The Custodian of Marvels

by Rod Duncan

  Jeremiah, I noted, had turned his back on the building, from which I guessed that he expected the key holder to soon appear.

  In the distance I heard the Patent Court clock began to strike the hour. As if on cue, the doors of a coach parked nearby opened up and out climbed six soldiers in Turkish uniform. They straightened their tarboosh hats and formed themselves into a line. At the same moment, another group of six soldiers, identically dressed, began marching across the plaza within the railings. The two groups converged at the locked gate from opposite sides in perfect synchrony.

  There passed a second in which nothing happened. Then, just as the chimes reached their end, I became aware of a small man wearing an unusually tall stovepipe hat. He had been strolling along next to the road. As he arrived at the gate, he paused to extract a key from inside his jacket. With this he unlocked the gate. The six Turkish soldiers behind the railings were now allowed through to the street. I was expecting to see the group outside marching in. But before they could do so, the small man – our key holder – had closed the gate and locked it once more. I watched as the six soldiers who had just come off their guard duty marched to the waiting coach and climbed aboard.

  The key holder stood facing the foremost soldier. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels in time with the barrel organ. Then he began whistling along to the tune – lazily so – slurring from one note to the next like a schoolboy.

  The soldiers did not move. Nor did they return his gaze, but continued to stand in rigid line.

  Perhaps bored by their lack of reaction, he cast around, his eyes passing over our little band of circus folk and sweeping beyond us before snapping back towards where we stood just in front of the bear.

  His whistling stopped. He stared, brazenly, drinking in the scene. I felt myself blushing on Lara and Ellie’s behalf. Fabulo had told me our target had a weakness, but I had not expected it to be so openly displayed.

  Then, after he had remained unblinking for longer than I would have thought possible, he turned his attention back to the Turkish soldiers.

  Even with his hat, he was shorter than them by perhaps half a foot. He resumed his whistling and started to stroll around the line, giving the impression of a general who had arrived to inspect the troops, still drunk from the night before. The soldiers stared towards the horizon over the top of his hat.

  It came to me that I was looking at a performance. It was ritual humiliation delivered by a specialist. Here they were, these elite soldiers. And here was he – a small, round man keeping them waiting in his outrageous hat. Their movements had been crisp and military, his were casual and unwaveringly insolent.

  Then other clocks began to chime the hour, close and far around the great city of London.

  The key holder got out his key, which I now saw was attached to the inside of his jacket by a loop of thin chain. As the chimes rang out, he seemed to examine it. He scratched at it with a thumbnail, as if removing a speck of dirt. Then he blew on it and looked at it again. Only as the chimes were ending did he put it into the lock and turn. Nine minutes and twenty-one seconds must have elapsed since the chiming of the clock on the Patent Court.

  The soldiers had played their part in the drama by remaining aloof. The lead soldier shouted something – in Turkish, I assumed. As one, they marched through the gate that was then relocked behind them.

  “Now,” said Fabulo, and strode away along a path into the park, beckoning us to follow.

  Yan was first to move, followed by the bear, Lara, Ellie and Jeremiah in that order. I brought up the rear, pushing the barrel organ.

  I was thinking that Fabulo had made a mistake. Though the sight of Lara and Ellie, or rather their legs, had attracted him, I did not think that showgirls would be unknown in the metropolis. The key holder could not be relied on to follow. But then I heard his voice, calling from behind me.

  “Hi! Good people!”

  Fabulo continued to lead us further into the park, though he must have heard.

  “Please wait!”

  I listened to the slap of the small man’s feet on the path as he ran to catch up. At last he overtook me and I expected him to go straight to the women. But he overtook them also, circling Yan and the bear at a safe distance before coming to a stop in front of them.

  “It is… a fine… bear,” he said, through gasps, for he was out of breath.

  “Why, thank you,” said Yan, bowing.

  “You like him then?” asked Fabulo, reaching up to give the key holder a friendly pat on the shoulder. When he withdrew his hand, I noticed a smear of syrupy liquid had been left behind.

  “Indeed, yes,” enthused our target. “He is a black bear, I can see that. But from what part of the world?”

  “Formosa,” said Fabulo.

  “Formosa? How singular. Indeed, how very singular! How, may I ask, did he come to be brought back over the border into the Gas-Lit Empire?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” said Fabulo. “But that’s what I was told when he came to me.”

  Now, I am not an expert with animals. But it seemed to me that the bear was displaying more than a passing interest in the key holder. The two of them leaned towards each other, the bear held back by the chain and the man held back, presumably, by a sense of self-preservation.

  “I have a certain interest in exotic mammals. Indeed, I’m proud to be on the board of trustees of the London Zoological Park, bears being my speciality. We have several specimens of Ursus thibetanus, that is the black bear, but none I believe of Ursus thibetanus formosanus. I don’t suppose you would be interested in selling?”

  Fabulo put a hand to his chin and frowned as if contemplating the suggestion. But whatever he had in mind to say was cut short by the sound of running feet. Then several things happened in the same instant. Tinker sprinted through the middle of our group careening off the key holder, who fell to the floor, spilling his hat. The bear lunged forwards as if to attack the sprawling man.

  “Stop him!” bellowed Fabulo. “Stop the thief!”

  Ellie launched herself after Tinker, who had continued to run. Unencumbered by skirts at the front she moved with surprising speed. Yan heaved on the chain, trying to pull back the bear. I saw now that it was not attacking. Rather, it was intent on licking the key holder’s jacket where Fabulo had touched.

  “Get it off me!” wailed the man.

  Lara bent low and, getting her hands underneath his armpits, began to pull him along the ground away from the animal. There was so much noise and confusion that I almost missed the moment when it happened. As the bear was hauled in one direction and the man in the other, Lara dipped her hand inside his jacket. I saw the key on its chain. Then Fabulo was helping him back to his feet. I did not see any cutters used but a moment later the key was gone and the chain was hanging limp by his side.

  “My goodness!” he gasped, looking at the animal in horror.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Lara, fussing over him. She had already passed the key to Fabulo, who had passed it to Jeremiah who stood behind, out of the man’s eyeline.

  “He’s never done that before,” said Yan.

  The man patted himself down and found the dangling chain. “I’ve been robbed!”

  All eyes now turned to Ellie in the distance as she tackled Tinker, bringing him to the ground.

  “What’s he taken?” asked Lara.

  “My key! I must have it back!”

  As they watched the woman and the boy, I watched Jeremiah standing just behind them, pressing the key into a wax pad, making two impressions of each side and then two more of the end.

  The drama in the distance seemed to have resolved itself. Ellie had Tinker on his feet and was dragging him back towards us by his ear. Holding her free hand aloft she showed us what she had won from him, though it was too small and distant to see.

  “Bravo,” said the key holder. “She shall have a reward. And the boy shall be punished.”

  Jeremiah closed up the wax ta
blet and slipped it inside his tunic. He passed the key to Fabulo, who passed it to Lara.

  “I’ll whip the boy myself,” said Fabulo.

  Ellie was halfway back when Tinker made his move. He barged his hip sideways, knocking her to the floor then made off at great speed. Lara ran, as if to her friend’s assistance.

  “My key!” cried the man.

  “She still has it,” said Fabulo.

  And indeed, so it proved. For when the two women returned, there it was in Ellie’s hand, a short length of chain still dangling.

  As soon as the man had it back, he clutched it to his heart. “I don’t know how to thank you! You have no idea the trouble it would have put me to. Even had it been out of my sight for a minute.”

  So saying he tucked it deep into his jacket pocket and drew out a wallet, from which he extracted a silver shilling. This he placed in Ellie’s hand. “Thank you, my dear,” he said. And then addressing all of us: “I would be grateful if you kept this event to yourselves.”

  Fabulo nodded and held out his own upturned hand. “I can be as discreet as the next man,” he said, and received a shilling of his own.

  We watched him hurrying away, the bear forgotten, his jacket slightly muddier than before, the stovepipe hat askew.

  When he was out of earshot, Ellie said, “One shilling? Why, the ungrateful little sod!”

  CHAPTER 17

  October 6th

  Comfortable seats make for a better trick.

  The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

  Two days after we returned the bear to its keeper, the wind backed southerly and the city began to bake, though October was already begun.

  That afternoon, Jeremiah moved in with a suitcase of clothes and possessions, taking up residence in our tenement on Samuel Street. Each coming and each going brought risk, Fabulo said. Therefore it was better for all of us to be hidden away together until the crime was done. Thus, a third sleeping roll was laid out in the hidden attic room.

  Jeremiah had not been idle in those two days. He brought with him a blank key, made by a blacksmith he knew and trusted, whose forge lay ten miles south of the river. Far enough away to have no thought of the International Patent Court or its locks.

  I had caught only a glimpse of the original key, and that while it was half pressed into the wax block. The colour had been silver. The handle, which Jeremiah said should more rightly be called the bow, had been intricately filled with ornamental wirework. I had the impression that perhaps pale yellow gems had been embedded in the design.

  The blank key was entirely different to my eye. The shaft, which Jeremiah called the stock, was a plain iron bar. The bow, a plain iron loop.

  “None of that matters,” he said. “It’s the bit we must consider. That’s the business end.”

  The bit was that rectangle of iron, projecting from the stock, which gave the key its distinctive shape. Examining the wax block, I could make out the impression of a fine lattice of cuts in the bit.

  I’d assumed the new key would be produced by some method of casting. But to my amazement I now saw Jeremiah unfold a leather tool bag and place a dozen files on the upturned tea chest. Each was different in shape and size. None of them were longer than the palm of my hand. The finest was no thicker than a fingernail. With these, and a drill of similar scale, he began to work, cutting slots into the metal to match the imprint.

  I had marvelled that those great sausage-like fingers might manipulate something so fine as a lock pick. But that was as nothing to my amazement at seeing his work with a file.

  Through the afternoon the sun baked the roof, which radiated its heat down into the attic space. Yan managed to extract some of the slates from near the apex, so that hot air could find its way out, but the atmosphere remained oppressive and our tempers thinned.

  Lara, Ellie, Tinker and Yan all found errands to run outside. But Fabulo had been unsettled by the raid and said that he and I should remain indoors for fear of being recognised by one of the duke’s spies.

  When the attic became too uncomfortable, I retreated to the downstairs room to sit on my own. But my mind was hungry for interest and staring at the blank walls was setting my nerves on edge.

  The next morning, I returned to the attic and found Fabulo sitting with the shagreen jewellery box open on his knee. He stroked the brass watch, as if it was his favourite. Then, becoming aware that I was looking, he snapped the lid closed. I’d already glimpsed two lines of empty depressions in the satin. Half the watches had gone.

  Jeremiah seemed hardly to have moved from his work place since my last visit. Iron filings had accumulated on the tea chest and on the floor around it. The key had developed. The end of the bit was now shaped into a series of castellations.

  “Each one pushes up a lever inside the barrel of the lock,” he explained when I asked. “The lever must be raised to a certain height. Then the central drum of the lock will be free to turn.”

  “What about all those other patterns?” I asked, meaning the lines and crosses cut into the body of the thing.

  “Inside the lock will be wards – that is to say, sills of metal that would block the turning of the key were it not for these slots. Some of the patterns may be ornamental. Some may be needed. We can’t tell which is which.”

  “Then why not hollow out all the metal in the middle of the bit?”

  All this conversation had been carried out whilst he worked, his eyes fixed on the emerging key, accompanied by the rhythmic scraping of the file. But on hearing my question he stopped and looked me in the eye.

  “You’re a quick one,” he said. “I had an apprentice work three months for me before asking that. For most warded locks you’d be right. We could hollow out the bit and leave no metal there to be blocked by any of the wards inside. That’d be called a skeleton key. It’s why warded locks aren’t secure.”

  “So, why aren’t you doing it that way?” I asked.

  “Because the locksmith who worked on that gate was no dolt. Things won’t be as simple as they seem. Maybe these patterns are needed. What if we got there and tried a skeleton key and it didn’t work? Or, worse, it could be a detector lock – one that knows when you use the wrong key and sets itself to stop working altogether.”

  “Let the man make his key!” snapped Fabulo, whose brow was already glistening with sweat.

  It was not just the heat that began to press in on us. As London warmed, its smells became more intense. The tanneries, the drains, the river and a million sweating bodies – with no breeze, their exhalations hung over the city. Yan had removed more slates since the previous day. When I looked directly up through the gaps, I saw a blue sky, but it grew sepia above the roofscape. Chimneys faded with distance.

  “How much longer?” Fabulo asked.

  “It can’t be hurried,” said Jeremiah.

  “I didn’t ask you to hurry.”

  “No locksmith could do it quicker.”

  “I asked when it would be finished.”

  “It’ll be done when it’s done!”

  Jeremiah’s fingertips were black with iron dust. There was a dark streak across his brow where he must have wiped a hand. Fabulo was doubly oppressed, I thought. Once from such physical discomfort as the weather had brought and once from the burden of directing his strange crew. We’d none of us been so biddable.

  I sighed. “When will the weather break? That’s what I want to know.”

  “It’s still London Summer Time,” growled the dwarf.

  In the early afternoon, with little shade to be found, the people of St John’s retreated into their houses and the streets grew quieter. Having been enclosed for two days, I chose to ignore Fabulo’s warning and ventured out to the water pump at the end of the road, where I set about washing those few spare clothes I’d brought from the boat. I soaked them then rubbed soap into the weave before beating them against the cobblestones, which had here been worn smooth.

  The water on the ground dried as I watched.

>   From time to time I saw eyes peering from dark windows and wondered how much the dwarf had paid for us to remain unmolested. I feared it would not be as much as the duke would pay to know the location of our hiding place.

  It was late afternoon when I climbed again to the hidden attic. I found Fabulo pacing like a wolf caged in a zoo. With his short stature, he could walk close to the eaves without stooping, making it a dozen of his paces from sloping roof to sloping roof.

  Jeremiah now wore a leather band around his forehead from which sprouted various lenses of different magnification. Positioning one of these in front of his right eye, he examined the key next to the wax block, then took the smallest file and brushed it against the metal.

  I knelt next to the tea chest. “Are you almost done?” I asked.

  “There is no almost! A fraction off and he won’t work.”

  “The key must be so precise?”

  “A key will try many locks. But the lock – she’ll allow only one key.”

  “You speak of them like people.”

  “And so they are. Imagine the one you love. If he were a fraction off, you’d know him for an imposter.”

  The image of John Farthing swam unwanted in my mind. I got to my feet in an attempt to hide my reaction.

  Fabulo stopped pacing. “Will you let the man work!”

  But Jeremiah stood and held up the key, turning it so the bright metal caught the light. “It’s done,” he said.

  The dwarf accepted it with two hands, as if it were a thing of great value, which indeed it was. I watched as he took it to a gap in the slates and examined each surface in the sunlight.

  “Indeed it’s a thing of beauty,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Will it do the job?”

  Jeremiah seemed less than pleased by this question. “Probably,” he said.

  Fabulo appeared to be satisfied with this, though it seemed scant assurance to me.