The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (3 page)

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.

Swinburne 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.”

The cold wind battered them and the deluge lanced into their faces. They pulled the brims of their hats down low and the collars of their coats up high, but it was a lost cause.

Burton was shivering uncontrollably. Tomorrow, he knew, he was going to be in a bad way.

The bank loomed ahead. It was a big, dirty, foreboding edifice. The water had cut grey rivulets into its sooty coat.

Swinburne hopped up its steps to check the doors. They were closed and barred. He came back down. All the windows were shuttered.

“This isn’t very inspiring at all. I think we’re on a wild goose chase,” he complained. “What time is it?”

“Nigh on midnight, I should say.”

“Look around you, Richard. Everyone has disappeared. We haven’t even seen an automated animal. Man, woman, and beast are tucked up in their warm, dry beds! So are criminals!”

“You’re probably right,” Burton replied grumpily, “but we should press on until we reunite with Trounce.”

“Fine! Fine! If you say so,” Swinburne replied, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “But please remember that—should another occasion like this arise in the future—being wet to the bone and frozen to the marrow is definitely not the sort of pain I enjoy. The sting of a hard cane, yes! The sting of a hard rain, no! What’s that?” He pointed across the road to a fenced area beside an intersection. Beyond the low barricade, there was pitch darkness.

“It’s Mildew Street,” Burton answered. “Let’s take a look. Those are the works where they’re shoring up the underground river.”

They crossed Saint Martin’s again and leaned over the waist-high wooden barrier. They couldn’t see a thing.

Burton pulled a clockwork hand-lantern from his pocket, shook it open, and gave it a twist. The sides of the device spilled light into the rain. He held it up over the fence, illuminating a muddy pit. The saturated ground angled down to the mouth of a well, from which the top of a ladder projected. Streams of water gurgled over the slope and disappeared into the wide shaft.

“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to a patch of mud at the top of the slope, just beneath a collapsed segment of fencing on the Mildew Street side.

“You mean the footprints?” Swinburne shrugged. “So what?”

“Don’t be a blessed fool!” Burton growled. “How long are muddy footprints going to last in this weather?”

“My hat! I see what you mean!”

“They’re recent. Some of them haven’t even filled with water yet.”

The two men moved around the barrier to the broken section. Burton squatted and examined the footprints closely.

“Remind you of anything?” he asked.

“It looks like someone’s been pressing flat irons into the mud,” the poet observed. “My goodness, those are deep prints. Whoever made them must have been very heavy. Ovals, not shoe-shaped. I say! The clockwork man!”

“Not the one in Trafalgar Square,” Burton corrected. “It had clean feet and these prints were made while it’s been standing beside the column. There were other clockwork men here—three of them—and less than fifteen minutes ago, I should think. Look who was with them!”

Burton moved his lantern. The circle of light swept across the mud and settled on a line of big, widely spaced, very deep oblong prints. Who- or whatever had made them obviously possessed three legs.

Swinburne recognised them at once. “Brunel!” he cried. “Isambard Kingdom Brunel! The Steam Man!”

“Yes. See how deep his prints are by the well? He obviously waited there while the brass men went down. I wonder what they were up to?”

Burton stepped over the fence’s fallen planks and turned to his assistant. “I’m going to have a look. You run back to that Spencer fellow. Give him another thruppence and ask him if he saw anything unusual around here, then come back and wait for Trounce and Constable Bhatti. Go! We mustn’t waste any more time!”

Swinburne raced off.

Burton crouched, lowering his centre of gravity to improve his balance on the slippery surface. He began to inch downward, bracing himself with his cane, holding the lantern high. The rain hissed around him. He wondered whether he was doing the right thing. Brunel and his clockwork companions were getting away—but from what? What had they been up to?

He’d covered half the short distance to the well when his feet shot out from under him. He slapped down onto his back and went slithering uncontrollably toward the mouth of the shaft, slewing sideways until his hip thudded against the top of the ladder which, thankfully, was bolted to the side of the well. He felt his shoulders swerving over the sodden clay and was propelled headfirst into the opening. Without thinking, he let go of his cane and threw out a hand. It closed over a rung and he gripped hard as his body turned in the air, swung down, and slammed against the ladder. The force of the impact knocked the wind out of him and loosened his hold. He fell before catching another rung. Pain lanced through his shoulder. His cane clacked onto a solid surface somewhere below.

He scrambled for a foothold, secured himself, and hung on, shaking. An involuntary groan issued from his lips.

He felt weak and ill. Despite the cold weather, beads of sweat were gathering on his forehead.

The lantern went out.

Shifting to better secure himself, he gave the device a twist. It spluttered back into life and he lowered it past his knee, revealing a brick walkway not far below. A river flowed beside it, the brown surface heaving and frothing as it sped past.

Burton descended with water pouring around him from the pit above. He stepped off the ladder and flexed his arm, winced, then picked up his cane and flashed the light around, finding himself in a small section of newly built brick-lined tunnel. Farther down in both directions, it gave way to a soft-walled, insecure-looking passage which, for as far as he could see—which wasn’t very far—had been shored up with timber.

The walkway ran alongside the river and disappeared into the darkness. On it, three sets of muddy oval-shaped footprints trailed back and forth.

He followed them.

The course of the river was by no means straight but the explorer felt certain that it remained more or less beneath Saint Martin’s on its way to the Thames.

Moments later, he came to a hole cut into the wall on his left. Big lumps of stone were scattered around it and a pile of rubble blocked the path beyond. A glance at the ground assured him that the three mechanical men had passed this way, so he entered and stepped through a short stretch of roughly cut tunnel.