The Adventures of Phineas Frakture (20 page)

Episode
4

“Run!”

Phineas and William turned quickly and took off as fast as their legs could carry them. Weaving around the destruction that he had passed the first time, Phineas finally saw their hotel and pulled William inside. They doubled over, panting, and soon they were on the floor laughing for no apparent reason.

“Run? That was your plan this time?” William asked.

“It wasn’t my idea. I took it from the guy whose fist was bigger than your belly. You dropped your pastries, by the way.”

“Casualties of war; but I did keep the paper,” said William triumphantly.

“Anything in there from our terrorist?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

Phineas looked at him. “Then why is that a good thing?”

“Because it has a nice recipe for Shepherd’s Pie.”

“You are incorrigible,” Phineas said, shaking his head.

The bellhop approached them and looked down his nose at the two men sitting on the floor. “The lady left this for you,” he said, handing Phineas a slip of paper. “She has already tipped me. She wanted me to tell you that.”

Phineas made a face at the bellhop and waved him off.

“What does it say?” asked William.

Phineas unfolded the note. “It says, ‘Jerks, go do your thing. I’ll be enjoying myself. A’.”

“She doesn’t sound happy. You should get her some flowers or something,” William advised.

“I’ll make it up to her when this is over. For now,” he grunted as he stood up, “let’s get to that paper’s office.” Phineas peered out the front window. “Looks like tall, dark, and scary is gone. Let’s go.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we are not in the habit of divulging our clients’ identities.” The lanky clerk behind the counter looked down at Phineas. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, but his ink-stained, calloused fingers showed that he had been working in the print house for several years, probably having been apprenticed at an early age.

Phineas turned his head slightly, mesmerized by the size of the young man’s nose, which reminded him of a parrot’s beak.

“Isn’t there any way that you can tell us? This is a matter of life and death…and money. The man who placed that ad blew up part of the city,” said Phineas, trying to appeal to the clerk’s sense of morality. “How do you drink coffee with that thing?” he added, completely destroying any headway that he might have made.

“I’m sorry, sir, but only the Queen can get me to divulge that information. And I drink tea,” the clerk said with contempt.

“Of course you do. And just
how
are we supposed to get the Queen to come down here?” Phineas began pacing in circles while the clerk watched him with a bemused expression.

William held up his hand to the clerk. “Just one second.” He took Phineas by the shoulders. “I think I know what he means. Trust me; this is what I do for a living.” William sidled up to the counter and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a coin and laid it on the counter. “Oh, look there, the Queen has come to visit.” He looked up at the clerk, who stared down at the money. “Maybe a visit from her twin…or triplet would help? My, she has a big family.” The clerk reached for the money, but William slammed his hand down on top of it. “Ah, ah…information first.”

“An automaton brings the ads in every week. He says that they are from a ‘Doctor M.’.”

“How many ads?” asked Phineas.

“About ten all together. Mostly ranting about the state of society or gibberish like that.”

“I need to see them,” stated Phineas.

“I need to see another sister.”

Phineas nodded to William, who pulled out another coin and handed it to the clerk.

“I’ll be right back.” A few minutes later, the clerk returned with a box and dumped the contents out, which consisted of a pile of papers, ranging from small slips to several pages bound together.

Phineas gathered them up, said a quick thank you, and began walking out the door.

“Hey! You can’t take that!” the clerk said, trying to keep his voice down so that his coworkers wouldn’t hear.

“Tell it to the Queen,” Phineas threw back as he kept walking.

“See, that’s how you do things in the real world. You need to get out of that classroom from time to time,” William said once they were outside.

“Bribes? Is that how you get things that I need?” asked Phineas.

“Favors. Why do you think some of your gadgets cost so much? I have to grease the right wheels.”

“I find your shadiness most refreshing. I’m seeing you in a whole new light.”

“Thank you. Now, what does our Doctor M. have to say?”

They sat down on the steps outside of the newspaper office and began leafing through the papers. When they were finished, Phineas had come to the following conclusion.

“These are the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic! It’s no wonder that no one took him seriously. His ‘manifesto’ is complete gibberish, his demands are moronic…’socks shall only be worn on Tuesdays when there is over sixty percent cloud cover’…what the devil is that about?”

“So, we are at another dead end?” asked William.

“No. I am convinced that he is the one. Juvenile as it may seem, there is an underlying tone about this that screams ‘sinister’. He has destroyed once, and he will destroy again. We need to interview every doctor in London whose first or last name begins with ‘M’.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“We’ll use our connections. Constable Fuller said that she would assist us in any way possible. I’m sure that she can get us a list. There,” Phineas pointed to a police call box, “we’ll use that.” They crossed the street and Phineas rattled the door to the box. “Who locks an emergency call box? Don’t they believe in public service around here? Time is of the essence here. Lord, help these people if there was an actual emergency. I tell you, nothing surprises me about this country anymore. If you told me that this box could fly away, I’d be inclined to believe you.”

“Are you finished?” asked William.

“Yes,” Phineas said, stomping away. “Let’s try another place.”

“Well, at least she didn’t call you crazy to your face,” William said as they exited Scotland Yard for the second time that day. “Wanting to bother half the doctors in London and then going on about call boxes that they say don’t exist, like it appeared out of thin air…I’ll be happy if we aren’t committed by the end of the day.”

“But, we have the list,” said Phineas. “We’ll divide the city in half and see what we can find.”

“And what are we looking for?”

“An automaton for one thing, and a doctor who has a lab…similar to my own, I should think,” said Phineas.

“What do I do if I find him?”

“Come straight back to the hotel and wait for me. Otherwise, we will meet back there at seven. That should be enough time.”

It wasn’t enough time.

Phineas had been running through his half of the list and still had over twenty names left to go. Everyone that he had interviewed had either slammed the door in his face or threatened to call the police. He had written all of them off as arrogant buffoons who couldn’t splice a wire, let alone build a bomb, and to make matters worse, the cab driver that he had hired suddenly abandoned him, leaving him stranded. Apparently, the promise of money wasn’t as good as payment upon each address.

So, Phineas was walking.

His feet were killing him from the uneven cobblestones, and visibility was getting worse by the minute. He hoped that William was faring better than he was, and Phineas checked his watch to see what time it was. Six thirty. He needed to find his way back to the hotel.

An odd squeaking sound was coming from somewhere in the fog, and soon, several large shapes manifested in the gaslight. As they drew closer, they took the form of several well- dressed men in bowler hats riding penny farthings. They approached Phineas and began circling him, ten in all. They stared as they rode around him, and the gaslight glinted off of their well-waxed handlebar moustaches. Phineas stood watching the silent procession, curious what they were up to, until one of the men acrobatically leaped from his bicycle and landed right in front of him.

“Good evening, sir,” the man said.

“Good eve—” Phineas was cut off as the man punched him square on the nose. Phineas staggered backwards into the arms of another man, who quickly pulled Phineas’ wallet from inside his coat. The man removed what money there was and then replaced the wallet. Phineas was pushed back towards the first man, who straightened Phineas’ coat and brushed him off with a small whisk broom. The man then smiled and quickly punched Phineas again, knocking him to the ground where yet another man handed him a cup and saucer.

“You have been served, sir,” the third said, and they quickly took to their penny farthings and rode away.

Phineas, stunned, took a sip from the cup and spat it out. “Tea. I hate this country,” he said, tossing the cup aside and then passing out.

“They are called the League of Disgruntled Gentlemen’s Gentlemen…a band of butlers turned to a life of crime. You were in an affluent part of the city, so you were a target.” Constable Fuller took the compress from Phineas, whose nose was broken. “You’re lucky those doctors complained about you. I had a hunch it was you and came out looking. You probably would have been lying there all night.”

“It could have been William,” Phineas said.

“No, we had no complaints from the side he was checking, only compliments on the diligence of our investigators. I didn’t have the heart to tell them he didn’t work for us. We need all the good publicity we can get. Is he looking for a job, per chance?”

“You wouldn’t want him. He has anger issues.”

“He seems pleasant enough. You, on the other hand, don’t play well with others. Do you?”

Phineas glared at her. “We still have little to go on, and another bomb will probably detonate tonight.”

“We have constables on the look-out, though I don’t know what they can do about it if they find it. We have no bomb experts that could diffuse it in time.”

“We’ll just have to hope for the best,” said Phineas. “I need to get back to my hotel and see about some sleep.”

“Do you need a ride? I still have the carriage out front.”

“Since I have no money and I am dead tired, I think that I will take you up on that offer.”

As they rode to the hotel, Phineas began nodding off until something caught his eye in the fog. At first he thought that he was dreaming, and then he shot to full consciousness.

“Stop the carriage!” he shouted, banging on the ceiling. But before it stopped, Phineas leaped from the door, leaving a bewildered Constable Fuller behind. When the carriage did stop, she followed him out into the fog and found him crouched next to a squat barrel with a blinking light on top. There was also a chirping sound coming from it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“This?” answered Phineas. “This is a work of art…and it is going to turn two miles of the city into a crater.”