He had branched out from there, into the numerous offices and sleeping accommodation, and stables, and catering areas and latrines and playrooms and storerooms.
And he had found absolutely nothing.
He had reached the cockpit and the engine rooms.
He had followed upon the polished ivory heels of Count Otto, as he strutted here and strutted there, attending to the minutiae of detail that ensured the Perfect Show.
He’d listened to all that the Count had said, even his whispered words.
And he had learned absolutely nothing, nothing to even suggest that this was anything more than a circus; an incredible circus, albeit, but a circus none the less.
“I am baffled,” said H.G. Wells to himself and he shook his invisible head.
The cabbie shook his head. “The traffic up here,” he said. “Chronic it is. Sorry, gents, but we’re in for a bit of a wait.”
The aerial cabs were nose to tail, queuing to dispatch their glamorous cargoes of lords, ladies and London glitterati at the circus entrance beneath the central big top.
“We’ll be a while,” said the cabbie.
“You’ll probably want to switch off your meter, then,” said Will.
“I probably won’t,” said the cabbie. “In fact, I definitely won’t.”
“Perhaps there’s another way in,” said Tim. “A back door or something. Perhaps we could slip in unseen.”
“Ain’t you got tickets, then?” asked the cabbie.
“Count Otto is a friend of ours,” said Will. “We’d like to surprise him. Perhaps you might leave the queue and fly around the circus. There might be somewhere else you could drop us off.”
“As you please,” said the cabbie, and he dropped his cab from the queue, then circled it up in a glorious arc and swung about over the dirigible.
“Look at the size of it,” said Tim. “It looks even bigger up close.”
Will rolled his eyes. “Fly very slowly around, cabbie,” he said. “Let’s see what we can see.”
“As you please,” said the cabbie once more.
“He’s very good,” said Tim. “A good pilot.”
“Thank you sir,” said the cabbie. “I got this cab from my brother. It was his you see, but he can’t fly it any more. He had a tragic accident.”
“In this cab?” Tim asked.
“Well, actually, yes. He was taking a Colonel William Starling to the launching of the moonship. But the Colonel threw him out of the cab into a pond at Crystal Palace. Broke both his legs. Then the Colonel crashed the cab. Cost me a packet to get it fixed up again. What a bastard that Colonel Starling, eh? I hope they catch him and string him up.”
“Right,” said Tim.
And “Right,” said Will.
“There,” said the cabbie. “Down there. See that gantry running the length of the southern star arm, I could drop you off on that, if you like. Then you can fend for yourselves.”
“Do that,” said Will and the cabbie steered the aerial hansom close in to the gantry.
“There you go, gents. That’s one and threepence on the clock.”
“Pay him, Tim,” said Will.
Tim patted his pockets. “I’m penniless,” he said. “I think someone deftly relieved me of all my money.”
“Me too,” said Will. “Winston the paperboy lifted my wallet.”
“This is most upsetting,” said the cabbie. “Generally in such situations, I close my hatch, engage the central locking, then fly the cab round to my other brother, Gentlemen Jim Corbett, barefist champion of Britain, and have him beat the non-payers to a bloody pulp.”
“We don’t really have time for that,” said Will. “But listen, as we’re sneaking in, we could let you have our tickets. Numbered seats in the front row. What do you say to that?”
“So where will you be sitting?”
“We’ll find somewhere. What do you say?”
“I say, thank you very much. Give me the tickets.”
Will took out the tickets and handed them through the little glass partition to the cabbie.
“Thanks very much to you,” said that man, examining the tickets. “Seats twelve and thirteen, row A. Careful how you go now.”
“Farewell,” said Will and he and Tim left the hovering cab and clambered onto the gantry.
A bit of a wind was blowing.
“It’s chilly up here,” said Tim. “Like being on a very high rooftop.”
“A rooftop,” said Will and he smiled.
“And why are you smiling about a rooftop?”
“Remember when we were in the cell at the Brentford court house and I told you about the Lazlo Woodbine thrillers I’d read?”
Tim nodded, but his nodding was all but invisible, hidden as it was by his hair, which was wildly blowing all around.
“And how I told you that every Lazlo Woodbine thriller ends with Laz having a final rooftop confrontation with the villain. Who then takes the big fall to oblivion at the end.”
“You did,” said Tim. “Although I didn’t see the relevance at the time. Everything gets explained eventually, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” said Will. “And I’m freezing my privy parts off here, so let’s get inside.”
Inside the big top, posh folk were taking their seats. And anyone who was anyone was there.
Wilde was there, sitting upon a swansdown cushion, due to the scalding of his behind which he had received when the moonship exploded. And Beardsley was there, chatting with Richard Dadd about how well his brother Peter was doing playing for Brentford football club and about how a talent scout from Liverpool had recently spotted him. And the Duke of Wellington was there, chatting with Lord Colostomy, who was trying to sell him a bag. And Dame Nellie Melba was there, admiring the boots of Little Tich.
Lord Babbage and Mr Tesla sat next to Her Majesty the Queen (GBH), who sat next to Princess Alexandra, who had her hand once more upon Joseph Merrick’s good knee.
And Mr Sherlock Holmes was there, back from Dartmoor with another successfully solved case under his belt. And Dr Watson, who had secretly been shagging the Queen for the last five years, sat with him, sharing a joke about bedpans with the Queen’s gynaecologist Sir Frederick Treves.
The Pre-Raphaelites were all there, of course, and these shared a joke with a group of proto-surrealists.
The joke was all about fish.
And there was Montague Summers and Madame Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley and the Pope of Rome.
But they weren’t sharing any jokes. They weren’t even speaking to each other.
There was an air of expectation breathing all around and about this salubrious crowd, an air of exaltation, of wonder and of hope. For a new century was dawning, and given the advances of the last fifty years, it was a new century that they were all very much looking forward to.
For what would happen next? What great steps would the British Empire be taking? To conquer all the world? And then the stars?
“Definitely the stars,” said The Man on the Clapham Omnibus, who was tonight A Face in the Crowd, albeit a most exclusive crowd.
Exclusive folk filed in and took their seats. Upon a high gantry Tim eased open a door.
“We’re in,” said he. “Follow me.”
“You know where we’re going then?” asked Will.
“Not as such,” said Tim.
A buzzer buzzed in the dressing room of the Lower Rank Performers. And a light flashed too. “Five minutes to curtain up,” came a voice through the public address system.
In the big top, the orchestra took their seats and took to tuning up their instruments. The smell of sawdust from the ring mingled with the perfumes of the wealthy.
“Down this way,” said Will.
“So you know where we’re going?”
“Not as such.”
The last of the aerial hansoms which had conveyed the rich and famous to the flying circus had now departed. One final cab drew up, this bearing the cabbie Will had passed his tic
kets to. The cabbie had brought his brother with him, the one with the broken legs. These legs were in plaster. The cabbie helped his injured brother from the cab. “This will be a real treat for you, bruv,” he said. “You deserve it.”
“Cheers,” said his brother, supporting himself on crutches.
“I’ll just switch off the engine,” said the cabbie, and he leaned inside the cab and did so.
“There,” he said, grinning back at his brother.
The aerial hansom plummeted down towards Whitechapel.
The cabbie’s plastered brother said, “You twat!”
“If we’d thought a little harder about this,” said Tim, as he and Will wandered aimlessly along a service tunnel beneath the dirigible proper, “we’d have got ourselves a plan of this craft. I’ll bet we could have got one from the Patent Office, or somewhere.”
“We’ll find our way,” said Will. “Have a little faith.”
“Oh I do. I have plenty of faith. Listen.”
Will listened.
“What is that, do you think?”
Will listened some more. “Applause,” said he. “It’s applause.”
“The show is beginning,” said Tim.
And Tim was right.
The show was indeed beginning.
42
Applause.
Tumultuous applause.
The big top was plunged in darkness, but for the starlight that twinkled through the vast glass dome. And then a spotlight pierced the black, striking the centre of the ring, and then a figure stepped into the spotlight, and there was deafening applause to greet Count Otto Black.
The Count looked magnificent. He had a huge fur hat upon his narrow head. A gorgeous cloak of gold, its high raised collar trimmed with ermine, swept the sawdust and was secured about the Count’s slender throat by a golden brooch, engraved with enigmatic symbols. His great black beard was plaited into numerous colourfully beaded braids. His eyeballs glittered and his mouth was set in a yellow-toothed grin.
The Count threw wide his cloak, to reveal a crimson tunic worked with cloth-of-gold, pantaloons of yellow silk and high top boots of black patent leather. He extended his long and scrawny arms and waggled his twig-like digits. These were weighed heavily with gorgeous rings, many engraved with the inevitable enigmatic symbols.
“Greetings one and greetings all,” cried he.
And the crowd cheered and clapped some more. And the cabbie in Will’s seat whistled.
“My lords,” cried the Count. “My lords, my ladies and gentlemen, your Holiness the Pope, artists, poets, great thinkers of the age, I bid you welcome. And to Her Majesty the Queen, Empress of India, America and the African States, I am your humble servant, Ma’am.”
The Count bowed low, and the Queen giggled foolishly.
“I do believe he’s knocking her off, too,” Dr Watson whispered to Holmes.
“Tonight,” the Count took to strutting about the circus ring, the spotlight stalking his every step, “tonight, it is my pleasure to present for you an entertainment such as has never been witnessed before. One surpassing those of ancient Rome, or anything produced before the courts of Russia. You will witness wonders. You will experience thrills that will excite your nerves and stagger your senses. And, as Big Ben tolls midnight and the dawn of the twentieth century—” But then the Count paused and put a long and bony figure to his lips. “—then we shall see what we shall see, and you will bear witness to something that is beyond your wildest imaginings.”
“That’s something I’d like to see,” whispered the lady in a straw hat to her friend called Doris, “because my imaginings are rather wild.”
“And so,” the Count flung out his arms once more, “our show begins.”
“We’ve gone the wrong way,” said Tim. “Let’s try down that staircase there.”
Will scratched at his blondy head. “Has it occurred to you Tim,” he asked, “that this flying circus is somewhat bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?”
Tim made his bestest thoughtful face. “I wasn’t going to mention that,” he said.
“Down the staircase, then,” said Will.
The lights went up in the great big top and fifty dwarves upon ostrich-back[31] trooped into the ring. They steered their mounts through a complex dance routine, to the accompaniment of the orchestra, which played a selection of popular music hall numbers, including “Don’t jump off the roof, Dad, you’ll make a hole in the yard”, and “When your grey hair turns to silver, won’t you change me half-a-quid?”, and “Get out the meatballs, mother, we’ve come to a fork in the road”, which was always a favourite, but thankfully not the Big Boot Dance.
The crowd sang along with these, for they were the dance anthems of the day. Queen Victoria did the hand jive and Princess Alexandra, the five-knuckle shuffle.
Joseph Merrick simply hummed.
“Not bad, eh?” said the cabbie in Will’s seat. “Enjoying yourself, bruv?”
His plastered brother shook his head. “I’d be enjoying myself a great deal more, if I didn’t know that my aerial hansom was presently embedded in the roof of the Naughty Pope,” said he. “You big-nosed twat!”
Master Makepiece Scribbens gave his nose another powdering.
“A regular dandy,” whispered a voice at his ear.
Master Scribbens glanced into the mirror. Only his own reflection gazed back at him.
“It is I.” The voice belonged to Mr Wells. “Remember our rules. Do not acknowledge my presence, other than to nod or shake your head when deemed appropriate. Do you understand me?”
Master Scribbens nodded his wobbly head.
“Did you dispatch the complimentary tickets to William and Timothy?”
Master Scribbens nodded once more.
“Do you know whether they have taken their seats?”
Master Scribbens now shook his wobbly head.
“I have had no success in locating any computers aboard this vessel. Nor have I overheard anything suspicious. I do not know what to make of it.”
Master Scribbens gave his head a nod and then a shake.
“I hope we haven’t made a terrible mistake,” said Mr Wells.
“Cavalcade of Curiosities to the ring,” called a voice through the public address system in the Lower Rank Performers dressing room.
“I have to go,” whispered Master Scribbens.
“Break a leg,” said Mr Wells.
Tim tripped down the staircase. “Damn,” said he, as he picked himself up. “I thought I’d broken my leg.” His trouser was snagged up on a rivet, Tim yanked it free, ripping a hole in the fabric.
“Try and be careful,” said Will.
“Yes, well, I didn’t do it on purpose, you know. And I’ve ruined my smart trousers now.”
“I’m getting confused here,” said Will. “Doesn’t this corridor look exactly the same to you as the one we’ve just come from?”
“Do you mean we’ve been going around in circles?”
“Well, hardly, if we’ve just come down a staircase.”
“Let’s try this direction,” said Tim.
“I’ll follow you this time,” said Will.
Mr Wells followed the Brentford Snail Boy as he slid towards the circus ring. Mr Wells was most impressed by all he had seen of Count Otto Black’s flying circus and he felt quite certain that he had seen all of it. The symmetry of the corridors, the precision of the engineering. It was all so highly advanced. Even in this age of advancement, it was highly advanced. And he noticed for the first time a curious anomaly; that although the steel-tipped heels of his invisible shoes struck the steely floor of the corridor, they made no sound whatsoever. And yet earlier in the day they certainly had, and he had been forced to creep everywhere upon tiptoe for fear of being heard.
Mr Wells stopped, did a little jump, heard nothing, stroked his invisible chin and continued to follow the Snail Boy.
Will continued to follow Tim.
“Down this staircase,”
said Tim.
“Fair enough,” said Will. “Careful you don’t trip this time.”
“Yes, as if I would.”
Tim took a step down the staircase, tripped and fell the rest of the way.
“You only did that to amuse me,” said Will, joining Tim at the foor of the stairs and helping him to his feet.
“I can assure you I did not.” Tim dusted himself down and gave the staircase a kick. “That’s curious,” said Tim.
“And rather pointless,” said Will. “Did you hurt your foot?”
“Certainly not.” The expression of pain upon Tim’s face made a lie of this statement. “But the sound.”
“What sound?”
“No sound at all.” Tim kicked the staircase once more.
There was no sound at all.
“Now that is curious,” said Will.
“Yes,” Tim agreed, “and not only that. See there,” and he pointed.
“What is that?” Will asked.
“The piece of my trouser that got torn off when I fell down the other staircase.”
Will looked at Tim.
And Tim looked at Will.
“I think we’re in trouble,” said Will.
“You know what the trouble with dwarves is,” said the lady in the straw hat.
Her friend Doris shook her head.
“Nor me,” said the lady. “But someone must know.”
And the crowd almost rose to its collective feet to greet the entrance of the Brentford Snail Boy and the Cavalcade of Curiosities.
The Dog-Faced Boy juggled pussycats.
The Big Fat Lady sang.
The Man With Two Heads talked to himself.
The Bell-End Baby rang.
The Siamese Twins played saxophones.
The Pig-faced Lady juggled.
And the uniped,
With the pointed head
Bounced up and down and—
“What?” Lord Byron asked the Great McGonagall. “Nothing rhymes with ‘juggled’ and you know it.”
The Witches of Chiswick Page 39