The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age Read online

  Things took the first big turn for the worse when the brougham, up upon two wheels, turned right into St James’ Street. Here a steam-pantechnicon was parked, with removal men unloading a grand piano. The brougham crashed back down onto four wheels and the driver dragged the horses to the right, but the brougham’s rear end struck the grand piano, scattering removal men and hurling the piano through the glazed facade of a pharmacy. One of several such pharmacies, owned by a physician from Brentford in Middlesex named Professor Superdrug.[7] This particular pharmacy specialised in volatile nostrums of an unstable nature.

  ‘Boom!’ went the explosion.

  The hansom cab, now hard upon the brougham’s heels, took much of the force. Cameron Bell suddenly found himself engulfed in flames and choking fumes and battered by a downpour of surgical appliances.

  ‘Oh my dear dead mother!’ The private detective hung on to his hat as a truss caught him full in the face.

  ‘Wah!’ wailed the cabbie. ‘Me bowler’s blown off and me barnet’s on fire. I’m proper angered now!’

  Billowing smoke and bawling invective, the cabbie stepped up the pace.

  The brougham had now turned left into Piccadilly and was heading past Green Park.

  Normally, when passing this delightful area of pastoral beauty, the cabbie would become melancholic and often find the muse upon him and recite either Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ or William Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ (otherwise known as ‘Daffodils’).

  ‘******* French *******!’ swore the cabbie, beating at his smouldering topknot and whipping further life into Shergar.

  It was at Hyde Park Corner that things took a second and decidedly worse turn for the worse.

  ‘We’ll ‘ave ‘im in all this ‘ere ‘ubbub,’ roared the cabbie, as in amongst a great slow-moving whirligig of traffic went the brougham. ‘I can ease alongside and you shoot Mr Froggy dead, if you will, guv’nor.’

  I hope it will not come to that, thought Cameron Bell.

  But it did come to something like that. Of a sudden.

  Above the considerable ‘ubbub of traffic was heard a loud report and an almost simultaneous whine as a bullet of high calibre ricocheted from the roof of the hansom cab.

  ‘‘E’s firing first!’ The cabbie ducked and thrust his head through the hatch above Cameron Bell. ‘****** unsporting *****.’

  The scream of a woman rang out. Atop a nearby horse bus a gentleman clutched at his chest. The ricocheting bullet had struck an innocent soul.

  ‘There,’ cried somebody, pointing at Cameron. ‘There is the man with the gun.’

  ‘Not I.’ Cameron rose to protest his innocence. But then dropped back as further gunfire raked about the hansom.

  Passengers atop the nearby horse bus, where the innocent soul had been hit, were now delving into their handbags and morning coat pockets, depending upon the gender, and tugging out an assortment of weaponry. The blades of swordsticks were being unsheathed; derringers attached to hydraulic contrivances sprang into the hands of gamblers.

  A lady in a straw hat, who steered a pony and trap, cocked a bulky-looking parasol which housed a flame-throwing cannon. And several soldiers of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers, home upon leave and crammed into the rear of a steam-powered charabanc, unholstered their ray guns and prepared to lay down fire.

  The cabbie atop the hansom dragged out his blunderbuss.

  There had not been a substantial shoot-out at Hyde Park Corner since that memorable day in eighteen twenty when the Duke of Wellington, somewhat far gone in his cups and in the company of regimental colleagues equally far gone in theirs, opened fire upon a party of nuns, believing them to be Black Watch highlanders in the service of Napoleon Bonaparte. An easy enough mistake to make and one which George IV, then Prince Regent, considered a just cause for awarding the Iron Duke the Order of the Garter. Two posthumous medals for bravery were also awarded to three officers in Wellington’s regiment who tragically fell when the nuns returned fire.

  Cameron Bell ducked in his boater as pistols were drawn and pot-shots were taken and murder and mayhem ensued.

  The drivers of hansom cabs, whom the drivers of horse-drawn buses believed to be members of a secret underground Masonic association, opened fire upon the drivers of the horse-drawn buses, whom they believed to be members of a secret underground Masonic association.

  A regiment of Royal Horse Guards, who were taking their morning constitutional along Rotten Row, overheard the sounds of gunfire and took to the drawing of their sabres and the diggings of their boot spurs into the flanks of their stallions. ‘Charge!’ cried their commander.

  A blackly clad anarchist pulled from his cloak something that resembled a cannon ball and lit its fuse.

  Cameron Bell called up to the cabbie, ‘The brougham is getting away.

  And indeed the brougham was. Its driver was steering it through the thick of battle. Beams of energy sliced at the sky as fine ladies in upholstered carriages pressed their gloved fingers to the ivory triggers of miniature jewel-encrusted ray guns that were the very latest fashion accessory. Horses reared and panicked and the death toll rose. The cabbie shouted, ‘After ‘im, Shergar.’

  The brougham emerged from the war zone and plunged forwards into Hyde Park, narrowly avoiding the onward charge of the Royal Horse Guardsmen.

  These gentlemen in their uniforms of red with emblazonments of golden braid rushed to either side of the hansom cab, causing the cabbie to shout out, ‘Rule Britannia!’

  Along beside the Serpentine streaked the brougham, on the straight and drawing ever away from the hansom cab.

  ‘Faster, Shergar,’ screamed the cabbie, but Shergar was doing his best.

  ‘We’re losing him,’ called Cameron Bell. ‘Can’t you go any faster?’

  ‘We could if you’d care to get out, the cabbie suggested. ‘You are somewhat weighing us down.’

  Cameron Bell spoke through gritted teeth. ‘What is that up ahead?’ spoke he.

  ‘That—’ the cabbie was shaking the reins about, having given up on the whipping ‘—that is the flying platform what I told you about. As what floats into the air like a flipping ‘air cut.’

  ‘Airship,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘And we don’t have time for any more of that.’

  ‘Quite rightly too, guv’nor. All this careering about the streets ‘as fair sobered me up any’ow.’

  In the distance Cameron could observe a lot of colourful bunting and a goodly crowd of people. The brougham was no longer to be seen.

  ‘We’ve lost him.’ Cameron Bell made a fist at the cabbie.

  ‘We’ve not lost ‘im, guv’nor. I can see ‘im in the crowd. ‘E’s down from the brougham and making for the platform. And ‘e’s carrying a ruddy great portmanteau on ‘is ‘ead.’

  The cabbie brought the hansom to a halt, poor Shergar all sweaty at the flanks and foamy-faced.

  ‘Best settle up now,’ the cabbie called down. ‘And I’ll want a least a guinea for all this fuss and bother. Not to mention the— Oi there, ‘old on—’

  But Cameron Bell had left the cab and shouting, ‘I’ll be back,’ fought his way into the crowd. Ahead the flying platform stood. A truly magnificent creation of burnished brass and polished steel, one hundred feet in diameter with surrounding guardrail and central dining salon. Beneath the promenade deck were the powerhouse and electric turbines, which received their driving force through Lord Tesla’s wireless transmission of electricity. A marvel of the modern age.

  Cameron Bell elbowed his way through the surrounding crowd. Ladies and gentlemen elegantly dressed in the latest finery. Tots in sailor suits. Little girls in bonnets.

  ‘Pardon me,’ puffed Cameron Bell. ‘Important delivery coming through.’

  Ahead he could just make out the portmanteau. It was rising now. Up the gangway to the flying platform.

  ‘Pardon me, please.’ Cameron Bell pressed forward. But now his way was blocked by a chap in a unifo
rm. ‘Have to stop you there, sir,’ said this fellow. ‘All full up for this trip. Have to wait your turn.’

  ‘I am an officer of the law,’ puffed Cameron Bell. Now short of breath from all of the excitement.

  ‘I recognise you, rightly enough,’ said the chap in the uniform.

  ‘Then let me pass. The suspect in a murder case has boarded the flying platform.’

  ‘Why, you’re a card and no mistake,’ said he of the uniform. ‘Come on now, Mr Pickwick.’

  Cameron Bell waved his pistol. ‘Let me pass,’ he shouted.

  But it was all too late.

  The flying platform rose silently from its moorings, drifting up to tree-top height in a manner not unlike an airship. Folk were cheering and waving up at it. Folk aboard were calling down and waving back at them.

  As Cameron looked up in dismay he saw a tall, lean and most dramatic figure lounging at the guardrail. The face was lost in the shadow of his high top hat, but a gaze swept down at Cameron Bell, as if a palpable thing.

  There amidst the cheering and waving of the crowd upon this bright summer’s day, Cameron Bell felt an awful chill. And it was as if everything became momentarily silent and he was all alone in the presence of a terrible evil.

  The moment passed. The shock of it remained. The flying platform gathered speed and swept away through the sky.

  Cameron Bell made a bitter face and returned to the hansom cab.

  14

  he doorman of The Spaceman’s Club waved as the flying platform passed him by.

  It passed him by at quite close quarters and at an elevation of one thousand feet.

  The Spaceman’s Club occupied extravagant and unique premises. The luxuriously appointed gondola of an airship nearly fifteen hundred feet in length, which hung in the sky above London. Moored to a wheelhouse in the pleasure gardens at Battersea Park.

  Although perhaps not the most exclusive of all London’s clubs (the award for this surely going to The Bill and Roger Club in Dean Street, which boasted only two members, Bill and Roger Club), The Spaceman’s Club was undoubtedly the most novel and owned to the very finest views.

  It had always been a matter for debate, amongst those who choose to debate such matters, as to whom The Spaceman’s Club actually belonged. A certain faction believed the owner to be a member of the royal household. Others subscribed to the belief that it was a foreign potentate or even an off-world conglomerate. But folk more circumspect in nature would point to the brass plaque above the entrance doors, on which were engraved in letters bold and bright the words: LICENSEE AND PROPRIETOR: MARK ROWLAND FERRIS, FIFTH EARL OF HOVE.

  This circumspect minority put forward the proposition that this might well be the same Mark Rowland Ferris, property developer and industrial millionaire, noted sportsman and airship aficionado, who was regularly to be seen in the company of his three French bulldogs, Ninja, Yoda and Groucho, welcoming members to The Spaceman’s Club.

  But where at all would life be without mystery?

  In order to reach The Spaceman’s Club, members and their guests had to ride ‘The Upper’: an electrically driven chairlift affair, operated from the ground-located wheelhouse. Double seats, somewhat resembling those of a fairground big wheel and linked to never-ending chains that ran from the wheelhouse to the elevated Gaming Hell, hoisted members aloft. Affording fine vistas of the capital, weather permitting.

  The weather was glorious upon this summer’s day, but only one double seat of the electrically driven chairlift affair was actually occupied.

  And this by a man and a monkey.

  The man sat up as straightly as he might and inhabited the uniform of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers.

  The monkey bounced excitedly, as monkeys will when raised to any height, and sported a rather fancy waistcoat.

  ‘So,’ huffed Colonel Katterfelto, who was reverting more and more to the clipped martial manner of speech so favoured by those of his military rank. ‘Up to club. Carry out campaign according to plan. Pocket winnings. Withdraw to base.’

  Darwin the monkey was almost paying attention. He was greatly enjoying the exhilaration of elevation. Although this was coupled with a small degree of regret. As it put him in mind of the Empress of Mars, upon whose ill-fated maiden voyage Darwin had travelled, two short years before.

  ‘Born down there,’ the colonel said suddenly and he pointed to the west. ‘Ealing. Rural community then. All changed now. All changed. See those, my dear fellow?’ A sweeping gesture included several of the tall steel towers that rose above the rooftops of London to all compass points. Tall steel towers topped by huge metallic spheres that sparked and crackled with electrical energy.

  ‘Tesla towers,’ said Colonel Katterfelto. ‘Springing up everywhere. Transmit electricity, they do. Without wires or cables. Revolutionise everything. Transport, communication. New world, it is. Damned clever. Damned very clever indeed.’

  Darwin turned his face towards that of the colonel. ‘Regarding this infallible gambling system that you claim to have masterminded,’ he said. Most eloquently.

  ‘Not a system as such,’ the colonel puffed. ‘More a strategy. Means to an end. Take two to pull it off, though. Fifty-fifty all the way, as agreed.’

  ‘I mastered Snap some years ago,’ said Darwin, ‘but I have no knowledge of other card games.’

  ‘No need,’ went the colonel. ‘Simple matter really. Just require you to look over the shoulders of the other players, then report back to me what cards they hold in their hands.’

  Darwin’s eyes and mouth widened simultaneously. ‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘All fair in love and war,’ quoth the colonel. ‘Require cash for Great Work. Means to an end and all that. Folk will thank me for it one day soon.

  ‘No,’ said Darwin, shaking his head. ‘I do not have qualms regarding the acquisition of funds through means that are not wholly honest. However, such a scheme as this is open to exposure. It will mean jail for you and the zoo for me. Should not some overzealous henchmen of the proprietor choose to simply fling me from the airship.’

  ‘Don’t fret, old chap.’ The colonel tousled the top of the monkey’s head.

  Darwin bared his teeth.

  Colonel Katterfelto withdrew his tousling hand. ‘No need for anyone to suspect,’ he assured his business associate. ‘Your secret is safe with me. No one else knows you can talk. A quick shufti over a shoulder or two. A whispered word in my ear. Job done. You can take trays of drinks around. You are good at that kind of caper.

  Darwin made a doubtful face.

  ‘Fifty-fifty,’ said the colonel. ‘You might have yourself fitted out with a new wardrobe of clothes.’

  Darwin’s face became thoughtful.

  ‘Nice top hat, kid gloves. Cane with your initial on the silver top.’

  Darwin’s face took on an eager look.

  Chains purred upon cogwheels and finally they reached the gondola.

  The doorman who had so recently waved to the flying platform saluted the colonel and offered politely to aid him from his seat.

  ‘I can manage,’ gruffed the old soldier, rising stiffly, but affecting a certain sprightliness. ‘Come on, Darwin, if you will.’

  The doorman now barred the colonel’s way.

  ‘Terribly sorry, sir,’ said he, ‘but you must observe the dress code.’

  ‘Wearing my dress uniform, you damn fool,’ the colonel was heard to remark.

  ‘Oh, sir, please pardon me. I was not alluding to yourself You are the very proprietorial exemplar of sartorial elegance. Naturally I was referring to your companion.’

  ‘He’s a bally monkey,’ said the colonel.

  ‘He is wearing no—’ The doorman did whisperings behind his hand. ‘No trousers, sir.’

  Colonel Katterfelto offered the doorman what he considered to be a most formidable and intimidating stare.

  The doorman merely smiled and said, ‘No trousers, no admittance. Sorry, sir.�
��

  Colonel Katterfelto made huffing, puffing, grumbling sounds and for one moment actually toyed with the idea of flinging the doorman from the gondola. Reason, however, prevailed and he prepared instead to strike the fellow down and have done with it.

  ‘We can supply trousers,’ said the doorman.

  ‘Monkey trousers?’ queried the colonel.

  ‘We have trousers for most species,’ said the doorman. ‘Although I regret that those for okapi are presently at the cleaners. You know how it is.’

  Colonel Katterfelto shook his head. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘I would say your companion would be a size fifteen.’

  ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ asked Colonel Katterfelto. ‘Monkey trousers? Okapi trousers? Elephant trousers, too, do you have?’

  ‘Now sir is joking,’ said the doorman. ‘Elephants would hardly need to be supplied with trousers, would they?’

  ‘Not to my way of thinking,’ huffed and puffed the colonel.

  ‘Because elephants are denied entrance anyway, due to weight restrictions on The Upper.’

  ‘Are you married?’ the colonel asked the doorman.

  ‘Married? Me, sir? Only to my work.’

  ‘Unfortunate,’ said the colonel. ‘Nothing like a good wife to dress a husband’s wounds. When he has received a sound thrashing for his impertinence.’

  ‘No impertinence intended, sir. Come, let me show your companion to the dressing room.

  Colonel Katterfelto took to the taking of deep and calming breaths. The air was fine and clear up there. He and Darwin followed the doorman into The Spaceman’s Club.

  Its interior was certainly something to behold, being all decked about with inlaid woods and silks and finest lacquers. The style was oriental, though with touches of moderne. The air was sweetly scented by the lily and the fern. There were kilims, there were carpets, there were paintings most eclectic. There were crystal candelabra, though the lighting was electric. It was tasteful, it was elegant, exquisite and effete. And it offered entertainment to space—travelling elite.