The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 9 JEDIDIAH’S EMPORIUM OF MECHANICAL MARVELS

The sign above the shop announced JEDIDIAH’S EMPORIUM OF MECHANICAL MARVELS. As Conan Doyle and Jean Leckie approached, a half-dozen street urchins scrummaged the windows, runny-noses smearing the glass as they ogled the multicolored toys on display.

Conan Doyle chided a path through the press of children with a throat-clearing harrumph. He thumbed the latch and a bell jangled as he swung wide the shop door and stood aside to allow Jean Leckie to enter. At that moment, one of the boys barged past, reached into the shop window, snatched a toy, and bolted.

“You young scoundrel!” Conan Doyle shouted impotently, but the boy was a blur of running arms and feet fast disappearing down the cobblestone street. “Stop!” He looked at his lady friend with concern. “That impudent tyke just pinched a toy right from under our noses.”

A rumble from behind made Conan Doyle turn. A large trapdoor in the floor flung upward and footsteps thumped up a flight of wooden steps. The figure that ascended from the cellar had a long white beard that spilled down upon his chest. He wore half-moon spectacles balanced upon his nose and a tasseled and richly embroidered burgundy smoking cap upon his head, beneath which his long white hair was pulled back and braided into a ponytail. With his avuncular demeanor and stained canvas apron, he resembled an emaciated Father Christmas.

“Welcome! Welcome,” said the man. “I am Jedidiah, owner of the emporium.”

Conan Doyle was about to speak when a mournful whistle interrupted him. He looked for the source of the sound and saw a miniature steam locomotive running on a set of steel tracks set high on the walls. The train orbited the shop in a frenzy of reciprocating motion and then plunged into the maw of a papier-mâché tunnel and vanished.

“I must apologize, sir,” Conan Doyle said. “We have inadvertently assisted a robbery. I was holding the door for the lady when a young guttersnipe snatched a toy from the display and took to his heels.”

The shopkeeper, a man who appeared to be in his sixties, rumbled with good-natured laughter.

“Do not be concerned. I think I know the boy. He has been staring at that toy for days with the kind of hopeless longing only a poor child can manifest.”

“But the lad is a thief! Should we not summon a constable?”

The older man shook his head dismissively. “There is no need. I did not become a toy maker seeking to become a rich man. I did so to make children happy.”

“How wonderful!” Jean beamed, and Conan Doyle, who was still perturbed about encouraging theft in the young, swallowed what he was about to say. “Now see here,” he said, drawing out his coin purse, “you must allow me to recompense you—”

The shopkeeper silenced him with a raised hand. “No, sir, that shall not be necessary. Perhaps if you find something to your fancy and make a purchase, that will help defray the loss.” Jedidiah looked from Conan Doyle to Jean Leckie with a sparkle in his eye and an amused smile. “But I see you are a handsome young couple, come to shop for your children.”

Conan Doyle blushed at the comment and quickly mumbled, “Actually, I was wondering if you could possibly mend this.” He pried the windup drummer from his deep coat pocket. “It is my son’s favorite toy and he is quite upset that it is broken.”

“How unfortunate. Let me see what I can do.” Jedidiah wiped his hands on his apron and took the toy. His tinkerer’s hands, stained with oil that marked every crease, poked and probed and gave the key an exploratory twist. After a ruminating pause he frowned and shook his head. “I am familiar with this make of toys. Inexpensive, but rather shabbily made. They soon break — an unfortunate situation guaranteed to break a child’s heart. He indicated the wares of his shop with a careless wave. “Everything in my shop is handmade by myself on the premises. Should a toy ever break, a customer may simply return it for free repair or replacement.”

“Ah,” Conan Doyle said. “So you cannot fix the toy? I had hoped… it is Kingsley’s favorite.”

Jedidiah raised a placating hand. “Do not give up hope so soon. Let me have a look inside.”

The toy maker produced a small screwdriver from an apron pocket and prized loose the tabs holding together the tin body. A black ribbon of coil spring unspooled and dangled. “As you can see,” Jedidiah noted, pointing to a gearwheel missing several teeth, “inferior gears. It has been overwound, stripping several teeth.”

“I see. Beyond repair. Dash it. Perhaps I can find something to replace it.”

“I cannot repair it,” Jedidiah said, looking craftily over his glasses, “but I can rebuild it. Properly. I’ll just take it to my workshop for a better look. Perhaps you and your pretty wife would care to browse while you wait?”

Both Conan Doyle and Jean Leckie squirmed a moment, embarrassed by the false presumption, but neither said anything to correct the mistake.

“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed. “That would be splendid.”

The shopkeeper nodded. He left the counter and tromped down the steps into the glowing cave of his cellar workshop.

“Isn’t it a dreamland?” Jean Leckie said, wandering the store, fondling toys hanging from the ceiling on cords and crowding the busy shelves. She touched a tinplate monkey in a red fez and it came to life, its arms winding forward and then snapping back as the monkey backflipped. The arms wound up again and the monkey backflipped a second time. “How funny!” she laughed.

Conan Doyle looked around, dazzled by the assortment. The shop displayed a few simple toys, such as stuffed bears, a maniacally smiling rocking horse, a few wooden swords and shields, but most everything was mechanical: windup, clockwork mechanisms of great ingenuity painted in colors to dazzle a child’s eye. “I could never bring Kingsley in here,” he remarked. “I should have to prise his hands off the counter to get him out!”

As Conan Doyle perused the shop, he found that it was much more than a simple toy store. It was also part museum and displayed a variety of wondrous mechanical contrivances. Then he glimpsed something hanging on the back wall that made his heart leap into his throat.

A steam motorcycle.

And a beautiful one at that. He had never seen such an advanced design. The motor was a compact unit streamlined into the fuel tank. Everything was beautifully wrought of painted steel and machined brass, all held together by shiny bolts. The motorcycle was fitted with a giant brass headlamp and two sculpted metal bucket seats, one for the rider and one for a pillion passenger. For a moment Conan Doyle was possessed by visions of swooping along a winding country lane on such a machine, gauntleted hands gripping the handlebars, cap on backward, eyes goggled against the rushing wind. And, of course, Miss Leckie would be seated pillion behind him, arms hugging about his waist, her long tresses tucked beneath a handsome bonnet, a silk scarf fluttering around her neck.

In all his life, he had never lusted so strongly after a material possession. He was at heart a Scotsman, cursed with the Caledonian habit of thrift. But, gripped by a mad impulse, he resolved on the spot to buy it — no matter what the expense. But then he noticed to his crushing disappointment a printed card affixed to the wall beside it: DISPLAY ONLY. NOT FOR SALE.

“Blast!” he muttered as the bubble of his fantasy burst.

Meanwhile, Jean had wandered deeper in the shop, and now her musical voice carried from the far back reaches. “Oh, Arthur, you must come and see this!”

Conan Doyle followed her voice to the back of the shop. When he finally found her, she was staring at something that dropped his jaw with surprise.

Sitting behind a low cabinet was a coffee-skinned man in a costume of the exotic east: a plumed turban and a crimson robe trimmed with white rabbit. An inlaid chessboard took pride of place atop the cabinet before him, which had its all of its doors left wide open to display its many brassy cogwheels, pulleys, and mechanisms of diabolical complexity. Atop the chessboard were ivory chess pieces set out, ready for a game. The turbaned man, who on closer inspection, proved to be a simple wooden dummy, held a long-stemmed pipe in one hand. Conan Doyle recognized instantly what he was confronted with.

“Extraordinary! It is a replica of—”

“The Automaton Chess Player,” Jean Leckie interjected before he could finish.

He looked at her, mouth agape. “You know of it?”

“Yes, Arthur. Although I am a mere woman I have a keen mind and am an active member of three lending libraries.” She gave him a cutting look that softened into a playful smirk. “As I told you in the park, I have made a study of all things occult since I was a young girl. It is a replica of Wolfgang von Kempelen’s mechanical chess player, one of the most famous automatons of all time. The original was built in 1789 to impress the Austrian court. Although many declared it a fake, no one could prove it so. The automaton defeated some of the greatest chess players of the day. It even defeated Napoleon. The original wound up in America where it was destroyed in a fire.”

Conan Doyle bowed, hand on heart. “I apologize and happily stand corrected. Miss Leckie, your knowledge of the arcane is positively encyclopedic.”

“Go on, Arthur,” she said, nudging him with an encouraging look. “Try it. Let’s see if the mind behind Sherlock Holmes can defeat a mere mechanical apparatus.”

Conan Doyle vacillated, suddenly reluctant. “But I don’t even know if it functions. Or how to turn it on. I don’t see a switch anywhere.”

“Try moving a piece and see what happens.”

Conan Doyle cleared his throat, feeling slightly ridiculous, and also a little nervous should the device actually work and he be defeated in front of the lady. But he stepped forward gamely, studied the chessboard for a moment and then began with his usual opening, pushing his queen’s pawn to queen 4. He drew his hand away and waited. Nothing happened. He turned to Miss Leckie. “I don’t think it’s work—”

He was interrupted by the ascending whine of mechanical gears. The figure of the Turk drew itself erect, the turbaned head lifted, and the eyes sprang open, glowing with an eerie inner light. The Turk’s arm lifted the long pipe to his carved wooden lips, as if to take a puff, and then blew out a slender jet of steam. The left arm jerked, swept across the chessboard, hooked the black queen’s pawn with its wooden fingers and pushed it forward, exactly matching Conan Doyle’s opening gambit.

“Amazing!” Conan Doyle laughed. “It’s powered by steam. I must have Oscar take a crack at this.” He smiled and looked around for Miss Leckie, but she had vanished. Conan Doyle returned his attention to the automaton. He reasoned it must be a simple mechanical device — a series of gears mathematically determined to play one or possibly two game variations. Conan Doyle had been a bit of a chess prodigy while at Stonyhurst College. He had little doubt he could make short work of a clockwork cabinet full of gears and pulleys, a mechanism little more than an elaborate cuckoo clock. He stooped forward, placed his large index finger atop his rook’s pawn, and pushed it forward to rook four. Jean would have a few minutes to explore the shop on her own.

This would not take long.

Miss Leckie had been drawn away by an object of great beauty and even greater notoriety. The Mutoscope resembled a metal snail set atop a trapezoidal stand. Painted in a gleaming cream and red paint scheme resplendent with whorls and flourishes, it was more than a beautiful object — it embodied the allure of the forbidden. Even though she was a well-bred young lady, Jean had heard of such devices and knew of their salacious reputation. Mutoscopes could be found in the arcades of every seaside pier in England, but she had never had chance to personally experience one.

The temptation proved irresistible.

She glanced about. Conan Doyle was busy battling the chess player. The toy maker was tinkering in his workshop. She had no audience. The elaborate gold script painted above the coin slot pleaded for only 1d. She rummaged a penny from her purse and dropped it in. The Mutoscope swallowed the coin with a clunk. Instantly, a light bulb glimmered to life. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to the metal visor, peering in through the glass window.

The bulb glowed, illuminating a tranquil scene: a Scottish loch in early morning, its glassy surface mirroring the surrounding mountains. She gripped the crank handle with a gloved hand and began to turn. A succession of paper photographs peeled from beneath a brass finger and the scene animated to life. An open steamer sped across the loch. And then the scene changed to show a young blond lady of great beauty wading in the shallows. Jean Leckie felt a stab of disappointment. She had expected a scene in a harem, or a butler’s eye pressed to a keyhole watching a lady in a state of undress, but the images seemed beautiful and natural and not at all lascivious. The young woman in the Mutoscope combed a long strand of blond hair from her face and turned to look behind her. A young child in a sailor’s suit stood knee-deep in the water, clutching a windup toy boat—

A hand clamped over hers with surprising force and halted the crank’s rotation. Startled, she pulled her face away from the glass to see Jedidiah looming at her side. His grip relented in its pressure, but he insistently drew her hand away.

“I must apologize,” he said. “The machine is here for repairs. Should you turn the handle further, irreparable harm will result.”

“Forgive me. I did not mean to—”

“It is nothing. A misunderstanding.” He released her hand and straightened, forcing a smile. “I really must hang a sign upon the machine.” He was standing very close and his gaze upon her grew vulpine. His head shook with a slight tremor. “But after all, who could resist touching such a beautiful thing?”

He must have realized that his gaze had devolved into something threatening, for he took a step back, and his demeanor became avuncular once again. “But I have something that will truly delight you.” He turned and drew her along with a gesture. She timidly followed to a glass display cabinet. She looked inside and gasped.

A doll. But not just a doll: a miniature princess in a silk gown of royal blue. Atop her head a sparkling tiara of semiprecious stones.

“Oh,” she gushed. “It is the most beautiful doll I have ever seen!”

“Yes,” Jedidiah agreed. He smiled mischievously and slipped the cabinet’s catch. After carefully drawing the doll from its crystal coffin, he placed it in her hands.

The little girl in Jean Leckie was enthralled. She had never owned a doll this lovely. This remarkable. This lifelike. As she tilted it upright, the eyes glided open revealing orbs of stunning blue flecked with gold — disconcertingly lifelike under the gaslight.

“She is beautiful is she not? My favorite creation.”

“She is breathtaking,” Jean said, and added impetuously, “I wish to buy her. You simply must sell her to me.” She looked around. “And this also,” she added, snatching up the backflipping monkey in his red fez.

“An excellent choice,” Jedidiah purred. “Will the gentleman be paying?” He craned to look about the shop for Conan Doyle.

“No. I shall be paying. These are a gift for the children of my gentleman friend. I want it to be a surprise.”

“A surprise, eh?” The shopkeeper smiled knowingly. “Everyone loves surprises and the gift of a wonderful toy earns the giver a special place in the heart of any child.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I’m sure you are correct. She is the most beautiful doll I have ever seen. I should have so loved to have had her as a child.”

“And she has a secret beneath her petticoats.”

Her eyes widened slightly at the shocking suggestion.

Jedidiah chuckled at her concern. “A wonderful surprise,” he said and urged her to explore with a gesture.

Jean was intrigued, but lifted the doll’s skirts to find nothing but the rounded, sexless crotch of a toy.

“At the back.”

When she turned the doll around she found a keyhole and, attached to the petticoats by a short blue ribbon, a shiny silver key.

“What does it do?” she asked, fingering the key.

“Wind it and see.”

Intrigued, Jean Leckie slipped the key into the hole and wound the doll several times. When she released her grip, the key turned and a hidden music box trilled an enchanting series of silvery notes. It was a melody she recognized.

“I know this music. It is an aria. How wonderful!”

“Yes. She is a very special doll. I do hope she is destined for a little girl who will treasure her very much. Beautiful things must be treasured for always.”

“I am certain she will be the pride of her collection.” Jean handed him the doll and the mechanical monkey. She followed him to the shop counter where he found a sturdy box and nestled the toys inside. She drew out her calling card and handed it to him.

“Could you please have them delivered to this address in Blackheath, along with the bill?”

“Certainly, Madam,” the toy man chuckled. He eased the card from between her slender fingers and tucked it in the breast pocket of his apron. Returning to his task, he tore off a sheet of brown paper from a roll, but then paused in his wrapping as if remembering something.

“But where has your gentleman got to after all this time?”

They found Conan Doyle transfixed before the Turkish Automaton. Most of his white pieces had been swept from the board and he was desperately juggling the position of his queen and king, dodging in and out of check.

The Turk patiently puffed at his long pipe, exhaled a wisp of steam and then slid his queen forward, pinning Conan Doyle’s king inescapably.

“Checkmate, I think, sir,” Jedidiah observed.

The author’s shoulders slumped. He brushed at his moustache in agitation, then reached forward and solemnly toppled his king in surrender. “Beaten by a clockwork mechanism,” he moaned in an exhausted voice and cast a sheepish look at Jean. “Of course, I haven’t played in years.”

“Of course not,” she cooed, laying a reassuring hand on his arm.

“And playing against oneself hardly counts as practice.”

“Hardly at all.”

Conan Doyle caught her mocking tone and had to laugh at himself. He noticed Jedidiah hovering. “Well? Can you fix my boy’s soldier?”

“Of course,” Jedidiah reassured. “The spring is repairable but some of the gears are broken and I shall have to make new ones.”

“Ah, I see—”

“But do not worry. When Jedidiah has repaired your boy’s soldier with new gears, he will never break again. Your son will hand down the toy to his son.”

“Topping! When might I pick it up?”

“The day after tomorrow?”

Conan Doyle pulled a calling card from an inside pocket and handed it to the toy maker. “Please send the bill to my home address. I should be able to pop in to pick it up sometime this week.”

Jedidiah accepted the card and bowed slightly. A violent tremor shook his head, but his smile remained fixed.

A touch of palsy, Conan Doyle quickly diagnosed.

“Very good sir. A pleasant day to you and your lady and thank you for stopping in.” Jedidiah escorted them to the door and held it open as they left amid smiles and nods.

In the street outside, although it was barely four-thirty, the sky was a dark swirl of fog. Perched atop his ladder, a lamplighter was kindling a nearby streetlamp to life. Conan Doyle looked doubtfully at the sky and checked his pocket watch.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“It’s practically dark already.”

Jean Leckie’s face fell. “And so our wonderful day together is nearly over?”

Conan Doyle thought a moment and said, “No, I was about to say we are late for afternoon tea.” He smiled. “But perfectly on time for supper at The Savoy.”

“Really? Supper at The Savoy? How wonderful!”

Conan Doyle reached in his top pocket and drew out the tickets Wilde had given him. “And then I have two tickets for Oscar’s latest play — unless you wish me to convey you home after supper?”

She clapped her hands together and trilled with delight, “Oh, I should love to visit the theater!”

“Yes, I believe they are rather good tickets. Next to the royal box. One of the perks of knowing the playwright.” He added in a low mutter, “I suppose there had to be some advantage. Wait here, I’ll just sort out a cab.”

Conan Doyle wandered off to look for a hansom, leaving Jean Leckie to loiter in the circle of light beneath the gas lamp. The lamplighter, having finished, closed the glass shade, slid down his ladder, then tucked it over his arm and moved on to light the next.

Inside the Emporium, Jedidiah turned over the sign in the shop door from OPEN to CLOSED and stood watching Jean Leckie through the glass. From behind came a whish of gears as the Turkish Automaton stirred to life. The glowing eyes sprang open, the turbaned head swiveled. It breathed a jet of steam and then the arm swung over and tapped three times on the chessboard with the tip of his pipe. Jedidiah ignored it and drew the two calling cards from his apron pocket. He scanned the addresses on each, first Conan Doyle’s home in Surrey, and then Miss Leckie’s in Blackheath. He smiled to himself.

Outside, in the street, Jean Leckie stood alone, marooned within a halo of amber light. A drunken swell staggered past, white silk scarf fluttering loose, top hat askew. He must have said something to her, something disrespectful, because she dropped her head and looked away. Now, she was visibly nervous, as any young gentlewoman would be, abandoned on her own in the gathering gloom. The street dimmed perceptibly as dusk mixed with yellow fog and turned the light a murky green. The daily fogs drove most Londoners indoors early, and cabbies without fares quit for their homes. It was not surprising that Conan Doyle was having difficulty locating a hansom.

Jedidiah remained at the window, watching Jean Leckie with growing interest. “You are as lovely as any doll I have ever created,” he breathed aloud. His head tremored violently.

Outside, Conan Doyle had returned with a hansom and was helping Miss Leckie step aboard.

The automaton hissed again, releasing a coiling tendril of steam into the air. The wooden hand lifted and tapped the pipe three times.

“Be patient, Otto,” the shopkeeper called over his shoulder. “I shall feed you in a moment.”