“We’re being followed again, Noodles,” Wally said.
The brilliant boy was as observant as usual. The shadows thrown by streetlights could not explain the silhouette that followed on the rooftops, black as ink against the stars.
Like our own shadows, it ran sometimes behind us. But sometimes it ran ahead, as if it knew where we were going.
The quarter bells were ringing again by the time we found the alley that opened into a small courtyard behind the pub. It was lit only by light that spilled from windows.
Something moved in the darkness, just as the voice of Big Ben, the bell that spoke the hour, broke the night. Doom, doom, doom, it rang, twelve times, and then the giant we’d seen at the Embankment stepped into a rectangle of light. He still wore his turban, but he was shirtless now. Light glinted off a metallic rib cage that expanded and contracted with the rhythm of a metronome.
“Where is Dobbin?” Wally asked. I was wondering that myself.
The giant took a hand bellows from his pocket, inserted it into his mouth, and pumped himself full of air.
“Kenn-eee-wickett.” He sighed as the air exited past his vocal cords. My hackles lifted from nape to tail. If a corpse leaked air, I imagined it would sound something like this. “Follow meeeeeeee.”
“You must breathe through mechanical gills!” Wally exclaimed, and then looked embarrassed. “Pardon me, but . . . that’s fantastic! I’m here to see Dobbin. He wrote about a matter of life and death?”
The giant pumped himself full of air once more.
“Liffffe.” The giant sighed. “Deattthhhhh. Yessss. Hellllp ussssss.”
At that moment, the shadow dropped from above.
A young man landed with a metallic sproing right in front of Wally. He wore leather leggings above what appeared to be thick-soled, spring-loaded boots; a red silk shirt; and a rakish cap. A dark cape draped behind him. His eyes looked black in the darkness.
“Spring-Heeled Jack, I presume?” Wally said.
“Jack will do,” the young man replied. “Stop wasting time, Cy. Knock him over the head, or I will. We have to get below. There’s peelers everywhere tonight. I’m surprised they didn’t follow him.”
I growled and inched in front of Wally as the giant stepped forward.
“Oh-ho!” Jack folded his arms. “A scary sausage.”
“There is no need to knock my head,” Wally said, assuming a judo stance. He had practiced the sport daily since being introduced to its effectiveness by President Theodore Roosevelt. “If you’re friends of Dobbin, I’ll come peacefully. If not, you can try your luck.”
“A scary sausage and a feisty shrimp.” Jack shook his head. “Where did Dob find you? Let’s see if you have the guts for the business at hand! Open it, Cy.”
The half-mechanical man squatted and grasped the sewer grate. With one mighty heave, he lifted it away, revealing a black hole beneath.
Wally pulled his candle stub from his pocket, lit it, and leaned over the hole. Metal rungs descended into the darkness.
“Hurry up.” Jack dropped past him. “I told you, there’s no time.”
“I’d like some proof that you’re taking me to Dobbin Winckles,” Wally said.
“Winckles said you have a ‘respectable’ dog and make interesting art.” Jack shrugged. “I don’t like dogs, and art’s for namby-pambies, so it’s not like I listened.”
“Namby-pamby” refers to someone weak and sentimental. I am sure he meant it as an insult, but Wally just nodded.
“You’ll have to wait for me, Noodles,” he said, and started to climb down.
I’ve said that nothing on earth could induce me to venture into the sewers. I meant nothing but the thought of Walter Kennewickett going without me. I closed my eyes and leaped . . .
. . . and felt myself snatched from thin air and swung aloft. I found myself eye-to-eye with the giant. He tucked me under his arm and started down the ladder. Wally’s candle flickered below us as we descended into darkness.
The feeble flame revealed a catwalk that clung to the side of the tunnel, the depths of which were lost in darkness. When I mentioned the word “sewer,” I am sure many unpleasant things came to mind. The reality was even more unpleasant than can be imagined.
The smell almost made me swoon. Wally had his hand to his nose, and Jack, who had closed the grate and followed us down, pulled a black scarf over his face.
Cy merely set me down, as if he could smell nothing at all. And then he unwound his peculiar turban to reveal an even more peculiar cranium. Cy’s ribs were not the only bits of iron about him. The dome of his head was ferrous as well, and there was a bulging lens in the center of his forehead.
The giant snapped his fingers, and a flame leaped to life behind it, sending out a beam like a bull’s-eye lantern. As he turned his head, I took in our surroundings.
A milky green river ran beneath us, full of unthinkable things. When the beam of Cy’s lamp turned toward the torrid torrent, I saw a huge river rat on a raft of flotsam.
I believe I have mentioned that dachshunds navigate by nose. My olfactory nerves were overwhelmed by the scent, and my head was swimming. By the time we arrived at a side tunnel, I had no idea what part of London might lie above us.
We turned away from the subterranean river and stepped through an arched aperture into yet another tunnel, clearly older and thankfully drier than the first.
The air was fresher here, and clean water spouted from between the bricks as if springs had been walled up inside. The water was no more than an inch deep on the floor. Crystals had formed from minerals leaching through the ancient walls, and they sparkled in the lamp’s beam. Tiny pale spiders skittered among them.
We’d traveled perhaps half a mile, past openings large and small, when Jack held up his hand.
“Listen,” he hissed.
I could hear a splashing far behind us.
“It’s the piggies.” His voice sounded far more frightened than you might expect from a hardened criminal. “Climb for your life!” We raced to the nearest sewer access ladder. Cy scooped me up and nodded to Wally, who started to climb.
Jack reached the grate that opened onto the street, but when he pushed against it, nothing happened.
“Locked,” he said, swinging hand over hand out on the grate to make more room on the ladder.
And then they arrived.
These were not piggies.
Piggies are small and pink. These creatures were large and pearly white. Their tiny eyes flashed red in the light of Cy’s lantern. In short, they were sewer swine. They gnashed their teeth and grunted, trying to figure out a way to get us.
“You’ve got to get higher, Cy,” Jack said. “They’re going to start stacking.”
But we couldn’t climb any higher. Wally was in the way.
The pigs began piling one on top of another until the jaws of the topmost, an enormous boar, were snapping just beneath the giant’s heels.
Cy squeezed his eyes closed.
“Hold on.” Wally looped his arm through a rung of the ladder. He pulled out the tin of Delightful, Dependable, and Safe Matches.
A match flared. Wally lit a fuse and tossed his first Coruscating Cannonade.
The boar leaped, intercepting it in the air. Swine saliva swamped the fuse. The monster swallowed it whole, licked its chops, and pranced as if asking for more.
“Feeding them treats,” Jack said. “What a novel idea. That will make them leave.”
Wally was already lighting his second pocket pyrotechnic.
He tossed this one farther down the tunnel. The swine scrambled after it, but just before they reached it, it burst. Spinning spots of yellow, blue, and purple fire shot upward, coruscating as they rose. They ricocheted off the walls and bounced from the ceiling. And then the cannonade began, each spark emitting a boom as it died. The sewer swine fled, squealing and slightly singed.
Jack dropped to the floor of the tunnel as soon as the last kinky tail disappeared, but Cy
would not move until their squeals diminished in the distance.
“What was that?” Jack asked when Wally reached the floor at last.
“Art,” Wally said, taking his notebook from his pocket. “I believe it needs more purple.” He made a note of it and we continued on, past ancient arches that had been bricked over, and I could only wonder what lay on the other side. Finally, we stopped before a wooden door with massive iron bands and hinges. They must have been well oiled, for the door swung open silently.
The room we entered can only be described as a cathedral of clockwork. Brass bits and bobs glowed in the gaslight from Tiffany lamps. One side of the room resembled a giant watch that had been turned inside out. Springs, weights, and gears spilled out of the wall. They looked as if they had once kept perfect time as they performed their maker’s mysterious purpose. But it was clear the clockmaker was gone and that the workshop had fallen into disuse and disarray. The opposite wall looked like something from the Middle Ages, with torches in sconces.
“We brought him as requested, Dob,” Jack said.
Dobbin jumped up from a cluttered workbench that looked much as I imagined the one in Oliver’s lab would have if Calypso had never set foot in the Automated Inn.
“You rotten rat!” he cried, his fingers curling into fists. “You slimy squealer!”
A growl started to grow inside me. This was no matter of life and death. Wally had been deceived into entering a den of thieves!
“I did not squeal,” Wally said. “Though I did leave a message for my parents before I left. What is this about?”
“Tick Tock said ’e was going to nab you.” The little angel who had warned Dobbin of the peelers stepped out of the shadows and took Cy’s hand. “And now he’s missing.”
Of course she was part of this gutter gang. Now that I saw Dobbin and the girl together, it was clear that they were siblings.
“You’re supposed to be in bed, Briney,” Dobbin said. “You said you were knackered. I ’ad to carry you ’ome!”
If Walter and I had not read so many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, I might not have known that “knackered” meant exhausted.
“I’m always knackered,” Briney said. “Bed don’t help.”
Cy sat down on the floor, and Briney squatted beside me. I started to back away—and then I heard it.
Tick-tock.
It wasn’t as loud as Tick Tock’s heart, but it was loud enough that I couldn’t miss it. It took me a moment to realize what it meant. It seemed that Tick Tock was not the only member of this band of bandits with a mechanical heart. I sat down.
“You twig to it, Noodles?” Dobbin asked.
“Twig” is slang for “understand,” and I was terribly afraid I did.
Dobbin nodded. “Dogs could ’ear it, I suppose. Show the gent, Briney.”
The little girl unbuttoned a pocket in her gown to reveal a cabinet in the center of her chest. The mechanism ticking away inside was a marvel of gleaming glass and metal. A weight swung above it like a metronome.
“Incredible!” Wally cried, stepping closer. He gasped, and I knew the keen boy had seen the keyhole and understood instantly what it meant.
“Clockwork has to be wound”—Wally’s hand went to his own heart—“and Tick Tock’s gone missing with the keys! What time does Mr. Tock generally wind your apparatus?”
Cy blinked as if holding back tears, but Briney just wrapped her arms around me. I held very still, listening to the whir of clockwork in her chest. This was a matter of life and death after all. They might be pickpockets and thieves, but if Tick Tock did not return with the keys, both Cy and Briney were doomed.
“He winds them in the morning at seven sharp.” Jack picked up a tappet wrench from the table and twirled it like a baton. “Every single day.”
I thought for an instant that the child beside me was too young to understand her predicament. And then I felt her tremble. Briney Winckles was well aware of the peril her peculiar heart put her in, but she did not want her brother to know she was afraid. I leaned against her and licked her chin. Even a desperado needs to hug a dachshund sometimes.
“You mentioned he might kill you?” Wally queried.
“It don’t matter wot ’e does to me,” Dobbin said, paling perceptibly. “Wot matters is that ’e makes it back before seven.”
Wally cleared his throat. “That may be beyond his ability. I’m afraid Noodles and I may have witnessed Tick Tock being abducted.”
Briney went still.
“Which only means we must rescue him,” Wally added quickly, “rather than await his return.”
“Scotland Yard’s taken ’im!” Jack exclaimed.
“I don’t believe so,” Wally said, and described exactly what we had seen.
“It must ’ave been the peelers,” Dobbin said.
“Perhaps,” Walter admitted. “But there is someone I would very much like to consult just in case it isn’t.”
“You know a criminal mastermind?” Jack asked.
“No,” Wally admitted. “But my aunt is acquainted with a deductive genius. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”
Jack fumbled the wrench he was spinning, then snatched it from the air. “You think ’e would give us the time of day?”
“I believe so,” Wally said. “I was supposed to have breakfast with him tomorrow.”
“He’s at his flat in Buckingham Mansions instead of his country house, then.” Jack jumped down. “Let’s go!”
I found it fascinating that a criminal such as Spring-Heeled Jack would know the whereabouts of Sir Arthur’s flat.
“If Tick Tock ’as been taken,” Dobbin said, “I expect ’e will escape. And when ’e does, ’e will come ’ere.”
“But if he does not,” Jack insisted, “then we have no time to lose!”
“Jack’s got it right, Dob,” Briney said, standing up. “We go find him.” The giant, who had been sitting silently beside me the whole time, nodded his odd head.
“All right,” Dobbin decided. “We go. I’ll bring you pickaback, Briney.”
To bring someone “pickaback” means to carry that person on one’s back. The boy bent over so his little sister could climb on.
Buckingham Mansions proved to be a fortress of flats almost a block long and six stories tall. The street level was occupied by shops and guarded by a doorman.
“Pardon me,” Wally said to this worthy man when we arrived. “Would you inform Sir Arthur that Walter Kennewickett wishes to see him?”
The doorman’s eyes took in Wally and our three curious companions—Cy had wisely waited in the shadows on the opposite side of the street—before they settled on me.
“Get on,” he growled. “No dogs allowed. I don’t like dogs, nor boys nor girls for that matter.”
“How about your job?” Jack asked. “Do you like your job? I ask because Sir Arthur is expecting us.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” Not only did Jack sound sincere, but his face showed no sign of deception. Criminals of his ilk could apparently lie without blushing.
“Then you would know that he’s out chasing ghosts. Yer not gettin’ in. Not in the middle of the night.”
I was deciding which ankle to bite when my lunge was arrested by a cry from the street.
“Wal-ter!”
Rhodope was running toward us. The gentleman following at a more dignified pace could only be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Jack made a strange, strangling sound. I could understand his emotion. Sir Arthur’s form engendered awe in me as well. He was not cut from the same physical cloth as his character Sherlock Holmes. The fictional detective is described as a whip of a man. Sir Arthur resembled a walrus.
“Walter!” Rhodope cried again when she arrived. “I wired your parents as requested. They’ll be here by midmorning, I’m sure. When you failed to return, I tracked Sir Arthur down at a Society for Psychical Research meeting to enlist his help. But it seems you’ve captured the criminals single-handedly?
Bravo!”
“He didn’t capture anybody, love.” Jack had jerked his scarf over his face. “We kidnapped him right and proper.”
“I believe ‘requested my presence’ would be more accurate,” Wally said. I had to concur. I would never have allowed Walter Kennewickett to be kidnapped.
“Kidnapped,” Jack insisted, as if his credentials as a criminal were in question. “Carried off!”
Miss Rhodope’s eyes narrowed. “Do I know you, sir?”
“Not unless you consort with vile criminals,” Jack growled, his voice having grown even gruffer. “The name’s Jack. I imagine you’ve heard of me?”
Sir Arthur studied him. “Spring-Heeled Jack steals purses, then jumps walls and bounces up buildings. You’d be that Jack, would you?”
Jack made his bow and flourish.
“But he did not kidnap me, sir,” Wally insisted.
“It’s just as well,” Sir Arthur said. “Your aunt was about to rouse the Sisters of Suffrage to your defense. I expect there would have been rioting in the streets. And who are these young people?”
Rhodope turned to the urchins as Wally made the introductions. Dobbin scowled as if he feared Rhodope might scrub him clean on the spot, but Briney smiled shyly.
“You’re the picture lady,” she said.
“And you are the acrobatic angel. I’ve seen you perform! Aren’t you a bit big for your brother to be carrying you?”
“She’s knackered, miss,” Dobbin said. “She’d set right down in the road if I didn’t carry ’er.”
“Poor child!” Sir Arthur exclaimed. “You must come inside!”
It seemed as if all would be well until Cy stepped from the shadows and crossed the street. I realized with dismay that he had neglected to replace his turban.
“Good Gad.” Sir Arthur’s grip on his walking stick tightened. “Who might you be, sir?”
“He’s a friend,” Wally said quickly.
Cy produced his bellows from his pocket and pumped his chest full of air.
The Tick-Tock Man Page 3