My Clockwork Muse

by D. R. Erickson

  I grabbed the policeman around his neck and bent him over double, holding him in a headlock. His greater strength would allow him to break my grasp at any moment, so I had to think fast.

  The office door stood open against the wall. It was right in front of me, so I drove the cop's head into the glass. It shattered in a shower of broken shards that spilled over the Irishman as he crumpled to the floor.

  But that was the end of my escape. Before I could take another step, the office workers grasped both of my arms and I could not break free, even as Olimpia tried to pry them away. It was over. I was resigned to my fate, happy only that I had not gone quietly.

  Then Gessler's voice rose above the chaos. "Stop!" He had been bent over Burton's body, inspecting his wound. Now he rose to his full height and held up his hands. "Stop, I say! Release that man at once."

  Confused, my captors loosened their grip on me by degrees as Gessler commanded them.

  "There has been no murder committed here," he said, and all eyes fell upon the body of Billy Burton.

  He lay flat on his back on the floor. As those who had knelt to assist him slowly withdrew in bewilderment, I could see that there was a gaping hole in Burton's chest where I had shot him. It was ringed by a wet, reddish substance that soaked into his torn shirt—es New Roman" s 12a thin, translucent liquid, not blood. Tendrils of steam rose from the wound and in the burgeoning silence you could hear a faint hissing.

  I could feel a smile begin to expand across my face. "I knew it!" I exclaimed, throwing off the last restraining hand from my shoulder. "By God, I was right! What do you think now, Inspector?"

  Gessler stared down at the open wound. "I—I don't know what to think. Would you mind explaining this to me, Mr. Poe? What sort of man is this?"

  "This is no man at all," I said triumphantly. I knelt on one side of the hissing body, Gessler on the other. Both of the cops had recovered and looked on over our shoulders. In utter silence, the office workers closed in around them. From the bottom of this well of humanity, Gessler and I inspected the wound. I flattened Burton's shirt over the steaming gash, exposing a broken spring protruding from the hole. "This is a machine, gentlemen. Behold!"

  Gessler looked at me and then down at the spring. He grasped it and pulled. The spring uncoiled slightly and then Gessler yanked it out. He examined it closely but hesitantly as one would a potentially stinging insect.

  "Go ahead, Inspector," I said, when he obviously still did not comprehend the meaning of what was before his eyes. I indicated the wound. "Have a look inside."

  With obvious distaste, he reached his thumb and forefinger into the hole. His face expressed shock as he pulled out a tiny dripping gearwheel. "Mein Gott!" he exclaimed, reverting to his native German.

  "A clockwork man," I declared. "There can have been no murder here."

  "We will have to examine this ... man closely," Gessler said. "One spring and a gearwheel does not a clockwork man make—New Roman" s 12necessarily."

  The throng began murmuring and Gessler hunched down to peer closely into Burton's face. As he did so, the automaton's eyes snapped open. Gessler made to recoil in fear but was halted by the thing's hand which shot upward, grasping him around the throat. Alarmed, the crowd screamed and backed away. Burton began to rise, easily lifting Gessler with one hand. The inspector tried to cry out, but nothing escaped his lips but a strangled gurgling.

  The crowd dispersed in panic, running from the monster they had suddenly found in their midst. Burton stood to his full height, lifting Gessler by the throat and holding him there as though he were weightless. Gessler's toes danced inches above the floor.

  "It's killing him," Olimpia cried. She grabbed at its free arm, but clockwork Burton swatted her away effortlessly and she went sliding across the floor.

  Fearing she was badly hurt, I ran to her. But she waved me off and pointed instead to an object on the floor.

  "Your gun!" she cried.

  I followed her finger and saw my pepperbox revolver laying on the floor where it had fallen. Gessler gurgled and danced as I rushed toward the gun. I dove for it and, grasping the handle, rose to my feet and moved to where I could get a good shot at the creature.

  It saw me at the same instant that I found my spot.

  Squeezing the life out of Gessler, the creature looked right at me and in Burton's voice, it hissed, "You're next, Poe."

  I steeled my resolve. "Are you talking to me?" I asked. I lifted the gun, took careful aim and fired.

  A neat, round black hole appeared in the monster's forehead, right between its eyes. Its hand sprung open and Gessler crumpled to the floor, coughing and hacking. A geyser of steam gushed from the wound. The thing took a wavering step forward. I prepared to fire again. One of its eyes suddenly shot out of its head from some internal pressure. The eye dangled from its socket by a cluster of fine tubes and wires. Then the creature's knees gave way, and the thing collapsed.

  Chapter 17

  Olimpia and I helped Gessler up to a sitting position. He sat rubbing his throat for a moment before speaking.

  "You saved my life, Mr. Poe," he rasped before coughing several times into his hand. When he had regained himself, he looked up at Olimpia. "Miss Coppelius, I am not surprised to find you here."

  "You will find me always with Eddy," she said. "He is an innocent man, Inspector."

  "Yes, that I know. You were one step ahead of me the whole time, Mr. Poe."

  "It is easy to stay ahead with killers hounding your heels, Inspector."

  Gessler tried to get up and winced in pain. Olimpia and I each took an arm and helped him to his feet. "One thing I don't understand, though. If that thing is not Burton—then who is?"

  We gazed down at the dead automaton, still shuddering and convulsing on the floor. The gushing steam from its head wound had been reduced to a trickle. The manuscript pages that comprised 'Berenice' lay scattered all over the office.

  "The corpse in the wall," I said. "That was Burton."

  I went on to tell him how the thing had attacked me and how it could not be stopped, even after I had caved its head in with a two-by-four. Only after I had spilled oil on it and set it alight was I able to escape its grasp. Even after all that had happened, Gessler looked at me skeptically.

  "Don't ask me how it is possible," I said. "But it is real—as real as this." I leaned down and yanked Burton's dangling eyeball from its connecting tissues and wires. I tossed it to Gessler. He caught it and held it briefly before flipping it back with a look of revulsion. It dropped to the floor near Burton's head. "I wouldn't have thought this possible, either, Inspector. Yet, here it is."

  "You have a point, Mr. Poe—as well as a black eye. None the worse for wear, I hope?"

  I touched my eye. The flesh surrounding it was swollen and tender. Someone must have cuffed me during the fracas. I looked over at the policeman whose head I had smashed into the glass. He was holding a blood-smeared cloth to a cut on his forehead. A fair exchange, I supposed. Olimpia examined my eye closely, touching it gingerly with her fingertips.

  "My problems far exceed a black eye, Inspector. There is still someone out there trying to kill me—someone capable of devising a machine such as this."

  "Then you believe there is more than just Mr. Burton behind this scheme against you?"

  "Oh, this is not Burton's doing. I believe he is as much a victim as I am."

  Gessler raised his eyebrows. Before answering, I set about herding everyone out of the office. Most of the workers had gone back to their desks—12or had left the building altogether—but there were a few stragglers. The cops went last. I closed the door behind them, a rather silly pretense given the shattered glass. I ignored their chortling. Then I started gathering up the scattered pages of 'Berenice'.

  "Burton was selected because I had a motive to kill him. At least it was perceived that way by whomever the mastermind of this plot may be."

  "The 'Pym' review," Gessler said.

  "Among other th
ings. Injuries and insults, you might say. But I don't think he foresaw this conclusion."

  "Burned to death in a boarding house basement."

  "And his facsimile laying here with a hole through its mechanical brain."

  Olimpia handed me a few pages of 'Berenice' she had found under the desk. "It occurs to me," she said, "that Mr. Burton was probably unaware of ... this." She nodded toward the ruined automaton.

  "Interesting ..." Gessler muttered. "Do go on, Miss Coppelius."

  "I believe his part in this ... affair ... was merely to portray a dead man in that wall. A simple matter to fool a handful of police. No offense."

  "The role of a lifetime—for a hack actor," I added.

  "In fact, I believe he was meant to perish there. Perhaps not in the fashion Eddy describes, but—"

  "Oh, seriously, Miss Coppelius!" Gessler exclaimed with the bemused smile, his mustache huffing. "I examined that body myself and, believe me, he was quite dead."

  "Not dead enough to keep him in that wall, let me assure you!" I cried. "That was no ghost who attacked me."

  "He was feigning death, Inspector Gessler," Olimpia said with certainty. "Or perhaps ..."

  "Perhaps what?" Gessler asked when Olimpia paused in thought.

  "Or perhaps he was in a state that merely resembled death."

  "Drug induced!" I cried. Yes, it made sense now. I told Gessler about the vial I had found at the scene. I had almost forgotten. "I am having it analyzed even as we speak."

  Gessler stroked his chin. "A drug that would cause a man to fall into a death-like trance..." He thought it over for a moment.

  "Perhaps even one that would eventually kill him outright," Olimpia added. "Mr. Burton as unwitting victim."

  "He was a victim of his own villainy," I said. "I will shed no tears for Billy Burton."

  "And the Rue Morgue?" Gessler asked.

  "A crime committed by his double, at the behest of its maker."

  "He showed me how he did it, Inspector. I admit to having doubts that the crime could be committed in the manner I had described in my story. But Burton—or, rather, that machine—showed me that it could be done. And I believe only he—it—could have done it."

  "And then tried to pin the murder on you."

  "And the 'Berenice' crime," Olimpia chimed in. I started to protest for I had risked my life to conceal it. But Olimpia cut me off. "Go ahead, Eddy. Show him. The innocent have nothing to fear."

  "'Berenice'?" Gessler looked from one to the other of us. "Why, isn't that—?"

  "I finished it, Inspector, yes. Oh, would to God that I had not!" I showed him the pages. They were all a jumble, of course, but we sorted through them until, finding the last page, I showed him the conclusion to the story he had begun back at my cottage. Miraculously, the box of teeth was still in my pocket. My pain at opening it and exposing its hideous contents was nearly unbearable.

  Gessler, whom I supposed had seen quite a lot in his time, made no reaction. He closed the lid gently and looked up.

  "And Burton, you say, is the only person who had seen this story?"

  "As far as I know."

  "Then we have some investigating to do, Mr. Poe. Miss Coppelius, you will of course assist." He turned back to me. "How's Monsieur Dupin these days?"

  I smiled broadly. "Sharp as a tack, Inspector."

  ~ * * * ~

  "Perhaps we should stop at the butcher's for that eye of yours, Eddy," Olimpia said good-humouredly as we rode down the street in Gessler's carriage.

  It had swollen to the point that I could hardly see through it. Worse, I had caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass of the carriage window and saw that the horrified stares I had received on the street were warranted. Indeed, I made a frightful appearance. The last thing I wanted was to be taken for some street ruffian, so when I spied an optical goods shop from the carriage, I bid the driver stop and went inside.

  When I came back, I was wearing a pair of pince-nez spectacles with oval-shaped lenses of smoked glass. I saw in my reflection that while they did not entirely hide my blackened eye, I would at least no longer be mistaken for a street tough.

  Gessler, of course, considered the stop an unnecessary delay. "May we now proceed to this chemist of yours, Mr. Poe? Perhaps you would concede that we have matters more pressing than your personal appearance?"

  "Ah, but it goes beyond mere appearance, Inspector. I have been suffering a peculiar sensitivity to light these past weeks. I now find that these smoked lenses—the darkest the proprietor had on hand—provide a great deal of relief. Had I known, I would have allowed your man to blacken my eye a long time ago. Besides," I added with a smile, "I think I look quite smart. Rather dashing, don't you think, Olimpia?"

  "You look so mysterious," Olimpia observed.

  "Fitting for the writer of tales of mystery, don't you think?"

  Olimpia smiled and shifted her weight to press up against me, clutching my shoulder to her cheek. "Oh, most indubitably!" she agreed.

  Gessler cleared his throat uncomfortably and called for the driver to proceed. "If that's all right with the both of you." he added irritably.

  ~ * * * ~

  Though the traffic outside Witherspoon's shop was heavy, the shop itself was empty when we arrived. We opened the door, a little bell jingled and Witherspoon emerged from his back room cleaning his spectacles with a cloth.

  He muttered some pleasantries, and squinted at us with an amiable expression. Seemingly blind, his gaze did not quite meet our faces. It was not until he pinched his glasses to his nose and adjusted them through several fits of facial contortions that he realized who had entered his shop. His genial expression changed to surprise and then, seeing all three of us together, fear.

  "What's all this, then?" he asked. I could see his hands clench the trim of the countertop. His gaze moved from one face to the next and then dropped to our hands, as if he expected to see one of us, at least, in handcuffs. "Inspector Dupin! I ... I ..." He swallowed deeply between 'I's, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

  Gessler, holding his derby, chuckled at the mention of Dupin. Embarrassed, I glanced at him, but he merely looked down at his feet. I could tell that his lips were curled in a smile, though I could not see them beneath his drooping moustache.

  "Yes, well ... Mr. Witherspoon ... I, uh ..." I was stammering, unsure how to proceed. I had been so eager to learn the results of his investigation into the contents of my vial, and so overcome by the course of recent events—not least of which was my unforeseen alliance with Gessler—that I had completely forgotten my charade of the previous day. "Mr. Witherspoon, please let me explain—"

  Witherspoon straightened suddenly. "I suppose you had better, sir! I was told to believe—at no little discomfort to myself, and against my better judgment—that you had embarked upon some investigation of the very man who now stands by your side, apparently your companion, if I may judge from appearances. I took you at your word, Inspector Dupin, and have made a thorough examination of the vial you left in my care. Now, if I have wasted my time—"

  Gessler again reacted at the mention of Dupin. This time, he burst out laughing. "You couldn't resist calling yourself Dupin, could you?" he asked between spasms of mirth.

  Witherspoon looked confused and angry. "Perhaps I have missed the joke."

  He had examined the vial! I felt a thrill at the revelation. But I could see that he was becoming angry. I decided I better explain before he turned on me completely. "I have a confession to make, Mr. Witherspoon. I am not who I said I was. I am not Inspector Dupin. In fact, I am not a law enforcement official of any sort."

  "Yes...?" Witherspoon urged, noncommittally.

  I went on to tell him that I was indeed investigating a crime—a crime for which I had been framed. "The vial," I said, "was found at the scene of a murder for which I was unjustly accused. This piece of evidence, which you now hold, I believe will exonerate me."

  "If you are not this Dupin, then who are y
ou, sir?"

  I removed my smoked lenses. Witherspoon winced a little at the sight of my discolored and swollen eye. "I am, in fact, Edgar Poe, erstwhile editor of the Broadway Journal, poet and writer of tales of the imagination." I was accustomed to blank stares, so I added quickly, "You may have heard of 'The Raven'."

  "Ah!" Witherspoon's face lit up. "'Once upon a midnight dreary'..." That 'Raven'? You're that Poe?"

  I nodded.

  "Edgar A. Poe," Witherspoon said meditatively. "Well, I'll be damned. And who in reality are you, then, Inspector? Washington Irving?"

  Gessler cleared his throat of laughter and took a step forward. "I am exactly who I said I was, Mr. Witherspoon. We—that is, Mr. Poe and I, and Miss Coppelius—are making a joint investigation toward a common end, a fact that did not become clear to us until just an hour ago. It is exactly as Mr. Poe says. That vial you have examined is of the utmost importance to us, Mr. Witherspoon. Matters of life and death may hinge upon your identification of its contents."

  "Of course! The Poe Murders!" Witherspoon exclaimed as if he had been mulling it over the past few moments and it had just occurred to him. "It is in all the papers just this morning. I would have never suspected that I was investigating such a celebrated case. 'The Rue Morgue', they're calling one. 'Amontillado', the other. Oh, the details of the crimes are perplexing indeed!" Witherspoon came out from behind the counter and rushed to the front door. He locked it and lowered the blind, darkening the room. He turned back to us and spoke in a low tone. "I know I should be angry with you, Mr. Poe, but I'm not. For what I found in your vial has far exceeded my expectations."

  "Laudanum?" I asked, hopefully. "Of a certain, specific variety?"

  "Oh, no. What I found is far worse—perhaps even beyond our understanding."