The Educated Ape & other Wonders of the Worlds (21 page)

The
Phelamanga
entered the atmosphere of Mars with little more than a few angelic
flutterings, then wafted down and settled upon the landing strip of the
planet’s capital city.

The
imaginatively named VICTORIA.

Mr
Bell craned his neck to view what lay beyond the porthole. He had only been
off-world once before, when he found himself amongst an illegal hunting party
upon the planet Venus. Mars would be a very big adventure.

Would
he succeed? Rescue Darwin, foil the witch and bring her justice, then return
the stolen loot to its rightful owners? All depended first upon him finding and
acquiring the last reliquary. Stolen by whom? And located where? It was a very
big planet out there.

The
first—class passengers disembarked and were carried off towards the arrivals
hall aboard a six-wheeled charabanc drawn by several creatures which Mr Bell
assumed to be the Martian equivalent of the horse. Three-legged beasties were
these, which perambulated in a spiralling balletic fashion. Their heads were
small, their bodies sleek and speckled.

Mr
Bell now became aware that everything upon Mars appeared to be hued in shades
of red. The dust that arose from the charabanc’s wheels was a rich and rusty
ochre, while the beasties’ pelts were in tones of pink that matched the
cloudless sky.

Presently
the outer door of the second-class cabin opened, releasing the fetor within and
admitting a dry and pleasant air laden with curious essences, all new to
Cameron Bell.

An open
cart pulled by an alarming spider the size of a brewer’s dray horse arrived at
the
Phelamanga
to collect the second-class passengers and their luggage.
The driver of this cart and a swarthy assistant went about the loading of the baggage
in a calm, unhurried fashion possibly indicative of a philosophical frame of
mind that embodied syncretisation and spiritual placidity.

The
driver’s shirt cuffs, however, informed Mr Bell that it was nothing more than
wilful malingering and the great detective offered Mars his very first sigh of
the day.

The
journey to the arrivals hall passed without incident. But as Mr Bell stepped
down from the cart, he became aware that he was now coated with a thin layer of
Martian dust. Two ‘dust boys’ appeared from the building and with the aid of
long-handled brushes, and in exchange for a small remuneration, flicked the
passengers into a semblance of normalcy.

The
arrivals building was a piece of original Martian architecture. Constructed in
an unforgiving and unaesthetic manner, it was all bold buttresses and
stanchions with high blank ceilings and small circular windows. A large crude
‘A’ had been painted upon the facing wall. Menials were scratching away to
remove it and grumbling the word ‘anarchists’ as they did so.

Now
began a process which appeared expressly designed to upset the incoming
passenger, involving as it did outrageous public body searches accompanied by
much shouting and barking from brutal officialdom. Mr Bell managed a long and
lingering anticipatory sigh but was mercifully spared from it all, for upon
displaying his passport to a ferocious flat-headed individual, he was informed
that he had a ‘priority clearance’ and that his friends were waiting for him in
the First—Class Saloon.

Mr
Bell humped his luggage to this First-Class Saloon, there to be greeted by Miss
Lavinia Dharkstorrm and two henchmen new to Cameron Bell.

Miss
Dharkstorrm was seated at a table topped by red local marble and supped at a
cocktail held in a long pale glass. She raised her eyes to Mr Bell, then dabbed
her fingers to her nose.

‘Why,
sir,’ said she, ‘you smell most rank indeed.’

Mr
Bell smiled through teeth most tightly gritted. ‘Your fragrance remains
unchanged,’ he observed.

‘Compliment
or insult?’ Miss Dharkstorrm shrugged without interest. ‘I have booked you into
the New Dorchester,’ she said. ‘There you may bathe and make yourself
respectable. I have also arranged an audience with Princess Pamela at ten
o’clock local time tomorrow morning. Princess Pamela is aware of your reputation
— after all, it was
I
who recommended you to her as the ideal fellow,
both discreet and thorough, to retrieve her stolen property. I know you will
seek to recover the reliquary as quickly as possible to save your little monkey
friend from undue suffering. Once you have done so, you will place it in a
safety-deposit box here at the spaceport. Give Mr Bell the key, please,
McDuff.’

The
henchman named McDuff stepped forward and tossed the key at the feet of Mr
Bell. The detective stooped to pick it up.

‘I
would ask—’ he began.

But
Miss Dharkstorrm shook her head. ‘All that needed to be said has now been
said.’ She smiled. ‘You will do as I have instructed. The matter is neither
open to negotiation nor subject to equivocation. Depart now, if you please, for
your rankness offends me.’

The New
Dorchester was but a short stroll from the arrivals building.

The
New Dorchester had opened the previous year and was a faithful reproduction of
the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne. The whiteness of its walls might be tinged Martian
pink, but it stood all proud and British upon this alien soil.

Before
the hotel was a steam charabanc that the hotel’s residents might hire for days
out. Also there loafed a group of boys, grubby boys, these, and somewhat wild
of eye. As Mr Bell approached they fell upon him with offers to carry his bags,
or indeed his person, and to do certain things that were quite illegal on
Earth. Mr Bell fended them off with his sword-stick and entered the hotel. The
plushly costumed doorman was similarly offended by Mr Bell’s rankness but
tipped his hat to the detective, for it was more than his job was worth to turn
away paying clients.

A
suite of rooms had been booked for Mr Bell, a splendid bedroom with a study
area and a bathroom with a hydrostatic health spa, which was as fearsome an
arrangement of pipingshowerhead-water-jet paraphernalia and brass stopcocks as
had ever daunted Mr Cameron Bell. The instruction manual ran to thirty-six
pages and the detective suffered chills and scaldings by turn, but eventually
emerged from the bathroom a cleaner and a wiser man.

Having
attended to all the minutiae of male hygiene, he dressed in his pale linen suit
and put his travelling clothes outside the door, with a note to the effect that
they should receive immediate attention.

By
local time it was now early evening and Mr Bell’s stomach grumbled for dinner.
He stood in the bedroom and examined his reflection in a tall ornately framed
looking-glass.

He
was determined that he would succeed in his endeavours. He was, after all, Mr
Cameron Bell, widely recognised to be the greatest detective of his day. A man
who through mere observation of a gentleman’s attire could deduce with unerring
accuracy a host of intimate details and reveal the truth, thereby determining
guilt or innocence.

He
peered at this reflection. What could he deduce from
that?
It was
slightly out of focus, for from a misplaced vanity he rarely wore his
pince-nez. But he could read much about himself from his reflection.

Here
stood a man of average height, a portly fellow with a large bald head. A fellow
who looked as Mr Pickwick did. A fellow, furthermore, whose turn-ups spoke of
his self-doubt, and his lapels of his failings on this, that and the next
thing, too.

Mr
Bell was distracted from his reverie by a knock at his door.

He
answered this to find a messenger boy in a pillbox hat and brightly buttoned
waistcoat holding a silver tray that bore a long white envelope upon which Mr
Bell’s name was scrawled.

Mr
Bell accepted the envelope and tipped the messenger.

Alone
in his room, he examined the envelope.

It
had travelled through many hands and the Gothic script had been penned by a
woman. An evil woman. Miss Lavinia Dharkstorrm.

Cameron
Bell tore open the envelope, drew out a sheet of scented paper and read aloud
what was written upon it.

There
was something more inside the envelope and this Mr Bell tipped into his hand.

A
tuft of brown hair. A tuft that had not been cut but rather
torn
from
the skin of its owner.

There
was blood upon this hair.

The
blood of Darwin the monkey.

20

rincess
Pamela’s floating palace was painted peachy pink and had tiers and tiers of
tessellated turrets. Amongst its architectural anomalies were also to be found
a conglomeration of crimped cupolas, a multiplicity of marble minarets and a
superabundance of staggering steeples. All sufficient, in fact, to beg for
abominable alliteration as a hungry hound might beg for a bone-meal biscuit.

Or
indeed a simpering slave for the mercy of a monstrous master.

Mr
Cameron Bell, whose tastes in architecture were of the classical persuasion,
considered the palace to be of such overwhelming ostentation and ghastly
grandiloquence that he was lost for all alliteration.

As he
approached aboard the royal steam tug, the great detective stood at the prow,
as if some stoic figurehead, viewing the outrageous construction as it slowly
filled the skyline.

This
portly figurehead with his pale linen suit, straw boater aslant upon his baldy
head, a Gladstone bag in one hand and a sword-stick in the other, was not the
Mr Bell of the previous day. Which is to say that a substantial change had come
over him since he had viewed the horror delivered to his hotel room in a long
white envelope. This Mr Bell was the Mr Bell of old. A man supremely confident
of his powers. A man determined in his attitude. A man who would not be shaken
from his purpose.

A man
who was a force to be reckoned with.

The
steam tug’s engine
chug-chug-chugged
as the bulbous boat, its
registration plate naming it as the
Maggie
of
Cubit’s Yacht Basin,
London,
moved over the placid waters. The Grand Canal was five miles wide
at this point and had more of the look of a lake or an inland sea about it.

Mr
Bell called back to the man at the helm. ‘How many folk inhabit his
extraordinary creation?’ he called.

‘Thousands,’
the helmsman replied. ‘The princess maintains a vast retinue of servants.
There’s flunkeys and footmen, castellans and courtesans, equerries, courtiers
and chatelaines, too. Then there’s the shield—bearers, train—bearers, cup—
bearers, wine-bearers, bare-bearers—’

‘Bare—bearers?’
asked Mr Bell.

‘Did
I say bare-bearers?’ said the helmsman. ‘Naturally I meant bear—bearers — the
chaps who carry little bears around. Then there’s the laundry maids and parlour
maids and chambermaids and—’

‘I
think I get the picture,’ said Cameron Bell.

‘Jamadars
and bheesties,’ said the helmsman. ‘Not to mention the major-domos, lordly
lamplighters and twisted firestarters.’

‘Twisted
firestarters?’ enquired the detective. ‘I told you not to mention them.’
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