The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (53 page)

“It’s the bleedin’ back axle, guv’nor!” the driver explained. “Third time it’s broken this week!”

Burton turned into Montagu Place.

“Hey up, Cap’n! How’s it diddlin’?” came a hail.

“It’s diddling very well, thank you, Mr. Grub. How’s business?”

“Awful!”

“The chestnut season is almost upon us. I’m sure that’ll improve matters.”

“P’raps, Cap’n. P’raps. You been to see his nibs again?”

“The prime minister? Yes, I was summoned.”

“Well, I ‘ope you told ‘im that the lot o’ the common man ain’t no bed o’ roses.”

“I always mention it, Mr. Grub.”

“An’ he does bugger all about it! Bloody politicians!”

“A breed apart,” Burton noted.

“That’s it in a nutshell, Cap’n!”

They paused while a rotorship roared noisily overhead. Mr. Grub shaded his eyes and looked up at the enormous vessel. “What’s that what’s wrote on the bottom of it?” he shouted.

Burton, who knew the street vendor was illiterate, said: “It is rather hard to make out, isn’t it? I think it says:
Make a new life in India. Space, spice, sunshine, and all the tea you can drink!”

The mighty ship slid away over the rooftops.

“You’ve been to India, ain’tcha, Cap’n? Would you recommend it?”

“It has its attractions.”

“But not for the likes o’ me, I suppose. I reckons I’m better off ‘ere on me own little corner of good old Blighty! Got me own patch, ain’t I! What more can a man arsk for?”

“Quite so, Mr. Grub. Good day to you!”

“An’ to you, Cap’n!” said Grub, touching the peak of his cap.

Burton strode on.

As he neared his front door, he heard: “Read all about it! Lincoln declares slaves free in Confederate States! Read all about it! Emancipation for slaves in America!”

The king’s agent whistled in wonder. He spotted little Oscar Wilde and called him over.

“Big news, eh, Quips?”

“Aye, that it is, sir!” The boy exchanged a newspaper for coins.

Burton read out the headline:
“Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Well, well! That’ll make things difficult for Pam! It looks to me as if America’s president is every bit as cunning as our own prime minister!”

“We have really everything in common with America nowadays,” said Quips. “Except, of course, language.”

The king’s agent chuckled. “Emancipation!” he announced triumphantly. “I can’t say I’ll be one whit sad to see that dreadful trade banished. If America is intent on becoming civilised, then Lincoln’s proclamation has just taken it a good deal closer to achieving that goal!”

Three harvesters stalked past on their tall legs, each with crated goods swinging in netting below their bodies. The second of them had somehow developed a limp, and as it thudded past, its damaged leg made a rhythmic complaint:
creak—ker-chang, creak—ker-chang, creak—ker-chang.

Burton recalled Sir Charles Babbage’s hatred of noise.

“The fact is, Captain,” said Quips, “that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.”

The famous explorer watched the three huge mechanised insects striding away. People scattered from their path. Voices were raised in anger, fists shaken.

“Maybe so, young ‘un. Maybe so.”

He bade the urchin farewell and mounted the steps of his home, glancing up at the boards that covered the hole where his study window used to be. The builders were due tomorrow to effect repairs.

“William Trounce is upstairs,” Mrs. Angell informed him as he entered the hallway.

“You’re back!”

“I am, Sir Richard. And a good thing, too. I don’t know why, but I’ve been under the impression that you promised to have the place clean and tidy. I suppose all the sea air must have gone to my head and filled me with funny notions.”

“I’m sorry, Mother. There’s been a great deal happening. I haven’t stopped!”

“Have you made us safe?”

“Yes. The Tichborne business is over and done with.”

“Good. Get yourself upstairs, then. I’ll fetch some cold cuts and pickles for you and your flat-footed friend.”

Burton leaned forward and pecked her on the cheek. “Angell by name, angel by nature. What would I do without you?”

He bounded up the stairs, past the wrecked study, and on to the library.

“Trounce, old man!” he declared as he entered. “It is undoubtedly a splendid day!”

“Gibber-mouth!” Pox squawked from his perch.

The Scotland Yard man rose from a chair, put a book aside, and shook Burton’s hand in greeting.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” he exclaimed. “I’ve had to bear the brunt of it all by myself. I don’t think I’ve ever been insulted so assiduously—and that’s saying something for a policeman!”

“Sit down. Take a brandy. Smoke a cigar,” said Burton, throwing himself into an armchair.

Trounce sat and squinted at him suspiciously. “By Jove, you almost look happy! I didn’t know that infernal face of yours was capable of such an expression!”

“I’m full of good tidings! Brunel has designed a new and more efficient voice-producing instrument—no more of that awful ding-donging—and, at this very moment, he’s fitting one to Herbert Spencer. Our clockwork philosopher will be speaking by the end of the day!”

Trounce clapped his hands together. “That’s tremendous! What’s he going to do with himself? It must be rather awkward, being mechanical!”

Burton produced a cheroot and applied a lucifer to it. “He wants Admiral Nelson’s old job—wants to be my valet. Says he doesn’t trust anyone else to keep him fully wound. And he wants to write; says he’s never had such clarity of thought and already has three volumes completed in his head—he just needs to scribble ’em down. If he uses my autoscribe, he’ll be knocking them out at twenty to the dozen!”

“A wind-up author!” exclaimed Trounce. “That really takes the biscuit!”

“It’s a publisher’s dream,” Burton declared.

“Flap-tongued baboon!” sang Pox.

The king’s agent drew in smoke, put his head back, and blew out a perfectly formed ring.

“Good news regarding Sir Roger, too. The Arundell family has taken him in, and Brunel is fitting him with power-driven arms, the same as those worn by Daniel Gooch. That’ll certainly compensate for his missing limb. Nothing doing with the face, though; I fear the poor soul will be behind that iron mask for the rest of his life.”

“Will he take up residence at Tichborne House?”

“Yes, and he’s adamant that the dole will continue to be paid every year. He still believes in Lady Mabella’s curse.”

“I don’t blame him. His family has had nothing but trouble since Sir Henry broke his ancestor’s vow.”

Burton jumped up and said: “What about that brandy, then?”

He crossed to the chest of drawers by the door and returned with a decanter and a couple of glasses. He poured generous measures and handed one to his friend.

“How’s Honesty?” he asked as he returned to his armchair. “Has he recovered from his injuries?”

“More or less. He’ll not have use of his hand for a while. He’s taking a month’s leave. I think the sight of all those animated corpses pushed him to the brink. I’ve never seen him so unnerved. I daresay time spent with his wife and garden will put him to rights. He’s a tough little beggar.” The Scotland Yard man raised his eyebrows. “I’m still waiting,” he said. “It’s all good news but none of it explains your—what is it?—
ebullience.
Is that a word?”

“It is,” Burton smiled. “And the correct one.”

“So let’s have it. Tell all.”

The famous explorer took a gulp of brandy, put his glass aside, and said: “Acting on a recommendation from my extraordinarily talented and brilliant assistant—”

“And perverted,” Trounce added.

“And perverted—the government has purchased the seven François Garnier Choir Stones from Edwin Brundleweed. They will, I’m happy to report, continue to reside in Herbert Spencer’s babbage brain. The government has also bought the seven South American fragments from Sir Roger. Palmerston wants to ensure that all the Eyes of Nāga are in British hands. It’s a matter of state security.”

“So now they are. What of it?”

“Two of them are, Trounce. Two of them.”

The detective inspector frowned and shook his head. “There are only two. The third has never been discovered. It’s somewhere in—Oh.”

Burton’s eyes glinted. “Africa!” he said.

“You mean—?”

“Yes, my friend. Tomorrow I shall start putting together an expedition. I’m off to search for the third stone, and, while I’m at it, I mean to locate once and for all the source of the River Nile!”

“You’re going to put yourself through all that again?”

“Don’t worry, old man. With the government funding the expedition and Brunel supplying vehicles for the initial stages of the safari, I think I can safely predict that this attempt will be a great deal less traumatic than the last!”

Pox let loose a terrific shriek: “Bollocks!”

SIR
RICHARD
FRANCIS
BURTON
(1821–1890)

1862 was a particularly bad year for Burton. Newly married to Isabel Arundell, he was separated from her for almost the entire twelve months. As consul on the disease-ridden island of Fernando Po, he spent much time exploring West Africa and was exposed to areas that had been decimated by the slave trade. As ever, he managed to commit his astute observations and sometimes extremely harsh opinions to paper, resulting in three books:
Wanderings in West Africa, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains
, and
A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomé.

ALGERNON
CHARLES
SWINBURNE
(1837–1909)

Due in no small part to the efforts of Richard Monckton Milnes, 1862 was the year that Swinburne’s maturing poetry gained greater critical recognition. It was not, however, an easy year for him personally. His great friend Lizzie Rossetti (née Siddal) died, and his one and only marriage proposal was rejected—the recipient, whose identity remains a mystery, laughed in his face. His alcoholism was also reaching epic proportions by now, making his behaviour erratic in the extreme.

Wouldst thou not know whom England, whom the world, Mourns? …

is from the poem
Elegy
, which appeared in
Astrophel and Other Poems
in 1904. It does not refer to Sir Richard Francis Burton.

If you were queen of pleasure …

is from the poem
A Match
, which appeared in
Poems and Ballads
in 1866.

CHARLES
BABBAGE
(1791–1871)

The man who is regarded as the father of computing was a complex personality, haunted by personal tragedies (including the death of five of his eight children) and ongoing funding problems. Some of his most groundbreaking designs, such as his Difference Engine, were never built during his lifetime. The unfinished status of so many of his projects can, in part, be blamed on financial woes, but Babbage’s eccentric character certainly didn’t help matters. Among his many quirks, he possessed a distaste for “common people” and an aversion to the noise they produced. His ire was particularly directed at street musicians.

Babbage was never knighted.

In 1862, he was busy writing his autobiographical
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.

THE
MEASUREMENT
OF BRAINWAVES

The understanding and measurement of the brain’s electrical activity properly began with a British physician, Richard Caton (1842–1926), who presented his findings to the
British Medical Journal
in 1875.

THE
TICHBORNE
AFFAIR

The sensation of the age, the Tichborne affair commenced in 1866, when the Dowager Lady Tichborne received a letter from a man purporting to be her long-lost son, Roger. This man, who was in all probability Arthur Orton, a morbidly obese butcher from Wapping, had relocated to Australia some years before. When he arrived back in England to claim the Tichborne estates, he was strongly opposed by the establishment but fervently supported by the working classes. Two trials followed. During the first, which lasted 102 days, the Claimant failed to prove his identity and the Tichborne inheritance was denied him. The second trial—a criminal prosecution—lasted 188 days. Arthur Orton was found guilty of perjury and sentenced to fourteen years of hard labour (he served ten).

Despite the overwhelming evidence against him (not least being the fact that he looked nothing like Sir Roger Tichborne), the Claimant became a great favourite among the lower classes, and was the subject of humour, songs, and plays. His trial exposed the weaknesses of the aristocracy and led many ordinary men and women to the conviction that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

The Tichborne/Doughty/Arundell family weathered the storm, though they became doubly vigilant that the annual Tichborne dole should never be missed.

HERBERT
SPENCER
(1820–1903)

One of the most influential, accomplished, and misunderstood philosophers in British history, Herbert Spencer melded Darwinism with sociology. He originated the phrase “survival of the fittest,” which was then taken up by Darwin himself. It was also adopted, misinterpreted, and misused by a number of governments, who employed it to justify their eugenics programs, culminating in the Holocaust of the 1940s. Spencer, unfortunately, thus became associated with one of the darkest periods in modern history.

Bizarrely, he is also credited with the invention of the paperclip.

He said:

“The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
”