The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends (10 page)

After hot and breathless desert trudgings, we returned at last in safety to the
Marie Lloyd
, where we hastened to our bathrooms. And I was glad for that.

We ensconced ourselves once more within our time-eliminating conveyance and I enquired of Mr Bell just where and when we would be travelling to.

‘Home,’ said Mr Cameron Bell. ‘Home to London, it is.’

And I was very happy to be going home.

To the safety of London, the heart of the British Empire.

‘Shall I set the controls for the year nineteen hundred?’ I asked.

Mr Bell now shook his head. ‘A little way on from there,’ he said to me.

I must have made a worried face at this, but my friend and companion assured me that all would be well. He knew London intimately, he told me, and I would have nothing to fear in the heart of the great Metropolis with him by my side.

‘London is London and always will be,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

‘So what year are we travelling to?’

‘Nineteen forty,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

*
There is no way of telling whether Cameron Bell
actually
said this, and by now the reader will have noticed numerous inconsistencies in the text. True, the book
is
penned by a monkey and this must be taken into account. Also there is always the problem of self-aggrandisement, which is so often to be found in autobiographies. My own
I, Robert,
soon to be published by Far-Fetched Books, suffers from none of this. (R. R.)

*
It is generally believed that keys did not exist in ancient Egypt (nor indeed dark blue policemen's trousers). But given all that has gone before, who would argue about such small details? (R. R.)

1940

11

e agreed that we should land the
Marie Lloyd
at the Royal London Spaceport in Sydenham, which spread beneath the hill and the Crystal Palace.

I set the controls for the date, month and year that Mr Bell instructed me to and we were off.

‘And so,’ I said to my friend, ‘explain to me, if you will, just why we are going to this particular time and place.’

‘To catch our thief,’ the great detective said.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I am aware that this is your goal. Now please offer me some
specifics
.’

‘Specifically, then,’ said Mr Bell as he uncorked champagne, ‘I discovered these papers –’ and he indicated those that were spread about upon the navigation desk ‘– which suggest that Arthur Knapton will have dealings here with a secret organisation in London during the year nineteen forty. There are dated memoranda. From numerous meetings.’

‘Meetings about
what
?’ I enquired, for this seemed a reasonable question.

‘ “The employment of top-secret technology”,’ said Mr
Bell, reading from a memorandum. ‘Mr Knapton is going to be engaged in discussions with the Ministry of Serendipity.’

‘I believe this Ministry is unknown to me,’ I said as I helped myself to a banana from the bowl and accepted a glass of champagne.

‘But not to myself,’ said Mr Bell. ‘It is said that the Ministry of Serendipity has been the “power behind the throne of England” for several hundred years.’

‘I like not the smell of that,’ I said.

‘The Ministry upholds the interests of the British Empire as a whole. Rulers come and rulers go, but the Ministry remains.’

‘That all sounds somewhat sinister,’ I said. ‘Almost criminal, in fact.’

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Mr Bell. ‘We . . . I mean
they
, do what is for the best.’

“‘
We
 . . . I mean
they
”? You mean
you
are an agent of this Ministry?’

Mr Bell nodded and toasted me with champagne. ‘I could possibly get you an honorary membership,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So then I might have a say in the running of the country?’

‘No, not as such. But you could use the Ministry's bar and you get a discount on hansom cab fares.’

‘Do you think they will still have hansom cabs in nineteen forty?’ I had emptied my glass of champagne now and held it out for refilling.

Mr Bell took to this refilling. ‘All vehicles will be electrically powered by nineteen forty,’ he assured me. ‘It will be thrilling to see the future, will it not, Darwin? To see the great strides forward Mankind will have made. I will wager you that the British Empire will rule not only the planets in our solar system, but many others also.’

I dearly wish I had taken Mr Bell up on this wager.

‘I predict that it will be idyllic,’ my companion prophesied. ‘All men equal. Peace and harmony. The races of Ape and Man living in perfect unity.’

Oh, how I wish I had taken him up on
that
.

‘So let us be clear,’ I said to Mr Bell. ‘You know, from the documents you found in the vault, the dates and times of Arthur Knapton's meetings with members of the Ministry of Serendipity in nineteen forty?’

‘I do,’ said Mr Bell. ‘And with one member in particular.’

‘Go on.’ I took my refilled champagne glass and set about its emptying.

‘An old friend of both yours and mine – Mr Winston Churchill.’

I snorted champagne from my nose. ‘Mr Churchill?’ I said.

‘By the evidence of these papers, Mr Churchill has attained to the rank of Prime Minister in the era towards which we are heading.’

‘Ah,’ said I. ‘Mr Churchill and I are indeed acquainted. A rather headstrong fellow, Mr Churchill. Always up for a fight, as it were.’

‘But a man, you will agree, who holds the Empire close to his heart.’

‘On
that
I
will
agree.’ And I toasted Mr Bell and the ship crashed down without warning and he and I fell on the floor.

‘We are going to have to work on our landings,’ said my friend, when he had once more found his feet. ‘We cannot go on crashing the
Marie Lloyd
.’

‘Well, it is not
my
fault,’ I said to him. ‘There is no way of judging how fast this ship travels through time.’

Mr Bell helped me to the pilot's seat and I examined the dials and year-counters.

‘We have reached the Royal London Spaceport,’ I said. ‘It is seven o'clock in the evening on the twenty-seventh of July in the year nineteen forty, and according to the barometer we can expect rain later, so we had best take our umbrellas.’

Now came the question of what would be the appropriate apparel to don for the year nineteen forty. All Mr Bell had to offer on this subject was that we ought to wear ‘something smart’.

So we repaired to our respective wardrobes and presently emerged in something smart.

Mr Bell wore a full dress suit, with evening cape and top hat.

I wore the rather spiffing Germanic military dress uniform that Queen Victoria's cousin Baron Claus von Zeppelin had given to me. Mr Bell had successfully solved a case for this great man. One that involved, if I recall correctly, a music hall dancer, a biscuit tin and a wiener dog named Fritzy. I remain somewhat hazy regarding the significance of the biscuit tin. But it was a
really
spiffing uniform, bedecked with a great deal of braid, smart golden epaulettes and German eagle motifs.

With the jodhpurs and jackboots I looked very smart indeed!

‘Dashing,’ said Mr Cameron Bell as he looked me up and down.

‘You yourself look smart enough,’ I said. ‘Are we going somewhere special, then, tonight?’

‘I thought we would visit the Electric Alhambra,’ said Mr Bell. ‘That will bring back a few memories, eh?’

‘Not altogether good ones,’ I said. ‘Colonel Katterfelto and I performed there, as you know. He had a knack for
dodging the fruit and veg that was thrown by the crowd. I, however, did not. And also that was where the colonel died.’

‘I will treat you to a box seat tonight,’ said Mr Bell, ‘after supper at my club.’

And on that merry note we left the
Marie Lloyd
 . . .

 . . . To step out onto the cobbled stone of the Royal London Spaceport . . .

‘Where has the London Spaceport gone?’ I asked Mr Bell. Because the
Marie Lloyd
was parked upon grass that spread away to the distance.

Mr Bell made sad sounds in his throat and pointed up towards Sydenham Hill.

‘Where has the Crystal Palace gone?’ he asked.

We had certainly landed in the right location – there were landmarks which attested to this. But the spaceport, its runways and buildings were gone, and so too the Crystal Palace.

‘I bet it burned down once again,’ I said to Mr Bell. ‘But on the bright side, at least this time it wasn't your fault.’

Mr Bell angled his topper and said, ‘Let us search for some transport.’

We marched away and found the road and with it a building that both of us recognised. A hotel in which I had lodged and Mr Bell had visited. A hotel known as the Adequate.

But it was known as the Adequate no more, for it had been renamed the British Bulldog. A swinging sign imaginatively depicted the coloured representation of a bulldog wearing a Union Jack waistcoat and some kind of iron helmet, and smoking a cigar.

‘If we have now found ourselves in a time where bulldogs rule the world,’ I said to Mr Bell, ‘I would like to take my leave at once.’

Mr Bell put his finger to his lips and said, ‘Now, listen to that.’

Somewhere from far in the distance, a curious metallic wailing sound reached our ears, followed by a number of dull but definite thumps.

All at once, a gentleman appeared from the doorway of the British Bulldog. He wore upon his head a helmet not dissimilar to the one the dog on the sign was wearing, but his had the letters ‘ARP’ painted upon it.

‘Gawd strike me down!’ he exclaimed as he viewed myself and Mr Bell. ‘Surely it's Count Dracula and Kaiser Bill ’iself.’

Mr Bell grinned painfully. ‘What is that woeful wailing sound?’ he asked.

‘The air-raid siren?’ asked the chap. ‘Are you kidding of me?’

‘Air raid?’ said Mr Bell slowly, and I swear I saw the colour drain from his face.

‘Are you with the circus?’ now asked the chap.

Mr Bell nodded. His thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

‘Well, you'd best get inside, mate. You know you can be shot for a looter if you're out after the siren.’

Mr Bell perused the chap, his gaze moving from the fellow's shoes to his trouser-cuffs, to his waistcoat and shirt-collar. Mr Bell drew a sudden breath. ‘We are at war,’ he said.

‘And the geezer in the topper wins a big cigar,’ said the chap in the helmet. ‘Now inside with you both and let's ’ave no more nonsense.’

Mr Bell looked down at me and shook his head in sadness. ‘This is very bad indeed,’ he said.

The interior of what once had been the Adequate had not changed very much, a tad shabbier, perhaps, and duller to
the eye, and the carpet was now threadbare. The lighting, however, was electric.

The hotel reception area now served as a saloon bar, littered with ill-matched tables and chairs. These were adorned by working types, who upon viewing us displayed expressions of dire perplexity.

Someone said, ‘Are you ’avin’ a gi-raffe?’ But this offered no comfort. A poster pinned to a nearby pillar displayed the words
WALLS HAVE EARS
, which I found most perplexing.

‘They're with the circus,’ said the chap with the painted helmet.

Mr Bell doffed his topper and said, ‘Greetings, one and all.’

The working men returned to their conversations as the chap in the helmet led us to the bar.

‘This is Doris,’ he said, indicating a vast woman who swelled behind the bar-counter, her costume a floral symphony, her face a crimson sunset. ‘She will serve your needs. I ’ave a call that must be made.’ And with that said, the chap in the helmet bowed and took his leave.

Doris smiled upon Cameron Bell, then turned her gaze towards me. ‘And who is this cheeky little rascal?’ she asked.

I opened my mouth to reply.

‘His name is Darwin,’ said Mr Bell, thrusting a rough hand over my face to stifle my conversation. ‘Naturally he cannot answer for himself –’ Mr Bell gave me a meaningful glance ‘– but he is a highly trained circus ape. House-trained also and not at all fierce.’

I bit the hand of Cameron Bell, but not hard enough to draw blood.

‘A cheeky rascal indeed,’ said Mr Bell. And his eyes turned towards the row of handpumps.

‘Only bottled, I'm afraid,’ said Doris. ‘And only pale ale, I regret.’

‘I'll take one of those, then,’ said Mr Bell, ‘and a bowl of water for Darwin.’

I showed Mr Bell my teeth and a second pale ale was swiftly added to the order.

‘One and six,’ said Doris, serving same.

Mr Bell dug into his trouser pocket and produced a half-crown coin that bore the head of Queen Victoria on its shiny face.

Doris received it, examined it and bit it, smiled and said fair enough and took herself off to the till.

I climbed onto the counter-top and poured my pale ale into a waiting glass. This received applause from the working men. I raised my glass and mimed a toast and they clapped once again. Doris brought change to Mr Bell and he examined this.

‘It's real enough,’ said Doris.

‘King George the Sixth,’ said Mr Bell.