The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends Read online

  It was during the summer of eighteen ninety-five that I accompanied Lord Brentford on what was intended to be the first circumnavigation of the globe by airship.

  The Empress of Mars was a magnificent vessel, a gigantic pleasure craft almost a third of a mile in length. The very cream of London society was booked on board for this historic flight and history was to be made. The Empress would rise from the Royal London Spaceport, which spread beneath the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and I would be amongst the history-makers.

  I confess that I was wary, but the prospect of such a journey held great charm for me as Lord Brentford explained that the airship would pass over Africa.

  ‘Where you were born, young Darwin.’

  Sadly, his lordship did not return in triumph from the maiden flight of the Empress of Mars. That beautiful silver ship of the skies went down in a terrible storm and plunged into a distant ocean. Lord Brentford was lost and I returned to London in the company of Mr George Fox, later dubbed a knight for his services to Queen and country.

  It was at this time that I first attained great wealth.

  Lord Brentford, it transpired, was not a man who looked favourably upon his family; in fact, he held them in utter contempt. He had taken the sensible precaution of updating his will before taking passage aboard the Empress of Mars and had removed the names of his ‘nearest and dearest’ and substituted my own.

  I had suddenly become an ape of wealth. The lands, the investments, the great house of Syon – all indeed were mine.

  I was deeply touched by this act of Man's humanity to Monkey and vowed that I would raise a monument to Lord Brentford. Possibly a bronze statue of himself to adorn the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square.

  Just as soon as I had attended to one or two more pressing matters, to wit, the laying down of banana plantations in the grounds and the construction of a Bananary to adorn the rear of Syon House. And in order to achieve these admirable ends, it was essential that I gain the ability to speak the Queen's English, to read and also to write.

  I had overheard conversations regarding a mysterious gentleman known only as Herr Döktor, who held to certain radical theories, most notable amongst them his conviction that the evolutionary progress of the simian species could be advanced through human tuition, and that apes might eventually catch up with Humankind. Herr Döktor's goal was to bring spiritual enlightenment to Man's hairy cousins, that their souls might be saved through knowledge and worship of the Almighty.

  Sir George Fox, with whom I had formed a bond of friendship, had a beautiful wife named Ada. I had achieved some success at communicating with her through the medium of mime, and when I made my wishes known, she arranged for Herr Döktor to attend me at the great house and put me through an intense course of instruction.

  Dear reader, I could write at great length of the travails endured upon both sides during the months of my training. And I confess that in times of great frustration I did resort to the flinging of dung. But Herr Döktor endured and so did I, and six months later I shook the hand of this remarkable visionary, thanked him and said farewell in all-but-perfect ‘Man’.

  And here I must express a certain measure of regret, for I did not use my new-learned talents as wisely as I might. I craved excitement and I craved to be as men are. I shaved my facial whiskers and the hairs from my hands; dressed as a sporting toff, my tail tucked out of sight; represented myself as an English country gentleman; and took myself off to the gaming tables of Monte Carlo.

  Within several short hours I had lost all that Lord Brentford had left me. I stood once more at poverty's door, a sadder yet wiser monkey.

  I learned that evening a bitter lesson. But my life has been a series of lessons learned and it has also been an adventurous and often carefree one, filled with the joys of genuine friendship and love. Thus I no longer offer excuses for my early foolishness.

  Happily I had retained my papers of employment, drawn up for me by Lord Brentford himself and bearing his heraldic seal. With these I presented myself at the offices of Blackfrond's, London's premier employment agency.

  Blackfrond's specialised in placing registered non-human workers into suitable employ. Here, upon any given day, the sapient pig, the equine wonder, even the spider of destiny might be found in the plushly furnished confines of Blackfrond's Waiting Hutch, patiently preparing for placement.

  I was fully aware that as the world's first speaking ape, a simian prodigy if ever there was one, I could reasonably expect to turn a pretty penny by exhibiting myself before a paying public. But my travels with Mr Wombwell had convinced me that discomfort outweighed monetary benefit in that line of work. I had grown to love the finer things of life. I determined to take once more to what I now considered my vocation and return to being a monkey butler.

  It was a wise decision.

  I took employment with a venerable ancient by the name of Colonel Katterfelto.

  My adventures with this worthy fellow have been chronicled within Mr Robert Rankin's admirable book The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age, and I can do no better than to recommend the reader purchase and peruse this finely crafted tome.

  After a life of heroic service to his fellow man, Colonel Katterfelto died in my arms. He was one of the finest and most noble individuals it has ever been my honour to call friend. Indeed, he called me his little brother, and tears fill my eyes at his memory.

  After that I fell in with Cameron Bell.

  Mr Cameron Bell is a most singular individual, even in an age that appears overpopulated with singular individuals. He is, by calling, a consulting detective and owns to a number of literary friends and acquaintances, two in particular being worthy of note here – Messrs Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Mr Dickens based the looks of Mr Pickwick upon those of Cameron Bell, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle modelled the deductive reasoning of his most notable creation, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, upon that of Mr Bell.

  A most singular individual indeed.

  Mr Bell's observational skills, his capabilities as a consulting detective, his discretion and his boundless enthusiasm for his vocation have made him the greatest detective of the Victorian age and something of a darling with the well-to-do.

  He has solved cases for most of the royal houses of Europe, and in eighteen ninety-nine, with my invaluable assistance (as he and I had formed a partnership under the name of Banana and Bell), he saved Her Majesty Queen Victoria from assassination.

  Mr Bell was awarded the Royal Victorian Order for his services to the sovereign and became a Knight of the Grand Cross.

  I received neither medal nor commendation. But, like the Fuller's 1900 Millennial Double Chocolate Stout, I harbour no acerbity.

  The case that led to Mr Bell saving the life of Victoria, Empress of both India and Mars, involved two dreadful harpies: Lavinia Dharkstorrm, a witchy woman, and Princess Pamela, twin sister of Queen Victoria and, as it turned out, the female Antichrist.

  It was a hair-raising adventure and I have many hairs that might be raised. Especially whilst in the company of Mr Bell, who is known to me as the World's Most Dangerous Detective due to his immoderate use of dynamite.

  I would mention here, because it is of importance, that Mr Bell and I had been taken into the confidence of the pre-eminent chemist Ernest Rutherford, the gentleman who created the world's first Large Hadron Collider, which was cunningly disguised as part of London's Underground Railway System – the Circle Line.

  This piece of advanced technology powered yet another.

  Mr Ernest Rutherford's time-ship.

  Through a series of what the mean-spirited amongst us might describe as unlikely events, I became the pilot of Mr Rutherford's time-eliminating conveyance and returned from the future to save my past self. In doing so, my future self was shot dead by Lord Brentford, who had not in fact died when the Empress of Mars went down, but had survived and taken shelter on a cannibal island. It is all rather difficult to explain, and rather tha
n waste the reader's time doing it here I would recommend perusing a copy of The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the Worlds by Mr Robert Rankin, where all is set out in the most meticulous detail.

  I write these words in the elegant city of Brighton, in the year two thousand and twelve. I know that I must return to the year eighteen ninety-eight to save my younger self, and I know that in doing so I will be shot, in error, by Lord Brentford.

  This is my fate. So it must be.

  But between the time when I set off in Mr Rutherford's time-ship in the company of Mr Cameron Bell and the time of my inevitable extinction, there have been many years of travel and many adventures, and it is these that I intend to write of here.

  Mr Bell assured me that once he had cleared up the single case that he had so far failed to solve, we would travel back in time to watch Beethoven conduct the Ninth Symphony and thereafter begin our adventures.

  Things did not go quite as he had planned.

  But they did get very exciting.

  And it all began when we sailed the time-ship back to eighteen ninety.

  1890

  3

  ain was falling and it was falling hard.

  Had it not been for the quality of my sou'wester, Ulster coat and India rubber galoshes, I would have felt the chill of this midnight hour more cruelly than I did.

  As I am possessed of considerable skills when it comes to piloting a space vessel, I was able to steer the time-ship (a back-engineered and greatly modified Martian war craft) gently down to a secluded area of Hyde Park. One frequented, when the weather was fair, by slosh-pots and Muff Mary Ellens, but deserted upon a night such as this.

  ‘I shall remain here whilst you conduct your business,’ I told Mr Bell as we sat in the time-ship's cabin, peering out at the night. ‘I am reading a book about tea that I'd quite like to finish.’

  Mr Bell shook his hairless head at this. ‘I contend,’ said he, ‘that we should not become separated during our journeyings through time.’

  ‘Surely there will be times when we must part,’ said I, for I had learned to take privacy whilst engaging in latrinal excursions.

  ‘And we will have none of that.’ Mr Bell made the firmest of faces. ‘An adventure through the ages seasoned by toilet talk and innuendo would be one too rich for my palate.’

  ‘Look,’ said I, removing the ignition key from the time-ship's dashboard and hanging it on its chain about my neck. ‘We have agreed that you will solve your one unsolved case and then we will go back to see Beethoven conduct the Ninth. We even swore a great oath to this effect – your idea, as I recall – and shook hands on it and everything.’

  ‘I wanted things to be absolutely clear,’ said Mr Bell, ‘so there would be no later disagreements or unpleasantnesses.’

  ‘Then go off about your business and I will await your return. Or better still, let us both remain here until the weather clears up.’

  ‘It rains all night,’ said Mr Bell. ‘And what must be done, must be done now and by both of us together. The quicker it is done, the quicker you can experience the Ninth, played as it truly should be played and conducted by the great man himself.’

  And so we left the Marie Lloyd (for such was the name of our time-ship) and trudged off into the rain. Mr Bell hailed a cab at Hyde Park Corner and directed its driver to take us to the British Museum.

  The cabbie, who rode aloft in the rain sporting an Ulster coat not dissimilar to my own but for its lack of quality, called down to us through the little roof hatch that he might enliven our journey with tales of those who had brought him honour by deigning to ride in his cab.

  ‘I ’ad that Winston Churchill in the back o’ me ’ansom the other night,’ he told us. ‘Now there's a rum young gentleman if ever there was one. Very fixed in ’is opinions, is our Mr Churchill. I touched upon the matter of public Ladies’ Excuse-mes, or conveniences as may be, and ’ow to my reckonin’ they would be a blessing to the dear ones, who aren't as good at ’oldin’ it in as would be a chap, and—’

  Mr Bell drew shut the little hatch. Toilet talk, as he had said, was not at all to his liking.

  As we had some distance to travel, I made polite conversation by asking my friend just what he knew of the villain he sought and just what the unsolved crime might be. Mr Bell had recently been all but defeated by a woman, and women appeared to be rising in prominence during this period of history – as evidenced by the spread of public Ladies’ Excuse-mes and suchlike. Was this villain a lady? I asked Mr Bell.

  The great detective shook his head and his hat showered me with raindrops. ‘A man,’ said he. ‘Most definitely. There is always talk,’ he continued, ‘of a criminal mastermind, some secret orchestrator of the capital's crimes. The Moriarty, who my good friend Arthur set against his Mr Holmes. This is the work of such a fellow and a very strange business indeed.’

  I yawned, rather too loudly, perhaps, but I was still a growing ape and it was after my bedtime.

  ‘An evil overlord,’ Mr Bell continued some more, ‘one capable of manipulating even the most powerful in the realm through blackmail and tergiversation. I have spied evidence of his sinister handiwork in everything from headlines in the broadsheets to acts passed in Parliament. Rumours abound as to his identity.’

  ‘Or indeed as to his very existence,’ I suggested in a tone of casual flippancy. Mr Bell raised an eyebrow to this and then went on to say more.

  ‘He is known as the Pearly Emperor,’ he said. ‘For as the cockneys have their Pearly Kings and Queens and Her Majesty is Empress of India and Mars, this would-be usurper of thrones has chosen such a title for himself. He is said to have risen from a humble background in the East End, and seeks to rule this world and all the others that roll about our sun.’

  ‘A man of great ambition,’ I said, snuggling down in my Ulster coat and searching out my mittens. ‘A worthy adversary for your good self. You being the uncrowned King of Detectives, as it were.’

  Mr Bell peered at me through his gold-framed pince-nez. ‘Are you,’ he asked of me, and here he employed suitable cockney patois in the form of rhyming slang, ‘having a gi-raffe at my expense?’

  ‘Heaven forfend,’ said I, a-putting on my mittens. ‘Here I am, rattling along in this uncomfortable conveyance, in bitter cold at an ungodly hour and all but freezing off those parts that will escape mention lest I be accused of toilet talk, bound for the British Museum. There to foil the evil intention of the Pearly Emperor, a monomaniac intent on world domination and—’

  But here I paused as I could, even in the limited light available, observe the reddening of my friend's cheeks and the infuriated expression he now wore. I felt it would probably be best to keep my own counsel.

  I did, however, make the observation that to my limited knowledge there had never been a single crime of any significance committed at the British Museum that had not gone unsolved.

  My good friend's face had now become purple, and when next he spoke it was as one possessed. ‘A crime did occur,’ he cried into my little ear. ‘A crime covered up by the authorities – no doubt in the pay of this monster made flesh.’ (I mouthed the words monster made flesh.) ‘This vile creature's minions have committed numerous crimes on his behalf. I could name dozens of them. I have been involved in solving dozens of their felonious cases. But the criminals never turn King's evidence, they never betray their master. He is never there when the crimes are committed. But tonight, tonight he will be there. I know it. My studies of case histories have led me to this conclusion. I know that I am right.’

  ‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘I am sorry if I misled you into believing that I harboured any doubts.’

  ‘He will be there tonight, and I will have him. Tonight, a seemingly impossible crime will be committed at the British Museum. I will be there to see how it is done. Then I will capture the criminal mastermind – or destroy him, if need be.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Destroy?’

  ‘If need be,’ said my companion.
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br />   ‘You brought your ray gun with you, then?’

  ‘Of course.’ Mr Bell patted a pocket.

  ‘And dare I ask if—’

  ‘Ask away.’

  The hansom made an alarming lurch and I said, ‘Dynamite.’

  ‘I have taken the sensible precaution of bringing along a few sticks in case they are required.’

  I groaned dismally, but silently.

  ‘Do not worry,’ said Mr Bell. ‘I am well prepared.’

  ‘But,’ I said, for I felt that I must, ‘it is the British Museum. It is filled with wonderful, beautiful things. Please do not blow up the British Museum, please, Mr Bell, oh please.’

  Mr Bell smiled as to offer me comfort. ‘It is a sturdy building,’ he said. ‘Have no fear for its collapse.’

  ‘But the wonderful, beautiful things—’

  ‘Let us hope it will not prove necessary.’

  ‘But it always proves necessary to your reasoning.’

  I noticed a certain twinkle come into the eyes of Mr Bell, for most surely this fellow's love for explosions was equal to his love for justice. I sighed deeply and inwardly and prayed to my chosen deity that the British Museum would still remain standing after our departure from it.

  And also that the rain might stop.

  The driver raised the little hatch and called down, ‘British Museum, guv'nor.’

  The British Museum truly was a beautiful building and it was my dearest hope that it would remain so.

  Built in that neoclassical style so popular during the reign of Queen Victoria, designed by Sir Robert Smirke and containing no fewer than eight million artefacts at the time of my visit, it was a thing of great splendour.

  In those days it also housed what would come to be known as the British Library, a collection of some twenty thousand, two hundred and forty volumes bequeathed by Sir Thomas Grenville. Exactly how a single individual had managed to acquire so vast a collection of books within a single lifetime was at that time quite a mystery to me.

  Later, all would become very clear.