Contriver

I’ll tell thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France; full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man’s good parts, a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother.

[…] those desctructive Machines, whereof he said, some evil Genius, Enemy to Mankind, must have been the first Contriver.

A heroine returning, at the close of her career, to her native village, in all the triumph of recovered reputation, and all the dignity of a countess […] is an event on which the pen of the contriver may well delight to dwell;

They had toured the world together with their Soirée of Illusions, combining his art as a public performer with her skill as a technician, a contriver of magical apparatus, and her artistic taste, which was far beyond his own.