The Steampunk Detective (2 page)

Still, anything had to be better than Sunnyside.

Jack gripped the wrought iron railing and mounted the tilting stairs. He pushed open the front door and entered the hallway. A glass frame listed the tenants of the building. Mr Doyle’s name appeared next to the tenth floor, but that was all. The stencilled letters did not display the name of his business.

The elevator shaft lay opposite. To its right, the stairs wound upwards into the building. A man occupied the bottom three stairs, sprawled out as if dead, a paper wrapped bottle inserted under his left arm.

Blimey, Jack thought. Not exactly the best house in town, is it?

He decided to take the elevator.

Jack pushed the up button and waited. A clanking, wheezing sound filled the lift well. After a minute, the elevator arrived and Jack climbed in. Pulling the iron door shut, he pushed the button for the tenth floor. The elevator shuddered – as if about to suffer cardiac arrest – and started to ascend. Jack caught glimpses of the other floors through the small glass window as he passed. He heard people arguing, saw a fist fight, witnessed a man and woman in a passionate embrace and heard someone singing opera.

The lift stopped with a shudder as if it had only just survived the experience. Jack climbed out. A short hall lay before him with a single door at the far end. He walked its length, feeling all the while like he was marching to his execution. A single spidery crack ran diagonally across the bottom right of the glass on the door. Two lines of text divided the glass.

Ignatius Doyle

Consulting Detective

He stood reading the words for a moment, then summonsed the courage to knock.

“Come in,” a female voice responded.

Jack gripped the brass doorknob in his hand and entered a small dusty office. Rows of empty chairs lined both sides. A beautiful woman sat at the desk. She wore a grey suit, bright red lipstick and dark eye shadow. Her hair was blonde with a mess of ringlet curls.

Bazookas
, he thought.
I’m in Heaven.

From behind the woman, a door led to another room.

She fired a wide mouthed smile at him. “Hello. You must be from the orphanage.”

He nodded.

“No words? Cat got your tongue?”

He shook his head.

“What’s your name?”

“Jack Mason,” he said.

“I’m Gloria Scott,” she introduced herself. “You can call me Gloria.”

“Hi Gloria.”

“And you’re an orphan.” She got up and before Jack knew what was happening, the woman gave him a hug. Jack was amazed. No–one at the orphanage had ever given him a hug. The last woman he could remember hugging him was his mother. A strange sensation welled up in his chest and he felt ridiculous, like he was about to burst into tears.

Gloria drew back from him and held him at arm’s length. “It must be so hard losing your parents. Ignatius lost his a long time ago.”

“Ignatius?” he asked.

“Yes. Mr Doyle.”

Of course.

“So you two are orphans together,” the girl said.

“Alright,” he said uncertainly.

A bell sounded on Gloria’s desk. She opened the door behind her and leaned through.

“Yes, Mr Doyle.”

“Is the young man here from the orphanage?”

“He is, indeed.”

“Well, send him in. We have work to do.”

“You have work to do,” Gloria turned to Jack with mock sternness. Then she winked. “Mr Doyle will see you now.”

Jack passed through the door into an enormous chamber beyond. A large timber desk crowded the entrance way. He stepped around it as his eyes took in the interior. The office seemed to take up the entire top floor of the building. Large windows surrounded the outside, allowing slanted rectangles of light to illuminate the huge chamber. Vast mounds of books and odd looking contraptions made the chamber look like some sort of junk shop. Low tables, filing cabinets and shelves created corridors through the chaos.

Jack’s eyes gradually focused on strange items within the chaos. He saw:

A stuffed owl and a stuffed rabbit.

Animals preserved in jars.

A miniature ferris wheel.

A plaster of Paris bust of a man.

A life size mannequin of a man missing its head.

A chemistry set with Bunsen burners and beakers.

Without doubt, this was the strangest room he had ever been in during his short life. He half expected a white rabbit to leap out from behind a shelf checking its watch. Gently closing the door behind him, his eyes searched the ramshackle interior for signs of life.

Harry – one of the boys at the orphanage – had told him the previous day about a racket involving orphanage kids. He had said some children were sold into slavery and transported to exotic far away places like Saudi Arabia. There they worked in the mines until they died of old age or exhaustion – whichever came first. Jack had laughed at him, but a seed of doubt had been planted.

As this memory passed through his mind, he heard a sudden shuffling sound from behind him. He turned. A man leapt up from behind a desk at the end of the room. The stranger wore a bizarre mask – a beekeeper’s hood.

He waved a gun in Jack’s direction.

“Don’t move,” the masked man ordered.

The gun fired.

Bang!

Jack threw himself sideways, hitting the ground. He rolled once, leapt to his feet and jerked open the door to the reception area. He raced through. Gloria cried out to him, but he ignored her as he sprinted down the corridor. As he reached the lift, he heard the man’s voice.

“Wait! Stop!”

Not bloomin’ likely
, he thought.

Waiting for the lift would take too long. He tore open the door to the stairs. Charging down them in terror, his heart banged like a hammer in his chest as the dimly lit stairwell closed in around him.

Chapter Three

Harry’s words rang in Jack’s ears. 

“They kidnap and drug you…you wake up on a boat….forced to work in the mines…feed you scraps….”

As far as Jack was concerned, no–one was drugging him, forcing him to work in a mine or feeding him any scraps. He would rather live on the streets than allow that to happen. As he went down the stairs two at a time, he heard the lift clanging as it descended through the building.

Was his assailant after him?

The stairs seemed to take forever. Finally he saw the old drunk at the bottom. He leapt over him in one smooth leap just as the elevator reached ground level.

The metal door slid across. Jack glanced back and saw a well dressed thin man exit. He held the beekeeper’s mask in one hand. It had to be the man who had shot at him. It had to be Ignatius Doyle.

Ignatius Doyle: man with an infirmity.

Ignatius Doyle: child kidnapper and slave trader.

Ignatius Doyle: scoundrel.

“Wait!” Mr Doyle cried out.

Jack ignored him and bolted from the building. When he reached the footpath his feet zigzagged left and right.

Where to run? Where to hide? 

A small group of well dressed people waited before him to cross the road. Jack pushed between them. A woman cried out indignantly at him as he started to charge across the road.

His feet slipped on the cobblestones.

A horse screamed.

Jack looked up to see a team of horses charging towards him. He tried to stand, but his shoes slipped again in the muck on the road. As he looked at the horses he saw the froth running from their mouths, their noses snorting, their legs bearing down on him…

“Holy bazookas,” Jack breathed.

A hand darted out of nowhere at the last moment. Grabbed his lapel. Dragged him sideways. As he sprawled across the pavement, he saw the horse and carriage charge directly past.

One more second and he would have been finished. He looked up into the face of Ignatius Doyle.

“You need to let me explain,” the detective began. “You see –.”

Ignatius Doyle got no further. Suddenly a dainty fist hit the older man in the shoulder.

“Mr Doyle!” Gloria stood there, her face crimson with fury. “How dare you scare the boy! He’s only just walked in the door!”

“I was merely testing a hypothesis,” Mr Doyle said. “Can a gun be accurately fired whilst wearing a beekeeper’s hood? I now know -.”

“Testing a –“ Gloria drew Jack close to her. “I’ve told you before about shooting inside!”

Mr Doyle stuck his bottom lip out. He looked like a schoolboy who had been caught doing something wrong. “A little bullet here and there won’t –.”

“A little bullet,” Gloria mumbled, turning Jack around to face her. “Don’t you mind Mr Doyle. He’s a good man, but a little eccentric. You know what I mean?”

“Uh,” Jack began. “I think I do.”

He studied Ignatius Doyle for the first time. He looked to be of slim build and aged about sixty years old. He moved with a slight limp; he favoured his left leg. He wore a bowler hat with goggles wrapped around the brim, a long black coat and a brown chequered cape.

“You come on back to the house,” Gloria continued. “Mr Doyle will make you a nice hot drink and sort everything out.”

Ten minutes later Jack found himself back in Ignatius Doyle’s lodgings, standing in almost the same place as he had been when the detective had fired his weapon. Now that he thought about it, the gun, although startling in the tiny space, had not actually been pointed at him.

Ignatius Doyle bustled over to a dartboard on the opposite wall. He examined it closely.

“Just as I thought,” he said triumphantly, turning to Jack. “The Queenscliff murder could have been committed by the beekeeper.”

Jack simply nodded.

The man lurched forward and held out a hand. “Ignatius Doyle.”

Jack looked at the hand uncertainly for a moment. Finally he clenched his jaw. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Jack Mason.”

“Ah, yes.” Mr Doyle looked slightly embarrassed. “Sorry about that little misunderstanding regarding the gun.”

“Uh, that’s alright.”

“But you will have to get used to my little mannerisms.”

“Uh. Okay.”

“Jack,” Mr Doyle mused. “That’s a good name.” The detective suddenly changed tact. “Did you enjoy the orphanage?”

Jack paused. “They were good to me, but I’m glad to be out of there.”

“I can imagine,” Mr Doyle said. “Hmmm.”

The detective limped over to a small table. He carefully inspected the collection of Bunsen burners and the chemicals filtering their way through a maze of tubes and curved piping. He removed a large flask of bubbling brown liquid. “Care for a hot chocolate?”

“Oh yes,” Jack said, his mouth instantly watering. “Please.”

Mr Doyle indicated two seats squashed around a small table under one of the windows. Jack looked out and saw a building on the other side. A woman hung washing on a makeshift line slung between two balconies. On another balcony a few floors below, two men sat on a pair of stools drinking cups of tea. One of them burst into laughter and fell backwards off his seat. Jack suspected there was more than tea in the cups.

Pushing aside a pile of books and a statue of the Eiffel Tower, Mr Doyle planted two mugs of steaming chocolate between them.

“Hot chocolate,” Mr Doyle said. “Elixir of the Gods.”

Jack gingerly sipped his drink. It was delicious. But – .

Could it be drugged? Mr Doyle and Gloria both seemed friendly, but could it all be part of an evil plan? He took another sip. The temptation was too strong.

Goodbye London
, he thought.
Hello, Saudi Arabia.

“Ah, Bertha,” Mr Doyle said, rising to his feet. He walked over to the fish tank, pulled a dead cricket from a nearby jar and dropped it in.

Jack watched in some horror as an enormous spider scurried over to the cricket and started to devour it.

“Haplopelma lividum,” Mr Doyle said. “The Cobalt Blue Tarantula.” He gazed down fondly at the creature before turning to Jack. “Do you have a favourite arachnid, Mr Mason?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “Any spider that’s under my shoe while I’m wearing it.”

Mr Doyle looked at him, stupefied.

He suddenly got the joke and burst out laughing. “Oh, very droll. But I must warn you that Bertha can only be handled by someone trained in arachnology. I must ask you not to play with her unsupervised.”

“I promise,” Jack said, seeing no problems in keeping that particular pledge.

“Now I will give you the grand tour,” Mr Doyle said.

The grand tour proved to be something like a cross between a jaunt through the British Museum and navigating a building site. Mr Doyle indicated various objects of interest. “Shrunken heads from Malta. My complete collection of cigar ash from the Birmingham and Leeds districts. Ah, now this is interesting.”

They stopped to pause before a cupboard. On one shelf assorted plates held samples of bread in various stages of decomposition. Moulds of various colours sprouted over the food. A small plate with a piece of cheese sat next to the others.

“I’m conducting an experiment into the rate of decomposition of bread at room temperature,” Mr Doyle explained. “It’s for a case I’m handling for the Surrey Police.”

“And the cheese?”

“Oh, that’s just yesterday’s lunch. Left it here by accident.” He popped the piece of cheese into his mouth.

Towards the back of the huge chamber, Mr Doyle pushed open a door and pointed inside.

“Here are your lodgings,” he said.

Jack looked inside.

His mouth fell open.

My lodgings
, he thought.

Back at the orphanage Jack shared a room of this size with seven other boys. It had measured about twelve feet square. Four sets of bunk beds crammed the interior. The room had no windows. A single gaslight illuminated the chamber in the brief hour before the boys went to bed.

Jack stepped into his new bedroom. Late afternoon sunlight steamed through the window, illuminating a wardrobe, chest of drawers, a freshly made bed and a desk. The walls were freshly painted. A sketch of a dog leaping over a stream decorated one wall. A door led off to one side.

“Your bathroom is through there,” Mr Doyle explained.