The curious case of the Clockwork Man bas-2

by Mark Hodder

There was a moment of respite.

  The Scotland Yard man wiped his sleeve over his eyes and peered around. Through the dense murk, he could see shadowy figures locked in combat. A great many constables lay dead or wounded in the road. Rakes milled about.

  “How many heads have I smashed in tonight?” he rasped. “And still the bloody stiffs keep coming!”

  He turned his head and saw Detective Inspector Honesty sprawled in the road, his face turning blue as a Rake, kneeling on his chest, throttled the life out of him.

  Trounce took a step, lost his footing, slipped, and slid across corpses to the cobbles. He scrambled to his feet and made to run to his friend, but he'd taken no more than a single stride before two wraiths suddenly wafted into view and grabbed him by the arms.

  “No!” he croaked, as, struggling furiously, he was dragged into the fog, borne away from his dying friend.

  The wraiths came to a halt as Krishnamurthy emerged from the haze. The ghostly figure of a top-hatted man loomed behind the commander.

  “Watch out!” Trounce cried. “And save Honesty! He's back there being strangled to death!”

  “I'm sorry!” the Flying Squad man gasped. “I-I can't-can't-” Lifting his truncheon high, he approached his superior. “Tichborne is-is innocent!”

  “Krishnamurthy!” Trounce yelled. “Pull yourself together, man!”

  “The op-oppressors must-must die!”

  He swung his weapon back, ready to sweep it down onto Trounce's head.

  Thunder sounded: Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom!

  The ground vibrated.

  A police whistle shrieked repeatedly.

  A powerful gust of wind suddenly swept over Trounce, and the two wraiths lost hold of him. They were ripped apart and blown away. Behind Krishnamurthy, the top-hatted apparition disintegrated.

  The commander looked over Trounce's shoulder, his eyes wide with astonishment, his mouth gaping.

  The detective turned.

  “Bloody hell!” he gasped. “I'm seeing things!”

  It came pounding across Waterloo Bridge, and when it entered the Strand, the cobbles cracked and powdered beneath its hammering hooves.

  Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom!

  It was a colossal horse, a mega-dray, and on its back, looking as tiny as a child's doll, sat Algernon Swinburne, a Pre-Raphaelite knight, his fiery red hair streaming behind his head, a tremendously long, thin lance gripped in his right hand.

  He was blowing enthusiastic blasts on a police whistle, and, perched on his shoulder, a little blue and yellow parakeet was gaily screeching insults at the top of its voice.

  As the enormous steed came charging out of the fog, the base of a pantechnicon, to which it was harnessed, followed. The wagon presented the incredulous spectators with an even more fantastic vision, for mounted vertically upon it was a huge spinning wheel. It was similar to a waterwheel in construction, though built from lightweight materials, and it was revolving at a tremendous speed on well-oiled bearings, driven by the twenty greyhounds that raced flat out on its inner surface. Miss Isabella Mayson stood beside the contraption and encouraged the runners with claps and whoops and morsels of food.

  From the wheel, a series of simple but extremely well-designed gears and crankshafts drove a mammoth pair of bellows up and down, and snaking away from the nozzle, a tube ran up to the top of a tower at the rear of the wagon and into the back of a cannon-shaped barrel. This was mounted on a swivel and was being aimed at wraiths by Constable Bhatti.

  The whole contrivance was a masterpiece of engineering, for it depended upon neither springs nor complex machinery, and was so simple in design that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had been able to build it in a matter of hours.

  As the mega-dray pulled the wagon onto the wide thoroughfare, Bhatti directed the jets of air hither and thither, and, though his range was extremely limited, the wraiths caught by the strong blasts were ripped out of existence.

  A great cheer went up from constables as they scattered out of the horse's path.

  Detective Inspector Trounce and Commander Krishnamurthy looked on in amazement as Algernon Swinburne lowered his lance and aimed its tip at the back of a Rake's head.

  Charles Altamont Doyle pressed his dead fingers into Detective Inspector Honesty's neck.

  “Squeeze!” he said. “Squeeze the life out of you and into me!”

  A fairy pranced at the periphery of his consciousness.

  “Recurrence comes!” it sang.

  “No! Life comes!” Doyle whispered. “Start again. Get it right. Mend my mistakes.”

  He felt something touch the back of his neck. From the perspective of his astral body, which drifted through the fog nearby, he could see that it was a long lance held by a small man on a big horse.

  His head burst into flames.

  “Now!” said the fairy.

  The fire ate into his face and scalp, clawed hungrily into the bone and tissue beneath.

  He rolled off the police officer and collapsed onto the ground, thrashing wildly as the flames gouged deeper and deeper into his dead flesh.

  The lance touched him again, on the chest, and his entire body ignited.

  He felt himself being consumed, found that he could struggle no more, lay still, and allowed the conflagration to suck him into oblivion.

  Nearby, swirling through the fog, he watched and felt himself burn.

  “No!” he thought. “What about all the things I still have to do?”

  A powerful gust of air tore into him and ripped him apart.

  Charles Altamont Doyle dispersed into the atmosphere and ceased to exist.

  Trounce and Krishnamurthy saw the Rake erupt into flames and roll off Honesty. Their friend crawled weakly away from the blazing corpse.

  They hurried forward and dragged him to safety.

  Trounce looked up and noticed that four cylinders were slung over the mega-dray's haunches. From them, tubes ran up into the hilt of the lance.

  “Inflammable gas,” he suggested.

  “I would venture so,” Krishnamurthy replied. “Some sort of flame-throwing weapon. Detective Inspector, I don't know how to apologise. They got into my head. I couldn't control myself.”

  “Accepted, lad. Say no more about it. Detective Inspector Honesty is injured-let's get him onto the back of that wagon.”

  They helped their colleague to his feet and guided him toward the pantechnicon.

  “Lily of the valley,” Honesty wheezed. “The flower of the poets.”

  A Rake approached them, waving his rapier. His eyes had retreated far into their sockets and his skin was horribly loose, as if the flesh were sloughing off the bones beneath.

  He attempted to address them, but his tongue and lips were too slack and only a horrible moan emerged.

  “I'll get this,” Trounce said.

  “Allow me,” came Swinburne's voice from above.

  The lance touched the decaying, sword-wielding corpse, which combusted, fell to its knees, and toppled onto its face, burning fiercely.

  “What ho, fellows!” Burton's assistant shouted enthusiastically.

  “Hallo, Swinburne!” said Trounce. “Honesty is injured!”

  “Oafish knuckle-dragger!” Pox squawked.

  “Hoist the old fellow onto the wagon. Miss Mayson will keep him comfortable until we can get him to safety.”

  Trounce and Krishnamurthy lifted their comrade and carried him to the pantechnicon.

  “His throat,” said Trounce to Isabella Mayson, as they laid him on the flatbed.

  “I think his fingers are broken, too,” Krishnamurthy noted.

  The young woman nodded. “Don't worry, I'll make sure he's comfortable.”

  Up on the horse, Swinburne whispered something to Pox and watched as the brightly plumaged bird launched itself from his shoulder and disappeared into the fog. He looked down at his friends and called: “In the absence of litter-crabs, what say you we clean up this street ourselves, hey, chap
s?”

  The two police officers brandished their truncheons.

  “Ready when you are,” Trounce grunted.

  H igh above the fog, glinting silver in the moonlight, an ornithopter flapped, circling the Strand at a distance of two miles. A long, irregular ribbon of white steam curved away behind it, marking its course through the sky.

  It was controlled by the clockwork man of Trafalgar Square, and, in the saddle at his back, sat Sir Richard Francis Burton.

  The flying machine soared northward over the Thames, banked to the left as the Cauldron slipped past beneath it, and headed east until it was over King's Cross.

  A parakeet suddenly fluttered out of the cloud below and caught up with the machine. It landed on Burton's shoulder.

  “Hello, Pox.”

  “Lice-infested chump!” the bird whistled. Then: “Message from Algernon Fuddlewit Swinburne. The game has commenced. Message ends.”

  Burton addressed his companion: “It's time. Take us down.”

  His valet yanked at a lever, sending the ornithopter skewing through the air as it veered sharply to the south. He switched off the engine and the trail of steam ended abruptly. The machine's wings straightened, and it began to glide down toward the blanket of cloud.

  “Here we go,” Burton muttered. He placed a hand on the brass man's shoulder. “Now we shake things up. This time, the police are the decoy and you are the main event!”

  They sank through the chilly night air.

  “Whatever might happen to me,” Burton said, “you must complete this mission. However, I have to tell you, I'm acting more on intuition than intellect. Many would think it madness to place so much faith in a dream and I might be completely wrong in my reading of the situation. Do you at least understand my reasoning?”

  The brass man nodded his canister-shaped head.

  Cloud enveloped them.

  Burton sent Pox back to Swinburne.

  He checked his harness. He was tightly strapped in.

  “I hope your calculations are accurate,” he said.

  Another lever was pulled. All along the back edges of the wings, wide but thin metal feathers emerged. The machine's nose rose and its silent, powerless descent slowed dramatically.

  The king's agent was shaken by a thrill of fear. He could see nothing but thick vapour. For all he knew, they were seconds away from smashing into the ground.

  He reached down and released four grappling hooks from the fuselage. They were attached to it by means of long, thin chains. He held two hooks in each hand and waited.

  In front of him, a mechanical arm rose. At its end, three fingers and a thumb were extended.

  The thumb curled in.

  Four.

  A finger folded.

  Three.

  Another.

  Two.

  The last.

  One.

  The roof of a large edifice rose up out of the miasma. With bone-jarring suddenness, the ornithopter thumped onto it and skidded across its surface, metal squealing, sparks showering outward.

  Feeling as if he was being shaken half to death, Burton threw a grapple; then the second; then the third.

  The right wing collided with a chimney stack, sending the machine slewing sideways as bricks exploded and bounced around it.

  He flung the last grapple overboard, hung on tight, and called upon Allah.

  The vehicle grated across the roof, hit the parapet, went straight through it, and plummeted over the edge.

  There was a moment of weightless terror, a shriek of stressed metal, and a tremendous jolt that caused Burton's face to slap into the back of his valet's head.

  He blacked out.

  Disorientation.

  Eyes coming back into focus.

  The harness was digging into his chest. He sucked in a shuddering breath, shook his head to clear it, and looked to his left and right. The ornithopter was hanging against the side of the building, between the big, flat, white letters “A” and “R” of the sign, VENETIA ROYAL HOTEL. The machine's wings were buckled, and the left one had broken through a window.

  Screams and shouts echoed up through the fog. There was obviously a battle occurring in the Strand below.

  “Good show!” the king's agent muttered.

  He braced his feet against moldings in the fuselage, gripped the lip of the saddle, checked that his cane was still securely thrust through a loop in the waistband of his trousers, and unbuckled his harness.

  “Are you all right?” he asked the man of brass.

  He received a nodded response.

  “I'm going up. Follow.”

  Transferring his grasp to one of the taut chains from which the flying machine hung, he swung free and pulled himself up hand-over-hand until he reached the roof. With a sense of relief, he hauled himself onto its flat surface.

  Moments later, the clockwork man joined him.

  Burton saw that three of the four grapples had caught fast amid brickwork. The fourth had crashed through a skylight and jammed against its frame.

  “That's our means of entry,” he said, pacing over and looking down through the broken glass into an unlit room. “It's some sort of presentation hall. Slightly too long a drop for me, but you'll make it. Get down there and drag over a table for me to land on.”

  This was done, and from the large room, Burton and his clockwork companion passed through a door into a hallway.

  The Venetia Royal Hotel was dark and silent, and the top floor, which consisted entirely of offices, meeting rooms, and storerooms, was entirely abandoned.

  They came to a wide staircase and descended to the next floor. Burton looked up at the ceiling. There was something clinging to it. It reminded him of the thick jungle vines he'd seen in Africa, except that it was pulsing and writhing and, somehow, no matter how hard he peered at it, it evaded proper focus, as if it wasn't entirely a substance of this world.

  It was ectoplasm. It exuded through the top of the double doors leading to the corridors and rooms, snaked across the ceiling, and disappeared into the stairwell.

  “Is it coming up the stairs or going down, I wonder?” he murmured.

  He stepped over to the doors and pushed them open. Gas lamps, in brackets on the walls, illuminated the hallway beyond.

  There were eight residential rooms on each side of this particular passage. Their doors were open. Ectoplasm twisted out of each one and joined the thick limb of stuff on the ceiling.

  Burton clenched his jaw nervously, crept up to the first chamber, and peered in. Its furniture had been pushed aside but for a large table. Seven chairs stood around it. Only one was occupied. The remains of a man sat in it. He was mummified, his skin shrunken and desiccated, his sharp cheekbones poking through. His head was thrown back and ectoplasm was issuing from his mouth and rising up to the ceiling.

  “Bismillah!” Burton whispered, entering. “There was a seance, and it doesn't look like this fellow survived it!”

  He bent and looked at the man's face, then jerked back with a cry of shock, bumping into his companion, as the mummy's eyes flicked open and rolled sightlessly.

  “Alive, by God! How long has the poor devil been here?”

  He turned to his valet. “I have a horrible feeling it's going to be the same story in the other rooms.”

  It was. On the seventh floor of the Venetia, in every room, there was a table at which a seance had been performed, and at every table there sat one shrunken, dried-out man, with head back and ectoplasm streaming out of him up to the ceiling and out into the corridor.

  When they descended to the sixth floor, they found the same, though the ectoplasm was more abundant.

  On the fifth, it was even thicker and glowed slightly with a greenish-hued light. It had crawled down the walls, forming strange organic shapes reminiscent of ribs and veins and quivering organs.

  The fourth floor was worse: walls, ceilings, fixtures, and fittings were so completely buried beneath the pulsating substance that it seemed to Bur
ton as if he and his valet were making their way through the arteries of a living organism.

  Cautiously, the king's agent led the way to the stairwell. The route down to the third floor resembled the gullet of a mythical beast.

  “Stepping into the dragon's maw,” Burton muttered.

  He took the step.

  Something touched his mind.

  “ You should be dead! ” a voice hissed inside his skull.

  He felt the devastating force of Madam Blavatsky's presence.

  “My apologies,” he said, aloud. “Alive and kicking. I thought I'd find you here.”

  “ And pray tell me, malchik moi, what led you to me? ”

  “I was told, some months ago, that this hotel had been fully booked by a private party. It's a big place, so the party must have been very substantial indeed; and since the Venetia is slap bang in the middle of the Strand, and the Strand is at the centre of the disturbances-well, you can see why I concluded that the Rakes were here with their elusive new leader.”

  “ Not all the Rakes, but a great many, yes. Come, stand in my presence. Bring your preposterous toy with you. ”

  Burton moved down the stairs. The steps were almost entirely concealed by the thick mediumistic substance, which felt spongy and unstable beneath his boots. He gingerly placed one foot after the other, struggling to maintain his balance. The clockwork man followed.

  Blavatsky poked and prodded at his mind.

  “ My my! You are so much stronger, lyubimiy moi!”

  “Beware of the brains you invade, bitch. Do you not think I learned just as much about you as you did of me the last time?”

  “ Then you know that I lack your vulnerability. ”

  “You have your own flaws.”

  “ Is that so? Then it's to be a duel, is it, Gaspadin Burton? ”

  “If you wish.”

  “ If I wish? I relish the prospect! Idi ko mne, moi miliy! You will find me in the library on this floor. ”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Burton turned to the left, the direction from which Blavatsky's power was emanating, and passed through open double doors into a hallway. The ectoplasm had made the passage almost tubular, and, as he and his mechanical attendant progressed along it, it constricted to such a degree that they had to proceed on their hands and knees.