The Death Collector

by Justin Richards

  Sir William had earlier got to his feet, smiled affably at the man standing guard over him, and tried to stretch some life back into his tired limbs.

  Lorimore glanced up from his intense work. ‘I do apologise for the delay,’ he said. ‘But everything must be exact, as I am sure you of all people will appreciate. By all means feel free to look round. I have some fascinating automata and specimens in my collection. You may go into the drawing room, but no further.’ He paused, before adding for the benefit of the two guards: ‘Miss Oldfield may go with him. If either of them touch anything or attempt to escape, kill them both.’

  It was said in such a straightforward tone of voice that it took a moment for Liz to register what he had said. She swallowed, her throat dry with fear.

  ‘Shall we?’ Sir William suggested.

  ‘I suppose we might as well.’

  They left Blade up his ladder, reaching for the glass roof and the metal sockets set into the supporting braces. Cables trailed down to the metal bowl on the workbench below.

  ‘We have to do something. Escape or anything,’ Liz whispered to Sir William once they were in the drawing room. The two guards with them could probably hear her, but she didn’t care. Without specific instructions she hoped they would do nothing.

  But Sir William ignored her too. He was peering in fascination at one of the automata – a train that was fixed to a loop of track running under a mountain. ‘I imagine that once wound, the train runs round the track, and the mountain is somehow made to smoke in sympathy. Like a small volcano.’ He smiled at Liz. ‘It really is very clever and intricate.’

  Liz sighed, not at all interested. ‘But what are we going to do?’

  Sir William shrugged. ‘As things stand at the moment, my dear, I don’t think there is anything very much that we can do. Except wait.’

  ‘For what?’ she demanded in exasperation.

  ‘For help. Though I must confess I have no idea whether it will come, or if it does what form it will take.’

  From out in the hallway came the sound of a bell ringing insistently. It seemed somehow out of place in the still of the house.

  ‘Who can that be at this hour?’ Lorimore’s voice demanded from the laboratory behind them. ‘It’s not yet six in the morning. Blade, see who it is.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Blade barely glanced at them as he strode past on his way to answer the door.

  ‘Help?’ Liz suggested quietly. She hardly dared hope.

  ‘Who knows?’ Sir William whispered back.

  They did not have to wait long to find out. Blade returned within a minute, carrying a wooden box the size of a small suitcase. Liz and Sir William exchanged glances and followed the man back into the laboratory, where he set the box down on the workbench in front of Lorimore.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know sir. The boy said he had strict instructions to deliver it here as soon as possible. That he had been told Mr Lorimore would want to see it straight away.’

  ‘Boy? What boy?’ Lorimore asked suspiciously.

  ‘Just a delivery boy. Barely more than an urchin by the look of him. He didn’t wait – in a hurry to get home.’

  Lorimore considered this. ‘I wonder.’ He glanced at Liz and Sir William. ‘But what can they do?’ he murmured. His fingers tapped against the top of the workbench like the legs of a spider. ‘And we can do nothing either, not until the power builds to a precipitate level. So, open it, Blade,’ he ordered, nodding at the box. ‘But, be careful.’

  Liz and Sir William watched curiously from the back of the room as Blade took out his knife and levered the lid off the wooden box. Nails squealed in protest as the lid tore free. Blade pushed his hand under it and ripped it away, dropping it to the floor. Frowning, he reached inside the box and carefully lifted out the contents.

  Lorimore had come round the workbench to see what it was, blocking Liz’s view. Whatever Blade was holding was obviously large and heavy. Lorimore swept the empty box off the workbench and gestured for Blade to set down the object.

  ‘No packing slip, sir,’ Blade said. ‘Nothing to say who sent it.’

  ‘There will no doubt be a letter in the first post this morning, Blade. But let us be cautious, just in case …’ Lorimore’s voice was hushed with awe, his suspicion diluted as he examined the object on the workbench. ‘Look at this. The workmanship, the skill that must have gone into it. Look!’

  As he spoke, he stepped aside so that now Liz was afforded a clear view of the object on the table. She heard Sir William’s sharp intake of breath as he too saw it.

  It was a model ship, exquisitely made from wood and metal and about a foot long. Without realising it, Liz had walked with Sir William across the laboratory and joined Lorimore and Blade as they stared down at the impressive craftsmanship.

  ‘Magnificent,’ Sir William said.

  Lorimore looked up at him, with the trace of a smile. ‘Indeed.’ His eyes were shining with enthusiasm as he gently turned the ship round. ‘And see, here, on this side – it is a clock.’

  There was, Liz could now see, a clock dial set into the side of the ship. It was showing the right time so far as she could tell – several minutes to six. She could see the intricately fashioned figures of the captain and his crew going about their business on deck and in the rigging – ticking through the everyday motions as the second hand clicked round. But this was not what surprised and interested her most. Her eyes were fixed on something else and she stared at it as hard as she could, willing Sir William to see what she could see.

  Set into the deck was a silver plate where one might expect to see a hatchway down into the hold. The middle of the plate was indented, gently sloping inwards to form a shallow bowl. It was a plate she was sure she had seen before – in the hands of George Archer. But now, resting in the centre of the plate was a small wooden barrel – a powder keg. A tiny fuse was sticking out of one end of it, and a sailor stood beside it, his hands outstretched towards the fuse.

  ‘I have seen something like this before,’ she said quietly to Sir William, hoping that Lorimore would not pick up on her meaning.

  Lorimore ignored her. But Sir William met Liz’s gaze. He was smiling, and nodding. ‘So have I, my dear,’ he replied in the ghost of a whisper, so quiet that only Liz could hear him. ‘So have I.’

  Before he could explain further, Sir William gasped. Lorimore looked up at him sharply, but the gasp had become a cough, and Sir William whipped out a large handkerchief and blew his nose noisily.

  Lorimore frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Perhaps we should leave our examination of this exquisite but unexpected gift until after we have completed our more pressing tasks.’ He tapped a long finger on his chin. ‘It may be from Lord Chesterton. He sent me Thierry’s monkey only last week …’ He shook his head. ‘No matter. Mr Blade.’

  Blade nodded and returned to his work, connecting up the final cables. This done, he moved the ladder to the side of the room, out of the way of the trailing wires. Then he attached the other ends of the wires to a set of three heavy levers attached to the end of the workbench, close to the metal bowl.

  But Liz barely noticed. She had glanced at where Sir William had been looking – at one of the enormous windows looking out on to the grounds of the house. Liz could see the fog pushing in against the glass, blurring the lawn beyond as the first light of dawn struggled to illuminate it. And, pressed up close to the window, looking in, were two faces. George Archer and Eddie Hopkins, watching Lorimore as he returned to his business, Blade as he completed his work, and Liz and Sir William as they stood next to the model ship on the workbench.

  Liz looked quickly away again. She struggled to make no sound that might betray what she had seen. Lorimore glanced back at her as he worked, and smiled thinly. The slightest reaction from Liz could betray her friends.

  But it was hard not to react, not to shout and point and try to warn them as a huge reptilian shape of metal and b
one solidified out of the foggy air behind them. An angry roar split the calm of the morning, like an express train speeding past. Steam and oil sprayed across the window, blotting out Eddie and George as they turned in surprise and alarm.

  ‘Ah my friend,’ Lorimore said without turning. ‘Not long now. When the power builds and I throw these levers to channel it into the egg. To create life itself …’

  The glass cleared, and Liz stared at the window, desperately trying to see what was happening outside. But there was only the grey of the fog, the snarl of the creature outside, and her own pale frightened face reflecting back at her.

  Chapter 23

  Augustus Lorimore lifted the fossilised egg carefully, reverently, and carried it across to the metal bowl. The wires jutted out from the bowl like the legs of a silver spider. They spilled across the workbench, fed into junction boxes, looped round and over before going either to the tank-like battery at the end of the room or up towards the ceiling where they joined the metal brackets that were attached to the lightning conductors outside.

  Liz could not help looking up, following the wires with her eyes. The first splashes of rain were streaking across the glass roof. A distant rumble, unmistakably thunder now, mingled with the noise of the creature outside. Splashes joined, droplets linked, and a tiny river of rainwater ran unevenly down the sloping glass. Liz watched it, trying not to think about what was happening outside in the murky first light of the day.

  From behind her came another sound. Liz and Sir William turned towards it. The creature that had once been Albert Wilkes lurched in from the drawing room and stood at the back of the laboratory. The metal frame around him was like some medieval cage built to prevent the prisoner inside from even moving. Except that this cage moved with its prisoner. The dead eyes were a uniform milky white, watching Lorimore as he placed the stone dinosaur egg inside the metal bowl and stepped back, rubbing his thin hands together in delight.

  ‘Now we can begin,’ Lorimore proclaimed triumphantly and waved impatiently at Blade. ‘Start the battery, man. Make the final connections.’

  Blade hurried to obey. Beside Liz, Sir William leaned forward slightly, checking the time on the dial set into the hull of the ship.

  ‘It’s almost six o’clock,’ he said.

  Lorimore threw him a glance. ‘Noting the time for posterity, Sir William?’

  ‘If you think it is important,’ Sir William agreed. ‘Here, see for yourself.’ He stepped forward and gently turned the clock-ship so that the dial was facing across the workbench at Lorimore.

  Lorimore gave a grunt of annoyance. ‘I have no time for trivialities,’ he declared. ‘Any moment now, I shall create life. And you trouble me with trinkets.’ He pushed forward the first of the three levers to which Blade had attached the wires. Immediately, the room throbbed with the increased power. Like a heartbeat.

  ‘Hardly a trinket, sir.’ There was an edge to Sir William’s voice. ‘Whatever insane experiment you are engaged upon, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will fail, here in front of you, if you will only take the time to look at it, is as exquisite a piece of engineering as you will ever see. I thought you were an expert in such mechanisms. It seems I was misinformed.’ He turned angrily and pointed at the former Albert Wilkes, held rigid in his metal frame. ‘“What a piece of work is a man”,’ he quoted. ‘Not any more apparently. You have reduced Man himself to a simple mechanism, so why not spare the time for a mechanism infinitely more complex and intricate than you could ever hope to manufacture. Compared to whoever made this, you are a third rate hack, a butcher. Inept.’

  Lorimore’s eyes were blazing with fury. ‘How dare you?’ he shouted. He stalked across the room towards Sir William, the intensity of his gaze making Liz take an involuntary step backwards. ‘I create life itself and you dare to impugn my scientific genius?’

  ‘Six o’clock,’ Sir William declared, and stepped smartly aside.

  The second hand of the clock in the side of the ship completed its circuit. The minute hand swung on to the twelve. With a metallic click, a mechanism inside whirred into life. The bell at the back of the ship chimed out a short tune.

  Lorimore paused, intrigued by the clock in spite of himself. He leaned across the workbench to see it more closely. Three small hatches opened in the side of the ship facing him, mirrored by another three on the side facing Liz and Sir William. Inside each hatch, Liz could see a small cannon, and beside it a sailor leaning forward to touch a model match to the fuse. In that moment she realised why Sir William had moved. She saw that the hatches on her side were pointing squarely at the large man who had been standing behind Sir William.

  Blade too saw what was happening. With a cry of warning he launched himself across the workbench. Not at the clock, but at Lorimore, knocking him backwards.

  The cannon fired. Six pin-prick shots, one after another in rapid succession.

  The guard who had been behind Sir William cried out, clutching at his chest. His eyes rolled upwards as he collapsed slowly to the floor, his shirt stained three patches of red. In the same moment, Liz turned and stamped as hard as she could on the foot of the man behind her. He cried out too, staggering back.

  Lorimore was unharmed. Two of the shots went over his head as he fell back. One of these cracked into a supporting post between panes of glass. The second went clean into one of the huge panes. The glass exploded outwards with a crash.

  The third shot caught Blade in the head. For a split-second Liz could see the ball bearing embedded in Blade’s cheek. Then he too was falling backwards, eyes staring. If he cried out, the sound was lost in the crashing glass behind him.

  Through the shattered window, Liz could hear the rumble of the gathering storm. Lorimore was struggling to his feet. The man whose foot Liz had stamped on was recovering, grabbing at Sir William. Wilkes was moving stiffly across the room, joints hissing and steaming.

  And on the deck of the ship, a sailor clapped his hands together. Hands that were flints. Hands that tried again and again to ignite the smallest of sparks. The plate beneath the powder keg moved so slightly that if Liz had not been looking straight at it she would have seen nothing.

  At the edge of her vision, Liz saw a hand raised in anger, ready to strike. Lorimore’s arm swept across the workbench towards the ship, about to dash it to the floor. Liz had to stop him.

  She suddenly felt calm. She fixed her gaze on the shattered window and gave a huge sigh of relief.

  ‘George, thank goodness. I knew you’d come.’

  Lorimore’s hand paused in the air. He turned, looking where Liz was looking. Saw nothing.

  ‘Quick, hide before he sees you!’

  Lorimore looked around in confusion, convinced that George was there in the laboratory. He stepped back from the workbench, wary, eyes narrow. ‘Where is he?’ he demanded of the man holding Sir William. ‘Did you see him?’ His voice was heavy with menace.

  The guard merely grunted. Lorimore glared. ‘You’re useless,’ he spat. ‘And you,’ he said advancing on Liz, ‘are very clever.’

  His voice froze with his body as he caught sight of the slight movement – the hands clapping together. His mouth dropped open – surprise and anger mixed with sudden fear.

  A spark flew. The end of the fuse flared, burned. The weight of the miniature keg delicately balanced on the metal plate lightened as the fuse burned away. Lorimore reached out, but too late. The plate sprang upwards, pivoting at one end, flinging the tiny wooden barrel high into the air towards the outside walls.

  The keg turned end over end. The fuse burned to nothing. Close to the main laboratory window, at the height of its trajectory, the little powder keg exploded.

  The wide expanse of glass that made up the end wall shattered under the blast. Liz and Sir William threw up their hands to protect themselves from the sharp splinters and flung themselves to the floor. The man who had been holding Sir William wasn’t quick enough. A blast of broken glass knocked him off his feet and
tore through his flesh as the glass ceiling rained in, sweeping him bloodied to the floor.

  Lorimore was screaming with rage. A percussive thump as the thunder roared above them. Rain poured through the broken windows and shattered roof as the storm finally broke. Lightning arced down. The battery fizzed and spat. Power hummed along the wires.

  And Eddie and George leapt into the laboratory, racing to help their friends.

  Sir William pulled Liz to her feet. He had blood on his face, from a small cut below one eye – a line of red, dripping. One of the men on the floor groaned and shifted. But he did not get up. Lorimore was looking about him in furious amazement, shouting at the remains of Albert Wilkes. A slice of glass had embedded itself in Wilkes’s arm and stuck out like a blade. But he seemed not to notice or care. More, smaller pieces of glass peppered his face. But there was no blood. Wilkes lurched forwards, arms out. Lightning flashed off the facets of the glass as he lumbered towards Liz and Sir William. Then a figure swept past them as George flung himself at Wilkes, driving him back.

  ‘Hold him!’ Lorimore screamed at Wilkes. Liz heard the hiss of pistons, saw the metallic claws that had been grafted to the end of Wilkes’s hands snap shut on George’s arms, holding him vice-like. George struggled and kicked, but to no effect.

  Lorimore seemed to have recovered. He was standing beside the workbench, the trace of a smile on his face despite the loss of his henchmen and Blade and the chaos all around him. He looked as if he was once again in total control. He was standing beside the bank of levers, and he was holding a gun. He pointed it directly at Liz.

  ‘I advise you not to try anything,’ he said to Sir William, standing beside Liz. ‘I can kill you both in less time than it would take you to call out.’ He raised his reedy voice slightly to add: ‘And that goes for you too, Mr Archer. And your urchin friend, whatever may have happened to him.’ The gun remained steady, fixed on Liz as Lorimore’s eyes swept the room. ‘Where are you boy? Come out wherever you are.’