The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 30 CHASING MONSTERS

Conan Doyle stepped through the main gates of Waterloo Station footsore and weary. Impossibly dense fog had stalled the train two miles from the station, forcing him to abandon the carriage and walk the tracks the rest of the way. He had a satchel thrown over his shoulder that contained his latest Casebook, as well as his Webley revolver and a full box of shells. Lost in his own turmoiled thoughts, Conan Doyle failed to spot the looming figure of a large man until it stepped from the fog in front of him.

“Arthur.”

“Oscar?”

For once, Wilde was dressed in a rather ramshackle fashion. His wild mane of chestnut hair was disheveled. He had not shaved and his eyes looked bleary and bloodshot from lack of sleep.

“My boy has been taken,” he said in dull and disbelieving tones.

“What?”

“Vyvyan…” His voice was utterly bereft. “… snatched before our eyes… by… dear God help me… by that… creature!”

At the news a giddy weakness flashed through Conan Doyle.

“Vyvyan, too?” He gripped Wilde’s arm. “Miss Leckie was abducted this morning. And by the same soulless devil we encountered the other night.”

“What are we to do, Arthur?” Wilde fretted. “What are we to do? We must summon the police! We must contact your diminutive friend from the palace, Mister Riddle. I will roust the old biddy Victoria from her bed if need be. My darling boy has been kidnapped!”

“I’m afraid we cannot wait for the police. We must seize the initiative. Our enemies are ahead of us. Remember today’s date and all that 13/13 business. The revolution, if there is to be one, will start within hours. The authorities will no doubt be overwhelmed.”

“What shall we do? Where shall we find them?”

Conan Doyle dipped in a pocket and withdrew the cogwheel, holding it up for Wilde to see. “Does this look familiar?”

“The gear you found at Tarquin Hogg’s home?”

“No, but its double. This fell out of Kingsley’s broken toy — the one I had mended at Jedidiah’s Emporium.”

“I fail to understand.”

“I now believe that our friend Jedidiah is behind the monster. If you recall we both gave him our calling cards. Cards that bore our home addresses. Very convenient for the kidnappers.”

“Dash it all! You’re right, Arthur. So what do we do?”

“We go looking for answers. Our first stop must be the Emporium of Mechanical Marvels.”

“But however shall we find our way? This blasted fog has brought the capital to a standstill. The omnibuses do not run. I could not locate a hansom and was obliged to walk all the way from Tite Street. Since I arrived here the fog has been steadily thickening. I doubt I could find my way home in this miasma.”

Both men stiffened at a jovial laugh that came from somewhere in the swirling gray.

“Foggy is it, gents?” a Cockney voice announced from the shadows beside the empty newspaper kiosk. “I wondered why it was so quiet about.”

Although he was only a few feet away, Conan Doyle and Wilde had to step closer before they made out the owner of the voice. Standing in his usual spot beside the newspaper kiosk was the Crimean war veteran and his tray of pennants. Tendrils of fog swirled about him, licking the black lenses of glasses behind which no vision was ever perceived.

But in the face of blindness, Conan Doyle suddenly knew how they would see their way.

The Scottish author kept a hand on the veteran’s epauletted shoulder while he and Wilde linked arms. With the veteran’s cane tap tapping the curbstone, they navigated slowly but steadily through the murky maze of London roads in a fog so total that street signs were invisible from more than two feet away. Twenty minutes later, they fetched up outside Jedediah’s Emporium of Mechanical Marvels.

“Well done, Sam,” Wilde congratulated.

“Yes,” Conan Doyle added. “Without your assistance we would have been lost after the first street.”

The shop was locked up tight just like all the businesses they passed; a CLOSED sign hung in the window. Conan Doyle took the Casebook from his satchel, scribbled a note, and then tore the page out and pressed it into the blind veteran’s hands.

“We need one more favor, Sam. Detective Blenkinsop lives close by, on Anglesey Street. We need you to deliver this note and then fetch him here. Do you think you could find the address?”

“Anglesey Street?” The veteran scratched his stubbly chin. “Wot’s the number?”

“Forty-two.”

“However shall he read the house number?” Wilde asked.

But the veteran didn’t need to see, he had his own way of navigating the city.

“Number forty-two? The lady wot lives in the bottom flat has a yappy little dog called Bonzo. I usually tosses it a biscuit when it comes sniffing about me feet. Don’t you worry, I can find it, no bother.”

The veteran turned and began tapping his way toward Anglesey Street. He had gone barely ten feet when he vanished from sight.

Conan Doyle turned to Wilde. “I noticed from your walk you seem a little stiff.”

Wilde grunted a laugh. “Stiff? After our adventure on the Thames the other night, a corpse in full rigor is more flexible.”

The Scottish doctor unshouldered his satchel and opened it. He drew out a smoked glass medicine bottle and handed it to Wilde.

“Medicine, Arthur?”

“The laudanum you once asked for. Mixed with gin and cocaine.”

“Sounds playful. But won’t it make us somewhat… sedated?”

“Not with all the amphetamines I added. Go on, take a good swig, you will soon feel better. Probably better than you have ever felt in your life.”

“Arthur, you dog!” Wilde smirked. “Am I at last being a bad influence upon you? You once said you didn’t dispense dangerous drugs.”

“Only in an emergency. And this qualifies. After all we’ve been through and have yet to endure, we both need a restorative. Now go on, take your medicine as the doctor orders.”

Wilde uncapped the bottle and took a long, Adam’s-apple-bobbing swig. He handed the bottle back to Conan Doyle, who did likewise. After a moment, Wilde commented, “Interesting, my face appears to have gone completely numb.”

“It does have that side effect. Still, let us get on with the task at hand.” The two friends studied the darkened shop front. Wilde thumbed the door latch experimentally, but to no avail. “Locked,” he said, “and we have no key.”

Conan Doyle reached into his satchel and drew out his Webley revolver. “Fortunately I brought a skeleton key with me.”

“Good Lord! Won’t that fetch the police?”

“A good thing if it did.” Conan Doyle dropped into a wide-legged stance, aiming the muzzle an inch from the lock. Anticipating shrapnel, he turned his face away and squeezed the trigger. BANG! Up close the shot was a thunderclap that ricocheted from the doorway, fell into the arms of the fog, and was quickly smothered.

The bullet had neatly blown the lock out of the door. The shop bell tinkled as Conan Doyle shouldered his way inside. Wilde followed after, remarking, “I should think it’s pointless announcing our entrance after that.”

“Keep your wits about you,” Conan Doyle warned. “Our resurrected friend might be lurking.”

“Heavens, I wish you hadn’t said that.”

The two men split up and crept about the shop. Looking. Listening. The space between shelves was unfathomably dark. Wilde struck a match only to yelp as a wild-eyed, toothy visage loomed from the darkness — the painted face of a rocking horse. Both circuited the shop and met up at the far wall where a sliver of yellow light gleamed beneath the parlor door. They paused on the threshold, listening.

From within came a faint but steady click-click… click-click… click-click…

Conan Doyle threw Wilde a baffled look and the Irishman volleyed it back. The Scottish author stood back and raised his pistol, then nodded to Wilde, who twisted the doorknob and flung the door wide. They expected an armed assailant, or Wilde’s kidnapped son and Miss Leckie tied to chairs. Instead, they found a domestic scene.

The blond-haired boy sat in his bath chair, a blanket draped across his lap. As before, his head turned to follow the movement of the toy train. However, the toy locomotive had toppled from its track and lay on its side, a puddle of water seeping from the tiny boiler. In the nearby rocking chair, the lady in the coal-scuttle bonnet furiously knitted away, needles mechanically working: click-click… click-click… click-click… The scarf she was knitting spilled in folds at her feet, perhaps ten feet long and steadily growing.

“I–I—I’m terribly sorry,” Conan Doyle started to say, but then his words shriveled in his throat. He and Wilde exchanged a mystified look and stepped closer. He touched the woman’s bonnet and it fell back to reveal an armature of wire forming a rough approximation of a human head. He lifted the blanket from the boy’s lap and found no legs: only a clockwork mechanism where the lower half of a body should have been.

Both figures were lifelike automatons, robotically repeating the same action over and over again.

“Good Lord,” Wilde breathed. “They are mere mechanisms, after all.”

Conan Doyle picked up a framed photograph from an end table and showed it to Wilde. It was the photograph he had seen on their earlier visit: a pretty blond woman posed in front of a lake with her hand on the shoulder of a fair-haired young boy of perhaps four years old who stood clutching a windup battleship.

“I believe these were the real models,” Conan Doyle said.

Wilde raised his bushy eyebrows. “And what became of the originals?”

“What indeed?” Conan Doyle shook his head grimly. “I suspect they are no longer with us. I believe these simulacrums are Jedidiah’s attempt at a replacement.”

“How grotesque.”

“I fear we are only just beginning to understand how twisted the mind of Jedidiah is.”

At his words, realization flashed in Wilde’s eyes.

“What is it, Oscar?”

The Irish writer sighed and shook his head. “I am a complete fool!” He fixed Conan Doyle with a solemn look. “What was the name of Ozymandius’s estranged brother?”

Conan Doyle thought a moment. “Solomon?”

“Precisely. As a student of the classics, I am mortified that I failed to tumble to it sooner.”

“Tumble to what?”

“In the Book of Kings, Jedidiah is another name for Solomon.”

“Ahhhhh! So after the accident with the torpedo, where his wife and son were killed—”

“He changed his name and seemingly his identity, from Solomon to Jedidiah.”

A floorboard creaked behind them. Conan Doyle spun and aimed the revolver, finger tensed on the trigger.

“Don’t shoot!” Detective Blenkinsop stood in the parlor doorway, the old veteran lurking behind.

“Detective Blenkinsop!” Conan Doyle exclaimed. “Thank goodness. You’d better come look at this.”

“What is it, sir?” Blenkinsop asked. He had obviously dressed in a hurry, for the front of his coat was misbuttoned. “What have you found?”

Conan Doyle nodded and the young detective stepped forward and peered at the two automatons. “Strewth!” he exclaimed raising his homburg and scratching his head. “Proper lifelike, ain’t they?”

“I believe Jedidiah is involved in a revolutionary plot that is unraveling at this very moment. I fear he is behind the kidnapping of Mister Wilde’s son and my friend, Miss Jean Leckie. Moreover, I believe he is behind the dead men who are coming to life and assassinating key members of the government.”

Blenkinsop let out a whistle. “All pretty serious charges. I mean, them big dolls is proper queer all right, but they ain’t against the law. I can’t go to Commissioner Burke unless we got something more substantial. Some proper kind of proof.”

Conan Doyle sagged visibly. “You are correct, Tom. We shall just have to keep searching the premises until we find it.” He thought a moment and said, “I believe a thorough probe of the cellar workshop should be next.”

As the men stepped back into the toyshop, a crouching shape stirred to life in the shadows, luminous eyes aglow. Startled, Blenkinsop turned and fired a single shot. BANG! Silver smoke purled in the air as the men crept forward and discovered what it was. The bullet had struck the wooden head of the Automaton Turk cleanly between the eyes. Despite the injury, the Turk stared demonically as his wooden arm lifted the pipe to his carved lips, exhaled a tendril of steam, and then swept smoothly across the chessboard and tapped three times.

“What is this infernal device?” Conan Doyle asked. He started to snatch open the various doors, revealing the clockwork mechanisms within. At the heart was a metal box, warm to the touch. His fingers fumbled a latch and the door sprung open. No one was prepared for the horror they found within.

A pair of living eyes stared back at them like bloody marbles and below, glistening white fangs. The men recoiled, exclaiming in shock and disgust. What they had found was an abomination: a monkey’s head, very much alive, although severed from its physical body. A metal collar encircled the stump of a neck. Rubber hoses pulsed with blood being pumped by a steam pump, leather bellows creaked up and down, pumping air, replacing lungs.

The ghastly secret of the Turkish Automaton revealed.

“Blimey! That’s nasty, that is!” Detective Blenkinsop breathed. He covered his mouth with his hand and turned away.

“What is it?” the blind veteran asked. “What’s he see?”

“A sin against man and nature,” Wilde hissed.

Conan Doyle touched a hand to his friend’s arm. They shared a look that acknowledged both were gripped by horrid speculation as to the well-being of their loved ones. “Come,” he urged, “we must search the workshop.”

The door in the floor flung open when Conan Doyle yanked the rope and the men peered down the precipitous steps. A light had been left burning as if someone or something down there waited for them. Detective Blenkinsop brandished his pistol and stepped cautiously forward. “I should be the one to lead the way,” he said. “This is now police business.”

They left the Crimean veteran to guard the top of the stairs and crept down the creaking steps, eyes probing the shadows. At the bottom they found a well laid-out workshop: half-assembled toys scattered atop workbenches, rolls of tinplate neatly stacked, tools hanging from hooks on the walls. There was nothing sinister about the place. No place prisoners could be held. No hidden cubbyholes.

“Nothing here,” Blenkinsop said. “Not a sausage.”

“Blast!” Wilde shouted, his voice cracking with disappointment. “Where can they be?”

Conan Doyle looked about the workshop. “Wait. There is something odd about this space.”

“Odd?” Blenkinsop said.

“It is too small. The shop upstairs is quite large. This looks to be half the size.”

He crossed to one wall, examining the bricks. “Note that the bricks on this wall are much newer than the bricks on the opposite wall.” His eyes traced the brickwork until he found what he was searching for: a straight crack that ran from floor to ceiling. The workbench set against the wall bore a cut that ran at an angle and intersected the same crack. He studied the hooks projecting from the brickwork. Only one was not hung with a tool. He grasped it and gave an experimental tug. The hook swung down on an invisible hinge and the wall opened with a clunk, rotating smoothly on an invisible pivot. They crossed through into the resurrection chamber.

“Another workshop,” Wilde said.

Conan Doyle looked around at the giant restraining chair, the laboratory tables, and the scarred wooden operating bench. “A workshop for evil. This is where they assemble their monsters.”

Blenkinsop found the door to the old larder. “Wonder where this leads?” He opened the door and went in. Conan Doyle and Wilde waited. After what seemed a very long time, Blenkinsop reemerged. Only now his expression was dire.

“What?” Wilde asked.

“Everything’s cold in there. On ice. And there’s two metal coffins.”

Wilde exchanged a look of dread with his friend.

Conan Doyle handed Blenkinsop the hissing lantern. “You open them, Tom.”

The younger man nodded. “Yeah. Right you are.” He stepped back into the larder and they heard the clang of metal lids being thrown open. Blenkinsop emerged moments later, his face ashen. He licked his lips, struggling to find his voice. “A young woman… pretty.” He looked at Wilde. “And a little boy.”

At the news, Wilde clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle a moan of despair. Conan Doyle stepped forward and said, “I must see for myself.” He took the lantern and entered the larder. By the time he stepped back out, Wilde was shaking with dread anticipation.

“It’s all right, Oscar. It’s not Vyvyan, nor is it Jean. The two metal tanks contain the bodies of Solomon’s young wife and son. Although preserved in chilled alcohol, the corpses have deteriorated quite badly.”

Wilde shook his head. “Dear Lord, what demons are driving this man? Surely, he does not hope to revivify their corpses after so long?”

A terrible thought occurred to Conan Doyle. Maybe he does not. Maybe that is why he has abducted Miss Leckie and Wilde’s young boy. Perhaps he will somehow replace his missing family. He made the mistake of looking at Wilde. As the two friends’ eyes met, it was as if the thought was transmitted telepathically between them.

“Dear God, no!” Wilde breathed.

“Come!” Conan Doyle shouted as he hurried back across the workshop and charged up the wooden steps to the toyshop.

“What now, Doctor Doyle?” Blenkinsop shouted as he and Wilde hurried along behind.

“Our course of action is clear. All paths lead to one man: Rufus DeVayne, the Marquess of Gravistock. We must hurry to his family seat. I’ll warrant that is where Jean and Vyvyan have been taken. And I’ll warrant that is where we will find Jedidiah, or as he is really known, Solomon Arkwright. We cannot delay a moment longer, for fear of what is happening to our loved ones. Oscar and I will lead the charge.”

“Sorry, sir,” Blenkinsop said. “But I believe that is my job.”

“I must differ with you, Tom. You must alert your colleagues in the police and then I want you to go to Buckingham Palace.”

“To the palace? Me?” He laughed. “Copper or not, I doubt they would let the likes of me in.”

“I will give you a note explaining everything. You must deliver it personally to a man named Cypher. Saying his name will open doors.”

“A bloke named Cypher?”

“They will understand. Now Oscar and I must make haste.”

“But how will you get there in this fog? The trains do not run. There’s not a hansom to be had.”

Conan Doyle pondered a moment, brows knit, but then something hanging on the wall caught his eye and a tight smile formed upon his face. “I think the evil genius Solomon Arkwright has provided the answer.” He pointed to the steam motorcycle hanging on the wall.

After they wheeled it out of the shop and onto the street, it took Conan Doyle ten minutes of head scratching before he could puzzle out its operation. “The water goes in here,” he said, patting the streamlined brass tank. “And the calcium carbide pellets go in here.” He yanked the cork from a smoked glass bottle and tipped a stream of white pellets into a metal reservoir. “Now, I believe the boiler is lit using this striker.” He depressed a spring-loaded plunger. There was a scratching sound and the foop! of a gas flame lighting. Within moments, the boiler hissed as it worked up a head of steam. He climbed astride the saddle, opened a petcock, and pistons began to drive up and down in their cylinders. And with that the machine came to life, throbbing between his legs, tendrils of steam wraithing about the engine. He had discovered two pairs of goggles hanging from a hook above the motorcycle and now he pulled on a pair and handed the spare to Wilde. “Here, Oscar, you will be needing these.”

“Whatever for?”

“To keep the wind out of your eyes.”

The Irishman chuckled ironically. “Oscar Wilde, ride upon such a contrivance? Surely you jest. Oscar Wilde does not ride bicycles or motorcycles. A hansom cab is the only two-wheeled vehicle I deign to ride inside.”

“How did you imagine we were going to get there?”

“I imagined you would ride, whilst I perambulate alongside.”

“Think of Vyvyan; we have no time.”

“But how will we see? The fog is so thick one can barely walk in it.”

Conan Doyle sparked a lighter and the steam cycle’s huge carbide headlamp flared to life, hurling a dazzling beam before it.

“Good lord, you have awakened a cyclopean beast!”

“Hop on,” Conan shouted above the clattering racket. “This way, we’ll be there inside half an hour.”

With great awkwardness, even for him, Wilde cocked a leg and straddled the bike, settling his backside into the bucket-like pillion saddle with the exaggerated caution of a hemorrhoid sufferer.

“Are you aboard?” Conan Doyle shouted over his shoulder.

“Only my most vulnerable appendages.”

“Right, then. Here we go. Hang on tight.”

Gears ground as Conan Doyle yanked levers, squeezed calipers, rotated handgrips, searching for a clutch. He gripped a small lever on the handlebars, pulled it back, and the motor revolutions climbed to a roar, the machine vibrating dangerously beneath them. A relief valve popped, jetting steam with a shriek. He threw more levers and then finally got lucky and found the clutch by slipping a toe beneath a foot pedal and lifting upward. Gears engaged with a graunch and the machine leaped forward. The cobblestones were greasy with fog and the back tire broke loose and spun madly. Conan Doyle snatched the handlebars left and right, fighting to stay upright. They veered across the road, mounted the sidewalk, careened off a wall and back onto the street. A lamppost loomed. Wilde shrieked and closed his eyes, hunkering behind Conan Doyle. Somehow they managed to swerve around it, although it clipped the Scotsman’s elbow painfully.

Suddenly the bike was flying along Winchester Street at a meteoric ten miles an hour, a speed which seemed much faster because of the fog and the necessity to dodge and weave around abandoned carriages blocking the roadway. Like men straddling a spluttering comet, they streaked through the streets of London and soon began the long, slow climb to Hampstead, where the fog finally began to thin. During the first five minutes of riding Conan Doyle attempted to slow for a corner only to discover that the machine had yet to be fitted with brakes. He decided not to broach the matter with Wilde who, lapsed Catholic though he was, was frantically reciting the rosary at the top of his voice.

As for stopping, Conan Doyle reasoned that wouldn’t be necessary until they reached the DeVayne family seat, at which point he would just have to improvise.