The Mechanical Messiah (13 page)

‘What the dickens?’ cried Cameron Bell, rightfully appalled.

‘Only joking,’ returned the cabbie. ‘Just imagine that if you will, though. A gentleman not being allowed to smoke in a cab. A sad and sorry world that would be, to be sure.’

‘Were such an unlikely event ever to occur,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘I would expect all right-thinking Englishmen to load their pistols, march to the terrace and take the gentleman’s way out.’

The cabbie made laughter. ‘Hello,’ he called. ‘The brougham’s turning into the Strand. We’ll be able to catch him up by going down the bus lane.’

‘Bus lane?’
queried Cameron Bell. Leaning forwards to stare.

‘‘Orse bus lane, guv’nor. A new in-o-va-cation to ease London’s traffic. The next thing you know they’ll be charging folk to drive into the capital.’

‘Enough of this biting satire,’ called Cameron Bell. ‘Take to the bus lane or whatever, but do catch up with the brougham.’

The private detective returned his cigar to its case and replaced this in his pocket. From another pocket he removed his handgun, checked it for ammunition and cradled it in his lap.

‘Blimey,’ called the cabbie, glancing down. ‘I ‘opes you’re not meaning to fire that thing in my cab.’

‘I have a special licence to use it,’ called Cameron Bell. ‘And,’ he added, ‘I believe the gentleman in the brougham to be a murderer.’

‘Even so,’ said the cabbie, who had his reservations.

‘And
French,’
said Cameron Bell. Knowing full well how all right-thinking Englishmen harboured especial distaste for the unwholesome Johnny Frenchman.

‘Then fair enough!’ The cabbie now steered his hansom into the bus lane and cracked his whip at the horse. Cameron was thrown back in his seat as the cab gathered speed.

The brougham swerved out from the crowded public lane and into that reserved for horse buses, hansoms and the like.

‘Must be a damned Frenchie!’ cried the cabbie. ‘No lawa-ma-biding son of this Sceptical Isle would behave like
that!’

‘There’s a sovereign in it, should you bring him to a halt,’ bawled Cameron Bell. Clutching his pistol in one hand and holding on tight with the other.

‘‘E does ‘ave two ‘orses to my one,’ the cabbie replied. ‘But we’ll catch ‘im, don’t you fret.’ He cracked his whip above the horse’s head. ‘Giddy up, Shergar!’
[6]
he shouted.

The chase was on, the horse’s hooves thundered, the hansom rattled fearfully and Cameron Bell held on tight. All was relatively safe and secure along the Strand and down into Pall Mall. Sporting toffs, who shopped in this fashionable area, raised their top hats and cheered as brougham and hansom rushed by. ‘Jolly good fun,’ they remarked.

Things took the first big turn for the worse when the brougham, up upon two wheels, turned right into St James’ Street. Here a steam-pantechnicon was parked, with removal men unloading a grand piano. The brougham crashed back down onto four wheels and the driver dragged the horses to the right, but the brougham’s rear end struck the grand piano, scattering removal men and hurling the piano through the glazed facade of a pharmacy. One of several such pharmacies, owned by a physician from Brentford in Middlesex named Professor Superdrug.
[7]
This particular pharmacy specialised in volatile nostrums of an unstable nature.

‘Boom!’
went the explosion.

The hansom cab, now hard upon the brougham’s heels, took much of the force. Cameron Bell suddenly found himself engulfed in flames and choking fumes and battered by a downpour of surgical appliances.

‘Oh my dear dead mother!’ The private detective hung on to his hat as a truss caught him full in the face.

‘Wah!’ wailed the cabbie. ‘Me bowler’s blown off and me barnet’s on fire. I’m proper angered now!’

Billowing smoke and bawling invective, the cabbie stepped up the pace.

The brougham had now turned left into Piccadilly and was heading past Green Park.

Normally, when passing this delightful area of pastoral beauty, the cabbie would become melancholic and often find the muse upon him and recite either Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ or William Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ (otherwise known as ‘Daffodils’).

‘******* French *******!’ swore the cabbie, beating at his smouldering topknot and whipping further life into Shergar.

It was at Hyde Park Corner that things took a second and decidedly worse turn for the worse.

‘We’ll ‘ave ‘im in all this ‘ere ‘ubbub,’ roared the cabbie, as in amongst a great slow-moving whirligig of traffic went the brougham. ‘I can ease alongside and you shoot Mr Froggy dead, if you will, guv’nor.’

I hope it will not come to that,
thought Cameron Bell.

But it
did
come to something like
that.
Of a sudden.

Above the considerable ‘ubbub of traffic was heard a loud report and an almost simultaneous whine as a bullet of high calibre ricocheted from the roof of the hansom cab.

‘‘E’s firing first!’ The cabbie ducked and thrust his head through the hatch above Cameron Bell. ‘****** unsporting *****.’

The scream of a woman rang out. Atop a nearby horse bus a gentleman clutched at his chest. The ricocheting bullet had struck an innocent soul.

‘There,’ cried somebody, pointing at Cameron. ‘There is the man with the gun.’

‘Not
I.’
Cameron rose to protest his innocence. But then dropped back as further gunfire raked about the hansom.

Passengers atop the nearby horse bus, where the innocent soul had been hit, were now delving into their handbags and morning coat pockets, depending upon the gender, and tugging out an assortment of weaponry. The blades of swordsticks were being unsheathed; derringers attached to hydraulic contrivances sprang into the hands of gamblers.

A lady in a straw hat, who steered a pony and trap, cocked a bulky-looking parasol which housed a flame-throwing cannon. And several soldiers of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers, home upon leave and crammed into the rear of a steam-powered charabanc, unholstered their ray guns and prepared to lay down fire.

The cabbie atop the hansom dragged out his blunderbuss.

There had not been a substantial shoot-out at Hyde Park Corner since that memorable day in eighteen twenty when the Duke of Wellington, somewhat far gone in his cups and in the company of regimental colleagues equally far gone in theirs, opened fire upon a party of nuns, believing them to be Black Watch highlanders in the service of Napoleon Bonaparte. An easy enough mistake to make and one which George IV, then Prince Regent, considered a just cause for awarding the Iron Duke the Order of the Garter. Two posthumous medals for bravery were also awarded to three officers in Wellington’s regiment who tragically fell when the nuns returned fire.

Cameron Bell ducked in his boater as pistols were drawn and pot-shots were taken and murder and mayhem ensued.

The drivers of hansom cabs, whom the drivers of horse-drawn buses believed to be members of a secret underground Masonic association, opened fire upon the drivers of the horse-drawn buses, whom they believed to be members of a secret underground Masonic association.

A regiment of Royal Horse Guards, who were taking their morning constitutional along Rotten Row, overheard the sounds of gunfire and took to the drawing of their sabres and the diggings of their boot spurs into the flanks of their stallions.
‘Charge!’
cried their commander.

A blackly clad anarchist pulled from his cloak something that resembled a cannon ball and lit its fuse.

Cameron Bell called up to the cabbie, ‘The brougham is getting away.

And indeed the brougham was. Its driver was steering it through the thick of battle. Beams of energy sliced at the sky as fine ladies in upholstered carriages pressed their gloved fingers to the ivory triggers of miniature jewel-encrusted ray guns that were the very latest fashion accessory. Horses reared and panicked and the death toll rose. The cabbie shouted, ‘After ‘im, Shergar.’

The brougham emerged from the war zone and plunged forwards into Hyde Park, narrowly avoiding the onward charge of the Royal Horse Guardsmen.

These gentlemen in their uniforms of red with emblazonments of golden braid rushed to either side of the hansom cab, causing the cabbie to shout out, ‘Rule Britannia!’

Along beside the Serpentine streaked the brougham, on the straight and drawing ever away from the hansom cab.

‘Faster, Shergar,’ screamed the cabbie, but Shergar was doing his best.

‘We’re losing him,’ called Cameron Bell. ‘Can’t you go any faster?’

‘We could if you’d care to get out, the cabbie suggested. ‘You are somewhat weighing us down.’

Cameron Bell spoke through gritted teeth. ‘What is
that
up ahead?’ spoke he.

‘
That—’
the cabbie was shaking the reins about, having given up on the whipping
‘—that
is the flying platform what I told you about. As what floats into the air like a flipping ‘air cut.’

‘Airship,’
said Cameron Bell. ‘And we don’t have time for any more
of that.’

‘Quite rightly too, guv’nor. All this careering about the streets ‘as fair sobered me up any’ow.’

In the distance Cameron could observe a lot of colourful bunting and a goodly crowd of people. The brougham was no longer to be seen.

‘We’ve lost him.’ Cameron Bell made a fist at the cabbie.

‘We’ve not lost ‘im, guv’nor. I can see ‘im in the crowd. ‘E’s down from the brougham and making for the platform. And ‘e’s carrying a ruddy great portmanteau on ‘is ‘ead.’

The cabbie brought the hansom to a halt, poor Shergar all sweaty at the flanks and foamy-faced.

‘Best settle up now,’ the cabbie called down. ‘And I’ll want a least a guinea for all this fuss and bother. Not to mention the— Oi there, ‘old on—’

But Cameron Bell had left the cab and shouting, ‘I’ll be back,’ fought his way into the crowd. Ahead the flying platform stood. A truly magnificent creation of burnished brass and polished steel, one hundred feet in diameter with surrounding guardrail and central dining salon. Beneath the promenade deck were the powerhouse and electric turbines, which received their driving force through Lord Tesla’s wireless transmission of electricity. A marvel of the modern age.

Cameron Bell elbowed his way through the surrounding crowd. Ladies and gentlemen elegantly dressed in the latest finery. Tots in sailor suits. Little girls in bonnets.

‘Pardon me,’ puffed Cameron Bell. ‘Important delivery coming through.’

Ahead he could just make out the portmanteau. It was rising now. Up the gangway to the flying platform.

‘Pardon me,
please.’
Cameron Bell pressed forward. But now his way was blocked by a chap in a uniform. ‘Have to stop you there, sir,’ said this fellow. ‘All full up for this trip. Have to wait your turn.’

‘I am an officer of the law,’ puffed Cameron Bell. Now short of breath from all of the excitement.

‘I recognise you, rightly enough,’ said the chap in the uniform.

‘Then let me pass. The suspect in a murder case has boarded the flying platform.’

‘Why, you’re a card and no mistake,’ said he of the uniform. ‘Come on now, Mr Pickwick.’

Cameron Bell waved his pistol. ‘Let me pass,’ he shouted.

But it was all too late.

The flying platform rose silently from its moorings, drifting up to tree-top height in a manner not unlike an airship. Folk were cheering and waving up at it. Folk aboard were calling down and waving back at them.

As Cameron looked up in dismay he saw a tall, lean and most dramatic figure lounging at the guardrail. The face was lost in the shadow of his high top hat, but a gaze swept down at Cameron Bell, as if a palpable thing.

There amidst the cheering and waving of the crowd upon this bright summer’s day, Cameron Bell felt an awful chill. And it was as if everything became momentarily silent and he was all alone in the presence of a terrible evil.

The moment passed. The shock of it remained. The flying platform gathered speed and swept away through the sky.

Cameron Bell made a bitter face and returned to the hansom cab.