The Steampunk Detective (4 page)

“Oh thank you,” Scarlet said. “Thank you.”

Mr Doyle turned to Jack. “Can you pack a small bag for yourself in case we are gone overnight. I already have one ready. We will meet on the balcony in five minutes.”

“On the balcony?”

Mr Doyle did not answer him. He had already left to speak to Gloria about rearranging his diary. Jack gave Scarlet a quick nod and hurried to his room. Packing his bag only took a moment. He threw on a long dark green coat and picked up a pair of goggles from the top of the chest of drawers.

These are cracking good
, he thought.
Very stylish.

Looking through them experimentally, he discovered a small sliding switch on the side that made it possible to magnify things at close distance. Now that he thought about it, Mr Doyle’s goggles had a similar control. He returned the goggles to their normal setting and jammed them on his head.

Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he thought he looked rather spiffy.

A moment later he exited and started towards the reception room. He stopped himself. Had the detective really mentioned the balcony? Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue. He found Scarlet leaning on the railing looking out at the city.

“It’s a beautiful view from here,” Jack said, desperate to make conversation. In his entire life he had never spoken to a girl as beautiful as Scarlet. In fact, he had never even envisioned a girl as beautiful as Scarlet could even exist. She made the girls back at the orphanage look like hedgehogs and walruses.

“It is, indeed,” Scarlet said. “Have you been Mr Doyle’s assistant for long?”

“Er, no, not very long,” Jack stammered. “Lovely day out here. Might be some rain later.”

“And what exactly do you do for Mr Doyle?”

Jack didn’t want to say he had only worked for the detective for less than a day. “Just assist him, you know, general like.”

“I see.”

Mr Doyle made his appearance at that moment. “Just this way, thank you.”

He started climbing up an iron ladder to the roof of the building. Jack had not noticed it before. Scarlet went next, so Jack was the last to stand upright on the roof to see Mr Doyle’s surprise.

An airship.

“You have your own airship,” Jack said, in wonder.

“Not many people have their own airship,” Scarlet said, looking impressed.

“She’s called the Lion’s Mane. A gift from a grateful client,” Mr Doyle explained. “It was a case involving a murder and an octopus and a –. Well, never mind. Shall we board?”

The vessel measured some thirty feet in length and about half that across. The main balloon was silver in colour. The gondola was red and gold. A stylised profile of a lion decorated the bow. The vessel rolled slightly as they entered the main compartment of the vessel.

It was two chambers. A glass dividing wall separated the living room from the engine room and bridge.

I’m in heaven
, Jack thought. He felt like he was walking on air. He had never travelled on an airship before. Covering his mouth, he hoped Scarlet didn’t notice the expression on his face – he felt like he was grinning like a loon.

If the other kids at the orphanage could see me now –!

Ignatius Doyle pushed a few buttons on the main control panel. “I started the boiler earlier, so this shouldn’t take very long.” He fiddled with the controls. A small shot of steam spat out from the side of the vessel. A dial on the board wavered in the green.

“I will release the mooring cables,” Mr Doyle said. “First the front. Now the rear.”

The cables fell away and the Lion’s Mane gently started forward. Within moments it had drifted away from the roof of the building and away from Bee Street. Jack gripped one of the hand rails tightly.

Jack’s heart pounded with excitement. His face felt flushed. “I’ve never flown before,” he said. “Not in an airship, anyway.”

He noticed Scarlet’s startled expression.

“It’s a long story,” he said.

Chapter Five

The airship rose higher above the city.

“I had to apply for a pilot’s licence,” Mr Doyle explained. “I’m now fully qualified to fly a flying boat containing up to sixteen passengers. Any more than that and I would have to upgrade my license.”

“You’re a man of many talents,” Scarlet said, looking at Mr Doyle with new respect.

A sudden thought occurred to Jack. Looking out at the city below, he asked, “Were you in the war, Mr Doyle?”

“I was.”

“And what did you do?”

Mr Doyle did not answer him for so long that Jack thought he must not have heard. He turned away from the view and looked into the older man’s face. He saw a frozen expression, as if the detective were staring into the past.

“I commanded a regiment in France,” he said. “Many men served under me. Young good men.” He said the words stiffly as if struggling to put the sentences together. “We fought many battles together. Some we won. Others we lost.” Mr Doyle looked embarrassed. He looked down and tapped his leg. “That’s where this happened. A piece of shrapnel, courtesy of the Kaiser. Still in there.”

Jack looked at Scarlet and noticed her looking at him with a slight frown on her face. He was unsure why she was giving him such a severe expression. “Do you have any medals, Mr Doyle?” Jack continued.

“There is a time and a place for everything,” Mr Doyle said evenly. “This is neither.”

“London is changing,” Scarlet suddenly said.

I’m an idiot
, Jack thought. The older girl had been quicker in realising Mr Doyle felt uncomfortable in discussing the war and now she was rapidly changing the subject.

“The city is growing all the time,” she continued. “The old buildings are being torn down and being replaced by the new.”

“The invention of Milverton’s bacteria has changed everything,” Mr Doyle said.

Jack frowned. Who was Milverton? Wasn’t he the chap at the Olympics? But what was this business about his bacteria?

“Ah yes,” Jack said. “Milverton’s bacteria. Good old Milverton. Where would we be without it. Er, him.”

He suddenly realised both Scarlet and Mr Doyle were looking at him.

“Alright,” Jack shrugged. “I give up. What does it do?”

“It was discovered by Darwinist, James Milverton,” Mr Doyle explained. “Engineered in a lab in Surrey, it has a strength two hundred times that of steel. The compound can still be used to coat individual bricks, stonework and other materials to build structures far larger than anything ever thought possible.”

With those words the airship rose up above the buildings of the West End and the entire horizon of London lay before them. The new mega structures, all built since the war, lay before them – the new Parliament House, the British Art Museum and New Buckingham palace. All three buildings climbed over two hundred stories in height – but what drew the eye was the piece de resistance of British engineering.

The London metrotower.

“Milverton’s Bacteria is changing the world,” Mr Doyle said. “We wouldn’t have the metrotower without it.”

They seated themselves around the small bridge and travelled in silence for a time as they continued to ascend. The landscape of London lay beneath them, smoke and steam rising up from it, blanketing the city in a shifting grey cloud. Mr Doyle manoeuvred the Lion’s Mane in the same direction as other airships departing the city. Eventually they hovered under a line of other ships heading East.

Jack noticed almost all of the ships were passenger or transport vessels with their company emblems emblazoned on the side. Only a few of them bore individual markings like the Lion’s Mane.  

“That’s the Highbridge,” the detective pointed out. “Belongs to the Queen’s nephew. And there’s the Musgrave. Belongs to that industrialist fellow, Beets.”

The sun broke through the cloud cover above them, dousing their vessel in patches of warm light. Jack leant against the window, took a deep breath and exhaled.

For a moment – just a moment – the pain of his parent’s deaths seemed to evaporate. Sometimes he felt their deaths so keenly he wanted to burst into tears, but mostly he felt their loss like a lead weight strapped to his chest. The sensation was always there, a stifling heaviness that never disappeared.

Now as he looked from the window the burden seemed to dissipate.

Maybe this really can be a fresh start
, he thought.

Gradually Mr Doyle adjusted their trajectory and started their descent towards Flinders Park. They gently drifted through the smoke and fog below until the vista of roofs lay beneath them.

“Can you see your home, yet, Miss Bell?” Jack asked.

“Why, yes, yes I can,” she said excitedly. “I believe we can land in the street outside.”

“I’ll bring us down,” Mr Doyle said.

They slowly descended past the sea of rooves towards the footpath. A few curious passers–by slowed to watch them drift down into the street. They landed with barely a bump and Mr Doyle climbed out to secure the vessel to a nearby lamp post.  

Miss Scarlet Bell’s residence was an apartment at the top of a three story building in a quiet back street of Camden. Jack and Mr Doyle followed her up the stairs until they reached the top floor. By the time they reached the final landing, Jack noticed Mr Doyle favouring his poor leg.

Scarlet opened the door and looked in. “Father, are you home? Oh!”

Her exclamation brought Jack and Mr Doyle into the room after her. They found themselves in a long narrow hall. A small side table lay overturned and the contents of its draw flung onto the floor. As they made their way through the apartment, they found it had been completely ransacked. The contents of every drawer had been taken out and cast onto the floor. Wardrobes had been emptied. The contents of cabinets were flung everywhere. The kitchen cabinets had been emptied, their contents unceremoniously flung onto the floor.

“I assume this is not your usual standard of housekeeping,” Mr Doyle said gently.

“Absolutely not,” Scarlet said, her face flushed with anger.

“I’ll make tea,” Jack offered.

“Good man,” Mr Doyle said.

By the time Jack had finished and poured tea into cups, Mr Doyle had searched most of the apartment.

“It seems you may have been correct in fearing for your father,” he said, patting the poor girl’s shoulder. “Whilst there is nothing to indicate he has been harmed, someone was certainly searching for something.”

“I wonder if they found it,” Jack tipped some broken crockery into a bin.

“It is impossible to say,” Mr Doyle said. “However, it seems likely they were unsuccessful. Scarlet, did your father own a safe?”

She sat up. “Yes, how foolish of me. I should have checked it immediately.”

They hurried to her father’s bedroom. A safe lay open in a wall behind a curtain. A few pages remained in the safe. Most of the other papers had been thrown over the floor. Some of them lay under bedding that had been dragged off the bed during the search.

“It seems they did not find what they were seeking,” Mr Doyle said.

“Are you sure?” Jack asked.

Mr Doyle nodded. “This bedding has been thrown over some of the papers taken from the safe, so it seems the search of the apartment continued after the safe was opened.” The detective seemed lost in thought for a long moment. “This leads me to two conclusions. One, that the perpetrators will continue to search for that which they seek. And two…”

He turned to Scarlet. “I’m afraid you may very well be in some danger, my dear.”

A distant rumble of thunder sounded overhead, as if to emphasise the great detective’s words. 

“Me?” Scarlet asked, surprised.

“Absolutely,” Mr Doyle responded. “I believe the criminals have tried to extract the information from your father without success. Then they have conducted a search of your apartment. The next logical step is to see if you can furnish them with what they need.”

“But I know nothing!”

“We know that, but they do not.” Mr Doyle stared into space for a moment before turning again to Scarlet. “I must ask you to remain in the parlour for a few minutes while we conduct our own search.”

“Of course,” she responded.

“It means we will have to search your own private effects.” Mr Doyle blushed slightly. “Even your clothing.”

“I have nothing to hide,” she said firmly. “I am a modern woman.”

Jack and Mr Doyle searched the apartment for the next hour, peering under furniture and going through each item one by one. Jack pointed out how difficult it was to actually find the object of their quest when they were unsure as to what it actually was.

“We will know it when we see it,” Mr Doyle said.

After some time Mr Doyle started tapping the walls of the apartment. He began in Scarlet’s room, then moved to her fathers and then finally the common rooms. After a time he called Jack into Joseph Bell’s study.

“My boy,” he said. “Would you be so kind as to pace out the length of this room?”

“Yes sir,” Jack said.

He started at the far end where a bookcase ran the whole length of the room and walked from that end to the opposite wall.

“Seven paces,” Jack said.

“Now come to the next room,” Mr Doyle instructed.

They walked down the hall to the adjacent room which was Scarlet’s bedroom. Jack paced from one end to the other and announced the distance to be ten paces. Finally Mr Doyle took him back to the hallway and asked him to pace the distance of the two rooms.

“Twenty,” Jack said, frowning.

“I thought so,” Mr Doyle said. “Either the builders did not know their maths or something is not quite right.”

They returned to the study. Every book had been ripped off the shelves and flung onto the floor by the perpetrators who had broken in. It took some time for Jack and Mr Doyle to clear the floor. Finally Mr Doyle stood in front of the bookcase, examining the shelves.

“This seems solid enough. And this.” He stood on a chair and ran his hand along the top edge. “Now there’s something –.”

A click sounded from the bookcase and it moved slightly towards them.

“A secret room,” Jack said in astonishment.