Mark Hodder - The curious case of the Clockwork Man

“I remember.”

“The machinery inside it is baffling. There are no moving parts, for a start. My people have yet to identify a single component of the thing they can understand.”

“So?”

“So they found six small black diamonds fitted into the device.”

“Do they emit a low, almost inaudible hum, Prime Minister?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, they do.”

“Then in all probability, sometime in the future, they will be cut from one of the Eyes of Naga.”

The rapid clicks and scrapes of a fencing match filled Burton's study. It was combat a la Florentine -he and Admiral Lord Nelson were holding long knives in their off-hands, using them as a secondary defence.

Burton was being forced backward around one of his three desks by his valet. As he came abreast a bookcase, the clockwork man “broke time,” suddenly changing the tempo of his attack, which caused Burton to miscalculate his parry. It was a classic move, but exercised with such speed and precision that it completely fooled the king's agent, whose foil flew wide. The brass man followed up with a balestra -a forward hop-and an attaque composee, which skipped lightly past Burton's instinctively raised knife to penetrate his defence before he could regain control.

The famous explorer grunted as the tip of his opponent's foil prodded into his right shoulder.

“Superb!” he cried enthusiastically. “Now do it again. I want to examine your change of balance when you break time. En garde!”

The competition continued.

Burton puffed and panted with exertion as his foil met and parried the clockwork man's thrusts. He backed across the hearthrug, avoided a prise de fer, and tried to press his opponent's foil aside. His valet responded by sliding his weapon from a high line to a low line, then twisted and lunged. Burton countered but Admiral Lord Nelson's move had been a feint; the brass man broke time again, skipped sideways then forward, and his attaque composee flashed past the opposing blade, his point stabbing hard against Burton's sternum.

“Bismillah, but you're good! Again! Again! En garde!”

Their foils clicked together.

There came a knock at the door.

“Not now!”

“You have a visitor, Sir Richard.”

“I don't want to be disturbed, Mrs. Angell!”

“It's Detective Inspector Honesty!”

Burton sighed. “Disengage,” he ordered.

Admiral Lord Nelson lowered his weapon. Burton did the same and pulled off his mask.

“Oh, very well,” he called in exasperation. “Send him up!”

He took his valet's foil and placed it, and his own, in a case that lay on one of the desks.

“We'll continue later, Nelson.”

The clockwork man saluted, walked across the room, and stood at attention next to the bureau between the two windows.

Moments later, there was a short sharp rap at the door.

“Come!”

It opened and Detective Inspector Honesty stepped in. There were beads of sweat on his brow.

“Hallo! Too hot. Hellish weather.”

“Come in, old chap. Take that confounded jacket off if you don't want to cook!”

The Scotland Yard man divested himself of his outer garment, hung it on a coat hook behind the door, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and settled into a chair. He looked around the study with interest, running his eyes over the swords hanging on the walls, the heavily loaded bookcases, the teakwood chests, the pistols displayed in the alcoves on either side of the chimney breast, the huge African spear leaning in a corner, the three big desks, and the many souvenirs of Burton's travels.

Detective Inspector Honesty was a slightly built man and rather fussily dressed, but he had a wiry strength about him and Burton knew that he was a formidable opponent in hand-to-hand combat. His brown mustache was extravagantly wide, waxed, and curled upward at the ends. His hair was parted in the middle and lacquered flat. His eyes were grey. There was a monocle clenched in the right.

“Back yesterday?” he asked, in his characteristically clipped manner.

“The day before,” Burton answered. “I spent most of yesterday reporting to the prime minister.”

“Any luck in South America?”

“Yes, I know where Tomas Castro is.”

“Do you, by crikey!” Honesty exclaimed, sitting upright. “Where?”

“In the Bethlem Royal Hospital.”

“Bedlam? Lunatic asylum? Here in London?”

“Yes.”

Burton took a cheroot from a box on the mantelpiece, applied a lucifer to it, and sat opposite the detective. He gave a quick nod of permission when Honesty half pulled a pipe from his waistcoat pocket. As the policeman went through the ritual of scraping its bowl and pressing in a plug of tobacco, the king's agent explained.

“I've had rather a high old time of it these weeks past. I shan't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that I got caught up in an adventure that took me from Buenos Aires across Argentina and into Chile. There, I was able to trace the Castro family to Melipilla, a town on the main road between Valparaiso and Santiago. I met Pedro Castro, the son of Tomas, who revealed that his father went missing almost a decade ago while prospecting in the mountains with a Frenchman. This individual had been staying with the family for some weeks. I showed Pedro a daguerreotype of the Claimant. He recognised the face as the lodger's but was astonished at the size of his body. The Frenchman, apparently, had been very slim.”

Honesty put a match to his pipe and muttered, “Impossible to get that fat. Even in ten years.”

Burton nodded, and continued, “So Tomas and this Frenchman spent weeks prospecting until one day they never came back. Nothing further was heard until earlier this year, when rumours reached Pedro that a person named Tomas Castro was in an asylum in Santiago. He rode there to make enquiries and was told that, around the time of his father's disappearance, a man had been delivered to the establishment in a state of near insanity. He'd later, during a moment of lucidity, given his name as Castro. Naturally, Pedro wanted to see him, but was informed that the patient had recently been transported to London to be incarcerated in the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Apparently, he'd turned out to be from a rich English family. Pedro therefore concluded that the lunatic in question was neither his father nor the Frenchman.”

“English!”

“Yes. So now we have to find out exactly who that man is.”

“Roger Tichborne?”

“It seems likely. You'll remember that he was raised by a French mother and had a French accent.”

“Which the Claimant doesn't.”

“Notably.”

Honesty asked, “Who took him from the Santiago asylum?”

“Ah, that's an interesting point.”

“It is?”

“He was removed by a rather well-known individual.”

“Who?”

“Nurse Florence Nightingale.”

“The Lady of the Lamp!”

“The very same. Which, considering I was told she's missing, intrigues me a great deal!”

“Told by whom?”

“Isambard Kingdom Brunel, at the time of the Brundleweed robbery.”

“By gum! What's she up to? We must see that man in Bedlam! A police raid, perhaps?”

“Good heavens, no! That would be far too heavy-handed! No, no, softly, softly, catchee monkey. Palmerston's men, Burke and Hare, are preparing false papers. In a couple of days, they and I will enter the asylum in the guise of government inspectors.”

Honesty grunted and sucked thoughtfully at his pipe.

Burton pulled a cord at the side of the fireplace. He and his guest sat in contemplative silence until Mrs. Angell answered the summons. Burton requested a pot of coffee. As the old lady left, he turned back to the Yard man and said: “So Commissioner Mayne sent you to Australia to find out more about our faux aristocrat? How went it?”