The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts

by David Wake

  However, her main worry was that she was really hungry.

  Macaroons wouldn’t be too much to ask for, surely?

  Or Garibaldi’s?

  Or cake?

  Chapter V

  Miss Deering-Doolittle

  And they didn’t see her off the next day.

  Cook had made bacon and eggs, which she wolfed down.

  Earnestine walked to work again.

  The newspaper vendors were full of news of a Member of Parliament, who had been arrested.

  Earnestine asked one: “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Foxley, Miss. They’ve only gone and nabbed him.”

  “Foxley?”

  “The Right Honourable, brother of the Earl no less, and his were a safe London seat.”

  “What for?”

  “Crimes, Miss, dreadful crimes. And they act all high and mighty and better than us, going on, he did, about family values, but that’s their class for you, begging your pardon, Miss.”

  She bought a paper, folded it and tucked it under her arm and marched to Queensbury Road feeling quite the important business woman, if such a thing could exist.

  When she arrived, she glanced right and left. The street was empty, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

  Boothroyd was already making the tea.

  “Shall we have biscuits?” he said.

  Earnestine wasn’t sure he realised that she’d left, been away the night and returned.

  “Please.”

  Her first task was to remove the piles that Boothroyd had moved back onto the desk and generally return things to that state they’d been when she’d finally called it a day yesterday. Next, there being no other plan, she simply picked a place and selected the first application. As she worked through, she found various objects to use as paperweights: a brick, a rather beautiful crystal that had been encased in rock, a trilobite and a piece of metal that looked like an important part of something else.

  One sculpture she uncovered was a teak box with a strange removable handle on the top and a dial on the front. It didn’t work as a paperweight because it was attached to the wall by a twisted cord.

  “Oh, the telephonic apparatus!” said Boothroyd. “At last, I know what that ringing noise was.”

  Earnestine’s system was simple: a place for everything and everything in its place.

  After a while the room suggested a gallery displaying sculptures and object d’art, which was quite pleasing.

  “Mister Boothroyd, may I suggest the fire for this one?”

  “Miss Deering–Dolittle, it may be important.”

  “One can buy this item at a good hardware store.”

  “Can you?”

  “Indeed, we have a cast iron one ourselves at home.”

  “The fire then,” Boothroyd conceded. “What would I do without you?”

  “I’ve only been here a day, Mister Boothroyd.”

  “And already you’ve made yourself indispensable, my dear.”

  “Thank you, Mister Boothroyd, one tries one’s best.”

  “I think you should take a break,” Boothroyd suggested.

  Earnestine realised that she did fancy a cup of tea, but Boothroyd instead suggested the Duelling Machine in the warehouse.

  “An excellent way to blow off steam,” he said and he left her to it.

  Earnestine examined the instructions, squinting at the spidery additions in the margins. The Jacquard cards, hard and made from a material Earnestine didn’t know, went in a slot at the back… no, this way round and the handle wound the internal springs. There were three: back, right – quite stiff – and the front, which whirred away until she realised that there was a catch. Finally, the instructions said it was started by dropping a gauntlet on the Activation Plate, see Fig 1. There was a heavy leather glove supplied for the principle, which had been loaded with lead shot and sewn shut. To deactivate it, all one had to do was press the heart in the centre of the main column with whatever weapon one had selected. This seemed remarkably simple, and the obvious nicks and holes attested to how often this had been achieved in the past.

  She marked a line two paces away in the dust with the toe of her Oxford Street boot and experimentally swished a foil this way and that. Finally, she pulled the face mask over, finding she could see through the wire mesh, but realising that her coiffure was ruined.

  “En garde,” she said, bringing the blade upright, the cold steel guard tucked under her chin, and then, ruining the bold stance, she bent forward and tossed the gauntlet down. It landed squarely on the activation plate.

  The metal dropped, the central arm jerked up in a parody of the duelling pose and then the first Jacquard card shunted in at the back, clunking and whirring. The right armature swung round, a counter balance, distracting Earnestine as the other arm came up and prodded forward. It caught her in the midriff; her corset transferred the force across her entire torso, so it flung her over backwards crushing both her bustle and her dignity. The thing carried on, whirling, swirling and stabbing, slashing and probing as the entire pack of cards jostled into the mechanism telling the mechanical combatant to fight and struggle on, despite facing an already fallen opponent.

  Earnestine rolled over and hustled out from under the flailing threat and turning, she pulled herself up.

  Waiting for the right moment, she stepped in: parried the blow. It clanged backwards and she smiled, knowing that she’d got the hang of this–

  “Oooph!”

  She was on the ground again, her ear stinging from a swipe. The face mask came free and bounced away like a rugby ball. The machine had known where she was, her blow activating cogs and levers as her parry moved the arm in a certain way and this in turn directed the counter move. She struggled backwards, the device thrashing side–to–side above her and walking!

  Walking!

  Towards her!

  It shunted from one short leg to another, the weights inside throwing it one way and then another in a travesty of motion.

  It stopped moving as the internal forces wound down and presently the thrashing slowed, stuttered and stopped.

  When it finally ceased, Earnestine stood and brushed the dirt off her dress before she–

  “Ah!”

  It struck again, the last spring giving its final oomph.

  “Right!”

  A simpler programme was the answer to expedite a gradual improvement of her skill, she thought.

  She selected another: turned the handle again – that right one could do with some oil – and set off the combat once more.

  This time she was ready, this time she parried and parried again before the thing somehow twisted its foil and disarmed her.

  Second attempt – the oil was in the workshop and… there must be something to get this disgusting stuff off her hands without ruining her lace handkerchief.

  “Now!”

  Gauntlet down, Earnestine down.

  Fourth attempt, the oil had done the trick, and she was soon hopping in the centre of the warehouse around the clever hansom cab, holding her hand and biting her lip to stop her yelling the ‘b’ word at the top of her voice.

  When it had finally subsided, Earnestine glared at it for a long time and then, very deliberately, she stabbed the heart of the machine. The image depressed signifying that the machine was ‘off’. It was indeed so easy when the opponent wasn’t defending itself.

  Oh, it was such a foolish un–ladylike activity anyway.

  She made herself a cup of tea, but it was no victory celebration and her hand, ear, derriere and pride smarted dreadfully, so she put the very idea out of her mind completely and went back to filing, banging the doors shut and slamming the stacks of paper down with a certain vehemence.

  “My dear, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing Mister Boothroyd.”

  “I think we should have a spot of tea.”

  They had yet another tea and Earnestine began to sort again, separating it
ems into i) clearly obsolete, ii) interesting and iii) utterly perplexing. There were many on the same lines, often with extremely minor adjustments to their diagrams. If this was school, then clearly these pupils had copied each other’s homework. She’d also forgotten some of the mnemonics she’d invented in order to understand her system. The pile under the brick, for example, ought to have been Architecture, but clearly wasn’t any more.

  She found the pile she’d removed from the fireplace, and decided to chance her luck.

  “These ones were already in the fire.”

  Boothroyd didn’t even glance up from his crossword: “Oh very well.”

  Earnestine rammed them back into the fireplace and lit them quickly in case he changed his mind. The fire produced a lot of smoke that wafted into the room, until the heat allowed the chimney to draw. The paper took and whooshed, so Earnestine added some wood that she’d found and then a few coals. She went into the kitchen to wash her hands, prepare a pot of tea and put together a plate of assorted biscuits.

  Boothroyd was sitting in the armchair, perplexed again by the empty desk. He’d finished the crossword, although he’d added some squares to the right hand side to do so.

  “May I?” Earnestine asked, putting her hand on the copy of the Times.

  “Certainly, my dear.”

  Earnestine realised that it was, in fact, her newspaper.

  The headline was about all these arrests, but Earnestine flicked through to see if there were any columns about explorers. There were no reports of any long lost expeditions being found. She was used to that, but even so she missed her mother and father. It was her regular morning tightness in her chest, but it passed.

  “My dear?”

  “I’m sorry, Mister Boothroyd, what was the question?”

  “What do you think of all this talk about temporal travelling?”

  “Oh… er…”

  Earnestine glanced at the headline again: ‘More arrests’ and it went on to talk about men from the future.

  “I’ve not been following it, I’m afraid.”

  “They’ve been arresting those responsible.”

  “Responsible for what?”

  “And taking them to the future to stand trial.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “Just think it though, my dear,” said Boothroyd.

  “It seems rather fantastical and far–fetched.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. Surely such a…” She looked at the front page for the right expression. “…Temporal Engine would be impossible.”

  Boothroyd dunked his garibaldi in his tea: “Why do you think that?”

  “I’m sure I read somewhere that the Patent Office of the Americas suggested that we were reaching the end of all possible inventions.”

  “My dear?”

  “That all inventions that were possible had already been invented. Or, at the very least, nearly so. There must surely be a limit to the possibilities.”

  “But we have so many inventions surrounding us. Steam power was unheard of only fifty years ago and now people go on day trips at velocities exceeding thirty miles per hour. There are steam powered boats made of metal. Zeppelins fly through the air. Why should it not be possible to construct a vessel to traverse the ether itself?”

  “Because…”

  “We could show the people of a hundred years ago marvels beyond their belief.”

  “I grant you.”

  “So it follows that in a hundred years’ time, there will be marvels that we would struggle to understand.”

  “But surely time is different.”

  “Certainly,” said Boothroyd. “But you already travel in time.”

  “One does not,” Earnestine scoffed.

  “If I were to travel to the continent, France or Italy, then I must reset my watch. I have travelled in time.”

  “Of course not.” Earnestine put down her tea and biscuit to point at the floor. “Here is Greenwich Mean Time. I could easily decide that over there by the door it was half past five in the afternoon. I could go there, turn my watch until it said half past five, but I would not have travelled in time.”

  Boothroyd stared at the corner: “And you would have missed afternoon tea.”

  “Travelling to now from a distant age is quite another matter.”

  Her paper appeared to have a lot of columns devoted to these people and, flicking over, on pages two and three. It was all there in black and white, with editorial comment on page seven, and clearly Earnestine had been living in another world for she had simply missed all of this.

  “These people say they have,” said Boothroyd, pushing his hand through his grey streaked hair, “so it must be possible.”

  “They say they have?”

  “How else do you explain their appearances and disappearances?”

  Earnestine, of course, could not.

  “Responsible and trustworthy men have seen it with their own eyes,” Boothroyd finished. “And they have shown marvels beyond our current understanding.”

  It was unfair, Earnestine thought, for everyone to strive so hard for a future that was suddenly, and inexplicably, handed to them on a plate. This department, the Patent Pending Office, was redundant. Why invent when one could simply have someone from the future give one the device, ready–made and, indeed, redeveloped and improved many times over?

  “Why paint a picture, when one can go to the future to see it already hanging in the gallery,” she said.

  Boothroyd snorted: “Why indeed?”

  “All this…” Earnestine said, waving her hand to encompass the study and, by suggestion, the warehouses beyond.

  “I wondered when you’d realise.”

  “If they give one the plans and say you invented this, then would one?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “But one wouldn’t have actually done it.”

  “Legally it’s whoever signed the patent application.”

  “Only legally.”

  “What other definition is there, my dear?”

  Earnestine tidied away the cups and small plate, and took them to the kitchen. At some point she’d have to see if she could match cup to saucer.

  “I suppose one can’t argue with them,” Earnestine said raising her voice. “After all, they’ll know what one is going to do, won’t they?”

  Boothroyd didn’t answer.

  “I mean,” Earnestine continued. “They have an unfair advantage.”

  There was a clatter, like something falling.

  “Mister Boothroyd?”

  There was a palpable silence and then a scuffle.

  “Mister Boothroyd?”

  Earnestine stepped back into the main room.

  Boothroyd was on his knees, his hands together pleading. Beside him were two tall men dressed in long frock coats and wearing high top hats. They had strange glasses, painted white which made them look blind. Another was suddenly standing beside her. He looked like a fighter or a bull, and he had a weapon in his hand, a brass device with prongs and a strange internal illumination.

  “Don’t fight them,” Boothroyd said.

  “What’s going on?” Earnestine demanded. She realised that she’d picked the flat iron up off the pile of ‘Household and Garden’.

  “This man is under arrest,” said one of the men. He had a curved sword strapped to his belt. Earnestine saw that the others were similarly armed. Not that she could fight them… except that they were six paces apart and, unlike the duelling machine, they wouldn’t be expecting an attack.

  “For what crime?” she demanded.

  “Genocide.”

  “Genocide?! But Mister Boothroyd is a harmless old man.”

  The man snorted: “This harmless old man created a weapon that decimated Europe in a great war.”

  Boothroyd didn’t look like a man who would hurt a fly, but then who knew what monstrous devices were tucked away here ready to be discovered when they reached a particular letter of the a
lphabet or deciphered something on yellow paper. Involuntarily, she glanced at the piles of documents fearing that her attention would alight on the very creation.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Scrutiniser Jones,” said the burly one. He had a bent nose that spoke of long ago fisticuffs. “This is Chief Examiner Lombard.”

  “You have no jurisdiction here to arrest anyone,” Earnestine replied.

  “Jurisdiction? All of time is our precinct.”

  The men hauled Boothroyd to his feet and frog marched him out. Earnestine took a step to follow, but the taller man blocked her way. As he left, Boothroyd looked directly at Earnestine and said, “By George–” but then he was gone.

  “Excuse me,” Earnestine said. “But he needs… does he get representation?”

  “Oh yes, these monsters get a fair trial.”

  “Will one be allowed to speak in his defence?”

  “Maybe… who are you?”

  Earnestine didn’t want to tell him.

  Somehow, she didn’t want to get involved despite desperately wanting to save Boothroyd, but was her loyalty misplaced? Should she side with a mass–murderer just because he gave her a biscuit with her tea? Even Napoleon for all his mad warfare and radical ideas, had probably meant well when he imposed the nonsense of the metric system on the continent.

  “Your name?” Chief Examiner Lombard repeated.

  “Miss Deering–Dolittle.”

  The man stumbled back surprised: “Miss Earnestine Deering–Dolittle?”

  “Yes.”

  Chief Examiner Lombard took a moment to close his open mouth, and then he chuckled, deep and reflexively.

  The others had gone with Boothroyd.

  There was only Earnestine and the laughing Temporal Peeler.

  Surely, if they had removed Boothroyd from history, then he wouldn’t be able to discover the weapon or whatever it was, so he would be innocent. But if it wasn’t him, then just as surely it would fall to his replacement, which could very well be Earnestine herself.

  He handed her a coin: “For your door.”

  “My door… oh.”

  She had to put the flat iron down to examine the gold disc. It was a King Edward sovereign, but Edward was only the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria was the Monarch.