The curious case of the Clockwork Man bas-2

by Mark Hodder

  Burton made a sound of agreement, but then the words the puppeteer is herself a puppet flashed through his mind.

  “The odd thing is,” he said, “when Sir Alfred was being dragged through the house to his death, the apparition warned me not to interfere. I heard her voice clearly in my mind and it had a distinct accent. Russian, I'm positive.”

  “Why is that odd?” asked Swinburne. “Aside from the obvious.”

  “Because Lady Mabella Tichborne was from Hampshire.”

  “Hamp-what? She was English?”

  “Thoroughly. So whatever's been haunting Tichborne House, it is not the ghost of the woman who crawled around the wheat fields. In fact, I doubt that it's really a ghost at all.”

  “It looked like one to me.”

  “Then perhaps you can explain why it was rapping its knuckles on walls rather than floating straight through them?”

  “You have an explanation?”

  “I have never given credence to ghosts, but I've read much about what spiritualists term the projection of the ethereal or astral double. Occultists state that it is perfectly possible to pass through solid objects while in astral form, but it should not be done too often, as it can disrupt the connection between the ethereal and the physical bodies. My supposition is that we witnessed an individual in such a form, and they solidified their knuckles for the purpose of searching the house rather than risk being forever separated from their corporeal body.”

  Swinburne jerked his limbs spasmodically-a sign of his growing excitement.

  “So we're dealing with a spiritualist, a table-tapper?”

  “That's my current theory, and one who appears to be using the Cambodian fragments and the South American Eye to somehow transmit and amplify mediumistic projections. I'm almost certain that support for the Claimant-who anyone in their right mind can see is a phony-is, through this method, being artificially generated to stir up the masses. What puzzles me is why the emanations influence some and not others. You are apparently rather sensitive to them, though more resistant when you're drunk. Myself, Trounce, and Honesty feel them only faintly, while Herbert here is not touched at all.”

  “From what I can see, the working classes are the most susceptible,” put in Swinburne. “Though I'd hardly place myself in that category. Whereas Herbert-”

  “-is a bloomin’ philosopher,” the vagrant interjected. He tore his eyes away from the mechanical man and peered at the poet from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows, one of which was raised speculatively.

  “Quite so. Quite so,” Swinburne conceded. “Forgive me for the observation, though, my dear chap, but you seem to be a singularly unsuccessful one. What exactly is your philosophy? Perhaps the nature of your thoughts bears some relation to your apparent immunity.”

  “That's an interesting hypothesis,” Burton said. He faced his two guests. “Talk to us, Herbert.”

  “Hmmph!” Spencer grunted. “You'll have to give me a minute or two to prepare meself. It don't come easy to me, I'm afraid.”

  “Go ahead. Take whatever time you need.”

  The king's agent and his assistant looked on in interest as the vagrant set his glass aside, propped his elbows on the arms of his chair, steepled his fingers in front of his face, closed his eyes, and laid his head back. He relaxed, and a remarkable tranquillity seemed to wash over him.

  Swinburne looked at Burton, who whispered almost soundlessly: “Self-mesmerism!”

  The clock on the mantelpiece clicked softly.

  Distant shouts and crashes sounded from outside.

  Two minutes passed.

  Herbert Spencer sniffed, cleared his throat, and began to talk. Astonishingly, he was suddenly possessed of a finely spoken, urbane, and educated voice.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said, without shifting position or opening his eyes, “let's see if I can offer you a little food for thought. To illustrate the core of my philosophy, I would ask you to imagine that you are blindfolded and don't know where you are. You stretch out your hands and walk slowly ahead until you encounter a wall. It may be a single wall blocking your way or it could be the side of a room. You don't know. Your only certainty is that the wall is there. So what do you do? I haven't a notion. What I do know is this: whatever your next action, it will be done in relation to the fact that you ran into that wall. Maybe you'll climb over it. Maybe you'll try to knock it down. Maybe you'll build a house adjacent to it.”

  Burton and Swinburne glanced at each other, amazed at their friend's eloquence and perfect intonation; wondering where his words were leading.

  “The question now is this: if you weren't the only blindfolded person to have bumped into the wall-let's say, for argument's sake, that twenty others have done so, too-which of you is best able to make the most of your situation? I'm not referring to the strongest or most intelligent or most resourceful; what I mean to ask is, which of you happens to be in possession of the abilities and attitude that can best adapt to the circumstance of encountering a wall? Am I making sense?”

  “Manifestly,” Swinburne replied. “When we first met, you used the phrase ‘survival of the fittest.’ You're referring to that, yes?”

  Spencer opened his eyes, which were oddly glazed, and jabbed a finger at the poet.

  “Exactly! However, don't mistake the ‘fittest’ for the healthiest or the cleverest or any other specific trait. I use it in the same sense that a square peg ‘fits’ into a square hole. The fittest man is the one most constitutionally suited to the conditions in which he finds himself. It's a two-way relationship: the particular nature of the individual confronting the particular nature of reality. Or, I should say, what appears to be reality.”

  “What appears to be?” Burton asked.

  “That's right, because it isn't possible to know if the reality you perceive is all there is. You can only deal with what you are cognizant of.”

  Burton frowned and nodded. “Knowledge is phenomenal? It pertains only to appearance-or in the case of your blindfolded individual, to the other material senses?”

  Spencer resumed his closed-eyed, steeple-fingered position.

  “Something like that, yes, though I don't mean to suggest that it's necessarily deceptive. We might only be aware of a small portion of reality, but it is reality nevertheless, so however we apprehend it, that apprehension has validity.

  “Existence, then, is, I posit, a continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. Which brings us to the crux of the matter, for if our existence depended not upon such adjustments but rather upon quantifiable attributes such as strength, health, and endurance-and if reality were known in its entirety and measured, mapped, and gauged-then it would be easy to determine one individual's chances of survival against another's. The Eugenicists propose the improvement of the human race on just such a basis. They are in error. What they overlook is that, because one person's reality isn't necessarily the same as another's, so the traits required to best prosper differ from person to person.”

  Swinburne bounced in his chair excitedly. “I see! I see! A man who perceives a barrier needs the dexterity to climb over it, while the man who sees a foundation would benefit from the talent to design and erect a structure upon it.”

  The philosopher nodded without reopening his eyes.

  “Just so. These differing notions of life and how to best deal with it have caused the human race to tend toward greater heterogeneity. Individuals are becoming more specialised and differentiated as they each adapt to their own perception. To compensate for this diversification, we, as a species, have developed the ability to integrate almost everyone by creating an interdependent society.

  “If we allow the Eugenicists to alter the race according to their infinitesimally narrow criteria, I think it almost certain that this interdependence will collapse and extinction will follow.”

  With eyes fixed on the vagrant philosopher, Burton moved to his saddleback armchair and sat down. “While I find myself in agreement with your n
otion of interdependent diversity,” he said, thoughtfully, “do you not think that it is overwhelmed by a rather more dominant division? I speak of that which we've seen demonstrated today-to wit, the segregation of society into the working and the educated classes.”

  “Ah, Captain Burton, you have hit the nail on the head. The Eugenicists may be wrong in their approach, but they are correct in their assessment that our society, in its present divided form, must either change or die. It is what prompted me to bring Darwin's theory into the picture.”

  “How so, Herbert?”

  “You see, when the mechanism of natural selection is transposed from the biological to the social arena, we can immediately see that our interdependence has become so extreme that evolution cannot possibly occur. Individuals have become too specialised. Consider our prehistoric ancestor. He knew how to create a fire, make a weapon, hunt an animal, fashion clothes and a shelter from its skin, cook it and eat the flesh, carve tools from its bones, and so much more. What man of the nineteenth century can do all those things? None! Instead we have engineers and weapon-smiths and tailors and cooks and craftsmen and builders-each excellent in his own field, each entirely helpless in the others!”

  Spencer opened his eyes again and turned them toward Admiral Lord Nelson, who was standing in his usual position by the bureau.

  “The idea that the Empire is progressive is an insidious myth. A myth! Look at that brass man! It is our tools that are evolving, not us! If anything, we are going in the opposite direction. While an increasingly exclusive elite are gathering information about ways in which the world might function, the ever-expanding majority are becoming ever more proficient in a single field of endeavour while comprehending less and less about anything else.”

  Swinburne paraphrased something Burton had said on the evening of the Brundleweed robbery: “The acquisition of knowledge has become too intimidating a prospect for them, so they shun it in favour of faith.”

  “Sadly so,” said Spencer. “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation; contempt carved from the immovable rock of faith.

  “Thus it is, gentlemen, that the masses are not only kept from the knowledge that would aid their ability to adapt and evolve, but they also actively reject it. Minds have become trammelled by ingrained social conditions. Working-class parents instill in their children the concept that reality offers nothing but hardship, that poverty always beckons, and that small rewards can be achieved only through strife and labour. Why should they teach differently when, under those same conditions, they themselves have survived? The child takes this as the unquestionable truth of the world. Opportunities are not recognised. The desire for change remains within the realm of dreams. Adaptability is devalued. Evolution is halted.”

  Spencer's face suddenly dropped into an expression of abject misery.

  “I'm runnin’ out o’ steam,” he said. “Me bloomin’ brain can't cope with it!”

  His arms suddenly dropped and dangled over the sides of his chair, his head nodded forward, and he emitted a loud snore.

  “Good lord!” Swinburne exclaimed.

  “Asleep,” Burton noted. “What an extraordinary man!”

  “I say, Richard, what do you make of all that?”

  Burton reached for his cigar case. “I think this warrants a two-Manila muse, Algy. Sit quietly, would you, while I give it a ponder.”

  Sitting quietly didn't come naturally to the diminutive poet but he gritted his teeth and managed to remain silent for ten minutes while Spencer snored and Burton smoked.

  “Fascinating!” Burton said, speaking at last.

  Herbert Spencer snorted and looked up. “Hallo, Boss! Did I take forty winks?”

  “You did, Herbert. Does that always happen after you philosophise?”

  “Yus. It exhausts me bloomin’ brain. How did I do? I hope I didn't humiliate meself.”

  “Humiliate?” Swinburne cried. “Good lord, no, Herbert! You did splendidly! You are absolutely remarkable!”

  Burton blew out a plume of tobacco smoke and said, “Forgive the question, Herbert-I mean no offence-but why on earth aren't you a sensation? With an intellect like yours, you should be writing books and touring universities!”

  Spencer shrugged and tapped the side of his head. “When a man's knowledge ain't in order, the more of it he has, the greater is his confusion.” He looked at Admiral Lord Nelson and sighed. “I should be more like him! There's one what's got an ordered mind!”

  “But no knowledge, Herbert,” Burton said. “No knowledge at all. So do you mean to say that your thinking processes are more usually in disarray?”

  “Yus, just that. When I sits down an’ talks, it's all fine, but for most o’ the time, me brainbox is a right old jumble.”

  “Hmm. I wonder if that has some bearing on your immunity to the Tichborne influence?”

  “Richard, that doesn't make sense,” Swinburne objected. “In the main, it's the working classes who've come out in support of the Claimant, which suggests they're most affected by whatever this emanation is. If a disordered mind is immune, then the working classes have ordered minds and most of London's gentry, including yourself, don't!”

  “No, Algy, that's not it at all. Let me pose a question: what would you be if you weren't a poet?”

  “Dead.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I am serious. There's nothing else I could be. I was born a poet. I think like a poet. I act like a poet. I look like a poet. I'm a poet.”

  “Accepted. By contrast, Herbert here, when we first met him, made it quite clear that he wasn't at all sure that he was cut out to be a philosopher.”

  “It's no way to earn a livin’, that's for certain,” Spencer muttered.

  “As for me,” Burton continued, “I've never possessed a clear idea of my function in society. I've been a soldier, a spy, a geographer, an interpreter, an explorer, an author, a surveyor, and now the king's agent, whatever the blazes that is. As for this country's gentry, I think you'll find that they mostly have a sense that life is filled with options; that, in terms of what they actually do with their time, there are few limitations.”

  “Herbert used the word ‘trammelled.’ Are you suggesting that the trammelled mind is the susceptible mind?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Funny. I've never considered myself trammelled. Quite the opposite, in fact!”

  “It's not that your mind or imagination is in any respect confined, Algy. It's simply that you've never given consideration to the notion of doing anything else. You even offered your services as my assistant because you felt the danger involved would cure your ennui and inspire greater depth in your poetry.”

  “Which it has. You suspect, then, that the black diamonds somehow break down the mental structures that keep a mind channelled, which is why the working classes are suddenly feeling hard done by-they're realising that they're being cheated out of alternatives?”

  “Yes. Remember the line in the poem? Vexations in the poor enables. And what about Edwin Brundleweed's story of how, the afternoon before the robbery, he suddenly and inexplicably felt dissatisfied with his lot in life?”

  “But what's it all about, Richard? What's the point?”

  “Judging by today's events, I'd say the point is chaos; maybe even insurgency-an assault against the very fabric of our society. I would even go so far as to say that the British Empire is under attack.”

  “My hat! By a foreign power?”

  “Or a budding despot. You understand now why John Speke can probably be discounted?”

  Swinburne nodded. “Unless it's the Prussians. You did say he'd gone to Prussia. On the other hand, our ghost is Russian.”

  Burton asked Admiral Lord Nelson to top up their cups from the coffee pot and they sat in silence for a few moments.

  “Are we on the brink
of a revolution?” Swinburne whispered. “Think of it! A reign of terror could descend on us just as it did on France. We might end up under the rule of an abominable tyrant like Napoleon!”

  “Or we might not,” Spencer muttered. “Would it be so bad if the workin’ man-an’ woman, I might add-gained some measure of power? Don't you think it's becomin’ a matter of urgency that they do?”

  “Maybe so,” Burton replied, thinking of Countess Sabina and his subsequent dream: a transition begins-a melting of one great cycle into another. “But do we really want such a change to be forced upon us by an external power? I find it inconceivable that they might be doing it for our own good!”

  He flicked the stub of his cheroot into the fireplace, stood, and paced back across to the window.

  “We must get to the root of this.”

  His eyes scanned the road below. Two labourers were trailing along behind a gentleman, mocking him relentlessly. Despite this scene, Montagu Place was unusually quiet for the hour.

  “In order to strengthen our campaign against the enemy, Algy, we must first strengthen ourselves. I've resisted it in the past, but I think it's time I mesmerised you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I want to see whether I can stop you becoming a Tichborne supporter every time the Claimant is nearby. If I can't, the only other option is for you to stay permanently drunk, and I'd rather avoid that.”

  Swinburne puffed out his cheeks and expelled a breath with a pop. “Oh, it wouldn't be so bad! Besides, you've always refused to exercise your mental magnetism on me before!”

  “True,” Burton affirmed. “I was concerned that your excitable disposition might react in an unpredictable manner. However, seeing as this affair is making you unpredictable anyway, my former caution seems somewhat misplaced. I shall employ a Sufi technique to fortify my own psychic defences, too. Then I have a task for you.”

  “Good! What?”

  “The Rake connection interests me. We've yet to identify their new leader. I want you to dig around-but keep out of mischief.”