The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (31 page)

“By golly, what a lot of broken windows! It looks as if a tornado passed through town!”

“Watch where you steer. There might be debris in the road. Hey! Where are you going?”

“This way, it’s a short cut!” the poet shrilled, suddenly veering off the main street and into a narrow lane.

“Blast it, Algy, what are you up to?”

“Follow me!”

The steam proved to be much thicker in the backstreets; a dense milky pall, reminiscent of that which rose from the Crawls in the grounds of Tichborne House. The top of the cloud was almost level with the saddles of the velocipedes—about the same height as the top of an average man’s head—and the two penny-farthings, as they clattered through it, left a widening wake behind them, exactly as if they were steering through a liquid.

Gas lamps flared, casting sharp shadows on the sides of the buildings and walls on either side of the lane, and making the top of the mist glaringly luminescent.

“Slow down, Algy! I can’t see the surface of the road! Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Yes, don’t worry! I’ve been this way many a time!”

“Why?”

“For Verbena Lodge!”

“The brothel?”

“Yes!”

“I might have—” Burton’s teeth clacked together as his vehicle bounced over a pothole “—known!”

They turned right into a less well-lit street, then left into another, and immediately found themselves in the midst of a disturbance. Yells and screams rose out of the cloud, women’s shouts and men’s protestations.

There came a loud report, almost like a gunshot, and Swinburne suddenly vanished.

The king’s agent saw the small rear wheel of his assistant’s velocipede fly upward before dropping back into the mist. He heard the machine’s engine race, cough, splutter, and die.

He squeezed his brake levers and swung down from his vehicle, plunging into the cloud.

“Algy? Did you hit something? Are you all right?”

“Over here, Richard! I—”

Crack!

“Yow!”

Burton moved toward the raised voices, peering into the murk. Were those figures just ahead?

“Algernon?” he called.

“Gah!” came the response.

A man ran out of the rolling vapour. He was dressed in nothing but a ripped and bloodied shirt, a top hat, and a pair of socks held up by gaiters. “She’s bloody insane!” he wailed, and sped past.

Another gentleman followed, barefoot and buttoning up his trousers. “Get out of here! The strumpet is spitting feathers!”

A woman in a floral dressing gown hurried into view and shouted after them: “Oy! Sir George! Mr. Fiddlehampton! Come back! Sirs! Sirs! You ain’t paid the bleedin’ Governess!”

She looked at Burton. “You a bloody rozzer, or what? ’Cos if you are, you can bleedin’ well stuff it.”

“I’m not the police. What’s all that noise about? Who’s screaming?”

Crack!

“Yow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ha ha!”

That was Algy!

“What’s happening? Answer me!”

The girl shrugged and gestured over her shoulder. “It’s Betsy, ain’t it? She’s gone bloody loopy. ’Ere, if ya ain’t a rozzer, maybe we could—”

Burton pushed past her and strode forward until he found himself mingling with a small crowd of semi-clad men and girls who’d gathered in a wide ring around a curvaceous brunette. She was heavily made-up, and wore little more than a tight black whalebone bodice, French bloomers, and high-heeled boots.

In her left hand she held a whip, the end of which was coiled around the neck of a man kneeling meekly behind her wearing nothing but underpants. She had a second whip in her right hand, and with this, she was lashing at a small figure that hopped, jerked, and danced before her.

It was Algernon Swinburne.

Crack!

The leather thong coiled around the poet’s hindquarters.

“Ouch! Ouch! Hah, yes! But really, Betsy, what do you think—”

Crack!

It slashed at his waist, ripping his shirt and slicing through his belt.

“Woweee! No! Ow! Ow!—do you think you are doing with that—”

Crack!

His trousers slid to his ankles.

“Narrgh! Oof! Ha ha ha!—doing with that poor gentleman?”

Burton glanced at the woman’s prisoner. He looked again, and recognised him: it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone.

“Mr. Gladstone!” he called, pushing past prostitutes and angry customers. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up!” snapped the whip-wielding woman, who Swinburne had addressed as Betsy.

“It’s all right, Richard!” the poet panted. “I have the situation under control.”

“So I see,” Burton replied sarcastically.

“Who are you, sir!” the kneeling politician demanded haughtily.

“Sir Richard Burton.”

“I said shut up!” Betsy ordered.

“Palmerston’s swashbuckler?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but—”

Crack!

Burton cried out and fell to one knee, clutching his head, feeling his scalp open up above the left ear. Blood dripped through his fingers.

Crack!

Leather encircled his forearm and neck, tightened cruelly, ripped his sleeve, and slid away. The explorer toppled to the cobbles and quickly rolled aside as the lash sliced through the air again and smacked loudly against the road beside him.

“Hey! I say!” Swinburne shouted. “Don’t flog him! Flog me!”

“Be quiet!” Betsy commanded.

“Yes,” said Burton, scrambling to his feet, “be quiet, Algy.”

Above the general hubbub, there sounded the clank and rattle of an approaching litter-crab.

The crowd thinned as men slipped away into the mist.

“Burton,” called Gladstone. “Do not misjudge what you witness here. I am present simply to rehabilitate these fallen women.”

“In you undergarments, sir?”

“They stole my clothes!”

Betsy pulled her lips back over her teeth and hissed: “Oppressor! Hypocrite! Conspirator!”

“Betsy, dear,” said Swinburne, soothingly, “the middle of the street is no place for a discussion about—about—by the way, what
is
it we’re discussing?”

“Pervert!”

Crack!

“Argh! Yowch! You mean
poet!
”

“For pity’s sake,” Burton growled impatiently. He took three long strides and grabbed the prostitute by the wrists. She let out a howl of fury and started to struggle, biting and kicking.

“Algy! Pull your bloody pants up and help me!”

Swinburne hoisted his trousers up to his waist, held them with one hand, shuffled over, and pulled the thong from around Gladstone’s neck.

“I’m married,” the politician told him earnestly. “I’ve never been guilty of an act of infidelity.”

“You may tell that to the marines—” the poet grinned “—but the sailors won’t believe you. There. You’re free. I suggest you leg it before the police get here.”

“The police!” Gladstone exclaimed in horror, and without a backward glance, he jumped to his bare feet and took off.

“I’d love to see how he gets home,” said Swinburne.

“Damn it!” Burton yelled as Betsy sank her teeth into his wrist. He pushed her from him and backed away, with Swinburne at his side. The woman, with a whip in either hand, spat and snarled like a wild animal.

The crowd had dispersed—the men running off, the women retreating into the brothel.

Crack!

The tip of a whip flicked through the skin of Burton’s forehead. He staggered. Blood dribbled into his eyes.

Betsy circled the two men. “Tichborne is innocent!” she said.

The bulky grey metallic form of the litter-crab loomed out of the mist behind her, its eight legs thumping against the road. From beneath its belly, twenty-four thin arms extended downward, flicking back and forth, picking rubbish from the road and depositing it into the mechanism’s flaming maw to be incinerated.

“Move aside, madam,” Burton advised.

“Why don’t you keep your fat mouth shut?”

“Betsy, there’s a litter-crab right behind you,” Swinburne shrilled, urgently.

Betsy giggled insanely. “Stupid bloody toffs.”

“You’re going to be—” Burton began.

The prostitute let out a piercing cry and flicked her whip up to strike. Burton flinched in anticipation, but even as he did so, the tip of the girl’s weapon flew back and tangled with one of the collector arms under the lumbering machine. The thong was yanked violently, jerking her off her feet. She went sprawling backward and rolled under the advancing crab. The twenty-four metal arms pummelled and thrashed at her. She screeched and writhed and fainted. Seconds later, the litter-crab froze as the fail-safe system activated, a valve clicked open on its back, and steam whistled out at high pressure. The emergency siren started to wail.

Burton stepped over to the machine, bending to peer at the prone body beneath.

“Is she dead?” asked Swinburne, raising his voice over the noise.

“No, just scrapes and bruises.”

The poet gave a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness! She’s one of my favourites.”

“Still?”

Swinburne nodded, smiled, and gave a shrug.

His trousers dropped.

“Don’t shrug again until you have a new belt,” Burton advised. “Come on, let’s get away from this bloody racket. The girl is already coming round and the crab’s siren will attract a constable soon enough. We’ll let the police sort this one out. I’ve had quite enough of it!”

They returned to their penny-farthings, restarted the engines, and steered past the hulking street cleaner.

“Ow! Hah! Yes! Ooh!” Swinburne exclaimed. “My hat, Richard! These boneshakers play the merry devil with freshly striped buttocks!”

“Spare me the details.”

They rode out onto a main road.

“It confirms your—ouch!—theory, though,” said the poet.

“What does?”

“The girls in Verbena—ah!—Lodge are all victims of the usual—argh!—sad process. You know the routine, they worked as maids, were seduced by—ooh! Ha!—their masters, fell pregnant, and were coldly thrown out onto the streets to fend for themselves.”

“Despicable!” Burton snarled.

“Indeed. But sadly—yowch!—all too common.”

“You don’t feel guilty taking advantage of their misfortune?”

“Please, Richard! I never—ow!—lay a finger on them! I pay them to apply the birch, nothing more!”

“Humph!”

“Anyway, I happen to know that Betsy is an exception. She didn’t suffer that cruel fate. She’s the only one of them—oy!—who was
born
in a brothel. She’s the daughter of—yow!—a madam. In other words, she’s never known anything—oof!—different and has probably never harboured any expectations beyond being a—oh!—working girl.”

“The trammelled mind.”

“Ex—ah!—actly!”

No further incidents interrupted their journey, and they arrived some fifteen minutes later at Bartoloni’s Italian restaurant in Leicester Square. It was closed and the window, which had apparently been broken, was boarded up.

Bartoloni responded to Burton’s knocking. His eyes widened with surprise when he saw the blood on his visitor’s face but he quickly regained his composure and acted as if there was nothing untoward.

“
Vi prego di entrare, signori
,” he said, with a slight bow. “
Il ristorante e’ chiuso mai vostri amici sono al piano di sopra.
”

“
Grazie, signore
,” Burton responded.

Passing through the eatery, he and Swinburne entered a door marked “Private” and ascended a staircase to the rooms above.

In a large, wood-panelled chamber, comfortably furnished and with its own bar, they found fellow members of the Cannibal Club: Captain Henry Murray, Dr. James Hunt, Thomas Bendyshe, Charles Bradlaugh, and, inevitably, Richard Monckton Milnes.

Tall, handsome, enigmatic, and saturnine in aspect, Milnes was one of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s best friends and staunchest supporters. Rich and influential, he’d interceded many times in the past when lesser men had tried to undermine the famous explorer. He also owned the largest collection of erotica ever gathered by a private collector. It included everything written by the Marquis de Sade—plus thousands of banned volumes concerning witchcraft and the occult. He was, of course, a Libertine. However, he was also a man who, at an emotional level, separated himself from others, preferring to conduct all his relationships on a purely intellectual basis. Some thought him cold. Others, Burton among them, realised that he was simply one of life’s onlookers, a man who studied everything but who never fully engaged with anything. This included the Libertine movement, which suited his temperament but failed to draw him in too deeply. He rarely became involved with its politics or various causes.

Burton and Swinburne entered the room to find Milnes standing in its centre pontificating about the latest Technologist developments.

“—so they take the species
Scarabaeus sacer
,” he was saying, “more commonly known as the scarab beetle, and their Eugenicists grow them to the size of a milk wagon!”

“Be damned!” Charles Bradlaugh exclaimed.

“I’m sure the Technologists will be, for once each beetle has matured, the engineers kill the poor creatures, scrape ’em out, and insert a seat and controls in the front and a bench and steam engine in the back. Thus a man can sit in the beetle, with his family behind him, and drive the blessed thing.”

“By thunder!” Henry Murray cried. “Yet another new species of vehicle!”

“My good man!” Milnes objected. “You’re missing the point entirely. It’s not a species of vehicle, it’s a species of insect; and not just any insect, but the one held sacred by the ancient Egyptians! They are being grown on farms and summarily executed, without so much as a by-your-leave, for the express purpose of supplying a ready-made shell. And the Technologists have the temerity to name this vehicle the
Folks’ Wagon!
It is not a wagon! It’s a beetle! It’s a living creature, which mankind is mercilessly exploiting for its own ends. It’s sacrilege!”

“Interesting that you should rail against the exploitation of insects by scientists when, it seems, the greater percentage of London’s population is currently up in arms over the exploitation of the working classes by the aristocracy,” Burton declared. “Are labourers no better than insects, in your view?”