The Tick-Tock Man

by Kersten Hamilton

  “Andrew hasn’t heard a thing,” Constable Arbuckle reported when he returned. “Aside from that bit of trouble with the suffrage ladies, it’s been uncommon quiet tonight.”

  Wally thanked the officer for his help, and Sir Arthur signed a slip of paper for him and shook his hand.

  “That leaves your aunt’s hypothesis, and that of Mr. Smyth-Hops, still to be tested,” Sir Arthur said as we started home. “Either the criminal element is involved, or the abduction had something to do with the rally. We have less information than I would like. We are running out of time. I did not want to mention it earlier, but we can’t even know for certain whether the tattered man was Tick Tock.”

  “But we can!” Wally cried.

  “Of course.” Sir Arthur understood instantly. “You took a photograph.”

  I had completely forgotten it myself!

  “And produced a print,” Wally added. “If the man in the alley was Tick Tock, Dobbin will be able to identify him.”

  We hurried toward Miss Rhodope’s rooms to retrieve the evidence.

  When we reached Sir Arthur’s flat, we found that the others had fared far worse than we.

  Cy was holding a cool compress to the side of Leander Smyth-Hops’s head while Miss Rhodope and Dobbin looked on. Briney was sleeping on the settee.

  “Who gave you the blinker?” Dobbin asked when Cy lowered the rag.

  A “blinker” was apparently a black eye. Mr. Smyth-Hops was sporting a beauty.

  “A few fellows who didn’t appreciate being asked their whereabouts last night,” the journalist said. “They had nothing to do with the disappearance. I was sure they had. It was a disappointment.”

  “Did you discern this before or after they blackened your eye?” Miss Rhodope asked. “And how many is ‘a few’?”

  “Somewhat after, I would say. It was quite a set-to, Rho. Oh, and there were only three of them.”

  “You bested three ruffians?” Sir Arthur asked in surprise.

  “Certainly,” Mr. Smyth-Hops said. “You can’t expect that I would go amongst the criminal element unprepared. I have been studying Bartitsu with Edward William Barton-Wright himself!”

  “Bartitsu?” Rhodope repeated.

  “A magnificent mix of cane fighting, kickboxing, fisticuffs, and jujitsu—in short, just the thing for the gentleman who intends to do investigative reporting on the rough streets of London. How about your hypothesis, Rho? Any bets placed?”

  “None,” Rhodope lamented. “Scotland Yard?”

  “Claims all has been quiet,” Sir Arthur admitted.

  “What have you there, Walter?” Leander asked.

  “Photographs,” Wally said, and everyone gathered around as he spread them on the desk.

  “That’s Tick Tock, right enough.” Dobbin picked up one of the photos of the fiend. “It flattens ’im a bit, if you take my meaning. ’E’s bigger in the flesh.”

  “He is more fierce in person,” Mr. Smyth-Hops agreed. “And he won’t be pleased that he’s been photographed, I’m sure.”

  “So we know he was at the parade, at least,” Sir Arthur said.

  “Who is this?” Wally asked suddenly, pointing at another picture. “Aunt Rhodope, do you know her?”

  I hopped up onto a chair and peered past Miss Rhodope’s elbow at the image in question.

  It was the photograph Rhodope had asked Wally to take of the Sisters of Suffrage as they passed. Every face was forward as they marched behind the Zephyr. Every face but one. A single sister was looking directly at us—or at someone behind us.

  “That’s Myra,” Rhodope exclaimed. “Myra Maybelle Thistlethorp!”

  “No, it ain’t. It’s Bloody Belle DunKelly,” Dobbin corrected. “The Butcher of Bartle Street. Ran ’er own butcher shop until ’er mister disappeared. Then they sent ’er to jail.”

  “But she is completely reformed and going by her given name now!” Rhodope cried.

  “Would she have known Tick Tock on sight?” Sir Arthur asked.

  “Oh, she knew ’im, right enough,” Dobbin said. “She sometimes gave ’im bones for the piggies.”

  We all paused a moment to ponder this terrible thought.

  “And if she had recognized Tick Tock?” Leander Smyth-Hops asked.

  “The Sisters of Suffrage are completely devoted to Calypso,” Rhodope reasoned. “They would never allow her son to be kidnapped by a criminal kingpin.”

  “‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’” Leander quoted. “The Sign of the Four, chapter six.”

  “Will you stop that?” Sir Arthur thundered.

  “Sorry,” Leander said. “But it seems the Sisters of Suffrage have taken Tick Tock, haven’t they?”

  “Wouldn’t Miss Rhodope have known?” Sir Arthur asked.

  “I was at Scotland Yard seeing to Sylvia’s release,” Rhodope replied.

  “But how did they manage it?” Sir Arthur asked. “Constables and criminal kingpins alike have tried their best—”

  “Do not underestimate the Sisterhood, sir!” Rhodope said, lifting her chin.

  At that moment, Briney sat up. “Dob,” she said, starting toward us, “I—” And she collapsed onto the floor.

  I was the first to reach her side. She was breathing. I was relieved to hear her heart still ticking.

  “She’s fainted,” said Sir Arthur as he lifted her from the floor. “I will say this while she is insensible, Dobbin. You must prepare yourself. It is as I feared when I first felt her pulse. Your sister’s clockwork is a more serious problem than you know.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Dobbin.

  “Her heart was made for her when she was younger,” Sir Arthur said. “She has grown too big for it.”

  “Like a fuel pump that don’t push enough into the engine,” Dobbin said slowly. “Even if we find the keys in time, Tick Tock’s brother’s dead. ’E can’t make another one.” The boy’s face went suddenly pale.

  “Electrification!” Wally exclaimed. “That was Tick Tock’s motive. He was not hired to extort my parents; he was going to do it himself. He’d read about our electric automatons. He was going to force my parents to replace Briney’s clockwork heart with a modernized model that runs on electricity!”

  “We’ll find Tick Tock,” Miss Rhodope assured Dobbin as he sank down beside his sister. “May I use your telephone, Sir Arthur? They will have taken him to Myra’s.”

  “The Butcher of Bartle Street?” Mr. Smyth-Hops gasped.

  “She is reformed, I assure you,” Miss Rhodope repeated. It was a matter of moments before the phone connected Rhodope to an operator, who in turn connected her to the line she requested.

  “Hello! Winifred? Of course it’s Rhodope! Who else? Listen, Win—do you have a criminal in custody? You do?” She nodded at Dobbin. “He was? No, Myra mustn’t!” Her voice grew very urgent, and she frowned as she listened. “You put it to a vote? I see. Win, darling, was he carrying keys? Brass keys such as you might use to wind a clock? I see. I’m sending someone over. Don’t let them dispose of him before my friend arrives.” She set the phone on its stand. “It’s already done.”

  “What?” cried Mr. Smyth-Hops.

  “Where?” demanded Dobbin.

  “Confound it all! What, why, where, and how?” Sir Arthur asked.

  “Myra did identify Tick Tock, as Wally supposed,” Rhodope said. “She intuited instantly that he was after Calypso’s son. She contacted Winifred and then the quilting society. Winnie’s husband is a surgeon, you see.”

  “I don’t see,” Mr. Smyth-Hops admitted.

  “It means she has access to diethyl aether,” Sir Arthur explained. “You can render a subject unconscious by holding a rag of it to his nose.”

  “That was the struggle we heard,” Wally guessed, “and the most dangerous part of their operation.”

  “Once they had him in the coach, they searched him for sharp objects, and then, before he could awake, t
hey stitched him between two quilts. He was quite helpless when he regained his senses.”

  “Then they have the keys!” Leander cried.

  “They don’t,” Rhodope admitted. “Which means that they must be well hidden on his person. He may have been helpless, but he was not silent. His language was so”—Miss Rhodope turned pink—“colorful, they voted on whether they should beat him with broomsticks or call the constables to have him hauled away. Myra is naturally opposed to constables.”

  “Naturally,” Sir Arthur said.

  “She argued for the broomstick party, but was overruled in the popular vote. The constables are on their way to collect the Tick-Tock Man as we speak.”

  Walter leaped to his feet. “They can’t have him!”

  “Tick Tock can’t fix her, anyway,” Dobbin said. “His brother, Basil, was the clever one that way, and he’s years gone.”

  “Then you and I will do it,” Wally said. “We need to get back to your lab. The tools there were Basil’s, weren’t they? He must have had schematics for Briney’s heart.”

  Of course I knew Walter Kennewickett would not give up! The girl stirred, and I licked her face. Dobbin knelt beside us.

  “Dob,” she whispered, “is Tick Tock come?”

  “’E’s been nabbed,” Dobbin said, brushing the hair from her face. “I’m going with the writer man to get the keys, on account of I can get them to the lab the fastest once they’re in ’and. Cy will carry you down below, won’t you, Cy?”

  The giant nodded as Dobbin helped his sister up.

  We stepped onto the street once more to find that an icy wind had swept the fog completely away.

  “Back down the way we came up, Cy?” Leander Smyth-Hops asked. Cy nodded.

  His bull’s-eye lantern sliced the darkness as I trotted to keep up with Wally. When we reached the sewer opening, Cy started down the ladder. His head was barely out of sight when Leander picked me up and followed, with Rhodope and Wally right behind.

  Rhodope held a kerchief to her face when she reached the bottom, but she glanced at Leander, then put it away. We hurried single file down the catwalk.

  Just as we reached the corridor of crystals, I heard what I feared the most: splashing behind us.

  “Do you happen to have any additional pyrotechnics about you, Walter?” Mr. Smyth-Hops asked hopefully.

  “I’m afraid not,” Wally said.

  “What is it?” Rhodope asked.

  “Possibly nothing,” Mr. Smyth-Hops replied. “Walk a little faster, if you will.”

  The splashing grew nearer, and I heard the unmistakable grunting of the sewer swine.

  Mr. Smyth-Hops stopped beneath a sewer grate. There was no ladder here, but an electric light on the street above us shone through the bars. A pile of detritus that had washed down the drains reached almost to the ceiling and narrowed the path.

  “It’s still some way to the lab, Rho,” he said. “I want you to go on.”

  “It’s sewer swine, isn’t it?” Rhodope asked.

  “Probably,” Mr. Smyth-Hops replied. “You’ll be needed to assist in the procedure, Rho. Walter will be needed to manufacture the heart, and Cy must carry Briney as well as light your way. That leaves one job for me.”

  “Leander!” Wally’s aunt cried.

  “Best hurry,” he urged her, taking off his hat and hanging it on a bit of broken board. He had chosen his spot well. He could see by the dim light from above, and the swine could not get past the pile of rubble on his right. “I don’t know how long I can delay them.”

  “Leander!” Rhodope exclaimed again.

  “Save Briney, Walter.” Mr. Smyth-Hops removed his coat as well. “Don’t let this be in vain.”

  “Don’t give up!” Wally said, then turned and ran into the darkness with Rhodope and Cy.

  My heart ached with the desire to follow him, and my knees were shaking, but my duty was clear. I took my place beside Leander Smyth-Hops.

  Dachshunds do not leave comrades to die alone.

  I turned to stand by Mr. Smyth-Hops’s side as the first of the sewer swine stepped into the light. The boar blinked at us, and for a moment it was still, as if it could not believe its luck at finding us there.

  Then it charged.

  Mr. Smyth-Hops spun his coat like a cape, covering the beast’s head, and then landed a terrific blow to its nose. It jumped back and he leaped after it, delivering a spinning kick to the snout. I gave a terrific growl as I followed, and then the rest of the swine joined in and the battle became a blur of tusks and fangs.

  I attacked the hocks, ears, and hindquarters; my comrade was everywhere, launching himself from the tunnel walls, rebounding from the roof, and using not only fists and feet but every brick and stick and stone at hand in the battle. I found myself flung into the air, and managed to nip a porcine ear on my way down. And then I was in the thick of the fray. I fought with fang and nail, dodging among the maddened beasts.

  The one thought in my mind—the only thought now—was that the swine must not pass. Not until Wally and the others were safe behind the workshop door.

  The battle went on and on, surging up and down the passage. At last I could tell we were being pushed back. The end had come. I gathered myself for one more assault, knowing it would be my last.

  In that dark moment, I heard a shout. Walter Kennewickett leaped past me, a blazing brand in each hand. Rhodope, with two torches of her own, was right behind him.

  The swine, no doubt remembering the burns from Wally’s pyrotechnics, turned and fled.

  Leander Smyth-Hops sank down beside me. His clothing was in rags, and his coat irretrievable.

  “We’re alive, Sausage!” he said.

  I was somewhat surprised myself.

  Cy was holding a very still Briney in his arms when we stepped into the workshop. There were tears on the giant’s face, and I thought for a moment that time had run out—but then I heard the faint tick-tock of her heart.

  There was still a chance.

  Somewhere in the night, Dobbin and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were doubtless rushing toward us with the keys to save Cy and Briney. Somewhere farther still, Oliver and Calypso were racing back in response to Rhodope’s wire.

  There are situations not even a dachshund can help with. Walter was facing one now. There was nothing I could do but watch as Wally and Rhodope tore apart the room searching for schematics and spare parts.

  And then the door burst open, and Tick Tock stood before us. This was no tatterdemalion but a tiger of a man, grown old but powerful still. The rags had concealed his size, and the stumbles his energy. I backed up until I was standing on Walter Kennewickett’s toes.

  A chill went through me as he swept into the room. Ineffable indeed. It was as if he carried every crime he had ever committed with him, crimes too horrible for this room to hold. His wild and wicked eyes took in the boxes of papers Wally and Rhodope had overturned in their search and came to rest on Briney’s small form.

  A crowd came through the door after him—Sir Arthur, Constable Arbuckle, several other constables, and Myra Maybelle Thistlethorp herself, still wearing a Sisters of Suffrage sash.

  “You brought him!” Mr. Smyth-Hops cried.

  “He brought us,” Sir Arthur replied.

  The officers of the law were as disheveled as Mr. Smyth-Hops.

  “Sewer swine?” Rhodope inquired.

  “Tick Tock,” Sir Arthur corrected as Dobbin rushed to Briney’s side, keys in hand. “We made the mistake of letting him out of the quilt.”

  “Kennewickett,” Tick Tock said as Dobbin wound Briney’s heart spring, “you were looking for my brother’s papers?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wally said.

  “Could they ’ave done it, then? Could your parents ’ave rigged Briney an ’eart?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wally said.

  “Then they still could,” the monster muttered.

  “Yes. And there was no need to try to abduct me,” Wally said. “Some people
will help if you ask.”

  “And some people won’t,” Tick Tock countered. “My way, they always says yes.”

  I heard a sob and turned to see Dobbin still beside his sister. “Something’s gone squiffy,” he said.

  It was clear that he meant something was very, very wrong.

  “I wound Briney, but she won’t wake up. Not even when I shake her. We brought the keys. She should wake up!”

  “Where’d that doctor go?” Tick Tock demanded. He turned around, and the constables retreated a step or two. I did not blame them.

  “I’m here,” Sir Arthur said.

  “I’d like a professional opinion,” Tick Tock demanded, his grimace showing blackened teeth. He cleared the workbench with one sweep of his arm. “Put ’er down, Cy. Let the sawbones have a look-see.”

  Cy laid Briney down gently and stepped away. Sir Arthur felt Briney’s pulse.

  “I’m afraid it has gone squiffy, Dobbin,” he said, laying his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder. “Your sister is deeply unconscious, and she won’t be waking up. Not even one of the famous elder Kennewicketts could construct a heart fast enough. I’m sorry. There is no hope.”

  My legs were suddenly too weak to hold me, and I sank to the floor. No hope.

  Dobbin staggered.

  “Don’t give up, Dob,” Wally said, and turned to Tick Tock. “We can’t give up without trying. Tell me where your brother’s papers are kept, Mr. Tock,” Wally said. “I will do my best to build her a bigger heart in time!”

  “You could do that?” Tick Tock walked toward Wally and stepped in between him and Dobbin. He leaned over me until his nose was almost touching Wally’s. “A boy like you could replace ’er ticker?”

  “I could try,” Wally said without backing up an inch. “With Dobbin’s help and a little more time, I believe it can be done.” My pulse pounded with pride for him, for his courage and conviction, and for a moment—just for a moment—I felt there might be hope.