The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

  “The key?” Burton asked.

  “Yes! To wind it up! It's clockwork!”

  “Bhatti, here,” Detective Inspector Trounce put in, “is the Yard's amateur Technologist. Of all the policemen in London, he's certainly the right chap to have found this contraption.”

  “A happy coincidence for the constable,” Swinburne observed glibly.

  “It's my hobby,” the young policeman enthused. “I attend a social club where we tinker with devices—trying to make them go faster or adapting them in various ways. Great heavens, the fellows would be beside themselves if I turned up with this specimen!”

  Burton, who'd started to examine the brass figure with a magnifying glass, absently asked the policeman what he'd done after discovering it.

  “The crowd was swelling—you know how Londoners flock around anything or anyone unusual—so I whistled for help. After a few constables had arrived, I gave the mechanism a thorough examination. I must admit, I got a little absorbed, so I probably didn't alert the Yard as quickly as I should have.” He looked at Trounce. “Sorry about that, sir.”

  “And what is our metal friend's story, do you think?” asked Burton.

  “Like I said, Captain, it's clockwork. My guess is that it's wound down. Why it was out walking the streets, I couldn't venture to guess.”

  “Surely if it was walking the streets, it would have attracted attention before it got here? Did anyone see it coming?”

  “We've been making enquiries,” Trounce said. “So far we've found fourteen who spotted it crossing the square but no one who saw it before then.”

  “So it's possible—maybe even probable—that it was delivered to the edge of the square in a vehicle,” Burton suggested.

  “Why, yes, Captain. I should say that's highly likely,” the detective inspector agreed.

  “It could have made its way through the streets, though,” Bhatti said. “I'm not suggesting it did—I simply mean that the device is capable of that sort of navigation. You see this through here?” He tapped a finger on the top porthole at the front of the machine's head. “That's a babbage in there. Can you believe it? I never thought I'd live to see one! Imagine the cost of this thing!”

  “A cabbage, Constable?” Trounce asked.

  “Babbage,” Bhatti repeated. “A device of extraordinary complexity. They calculate probability and act on the results. They're the closest things to a human brain ever created, but the secret of their construction is known only to one man—their inventor, Sir Charles Babbage.”

  “He's a recluse, isn't he?” Swinburne asked.

  “Yes, sir, and an eccentric misanthrope. He has an aversion to what he terms ‘the common hordes’ and, in particular, to the noise they make, so he prefers to keep himself to himself. He hand-builds each of these calculators and booby-traps them to prevent anyone from discovering how they operate. Any attempt to dismantle one will result in an explosion.”

  “There should be a law against that sort of thing!” Trounce grumbled.

  “My point is that when wound up, this brass man almost certainly has the ability to make basic decisions. And this here—” Bhatti indicated the middle opening on the thing's head “—is, in my opinion, a mechanical ear. I think you could give this contraption voice commands. And these—” he flicked the projecting wires “—are some sort of sensing device, I'd wager, along the lines of a moth's antennae.”

  Trounce pulled off his bowler hat and scratched his head.

  “So let's get this straight: someone drops this clockwork man at the edge of the square. The device walks as far as Nelson's Column, then its spring winds down and it comes to a halt. A crowd gathers. According to the people we've spoken to, the machine got here just five minutes or so before you arrived on the scene, Constable. And you've been here—?”

  “About an hour now, sir.”

  “About an hour. My question, then, is why hasn't the owner come forward to claim his property?”

  “Exactly!” Bhatti agreed. “A babbage alone is worth hundreds of pounds. Why has it been left here?”

  “An experiment gone wrong?” Swinburne offered. “Perhaps the owner was testing its homing instinct. He dropped it here, went back to his house or workshop or laboratory or whatever, and is waiting there for it to make its way back. Only he didn't wind the blessed thing up properly!”

  Burton snorted. “Ridiculous! If you owned—or had invented—something as expensive as this, you wouldn't abandon it, hoping it'll find you, when there's even the remotest chance that it might not!”

  Spots of rain began to fall.

  Trounce glanced at the black, starless sky with impatience.

  “Constable Hoare!” he shouted, and a bushy-browed, heavily mustached policeman emerged from the crowd and strode over.

  “Sir?”

  “Go to Saint Martin's Station and hitch a horse to a wagon. Bring it back here. On the double, mind!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The constable departed and Trounce turned back to Burton.

  “I'm going to have it carted over to the Yard. You'll have complete access to it, of course.”

  The king's agent pulled his collar tightly around his neck. The temperature was dropping and he was shivering.

  “Thank you, Detective Inspector,” he said, “but we were just passing. I don't think there's anything here we need to take a hand in. It's curious, though, I'll admit. Will you let me know if someone claims the thing?”

  “Certainly.”

  “See you later, then. Come on, Algy, let's leg it to the Venetia. I need that coffee!”

  The powerfully built explorer and undersized poet left the policemen, pushed through the throng, and headed across to the end of the Strand. As they entered the famous thoroughfare, the drizzle became a downpour. It hammered a tattoo against their top hats and dribbled from the brims.

  Burton's headache was worsening and he was starting to feel tired and out of sorts.

  A velocipede went past, hissing loudly as the rain hit its furnace.

  Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed—a litter-crab warning that it was about to disinfect a road with blasts of scalding steam. It was a waste of time in this weather, but the crabs were automated and clanked around London every night, whatever the conditions.

  “It's a good job brass doesn't rust,” Swinburne observed, “or this weather would be the death of the clockwork man!”

  Burton stopped.

  “What is it?” his assistant asked.

  “You're right!”

  “Of course I am. It's an alloy of copper and zinc.”

  “No, no! About it being a coincidence!”

  Swinburne hopped up and down. “What? What? Richard, can we please get out of this blasted rain?”

  “Too much of a coincidence!”

  Burton turned and took off back in the direction of Trafalgar Square.

  “We're already too late!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  Swinburne scampered along behind him, losing ground rapidly.

  “What do you mean? Too late for what?”

  He received no answer.

  They raced into Trafalgar Square and rejoined Trounce and Bhatti. The latter had managed to open the uppermost portal in the machine's head and was peering in at the babbage.

  “Oh, you're back! Look at this, Captain!” he said, as Burton reached his side. “There are eight tiny switches along the inside edge of this opening. Maybe they adjust the machine's behaviour in some manner? Each one has an up or down position, so how many combinations would—?”

  “Never mind that!” the king's agent snapped. “Tell me the route of your beat, Constable!”

  “My beat?” Bhatti looked puzzled.

  “What's happening?” Trounce asked.

  Burton ignored the detective inspector. His eyes blazed intently.

  “Your beat, man! Spit it out!”

  The constable pushed his helmet back from his eyes. Rainwater trickled down the back of his uniform. ??
?All right,” he said. “From here I proceed along Cockspur Street and around into Whitcomb Street. I walk up as far as the junction with Orange Street then turn right and keep on until I reach Mildew Street. I turn right again, at the works where they're shoring up the underground river, enter Saint Martin's, and foot-slog it back down to the square.”

  “And that takes fifty minutes?” Burton demanded.

  “When you figure in all the alleyways that I poke my nose into, the shop doors that need checking, and so forth, yes.”

  “And places of note on the route? Places you check with the greatest diligence?”

  “What's this about, Captain Burton?”

  “Just answer the confounded question, man!”

  “Do as he says, lad,” Trounce ordered.

  “Very well. There's the main branch of the Bright Empire Bank on the corner of Cockspur; the Satyagraha Bank is on Whitcomb; Treadwell's Post Office is on Orange Street, with SPARTA just opposite—”

  “Sparta?”

  “The Swan, Parakeet, and Runner Training Academy.”

  “Ah. Continue, please.”

  “The League of Enochians Gentlemen's Club is at the corner of Mildew, with the works on the other side; then going down Saint Martin's, there's Scrannington Bank, Brundleweed the diamond dealer's, the Pride-Manushi velocipede shop, Boyd's Antiques, and Goddard the art dealer. That's it. There are plenty of other places, of course, but those are the ones I make a special point of checking.”

  “Trounce, take Bhatti and follow the route from the Cockspur end,” Burton directed. “Algy and I will take the opposite direction, along Saint Martin's.”

  Trounce frowned, held out his hands in a shrug, and asked: “But why? What are we looking for?”

  “Can't you see?” Burton cried. “This bloody thing—” he struck the brass figure with his cane and it clanged loudly “—is nothing but a decoy! Whoever dropped it off in the square knew it would fascinate Bhatti, knew he'd pore over it obsessively before summoning help from the Yard, and knew that a fair amount of time would pass before he returned to his beat!”

  “Hell's bells!” Trounce shouted. “You mean there's a crime in progress? Come on, Constable!”

  He shoved bystanders aside, ordered a nearby police sergeant to guard the metal man, and raced away with Bhatti toward the end of Cockspur Street.

  Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Swinburne made their way to the edge of the square and pressed on through the rain to Saint Martin's.

  Adrenalin had sobered them but Burton's headache was intensifying and a familiar ague—a remnant of Africa—was beginning to grip his limbs. It was an oncoming attack of malaria, and if he didn't get back to his apartment soon to quell it with a dose of quinine, he'd be immobilised for days to come.

  They passed the police station and nodded to Constable Hoare, who was at the side of the road hitching a miserable-looking police horse to a wagon.

  All along the street, gas lamps had fizzled out, their covers inadequate against the downpour. Only a few remained alight, and the deep shadows and streaming rain reduced visibility to just a few yards.

  A little farther on, the two men came to Goddard's and peered through the night grille at the window behind.

  “Good gracious!” Swinburne blurted excitedly. “There's a Rossetti in there and I modelled for it! I must tell Dante. He'll be over the moon!”

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founding member of the True Libertines—the most idealistic faction of the Libertine caste and a counterbalance to the notorious Rakes. He was also one of the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” a community of artists whose stated aim was to produce works that communicated at a “spiritual” level with the common man; a direct challenge to the current trend in propaganda. Few people admired them. Rossetti and his cohorts were mocked and ridiculed by the press, which claimed the artists were appealing to a void, since common men—the working classes—lacked anything resembling a well-developed sense of their own spirituality.

  Swinburne often socialised with the group and had posed for their paintings on a number of occasions. He was surprised that Goddard dared display the small, medieval-themed canvas, which depicted the poet as a flame-haired knight with lance in hand, mounted on a sturdy horse. Admittedly, the picture was half hidden behind a more commercial portrait of the late Francis Galton, who was shown wielding a syringe and smiling broadly beneath the words: Self-improvement! It doesn't hurt a bit!

  The premises was quiet and dark, its door secure, the windows intact.

  “Let's move on,” Burton said. “No one's going to steal a Rossetti.”

  An old-fashioned horse-drawn brougham—they were still common—came clattering alongside, splashed water onto their trouser legs, and disappeared into the gloom. Oddly, the sound of its horse's hooves thundered on, seeming quite out of proportion to the size of the animal.

  “A mega-dray,” Swinburne commented, and Burton realised that his assistant was right; the heavy clopping wasn't from the brougham's animal at all, it was from one of the huge dray horses developed by the Eugenicists, the biological branch of the Technologist caste. Obviously there was one nearby, though even as Burton thought this, the sound faded into the distance.

  Boyd's Antiques, which was on the other side of the road, was, like Goddard's, locked up and undisturbed.

  “Nothing happening here,” Swinburne said as they walked on. “Great heavens, Richard, we're in desperate straits—we're both soaked, and not with alcohol!”

  “Good!” Burton replied. “I thought I'd weaned you off the bottle.”

  “You had, but then you tempted me back! You've not been sober for more than two days since the Spring Heeled Jack hoo-ha!”

  “For which I apologise. I think my frustrations over the Nile situation have been getting the better of me.”

  “Give it up, Richard. Africa's no longer your concern.”

  “I know, I know. It's just that … I regret the mistakes I made during my expedition. I wish I could go back and make amends.”

  A man hurried past them, spitting expletives as the strengthening wind turned his umbrella inside out.

  Swinburne gave his friend a sideways glance. “Do you mean physically return to Africa or go back in time? What on earth's got into you? You've been like a bear with a sore head lately.”

  Burton pursed his lips, thrust his cane into the crook of his elbow, and pushed his hands into his pockets.

  “Montague Penniforth.”

  “Who?”

  “He was a cab driver—a salt-of-the-earth type. He knew his position in society, and despite it being tough and the rewards slight, he just got on with it, uncomplainingly.”

  “So?”

  “So I dragged him out of his world and into mine. He got killed, and it was my fault.” Burton looked at his companion, his eyes hard and his expression grim. “William Stroyan, 1854, Berbera. I underestimated the natives. I didn't think they'd attack our camp. They did. He was killed. John Hanning Speke. Last year, he shot himself in the head rather than confront me in a debate. Now half his brain is a machine and his thoughts aren't his own. Edward Oxford—”

  “The man who leaped here from the future.”

  “Yes. And who accidentally changed the past. He was trying to put it right, and I killed him.”

  “He was Spring Heeled Jack. He was insane.”

  “My motives were selfish. He revealed to me where my life was going. I broke his neck to prevent any chance that he might succeed in his mission. I didn't want to be the man that his history recorded.”

  They trudged on through the sodden rubbish and animal waste. Unusually, this end of Saint Martin's Lane hadn't yet been visited by a litter-crab.

  “If he'd lived, Richard,” Swinburne said, “the Technologists and Rakes would have used him to manipulate time for their own ends. We would have lost control of our destinies.”

  “Does not Destiny, by its very nature, deny us control?” Burton countered.

  Sw
inburne smiled. “Does it? Then if that's the case, responsibility for Mr. Penniforth's death—and the other misfortunes you mentioned—must rest with Destiny, not with you.”

  “Which would make me its tool. Bismillah! That's just what I need!”

  Burton stopped and indicated a shopfront. “Here's Pride-Manushi, the velocipede place.”

  They examined the doors and windows of the establishment. No lights showed. Everything was secure. They squinted through the gaps in the metal shutter. There was no movement, nothing amiss.

  “Brundleweed's next,” Burton murmured.

  “Gad! I don't blame you for wishing you were back on the Dark Continent!” Swinburne declared, pulling at his overcoat collar. “At least it's warm there. A thousand curses on this rain!”

  They crossed the road again. As they mounted the pavement, a beggar stepped out of a shadowy doorway. He was ill kempt and wore disreputable clothes. A profusion of greying hair framed his face, and it was quite apparent that he was well acquainted with neither a comb nor a bar of soap.

  “I lost me job, gents,” he wheezed, raising his flat cap in greeting and revealing a bald scalp. “An’ it serves me bloomin’ well right, too. I ask you, why the heck did I choose to be a bleedin’ philosopher when me mind's nearly always muddled? Can you spare thruppence?”

  Swinburne fished a coin out of his pocket and flipped it to the vagrant. “Here you are, old chap. You were a philosopher?”

  “Much obliged. Aye, I was, lad. An’ here's a bit of advice in return for your coin: life is all about the survival of the fittest, an’ the wise man must remember that, while he's a descendant of the past, he's also a parent of the bloomin’ future. Anyways—” he bit the thruppence and slipped it into his pocket “—Spencer's the name, an’ I'm right pleased to have made your acquaintance. Evenin’, gents!”

  He raised his cap again and retreated to his doorstep, where the rain couldn't reach him.

  Burton and Swinburne continued their patrol.

  “What an extraordinary fellow!” Swinburne reflected. “Here's Brundleweed's. It looks quiet.”

  It did, indeed, look quiet. The grille was down, the window display was intact, and the lights were off.

  “I wonder how Trounce and Bhatti are getting on,” Burton said. He tried the door. It didn't budge. “It looks all right. Let's foot it to Scrannington Bank.”