Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (6 page)

Chapter
XIV:

Legal
Proceedings – Clapped in Irons

“I
f, as you
say, you were acting on behalf of Her Majesty’s Intelligence Services all
charges will, of course, be dropped Lady Sarah,” said the bewigged judge from
behind the elevated bench.
 
“Whether or
not that was indeed the case should not be difficult to ascertain.
 
Do you plan to enlighten us on this matter
Mister Caxton?”

“Indeed I do My Lord,” said another
bewigged man in a black robe.
 
“The Crown
wishes to call Mister Alistair Fox as a witness.”

“Why are they calling Fox?”
whispered Sarah to the solicitor Cruikshank seated across from us at the
table.
 
“It was my father who asked me to
spy on Schrödinger.”

“Mister Fox is the senior
representative of HMIS while your father is on administrative leave,” Cruikshank
said.
 
“In any case, any comment you
father might make would be suspect owing to your relationship.”

I
t was the
day after my ill-advised attempt at saving Lady Sarah’s aristocratic butt and a
night in Her Majesty’s holding cells had caused me to forswear any further
attempts at gallantry.
 
I was sore,
unshaven and tired.

Sarah, on the other hand, looked
like she had come from a day at the spa.
 
She had somehow managed to acquire a change of clothing and her hair was
done up in a modest bun.
 
Her whole
demeanor was that of someone faced with a minor inconvenience, but her attitude
was about to change.

A
listair
Fox’s face was even more pallid than I remembered as I watched the crown
attorney lead him through the specifics of his authority to speak on behalf of
Her Majesty’s Intelligence Service.
 
With
these formalities out of the way, the black-robed prosecutor got down to
business.

“Mister Fox, was Her Majesty’s
Intelligence Service concerned about a business known as Schrödinger’s
Esoterica
?”

“Yes it was.”

“And what was the nature of that
concern?”

“The establishment was suspected of
being the headquarters of a clandestine organization known as the British
League of Fascists.”

“An organization known to be
hostile to Her Majesty’s Government?”

“Yes.”

“I must object, your Lordship,” Cruikshank
said, rising from the table.
 
“The
British League of Fascists is not on trial in this courtroom.
 
Its objectives are of no concern here.”

“I will re-phrase my question,” the
crown prosecutor said, nodding toward him.
 
“Mister Fox, was Her Majesty’s Intelligence Service conducting a
surveillance of the establishment known as Schrödinger’s
Esoterica
?”

“Yes it was.”

“And who was in charge of that
surveillance?”

“A senior employee of Her Majesty’s
Intelligence Service named Arthur Flowers.”

“To your knowledge, was Sarah St.
John ever asked to take part in the surveillance in any capacity, official or
otherwise?”

“No, I am certain she was not.”

S
o that was
that.
 
Sarah and I were held over for
trial at a date to be set later.
 
Sarah
was fit to be tied and I am not being metaphorical.
 
A corpulent bailiff had insisted on
handcuffing us together before letting us speak with Cruikshank in the corridor
outside the courtroom.

“For god’s sake, do something,” Sarah
hissed at Cruikshank as soon as were alone.

“Lady Sarah, I am but a humble solicitor.
 
I have no magical powers,” Cruickshank said.

For the first time, Sarah seemed to
lose her composure.
 
Ever the lady, she
did not resort to coarse language but made her displeasure felt nonetheless.
 
I was momentarily distracted from her entertaining
tirade when a young couple asked me to move so they could pass through a
frosted-glass paneled door behind me.
 
When I returned to the action Sarah was threatening the hapless
Cruickshank with everything from disbarment to disembowelment.

“The best we can do at this point
is to apply for an early trial date in order to minimize your period of
incarceration,” Cruickshank said soothingly.
 
He seemed about to continue when his attention caught by a balding man
in a black pinstriped suit who was gesturing to him from the other end of the
corridor.
 
“Would you excuse me for a
moment?” he said.
 
“I need a very quick
word with that gentleman over there.”
 
He
walked quickly away leaving us momentarily alone.

“Throw your cloak over these
handcuffs and follow me,” I said to Sarah.

“Whatever can you be talking about?”

“Oh for God’s sake!
 
For once in your life stop being Miss Bossy
Boots and just go with the flow,” I said, dragging her through the glass-paneled
door.

Chapter XV:

A
Nervous Couple - Filling Forms – Five Pounds

W
e found
ourselves in a non-descript room furnished with a hard-backed bench on which
the two people I had seen earlier were carrying on a whispered conversation.

“We don’t have no choice,” the
young man said, reaching down to retie one of his black, lace-up boots.

“But what if my
da
won’t let us stay on?” the girl said.
 
“Where will we go?”

Their conversation was interrupted
when a gray-faced man in an equally gray waistcoat positioned himself at a
marble-topped counter at the rear of the room and asked “Who is next?”

“You lot go on ahead,” said the
young man looking up from his boot.

“Come on,” I muttered to Sarah.
 
“The last thing we want is a scene.”

We approached the counter on which
the gray man had placed two black government-issue fountain pens along with two
sheets of paper headed ‘Personal Particulars,’ one for each of us.

“What is this?” whispered Sarah,
looking at her form.

“Who cares?” I hissed back.
 
“Just fill it in.”

We completed the documents which
asked all the usual questions about date of birth, address and so forth, along
with some less-than-usual ones such as hereditary diseases and history of
insanity.
 
Sarah had the easier time of
it since her right hand was free.
 
I had
to curl my left hand around the form and work upward from the bottom so as not
to smudge the ink.

The gray man took the forms away
when we were finished and vanished into an office cubicle from which we soon
heard the distinctive ‘clack
clack
’ of a manual
typewriter.

“That will be five pounds,” the man
said, when he reappeared.

Sarah seemed about to protest, but
stopped when I kicked her ankle.
 
Two red
spots appeared on her cheeks as she reached awkwardly for her beaded handbag
beneath the cloak that covered our manacles.
 
Her hand emerged with a five pound note a moment later and the gray man
placed a typewritten form in front of us.
 
“Sign here and here,” he said, pointing an ink-stained finger at spaces
on the bottom of the form.

He inspected our signatures when we
were done and looked back up at us.
 
“Almost finished,” he said.
 
“There are two final questions the law requires me to ask.
 
Is either one of you married?”

“No,” I said.

“No,” Sarah said.

“Are the two of you related in any
way?” the man asked.

“No,” I said.

“Most certainly not,” Sarah said.

The man took a rubber stamp from
beneath the counter.
 
“Then by the
authority vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife,” he said, as he
brought the stamp down on the typewritten form with a loud bang.

Chapter
XVI

A
Rear Exit - On The Run – The Kinescope

“W
hat?” Sarah
gasped.
 
She then turned and gave me a
look that that somehow managed to combine rage with dismay. “Would you please stop
kicking my leg?” she hissed.

“Overcome with emotion,” I said to
the gray man.

“Quite understandable,” he said,
handing the marriage certificate to me.

“Sir, I wonder if I could impose on
your good nature?” I continued.
 
“My wife
and I would like to avoid certain persons who wish to thwart our love.
 
Is there a way we could get out of here without
being seen?”

“It would be most irregular, but I
suppose you could leave by the staff entrance on

“Thank you for your understanding,”
I said.

O
nce
outside, we had to wait while a noisy elevated train passed by, its diamond-stacked
locomotive followed by a series of small carriages whose steel wheels clattered
noisily along the overhead line.

“Is there anything else you can do
to ruin my life?
 
Whatever shall I do?” Sarah
wailed when the din had died down.

Not ‘what will we do?’ but ‘what
will I do?’
 
This girl was starting to
get on my nerves with her complaining.
 
At least nobody had used her as a punching bag.

“What we need is a moment to collect
our wits,” I said.
 
“Did he say this was

“Of course it is.”

“I think I know where we can go.”

T
he marquee
on the Old
Brompton
Road Kinescope had changed since
my arrest.
 
The double bill was now
shared by Backward Bob and someone called The Amazing Doctor Hades.
 
We exchanged my tickets for two seats in what
turned out to be a converted music hall that smelled of beer, sweat and
tobacco.

The lights had just gone down and
the narrow screen began to flicker with silent black-and-white newsreel
images.
 
The first story was about army
trials of a new rapid-firing gun in the air over Salisbury Plain.
 
The weapon looked to have been based on the
Gatling design with six barrels revolving around a central shaft.
 
It was mounted in a gondola slung beneath the
black gasbag of a rigid dirigible whose pointed nose and curved tailfins made
it look more like a predatory fish than a creature of the air.
 
The first clip showed the balloon slowly
maneuvering into position above a rusty steam engine with a large bull’s-eye
painted on its boiler.
 
The next shot was
from inside the dirigible’s gondola where a khaki clad soldier began to crank a
handle on the right side of the weapon causing an impressive burst of fire to
erupt from its rotating barrels.
 
The
next image was of the now-destroyed steam engine overlaid with the white-lettered
words
“SCATTER
OUR ENEMIES AND MAKE THEM FALL.”

The next story featured a crew of
maintenance personnel placing decorations along Birdcage Walk in preparation
for Her Majesty’s upcoming Silver Jubilee.
 
A caption card explained that this was the route her Majesty would
travel to address the Houses of Parliament.

The concluding item dealt with the
after effects of a bomb that had detonated near the London Stock Exchange.
 
Shots of broken windows were followed by a
clip of Sir Osgood Wellesley, leader of the British League of Fascists followed
by a title card which quoted him as saying the attack was the work of
“laborites, communists and Jews.”

“Are your wits collected yet?” Sarah
whispered.

“Give it a rest,” I said, as sepia
titles announced
The Further Adventures
of Backward Bob
.

The opening scenes of the film
looked strangely familiar to me.
 
I
suddenly realized I was watching a highly-stylized version of one of my own
attempts at seducing Hope Buchan.
 
Instead of my usual sweatshirt and jeans, my on-screen doppelganger wore
a white shirt whose standup collar was encircled by a loosened bow tie.
 
Movie Hope wore a high-collared silk blouse
and had her hair tied up by a satin bow.
 
She was cooling herself with a patterned lace fan which also served as a
weapon to ward off my double’s attempts to kiss her averted cheek.
 
The scene ended when she purposely knocked a
cup of cocoa into movie Bob’s lap, causing him to jump up and fan his hands at
the spreading liquid stain on his crotch.

“It
serves you right,”
read the on-screen title
.
 
“You
should know better than to trifle with a lady’s virtue.”

“But
Later that day”
read
the next card which
irised
to a scene showing Hope
sitting on a damask upholstered two-seater couch next to a mustachioed man with
brilliantined
dark hair who I recognized as Professor
Ross Percival, my thesis adviser.
 
Movie
Ross was slowly undoing the satin bow that held Hope’s hair in place while
leering at her melodramatically.

“Don’t
you feel guilty, betraying your young man like this?”
read the title.

“Do
you mean Robert?”
the next title read.
 
“He is a mere boy,
not a man like you.”

Mercifully, the film stuck in the
projection gate at this point, the image froze and bubbled on the screen and
the air in the Kinescope began to smell slightly acidic.
 
I was grateful for the interruption, but my
fellow movie patrons were not.

“Now we’ll never find out what
bleeding ‘
appens
,” said a man in a cloth cap.

“Same
fing
what always ‘
appens
,” said his companion.
 
“Our Bob will end up
wiv
’
egg on ‘is chivvy.
 
Serve ‘
im
right for being a total
berk
.”

Sarah seemed to share my sense of
relief, but for different reasons.
 
“I
feel I have seen the actor playing Backward Bob before,” she said.
 
“Surely it cannot have been in the West End.
 
No
legitimate performer would appear in such a low spectacle.”

There was a sound of doors opening
and closing at the rear of the theatre.
 
The man in the cloth cap looked around.
 
“What ‘
av
you been up to now?” he asked his
companion.
 
“Got to be six or seven
Rozzers
back there.”

Sure enough, all exits were now
guarded by blue-helmeted policemen who seemed to be waiting for orders.
 
In the meantime the film screen had been
retracted.
 
A pimply-faced man in a
dinner jacket appeared on stage to apologize for the delay in the program.
 
He announced that The Amazing Doctor Hades had
kindly volunteered to appear earlier than scheduled and would the audience
please be patient while the stage was being re-set.

There was a series of heavy,
thumping sounds from behind the curtains which eventually opened to reveal a
man in a scarlet-lined cape standing beside a coffin-like cabinet whose door was
fastened by a large brass padlock.
 
The
magician’s face was in shadow, but as soon as I heard his distinctive raspy intonation,
I recognized
Schrödinger
, owner of the calico
cat.

Schrödinger asked if anyone in the
audience had the courage to experience the terrors and delights of his patented
mind-reading apparatus.
 
He got no takers,
possibly because everyone had turned to look at the projection booth whose
window had begun to emit billowing clouds of acrid white smoke.

Ever the trouper, Schrödinger
carried on with the show.
 
“Let’s try something
different today,” he said, pointing to Sarah and me.
 
“Instead of one volunteer, why not have
two?
 
You two love birds come on stage.”

We had no choice.
 
It was either Schrödinger or the waiting
police.
 
We were still handcuffed so we
must have made an awkward sight as we climbed the narrow stairs to the stage.

Schrödinger tried to carry on with
the usual theatrical patter, demonstrating the cabinet’s solidity and so on,
but nobody was paying attention.
 
Finally,
he shoved us inside with me behind and Sarah in front, saying the magical
words. “Sod it.
 
Just get in the bloody
thing.”

The cabinet door closed forcing Sarah
backwards so that her buttocks were pressed against my crotch.
 

“Remove yourself at once,” she
said.

“Remove myself?
 
It’s all I can do to breath,” I said.

A trap door opened beneath us and
we fell downward onto some kind of a padded mat beneath the stage ending up in
a tangled heap surrounded by clouds of ancient dust that had us both sneezing.
 
A moment later there was the sound of the
trap door re-opening and we moved aside just in time to avoid being hit by Schrödinger
who landed on the mat with catlike grace and pulled an electric torch from
somewhere beneath his cape.
 
We followed its
flickering light though an obstacle course of discarded theatrical
bric
a
brac
, up a set of rough
wooden stairs and out a side door.