Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (16 page)

A hollow whistle sounded.

Lawless crossed to a brass panel in the wall and pulled a domed lid from it. As it came away, a segmented tube followed behind. Lawless flipped the lid open, blew into the tube, put it to his ear, and listened awhile. He then moved it to his mouth and said, “Hold him. I'll be right down.”

He clicked the lid back into the panel and said to Burton, “Apparently your assistant is causing merry mayhem in the engine room.”

“How so?”

Captain Lawless ignored the question and turned to his first officer. “Take command, please, Mr. Henson.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Playfair, how long to Cairo?”

“Two and a half hours, sir, unless we can slow her down. All four stern engines are already overheating, according to my instruments.”

“Thank you. Mr. Bingham, report, please.”

The fat little meteorologist replied, “Clear sailing all the way, sir. Not a cloud in the sky. Breeze is northwesterly, currently less than five knots but building.”

“Mr. Wenham?”

“Steady going, sir.”

“Good. Follow me, Sir Richard.”

The aeronaut and explorer left the bridge, descended through the conning tower, and entered the corridor that ran the length of the rotorship.

“Mr. Swinburne claims to have caught our saboteur,” Lawless said.

“Ah!” Burton replied.

They entered the lounge and descended the port-side staircase, then moved past the standard-class cabins and on into the first of the engine-room compartments. The rumble of the turbines sounded from the next chamber, muffled by thickly insulated walls.

Peering past pipes and four wide rotating pillars, Burton saw Trounce and Honesty gripping the arms of a very small person. Engineers were gathered around them, and Swinburne was dancing in front of the police officers and their captive, shrieking at the top of his voice.

“Tobias Threadneedle, my eye!” he screeched. “Liar! Brute! Traitor! Impostor!”

“What are you doing down here, Algy?” Burton asked as he and Lawless joined the group. “I thought you were working?”

“I found myself unable to write, Richard, so I came in search of inspiration, and what I found instead—” Swinburne raised his voice to a scream and pointed his finger, “—is the one and only Vincent Sneed—otherwise known as the Conk!”

Burton looked down at the short, wiry individual held in the grip of the two Scotland Yard men. He wasn't much bigger than a child, and owned a very unprepossessing stoat-like face, dominated by a perfectly huge nose. A ragged, nicotine-stained moustache concealed his lipless mouth. His thin black hair was long, greasy, and combed back over his narrow skull. He was pockmarked and sly-looking, and his beady little eyes—positioned almost on the sides of his gargantuan proboscis rather than to either side of it in the normal way—were flicking back and forth in a panicked manner.

“I bloody aren't!” he protested. “Me name's Threadneedle. Arsk 'im!” He nodded to a small boy standing nearby, a ragamuffin with sandy-blond hair.

Captain Lawless said, “And who are you, my lad?”

“Willy Cornish, sir,” the boy answered nervously.

Daniel Gooch stepped forward, his mechanical arms slowly undulating to either side of him. “They are the ship's funnel scrubbers, Captain.”

Willy Cornish nodded and pointed at the prisoner. “That's right, sir. And he's who he says he is—Tobias Threadneedle.”

Swinburne let loose a tremendous howl and hopped up and down like a madman. “Willy! You know perfectly well this is Sneed!”

Cornish shifted uncomfortably and wrung his hands. “No, Carrots,” he said, employing the nickname he'd given the poet during the time they'd spent together sweeping chimneys. “I know he looks like old Sneed, but he's Mr. Threadneedle, and he's all right, he is.”

“All right? He's a rogue! A bully! A snake in the grass!”

“I ain't none o' them things!” the captive cried out, struggling to free himself.

“Here, less of that!” Trounce snapped.

“I'll have the cuffs on you!” Honesty threatened.

“I ain't done nuffink!” the prisoner protested.

“You sabotaged the ship!” Swinburne shouted.

“I bloody didn't!”

“You bloody did!”

“I bloody didn't!”

“SHUT UP!” Lawless roared. “You—” he jabbed a finger at Swinburne, “—calm down and explain.”

“The explanation,” Swinburne answered, “is that while this hound may be calling himself Tobias Threadneedle, he is actually, and without doubt, a scurrilous rogue by the name of Vincent Sneed. I worked side by side with him the year before last and he treated me abominably. I cannot be mistaken. Look at that nose of his! How many men do you think there are walking around with such a perfectly enormous beak?”

“Oy!” the prisoner objected.

“But you say Mr. Swinburne is mistaken?” Lawless demanded of Cornish.

“Y-yes, sir,” the boy stuttered. “I kn-know Mr. Sneed, and this ain't him.”

Swinburne groaned and slapped a hand to his forehead. “Why, Willy? Why are you supporting this blackguard?”

“Stop calling me them bleedin' names, you damned rat!” the accused man cried out.

“Algy,” Burton said. “Even if this is Mr. Sneed—”

“It is!”

“—What makes you think it was he who sabotaged the ship?”

“Because he's a villain!”

“So your allegation is based on supposition rather than evidence?”

Swinburne sighed and muttered, “Yes, Richard. But isn't it enough that he's lying to us?”

Burton turned to Captain Lawless. “Is there a secure room available? I'd like to keep this man under guard while we get to the bottom of this.”

“Use the first of the class-two passenger cabins,” Lawless said, pointing toward the corridor they'd come through. “I have to get back to the bridge. I'll send the steward down with the key. Report to me when this is sorted out, please.”

With that, the captain gave a last glance at the prisoner then marched away.

Burton addressed his assistant: “Algy, where is Herbert?”

“Holed up in his cabin, working on a philosophical treatise.”

“Would you fetch him, please?”

The poet shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glowered at the big-nosed man, frowned at Willy Cornish, then nodded and followed after Lawless.

Burton positioned himself in front of the individual who called himself Tobias Threadneedle and said, “Did you take part in a riot at Speakers' Corner last summer?”

“No!” the man answered. He couldn't meet Burton's eyes, and kept raising his own to the ceiling, anxiously scanning the pipes and machinery above. The way he squirmed in Trounce and Honesty's grip suggested that he wasn't telling the truth.

“The two men holding you are police officers,” Burton revealed.

Trounce added, “And we won't hesitate to arrest you and deliver you to a Cairo gaol if you're what Mr. Swinburne says you are!”

“Egyptian prison,” Honesty murmured. “Very nasty. Foul places.”

“Oh please, Mother! I ain't done nuffink!” their captive wailed. “I'm just a bleedin' funnel scrubber!”

“Sneed was at the riot,” Burton stated. “As were these two fellows and myself. My assistant got into a scrap with him. None of us saw it, but our colleague, Mr. Spencer, did. He's on his way down now, and he'll either endorse Mr. Swinburne's assertion, or he won't. If you're Tobias Threadneedle, you have nothing to worry about. If you're Vincent Sneed, things are about to go very badly for you.”

The prisoner let out a keening whine of despair.

Burton turned to Willy Cornish.

“I've heard good things about you, young man. I hope you're not telling fibs. I would be very disappointed indeed.”

Willy burst into tears and buried his face in the crook of his arm.

Daniel Gooch approached Burton and said, in a low voice, “That bearing cradle, Sir Richard—I understand it appeared in your cabin under mysterious circumstances?”

“Yes.”

“It's this fellow's duty—” one of Gooch's mechanical arms gestured toward Threadneedle, “—to keep the pipes clear on that side of the ship. He could have opened the ventilation panel in the pipe and entered your quarters through it.”

“I see. Thank you, Mr. Gooch.”

A few tense minutes passed while they waited for Herbert Spencer's arrival. When the clockwork philosopher entered the room—clanking along beside Swinburne, and with Pox squatting on his head—Threadneedle's little eyes widened and he stuttered, “Wha-wha-what's that thing?”

“Tosspot!” Pox squawked.

“Herbert,” Burton said. “Have you seen this fellow before?”

The brass man stepped over to Threadneedle and nodded. “Yus, Boss. He were at the riot last summer. He got into a fight with Mr. Swinburne. He's Vincent Sneed.”

The prisoner groaned and slumped.

Doctor Quaint walked in, glanced curiously at the scene, and handed a key to Burton. “Second-class cabin number one,” he said.

“Thank you, Doctor.” Burton addressed the Yard men: “Let us secure Mr. Sneed, gentlemen.”

He led the way to the cabin, followed by the policemen and their prisoner.

Swinburne turned to Willy Cornish and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. “Why were you protecting him, Willy? Has he threatened you?”

Willy looked up, his eyes swimming in tears. “I can't say, Carrots. I would, but I just can't!”

Swinburne shook his head and chewed his bottom lip. “There's something very wrong about all of this,” he grumbled. “But how the blazes am I to get to the facts of the matter if you won't help?”

With a cry of anguish, Willy suddenly sped away, ducked under the arms of the engineers who tried to stop him, and leaped onto machinery lining one of the walls. He clambered up it like a little monkey until he reached a ventilation panel. Swinging it open, he disappeared into the pipe behind.

“My hat!” the poet muttered. “What on earth has got into him?”

The
Orpheus
landed at the Cairo Airfield at seven in the evening, and the crew got to work taking on a fresh load of Formby coal and refilling the water tanks.

Vincent Sneed had been left alone to stew in Standard Class Cabin 1. He was slumped on the bunk when a key turned in the lock and the door opened. Sir Richard Francis Burton entered followed by Detective Inspectors Trounce and Honesty and a tall dark-skinned man wearing a uniform with epaulettes and a sash. His face was eagle-like, adorned with a moustache and imperial, and his eyes were black. There was a fez on his head.

“Mr. Sneed,” Burton said. “This is Al-Mustazi, the commissioner of the city police. He has men waiting outside. They will take you into custody until the British consul gets around to dealing with you. That could take a good few weeks, during which time you'll have to survive as best you can in Cairo's prison. I know you were born and raised in the Cauldron, and I know from personal experience what a hellhole that part of London is, but I can assure you that it will seem like Shangri-La in comparison to the conditions you are to experience shortly.”

Sneed looked up, his little ferrety eyes filled with wretchedness. “I ain't done nuffink,” he keened.

“Do you still maintain that your name is Tobias Threadneedle?”

The funnel scrubber swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing on his scrawny neck.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Even though you've been identified by two people as Vincent Sneed?”

“Yes.”

“Did you break into my quarters and deposit a bearing cradle in them?”

Burton noted that the little man's hands were trembling. He saw the eyes flick to the left and right, then up at the ceiling.

“I—I ain't done nuffink! Nuffink!”

Burton sighed. “Mr. Sneed, many a man has lied to me in the past and I have a practised eye. I can see by the way you hold yourself, by your every movement and expression, that you're not telling me the truth. I shall give you one final chance. Admit who you are, tell me why you placed the bearing cradle on my desk, then I shall see to it that you are shipped back to London with due dispatch. I'll even ask that no charges are brought against you. Obviously, you'll never work as a funnel scrubber again, but you can, at least, go back to being a master sweep.”

A tear trickled down Sneed's cheek. “You don't understand,” he said. “I knows I've been a bad 'un. P'raps a bit too strict, like, wiv the nippers. But I were only tryin' to get good work out o' them. I didn't mean no 'arm to that carrot-top. I were just trainin' 'im. An'—” he sucked in a shuddery breath and swallowed again, “—an' I don't mean no 'arm now, neither. I ain't done nuffink! I ain't done nuffink!”

“So you admit to the actions of Vincent Sneed yet still say you aren't him?”

The little man wrung his hands together then raised them to cover his face.

“Yes,” he groaned.

“Does the name Zeppelin mean anything to you?”

Sneed parted his fingers and looked out from behind them. “Zephram?”

“Zeppelin.”

“I don't know no Zeppelin.”

Burton turned to Trounce and Honesty. “Would you hand the prisoner over to your Egyptian colleagues, please?”

The two detectives nodded, stepped forward, and hoisted Sneed up off the bed.

“No!” he screeched, writhing in their grip. “Get yer 'ands off me!”