The Educated Ape & other Wonders of the Worlds (24 page)

‘Absolutely
never.’ Belmont rocked gently, clutching his stomach.

‘I am
at a loss to explain this.’ Cameron Bell shook his head.

‘Oh …‘
went Belmont. ‘Oh …’

‘What?’
asked Cameron Bell.

‘Well,
have
you
ever seen
me
before?’

Cameron
Bell took to shaking his head once more.

‘Then
how do you know it’s
me?’
Belmont creased in further convulsions of
mirth.

Mr
Bell swung his foot and kicked him down the corridor.

At length, order
was restored and both made free with their apologies. Mr Bell’s sounded the
more convincing of the two, but even
he
did not really mean it.

‘So,’
he said with a heartfelt sigh, ‘it appears I must investigate myself’

Belmont
chewed upon his lip and twisted his fingers into his long white beard. ‘The
machine room should settle it,’ he said.

Mr
Bell tapped his sword-stick upon the flagstones. ‘What is this machine room all
about?’ was the question that he asked.

‘I am
the Keeper of the Royal Engines,’ said Belmont, pulling back his shoulders and
thrusting out his pigeon chest. ‘It is my duty to—’

‘Clean
and maintain them,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘And you have asked repeatedly for an
assistant to aid you in your duties but so far one has been denied you.’

‘Uncanny,’
said Belmont. ‘How did you know all that?’

Cameron
Bell shrugged. ‘Observation,’ he said.

‘Yes,
well, all true. The engines are old — they belonged to the Martians. I am the
only one who knows how they work.’

‘And
you believe that through the use of one of these machines we might divine the
truth of all this?’

‘Precisely.’
The little man made a weary expression. ‘I said as much to the princess, but as
I told you, she wouldn’t listen.’

‘I
am
listening,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Lead me to this machine room of yours and we
shall see what we shall see.’

‘We
shall,’ said the bearded Belmont.

The machine room
was long and low and offered up that smell of oil and brass polish that would
forever bring joy to generations of young and old men alike.

Mr
Bell sniffed approvingly and viewed the machine room. It was indeed a room of
many engines, all highly polished and highly complicated, a veritable panorama
of brazen tubing, cogs and gubbins and buffed-up brass stopcockery.

‘A
most impressive collection.’ Mr Bell made a smiling face and sniffed once more
at the air.

‘You
wouldn’t want the job of polishing it all,’ said Belmont bitterly.

‘But
what do they do?’ asked Cameron Bell, whose knowledge of engineering was scanty
at best.

‘All
manner of things.’ Belmont beckoned to be followed and pointed as he walked.
‘This one transmutes gold into base metal,’ he said. ‘That one creates
unnecessary friction. That one there can bring chaos out of order. And
that
one—’
he pointed to one quite near at hand ‘—that one makes apples out of
cider.’

‘They
all do the reverse of what they were intended to do,’ said the enlightened Mr
Bell.

‘On
the contrary — they all do
precisely
what they were intended to do. It
is more difficult to untie a knot than it is to tie one, would you not agree?’

‘I
would,’ said Cameron Bell, reaching out to touch a particularly pleasing
contrivance.

‘And
don’t touch anything!’ cried Belmont, spinning around. ‘That one unpicks people
as a grandma might unpick knitting.’

Cameron
Bell withdrew his hand. ‘Regarding knots,’ said he.

‘Like
I said, it’s harder to undo a knot than to tie one, so imagine how skilful
would be the inventor who constructed a de-printing press?’

‘De-printing?’
queried Mr Bell.

‘It
removes the printed words from paper then reduces the paper to its component
parts. Years of work went into that one, I am sure.

‘But
to what end?’ asked Mr Bell.

‘To
make all well with the world,’ said Belmont in a most exasperated tone. ‘Have
you never heard anyone say “things were so much better in the good old days”?’

‘I
say it myself every once in a while,’ admitted Mr Cameron Bell.

‘So
these engines were designed to make things the way they were before they got
all messed about with and spoiled.’

‘I
understand the logic,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘Good,’
said Belmont. ‘These engines, if set running twenty-four hours of every day,
would eventually return the worlds to the state of paradise that existed at the
dawn of Creation. Now do you see their cleverness and purpose?’

‘Yes,
indeed,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Yes, indeed I do.’ And his head went bob-bob-bob and
then he asked, ‘Who invented these marvels of retrograde machinery?’

‘Ah,’
went Belmont and took to tapping his nose. ‘A Martian invented these engines
and you know his name well enough.’

‘It
was not
me,
I suppose?’ said Cameron Bell.

‘What
a foolish thing to say,’ said Mr Belmont. ‘Let us pretend that you never said
it and go on with our conversation.’

‘So
who did invent these machines?’

‘A
Martian by the name of Leonardo da Vinci.’

Cameron
Bell gave thought to this. ‘That should have been followed by a drum roll and a
symbol clash,’ was his observation.

‘Were
you dropped at birth?’ asked Mr Belmont.

‘Which
is the machine that would have solved the case without the need for my
involvement?’ enquired Mr Bell.

‘This
fellow here,’ cried Belmont, making expansive gestures before an exceedingly
large and very wonderful engine. A symphony in brass, it was, with cogs
a-twinkle all about and pistons tall and pistons short and lettered key plates
poking out.

‘Behold,’
said Belmont. ‘The Patent Post-Cogitative Prognosticator.’

The
detective beheld this. ‘Post-Cogitative?’ said he. ‘Am I to assume that this
contraption predicts the
past?’

‘With
unerring accuracy. Behold the lettered key plates.’

Mr
Bell had already beheld the lettered key plates, but he was prepared to behold
them anew if necessary.

‘There
are key plates with letters and others with spaces,’ said Belmont. ‘Although I
cannot see them from down here, I’ve been up there polishing them often
enough.’

‘All
right,’ said Mr Bell. ‘What is it that I must do?’

‘Ask
it a question,’ said Belmont. ‘Tap the letters on the keys and spell out your
question. Ask it who stole the reliquary.’

‘But
I know who stole it,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘Somehow it was me.

‘Listen,’
said Belmont, ‘I am sorry that I laughed so much in the corridor.’

‘And
I’m sorry that I kicked you along it,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘Quite
so. But the reason I did is this. You may be a detective, and a good one, too.’

‘Some
say the best,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘And
you, no doubt, would be one of those. But you are on Mars now and things are
different here. Look at
me
— did you ever see anything like me on planet
Earth?’

‘I
once saw General Tom Thumb,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I had dinner at Windsor
Castle, with the Queen and Mr Phineas Barnum.’

‘You’re
not paying attention. Did you steal the reliquary, or did you not?’

‘The
evidence-’ said Mr Bell.

‘Forget
the evidence. Did
you
steal it?’

‘Not
to my certain knowledge,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘Then
whatever your evidence tells you, it must be wrong. The Patent Post-Cogitative
Prognosticator, however, is
never
wrong. It was built to be right. It
is
always
right.’

‘So
if I ask it who stole the reliquary, it will furnish me with the
correct
answer?’

‘That
is what I have been trying to tell you all along.’ Belmont cast his hands
aloft. ‘People just don’t listen to you when you are little. They boss you
about and don’t take any notice of you. They do not care about your feelings.’

‘I am
sorry,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘But — and please bear with me on this — what if I
enquire who stole the reliquary and it
does
spell out my name?’

‘Then
I will eat my beard,’ said Belmont. ‘Peppered and salted. Perhaps upon toast.’

Mr
Bell considered that although he could not really spare the time, he would be
prepared to set an hour or two aside to watch
that.

‘Right,’
said the detective. ‘I will tap in the question.’

‘Not
so fast,’ said Belmont. ‘You should pay a forfeit if you are wrong.’

‘But
I am
not
wrong,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I have yet to explain matters, but
essentially I am
not
wrong.’

‘Then
you won’t mind paying a forfeit if you
are
wrong.’

‘Not
at all,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Well,’
said Belmont, stroking the beard that he soon might be having for lunch. ‘Ah
yes, quite so. If I am to dine upon my beard, then you, if you are wrong, must
eat your hat.’

Mr
Bell laughed somewhat at this.

‘Promise
that you will,’ said Belmont. ‘I assume you to be a man of your word.’

‘All
right,’ said Mr Bell. ‘I promise.’

‘Then
tap the keys and spell out your question.’

Mr
Bell gave thought to this and then tapped out his question.

WHAT IS THE TRUE
NAME OF THE MASTERMIND

BEHIND THE ROBBERY
OF THE RELIQUARY?

‘Are
you sure you wish to phrase it like that?’ asked Belmont.

‘Absolutely
certain,’ said Cameron Bell.

Belmont
tutted loudly.
‘Mastermind,’
said he. ‘Giving yourself all airs and
graces.’

‘Just
trying to keep it accurate,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘Oh,
it will be
that
all right.’ Belmont climbed a small staircase, took hold
of a key that was almost the size of himself and wound up the clockwork motor
that powered the Patent Post-Cogitative Prognosticator.

The
engine came to life with wonderful
whirrings
and
clickings,
with
a spinning of ball governors and the enigmatic moving of parts that few men
knew the names of Mr Bell watched it as it went about its mysterious business.

‘Just
one question for you,’ he said to Belmont. ‘How far back into the past can this
contraption delve in search of answers?’

‘Until
the year eighteen nineteen,’ said Belmont, who had found an oily rag to wipe
his hands upon in the manner that engineers find so pleasurable. ‘Back until
that year only. It expresses no knowledge of anything prior to that time.’

‘And
how would you account for that?’

Belmont
now wiped his beard on the oily rag. ‘Either the engine was built during that
year or
nothing at all
occurred before that year. I am in two minds
myself’

Click-click-whirr-and-whizz
went
the wonderful engine and then it ground to a standstill. There was a sound that
resembled a thunderous burp and a strip of brass popped out of a little slot.

Belmont
caught it, blew upon it — for it was hot — then without so much as a glance
passed it up to Mr Bell.

‘You
read it out,’ said he.

Cameron
Bell glanced at the strip of brass. Letters were embossed upon it, so Cameron
Bell read out what they spelled. But read it to himself.

‘Out
loud,’ said Belmont. ‘What does it say?’

Mr
Bell took a very deep breath. ‘It says,’ said he, and he took another breath.
‘It says: “THE TRUE NAME OF THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THE ROBBERY OF THE RELIQUARY
IS—”‘

‘Go
on,’ said Belmont. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘“DARWIN
THE MONKEY,”‘ read Cameron Bell.

‘Do
you want mustard on your hat?’ asked the grinning Mr Belmont.

23

ustard,
Mr Bell spread on his hat, and then consumed it.