The Mechanical Messiah (49 page)

‘That might explain the waitress,’ he whispered. ‘New billet for us tonight, I’m thinking. Whole damn world’s gone mad.’

Whitechapel seemed as ever it was, but such indeed was Whitechapel. The folk here were always poor and always ground down. A new direction in government meant very little to them. As long as they had sufficient pennies in their ragged pockets to drink and fornicate and visit the Music Hall they were as happy as they would ever be in life. And as they had not suffered the unexplained loss of any virgins for the last year, this fashion apparently having shifted itself to Sydenham, the home of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, the plain folk of Whitechapel all seemed happy enough.

Colonel Katterfelto paid off the driver of the hansom cab, offering him a two-fingered gesture of contempt upon his departure. He then applied his key to the chapel door and followed Darwin inside.

Long fingers of sunlight diddled about through the stained-glass windows and flickered over a large packing case that stood all alone in the middle of the floor.

‘Oh yes,’ said Colonel Katterfelto, drawing his ray gun. ‘This is it now, Darwin.’

The monkey looked up at the colonel. ‘Are you going to shoot it?’ Darwin asked.

‘Course not, my dear fellow. Just knock the case open. Don’t have a crowbar. Shouldn’t take a jiffy.’

The colonel crossed to the packing case, a full head higher than himself, and began to belabour it with the butt of his ray gun.

Darwin stood and watched him. And wondered what would unfold. Darwin looked up at the stained-glass windows, recognising many of the biblical scenes pictured upon them.

There was Balaam’s talking donkey. And old father Noah, of course. Two monkeys on the roof of the ark.
My first parents?
wondered Darwin, scratching at his head.

‘Aha!’ cried Colonel Katterfelto. ‘Absolutely splendid. Darwin, come and look.’

The monkey skipped across the chapel floor and joined the old soldier, who was tearing away at the wood shavings that were used as packing. The shavings gave off a delicious scent of pine. Darwin breathed it in.

‘Oh yes,’ cried Colonel Katterfelto. ‘Yes.’

He tore away the last of the packing, then reached down and took Darwin by the hand.

And then the two stepped back to behold

The Mechanical Messiah

he prince and princess enjoyed a breakfast that was barely enjoyable. The princess paid for the rooms and breakfasts. The princess seemed rather grumpy.

‘I will pay you back for everything,’ Cameron assured Alice as they were driven towards London aboard a hired horse—drawn cart. This cart was towing a very large makeshift cage upon wheels. A cage that contained snoozing kiwi birds. ‘I have one of the uncut diamonds from Venus. Major Thadeus Tinker gave it to me. I had hoped to have it made into a ring.’ Cameron Bell sighed wistfully. An engagement ring for Alice was what he had hoped.

‘I will sell it at Hatton Garden,’ said Cameron. ‘You can have all of the money.

Alice thought back to what the kiwi bird had said to her last night. That she was the only one who had not returned to Earth with something stolen from Venus.

‘I don’t want the money,’ said Alice. ‘I am going to see Lord Andrew Ditchfield. Perhaps the Electric Alhambra has been opened again. Perhaps he will let me top the bill once more.

‘Oh no,’ said Cameron Bell, shaking his head with vigour. ‘Firstly, even if the Electric Alhambra has reopened, it would not be safe for you to top the bill. There have been three deaths amongst those who topped the bill.’

Alice made her sulky face.

‘And secondly, you are a wanted woman — THE EVIL KIWI GIRL, if you recall. Hence our disguises.’

Alice made her angry face.

‘You must let me sort it out,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I will speak with Commander Case at Scotland Yard. And later with Sir Andrew Ditchfield, if he still manages the Electric Alhambra. I will sort this out for you. Please trust me.

Back at the Adequate, the receptionist unrolled a poster that had arrived in the morning post.

DANGEROUS ASSASSIN

announced the poster.

TO BE SHOT UPON SIGHT

it continued.

Below this there was that illustration by Boz of Mr Pickwick and words to the effect that Cameron James Bell had now been positively identified, by no lesser a figure than the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, to have been the would-be suicide pilot who had crashed a Martian spaceship into the heart of London. The reward for this criminal’s carcass stood at two thousand pounds.

‘Everything will be fine,’ said Cameron to Alice. ‘A few misunderstandings. Nothing more.

The prince and the princess did not earn a warm welcome from the people of London. Usually such an unusual pair of seemingly exotic beings would have received little more than whistles and jovial cheers from the populace. But not today. Today, instead, people jeered. Someone threw a stone. Another cried, ‘Down with Johnny Foreigner.’

‘Outrageous,’ declared Alice. ‘And me a princess, too.’

‘I shall return you to the Ritz,’ said Cameron. ‘Major Tinker will still be there having a lie-in. He can look after you until I return.’

Alice Lovell folded her arms, then dodged a Brussels sprout.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle modelled Sherlock Holmes upon Cameron Bell, it was only the private detective’s mental capacity, his skills at drawing inference from observation, that he used. Doyle drew the looks of Holmes from his own brother Terry, a lanky fellow whom history would fail to record. Doyle’s Holmes was a veritable master of disguise who fooled his biographer Watson on many occasions. Cameron Bell was
not
a master of disguise.

He and Alice found Major Tinker breakfasting at the Ritz. The major nearly made himself sick from laughing at their disguises. He agreed, however, to offer Alice sanctuary in his room. Agreed rather too eagerly in Cameron’s opinion. And agreed also to allow Cameron to change his disguise there to something less foreign.

‘I can’t wait,’ said Major Tinker.

They joined the major in a more than adequate breakfast and were just finishing up when the doorman of the Ritz approached Major Tinker. ‘They are all up in your room now,’ he said.

‘All of whom?’ asked the major.

‘About two dozen kiwi birds,’ said the doorman. ‘It was a right old struggle, I’ll tell you. But they’re all up there now, just as the princess ordered. She said you’d cover any damage.’

Major Tinker made gagging sounds.

The princess smiled upon him.

At a little after ten of the London clock, a portly fellow in a slightly soiled dress suit, with extreme bandaging to his face and borrowed money in his pocket, left the Ritz and ordered a hansom to take him to Scotland Yard.

‘Morning to you, guv’nor,’ called the driver through the little hatch. “Ow do you fancy travelling today? Should I dawdle along, or whip up me ‘orse Shergar and ‘ave ‘im shift you like a batsman out of ‘ell?’

Cameron Bell made groaning sounds.

‘Badly wounded, eh, guv’nor?’ called the cabby. ‘Probably ‘ad that spaceship fall on your ‘ead. Never mind, you don’t ‘as to speak. We’ll go by the park and I’ll do me recitation of “The Daffodils”.’

Cameron Bell groaned just a bit more, but settled back in his seat. He viewed what the colonel and Darwin had viewed. The posters. The mood of the people. Then suddenly he saw something more and called for the driver to bring the hansom to a halt.

‘Right in the middle of me recitation,’ the driver complained. ‘I was wandering lonely as a clown and everything.’

‘What is the meaning of
that?’
asked Cameron Bell.

They were parked before the Houses of Parliament. The driver having a route of his own that led to Scotland Yard.

‘What
what
is
that?’
the driver asked.

‘
That!’
Cameron Bell pointed.

‘Ah,’ said the driver. ‘You are referring to the banner extending down the tower of Big Ben. Which I will ‘ave you know is the name of the bell and not the mech-an-emism what makes the clock work. The banner is of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

‘It is a black silhouette,’ Mr Bell said through his bandages. ‘A tall black hat, a long black cloak, but no facial features at all.’

‘That’s because no one’s seen his facial phy-si-o-ognomy. ‘E’s too modest, see. No one even knows ‘is name. ‘E came into power as if from ‘Eaven. Runs the whole Government all by ‘is self, they say. The Prime Minister’s ‘ad to go away for treatment for alco-mor-lism or some such thing. Troubled, ‘e is, the papers say.

Cameron Bell made a very large groan indeed.

‘You sound sick, guv’nor. Should I take you instead to the London ‘Ospital? Old Jo Merrick the Queen’s physician will give you a looking over.

Cameron Bell began to sweat beneath his bandages.

‘Joseph Merrick?’ he managed to mumble. ‘The Queen’s physician?’

‘Poor old Mr Treves,’ said the driver. ‘‘E slipped on a banana skin in the morgue, fell ‘eadfirst onto ‘is big bone saw.

Cameron Bell made further groanings.

Then looked on in some dismay as a number of gentlemen wearing all-black clothing and all-black pince-nez glasses issued from the Houses of Parliament and demanded that the hansom cab move on at once in the interests of National Security.

The driver gave Shergar a good geeing-up. ‘Don’t want to argue with the gentleman in black,’ said he. ‘No telling where you might end up in bits.’

At Scotland Yard Cameron paid off the driver.

‘Cheers, guv’nor,’ said the man. ‘Do you know what? Even with those bandages on your bonce, you remind me of someone.’ And then he shook his head and drove away.

Cameron thought back to his previous encounter with that driver at the Crystal Palace. The matter of the Educator ray gun and his precious gold watch. Cameron still had his precious gold watch. He now remembered that he had left the Mark Five Ferris Firestorm behind in his room at the Adequate.

Cameron sighed. There
had
been a time when his life had been uncomplicated. When he had his work and his house and his treasures. How had it all gone so terribly wrong? What had been the catalyst that had sparked his descent into chaos and complication?

Cameron Bell made the grimmest of faces beneath his bandages. It had been his visit to the Electric Alhambra to see Alice Lovell and her Acrobatic Kiwi Birds. If he had not been there upon that particular night— Cameron Bell now entered Scotland Yard. At the desk in the grand entrance hall sat a policeman. He was a young policeman and wore a uniform that Cameron Bell did not recognise. An all-black uniform with strange insignia. He looked up from the notes he was making and viewed the bandaged visitor.

‘Yes?’ he said in a manner somewhat surly.

‘I would like to speak with Commander Case,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

‘Commander
Case?’
The young man in the uniform of black tapped the keys of a lettered board beneath a complicated apparatus of brass.

‘That looks rather splendid,’ Cameron Bell observed.

‘It’s a crime engine,’ the young man replied. ‘Very latest thing. All the information required is in here. On punched pieces of paper.’

‘How does it work?’ asked Cameron.

The young policeman struck it with his fist. ‘It mostly doesn’t,’ he said.

‘I only want to speak with Commander Case.’

The young policeman struck the crime engine once again. ‘Stupid thing,’ he said. ‘It was working a minute ago.

Cameron looked down at the desk. The young policeman’s name was printed on a little brass plaque.

‘Constable Gates,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘I know my way to the commander’s office. I will trouble you no more.