's get back to business, shall we?"
Lowry sighed and proceeded to share notes about the many oddities that she and her men found throughout the RMS Teutonic while taking control of the vessel. They reported that all twenty of the lifeboats on board had been removed overnight. The Marconi Telegraph Room was also apparently ransacked, leaving all of the electrical equipment there useless. Then, to make matters worse, they saw that the twin triple-expansion engines of the Teutonic were long overdue for maintenance, forcing the vessel to move forward at slow ahead or risk a crippling breakdown.
Gura then spoke and relayed what the rest of the remaining crew told her. She was told that the Teutonic had just enough coal to power through the storm and steer the vessel to Bordeaux. There was enough water and food to feed everyone on board for three square meals too. All they had to do was keep the ship afloat, sail slow and steady to their destination and keep everyone on board calm.
Lowry rested her elbow on the table with displeasure, but she accepted Gura's report nonetheless. Her honey-brown eyes then turned to Ame and Ina.
"That's all from us, Watson." Lowry concluded. She then took a sip of her cognac and asked with rare, businesslike candor, "So what did you and the librarian find out?"
"Quite a bit." Ame started cordially as well. She brought out her doctor's bag and pulled out a myriad of documents that she spread out on the table, "So then, do you want the bad news or the bad news?"
Twenty-Second Scene - Floating Coffin
Ame passed her dossier of documents across the table to Lowry. The dossier sailed through the well-varnished surface of the table and reached the arm of the chairman's daughter.
"Those are carbon-copies of documents that I found in the Captain's quarters and Miss Chadwick's office." Ame started firmly, following along as Lowry inspected the dossier, "There's a written statement from Captain Morrison refusing an order from the White Star Line Company to bring the Teutonic to drydock for the overdue maintenance."
Ina laid her hands on the table and continued, "Captain Morrison's reasoning was that ' the Teutonic can make one final journey to France ' and urged the executives to ' think of the bottom line' ."
"We could end up at the bottom of the sea because of that bastard!" Lowry hissed as she read Morrison's appeal, "What else did you get?"
"A copy of a bill of work signed by Captain Morrison and Miss Chadwick." Ina introduced this time, "The Teutonic can be converted into a merchant marine cruiser at the request of the British Admiralty in times of war. She was fitted with eight QF 4.7-inch naval guns and a handful of Maxim machine guns for self-defense. Captain Morrison had all these weapons removed at Portsmouth."
"Why would he do that?" Lowry shook her head, "Father told me the Teutonic would participate in the Admiralty's naval review to honor the Queen next month!"
"He probably told the company that the ship would sail faster without the deadweight." Ame scoffed, "Speaking of deadweight, take a look at the next set."
Lowry found a peculiar stash of documents like Ame said. The bewildered aristocrat thumbed through the sheets of paper and realized what it was.
"The ship's manifests. The names of the passengers and crew members are listed here." Lowry hummed. Her eyes scanned through the names and eventually found the slot for the Captain and First Mate, "Hey… wait a second!"
"That's right." Ame finally spoke grimly, "The captain for our ship on this journey was supposed to be a Mr. Jeffrey Dunleavy. His First Mate was supposed to be John Key Charleston. We've been tricked from the very beginning."
"I had my suspicions about Captain Morrison at first." Ina sheepishly added, "However I didn't have any evidence to accuse him or Miss Chadwick of anything - until now. I would have seemed like a lunatic if I spoke up."
"All of the other passengers were fooled too, Ina." Ame reassured, "Don't beat yourself up over it."
Lowry bit her thumb and grumbled, "If only our Telegraph Room was functional, I'd have daddy put Scotland Yard on the case. We'll have a manhunt for Morrison and Chadwick and make them squeal!"
"I seriously doubt that Scotland Yard would be able to help us right now, Lowry." Ame answered with a frown. She then pointed to a small scrap of paper at the bottom of the dossier, "I found that in the wastebasket of the Telegraph Room. It's from four hours ago. You can read Morse, right?"
"Of course." Lowry clicked her tongue and took the strip. She then proceeded to read it out loud, " Report from… HMS Majestic. Stop. Royal Navy flagship. Stop. Ocean liner attack… confirmed. Stop. Atlantic Ocean. Stop. Six hundred… confirmed dead. Stop. Hundreds missing. Stop. Survivors hysterical. Stop. Investigation and rescue… continuing. Stop. "
Lowry set down the Morse code strip and lamented.
"What in the world is going on!?"
Epilogue
As the Watson-Lowry meeting continued in the banquet hall, Gawr Gura looked at her own reflection on the polished surface of the long table. Even though Ame intervened on her behalf, Gura still felt Lowry's scathing questions digging into her heart.
'What's a mere maid doing in that room?'
'What if she was one of 'them'?'
A sour frown lingered on her lips and she raised her eyes up to the fresco of Poseidon riding the waves. She fixed her gaze on the trident and whispered beneath her breath.
' Hey. Where do I belong, really? '
While Gura was searching her heart for an answer, the Teutonic rocked wildly. Thrashing waters picked up the boat as if it were a mere toy and threatened to break it, yet the Teutonic sailed on through the salty spray. It was a frightening rhythm of the sea, but the girls in the banquet hall had already gotten used to it.
Why then did Gura feel so nervous?
Gura closed her eyes and tried to calm her beating heart. All she had to do was sit tight and she would be able to make it to Bordeaux. There, perhaps, she could leave it all behind and disappear once more.
It made her wonder just how many times she has run away from tough times like this. Somewhere along the way, the chambermaid realized that she managed to lose count.
Suddenly, the wild waltz of the Teutonic through the ocean was disrupted and the ocean liner was struck by something as hard as steel. The reinforced superstructure of the ocean liner was shaken to the core and moaned ominously from the blow. Then, the entire banquet hall shook violently - forcing Gura and the rest of the girls to hang onto the polished table for dear life.
Lowry's glass of cognac slid off the table and smashed against the dark mahogany walls, followed by the dossier that she had been examining. The framed painting of Queen Victoria also fell off its perch and crashed onto the banquet hall floor.
"Holy…!" Gura cursed as her head spun from the shaking. The electrical lights flickered on and off too and the Teutonic seemed to take much longer to right itself in the waves than before.
After that, the sound of brass bells started ringing - first from the bow, then from midship and then the stern. Those bells rang with a desperate urgency that Gura had never heard before. It told her that the watchmen had seen something terrifying.
Something that spanned from one end of the Teutonic to another.
Gura's eyes darted to the now cognac-stained strip of Morse code tape from Ame's dossier. Then, she dared to look out the windows of the banquet hall toward the restless sea.
There beyond the glass, she saw the gathering storm clouds that had turned the late afternoon into midnight black. Lightning flashed like tendrils of light that snaked through the darkness over the dark waters. Those flashes then illuminated what the Gura believed the watchmen ringing the bells saw.
It was the silhouette of a long, serpentine creature leaping out of the water as it swam alongside the RMS Teutonic. Menacing red eyes shone through the darkness and traced ominous red lines in the creature's wake. Then, stuck to the creature's long carapace were traces of what looked like a dozen polearms and tridents, whittled down by decades-worth of decay.
Gura's eyes saw those broken tridents and her face went pale with horror.
"N-no…" Terrified words escaped from Gura's trembling lips, "It can't be…!"
To Be Continued