The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (44 page)

“Mother!” a muffled voice cried from inside the mobile castle’s front cabin. “Help me!”

It was Palmerston’s driver, who’d been quaking inside the box ever since the wraiths had appeared and caused the deaths of the guards.

The piggy eyes of the Claimant flicked to the source of the sound. In one stride he was beside it, grabbing the edges of the wedge-shaped compartment. He began to heave it back and forth. The man inside wailed piteously.

Swinburne heard himself mutter: “Tichborne! The bloody toffs are—are—are trying to do away with Tichborne!”

He shook his head.

“No!” he growled. “No! No! No! That is
not
Sir Roger bloody Tichborne!”

He stepped straight through the drifting wraith, levelled the cactus gun, and fired. As he touched the trigger nodule, his arm jerked aside, and the spines flew wide.

“Bloody conspiracy!” he gasped, fighting the words as they forced themselves out of his mouth. As fierce as the battle in the street was, the fight in the poet’s head was even more intense.

Admiral Lord Nelson bounded over to the Claimant and lunged in. His rapier danced. He skipped away. Wraiths swooped around him, grabbing at his arms, but they couldn’t hold him.

The corpulent creature screamed as two of the lumps on its scalp disappeared, sliced off by the sword blade. Blood gushed from the wounds. Black gems bounced into the gutter.

Swinburne felt a sudden lessening of the pressure on his brain.

“Herbert!” he cried. “Collect the diamonds! We mustn’t lose them!”

The Claimant twisted and lumbered after Nelson, who now stood a short distance away in the
en garde
pose. He reached the clockwork man and there commenced a flurry of arms and blade as Nelson jabbed and sliced at the fat behemoth, while the latter attempted to deflect or catch the flashing rapier.

Herbert Spencer tore himself away from the tormenting wraith and darted forward. He retrieved the two fallen Choir Stones. As he did so, another one fell.

The Claimant let loose a terrific shriek and clutched his head.

“I remember!” he shouted. “I remember!”

Nelson backed away from his opponent, who once again lurched after him. The sleeves of the Claimant’s jacket, and the shirt beneath, hung in tatters. When he raised his hands to grab the rapier, his mismatched forearms were fully exposed. They were terribly lacerated, but the creature appeared to be entirely immune to pain.

The rapier danced away from the clutching fingers.

The Claimant roared with frustration.

Herbert crept up behind him and picked up the third stone, then two more as the fourth and fifth flew from the swollen man’s head.

Swinburne started to shoot spines into the creature’s back, hoping that the accumulating venom would at least slow the juggernaut down.

“I want meat!” the Claimant raged. His face was covered with blood. Every few moments, his tongue snaked from between his lips and licked at the red liquid.

The sixth diamond dropped.

Admiral Lord Nelson started to duck and dodge more intently. The remaining stone was located at the back of his opponent’s head, so he needed to somehow manoeuvre himself into a position from which it could be extracted.

As the two combatants moved back and forth over the cobbles, Spencer followed cautiously, slipping the sixth stone into his pocket.

The clockwork man stepped in close, bent under a lashing fist, sprang forward, whirled, and sent his rapier’s tip digging into the remaining fleshy protuberance on the back of his adversary’s skull. A small chunk of flesh dropped away. Blood spurted. A black diamond sparkled. It landed at Spencer’s feet. He snatched it up. He now had the complete François Garnier Collection in his pocket.

“Aaaaargh!” the Claimant cried. “Hurts! It hurts! Give me meat! I want meat!”

He turned to face Nelson and backed away a couple of steps, peering through the blood streaming over his eyes.

His fury seemed to leave him for a moment.

He blinked.

Swinburne felt a profound sense of release, as if he was fully himself again. He lowered the spine-shooter and watched.

“No,” the fat man uttered. “No. I am not—I am not—”

He lifted the larger of his two hands up to his face.

“I am not Roger—”

He dug his blunt fingernails into his forehead and cheeks.

“I am not Roger Tichborne!”

With a stomach-churning tearing noise, he ripped his face from the front of his skull and held it out triumphantly.

“My name is Arthur Orton! And I want meat!”

He pushed the drooping skin and tissue into his mouth and started to chew.

“Ah,” Swinburne whispered. “So there we have it at last.”

Arthur Orton considered Admiral Lord Nelson.

“You,” he rumbled, “are not meat.”

His gory countenance, all raw muscle and throbbing veins, turned until he was looking directly at Herbert Spencer.

“But you—”

With startling agility for one so gargantuan, Orton lunged at the vagrant philosopher.

Spencer turned to run.

Admiral Lord Nelson sprang into action. He took two great strides, raised the rapier, sent it plunging toward the back of Orton’s spine, suddenly slowed—and froze.

The clockwork man had wound down.

Corpulent fingers closed around Spencer’s neck.

Swinburne started shooting, pressing the trigger nodule again and again.

“Trounce!” he shrilled. “Your pistol! Your pistol!”

There was no response. The detective was either out cold or dead.

Spencer yelled as he was yanked off his feet.

“Meat!” bellowed Orton triumphantly and sank his teeth into the back of the philosopher’s neck. His victim’s scream of agony was cut short as vertebrae crunched and shattered, and a gobbet of pulsating flesh was wrenched free.

Orton twisted Herbert Spencer’s head off and threw it to one side. It bounced away across the cobbles. Blood pumped from the severed neck, and the monstrous butcher laughed as it sprayed over his face.

“No,” Swinburne sobbed. “Oh Jesus, please no.”

Holding Spencer’s twitching corpse with the larger of his hands, Orton plunged the other into the neck, pushing it deep into the body.

“Aaah,” he sighed, and when he pulled the dripping red arm back out, the philosopher’s still-beating heart was gripped in his fingers. He tore it free of stretching arteries and flesh, raised it to his mouth, and licked it.

“Why won’t you fucking die?” Swinburne raged, tears streaming down his cheeks.

The Claimant turned and regarded the poet. He grinned and chewed on the twitching organ.

Swinburne raised the cactus gun and, without aiming, touched the trigger nodule.

Spines sank into Orton’s right eye.

The butcher flinched, shook his head, and waddled slowly toward the tiny man.

“More meat! I like meat!”

Swinburne turned to run but suddenly found himself gripped by vaporous hands. Two wraiths had swooped upon him and now, just as they had dragged Sir Alfred Tichborne through Tichborne House to his doom, so they began to pull Swinburne to his.

“Get off me! Get off me!”

Orton gave a bloody smile and said: “Come to me. I eat you up!”

Closer and closer Swinburne was drawn, until the gigantic butcher towered over him, dripping blood onto his flame-red hair.

“Yum yum,” Orton drawled, through a mouthful of Herbert Spencer’s heart.

He reached out and caught the poet by the lapels. He lifted him into the air. The wraiths floated beside Swinburne, holding his arms, preventing him from using the cactus pistol.

Orton spat the lump of flesh from his mouth. His lips peeled back from the big green incisor teeth. His jaws opened. He leaned forward, his mouth approaching the poet’s skinny neck.

Swinburne suddenly felt completely calm.

“Two things,” he said, looking straight into the little piggy eyes. “Firstly, I concede defeat.”

Orton stopped and regarded the small man.

“You’ve won. So why not rein yourself in a little? After all, London is on its knees. The Houses of Parliament are half destroyed. Buckingham Palace is under siege. The working classes are in control. My friends have been beaten into submission or killed. I mean to say, there’s no need to dine on an insignificant little poet like me just to prove a point, is there?”

Orton gave a bubbling chuckle and licked his lips.

“Meat!” he hissed.

“Yes,” the poet continued. “I thought you might say that, which brings me to my second point, which is this: your manners are truly appalling. Have you not read
A Manual of Etiquette for Young Ladies?”

Emitting an animal growl, the Claimant opened his mouth wide and placed his teeth against Swinburne’s throat.

There was a sound—
thunk!
—and the poet suddenly fell to the ground, the wraiths swirling away from him.

He looked up.

Arthur Orton’s head was transfixed by a huge African spear, which had pierced his skull above the right ear and exited beneath the left. Blood and grey brain matter oozed from its point.

The man who’d called himself Roger Tichborne toppled backward, hit the road with a tremendous thud, and lay still.

Algernon Swinburne sat bemused. Then he looked to his left at number 14 Montagu Place. In the gaping hole where the study window had once been, Sir Richard Francis Burton stood, his Dervish robes fluttering slightly in the breeze.

I see tremendously bright future. I see plants and flowers everywhere. They will fulfill their natural functions, of course. They will add colour and beuty to our cities and landscapes, of course. They will freshen and perfume the air, of course. But, by god, they will do so much more.

—Richard Spruce

“May Allah bless thee and grant thee peace,” Al-Masloub murmured.

“And peace and blessings upon thee,” Burton replied. “You are certain you do not require an escort?”

“Allah is our escort.”

“Then I am assured of your safety. Until next time, my friend.”

Al-Masloub smiled and bowed and he and his fellow musicians departed, slipping into the thickening atmosphere of Montagu Place.

“You, on the other hand,” Burton said, turning to Mrs. Angell, “most definitely will be escorted.”

“I should stay, Sir Richard,” his housekeeper protested. “Look at the state of the house! It’s a terrible mess!”

“And one that I shall see to. Your carriage awaits, Mother Angell. A constable will drive you to the station and stay with you on the train all the way to Herne Bay. A few days in a bed and breakfast enjoying some fresh sea air will work wonders on your nerves.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my nerves.”

“Well, there jolly well ought to be after what you’ve been through today! Now off with you, and I promise to have this place as good as new by the time you get back.”

Reluctantly, the old lady descended the front steps, accepted a helping hand from a policeman, and climbed into the brougham parked just in front of the prime minister’s mobile castle. With a quick blast of its steam-horse’s whistle, the carriage chugged away, heading to the Queen Victoria Memorial Railway Station.

Detective Inspector Trounce emerged from the mist.

“Your local postmaster is a stubborn ass!” he complained. “He absolutely refused to open up shop. I had to threaten him with arrest.”

“Can you blame him, after this?” Burton responded, indicating the debris-filled road.

“Humph! I suppose not. Anyway, I sent off a parakeet to Scotland Yard. More men will be here in due course.” He hesitated. “And a mortuary van is on its way.”

Burton gave a curt jerk of his head in acknowledgement and the two men entered the house.

The king’s agent said: “Pox found Constable Bhatti, who says he’s on his way. The bird has since been racing back and forth between here and Battersea Power Station. Brunel has agreed to assist us.”

Trounce reached up and gingerly felt the big bump on his head. “Ouch! So the Steam Man will fight alongside us rather than against us on this occasion?”

“Yes, although not literally. There are a lot of springs in that lumbering life-maintaining contraption of his. If the mechanism ceased to function, he’d die. Best to keep him out of the enemy’s range.”

They passed Admiral Lord Nelson, who, rewound, and with the cactus pistol in one hand and a rapier in the other, was standing guard in the hallway.

“Same applies to him, then,” Trounce said, indicating the valet.

“No,” Burton replied.

“No? But he’s chock-a-block full of springs!”

“Yes.”

“So our opponent will stop him with ease.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“What? By Jove, what the blazes are you up to?”

“All in due course, Trounce, old man. All in due course.”

Algernon Swinburne came down the stairs. His eyes were hooded and his jaw set hard. Herbert Spencer’s death had affected the poet greatly.

“I’ve locked the Choir Stones in the safe in your library, Richard. They were giving us headaches.”

“Thank you, Algy.”

The three of them entered the seldom-used dining room. Lord Palmerston, Burke and Hare, and the prime minister’s driver were seated around the large table.

“Gentlemen, we have very little time to spare,” Burton announced. He, Swinburne, and Trounce sat down. “Our riposte must be immediate and devastating. Before we put the wheels into motion, though, I feel I should apologise to you all. Our enemy incapacitated me. She exploited a certain flaw in my character, causing it to echo back on itself over and over until it became amplified beyond all endurance. Fortunately, I retained enough of my wits to put myself through the Dervish meditation ritual. It enabled me to transfer my mind’s focus from guilt, disappointments, and regrets to something I said to Charles Babbage right at the start of this whole affair, to wit: ‘
The mistakes we make give us the impetus to change, to improve, to evolve.
’ I should have been regarding my own errors of judgement in that light all along, but I wasn’t. Now I am. It’s a statement, I believe, that can be applied not only to individuals but also to wider society, and is the philosophy that must guide us now, for whatever the rights or wrongs of a workers’ revolution, the crisis currently afflicting London does not have its origin in lessons we, as a nation, have learned. Rather, it has been forced upon us by an external agency, and in relation to a mediumistic divination. We cannot allow it. The woman must be stopped.”