Mark Hodder - The curious case of the Clockwork Man

Edwin Brundleweed looked up from his counter, which was secured behind metal bars. He was a stooped, middle-aged gentleman, with a long brown pointed beard drooping from his narrow chin. His head was prematurely bald, his lips thin, and thick-lensed spectacles were perched on the bridge of his hooked nose.

“Why, Detective Inspector! How very nice to see you! Is there news?”

“I'm afraid not, Mr. Brundleweed. This is Captain Sir Richard Burton. He's the gentleman who discovered the robbery here.”

“Then I'm very much in your debt, sir,” the dealer said to Burton. “If it weren't for you, the rest of the diamonds would have been lost too and I'd have been put out of business. Pray, come in, gentlemen.”

Brundleweed moved to a door set in the bars at the side of the counter, unlocked it, and stepped back to allow his visitors through. He relocked it behind them.

“I have a fresh pot of tea just brewed and a new tin of custard creams. Would you care to join me?”

Burton and Trounce answered in the affirmative. A few minutes later, they were seated with their host around a table.

“Mr. Brundleweed,” Burton said, “I'm puzzled. Why would the mystery person who replaced the Choir Stones with fakes take only those gems and not the others you had in your safe?”

The king's agent knew from Babbage that the missing gems possessed special qualities but he wondered who else might be aware of the fact.

“Good question!” came the reply. “I believe the culprit must be a specialist, a collector, a man who has interest in diamonds only for their history rather than for their financial worth. Do you know their background?”

“Only that they were discovered after they started ‘singing’ in 1837, were recently taken from a temple in Cambodia by Lieutenant Francois Garnier, and there were originally seven of them, but he gave two away. Those two subsequently went missing after the death of their owner.”

“That's correct. However, there's much more to the tale, and it's this that makes the remaining gems so eminently collectable. Black diamonds aren't the same as the white variety; they're not found in diamond fields, such as we have in South Africa and Canada. Current thinking posits that they fall from the sky as aerolites.”

“Yes, I've come across that theory.”

“According to an obscure occult manuscript-dating from the sixteenth century, if I remember rightly-which is quoted in Schuyler's De Mythen van Verloren Halfedelstenen, a large aerolite that fell in prehistoric times broke into three pieces. One piece landed in the West, another in Africa, and the third in the Far East. They are known as the Eyes of Naga.”

“Three eyes?”

“Yes. Three eyes. Peculiar, isn't it? I'm afraid I have no understanding of the Dutch language and wasn't able to read the Schuyler volume myself-my information came from a summary in Legendary Gemstones by Jerrold Wilson-but I believe the author goes on to recount two myths: a South American one which tells how the Amazon sprang into being when a large black diamond fell from the sky; and a Cambodian one about a lost continent in which a great river flowed from the spot where a black stone fell. He speculates that a similar story probably exists in the African interior concerning the source of the Nile.”

“It does!” Burton exclaimed. “While I was in the central Lake Regions, in a town named Kazeh, I was told that the fabled Mountains of the Moon supposedly mark the outer rim of a crater where an aerolite fell, giving rise to that river.”

“It can't be a coincidence, can it?” Brundleweed said. “I suppose the mythical shooting star really did fall. Anyway, the Choir Stones are supposedly the fragments of the Far Eastern Eye. If that's true, then the original diamond must have been considerably larger than the Koh-i-noor.”

“Hmm,” Burton grunted. “The Naga. I've encountered references to them. They equate to the Devanagari of Hindu mythology; seven-headed reptilian beings who established an underground civilisation long before Darwin's apes learned how to walk upright.”

“Ah, well, there you are,” Brundleweed commented, noncommittally.

“I shall have to look into that,” Burton murmured thoughtfully. “What of the African and South American diamonds?”

“Not a trace,” the dealer answered. “Although there are vague suggestions that, seventy years or so ago, an English aristocrat discovered an enormous black diamond in Chile. However, I very much doubt the veracity of the claim, for no such diamond has ever been seen, let alone cut and placed on the market.”

“The aristocrat's name?”

“I have no idea, Captain. As I said, it's the vaguest of rumours.”

“Hmm. And what of Francois Garnier? Why did he decide to sell his collection?”

Brundleweed snorted scornfully: “Believe it or not, he claimed that they emanate a deleterious influence. Tosh and piffle, of course!”

“Did you have any prospective buyers?”

“No, but my advertisement in the trade newspaper was only published a couple of days before the robbery. I received just a single enquiry, from a chap who came into the shop to confirm that I was putting the stones on the market, but he was one of those dandified Rake-ish sorts, and though he expressed an interest, he didn't leave a name or address, and I haven't heard from him since.”

“I followed that up,” Detective Inspector Trounce put in, “but it's been impossible to trace the fellow.”

Burton sipped his tea and gazed at the biscuit tin, his mind working.

He looked up. “Is there any explanation for the sound the diamonds are reputed to make?”

“Not that I know of. The sound is real, though. I heard it myself-the faintest of drones. I believe there's a Schuyler in the British Library, if you want to consult it. Maybe the author makes mention of the phenomenon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brundleweed. One final question. You reported a ghost?”

The diamond dealer looked embarrassed. He coughed and scratched his chin through his beard.

“Um, to be frank, Captain Burton, I think I must have nodded off and dreamed it.”

“Tell me, anyway.”

“Very well, but please bear in mind that I was strangely out of sorts that afternoon. I don't know why. I developed a migraine and felt oddly nervous and jumpy. For some reason, I imagined that my lot in life was very unsatisfactory and I grew rather morose. I inherited this little business from my father and have never before or since considered that I might do anything else in life but run it. However, that afternoon I was suddenly filled with resentment toward it, feeling that it had prevented me from doing something more important.”

“What, precisely?”

“That's the thing of it! I have no idea! The suggestion that I might abandon the family business is absurd in the extreme! Anyway, I was in a thoroughly bad temper and, at four o'clock-I remember the time because the clock suddenly stopped ticking and I couldn't get it started again-I decided to pack it in for the day. The Francois Garnier Collection was already locked in my safe but, before leaving, I went to double check it. As I passed through into the workshop, the figure of a woman caught my eye. It made me jump out of my skin, I can tell you. She was standing in the corner, white and transparent. Then I blinked and she was gone. Believe me, after that I had a thorough case of the jitters and left the shop in a hurry, though not before locking up carefully. On the way home, the fresh air seemed to do me good and the migraine left me. I began to feel more like my old self. By the time I stepped through my front door, I was perfectly fine. I went to bed early and slept heavily. I didn't awake until the police knocked the next morning.”