Chapter 298: A City Without Reins Part 1

Ernest Teucher realized something fundamental had shifted in Helmarte when nobody bothered to look at his car.

He noticed it on a drizzly Wednesday morning. Not inside a busy factory, not in the quiet luxury of the Teucher Motor Company boardroom, and not while wading through Arthur’s increasingly ridiculous sales charts.

He noticed it while stuck in dead-stop traffic.

Ernest rested both forearms against the wooden rim of his dark green Model One’s steering wheel, staring blankly through the glass windscreen.

Ahead of him, a heavy dray wagon stood loaded with beer barrels, its massive draft horses snorting steam. Right behind the wagon was an electric tram. Wedged along the tram’s flank were two open buggies. And flanking those—three purring motorcars.

Ernest checked his rearview mirror.

Another Model One sat inches from his bumper. Directly behind that was a squat, unfamiliar automobile painted gray.

He frowned. "Eleanor."

"Hm?"

She sat beside him on the buttoned leather bench, casually turning a page of her folded morning paper.

"Look."

Eleanor lowered the paper an inch, peering over the top. "At what?"

Ernest gestured out the windshield. "The car."

She swept her eyes across the intersection. "Which one?"

Ernest froze. There were six within arm’s reach.

A slow, knowing smile spread across Eleanor’s face. "Exactly."

Ernest looked around again.

Nobody was gawking. A scruffy newsboy hurried between the bumpers, shouting headlines about railway tariffs without sparing a single glance at Ernest’s gleaming paint. A woman clutching a sack of cabbages dashed across the cobblestones, stepping right between an idling Model One and a carriage horse. A bored traffic constable in a damp wool tunic swung his arms with total indifference.

On the walkway, two schoolboys stood chatting. Neither pointed. Neither raced toward the idling chassis with wide eyes. One boy was wholly preoccupied trying to get a stray dog to chase a stick.

Ernest stared at the kid. "The dog is apparently more impressive than five hundred pounds of precision machinery."

Eleanor flipped to the society column. "Maybe it’s an exceptional dog."

"It’s a mutt."

"Then you’ve been dethroned, my dear."

Up ahead, the wagon finally rolled. Ernest dropped his foot to the clutch, slipped the lever into first gear, and let the Model One creep forward into the current of King’s Avenue.

They had driven down to Helmarte for an official round of talks. Arthur had arranged meetings with the city transport commission, a batch of fleet buyers, and the railway logistics board handling Plant Two’s future rollout. Eleanor had joined him since they planned to spend the night.

Their first appointment wasn’t until half-past ten. Ernest had originally floated the idea of arriving at the municipal building two hours early to inspect the boiler pipes. Eleanor had flatly vetoed it.

So they just drove. No fixed route. No factory audits. Just Helmarte.

For the first time in years, Ernest wasn’t looking at the capital as a tangled knot of logistical headaches waiting to be engineered out of existence. He was just looking at the city itself.

And everywhere he turned, cars owned the road.

A year ago, King’s Avenue belonged to the horse: coaches, carts, hansom cabs, heavy dray teams, and messengers. Now, the street belonged to two different eras smashed together.

A double-deck horse bus rumbled past a fresh-washed Model One. A courier on a bicycle darted into the tiny gap between them. An electric tram clanged its brass bell. Further up, a motorized delivery van was backing into a department store’s loading bay, completely boxing in two stubborn wagon drivers who were cursing colorfully at the driver.

Ernest found himself tapping his index finger against the wheel rim, counting. One. Two. Three...

Eleanor didn’t even look up from her article. "Stop."

"Stop what?"

"Counting."

"I’m not counting."

"Your pointer finger has tapped seven times in ten seconds."

Ernest pulled his hands down to his lap. "Fine."

The signal officer held up a gloved hand. Ernest eased to a stop.

A cream-colored Model One pulled up on their left. Behind its wheel was a smartly dressed woman in her thirties, wearing tight kidskin driving gloves and a wide-brimmed felt hat securely pinned down against the breeze. Her passenger had a lap full of ribbon-tied shopping parcels.

The woman felt Ernest’s gaze, met his eyes, and offered a casual, polite nod.

Ernest nodded back.

The constable blew his whistle. The woman popped her clutch with practiced confidence and shot forward, clearing the intersection well before him.

Eleanor chuckled softly behind her paper. "She smoked you."

"I am not street racing a customer."

"Naturally."

"I engaged the friction plate gradually to spare the clutch surface."

"Of course you did."

They rolled into the financial quarter, where the scenery turned even more dramatic. Motorcars sat banked along the granite facades of banks, hotels, law offices, and high-end clinics. Outside one imposing stone entrance, a freshly painted wooden board read:

MOTOR VEHICLE STAND — 20 MINUTE MAXIMUM

Ernest slowed to a crawl, leaning forward to stare at the painted lettering.

Eleanor sighed. "What now?"

"That sign."

"It’s a parking sign." ℯℯ𝑙.

"There wasn’t a parking sign here two months ago."

"There weren’t fifty cars parked on this curb two months ago either."

Behind them, a sharp metallic horn blasted.

HONK!

Ernest glanced up into his tiny rear mirror. A red-faced gentleman in a bowler hat was sitting in another Model One, violently waving his arm out the window.

Ernest hastily stepped on the accelerator.

Eleanor brought a hand up to smother her laugh. "Did you just get honked at by a customer buying your own product?"

"I was analyzing the evolution of municipal roadside management."

"You were blocking the road, Baron Teucher."

Ernest grumbled under his breath, steering toward Bedford Street. But deep down, the brief flash of annoyance evaporated into pure delight.

The driver hadn’t recognized him. Nobody did. He was just another slow driver holding up traffic on an ordinary morning.

In the early days, the Model One had belonged exclusively to the wealthy elite. The people who could drop seventy-five pounds on a machine without glancing at their ledger: factory bosses, country barons, top surgeons, and premier hotels. That crowd was still buying. Outside the Carlton Hotel sat an ultra-luxe Model One painted deep burgundy, complete with brass carriage lamps, polished walnut trim, and a chauffeur standing rigidly by the door.

Arthur had called that early craze months ago: Get three lords to park one outside the club, and thirty minor gentlemen will sell their hunting dogs to buy one.

Ernest didn’t care much about the vanity of the rich. Their gold was simply funding the tooling for Plant Two.

What made his heart skip was what sat half a mile down Bedford Street.

Parked outside a brick apothecary was a standard gray Model One. No custom lacquer. No gleaming brass. Standard factory iron wheels, dull vinyl upholstery, no chauffeur.

A man in a plain woolen suit stepped out of the chemist’s shop carrying a small brown parcel. One of his shirt cuffs was stained with ink. A clerk. Maybe a junior solicitor.

The man tossed the bag onto the back bench, cranked the nose handle, hopped into the driver’s seat himself, and pulled out into the morning mist.

"Middle class," Eleanor murmured.

Ernest glanced sideways. "You noticed?"

"You were staring at him like he was a new boiler design."

"I don’t stare. I observe."

"You observed that poor accountant for a full minute."

"You don’t know he’s an accountant."

"He had ink on his sleeve and a ledger under his arm, Ernest."

They drove three blocks and saw five more just like him: a dentist parking outside his surgery, a master rail supervisor, a dry-goods merchant, a headmaster. People who, just a season prior, were tied to the timetable of an omnibus or the endless feed bills of a single stable nag.

For them, seventy-five pounds was a massive mountain of cash. But they were scraping it together. Some were even buying used.

Around the corner, an old carriage repair shop had hung out a fresh cloth banner:

USED MOTORCARS BOUGHT & SOLD

Ernest tapped the brakes again.

"Keep your foot down," Eleanor warned.

"Eleanor, they’re establishing a second-hand market."

"I have eyes."

"A secondary market means the initial buyer can recover residual capital after eighteen months, drastically lowering the real-term depreciation cost! That means an entirely new tier of wage earners can—"

"Car, Ernest. Look at the road."

Ernest yanked the wheel slightly to dodge a coal heap. "Right."

Six months ago, owning a motorcar in Helmarte was an expedition. You had to memorize which apothecary stocked cleaning benzine and carry four spare tubes. Now, hand-painted wooden signboards dotted every corner: MOTOR SPIRIT. OIL & GREASE. TIRES VULCANIZED.

Then he saw a brick garage with a massive painted sign:

REPAIRS & OVERHAULS — ALL MAKES & DESIGNS

Ernest hit the brakes hard enough to pitch them forward. "All makes?"

Eleanor braced herself against the dashboard. "Ernest."

Sitting outside the garage was an open runabout. It wasn’t a Model One. The frame was shorter, the radiator shell was oval instead of rectangular, and the steering box used a chain link.

Ernest’s fingers twitched on the wheel. He practically vibrated with the urge to tear it apart with his bare hands.

Eleanor gave him the look she usually reserved for stubborn machinery. "Don’t you dare."

"I haven’t said a word."

"We have an appointment."

"We have forty minutes."

"You will spend thirty-nine of those minutes arguing with the mechanic about why his float bowl is terrible."

"Twenty minutes."

"Drive the car."

Ernest reluctantly clicked into gear. But he watched the little runabout through the rearview mirror until it vanished behind a tram.

A rival. A competitor.

He found himself grinning ear to ear.

Arthur would have panicked at the sight of a competitor setting up shop in the capital. But Ernest wasn’t interested in holding a monopoly over a tiny luxury fad. A monopoly was just a big pond with one fish.

He didn’t want a pond. He wanted an ocean. He wanted parts suppliers, tire mills, fuel chains, driving tutors, body builders, and a dozen hungry rivals nipping at his heels.

A single company made a novelty. An entire economy made an industrial revolution.