Chapter Six
Madame Phoebe then said, “As Christ led his disciples out to the Garden of Gethsemane from the last supper, the Scriptures say that ‘they sang a hymn, and went out.’ I would like us to sing to the Lord as a means of fixing our minds and hearts on Him as we close this meeting.”
She began to sing the hymn, “Take My Life and Let It Be,” and all the others joined in, but I was stunned to hear this woman’s voice. I had heard her lovely bird-calls the night before but had never imagined her exquisite singing voice. I could barely make myself sing along.
Edward Ferrars led the group in a brief closing prayer. As soon as the “Amen” left his lips Doctor Mac launched himself into the crowd that formed around Oliver Twist. We were already shouting questions at him and he shrank beneath our veritable assault. Doctor Mac swept in and scooped him aside.
“Me first, since I hold the pursestrings.” Twist actually looked relieved.
“Doctor Campbell!” He fumbled in a bag beside his chair and produced something like a shade used to protect the eyes of a person with weak vision. This, however, was a sleek bronze item with layers of amber lenses and some clockwork dials and gears on the sides.
“Try this for me, would you?” he begged. “I’ve been working on it for years but I couldn’t find the right test subject.”
“Ummm, what is it? I don’t want any projector showing pictures of my eyeballs on the wall, thanks.”
“Nothing like that. Eyeglasses, for want of a better term. Please, I’ll get down on my knees and beg, but I must know if they work.”
Doctor Mac divested himself of his own glasses and slipped on the bronze visor-like device. Oliver adjusted lenses and the clockwork gears ticked softly. Mac began to grumble but then stood silent a moment, stunned.
“I can see it in your expression. They work!”
Mac swung his head and I saw him pick up his wife at the far end of the room. The clockwork continued its soft ticking and the lenses moved minutely, adjusting without Doctor Twist’s touch. “That’s the most beautiful thing I never really saw before. What is it? Is it really Rosie clear as crystal, or another of your projections?”
“Not a projection at all.” Oliver laughed like a child dipping his toes in the mud for the first time. “The amber crystals make a much more efficient and versatile lens than plain ground glass. And some of these lenses are especially sympathetic to a particular type of eye injury resulting from sunstroke. It’s technically a brain injury, but this compensates for it. It’ll take a little time, but the clockwork will adjust the lenses automatically as the detectors built into the frame notice your eyes’ and eyelids’ attempts to compensate for near and far, that sort of thing.”
“But I’ve never -- I’ve never ever seen this well.” Mac still stared at Rose. She chatted with the ladies, oblivious until something made her turn toward her husband. She saw his dumbstruck expression and the strange eyewear and smiled uncertainly.
“Oh, thank you, Doctor Twist. I think I’m the one to be kneeling. Do you have any idea -- ?”
“I have an idea that you’ve lost opportunities to study a few more hours in the sunshine, identify a few more specimens under a microscope, remove a few more bad cells in surgery…” Oliver trailed off and glanced at Rose, who was smiling a little wider and blushing in a way that made both Doctor Twist and me quickly find something else to look at. “Now you can make up for all that.” He tried to temper his delight but his lips positively quivered with the effort.
“Now, about that magic tablet of yours.” Doctor Mac shook himself to get his mind back on track. We others crowded in to hear Oliver’s response.
“Nothing I do is magic.” Oliver went suddenly from sunshine to scowling. “I’m so sick of everyone saying that. God has given me the ability to study, to work, and I find out things nobody else had time or money to do yet. That’s all.”
“Ah got better reason to know th’ truth a’ that than mostly anybody,” Sluefoot Sue put in as the others still clamored on about the tablet, the images and the now-dark blue stone on Oliver’s top hat. “Doc Twist, mah pa had him a bit of a hankerin’ after the mechanical, and when he passed on Ah tried to carry on the family work, but Ah find mahself at a little bit of a loss fer spare parts after twenty-some years. Bill was pretty handy while he was able ta help, but now Ah wonder if’n you could help me out a mite.”
“Well, I can hear that the servo in your knee joint is malfunctioning,” Oliver responded. “I didn’t want to be rude, since not everyone seemed to notice the reason for your nickname. At least, I assume that’s the reason.”
“Ah slid down th’ hill an’ caught mah foot in a sluiceway ‘cause pa done yelled Eureka! an’ Ah run t’ see whut th’ fuss was all about. He was almost madder that Ah threw the sluiceway out a’ kilter jest when he done hit the Mother Lode than he was sad about havin’ t’ replace mah laig w’ this.” Sue grinned unashamedly. “Almost.”
She hiked her skirt up an inch or two and every thought about Oliver’s tablet went out of my head at the sight of her bronze mechanical knee peeking out between her boot top and the leather skirt fringe.
“May I?” Oliver sank to one knee with a glow in his eyes and a neat little bronze toolkit already in his hand.
“Ah’d be ever s’ grateful.”
“See here now!” Rose Campbell exclaimed. “We shall give Doctor Twist the benefit of the doubt here, since he has demonstrated expertise in the -- err-- mechanical field but the rest of you gentlemen must give a lady some privacy!”
“Come, come,” Elinor Ferrars said briskly. “To the private sitting room next door with you, Doctor Twist and ‘patient.’” The whole troupe of ladies surrounded Sue, skirts swirling into an impenetrable curtain, and bore her away. Oliver trailed after them. The remaining members of the Alexander Company, along with Mr. Campbell and Doctor Mac, stood looking foolish and not a little shamefaced.
“Well, what’s to be done first to continue your investigations?” Mac inquired.
“We have to go back to the place where you were attacked, Doctor Campbell, seeking the trail of the arresting Constable Dodge,” Mowgli piped up. “Among all the missing papers and missing persons it is the only physical place where we know he was present.”
“He was present right in the hallway below the penthouse last night,” Doctor Mac exclaimed. “Why can’t we start there?”
“Indeed, it is good hunting,” Mowgli agreed. “I shall go fetch Bagheera.”
As we filed out of the room Doctor Campbell suddenly recalled Pecos Bill, who still sat with Dobbs in the fast-emptying room. “Can we -- uhh -- assist you in some way with Bill, Dobbs?” he asked awkwardly.
“Nope,” Dobbs said laconically. “Ah kin git th’ boss-man a-movin’ all by mah lonesome. Be right b’hind y’all.”
I lingered, baffled, until Dobbs pressed some bronze ornaments on the sides of Bill’s thickly-padded black leather chair. A hiss of steam made me jump and the chair lifted several inches off the ground. Small wheels appeared behind Bill’s boots and a larger set slid with a tick of clockwork at a perpendicular angle out of the back, lowered to the carpet, and swung forward into position alongside the arm rests. The chair glided after us with Dobbs tromping in its wake. Bill’s eyes glittered with excitement.
We all trooped up to the hallway below the penthouse. Mowgli flitted up in the tube lift. Mr. Campbell had all of us check and double-check the hallways. We pronounced them well and truly empty before Campbell signaled for Mowgli to come down. A few moments later Mowgli descended with a huge black panther in a leather harness and chain. The great cat gazed around at us in mild boredom. The company flocked behind Mowgli.
Bagheera dutifully sniffed the entire hallway where the constable had stood with the boy and left with him. Finally the cat sat back on his haunches and said, “Wow.”
“There is no sign to follow,” Mowgli informed us.
“How can there be no sign?” Doctor Mac demande
d. “And how do you talk to old Bagheera, anyway?”
“We do not speak, as you understand speech. There was a fanciful fellow who wished to write about my life in the jungle, and he filled it up with poetry and flowery speeches we were supposed to have made to each other, all the animals and I. He wrote a fine tale, and the poetry was very pretty, but among creatures there is a look in the eye, the twitch of an ear, a stretching out of toes, rubbing the jowls or scratching the claws against a tree-trunk, and other things that speak as loudly as words. There are sounds too, such as you just heard Bagheera make, for simple ideas. Some sounds are too low or too high for untrained ears to hear.
“Bagheera says if the man was here, either the traffic in the hallway has made his trail impossible to pick out, or he has found some very clever way of hiding himself. Bagheera’s opinion is that it is the latter. He is very good at distinguishing one man’s scent from another. We may learn more in the alley, if he was there.”
Bagheera went back up the lift and the group returned to the conference room just as Sue and Doctor Twist emerged from the sitting room with Sue’s train of protectors. No sound came from her knee now as she strode easily across the room. She made a beeline to Bill and pushed back his Stetson, planting a long, lingering kiss on his forehead.
“Hey, Honey-bunch,” she beamed. “Lookey how the little doc done fixed up mah leg! Good as new, ain’t it?”
Bill’s eyes drank his wife in. No words that I could pen could describe the connection between this bombastic, animated woman and her silent, motionless spouse. I saw nothing of frustration, awkwardness or sorrow in either of their faces. Sue ran her fingers with lingering deliberation through her husband’s grey tresses and rested her cheek for a moment against his face. I felt like an intruder but could not help noticing that Bill could blink his eyes against his wife’s freckled cheek and, in a way, caress her. He caught me watching and winked at me, bringing a dark flush to my face.
“Lunchtime,” Mr. Campbell announced. “Shall we head for the restaurant?”
“Must we ride in the demon coach again?” Zambo asked, quivering. I quivered right along with him.
“Demon coach?” Mac’s eyebrows went up with interest.
“Come,” Oliver said with a frown at Zambo. “I’ll show you.”
Down on the street stood the ordinary-looking London Mail Coach with six horses waiting patiently. Tod lounged on the box and whisked his fox tail at us. Doctor Mac reacted much as I had but rebounded more quickly.
“Is there room for all of us in there?” he asked doubtfully.
“They’s alternate transportation, if’n yer frettin’ ‘bout overcrowdin’,” Sue offered. The hotel stood across the street from the Thames. Dobbs trotted across the street, giving a shrill whistle. We all cried out as the murky waters churned and something made of glittering bronze broke the surface of the river.
“It’s a -- It’s--” Doctor Mac babbled.
“A giant catfish.” Rose clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, I’ll ride in that! Is it a submarine, then?”
“It is, ma’am,” Sue beamed. The thing towered twenty feet tall and bobbed on the Thames with a small exhalation of steam now and then to keep it from drifting. “When Ah first met mah Bill Ah were jest tryin’ it out fer pa on th’ Rio Grande. Lookie up thar on th’ back an’ ya’ll kin see it’s even got a tooled saddle so’s y’ kin ride outside an’ skim th’ river surface. Pa always done sech fine leather work. He worked th’ toolin’ inta the bronze.”
“Catfish don’t have scales,” Mac grunted, observing the glittering sides.
“Yeah, but pa were an ar-teest, not a biologist. He seen one a’ them Japanese-type Koi ponds and was mighty taken with them fish. He said, ‘Scales’d look mighty purty, wouldn’t they?’ An’ I said, ‘Shore ‘nuff, they would, Pa!’ Th’ eyes is observation ports on the surface and underwater and they got lights built in. Th’ whiskers do th’ sonar thaing ta let ya know when somethin’ moseys inta the path thet y’ might miss thru th’ ports.”
“I am surrounded by powers I cannot understand!” Zambo cringed. “Can I not walk to the restaurant? The cobblestones and sidewalks of London I can trust and know.”
“How about a horse, Mr. Zambo?” Sue laughed. She whistled this time. The mouth of the bronze catfish clanked open with a blast of steam and whirring gears as the sub turned toward the dock. Out of it pranced a gigantic black stallion in elaborate trappings to match Sue’s outfit. “May I introduce Widowmaker the Second?”
“Widowmaker?” Zambo repeated. He had overheard the tale of Pecos Bill’s horse and cowered.
“Widowmaker the Second,” Sue corrected. “He’s gentle as a lamb. Just wanted to keep the name in honor a’ mah Bill’s old horse. You’re a rider, ain’t’cha, Mr. Zambo? Hop up there.”
Zambo warily approached the horse as it crossed the street and came to a halt in front of Sue. He walked all around the horse and apparently decided it was both real and safe. Mounting, he patted Widowmaker the Second’s neck. The horse bobbed its head.
“He kin carry double,” Sue urged. “Your lovely wife kin git right up behind you.”
Sahara eagerly accepted Sue’s boost and landed behind her husband with a beaming face. She wrapped her arms around his waist and snuggled close. Zambo relaxed and chucked up the reins. “We shall see you at the restaurant,” he smiled.
The rest of the company divided up quickly between Sue’s giant catfish and the mail coach. Londoners were not quite so jaded as to be completely unmoved by all these sights, but I believe that once the Alexander Legacy Company had disappeared in their various ways the traffic began to flow again and London life went on.
Favoring the known over the unknown, I followed Oliver Twist’s lead, approaching the mail coach airship. Still, I could not bring myself to just hop in. “Sue’s catfish might bite, Florrie, but my airship won’t,” Twist grinned at me. “It didn’t last night, did it?”
I climbed aboard and seated myself next to Fun See Tokiyo. I found him regarding me with the very smallest of smiles showing gritted teeth.
“I was just wishing there had been one more space on the back of the horse,” he murmured. His long sleek nails dug ferociously into the leather armrests. Annabelle Fun chatted obliviously with Abdalla Gafur. Mowgli and his wife sat facing them, and the black silk-clad man of the jungle gazed around in childlike delight.
“Shall we fly to the restaurant, Twist?”
“No, we’ll keep it on the ground.” Oliver’s blue eyes twinkled. “I have to admit I expected you to be the most put off by my ship, Mr. Mowgli. You seem quite at home.”
“It sounds like the sleepy black bees when you pass by their chasm,” Mowgli shrugged. “I have flown through the air without wings before, grabbing vines in the jungle or Kaa’s coils in the river. This is much more comfortable.”
We dined at an exceptional restaurant. I had not seen food like this since Bohemia, grilled trout, fresh asparagus, excellent prime rib, and a heavenly cobbler of tart cherries. I heard from Doctor Mac of the adventure of those who traveled in the giant catfish. Edward and Elinor had joined Sue as well.
“We passengers settled into the forward compartment of the catfish sub on saddle-shaped seats. Bill got his chair locked down beside us. We were surrounded by bronze clockwork and steam tubing,” Doctor Mac reported. “Sue and Dobbs operated a curved control panel stretching all around the interior and beneath the catfish’s enormous golden eye-ports.
“They tramped to and fro on the richly-spotted cowhide rugs while pressing buttons and pulling levers marked ‘Mouth,’ ‘Whiskers,’ ‘Left Fin,’ ‘Right Fin,’ ‘Right Eye Gas jet,’ ‘Left Eye Gas Jet,’ to manipulate a series of gigantic gears. With considerable clanking and hissing the mouth of the catfish closed and we felt the bronze beast move backward along the surface of the Thames, thrumming deep and steady, water churning around it, the sounds echoing through the metal chamber.
“Dobbs cranked briskly a
nd gaslights glowed in the eye ports as the catfish’s whiskers sank, followed by the rest of it, beneath the murky waters of the London river. Fish swarmed over the glass eye inches above my head. Rose giggled and snuggled under my arm, fascinated with everything. I am still not used to the clarity of my new ‘Spectaculars’ -- That’s what I’m calling this visor thing, Twist, and feel free to use the name when you patent it. Even by gaslight in the depths of the Thames I could not believe how well I could see.
“ ‘I wanted to keep staring at you, my beautiful wife’, I whispered in her ear, but there were some powerful distractions there.”
“It was splendid,” Edward exclaimed. “Just splendid.”
“It just goes to show,” Elinor beamed, “that one is never too old to experience something new.”
A Dodge, a Twist and a Tobacconist Page 9
