Infernal Devices (3 page)

  Such were the well-worn reveries that weighted my thoughts as I bent over the cabinet. As needful as my personal accounts were of replenishing, I feared that this was not to be an occasion of profit. I turned the flame up on the bracket behind the counter and, while my visitor continued to regard me with his slitted stare, bent over the device with magnifying glass in hand.

  My study revealed nothing of the machine's purpose, though any question of its origin was dispelled. Under the glass I discovered the floating escapement with ratcheted countervalences that my father had invented, though in this instance of a smaller size than I had ever encountered before, and linked in parallel to a train of duplicates disappearing into the brass innards. Other features were of such minuteness that the magnifying glass, no matter how I squinted through it, failed to yield the details of the device's workings. One section, brighter than the rest, appeared to be made of finely hammered gold leaf, the sheets of which were folded upon themselves in various asymmetrical patterns. Simple set-screws in the corners of the box showed where the device could be removed from its mahogany housing. A number of incomplete linkages around the sides, with signs of wear marking the collars at the ends of protruding shafts, indicated where the workings could be connected to other, larger devices.

  "It appears to be some sort of regulatory mechanism," I mused aloud. I looked up to see the Brown Leather Man's eyes still fastened upon myself. I shrugged, made uneasy by his intent scrutiny. "For a clock, perhaps, with various other functions combined?" I knew that the device was far too complex for such a simple purpose.

  Brown Leather nodded. "A regulator… yes. That is so. You are familiar with devices such as this?"

  "I know much of my father's work," I said. "But this in particular – no. I'm sorry."

  "But to repair it." His narrow gaze seemed to sharpen as he looked at me, as though the glint in his eyes were the points of needles. "You are capable of such a task?"

  As with most tradesmen, avarice outweighed prudence in my nature. There was nothing to be lost in an attempt to remedy the device, however unlikely the chances of success. But the man's eyes unnerved me, arousing a taste of the fear that Creff had felt, and moved me to honesty. I closed the mahogany lid and pushed the cabinet away. "I think not," I said. "Some of my father's creations are beyond my skill. I believe I would only damage this further if I meddled with it."

  My candour enabled me to look the gentleman directly in the eye. For a moment he was silent, the small points of light behind the slitted lids reading deeper past my own face. "Your warning I accept," he said at last. "Nevertheless, worthwhile will I make it to attempt what you can."

  "I cannot guarantee any results."

  "Please." The brown hands folded along the sides of the cabinet and slid it towards me. "Even the attempt is valuable to me."

  "Very well." My fingertips briefly touched his as I drew the device back to me; a deep chill flowed from the dark skin, drawing a heartbeat's warmth from my own. "I am, ah… uncommitted to any other projects currently. If you'd care to return in a week's time? Perhaps by then. Let me write you a receipt." I took a sheet of paper from beneath the counter. "Received from… ?"

  He ignored me, his gaze broken away from me and now sweeping about the shop's contents. Each clock, simple or elaborate, fell under his inspection.

  "Is there something else with which I can assist you?" I asked. Free of his searching gaze, I had been able to dismiss my moment of dread as foolish. Perhaps a solider bit of business could be transacted.

  Brown Leather turned back to me. "Your father's workroom," he said. "I would like to see it."

  The request caught me by surprise. I blinked at him before I found my voice. "Why?" I said simply. "There's nothing–"

  "Your father, Mr Dower; perhaps he left behind some articles, the use of which is puzzling to you? Mechanisms not exactly as this, but similar in part. Or even wholly different, but still of a function to you mysterious. If such are still in his workroom, I would like to examine them. They might be" – his voice arched, intimating – "valuable to me."

  His surmise as to the contents of my father's workroom was completely accurate. When I had first come to London to claim my inheritance, I had been astonished at the mechanical chaos that filled the large windowless room at the back of the shop. Tottering clockwork mountains, eviscerated timepieces of every size from pocket watches with dials as small as thumbnails to the massive gearing of tower clocks with hands thicker about than a man's wrist, brass skeletons of automaton figures with the round orbs of porcelain eyes staring from the unfleshed faces, scientific apparatus with dusty lenses peering only at darkness – a whole, universe caught midway through its moment of creation, and frozen there by the death of its Creator. My father apparently had worked on a score of projects simultaneously, and only his fervid brain had been able to sort out the interpenetrations of each with each in the crowded space. In my brief tenure there, the disarray had been increased by the natural decay of Time, and by my own admitted carelessness in clearing enough room for my own work at my father's bench. In addition, my practice of facilitating a number of repairs by scavenging bits and pieces from the partially assembled devices had the unfortunate effect of hastening the general disintegration.

  My reluctance at allowing a stranger to see the embarrassing muddle into which my legacy had fallen was overcome by the prospect of turning a profit on some conglomeration of gears and springs on which I had never expected to receive anything other than scrap value. "By all means," I said, gesturing towards the door behind the counter. "If you'd be so kind as to step around, I'd be pleased to have your inspection."

  I guided him down the hallway and the short flight of stone steps to the workroom. There being no gas bracket, I lit the lamp I kept on the bench. The flame, even adjusted to its highest, cast a light barely penetrating to the corners of the room, had they been visible behind the disordered masses of my father's abortive creations. The glow picked out highlights of brass gears and little more.

  Disregarding the gloom, the Brown Leather Man was already intently peering at the jumble of devices, poking at the various mechanisms with one long brown finger and bending closer to examine the assemblages of gears. Disaster threatened as one cliff-face of brass wheels tottered at his prodding inspection, a disembodied mannikin's head looking down from above in the manner of a Red Indian stalking an explorer in the rude deserts of America.

  A lensless telescope swung on its pivot away from Brown Leather as he probed deeper into the mechanical morass. "Are you finding anything of interest?" I called from my place at the bench.

  The silence of his back turned to me was his only reply. A bit nettled, I lifted the lamp and carried it towards him, the yellow circle cast around my feet, more to benefit my own curiosity than to aid his search.

  Holding the lamp aloft, I peered over the Brown Leather Man's shoulder, the light gleaming from the fuscous curve of his skull. Some involved meshing of gears and cogwheels, frozen in stopped Time, lay exposed before him, his extended forefinger probing like a surgeon's scalpel into a brass cadaver. So intent was he upon this post-mortem de artifice that he seemed scarcely aware of my presence behind him.

  A sudden snap of thin metal breaking, and my odd client lurched backwards, knocking me over and sending the lantern flying from my hand. The light was not extinguished, coming to rest propped against the leg of the workbench, but the immediate area where the Brown Leather Man stood and I undignifiedly sat was darkened.

  Enough light was reflected from the banked clutter of metal for me to look up and see what had happened. A coiled spring in the apparatus Brown Leather had been investigating now dangled crazily in air in front of him, one jagged end bobbing like a jack's head. The spring had apparently broken under his prodding and snapped sharply enough to inflict a wound on him. Indeed, I could see him with one hand clutching his opposite forearm to stanch the flow of blood from a jagged gash above his wrist.

  I scrambled to my feet, moved by natural sympathy and the prospect of the damages to which I might be liable.

  "My God, sir, you're hurt!" I cried, bending forward to minister to his wound. Dismayed, I saw the damp spatter of his blood upon the stone floor and the nearest brass device.

  He jerked the injured limb away from me. "It is nothing," he said. "Do not worry of it." His actions belied his words; still clutching his forearm, he hastily retreated up the passage to the front of the shop, with myself close behind.

  Before gathering up his hat and gloves from the counter, he clumsily fished a coin from his coat pocket and pressed it into my hand. A shiny wetness seeped between the brown fingers clamped to his forearm. "A payment on account," he said, his narrow eyes locking once more on to mine. "For your work to be done yet."

  Then he was gone, the shop door slamming behind him, and the clatter of hooves on cobbles and a hansom cab's wheels fading into the street's constant murmur.

  "Lord, I told you he were a mad one, didn't I? Just didn't I!"

  I looked around and saw Creff watching from the stairway, one hand again clutching the dull kitchenknife. Without looking at the coin that the Brown Leather Man had handed me – the flash of silver and its familiar weight assured me of its being a crown – I slipped it into my waistcoat pocket. "There's a bit of mess in the workroom," I said. "Some blood on the floor–"

  Creff's eyes widened as though inflated by his sharp intake of breath.

  "An accident," I assured him. "Nothing but a broken watch spring. Would you be so kind as to clean it up?"

  A few moments later, as I stood behind the counter examining the device left behind by my morning's visitor, with an odd premonitory unease staying my hand from lifting the lid, a shout came from the workroom. Creff appeared in the passageway, wadded rag in hand.

  "There's no blood here." He sounded annoyed, as if having discovered a jest played on him. "It's all wet, right enough, but there's no blood."

  "You must be mistaken," I said. "In the back, by my father's old things."

  "See for yourself, then,"

  I followed him down the steps. In the workroom, by the brass wall of my father's creations, where I had seen the jagged edge of metal tear the brown skin, I knelt down on the stone floor. Creff held the lantern above, illuminating the spattered wetness from my client's wound.

  Even before I touched it, a faint scent traced across my nostrils, evoking memories of childhood: the aunt who raised me, and our visits to the seashore at Margate. I dabbed a finger at one of the spots. The fluid on my fingertip was perfectly clear, rather than the thick scarlet I had expected. Curious, I tasted it.

  Not blood, but brine. As I knelt upon a stone floor in the heart of London, memories of sand and wheeling gulls deepened, unlocked by the sharp, vivid tang of sea water.

 
 

 

I have returned from my regular morning perambulation. Long acquaintance with my father's devices, and the eliminative functions of a dog grown old even before he became my companion in travail and peril, have made my habits as rigidly timed as those mechanical figures that parade in and out of the faces of certain Bavarian clock towers.

  In a smoke-darkened courtyard branching off my route, a group of children in tattered smocks, bare feet as black as the street grime they skipped upon, sang and played a simple hand-clapping game. The dog barked, as though to join in their shrill, innocent glee, but a chill settled around my own heart as I made out the words that accompanied their criss-crossing dirty arms and slapping palms.

 

 

  The children ran off, laughing and shouting rude gibes at the man who gazed after them with stricken expression. Painful memories, evoked by the childish song, marched behind my creased brow as, dog at heel, I retraced my steps homeward. The game's jingling rhymes were, no doubt, a decaying echo of those street ballads – complete unto infamous detail! – that first sprang up when my affairs came under the eye of public attention. I recalled the horrid evening, when I, thinking I had at last been returned to safety and anonymity, stopped at the perimeter of a crowd assembled to listen to an itinerant singer. Within minutes, I had realised that, to the tune of "Hail, Smiling Morn," a bawdy account of my recent perils was being related to the audience. Above their heads a coloured board had swayed on the end of a pole, with an artful caricature of my own face leering at maidens swooning to my supposed violin-playing; one ladylike hand had been depicted by the artist as trembling to touch the exaggerated clock-winding key into which a private section of my anatomy had been transformed. The sight of this villainous depiction in the hands of the balladeer's accomplice had staggered me backwards; the nearest faces had turned towards me and had spotted the resemblance between me and the demon fiddler on the placard; across dizzy-heaving streets I had been forced to flee before a general hubbub could arise. Shortly after, I had decamped to my new residence and hidey-hole, in a less populous district where my alleged crimes might go unnoticed against the backdrop of the inhabitants' grey squalor.

  Having returned to my desk and pen, the dog once more at his somnolent station by the coal-grate, I strive to banish the singing, mocking voices from my thoughts. To no avail: they form a constant obbligato to the actual words and tones I seek to conjure from the past.