The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age Page 10

  The doorman led Darwin away to the dressing room. The colonel made his way to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic. The barman, a chappy of foreign extraction who no doubt wore trousers beneath his floor-length robes, bowed a head burdened by a turban of extravagant proportions and set about his task with a will. The colonel’s gaze strayed towards a large cage hanging behind the bar counter. It contained a parrot. The parrot wore a pair of turquoise trousers.

  ‘I know what you are thinking.’

  Colonel Katterfelto turned at these words to view the young man who had spoken them. He was tall and lean and elegant, with the dashing good looks of some hero of the Empire. A head of lush black hair and the bluest eyes the colonel had ever seen.

  ‘Mark Rowland Ferris,’ the young man introduced himself. ‘Fifth Earl of Hove and owner of The Spaceman’s Club. And you, if I am not mistaken, are Colonel Katterfelto.’

  ‘Your servant, sir,’ said that very fellow. ‘But how do you know my name?’

  ‘I am blessed with a total recall of events,’ said the young man. ‘I say blessed, but at times it is a terrible curse. But what I see, what I read, what I hear — I recall all. I observed your photograph in The Times newspaper of—’ Mark Rowland Ferris named day and month and year correctly ‘—being awarded that very medal that adorns the breast of your uniform by our grateful monarch, Queen Victoria, God bless her.’

  ‘God bless her,’ echoed the colonel.

  ‘Our paths have not crossed before,’ said Mark Rowland Ferris, ‘but I regularly peruse the visitors’ book and it is more than five years since your presence has graced my establishment.’

  ‘Been away.’ The colonel cleared his throat. ‘In the Americas. Don’t wish to dwell upon the matter.’

  ‘Quite so.. The privacy of members is to be respected at all times.’

  Trouser humour? wondered the colonel. Of course not! he concluded.

  ‘Sorry about the trousers,’ said Mark Rowland Ferris. ‘Some new Government ruling, thrust upon entrepreneurs such as myself who only seek to go about their business, unfettered by needless regulations. A health and safety executive, it is called.’ Mark Rowland Ferris turned up the palms of his exquisitely manicured hands. ‘Please have this drink upon the house. And see — here comes your pet in the most stylish of trousers.’

  Colonel Katterfelto agreed that the trousers which adorned Darwin were indeed especially stylish. He hoped, however, that his simian business partner had not overheard the word pet.

  ‘Would you care for a sherbet, little fellow?’ asked Mark Rowland Ferris. Darwin bared his teeth at Hove’s Fifth Earl.

  ‘He does not really understand English,’ lied Colonel Katterfelto. ‘Responds well to a cuff around the ear with a swagger stick, though.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Mark Rowland Ferris. ‘Well, I must be leaving you now. I just wanted to welcome you to the club. Not very much going on at this time of day, I regret. Apart from a party of Jovians in the Snap salon.’ Mark Rowland Ferris now spoke conspiratorially from behind a manicured hand. ‘Very big spenders,’ said he. ‘And very slow Snappers. ‘And he winked at the colonel, clicked his heels together, bowed his head and said farewell and strode away from the bar.

  Accompanied by his three French bulldogs, Yoda, Ninja and Groucho. All of whom wore trousers and berets.

  ‘What a strange fellow,’ mused the colonel to the monkey. ‘But polite enough in his manner. Hop up onto a stool here and take a glass of sherbet.’

  The turbaned barlord decanted a sherbet for Darwin and then removed himself to a respectful distance. The colonel muttered whispered words to the monkey.

  ‘Damned near impossible to — how shall I put this — gain an advantage at Snap,’ was what he had to say.

  Darwin whispered words of his own to Colonel Katterfelto.

  Armed with one hundred pounds’ worth of gambling chips (there had been some unpleasantness from Darwin regarding the handing over of his fifty pounds, but reason had finally prevailed), Colonel Katterfelto and his trousered companion took themselves off to the Snap salon. The room was dressed up as a traditional gentleman’s club, with oak-panelled walls and mahogany gaming tables. The house Snapper sat to one side of the only occupied table. Two girthsome Jovians sat to the other.

  The colonel had always been rather taken with Jovians. He had led several parties of them on big-game shoots upon Mars. There had been some fatalities, but the Jovians took that, as they seemed to take everything else, in good humour. There was much more of the human to the average Jovian than there was to the average Venusian. But for their overall size and their natural grey skin tone, which they tended to humanise with pink make-up when visiting London, they might well have been taken as sons of the British Empire. The two at the Snap table were laughing now. They seemed in the best of spirits.

  The house Snapper spied Colonel Katterfelto’s entrance and called out to him, ‘Sir, would you care to join us in a game?’

  ‘Not I,’ said the colonel, ‘but my nephew here.’

  ‘Your nephew?’ The house Snapper viewed Darwin the monkey. ‘Your nephew, did you say?’

  The colonel approached the house Snapper and whispered down at him, ‘The boy is somewhat backward,’ he explained, ‘and somewhat deformed, as you can see. He suffers from hypertrichosis, a medical condition of all-body hirsuteness that was recently exhibited in the sideshows The Missing Link and Half-Man, Half-Monkey.’

  ‘Really?’ asked the house Snapper, wondering over Darwin’s tail.

  ‘He has managed to master the word “Snap”, continued Colonel Katterfelto, unabashed, ‘and has some of the basic rudiments of language at his command. I trust you would have no objection to him sitting in upon a round or two?’

  The house Snapper thought to smell, if not a monkey, then perhaps a rat.

  ‘He has a daily allowance of one hundred pounds to spend at the table,’ said the colonel.

  ‘I will fetch him a couple of cushions to sit on,’ said the house Snapper with a smile.

  15

  ithout further incident, but also without further progress in the case, went the day for Cameron Bell. The flying platform had skimmed away at speed towards Sydenham Hill and the Crystal Palace. Forcing Mr Bell to give up the chase and fume in the London traffic.

  He dined that evening at his club in the Mall. A club that did not permit the admittance of monkeys, trousered or otherwise. Drank perhaps a trifle too freely of the port and then returned home to don his evening wear and prepare himself for another night out at the Electric Alhambra.

  The walk to his home had not been enhanced by the bawling of newsboys hawking the evening editions. Many Dead in Hyde Park Corner Massacre was a popular cry of the early evening. As was French Spies Suspected. Cameron Bell took no joy whatsoever in the hearing of these cries.

  The arrival at his home had not been enhanced by the discovery of a black envelope that lay upon his front door mat. Within this he found a brief note printed in a Gothic font. Which read:

  Cameron Bell digested the contents of this missive. Then filed it in his correspondence cabinet within the folder labelled Threatening Letters.

  Taking a small brandy to settle his stomach, he bathed, dried, dressed and departed by hansom to the London Hospital. There to collect Mr Joseph Carey Merrick.

  The Elephant Man was dressed in his finest apparel, all tailor-made to flatter his outré physique. His white winged collar could easily have encircled an average fellow’s waist. And his top hat, upturned, could well nigh have served as a dustbin. His good hand was encased within a white silk glove and in this he held up and before his face a lady’s modesty fan upon which had been whimsically painted, in a fullness of colour and a lifeness of size, the face of ex-Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

  ‘Most droll,’ observed Cameron Bell.

  The journey to the Electric Alhambra was enlivened, although in the opinion of Cameron Bell not enhanced, by examples of Joseph Merrick’s boyish brand o
f humour. Mr Bell suffered the initial dignity of the squirty flower with stoicism. Declined the offer of chocolate that smelled strongly of the Pure. Politely refused to slip his hand into Mr Merrick’s trouser pocket to feel ‘a certain surprise’. And kept his buttocks firmly on the seat, thus thwarting the Elephant Man’s attempts to introduce a whoopee cushion beneath them. It was, however, when offered a tipple from a hip flask reeking of chloroform that the private detective finally displayed his pistol and promised to shoot the prankster dead if he did not immediately affect the demeanour of a Trappist monk.

  Chastened, but unabashed, Joseph Merrick took to a sulking silence.

  Presently they arrived at the Electric Alhambra.

  Performing artistes were already assembled there and many were crammed into the communal dressing room.

  Colonel Katterfelto, lately returned from a most successful day’s Snap, was smoking a cigar. Darwin the monkey now wore a silk shirt and bow tie to go with his waistcoat and trousers. The sum of five hundred pounds’ worth of winnings had been split fifty-fifty.

  There had only been a small amount of unpleasantness.

  Darwin had concluded that as he did all of the Snapping he deserved a bigger share of the winnings. Also that as they were now both substantially in pocket, they should not return to the Music Hall, but book straight into a swank hotel and review their plans for a prosperous shared future.

  Colonel Katterfelto had put the monkey straight. They had shaken on the fifty-fifty agreement, he explained. A handshake was a bond of trust, no matter the species that took it. And as to the matter of the Music Hall, yes, it was regrettable that they must return to suffer more from the hurled fruit and veg of the mob. But the colonel was a man of his word. And he had signed a six-week contract to play at the Electric Alhambra.

  The monkey had bitten the colonel.

  The colonel had kicked the monkey.

  And now they both sat glowering once again.

  Lovely Alice Lovell, accompanied this evening by, it appeared, all her worldly goods in carpet bags and cases, said, ‘Do you know who is topping the bill?’

  Conversations focused as the artistes dwelt upon this.

  ‘Smelly Charlie Belly,’ said one of the Travelling Formbys. ‘Greatly overrated, in my opinion.’

  Alice Lovell sighed and said, ‘He’s dreamy.’

  Peter Pinkerton said, ‘I heard that Lord Andrew literally bought him from Henry Irving at the Lyceum. Paid Irving one thousand pounds.’

  ‘Well,’ said another Formby, the one to the right of the rest, ‘the Alhambra was going to need the best now that Harry Hamilton is gone. And no matter what my brother thinks, Belly really is the best.’

  Heads nodded in agreement at this. Smelly Charlie Belly was top of the tree and no mistake about it. Probably the best-loved Music Hall turn of the day.

  A smile, a song and an acrid stench.

  It did not get better than that.

  ‘I have also heard tell,’ said Peter Pinkerton, ‘that Mr Belly’s smell is prepared for him by a Parisian perfumer.’

  ‘I heard it was a professor from Brentford in Middlesex, ‘said yet another Formby. ‘Professor Chanel, I heard.’

  ‘You heard wrong,’ said Peter Pinkerton. ‘Ten guineas per fluid ounce he pays for that particular pong. It contains musk, ambergris and civet and has an aphrodisiac effect on the ladies, I’m told.’

  ‘Dreamy,’ said Alice Lovell once more. ‘Tall and dark and handsome too, with lovely long eyelashes.’

  ‘No chance that I’ve been moved up the bill, I suppose?’ asked Colonel Katterfelto.

  ‘No chance at all!’ the artistes replied, as one.

  ‘Then best be sprightly on my pins, I suppose.’ The colonel rose and did limberings-up, whilst puffing upon his cigar.

  Cameron Bell was puffing a cigar. With an extraordinary vigour. He and Mr Merrick sat in the luxurious box that the private detective had occupied the night before. Cameron Bell was somewhat red in the face.

  ‘That was outrageous behaviour,’ he told the Elephant Man. ‘Fondling that lady in the foyer. Whatever were you thinking?’

  Joseph Merrick was idly flicking peanuts onto people in the stalls. ‘Please do not raise your voice to me,’ he said.

  ‘You are a monster,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘No wonder Sir Frederick Treves declines to take you out to the Music Hall.’

  ‘A monster?’ The Elephant Man now took to an exaggerated high-pitched wailing. ‘He calls me a monster,’ he cried to all that were in earshot. ‘I who have suffered so much.’

  ‘Shame!’ came calls from the orchestra stalls. A cabbage flew in Cameron Bell’s direction.

  ‘Stop it at once!’ the detective told the wailing Mr Merrick. ‘Or I will suggest to Mr Treves that a month or two in Bedlam might serve you well.’

  ‘Mr Treves is my friend,’ said the Elephant Man. ‘He would not do that.’

  ‘He told me he was thinking of having you moved on, ‘said Cameron Bell.

  There was not one single word of truth to this, but it did have the desired effect upon the unruly Elephant Man.

  ‘Can I have some popcorn, please?’ asked Mr Joseph Merrick.

  There was a full house at the Electric Alhambra upon this summer’s evening. Smelly Charlie Belly could really pull the crowds. And of course there was that thing about morbid curiosity. Wanting to see whether there were any traces of Harry ‘Hurty-Finger’ Hamilton still to be seen upon the stage.

  There were not, as it happened. The stage had been thoroughly scrubbed.

  The Elephant Man enjoyed the evening performances. He had neglected to bring any fruit or veg to throw and so had to content himself with flinging popcorn and peanuts at the elusive Colonel Katterfelto, who, aided by his goggles, left the stage once more completely unscathed.

  Mr Merrick was entranced by the jugglers, the acrobats, the magician and the singers of the songs. And as the enchanting Alice Lovell put her performing kiwis through their paces, he and Cameron Bell leaned forwards in the expensive box and sighed their separate sighs for her enchantments.

  Finally, and to the kind of applause that most performers could do nothing more than dream of, Smelly Charlie Belly took the stage.

  There was no doubt that this chappie had charisma. He was tall and dark and handsome and the rest. He wore a purple suit with matching topper. And he really was the bestest of the best. His voice was deep and mellow, his buttonhole was yellow, he was a jolly fellow. And all were most impressed.

  And when it came to the singing of his famous song, the crowd joined in with gusto.

  With my seafood antipasti I’ll be strolling along.

  Everyone knows my name.

  People, they come up to me, say, ‘Cor, what a pong,’

  They know that I’m to blame.

  Now you might think I stink

  Just like a fishmonger’s boot

  Or something’s crawled and died

  Inside my best Sunday suit.

  But every single day it’s the same

  For Smelly Charlie Belly is my name.

  It was a triumph and there was a standing ovation.

  Smelly Charlie Belly wafted his personal fragrance towards the ladies in the front row and took bow after bow, receiving a bunch of roses thrown from the Royal Box.

  He smiled and he waved.

  And then he exploded.

  In a great big ball of flame.

  16

  am closing the theatre,’ said Commander Case. ‘One public murder was too much. I do not possess sufficient words to express my feelings now that two have occurred.’

  ‘It is an unfortunate circumstance,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Unfortunate circumstance?’ roared the commander. ‘No, sir. That does not cover it. Not one little bit.’

  The two stood once more in the otherwise deserted foyer of the Electric Alhambra. The time was close to midnight. Tensions had been raised.

  ‘I would appreciate it very much i
f you did not close the theatre,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘It would impede the course of my inquiries.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Commander Case. ‘Clearly I have not expressed myself in a manner that you can understand. I do not wish you to make any further inquiries. You are dismissed from the case.

  Cameron Bell was clearly rattled by this. Words momentarily failed him. He removed his hat and ran a handkerchief over his naked scalp to mop at sudden perspiration.

  ‘I have a theory,’ said Cameron Bell, when words returned to him.

  ‘You always have a theory.’ Commander Case turned his nose up. ‘But I have two men dead on a London stage.’

  ‘You will not solve these cases without me,’ said Mr Bell. ‘You do not know what I know.’

  ‘Do you wish to share what you know with me?’

  ‘Should I do so, would it lead to reinstatement?’

  ‘No.’ Commander Case folded his arms. ‘It would not.’

  Cameron Bell made the saddest of faces. ‘You are making a terrible mistake,’ he told the commander. ‘I feel confident that I can break this case within the next few days. And believe you me, we are dealing with something here that is beyond the realms of anything that the Metropolitan Police Force have ever dealt with before.’

  ‘Oh really?’ said Commander Case in a tone of some sarcasm. ‘A magical mystery is it, then?’

  ‘Magical?’ asked Cameron Bell. ‘Why would you use such a word?’

  ‘There seem to be a lot of queer things happening lately. Around and about Whitechapel. There’s been scrawlings on walls. Magical symbols, I’m told. Certain superstitious young bobbies have been getting themselves all in a lather and—’ Commander Case ceased his discourse and then said, ‘Why am I telling you this? You are off the case, Bell. If you have any information to offer me, it is your duty as a gentleman of the realm to offer it. Is there anything you wish to say?’