His lordship’s cries of, ‘Stop hitting me, you blackguard!’ drew the ape’s attention.
As Winston Churchill raised his sword to clock Lord Brentford one in the eye, Darwin flung the tray of marshmallows aside and leapt along the table’s length to aid his helpless master.
Sir Peter Harrow’s hand snaked out towards the upstairs maid both spare and kempt. This unasked-for intimacy was rewarded with a blow to the head that sent Sir Peter sprawling.
He sprawled across the bountiful lap of the Jovian ambassador’s wife, a woman who had been asked to contribute precisely nothing to the foregoing conversation and as such was happy to strike out at anything that came her way, in the spirit of pure frustration.
She raised Sir Peter from her lap, hauled him upright, then flung him onto the table.
Queen Victoria stared aghast as Darwin set about Mr Winston Churchill, who in turn set about Lord Brentford, who in turn was setting about himself and punching repeatedly at his groin. Sir Peter rolled over the table and fell onto the Venusian ecclesiastic who accompanied Leah.
As to be touched by those of an impure race was considered by Venusians an act of such gross personal violation as might only be redressed by the extinction of the perpetrator, the Venusian ecclesiastic uttered the words of a magical spell to draw down fire from Heaven.
Flames rolled out from the empty sky and set ablaze the table decorations.
Geraldo, seeking someone to punish for this, chose the Jovian ambassador.
As ‘Great Fights in Inappropriate Places’ went, it did not rival the now-legendary ‘Battle of the British Showman’s Fellowship’ of the previous year. But as Queen Victoria later wrote in her diary:
Luncheon today at Lord Brentford’s.
Treacle Sponge Bastard for pudding.
Splendid punch-up afterwards.
Tea at Claridge’s later.
34
ameron Bell gazed down at the River Thames. The bloody hues of the previous day were gone and the majestic watercourse flowed pure and crystal clear once more. Salmon sported and ducks went dabble-dabble.
The detective stood upon London Bridge, an early-morning news-sheet spread before him on the parapet. Cameron Bell glanced at the headline, printed big and bold.
LORD BRENTFORD RETURNED TO HOSPITAL
UNHAPPY LORD ADMITTED WITH
BROKEN NOSE AND BEE-STING
Cameron Bell turned pages in search of some reference to the blooding of the River Thames. On page four he located a small piece penned by the paper’s Thames Correspondent, who through diligence and determination had tracked down the cause of the horror:
A chance combination of soil from the Indus Valley,
dust from Mars brought in on solar winds,
the crimson clay of Kentish Town and
the dirty dogs of Dagenham.
So that was that and the capital of the Empire had nothing whatever to fear.
Cameron Bell flipped pages back and forth. He had been hoping to see some crime reported, some major crime that would baffle Scotland Yard. Not that he wished to solve it himself, oh no. Rather it was his hope that such a crime would lure the Nation’s Most Wanted, Lady Raygun, out to destroy the criminal.
And in doing so, allow herself to fall into some cunning trap laid for her by Mr Cameron Bell.
For during the month that had passed since Mr Bell’s return to sensibility, there had been no further outrages from the woman the gutter press referred to as the Mistress of Mystery and the Angel of Death. In fact she had attained to a certain celebration, with penny dreadfuls dedicated to her exploits and Lady Raygun dolls for sale on the market stalls of Brick Lane.
At present, Mr Bell had nothing to go on and a growing sense of unease that as the nation appeared to have taken this murderous female to its heart, the detective who brought her career to an end would not be a popular man.
‘Best let Chief Inspector Case take all the credit for that one, then,’ said Cameron Bell to himself.
But there it was, and now there was simply no crime in London Town. The pages of the news-sheet painted the prettiest picture of the metropolis, a crime—free utopia and one, it appeared, that within several months would be treated to something altogether superb.
THE GRAND TRI-PLANETARY
EXPOSITION
Wherein will be displayed
THE WONDERS OF THE WORLDS
The announcement had been made this very morning. The news-sheet displayed a detailed engraving of the planned structure within which this fabulous exhibition would be displayed. It spoke of the concert hall at which Beethoven’s Glorious Ninth would be performed and hinted at many marvellous things to be seen. And the mighty edifice was to be raised literally within Her Majesty’s front garden, in the park stretching the length of the Mall.
‘Now that will be something to see,’ said Cameron Bell, and he raised his eyes from the news-sheet and looked up at the city he loved, a thriving city and one blessed with miraculous technologies. Around and about the power station at Battersea arose the tall, slim Tesla towers, transmitting, without the need for wires or cables, electricity to power the capital and those marvels of the modern age that rose from within it. For above and swimming in the sky of blue were great silver airships and the sleek pleasure-craft of the wealthy. And all about in the architecture there was evidence of the new. Of the coming century. Of hope. And all about, too, Londoners pressing on about their business as ever they had and hopefully would ever do. As Mr Bell watched them passing him by over the famous bridge, he found his thoughts turning unexpectedly to Beethoven’s Ninth and its libretto drawn from Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy:
Endure courageously, millions!
Endure for the better world!
O’er the tent of stars unfurled
A great God will reward you.
A gentle breeze lifted Mr Bell’s news-sheet and flung it down to the crystal waters below. The great detective marshalled his thoughts. She was out there somewhere, that Lady Raygun. Out there somewhere and he would surely find her.
The knock upon the door of Ernest Rutherford’s house was swiftly answered. A well-dressed troll with polished teeth greeted the lady all in black who stood upon the step.
‘A joy to see you once again, sweet madam,’ crooned the troll, noting well the swing of the lady’s dark lace parasol. ‘Mr Rutherford awaits — I will lead you to him directly.’
The troll named Jones led Violet Wond to the door of Mr Rutherford’s study, knocked upon it, stepped back, announced, ‘I will fetch you tea and biscuits at once,’ and made a smart departure.
Mr Ernest Rutherford opened the door. ‘Dearest Violet,’ said he. ‘This is an unexpected surprise and a most delightful one, too.’
‘Ernest,’ said the lady in black, inclining her head towards the chemist that he might kiss his loved one on the veil. ‘I have come to see what progress has been made on your grand enterprise.
Mr Rutherford smiled. ‘Then would you care to come and see?’
‘I would be delighted.’
‘Then I will fetch my coat.’
As the two approached the front door, Jones the troll descended the staircase, tray of tea and biscuits in his horny little hands.
‘A splendid job there, Jones,’ said the chemist, ‘but we are going out.’
Mr Rutherford turned away to open the front door and as Jones stepped from the staircase to the hall, an accident occurred.
Miss Wond’s parasol swung between the legs of Jones, causing him to trip, upend his tray and fall in a heap to be painfully scalded by tea.
Mr Rutherford turned to view this calamity.
‘You really are a clumsy fellow, Jones,’ said he. ‘Please fetch a cloth and clear up all that mess.
Jones glared daggers at the lady all in black.
As, swinging her parasol once more, she swept into the street.
‘We are making considerable progress,’ said Mr Rutherford as he helped Miss Wond to enter
a hansom cab. ‘I have engaged the help of two of the Empire’s most notable scientific minds.’ Mr Rutherford climbed into the cab and settled himself next to Miss Wond. ‘Victoria Palace Theatre,’ he called out to the driver.
‘You are taking me to the music hall?’ asked the lady of his heart’s desire.
‘You will see — it is my surprise.’
Clip and clop went the horse’s hooves and the cab travelled over the cobbled streets of London.
‘Did you read the papers today?’ Mr Rutherford asked.
‘I did,’ said Miss Violet, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. ‘Absolutely no crime to speak of in the capital at present.’
Mr Rutherford raised an eyebrow. ‘You say that almost as if it is a bad thing,’ he observed.
‘Of course not, dear. But what was it that interested you in the morning’s press?’
‘The Grand Exposition,’ said Ernest, ‘wherein will be displayed the Wonders of the Worlds.’
‘And what is this to you?’ asked Violet Wond.
‘The greatest opportunity that ever there was,’ the chemist replied. ‘Would it not be just the thing to unveil the timeship at the Grand Exposition?’
‘I thought the project was to be conducted in the utmost secrecy?’
‘It is, my dear, it is — at least until it has reached a successful completion. I have given this very much thought and I do believe that the time-ship will be the single most important invention in the history of Mankind, and one that will ensure peace between the worlds in our time and for ever.
Miss Violet Wond set free her loved one’s hand. ‘Perhaps you should give it a little more thought,’ said she.
At length they reached the Victoria Palace Theatre and Mr Ernest Rutherford paid the cabbie.
A large sign above the doors to the theatre read: CLOSED FOR RENOVATION.
‘I do not believe,’ said Violet Wond, ‘that Little Tich will be entertaining us today.’
‘Come, please,’ said Ernest Rutherford, pushing open a door and ushering his sweetheart into the darkened theatre.
They passed through the foyer and entered the auditorium and here Miss Violet Wond beheld a great wonder which caused her to cry aloud.
‘The Marie Lloyd,’ cried she.
And indeed, there stood the battered Martian hulk, filling the interior of the music hall. The stage, the seating, the balconies were gone and nothing was contained within but a great big spaceship.
Miss Wond gazed up to the frescoed ceiling, a wild rococo romp of pink-bottomed cherubs and a five-tier chandelier, a perfect match for that which lit the music room of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton.
‘But how,’ she asked, ‘did you get it in? The ceiling is untouched.’
‘Through the floor,’ said Ernest Rutherford, with pride in his voice. ‘You steered it down into a siding of the Circle Line. I had it eased through the tunnel then raised upon hydraulic ramps into this disused theatre. No more fitting place for Miss Marie Lloyd, surely?’
‘Very impressive,’ said Miss Violet Wond. ‘And who are these bright fellows, might I ask?’
For two bright fellows had indeed issued from the open port of the Marie Lloyd, a robust avuncular figure and a tall and pinch-faced man with a fine dark shock of hair.
‘Please allow me to make introductions,’ said Mr Rutherford. ‘Lord Charles Babbage and Lord Nikola Tesla, pleased be to meet Miss Violet Wond.’
The avuncular fellow bowed and said, ‘Babbage.’
The other bowed and said, ‘A pleasure to meet you.
‘Well, now,’ said Miss Wond. ‘Two most distinguished members of the scientific community.’
Lord Babbage glanced at Lord Tesla. There was something about the way that this young woman had just articulated the word ‘members’ …
‘How goes it, gentlemen?’ asked Mr Rutherford, taking a business-like approach.
‘For the most part, well,’ said Lord Babbage. ‘We have linked the inter-rositor to induce a cross-polarisation of beta particles which should result in a transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ said Miss Wond.
‘Quite so, madam.’ Lord Babbage shook his head. ‘But things keep coming through, as it were, which tend to cause confusion.’
‘Things?’ asked Mr Rutherford. ‘Coming through?’ he said also, for the memory of a certain troll named Jones, who had ‘come through’ during a previous experiment, was ever fresh in his mind.
‘Each time we switch on the inter-rositor, one of them comes through,’ said Lord Tesla. ‘We did not mind the first time — Babbage had it for dinner.’
‘And very tasty it was,’ said the famous inventor of the famous Difference Engine, ‘but the novelty has worn off. I am a scientist, not a farmer. Something must be done.’
‘I would appreciate it,’ said Mr Rutherford, ‘if you would explain to me clearly and precisely exactly what you mean.
‘Step this way,’ said Lord Tesla, ‘and we will show you.’
The two eminent scientists led the chemist and the veiled lady in black into the Marie Lloyd. Here was to be found all that electronic trickery-dickery and brass-tubed hubbing-gubbing that had filled the Marie Lloyd when the aged Darwin from the future had crashed it into the Bananary at Syon House, one month before this day.
‘It is all so very shiny,’ said Miss Wond, affecting the manner of the scatter-brained female that big roughty-toughty men find so endearing. Scientists in particular. ‘What does that big wiggly thing do?’ asked Miss Wond, pointing to the flux capacitor for which she had drawn up the plans.
Lord Babbage said, ‘Please allow me to demonstrate.’
‘What are you intending to do?’ asked Mr Rutherford.
‘Create a minor temporal anomaly within strict boundaries and lure, if you will, a tiny piece of the past into the present.’
‘How very exciting,’ said Miss Violet Wond. ‘But isn’t that rather dangerous? From what location are you ensnaring this tiny piece of the past?’
‘From our present location,’ Lord Babbage explained. ‘I assume Mr Rutherford has explained to you the nature of this project — in a manner that a lady can understand?’
‘He has,’ replied Miss Wond. ‘That power here is drawn from the Large Hadron Collider beneath our feet, which is built into the Circle Line, a particle accelerator designed to create a situation where the speed of light is slowed to below walking pace, in order that this vessel can overtake it and travel through time.’
‘Yes,’ said Lord Babbage. ‘That is indeed the case. The experiment that we have been conducting creates this effect on a limited scale, bringing a bit of yesterday into today.’
‘But,’ said Lord Tesla, ‘we cannot take a piece of yesterday as such. This theatre was built in eighteen twenty and folk have sat in this auditorium since then. We do not want to snatch one of them from the past into today — that would be most impolite.’
‘So you have set your controls to fish for something back beyond the year of eighteen twenty?’
‘Indeed, madam,’ said Lord Tesla. ‘We have set it to seventeen twenty, sixteen twenty, fifteen twenty, so on and so on and so on—’
‘And?’ said Miss Violet Wond.
‘Oh yes,’ said Lord Babbage, ‘let us see. What do we have it set at presently, Lord Tesla?’
‘Twenty-seven thousand and twenty BC,’ said his scientific lordship.
‘And I will wager it comes up the same.
‘Gentlemen, please get on with it,’ said Mr Ernest Rutherford.
‘As you will.’ Lord Babbage threw a lever.
There was a flash and a big cloud of smoke.
Which cleared.
To reveal a big fat chicken.
‘There,’ said Lord Tesla. ‘Another one! It just doesn’t make any sense.
35
chicken!’ said Ernest Rutherford. ‘And it is always a chicken?’
‘Always a chicken,’ said Lord B
abbage. ‘No matter how far back in time we go, we always turn up a chicken.’
‘Perhaps there have been chicken farms upon this spot since the very dawn of civilisation,’ was Mr Rutherford’s suggestion.
‘Perhaps,’ said Lord Babbage, ‘perhaps.’
‘I cannot think of any other likely explanation.’
‘I hate flaming chickens, I do,’ said Lord Nikola Tesla.
‘Flaming chicken,’ said Lord Brentford. ‘Flaming chicken for lunch.’
Darwin looked up at his lord and master. What was this all about?
They sat side by side in a hansom cab parked at the kerb of the Mall.
‘I will take you for lunch,’ Lord Brentford explained, ‘to the very latest and most fashionable eatery in town. It is called Patrick’s Flaming Chickens. You have no objection to eating chicken, I suppose?’
Darwin shook his hairy little head.
‘Mean to say, not as if they’re your ancestors or anything.’ Lord Brentford chuckled merrily, then clutched at his wounded nose. ‘Anyhow,’ he continued, ‘this is where the Grand Exposition will be held. The great house of glass stretching all the way from there—’ he gestured towards the archway that led to Trafalgar Square ‘—to there.’ And they viewed the palace of the Queen. ‘Construction will start next week. We’ll pop down every day or so to keep an eye on things.’
Darwin thought this a pleasant enough prospect and smiled as he nodded his head.
‘We will be making history, my boy,’ said Lord Brentford, patting his monkey butler upon his nodding head and nearly knocking his hat off. ‘Making history, what do you think about that?’
Darwin raised a thumb approvingly.
‘Splendid stuff Then let us go for lunch.’ Lord Brentford shouted up to the driver, ‘Patrick’s Flaming Chickens, man.
It was a rather swank affair, was Patrick’s Flaming Chickens. It served a most nutritious delicacy: farm-fresh chicken pieces cocooned in a batter of secret herbs and spices, then plunged into a boiling vat of health-giving lard and cooked to a tasty turn.