The Great Detective (4 page)

A hasty consultation of the London Directory yielded an address for Steyne & Sons in Shoreditch—not a safe place for a lady to walk alone. And Steyne & Sons were unlikely to look with favor upon a request to open their ledgers to her. It seemed Tacy needed a man—a gentleman, by preference. And she needed him quickly.

She rang for Swindon, asked him for the
Times
, then went out to the garden to cut a willow branch. When he returned with the paper, neatly ironed, on a silver tray, she was whittling industriously.

He set the tray at her elbow and Tacy snatched up the paper. “Mistress Angharad found an advertisement yesterday—a military man, it was, seeking employment. Ah, here it is! A doctor, too—even better! Swindon, I will send a telegram.”

“Very good, miss.”

Some minutes later, Ethel ran to the post office with the following telegram:

DR JOHN WATSON STOP SITUATION AVAILABLE TO BEGIN ON MUTUAL AGREEMENT STOP REPLY UPON RECEIPT TACY GOF 9 CURZON STREET STOP

Dr. Watson's reply arrived just as Tacy thought she must run mad with worry. It contained an address on Baker Street, which led her to a cheerful tearoom that smelled deliciously of baking and strawberry jam. Looking about, she saw a lean, slightly shabby figure hunched at a back table and approached it. “Pardon me,” she said. A pair of grave brown eyes rose to her face. “I am Miss Tacy Gof. I believe you are here in answer to my telegram.”

The man scrambled to his feet, holding out a broad, brown hand. “And I am Dr. John Watson. Please sit down, Miss Gof. Would you like tea?”

Miss Gof would—and some food as well, as it was past noon. As the doctor summoned the waitress, Tacy studied him. He had a pleasant face, she thought, with a firm mouth, though his expression was a little stern. His skin was weathered by the fire of a foreign sun and his mustache was touched with grey, making his age hard to determine.

The luncheon ordered, he turned his attention back to Tacy. “Well, Miss Gof. How do you wish to proceed? I will confess before we start that this is my first interview of this kind.”

“Your candor does you credit,” Tacy said in a businesslike manner. “You might begin by telling me something of your history. Where, for example, did you train?”

His first answers were short and factual, but gradually he grew more forthcoming. He was the son of a country gentleman who had come to London to train at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Upon receiving his qualification, he had joined the army and shipped out to Afghanistan as a surgeon. A badly treated bullet wound had led to a fever that so weakened his constitution that he had been sent back to England.

“And why, if I may ask, did you not hang out your shingle? There are not so many good surgeons in England that you would want for patients.”

“Most patients prefer an older man—I am only five and twenty. Furthermore,” he went on, “I am done with pretending I know anything about healing. My year in Afghanistan left me with an oppressive sense of my own helplessness in the face of the damage artillery can inflict on fragile human bodies. While I was in hospital, I thought I might try my hand at improving the mechanical limbs currently in use by the army. Clumsy, monstrous things they are, forever having to be adjusted. The men hate them.”

Tacy smiled encouragingly. “There's a fine ambition. And a practical one.”

“Not without extensive training in mechanics, which I can by no means afford. Thus my advertisement.”

“Indeed.” Tacy made her decision. “The position is yours, should you choose to accept it. That will make a beginning, at any rate. I can at least promise you a mystery, and perhaps even an adventure. But first, I must give you a little background.”

Their food arrived, and over Brown Windsor soup and a chop, Tacy recounted everything she thought he needed to know of Angharad and Sir Arthur and the Reasoning Machine. When she had finished, the doctor regarded her with wonder. “An extraordinary story,” he said.

“I suppose it is extraordinary,” she said, surprised, “if you haven't been living in the thick of it. Just my life, it is to me, nothing out of the way in it at all.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “If I understand correctly, you need a kind of bodyguard-cum-fellow-conspirator to help you find your colleague and your friend.”

Tacy had not thought of doing the finding herself, but as soon as the doctor suggested it, she knew that was what she wanted. No empty waiting, no fearful imagining, no endless explaining. No Gregson.

Her heart lightened. “That's it in a nutshell, Dr. Watson. Will you do it?”

“I will, if only so I may make the acquaintance of Sir Arthur and Mistress Angharad Cwmlech. What do you need me to do?”

“If you will procure a cab, Dr. Watson, I will tell you as we go.”

*   *   *

After the bright shops of Baker Street, Shoreditch was unrelieved grey. The sky was grey, the streets were grey, the high walls of the manufactories were grey with smoke and soot. The mechanical hansom dropped Tacy and Dr. Watson at a huddle of grey stone structures built around a yard. A smart sign with the words S
TEYNE &
S
ONS
painted on it in gold hung over a shop displaying trays of brightly polished gears.

“Only remember,” Tacy said. “Your name is James Watkins, and I am your sister.”

The young doctor looked at her gravely. “I know my part, Miss Gof. Do not be anxious.”

“I am not anxious,” Tacy said. “Should I be caught spying, I will have the vapors. Men can seldom withstand a thoroughgoing fit of the vapors.”

Inside the shop, a clerk approached them inquiringly. He was a small, square man, amazingly hairy as to the jaw and eyebrows and bald as to the head. Dr. Watson introduced himself as a neophyte eager to learn. The clerk, a true enthusiast, professed himself glad to answer his questions, and they were soon deep in discussion.

Grateful, for once, for the masculine prejudice that dismisses all females as more or less decorative featherbrains, Tacy wandered to the back of the shop, where a promising-looking ledger stood open upon a high desk. A wary glance forward confirmed two masculine backs bent over a tray. She drew a small notebook and silver pencil from her bag and prepared to snoop.

Alas for her plan, the desk was too high, the light too low, the angle impossible—Tacy could not see the ledger entries, much less examine them. She nipped around the counter and mounted the clerk's platform. Ah, that was better!

As she was running her finger down the column of names, the clerk turned to collect another tray. Hurriedly, she ducked behind the desk and peered cautiously around its side. The clerk was holding a tiny, bright gear up to the light to display its intricacies. She turned back to her task.

The ledger was arranged in a series of columns: date of purchase, client's name and direction, number and description of the items each had purchased. In addition to Sir Arthur's own orders, the delicate and expensive Number 475-S appeared thrice. One box had been sold to a watchmaker by appointment to the Queen, and two boxes each to two individuals: A Mr. Thomas Edison, with an address in New York, America, and a certain Mr. Peter Cantrip.

Breathless with excitement, Tacy wrote down Cantrip's direction. She was making a note of the other addresses when she heard the clerk's voice asking her what she was doing.

Thrusting her notebook in her muff, Tacy stiffened her back and assumed what she hoped was a forbidding expression.

“Well, brother,” she said. “Are you finished at last? I feel one of my spasms coming on.”

Dr. Watson's face was the picture of brotherly alarm. “To be sure, my dear.” Then, man-to-man: “You understand, Mr. Clovelly, I am sure.”

Mr. Clovelly's whiskers trembled slightly. “Yes. I mean to say, what are you doing at my desk, miss?”

Tacy gave an awful groan. The doctor hurried over and took her arm. “She is of a hysterical bent,” he confided to Mr. Clovelly. “Restless, you know. I had better get her home. Thank you for your advice. It was most helpful.”

And he strode from the shop, Tacy clinging to his arm, struggling to stifle her mirth until Steyne & Sons was safely out of sight and sound. “Poor Mr. Clovelly!” she exclaimed as they rounded the corner. “I thought he was going to have a spasm on his own account!”

The doctor smiled. “Indeed. I am much obliged to you, ma'am. Mr. Clovelly has given me a thorough grounding in the science of gears and bearings and drive trains, could I only remember it all. Were you able to procure the information you needed?”

“I think so,” Tacy said. “There were three recent orders for the 475-S, but the only one that signified was Mr. Peter Cantrip. Odd it is how his name is constantly turning up, like a worm after rain.”

“Odd, indeed. Where does this Cantrip live?”

“In Spitalfields,” Tacy said. “What sort of district is Spitalfields?”

Dr. Watson frowned. “Not nearly so respectable as Shoreditch. Ladies do not commonly venture there.”

“A blacksmith's daughter, I am.” Tacy gave him a sober look. “Have you such a thing as a revolver about you?”

Dr. Watson looked startled. “My service revolver is at my lodgings.”

“We will call at your lodgings on the way, then.”

*   *   *

Where Shoreditch smelled primarily of smoke and stone, Spitalfields smelled of humanity: poor, cramped, and unhappy. As Tacy and Dr. Watson's hansom churred over the cobbles, rats scampered from its path and hollow-cheeked, ragged men and women stared at it with avid, measuring eyes. At length, the cab turned to enter a barren court, stopping in front of what looked to have been a school, set back behind an iron fence. Its windows were clumsily boarded and its bricks were streaked with moss.

Tacy tapped the hansom's speaking tube. “Will you wait for us?”

“Not in Spitalfields,” the mechanical coachman replied.

“Come, come, Miss Gof,” said Watson cheerfully. “If you can contemplate with equanimity bearding a mad scientist in his den, the streets of Spitalfields need not alarm you.”

“I am not alarmed,” said Tacy, with dignity. “Just wondering I was, how we are to get Sir Arthur away, once we've rescued him.”

“One problem at a time, Miss Gof,” he said. “Before we get away, we must get in.”

The iron fence was provided with a stout gate, secured by a bright new chain and lock. Dr. Watson examined it with a businesslike air. “It seems the mysterious Mr. Cantrip does not encourage casual visitors. Have you such a thing as a hairpin about you, Miss Gof?”

“Full of surprises, you are,” she said, and drew one out of her coiled hair. As Dr. Watson knelt to address the lock, she saw a movement in the shadows by the door of the building—a misty figure in a white nightdress of antique cut stained down the left side from bosom to hem. It was a figure Tacy had not seen since Angharad had possessed the automaton, and the sight of it filled her with dread.

She seized the bars and called out: “Angharad! What has that Cantrip done to you?”

Angharad waved her question aside impatiently. “Around to the yard with you—there's a door open. 'Ware the rats.
Hurry
, child!”

“Is it Arthur?” Tacy gasped.

Dr. Watson looked around, alarmed. “What is it, Miss Gof? To whom are you speaking?”

Impatiently, Tacy grasped Dr. Watson's sleeve and pulled him towards a narrow and noisome alley that ran along a brick wall to an even more noisome yard. And there she halted, overcome with horror. For between her and the half-open door was a heaving grey swarm of rats the size of small dogs. As if moved by a single mind, they lifted their noses and advanced upon the intruders.

Dr. Watson snatched his revolver from his pocket, pulled back the hammer, and shot the foremost rat between its shining eyes. The resulting explosion of fur, springs, and cogs did nothing to halt the gray tide, which rolled forward, chittering shrilly.

Shuddering with disgust, Tacy drew the willow whistle she'd whittled that morning from her pocket, put it to her lips, and blew. It made no audible sound, though her ears rang slightly.

The rats fell over and were still.

Dr. Watson gaped at her. “Mechanicals,” Tacy explained briefly. “I've jammed their mainsprings. Come on!”

Much to Watson's credit, he forbore to question her, but kicked a path through the disabled rats to the door. Soon the pair were standing in a bare and ill-lit corridor, cold as a tomb and smelling strongly of damp and machine oil. At the far end, Tacy could just see Angharad floating above the steps of an iron staircase and beckoning urgently like a specter in a penny dreadful.

Tacy sprang towards her, heart thundering. As she set her foot upon the bottom step, a metallic clatter reached her ears from above, followed by a shriek that froze her to the spot.

Watson dashed past her, straight through Angharad, who swore dreadfully and disappeared.

Shaking off her paralysis, Tacy caught up her skirts and sprang after the doctor. She heard Watson shout, “Stand back, or I shoot!” and then she was at the top of the steps and running down a shadowy hall. When she reached an open door, she plunged through it into an atmosphere permeated with metal, spermaceti oil, and high drama. Under the bright cone of an outsized clockwork lamp, Dr. Watson was holding two tall figures in long leather aprons and magnifying goggles at bay with his revolver. They were surrounded by a dizzying array of machines and devices and at their feet lay the bust that had housed the Illogic Engine, open and empty and dented. Behind them, on a metal table, a figure draped in white linen lay ominously still.

Tacy rushed to the table, her heart clacking like a gear train, and pulled back the sheet to reveal a pair of terrified eyes, lambent as pearls, staring up out of a long, pale face half-obscured by a cloth gag.

She whirled to confront the aproned figures and addressed them furiously. “What is Mr. Holmes's Reasoning Machine doing here? Which of you is Mr. Cantrip? And what have you done with
Arthur
?”