The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the Worlds Page 4

  ‘Of course.’ The baldy bearded one downed more champagne.

  ‘It is all to do with time and the speed of light. It is believed that if one could travel faster than light, then one would travel faster than time. Depending on how you chose to apply this, one could travel either into the past or into the future.’

  ‘So the Large Hadron Collider is really a time machine?’

  ‘Part of a time machine. The motive power. You encountered the travelling element when the actual time—ship crashed in Syon Park.’

  ‘I did not tell you that,’ said the champagne-supper, who could at least remember that with precision.

  ‘It is in the letter you delivered to me. The time-ship was aimed there because you and I, and indeed Darwin, too—’ he gestured to the ape, who had finished his champagne and was now wearing a foolish face ‘—knew that last night you and Darwin would be at Syon House.’

  ‘I am not sure that your explanations are actually explaining anything.’ The man who owned to a beard and baldness held out his glass for a further topping-up and received same.

  ‘Then I will do my best to keep it as simple as I can. Regarding the time-ship, know this. The speed of light is presently calculated to be one hundred and eighty—six thousand, two hundred and eighty-two miles per second —a goodly speed by anybody’s reckoning and one it would be difficult to best. The true purpose of this Large Hadron Collider is to slow the speed of light down to a velocity at which a conveyance designed for the purpose might outpace it in relative safety.’

  ‘A fanciful notion, but one of extreme cleverness.’ Podgy fingers toasted with the champagne glass.

  ‘I pride myself on my ability to look at things from a different perspective.’ The chemist located further champagne and took to its uncorking.

  ‘Might I ask a question?’ Podgy fingers held out the champagne glass for further refilling. ‘If what crashed into the Bananary at Syon House was a ship of time rather than a ship of space, why was it piloted by a monkey? And if it is one and the same monkey as the monkey here—’ the monkey here held out his champagne glass ‘—why was the monkey in the time-ship old? For he was an aged ape.’

  ‘Old?’ said Mr Rutherford. ‘Indeed?’ said Mr Rutherford. ‘I regret that I cannot answer questions which refer to things that will happen in the future,’ said Mr Rutherford. ‘I think the thing would be for me to examine the time-ship with great care. You must understand that at present it is only in the first stages of construction. If I was to see what the finished article looks like, it might speed up the construction process considerably.’

  The man with bald and beardness made a certain kind of a face and knocked back more champagne.

  ‘You believe I might encounter a temporal anomaly by so doing? Affect a singularity that might destabilise the atoms of the universe?’

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘You have not, I trust, read the morning papers?’

  Further champagne was danced around. The chemist shook his head.

  ‘Then you will not know that the time-ship no longer exists. Lord Brentford entered it and shot the pilot. The cockpit of that craft was perhaps not the best place to discharge a firearm.’

  ‘Some damage was done?’

  ‘Some damage, yes. The time-ship exploded. It was utterly destroyed. The main reason I came here today, aside from delivering your envelope unopened — a tribute, may I say, to my honesty and steadfastness — was to enquire whether you might offer myself and monkey here positions in your household. With Lord Brentford lying upon what might well be his death-bed in hospital, we are presently unemployed.’

  Ernest Rutherford, First Baron Rutherford of Nelson, dropped down upon a three-legged milking stool that lacked for comfortable cushioning and made a face of complete and utter despair. ‘The time—ship gone, lost,’ he said, and his chin sank onto his chest. ‘And a noble lord mortally injured. Calamity.’

  ‘Don’t forget the monkey,’ said the unemployed fellow.

  ‘Naturally not.’ Mr Rutherford sought to affect a brave face. ‘But now we know that the theory is sound. That the time-ship will function. That it has in fact functioned. And when you are returned to the soundness of your mind, perhaps together we can mould the future in such a way that these tragic events do not occur. What say you to this?’

  ‘I fear that I am somewhat drunk,’ came a slurred reply.

  ‘Myself, too, as it happens,’ admitted Mr Rutherford. ‘But no matter.’ Champagne was sloshed into glasses and the chemist returned once more to his rosewood cabinet. ‘We will start with the less toxic and dangerous memory restoratives,’ he said, ‘and if these prove ineffective we will raise the bar, as it were, and move on to the downright lethal.’

  ‘Your words are pure confusion,’ said the man without the hair. ‘But I would like to recommend myself for the position of chef I have extensive knowledge of both Venusian and Jovian cuisine. My fillet of six-toed Nunbuck will find no equal in London.’ Lord Brentford’s ex-chef now became loquacious regarding his culinary skills, even recommending ‘monkey’s’ adeptness in the art of the cocktail. ‘Might I have a tad more champagne, please?’ he asked at his conclusion.

  ‘As much as you like, my dear fellow.’ Mr Rutherford now approached with an unsteady sort of a gait. ‘Just get fifty milligrams of this inside you and we’ll see what’s what.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  Mr Rutherford lunged forwards and rammed a hypodermic needle deep into the portly fellow’s ample left shoulder.

  ‘Ouch,’ went the portly fellow. ‘What in the world have you done?’

  ‘It comes from the Amazon,’ said Mr Rutherford, swaying slightly as he did so.

  ‘What does?’ asked the portly fellow, rubbing at his shoulder. ‘What comes from the Amazon?’

  ‘Water, mostly, I suppose. It discharges into the sea.’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it.’ The portly fellow drained his glass and stumbled over to the newest champagne bottle which was located upon an occasional table, built from wood to serve at any occasion. ‘You’ve spiked me,’ he said.

  The monkey screamed and bared his teeth.

  ‘And spiked the monkey, too.’

  ‘It might work,’ said Mr Rutherford, nimbly evading the monkey’s snapping teeth. ‘After all, it is from the Amazon.’

  ‘I feel somewhat queer,’ said the man who now held the champagne bottle in an unsteady hand. ‘You have poisoned me, sir, and I will have satisfaction. Fetch a brace of pistols, if you dare.’

  Mr Rutherford was swaying more than slightly now. ‘This really is very strong champagne,’ he said in the tone known as ‘tipsy’. ‘Good stuff, though, don’t you think?’

  ‘I think that I am going to be sick.’

  ‘Please do it in the wooden bowl,’ said Mr Rutherford.

  The portly bald and bearded ex-chef, and possibly the world’s foremost consulting detective, staggered about clutching at his head. Something very odd was going on inside it.

  ‘I think it is starting to work,’ said Mr Rutherford.

  ‘The endorsements for effectiveness on the bottle of ACME PATENT AMAZON-REMEDY UNIVERSAL MEMORY RESTORATIVE may well prove to be all they claim.’

  ‘Oooh,’ and, ‘Aaah,’ went the chef of mystery.

  ‘Squeak,’ and, ‘Squawk,’ went the monkey and he bobbed up and down.

  Within the heads of man and monkey light pierced darkness, rushing forward, all-embracing, flooding over everything.

  ‘Oh my dear dead mother,’ cried Mr Cameron Bell. ‘It’s coming back. It’s coming back. Oh yes, I remember it all.’ And he stared as if from the present into the past. ‘It all began last summer,’ he said, ‘in the long, hot summer of eighteen ninety-eight.’

  1898

  (During the Long, Hot Summer)

  6

  anana and Bell read the nameplate on the door. A brightly poli
shed plate of brass upon a painted door. Below the names were etched the words ‘Consulting Partnership’.

  The offices beyond the door were royally appointed. Which was to say that not only were the fixtures and fittings composed of regal stuffs, but the very establishment itself, the ‘Consulting Partnership’, had been accorded the official endorsement of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of both India and Mars.

  The potential client, having tugged upon a brazen bellpull that activated an electrical buzzer within, would find the door opened to them by a boy, smartly dressed in red livery, who would announce himself to be, ‘Jack, and at your ‘umble service.’

  The first impressions of the potential client would be made favourable by a hallway opulent with gold-leafed papers patterned by William Morris. Jardinières that sprouted blooms which hailed from other worlds. Framed testimonials. A suave satyr of ebony that held a gong of bronze. An eclectic collection born of esoteric tastes, items for the eye to rest upon, yet briefly, for the potential client would have urgent reasons to be calling upon the offices of Banana and Bell. Reasons that would oft-times pertain to a crime.

  For these were indeed the offices of the British Empire’s foremost consulting detective Cameron Bell and his partner Humphrey Banana.

  Having been led up a staircase carpeted in Royal Axminster, the potential client would be shown to a private curtained waiting booth from whence their carte de visite would be freighted upon a silver tray by Jack to the offices proper. The office of Mr Bell.

  Mr Cameron Bell dwelt behind an exquisite desk that had once been the property of Louis XIV, the Sun King himself The walls of this office were draped with pale swagged silks. Ornate and gilded furniture weighed heavily upon the eye and upon the lush pile carpetings. The effect was one of ostentation and grandiloquence. The titled clients adored it.

  It was the summer of the year of eighteen ninety-eight and it was hot. Outside, London swam in the sunlight. Electrical hansom cabs purred through the heat—haze. Horses’ hooves raised clouds of dust and gentlemen tugged at their collars. Those forecasters of weather tapped upon their leech prognosticators: the glass was rising, mercury bubbling, further heat was surely on the way.

  Within the offices of Banana and Bell the temperature was moderated, cooled by conditioned air issuing from the patent ice grotto. The atmosphere was calm.

  But for the shouting.

  One voice boomed in a basso profundo.

  The other one squealed in a shrill soprano.

  Neither voice was pleasing to the ear.

  There were no potential clients upon this summer’s day.

  Jack the boy servant, who freighted the cartes de visite, was in the downstairs pantry practising his ukulele, and the upstairs maid, a woman both spare and kempt, had gone to the market to purchase Lemon Pledge.[3]

  The shouting that went on, went on between the partners. The shouting was quite loud, and sometimes bitter.

  Humphrey Banana stood upon the desk of Cameron Bell. Humphrey was an ape of average height, whatever that might be for an ape, well clad in a hand-tailored pale linen suit of the Piccadilly persuasion that featured trousers with a tail—snood augmentation and a triple—breasted waistcoat in the very latest style. Humphrey was an ape of high fashion and an ape possessed of qualities that could be considered unique.

  ‘I will not do it,’ he squealed at this partner. ‘No, not again, I will not.’

  His partner, that famed detective Mr Cameron Bell, sat upon a golden chair behind his occupied desk.

  ‘But it is such a simple solution and such an effective deception.’

  ‘No!’ shrieked Humphrey Banana. ‘I will not do it! No indeed I will not.’

  Cameron Bell sighed sadly. ‘Our partnership has been most successful,’ said he in a raised voice slightly less loud than a shout, but not much. ‘I am sure you will agree.’

  The detective’s partner nodded his hairy head.

  The ape’s partner stroked at his beardless chin. The ape’s partner wore a well-cut grey morning suit that flattered his portly form and a high wing-collared shirt with purple cravat. Spats and coal-black Oxford brogues adorned his feet. A pair of golden pince-nez clasped the bridge of his snobby nose.

  ‘You have prospered,’ the ape’s partner continued. ‘I understand that you have recently purchased Syon House, the country seat of the late Lord Brentford, and have designed your own Bananary to place upon its rear.

  ‘I have.’ The ape gibbered and bared his teeth. ‘And you have prospered, too.’

  ‘I am the detective.’ The detective raised his voice somewhat. ‘It is I who actually solve the cases.

  ‘Not without my help, you would not.’

  ‘On that I beg to differ.’

  ‘All right,’ cried Humphrey, bouncing up and down. ‘Who was it that stopped Big Bill McCrumby the Birmingham Basher dead in his tracks with a well-aimed piece of dung?’

  ‘You,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

  ‘And who caught Smiling Sam Dimwiddy the Pimlico Perambulator square in the earhole with a well-flung piece of dung?’

  ‘You too,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

  ‘And who, and I am sure you will remember this, brought down Senorita Rita the Hampstead Husband Beater by striking her slap-dap in the forehead with—’

  ‘A well-tossed piece of dung,’ said Cameron Bell. Most loudly. ‘I remember it well.’

  ‘There,’ said Humphrey Banana. ‘You see.

  ‘I do see.’ Cameron Bell lowered his voice. ‘But these people were not involved in any of the cases we were set to solving at the time. They were just casual bystanders to whom you took a dislike.’

  ‘They were looking at me in a funny way,’ cried Humphrey Banana.

  ‘You were drunk,’ shouted Cameron Bell. ‘You had imbibed too freely of that banana liqueur of which you are so fond. You were singing a Music Hall song.’

  “‘Me One-Legged Nanna Is Home from the Sea and Wants the Loan of Me Foot”,’ shrieked the ape. ‘It is a modern classic.’

  ‘Could we not conduct this discussion in less heated tones?’ asked Cameron Bell, clutching at his heart.

  ‘It is not a discussion. It is an argument. And they were looking at me in a funny way.’

  ‘You were singing.’ Cameron Bell sighed. ‘You are the world’s one and only talking ape. It is supposed to be a well-kept secret. Certain elements of our partnership rely heavily upon this, as you know full well.’

  ‘And one in particular.’ Humphrey Banana raised his fists and bounced about some more.

  ‘If I promise you that it is for the very last time,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘that you only have to do it until this case is concluded and then you never have to do it again?’

  ‘I don’t have to do it this time.’ The ape took to the folding of his arms and the sticking out of his chin.

  ‘You do if you do not want this partnership to be dissolved.’

  ‘I might strike out on my own.

  Cameron Bell raised an eyebrow and sighed a little more. ‘Is that really likely?’ he asked. ‘Humphrey Banana the monkey detective? Specialising only in cases that involve yellow tropical fruit, I suppose.’ Mr Bell laughed loudly.

  A wounded expression appeared on the face of the ape. His little mouth puckered and a tear formed in his eye.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘I did not mean it as a personal slight. Well, perhaps I did, but not to hurt you.’ He reached out a hand to pat the ape’s shoulder.

  Humphrey Banana bit him.

  Cameron Bell struck Humphrey Banana.

  Humphrey Banana spat.

  ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ shouted Cameron Bell. ‘There is nothing to be gained by this behaviour. I am on the verge of cracking an important case, one that will bring a considerable amount of money into the partnership. You can either assist me in this matter and benefit financially, or I offer you the choice of withdrawing from the case and forfeiting your share of the money.

  Humphre
y Banana bared his teeth.

  ‘And that does not impress me.

  The monkey made a sour face. ‘Then just for this last time only,’ he said, ‘and never again.’

  ‘Never ever again,’ said Cameron Bell as he slyly disguised a smirk. ‘We will don the appropriate apparel, blend in with the crowds and locate and follow our suspect to her lair. There we will place her under arrest and retrieve the stolen item.’

  ‘The reliquary,’ said Humphrey Banana. ‘A very queer thing indeed, by all accounts.’

  ‘A very queer thing,’ agreed Mr Bell, ‘and one of great value. We will be handsomely rewarded for its safe return. Now, are we agreed?’

  Although still sour-faced, the monkey nodded his hairy little head. ‘We are agreed,’ said he.

  ‘Then let us shake upon it, as gentlemen should.’ Cameron Bell stretched out a hand and although he was not keen at all, Humphrey Banana shook it.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Cameron Bell, and he turned away to hide his spreading smile. ‘Then I will fetch out the barrel organ while you slip off to get your fez and your little tin cup.’

  Outside the noon-day sun shone down upon mad dogs and Englishmen. Within his office, Cameron Bell bit down hard upon his lower lip in an attempt to stifle the chuckles that sought to flee his mouth.

  Humphrey Banana stalked from the office. A grumpy ape was he, for although Cameron Bell thought it something of a lark to have him wear a fez and dance about on a barrel organ waving an old tin cup in hope of funds, Humphrey did not find it funny at all. He hated that fez and tin cup, because they represented to him everything that was wrong with this world: the thraldom of one race to another — or in his case of one species to another. Man’s inhumanity to Monkey.

  Certainly, through the merits of his gift of speech, Humphrey had become an ape of means. But he was still an ape for all that, and he knew it. Still an ape and one who cared for his fellows.

  ‘One day things will change,’ he muttered as he stalked along. ‘One day things will change, I know they will.’