Infernal Devices Read online

  As my father's shop stood near Clerkenwell Green, in that London district long noted for its watchmakers, I stocked a few timepieces crafted by my neighbours, hoping to sell one to the odd passer-by. Creff had assumed this to be the caller's pretext for gaining entry and murdering us.

  When I at last roused myself from my thoughts, what remained of my breakfast had passed from unattractive to inedible. I pushed it away and stood up. On the stairs I passed Creff, still muttering dark worries about "savage cannon-balls", as I went to see what manner of trade had come that morning.

  My first sight of that figure, whose crossings and recrossings through the course of my travails would be the source of so much mystification, instilled in me no such apprehension as had seized Creff. The gentleman had his back to me as I reached the bottom of the stairs. He waited, hat by his elbow upon the counter, and studying one of my father's clocks upon the opposite wall. Of more than average stature, yet with a narrowness through the shoulders that his greatcoat could not conceal, the man stood stockstill, absorbed in the clock's recording of hours, date, and position of the major planets.

  "May I be of some assistance?" I announced my presence, and the man turned towards me, pivoting on his heel with a slow, fluid grace.

  I saw then how Creff's fears had been triggered. At first I thought that the shop's gas bracket was turned too low, leaving the stranger's face in shadow; then the flame's glow shimmered across the high points of his countenance. The skin of his face and hands, as I then saw that his gloves were folded beside his hat, were of a deep, rich brown, reminding me of burnished mahogany or fine morocco leather, its patina grown smooth and lustrous with age. It could be no disguise, no lampblack smudged over skin pale as my own, but only the pigment of nature. Reinforcing the supposition of the stranger's African birthplace were the symmetrical lines of minute scars curving across the cheeks and forehead, such as are reported to be the self-inflicted adornment of certain tribesmen, the small wounds pricked with a thorn and rubbed with sand to make them more pronounced when healed.

  His eyes were as Creff had described them, the lids drawn together to form two slits over the slightly protuberant spheres of the eyes behind them. I did not find this as disconcerting as the more excitable Creff had; indeed, the grave, unsmiling expression lent a calm dignity to the stranger's presence. Whatever savagery might have remained in his breast was well concealed under the expensive cut of his clothing.

  "Mr Dower." He spoke distinctly but softly, the thin lips barely moving apart.

  "I am. The son, that is." I always made this emendation to those who might have known my father only through his creations, in an effort to forestall any disappointment in my own inferior services. "The founder of the business is deceased."

  "My condolences I extend." An unplaceable accent revealed itself in his speech. His slight bow allowed the gas bracket's light to graze the equally dark and polished curve of his skull.

  "Two years have passed. The grief has ebbed a little, I believe." My own words mocked my true feelings, as they often did when I spoke of my father. How grieve over a man one has never known, no matter how intimate the connection? I stepped behind the. shop's counter and spread my hands upon it. "Now to business, Mr… ah…" Through observation of my neighbours I had cultivated the tradesman's obsequious smile. "I have the pleasure of addressing…?"

  The gentleman ignored my forays towards his name, and produced a paper-wrapped parcel from the crook of one arm. Placing it on the counter between us, the Brown Leather Man (as I had already begun to identify him in my thoughts) undid the knotted cord and pushed aside the paper with his dark hands. "I was a client of your late father," he said. "For me he built this, upon my commission. Some element of disorder has entered its workings, and I seek to employ you in the setting right of it."

  The last of the wrappings fell away. "What is it?" I asked. My eyes turned upward at the Brown Leather Man's silence, and found the narrow slits studying me with an unnerving intensity.

  In relief I looked back down to what lay before me. A mahogany box a little over a foot in length, half that in its other dimensions; a pair of brass hinges faced me. With one finger I attempted to swivel the box around, but the surprising weight of it kept it motionless upon the counter. I was forced to grasp it with both hands in order to turn it about.

  I unlatched the simple brass hasp and tilted the box's lid open. My heart sank within me as I looked down at the intricate anatomy of the device.

  This feeling of despair was not unfamiliar to me; it often welled up at the sight of one of my father's creations. His genius had not been limited to the production of the pocket watches and larger timepieces whose subtlety of design and intricacy of execution had established his name among admirers of the horological art. Since his death and my inadequate assumption of his place, I had become acquainted with facets of his work that are still little known, having been undertaken at the behest of a select arid discreet clientele. Scientific and astronomical apparatus of every description, ranging from simple barometers, though of a fineness of calibration rarely if ever equalled, to elaborate astrolabes and orreries, the latter distinguished by a set of reciprocating eccentric cams in the clockwork drive mechanism capable of showing the true elliptical orbits of heavenly bodies rather than the simplified circular motions employed in other such mechanical representations of the universe – all of these and more were my father's children. More so than my own self, I would often think as I gazed at some intricate intermeshing of gears and cogs such as the one revealed inside the Brown Leather Man's mahogany casket. The bits of finely turned and crafted brass showed the care and attention that had been absent in the creation and assembly of my own person into manhood.

  The purpose and function of some of the devices brought to me were unfathomable, and an odd secretiveness prevailed among my father's former clients. Amateur scientific pursuits had long been a preoccupation with serious-minded gentlemen of property and leisure, but the ones who came to me were often as uncommunicative as the devices they wished to be repaired. Sextants that divided the sky into angles not found in the usual geometries, microscopes whose hermetically sealed lenses distorted the viewed object into shimmering rainbow images, other instruments whose complexity and manifold adjustments quite overwhelmed my powers of speculation as to their use – all of these had in time been brought into the shop. With Creff's assistance I had managed the simpler repairs, a hair-thin chain slipped from its proper place or a minute cogwheel grown toothless and replaceable with a duplicate from the vast jumble of parts and half-assembled machines left in my father's workroom. The well-heeled clientele for whom I performed these services paid handsomely enough. Other devices, where the malfunction was as mysterious as the function, I was forced to return to the distraught owners with my apologies. I fear it was from the growing number of these admissions of inadequacy that my trade had fallen off, the word passing among the cognoscenti that the son was not the equal of the father. The disastrous episode of the Patented Clerical Automata, who completion and setting into motion in a London church I had undertaken while my confidence in dealing with my father's creations had not yet been sufficiently discouraged, had been suppressed from public notice, else the notoriety would have ended my trade once and for all.

  Such were the well-worn reveries that weighted my thoughts as I bent over the cabinet. As needful as my personal accounts were of replenishing, I feared that this was not to be an occasion of profit. I turned the flame up on the bracket behind the counter and, while my visitor continued to regard me with his slitted stare, bent over the device with magnifying glass in hand.

  My study revealed nothing of the machine's purpose, though any question of its origin was dispelled. Under the glass I discovered the floating escapement with ratcheted countervalences that my father had invented, though in this instance of a smaller size than I had ever encountered before, and linked in parallel to a train of duplicates disappearing into the brass innards. Other
features were of such minuteness that the magnifying glass, no matter how I squinted through it, failed to yield the details of the device's workings. One section, brighter than the rest, appeared to be made of finely hammered gold leaf, the sheets of which were folded upon themselves in various asymmetrical patterns. Simple set-screws in the corners of the box showed where the device could be removed from its mahogany housing. A number of incomplete linkages around the sides, with signs of wear marking the collars at the ends of protruding shafts, indicated where the workings could be connected to other, larger devices.

  "It appears to be some sort of regulatory mechanism," I mused aloud. I looked up to see the Brown Leather Man's eyes still fastened upon myself. I shrugged, made uneasy by his intent scrutiny. "For a clock, perhaps, with various other functions combined?" I knew that the device was far too complex for such a simple purpose.

  Brown Leather nodded. "A regulator… yes. That is so. You are familiar with devices such as this?"

  "I know much of my father's work," I said. "But this in particular – no. I'm sorry."

  "But to repair it." His narrow gaze seemed to sharpen as he looked at me, as though the glint in his eyes were the points of needles. "You are capable of such a task?"

  As with most tradesmen, avarice outweighed prudence in my nature. There was nothing to be lost in an attempt to remedy the device, however unlikely the chances of success. But the man's eyes unnerved me, arousing a taste of the fear that Creff had felt, and moved me to honesty. I closed the mahogany lid and pushed the cabinet away. "I think not," I said. "Some of my father's creations are beyond my skill. I believe I would only damage this further if I meddled with it."

  My candour enabled me to look the gentleman directly in the eye. For a moment he was silent, the small points of light behind the slitted lids reading deeper past my own face. "Your warning I accept," he said at last. "Nevertheless, worthwhile will I make it to attempt what you can."

  "I cannot guarantee any results."

  "Please." The brown hands folded along the sides of the cabinet and slid it towards me. "Even the attempt is valuable to me."

  "Very well." My fingertips briefly touched his as I drew the device back to me; a deep chill flowed from the dark skin, drawing a heartbeat's warmth from my own. "I am, ah… uncommitted to any other projects currently. If you'd care to return in a week's time? Perhaps by then. Let me write you a receipt." I took a sheet of paper from beneath the counter. "Received from…?"

  He ignored me, his gaze broken away from me and now sweeping about the shop's contents. Each clock, simple or elaborate, fell under his inspection.

  "Is there something else with which I can assist you?" I asked. Free of his searching gaze, I had been able to dismiss my moment of dread as foolish. Perhaps a solider bit of business could be transacted.

  Brown Leather turned back to me. "Your father's workroom," he said. "I would like to see it."

  The request caught me by surprise. I blinked at him before I found my voice. "Why?" I said simply. "There's nothing-"

  "Your father, Mr Dower; perhaps he left behind some articles, the use of which is puzzling to you? Mechanisms not exactly as this, but similar in part. Or even wholly different, but still of a function to you mysterious. If such are still in his workroom, I would like to examine them. They might be" – his voice arched, intimating – "valuable to me."

  His surmise as to the contents of my father's workroom was completely accurate. When I had first come to London to claim my inheritance, I had been astonished at the mechanical chaos that filled the large windowless room at the back of the shop. Tottering clockwork mountains, eviscerated timepieces of every size from pocket watches with dials as small as thumbnails to the massive gearing of tower clocks with hands thicker about than a man's wrist, brass skeletons of automaton figures with the round orbs of porcelain eyes staring from the unfleshed faces, scientific apparatus with dusty lenses peering only at darkness – a whole, universe caught midway through its moment of creation, and frozen there by the death of its Creator. My father apparently had worked on a score of projects simultaneously, and only his fervid brain had been able to sort out the interpenetrations of each with each in the crowded space. In my brief tenure there, the disarray had been increased by the natural decay of Time, and by my own admitted carelessness in clearing enough room for my own work at my father's bench. In addition, my practice of facilitating a number of repairs by scavenging bits and pieces from the partially assembled devices had the unfortunate effect of hastening the general disintegration.

  My reluctance at allowing a stranger to see the embarrassing muddle into which my legacy had fallen was overcome by the prospect of turning a profit on some conglomeration of gears and springs on which I had never expected to receive anything other than scrap value. "By all means," I said, gesturing towards the door behind the counter. "If you'd be so kind as to step around, I'd be pleased to have your inspection."

  I guided him down the hallway and the short flight of stone steps to the workroom. There being no gas bracket, I lit the lamp I kept on the bench. The flame, even adjusted to its highest, cast a light barely penetrating to the corners of the room, had they been visible behind the disordered masses of my father's abortive creations. The glow picked out highlights of brass gears and little more.

  Disregarding the gloom, the Brown Leather Man was already intently peering at the jumble of devices, poking at the various mechanisms with one long brown finger and bending closer to examine the assemblages of gears. Disaster threatened as one cliff-face of brass wheels tottered at his prodding inspection, a disembodied mannikin's head looking down from above in the manner of a Red Indian stalking an explorer in the rude deserts of America.

  A lensless telescope swung on its pivot away from Brown Leather as he probed deeper into the mechanical morass. "Are you finding anything of interest?" I called from my place at the bench.

  The silence of his back turned to me was his only reply. A bit nettled, I lifted the lamp and carried it towards him, the yellow circle cast around my feet, more to benefit my own curiosity than to aid his search.

  Holding the lamp aloft, I peered over the Brown Leather Man's shoulder, the light gleaming from the fuscous curve of his skull. Some involved meshing of gears and cogwheels, frozen in stopped Time, lay exposed before him, his extended forefinger probing like a surgeon's scalpel into a brass cadaver. So intent was he upon this post-mortem de artifice that he seemed scarcely aware of my presence behind him.

  A sudden snap of thin metal breaking, and my odd client lurched backwards, knocking me over and sending the lantern flying from my hand. The light was not extinguished, coming to rest propped against the leg of the workbench, but the immediate area where the Brown Leather Man stood and I undignifiedly sat was darkened.

  Enough light was reflected from the banked clutter of metal for me to look up and see what had happened. A coiled spring in the apparatus Brown Leather had been investigating now dangled crazily in air in front of him, one jagged end bobbing like a jack's head. The spring had apparently broken under his prodding and snapped sharply enough to inflict a wound on him. Indeed, I could see him with one hand clutching his opposite forearm to stanch the flow of blood from a jagged gash above his wrist.

  I scrambled to my feet, moved by natural sympathy and the prospect of the damages to which I might be liable.

  "My God, sir, you're hurt!" I cried, bending forward to minister to his wound. Dismayed, I saw the damp spatter of his blood upon the stone floor and the nearest brass device.

  He jerked the injured limb away from me. "It is nothing," he said. "Do not worry of it." His actions belied his words; still clutching his forearm, he hastily retreated up the passage to the front of the shop, with myself close behind.

  Before gathering up his hat and gloves from the counter, he clumsily fished a coin from his coat pocket and pressed it into my hand. A shiny wetness seeped between the brown fingers clamped to his forearm. "A payment on account," he s
aid, his narrow eyes locking once more on to mine. "For your work to be done yet."

  Then he was gone, the shop door slamming behind him, and the clatter of hooves on cobbles and a hansom cab's wheels fading into the street's constant murmur.

  "Lord, I told you he were a mad one, didn't I? Just didn't I!"

  I looked around and saw Creff watching from the stairway, one hand again clutching the dull kitchenknife. Without looking at the coin that the Brown Leather Man had handed me – the flash of silver and its familiar weight assured me of its being a crown – I slipped it into my waistcoat pocket. "There's a bit of mess in the workroom," I said. "Some blood on the floor-"

  Creff's eyes widened as though inflated by his sharp intake of breath.

  "An accident," I assured him. "Nothing but a broken watch spring. Would you be so kind as to clean it up?"

  A few moments later, as I stood behind the counter examining the device left behind by my morning's visitor, with an odd premonitory unease staying my hand from lifting the lid, a shout came from the workroom. Creff appeared in the passageway, wadded rag in hand.

  "There's no blood here." He sounded annoyed, as if having discovered a jest played on him. "It's all wet, right enough, but there's no blood."

  "You must be mistaken," I said. "In the back, by my father's old things."

  "See for yourself, then,"

  I followed him down the steps. In the workroom, by the brass wall of my father's creations, where I had seen the jagged edge of metal tear the brown skin, I knelt down on the stone floor. Creff held the lantern above, illuminating the spattered wetness from my client's wound.

  Even before I touched it, a faint scent traced across my nostrils, evoking memories of childhood: the aunt who raised me, and our visits to the seashore at Margate. I dabbed a finger at one of the spots. The fluid on my fingertip was perfectly clear, rather than the thick scarlet I had expected. Curious, I tasted it.