THE INCREDIBLE STEAM MAN

Ron Goulart

Ron Goulart will now set things straight on Victorian automata and other matters of great importance to Harry Challenge. Mr. Goulart kindly took time out from his current work on The Comic Book Encyclopedia to regale us with this yarn about an American in London.

From “Fantasy and Science Fiction” (May, 2003)

Perhaps you’re familiar already with Edward S. Ellis’s Steam Man of the Prairies, a dime novel from the 1860s. Or maybe you read Harry Enton’s sequels, starring the inventor Frank Reade. No? Surely you remember Professor Archibald Campion’s mechanical man Boilerplate from the 1893 World Expo? If you do, then you’ve probably fallen for a very convincing Internet hoax site at www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate.

THE PRETTY DARK-HAIRED young woman met Harry Challenge at Waterloo Station and didn’t try to kill him until half an hour later. It was a chill, foggy afternoon in the early winter of 1899, and Harry had just arrived in London after clearing up a case involving a vampire cult that had been flourishing in a Somerset village. The young woman, wearing a checkered cloak over a long-skirted dark suit and smiling thinly, was waiting on the platform as his train pulled in.

He stepped from his compartment, carrying his single suitcase and smoking one of the thin cigars he favored. Harry was a clean-shaven man in his early thirties, lean and a shade above average height. Folded in the breast pocket of his dark business suit was the cablegram from New York that had brought him to London.

It read: Dear Son: Quit resting on your laurels and your backside in the wilds of merry England. Get yourself to London right away. A crackpot scientist named Hulbert Beresford wants us to find his runaway automaton. He’s got lots of dough. Let him know when you’ll arrive and the poor mutt will meet you. Your devoted father, the Challenge International Detective Agency.

Harry had walked about ten yards along the misty platform when the young woman stepped into his path. “You look about what I imagined Harry Challenge would look like. Are you he?” she asked with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

“I am, yeah.”

“Frankly, I think my father’s making a terrible mistake hiring you,” she told him. “Scotland Yard is much better prepared to handle this sort of matter. But my dear father, being eccentric and a bit dotty, insists on throwing his money away on a overrated American inquiry agency.”

Harry exhaled smoke, grinned, tipped his bowler hat. “This is the nicest welcome I’ve had in many a month,” he confided. “Usually I’m met only by cute little blonde girls with baskets of flowers or a nattily dressed mayor with the key to the city. You’re Beresford’s daughter, huh?”

“I’m Emily Beresford,” she said. “And you’re extremely rude, Mr. Challenge.”

He nodded in agreement. “Being insulted does tend to bring out the lout in me, Miss Beresford. Did you come to Waterloo Station simply to offer your critique, or are you planning to escort me to your dad?”

“I have a hansom cab waiting outside.” Turning, she started walking briskly along the platform, her cloak flapping. Harry followed.

As the hansom cab rattled along through the foggy London streets, Harry asked, “Thackeray?”

The inventor’s daughter gave a faint sigh. “My father’s favorite author,” she explained. “He met him once in his youth. Why one would name a steam-driven automaton after an overrated and outdated novelist is beyond me.”

“Thackeray has a certain ring to it. And it’s less controversial than naming him Oscar Wilde.”

“You’d probably have christened him Fritz Katzenjammer.”

“That’s catchy, too. How did Thackeray come to run away?” Some of the heavy fog seemed to be seeping into the cab. Emily tightened her cloak around her. “The steam man didn’t initially run away. Someone stole him.”

“When was this?”

“Nearly a month ago.”

“How?” Harry took a puff of his cheroot.

“My father’s laboratory, which is attached to the rear of our house, was broken into and Thackeray carried off.”

“Where were you and your father when that happened?”

“Attending the opening of a show of paintings by Jeremy Otterbridge at the Gifford Gallery.”

Glancing out the window of the swaying cab, Harry spotted a large, bright new poster among those slapped on a siding. It announced, in bold type, that none other than the Great Lorenzo and his Internationally Acclaimed Astounding Magical Show was now playing at the Royal Serpentine Theatre. “Well, my old friend Lorenzo is in town,” he observed. “Have to look him up soon as—”

“Would this inane comment of yours have a blessed thing to do with my father’s dilemma, Mr. Challenge?”

“Nothing at all, nope,” he admitted, exhaling cigar smoke. “Now then—your father didn’t call in Scotland Yard?”

Emily said, “He’s very secretive about his work and, being a very stubborn man as well, he refused to consult the police or the Yard. He’s been trying to find Thackeray on his own.”

“But now he’s hired us. Why?”

“There has been a new development,” she answered. “That’s why he decided he needed outside help. I only hope you’re up to the task.”

Harry exhaled cigar smoke. “What sort of new development?”

The cab swayed as it rounded a corner. “My father will explain all to you, Mr. Challenge.”

“Do you have any suspicions as to who might’ve swiped your automaton?”

“I believe it was foreign agents.”

“From where?”

“As you know, if you keep up with international news at all, there’s a new war that’s broken out between the two middle European countries of Outavia and Cintavania,” the young woman said. “Some weeks ago, a Baron Sonifero, who’s an Outavian diplomat stationed here in London, called upon my father. He’d somehow gotten wind of the steam man and queried my father as to whether automatons like Thackeray could be used on the battlefield. Father, disdaining any such martial use of his work, threw the baron out.”

“You think Sonifero came back and stole Thackeray.”

“It’s certainly a possibility, but you’re the detective, Mr. Challenge. It’s up to you to determine the truth.”

A moment later the cab pulled up at a narrow, three-story brick house at the edge of the Bloomsbury district. Harry paid the driver, despite the protest of Emily, and they entered the chill, shadowy house.

“Father should be home shortly,” the young woman said, taking off her cloak. “You can wait in the parlor.”

It was in the parlor that she took two shots at him.

A moment after Harry pushed through the beaded curtain and crossed the threshold of the cluttered parlor, the grandfather clock, standing crowded between the glass-fronted bookcases and a whatnot stand dominated by a collection of small japanned boxes, struck the hour of four. It bonged in a reverberating, temple-gong sort of way.

“Yes, of course,” murmured Emily out in the hallway.

Walking rather stiffly, she entered the shadowy parlor and, skirting a plump purple ottoman, slid open a drawer in a marble-topped, claw-footed table.

“What time,” Harry started to inquire, “do you expect your father to —oops!”

The dark-haired young woman, who’d extracted a derringer from the drawer, had the compact weapon aimed directly at Harry. “You are an enemy of progress,” she charged in a droning voice. “Thus, you must cease to be.”

She fired the gun.

Harry had by that time dodged to his right, knocking over an Oriental screen and causing it to topple a potted aspidistra off another claw-footed table.

Emily’s second shot also missed, putting a hole through the crown of his bowler hat, which had fallen off of its place atop the tumbled table.

Before she could fire again, Harry, crouched low, dived toward Emily. He grabbed her gun hand, forcing her arm downward. With his free hand he aimed and delivered an uppercut to her petite jaw.

Eyes rolling suddenly upward, Emily sighed, swayed, fell over the ottoman and sprawled out on a rather surly looking tigerskin rug.

“See here, young man, that’s hardly the way to treat my daughter,” protested someone in the hallway. “Admittedly, the dear girl can be deucedly aggravating at times, yet—”

“You’re Beresford?” Picking up the unconscious young woman, Harry deposited her, fairly gently, on a mauve divan.

“I am.” The lanky, middle-aged man in the Norfolk suit stepped into the parlor. “And you, sir?”

“Harry Challenge,” he informed his client. “You hired our detective agency. Your daughter met my train, brought me here, and then tried to knock me off.”

“That’s decidedly odd,” he said, crossing toward his daughter. “Emily is a very independent young woman, but, like myself, is a dedicated pacifist. She has never before, to the best of my knowledge, shot a single soul.”

“Could be, as in this case, she tried and missed.”

After stroking his impressive gray beard, Beresford bent to take hold of Emily’s wrist. “Pulse seems normal.” He let go the wrist and placed his palm against her forehead. “I can’t, old man, imagine what prompted her to try to shoot you. For that matter, Challenge, I was unaware that she possessed a gun.”

Bending, Harry picked up the derringer and held it out. “This isn’t yours?”

The inventor didn’t accept the proffered weapon. He took a backward step, giving a negative shake of his head. “It is not, no.”

Emily moaned. “Whatever,” she murmured, “whatever has taken place?” She sat up, eyelids fluttering. “What’s that disagreeable odor? It smells as though someone has been celebrating Guy Fawkes Day indoors.”

“You apparently, my dear,” explained her father quietly, “attempted to slay poor Mr. Challenge.”

“I did no such thing.” She frowned at Harry, indignant. “How can you have formed such a ludicrous notion, Mr. Challenge?”

“Mostly, Miss Beresford, it was your pointing this thing at me and pulling the trigger a few times.” He held the derringer toward her.

She flinched. “Nonsense, I detest firearms.”

Dropping the gun on a marble tabletop, he scooped up his injured hat. Poking his forefinger at the hole, he said, “This is a bullet hole.”

“I… dear me, I… I seem to have a vague recollection of using that gun… but….”

“When the clock yonder struck four, you went into some sort of trance.”

“Surely it isn’t four o’clock yet?” She consulted the watch pinned to her blouse. “Why, it is.”

Beresford scowled. “What the devil has been going on here?”

“Somebody apparently hypnotized your daughter,” answered Harry, “and instructed her to kill me.”

Beresford had changed into a smoking jacket of a decidedly Oriental pattern and perched a somewhat floppy crimson fez atop his sparse gray hair.

Harry was sitting forward on a plump Morris chair that matched his client’s. They were both in the large drawing room. The fog outside the narrow windows had grown thicker and the fire crackling in the small stone fireplace did little to alleviate the chill.

“Before we go further into my reasons for hiring your detective agency,” said the bearded inventor, “I would like very much to hear your advice as to how to counter what’s been done to Emily. One can’t, you know, have one’s daughter going about taking pot shots at people.”

“Inconvenient, yeah.” Harry lighted a fresh thin cigar. “While you were changing, I took the liberty of using your telephone to track down my friend, the Great Lorenzo. There are some who argue that he isn’t, as he claims, the world’s greatest magician, but Lorenzo is a crackerjack hypnotist.”

“Can this Lorenzo chap reverse what’s been done to my daughter?”

Harry answered, “He assures me he can. I arranged to convey your daughter to consult with him this evening at 7:00. If that suits you and Miss Beresford.”

“You won’t be dragging her to some low music hall, Challenge?”

“The Great Lorenzo never plays low music halls,” the detective assured him. “Besides, we’ll be calling on him before he leaves for tonight’s performance.”

“At his hotel?”

Harry flicked ashes into the nearest potted palm pot. “Actually he’s a house guest of Mrs. Denis Edgeware Rider.”

Beresford sat up. “The famed novelist and author of The Clew of the Red Rose?”

“That Mrs. Denis Edgeware Rider, yep.”

From the nearby music room Emily began playing a mournful tune on the spinet. After a few seconds she sang, “They found Lord Dowlish cold and dead. He had put a pistol shot into his head.”

Raising his voice, Harry requested, “Tell me about your missing automaton.”

CROUCHED ON the slanting skylight of the inventor’s workshop was a plump calico cat. Paws folded under her chin, she gazed speculatively down as Harry and Beresford made their way into the room.

There was a Bunsen burner flickering on the black workbench closest to the far wall. Hanging in the corner, suspended from a wrought-iron hook, was a time-yellowed articulated skeleton, and on a camp stool near it sat the copper torso of an automaton. Wooden boxes jammed with tools rested atop the other two workbenches along with heavy spools of thick wire, spills of glass tubing, three different sized kettles, an overcoat, a floppy felt hat, and a bunch of silk violets thrust into an empty ginger beer bottle.

Looming large on one buff-colored wall was an ornately framed oil painting of Buffalo Bill Cody in a style somewhat like that of Whistler.

“Admirer of the Wild West, are you?” inquired Harry.

“That daub,” said Beresford disdainfully. “Emily, who’s quite taken with the painter, insisted on my buying it and displaying it here.”

“It’s the work of Jeremy Otterbridge?”

The bearded man blinked. “Don’t tell me you recognize that whelp’s inane and borrowed style?”

“Nope, but your daughter mentioned him earlier. Told me you were at a showing of his paintings the afternoon Thackeray disappeared.”

“Two losses that bloody day. My invaluable automaton and the outrageous price I paid for that dreadful canvas of Otterbridge’s.”

Settling on an unoccupied stool, Harry requested, “Tell me about Thackeray.”

From a file drawer, Beresford withdrew a portfolio. Clearing a space on a workbench, he opened it. “Here are my notes and drawings pertaining to the steam man.”

Harry stood, joining the inventor.

The top mechanical drawing showed an automaton, vaguely human in form, who stood seven feet tall. His metal head resembled a large canister with eyes, nose, and mouth. The next drawing showed the interior of Thackeray’s barrel chest, revealing an intricacy of gears and levers as well as a large copper container to hold boiling water.

Turning to a schematic drawing of the automaton’s head, Beresford tapped it. “I’m quite proud of the fact that Thackeray has the power of speech, as well as hearing.”

“The guy can talk?”

The proud inventor nodded. “Thus far he has a vocabulary of several thousand words,” he answered. “Had he not been abducted I would’ve added more useful words and phrases to his vocabulary.”

“How exactly does that work?”

“Much of my process must remain my secret, Challenge,” said Beresford. “However, I can tell you that I drew on and improved some of the innovations of your American Thomas Alva Edison—plus some rather insightful suggestions provided by my novelist friend Bertie Wells, who has an astonishing grasp of science. Perhaps you’re aware of his scientific romances?”

“Yep.”

“Another of Thackeray’s advantages is that he is capable of thought.” He showed Harry a drawing of the metal man dressed up in valet’s livery. “It is my intention to promote my Beresford Servatons as servants to perform an assortment of household chores. That will eventually allow our present servant class to move upward, permitting them to gain a more thorough education, and eventually leave mindless drudgery exclusively to my steam creatures. However, some war mongers have—”

“As I understand it, the Outavian ambassador thinks your automatons can be used as soldiers.”

Sighing, the inventor shut the portfolio. “Alas, yes,” he said. “It’s my contention that they’ve kidnapped Thackeray and have modified him to become frightfully aggressive.”

“Is that possible?”

Nodding sadly, Beresford reached into the portfolio and withdrew a fistful of newspaper cuttings. “I fear foreign agents have done just that. They’ve changed poor Thackeray into a killing machine and are testing him in London.”

The clippings were all from the London Times over the past three weeks. They described a series of brutal murders that had been taking place in the Limehouse district. Because of the vicious nature of his crimes, the unknown killer had been dubbed the Limehouse Mangier. The police seemed to have no solid clews and the one possible eyewitness had only seen the Mangier from a distance on a deeply foggy night. He’d described him as “a huge bloke, don’t you know, wearin’ an enormous plaid overcoat.”

After Harry studied the sheaf of clippings, he returned them to Beresford. “People are getting killed,” he said. “If I can’t track Thackeray down in the next two days, I’ll have to talk to somebody at Scotland Yard.”

“But, see here, Challenge, that—”

“If the Mangler is your wayward automaton, Beresford, it may take a whole crew of men to run him to ground,” he said. “There are a few things I can try on my own, but then it’s got to be Scotland Yard.”

Off in the music room Emily was still playing mournful tunes.

The carriage turned off the Tottenham Court Road, went halfway round a small park, clattered to a stop in front of a narrow gray stone three-story townhouse.

Harry alighted, reached up to pay the top-hatted driver. “Allow me, Miss Beresford,” he offered, holding out his hand toward her.

“Simply because I foolishly allowed myself, Mr. Challenge, to be hypnotized,” Emily informed him, ignoring his proffered assistance and stepping free of the carriage unaided, “in no way indicates that I am incapable of fending for myself in most situations.”

Grinning, he made a slight bow in her direction before starting up the brick steps of Mrs. Denis Edgeware Rider’s home.

The place had been electrified and the front windows on all the floors glowed warm yellow through the chill evening mist.

Harry was two steps below the carved oaken door when it silently swung inward. He crossed the threshold into the long, brightly lit hallway.

Behind him, Emily said, “I sincerely hope your magician crony isn’t going to bore us with cheap parlor tricks.”

From out of the parlor on their right stepped a portly middle-aged man in his shirt sleeves. “My tricks, dear lady, I can assure you, are far from cheap,” he announced, “as the crowned heads of numerous nations will gladly attest if pressed upon the matter. Good evening, Harry, my boy”

“What’s that you’re wielding, Lorenzo?”

“A carpet sweeper,” the plump magician replied, returning to the parlor and leaning it against the wall. “Quite a useful invention.” He pointed a gloved finger toward the ceiling. “When dear Estella is in the throes of creation with one of her detective romances, I help out with a few household chores.”

From above came the metallic patter of a typewriting machine.

“Lorenzo, this is the young lady I mentioned,” said Harry as Emily, reluctantly, entered the parlor. “Miss Emily Beresford.”

“My full name is the Great Lorenzo.” Producing a bouquet of yellow roses out of thin air, the magician presented them to the young woman.

Emily accepted the flowers, then dropped them onto the nearest marble-topped table next to a bell glass that sheltered a stuffed owl. “Thank you, sir,” she said crisply. “Now, can you spare me further items from your bag of tricks and get down to business?”

“Most certainly, my dear.” Smiling, the Great Lorenzo pointed a gloved forefinger at the discarded blooms. “Begone.”

After a faint popping sound, green smoke swirled up, soon surrounding the bouquet. When the smoke cleared, the roses were gone.

Emily frowned, gave a disapproving sigh.

Gesturing toward a claw-footed armchair, the magician invited, “Pray sit down by the fire, Miss Beresford, and we’ll proceed.”

She took the indicated seat. “Is there any danger you’ll botch this, causing me irreparable harm, Mr. Lorenzo?”

“As Harry will assure you, has he not already, the Great Lorenzo never botches anything.” He lowered himself into a bentwood chair that faced hers.

Harry moved to stand just behind his friend.

“I must inform you, although Mr. Challenge believes otherwise, that I am still not completely convinced I actually was hypnotized.”

“A skeptical attitude is a valuable asset for coping with life in a great metropolitan city such as London.” From a pocket of his checkered waistcoat, Lorenzo extracted a gold medallion on a gold chain. It had a bit of turquoise mounted at its exact center. “This, my dear, happens to be an ancient bit of jewelry recently unearthed in Egypt at the site of the pyramid of Ibis II,” he explained softly, holding it by the chain.

“Really, now.”

“Yes, indeed. It is a true and absolutely authentic relic of a vanished empire. I would like you, Miss Beresford, to watch the stone as it moves, slowly and repeatedly, back and forth, back and forth.”

“This strikes me as being nothing more than simpleminded mumbo—” Emily slumped in her chair, eyelids drifting shut.

“We shall commence with a few simple instructions,” Lorenzo told her. “Any previous orders given you while in any and all previous hypnotic states are hereby canceled. Do you understand?”

Emily, eyes closed tight, grimacing, shoulders hunching, answered, “I—Yes, I understand.”

“You are henceforth under no other instructions but mine. Tell me, Miss Beresford, when you were previously hypnotized?”

After a few silent seconds, she replied, “It was two days before poor Thackeray was taken from us.”

Lorenzo glanced back inquiringly at Harry.

“The automaton,” he said.

“You were told not to reveal any details of what happened to you, but, as already noted, those rules no long pertain. Who hypnotized you?”

Grimacing again, Emily answered, “It was… it was Jeremy Otterbridge.”

The magician nodded. “What were his orders to you?”

“To make certain my father and I attended his gallery showing on a certain day and at a specified time.”

“What about taking potshots at Harry?”

“Jeremy hypnotized me a second time,” recalled the hypnotized young woman. “I was to pick up Mr. Challenge at the train station, convey him to our home. When the clock struck four in the parlor I was to take out a gun and kill him.”

“Why, my dear?”

“Harry Challenge is a spy, planning to kill my dear father and steal his plans.”

“Where did the gun come from?”

“It will be in the drawer when needed.”

Again glancing up at Harry, the Great Lorenzo asked, “Anything else?”

“Does she know who’s got the automaton?”

“What is Otterbridge’s interest in Thackeray?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Lorenzo.”

“Do you know the current whereabouts of Thackeray?”

“No, I do not.”

“You’ll go to sleep now. When I snap my fingers in a few moments, you’ll awake,” he informed her. “You’ll remember everything you’ve told us. You’ll be unable to be hypnotized in the future by anyone but me.” He coughed into his hand. “You’ll be forever certain that I am indeed the world’s greatest magician and that Harry Challenge is a decent chap.”

“You could’ve added that I was the world’s greatest detective,” said Harry, moving out from behind the chair.

“We can only stretch the young lady’s credulity so far.” Lorenzo got to his feet. “I’ve heard of Otterbridge. Were you aware that the lad was practicing espionage on the side?”

Harry took out a thin cigar. “Nope, but I sure as hell am going to find out more about him.”

“Perhaps I can be of some assistance, Mr. Challenge.” A tall handsome woman of about fifty was standing in the parlor doorway. She was dressed in a long velvet gown, and a necklace of real pearls circled her slender neck. “I’m Mrs. Denis Edgeware Rider and it’s an extreme pleasure to meet a real detective.”

“You can offer a helpful suggestion to Harry, Estella my dear?”

“But of course, Renzo dearest,” she assured him as she came into the parlor.

The Tartarus Club stood on a narrow lane off Great Russell Street. When Harry arrived there at exactly nine that evening, the earlier mist had turned to a light drizzle. The nearest street lamp was blurred, its light fuzzy.

The large brass knocker, in the shape of an especially unattractive gargoyle, had been padded so that it produced only a gentle tapping.

Silently, a full two minutes after Harry knocked, the heavy door opened a few inches. “This is a private club, sir,” a small, much-wrinkled and highly bald servant squinted out to inform him.

“That I well know,” Harry assured him. “I have an appointment with Sir Ambrose Beggarstaff, arranged by Mrs. Denis Edgeware Rider.”

The hairless man straightened some. “Ah, yes, the gifted authoress of such splendid novels as The Clew of the Dowerless Maiden and many another thrilling piece of literature.” Extending a time-freckled hand that held a small silver tray out into the drizzly night, he requested, “Your card, sir.”

Harry produced one from a vest pocket, depositing it on the sparkling tray.

The venerable servant went away, shutting the thick oaken door, silently, on Harry.

After three minutes or so, the door opened a few inches wider than previously. “Sir Ambrose will see you in the Shakespeare Room, sir.”

Harry followed the slow-moving man down a dim corridor past several gas-lit rooms and shadowy alcoves. In some rooms gentlemen sat reading The London Times, Punch, and The Strand. In one dark-paneled room a billiard game was going on, though the balls made no sound as they collided.

The Shakespeare Room was better lighted than any he’d seen thus far.

The books crowding the wall-high bookcases were several centuries old, probably from the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Harry entered. “Sir Ambrose?”

“Obviously or old Truett wouldn’t have delivered you here, Challenge.” Beggarstaff was about sixty, lean, short, and with curly dead-white hair and shadow-rimmed eyes. He was wearing a rumpled gray suit. “Before you sit down, young fellow, I assume dear Estella Rider informed you that my consulting fee is fifty pounds. Are you clear on that matter?”

Settling into a wide leather armchair, Harry grinned. “Actually she told me it was twenty-five.”

Beggarstaff gave a chesty chuckle. “For established customers, to be sure,” he replied. “Estella has been drawing on my near-encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal mind and the London underworld for many a year, Challenge, ever since she established her reputation with The Clew of the Left-Handed Glove.”

Harry drew his wallet from the breast pocket of his coat. He extracted five ten-pound notes, setting them on his knee. “It was Mrs. Rider’s notion, because of this encyclopedic knowledge of yours, that you might be able to make some suggestions as to the present whereabouts of a missing automaton. The mechanism is named Thackeray, invented and constructed by Hulbert Beresford and swiped from his home laboratory a month since.”

“If you’ll pass the fee over, Challenge, we can commence.”

Rising slightly out of the deep chair, Harry handed across the money. “Do you know an artist named Jeremy Otterbridge who—”

“What I’ll do,” cut in the pale Beggarstaff, “is pose two questions of my own. As soon as you determine the answers to them, I venture to predict that you shall find your ill-named mechanical man.”

Harry nodded. “Okay.”

“First, who has Jeremy Otterbridge—a mediocre painter, I might add—who has he been riding with every morning in Rotten Row for several weeks past? Secondly, is this relationship a motivating factor in the young ninny’s non-artistic activities?” After clearing his throat, he resumed. “Next, why did Otterbridge rent, three some weeks ago, the long-deserted Copperfield Blacking Factory on the edge of the Limehouse district?”

“That’s three questions.”

“I find myself in a generous mood this evening.” He made a shooing motion with his pale left hand. “You may leave.”

Harry left.

The next evening was fog-ridden and cold. Every now and then a small flurry of fat snowflakes came drifting down through the darkening sky. Their carriage made its way slowly and cautiously through the London streets and lanes.

“You sure, Harry my boy, that you wouldn’t care for a scone?” inquired the Great Lorenzo.

“It’s one of the few things in life about which I’m absolutely certain, yes.” Leaning back, he lit one of his thin cigars.

“If you’ll pardon me, I’ll have just one more.” When the magician clapped his gloved hands, a large scone, encrusted with plump currants, materialized just above them. Catching hold of it, he took a bite. Crisp crumbs flickered down to land on his thick woolen muffler. “So you found out who the duplicitous Otterbridge, painter and mesmerist, is canoodling with?”

Harry nodded. “Helga Sonifero, beloved only daughter of Baron Sonifero, Outavia’s ambassador to Great Britain.”

“Ah, the very fellow who wants to convert Beresford’s automatons into field soldiers for their current war.”

“That Baron Sonifero, yeah.”

“What clever detective work on your part produced this information?”

“I found out where Otterbridge was riding this morning, went there, rented a horse and watched.”

“A stratagem worthy of Sherlock Holmes,” observed Lorenzo, brushing scone crumbs from his ample sideburns and then his nubby muffler, “or Martin Hewitt. You’re certain it was indeed Helga Sonifero the villainous lad was galloping around with?”

“She gave me her card.”

“Oh, so? How’d you manage that?”

“Helga was so grateful when I plucked her free from the saddle of her runaway horse,” Harry explained, exhaling smoke, “that she handed over the card and suggested that I drop in at the embassy some afternoon for tea. She further mentioned that her grateful pappy, the baron, would probably give me a medal. Whether gold or silver was not specified.”

“Where was Otterbridge during your daring rescue, my boy?”

“He had the misfortune of falling off his horse at about that time.”

“You had nothing to do with that.”

“Hardly anything.”

The Great Lorenzo clapped his hands again. “I won’t indulge in another scone,” he announced.

“Wise decision.”

“But a small chocolate �clair won’t—” The plump magician suddenly groaned, bending forward.

“What’s wrong, Lorenzo?” Harry put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

Breathing slowly through his mouth, Lorenzo replied, “As you know, Harry, I am sometimes visited with visions of the future.”

“You had one just now?”

“I did.” He straightened up. “It was about you.”

“Something unfortunate I’d guess.”

“I saw a huge fellow made of glittering metal rending you limb from limb and then strewing your remains in a foul, and foggy, Limehouse alley.”

Harry said, “In the past your glimpses of the future were okay in a general way but never too accurate when it came to specific details.”

The Great Lorenzo nodded agreement. “Since we’re at this moment heading for the Copperfield Blacking Factory, I’m assuming my vision has something to do with that,” he said. “If the missing steam man is being kept there, you’d best be very careful. He may attempt to kill you, Harry.”

“I was already planning on being careful, Lorenzo, but thanks for the hint.”

“Would that I could accompany you on your nocturnal investigation of the place. Alas, hundreds of devotees of the magical arts are counting on seeing my nonpareil performance in less than an hour.”

“That’s all right, Lorenzo,” Harry assured him. “You did enough by getting Mrs. Rider to loan us her carriage.”

“Should I receive any further visions, I’ll abandon my devoted audience and rush to the rescue.”

“Probably won’t be necessary.” Harry grinned.

By the time Harry jumped from the roof of the rundown hotel to the nearby roof of the blacking factory several feet below, the night snow had intensified.

When he landed atop the flat roof of the supposedly deserted factory, his booted right foot slipped on the thin dusting of new snow and he lost his balance momentarily and skidded toward the edge.

“Damn,” he mentioned as he came to a stop in time to avoid a plummet of three stories.

He was dressed in dark trousers and a navy blue pea jacket, a dark gray knit cap on his head. The increasingly heavy snowfall freckled his clothes with spots of white as he made his way toward the skylight. It was exactly where the plans he’d consulted earlier had indicated.

The uppermost floor of the blacking factory, viewed through the snow-blurred glass, was dark. In cautiously circling the grimy brick building earlier, Harry had spotted glimmers of light from the ground floor.

After taking off his boots and depositing them in two of his coat pockets, he very quietly lifted the window. Waiting a moment, listening, he then lowered himself into the darkness below.

Harry hit, with a minimum of noise, on the wooden plank floor. He remained where he’d landed, allowing his eyes to adjust to the surrounding darkness.

All around were stacked wooden crates. No doubt they had COPPERFIELD BLACKING… NONE BETTER stenciled in bold letters on their sides.

Inhaling slowly, Harry made his way through the storeroom, easing toward the stairway. The place still smelled strongly of the polish that had once been manufactured here.

The next floor, also dark, had been given over to offices.

As Harry moved in stocking feet toward the next stairway, he became aware of conversation drifting up from below.

“—ails you? You seem extremely nervy this evening,” a voice with a slight Outavian accent was saying.

“You’d be off your feed, too, Baron, had you fallen off your bloody steed earlier in the day.”

“According to my dear daughter, Jeremy, you are not only clumsy but cowardly,” continued Baron Sonifero. “A total stranger, and not even a gentleman I suspect, had to save Helga when her mount bolted.”

“I happen to be an excellent horseman, sir, which is unusual among gifted painters,” replied Otterbridge in his thin nasal voice. “However, that uncouth chap—and I strongly suspect he was an American—more than likely bumped into my horse and caused it to unseat me.”

“Enough feeble alibis, Jeremy. Help me and the good Dr. Mackinson get Thackeray ready for tonight’s test.”

“This is another thing that’s making me deucedly uneasy, Baron,” complained the artist. “I mean to say, don’t you know, that one doesn’t mind courting some annoyingly independent young lady nor hypnotizing her when the need arises. One doesn’t even ball< at being a party to the theft of her father’s blasted tm man. But, damme, sir, being a party to innocent people being butchered by this mechanical brute—it’s simply not the sort of thing a gentleman should be expected to be involved in at all.”

“Since you’re not a gentleman, but merely a second-rate painter and scapegrace, you needn’t worry,” the baron told him. “Also keep in mind that you’re being well paid.”

“Agreed that the pay is quite generous, old man, yet one does have moral qualms.”

“I’ve found his muffler,” announced an elderly man. “It had fallen down behind one of my workbenches. A few spots of blood on it, yet I doubt anyone will notice.”

“Very good, Dr. Mackinson,” said the baron. “Arrange it on Thackeray, then we’ll give him his instructions for tonight’s field test.”

“I do believe that my modifications of that fool Beresford’s automaton have achieved our goal,” said the doctor. “A very few more forays and then we can ship him to Outavia and begin setting up for mass production of mechanical warriors.”

“I really think you fellows are going to have to postpone tonight’s test.” Harry was at the bottom of the stairs, .38 revolver in his hand.

“Jove, it’s the bloke who knocked me off my horse,” exclaimed Otterbridge.

“Imbecile,” accused the baron. “This man is Harry Challenge of the Challenge International Detective Agency.”

Dr. Mackinson was a short, stout, gray-bearded man in a laboratory coat. He was standing beside Thackeray, the huge steam man who was wearing nothing more than a large plaid muffler at the moment. “Kill this intruder,” the doctor order the automaton.

Misty steam came hissing out of the venting pipe just above the automaton’s coppery left ear. Taking two clanking giant steps in Harry’s direction, Thackeray said, “You’ll forgive me, sir, for I fear I must slaughter you and thereafter tear off some of your appendages.”

His voice, emanating from a circular mouth hole in his canister-shaped head, was raspy and echoing. Even so, it sounded quite a bit like that of his creator.

“I’m near certain Beresford would be quite upset were you to do that, Thack,” Harry told the steam man. “After all, the ideal servant must know his place and never—”

“Alas, sir,” interrupted Thackeray as he thumped closer, “I am no longer a servant. Dr. Mackinson has converted me to a soldier. Mine is not to reason why, as it were, but simply to do what I am ordered to do.”

“Excellent,” commented Ambassador Sonifero, “you’ve got him thinking like a perfect fighting man.”

Shrugging modestly, Mackinson said, “It only required a few adjustments to convert him from butler to soldier, Baron.”

Harry executed an unexpected leap from the bottom step of the stairway. As he twisted in midair, he yanked his revolver out of a coat pocket. “Sorry, Thackeray,” he said and, dodging behind the lumbering automaton, he shot him three times in the backside.

“Oh, I say,” complained Otterbridge, “that’s hardly sporting, old man. Shooting a chap in the back is far from cricket.”

Having gone over the plans with Beresford, Harry knew that the mechanical man’s boiler was located in his lower back.

“I’m mortally wounded,” realized Thackeray, commencing to totter. “Tell them I am happy to have died for my country.”

Boiling water came spurting out of the bullet holes, along with hissing swirls of steam.

“Damme,” complained the ambassador, “we should have armor-plated his bloody back.”

Thackeray, staggering, dropped to his metallic knees. A great steamy sigh came gushing from his mouth and he fell, with a resounding clang, to the factory floor.

Harry fired his revolver yet again, in time to prevent Dr. Mackinson from tugging a pistol from beneath his lab coat.

Thackeray’s metal limbs twitched a few times, then he was still. Steamy water burbled out of his back.

Harry gestured with his revolver at Dr. Mackinson, Otterbridge, and the ambassador. “Okay, gents,” he suggested, “off we go to Scotland Yard.”

THE GREAT LORENZO TOOK a step in the direction of the blazing gas footlights. Pointing a white-gloved hand upward, he told the large attentive audience, “For untold centuries the secret of levitation had been known only to the veiled sorcerers of ancient Chaldea and then, while on an archeological expedition, I became the first person to unearth the venerable manuscript that held the long-lost secret.”

Moving back from the footlights, he aimed his ivory-tipped wand at the white-gowned young woman who appeared to be floating unaided high above the theater stage.

“Thus I am able, as you have just witnessed, to elevate Princess Nadja,” continued the portly magician. “And, from time to time, I can also transport her to her native Egypt.”

The tip of the wand glowed green for a few seconds, green smoke engulfed the floating princess. When it cleared, the floating lady was gone.

The theater audience applauded enthusiastically.

Bowing, he said, “Now, my dear friends, your humble servant, the Great Lorenzo, bids you a most cordial good night.” A cloud of emerald mist suddenly surrounded him and he, too, vanished.

Harry had been sitting on a prop trunk backstage watching his friend’s show.

“Splinters on the blasted trap door slide,” muttered Lorenzo as he returned from the basement of the theater rubbing at his left buttock.

“Can’t you remove them by sorcery? The ancient Chaldeans must’ve worked out a spell for—”

“Tweezers are simpler,” said the magician. “I read, with bated breath, all the accounts of your solving of the Limehouse Mangler case. Even the sedate London Times gushed.”

“And they mentioned the Challenge International Detective Agency three times on the front page. Great publicity.”

“Do you think Baron Sonifero will be able to save his neck by claiming diplomatic immunity.”

Harry grinned. “I was hired to retrieve Beresford’s missing automaton,” he reminded Lorenzo. “Everything else was frosting. I’m near certain they’ll at least charge Otterbridge and Dr. Mackinson for the murders. The trial ought to be interesting; first time anyone’s used a steam man to kill people.”

Lorenzo, gingerly, plucked a small splinter from his rump. “Did Beresford express his undying gratitude?”

“He paid our fee, but he’s unhappy that I had to shoot up Thackeray to stop him from dismantling me.”

“Alas, none of us is ever sufficiently appreciated,” said Lorenzo. “If you’re not doing anything this evening, Harry my boy, Estella Rider would be pleased to have you join us for a late supper. She’s exceedingly eager to chat with a sleuth of your reputation.”

Harry left the trunk, stretched. “I promised Emily Beresford I’d drop by.”

The magician’s eyebrows rose slightly. “I was under the impression that the lass didn’t think much of you.”

“The situation seems to have changed,” said Harry.

—«»—«»—«»—

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From “Fantasy and Science Fiction (May, 2003)

2003.06.29