The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends (12 page)

‘Now is not the time for reading,’ I told him. ‘Now is the time for action.’

‘And what action would
you
suggest?’

‘Departure,’ I said, ‘in the time-ship. Departure from this wretched time, and
now
.’

‘We will be on our way soon enough,’ said Mr Bell. ‘When I have achieved my goal.’

‘The arrest or destruction of Mr Arthur Knapton, the Pearly Emperor?’

‘One and the same,’ said Cameron Bell.

We had reached Piccadilly and things looked grim, with awful damage done.

‘You know you cannot stop him here and now,’ I said to Mr Bell.

The great detective sighed. ‘Naturally, I am aware of the difficulties,’ said he. ‘I do not have identity papers suitable for this period of time. According to the documents I obtained
in ancient Egypt, Mr Arthur Knapton would appear to be engaged in legitimate business here and now with the British Government. He has the edge on me, as our American cousins might put it.’

‘And also—’ I began.

But Mr Bell cut me short. ‘I am aware of every “and also”,’ he said. ‘We are in a very difficult position.’

‘Then let us take our leave. It is far too dangerous here. What if a bomb comes down from the sky and blows up the
Marie Lloyd
?’

‘You make a good point,’ said my friend. ‘We would do well to depart before night falls and the Blitz begins once more.’

‘The
Blitz
?’ I said. ‘A horrid word is
that
.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Cameron Bell. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

And I looked up to view the cause of his oh-dearings. And I was prompted to utter one of my own.

We stood now before the Electric Alhambra. But that beautiful building within which the greatest music hall acts of the day had entertained the plain folk and the gentry . . .

Was gone.

Destroyed.

A section of the façade was all that remained.

Mr Bell stooped down and picked up a piece of golden mosaic. ‘Such a pity,’ said he, in the softest of voices.

‘I just cannot bear it,’ I said.

‘Bookshop,’ said Mr Cameron Bell. ‘There is much I need to know, and then we will see what we will see.’

The Atlantis Bookshop had not changed at all. It lay, as it always had done, a mere tome's throw from the British Museum, which looked for its part as yet unscathed. Mr Bell
indicated a lamp post and suggested that I climb to its very top and await him there until he had done whatever business he wished to do. I set to climbing the lamp post, and Mr Bell entered the shop.

I heard a distant church clock chiming and looked on as Londoners came and went. I do not think that I had ever felt so alone before as I did then, and I was very glad when Mr Bell finally emerged from the shop, a brown paper bag tucked under his arm, and beckoned me down to join him.

‘To Sydenham at once,’ said he.

‘Thank goodness for
that
,’ said I.

We took a taxicab to Sydenham, and a wretched taxicab it was. It smelled of sweaty men and cigarettes and it coughed black smoke as it rattled along. Recalling the sleek electric-wheelers of eighteen ninety-nine, I found that taxicab puzzling.

Mr Bell spoke not throughout our journey. He had a very queer look on his face and his fists were knotted tightly. As we drew nearer and nearer to Sydenham Hill, I felt a growing sense of unease. A feeling of dread.

I had, if you will, a sort of premonition.

There was some unpleasantness regarding payment and the driver of the taxicab availed himself of Mr Bell's pocket watch. The great detective parted with this precious possession without a word of complaint. He had a weary look to him that I found most alarming.

The taxicab left us and we trudged back to where I had landed the
Marie Lloyd
.

And it came as no surprise to me, nor indeed to Mr Bell, to find that the
Marie Lloyd
had gone.

*

We sat together on high, on Sydenham Hill, and gazed down upon the rolling grasslands that spread beneath. No trace there of the Royal London Spaceport, of the great cobbled landing strip, of the vast Gothic-styled terminal buildings. No sign at all that they had ever existed.

I looked up at Mr Bell. ‘We both knew,’ I said. ‘Somehow, we knew that the
Marie Lloyd
would not be here when we returned. We
knew
, Mr Bell. But
how
did we know? What does it mean, please tell me?’

My friend took off his topper and placed it between his feet. A gust of wind caught it and it bowled down the hill. Mr Bell made no attempt to retrieve it and we watched it bounce away until it was lost to our sight.

‘Recall those chickens in ancient Egypt,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

‘Only too well, and I did not like them at all.’

‘And recall how you said that they should not be there because they received no mention in the history books of our time?’

‘Certainly I do,’ said I.

Mr Bell sighed. ‘I engaged in a little research at the Atlantis Bookshop,’ said he, ‘and I purchased this for you.’

‘A present? How kind.’ I accepted the brown paper bag that Mr Bell offered to me and withdrew from it a colourful picture book. On the cover was an illustration of a portly monkey and an even portlier gentleman. The title of this book was
The Adventures of Darwin the Monkey Butler and Mr Ball the Dangerous Detective
.

‘Posterity,’ I said, with delight. ‘At least they spelled
my
name correctly.’

‘Have a little flick through,’ said Mr Bell. As I did so, he added, ‘Then see how pleased you are.’

Presently I closed the book and let it fall from my fingers.

‘What does all this mean?’ I asked my friend.

‘What do
you
think it means?’

I glanced down at the book. ‘It is a children's book,’ I said. ‘A work of fiction. It is about us, but we are foolish.’

‘Foolish and fictional,’ said Mr Bell.

‘I do not understand.’

‘I only had time for a quick perusal of the history books the Atlantis held upon its shelves. What I found within them was nothing less than alarming. You and I, my little friend, came to this benighted time from one of Victorian wonder, where the British Empire owned spaceships, where electric vehicles moved through the streets of London, their power drawn from the Tesla towers which offered the wireless transmission of electrical energy to an age of Babbage computers and great things yet to be.’

‘I recall it all,’ said I. ‘In fact, it would appear that we were more advanced in the sciences back then than those folk here and now.’

‘So it might
appear
,’ said Mr Bell. ‘But you see, Darwin, in
this
here and now, none of those things ever happened. Mr Babbage did
not
exhibit his difference engine at the Great Exhibition and find royal patronage. Mr Tesla did
not
effect the wireless transmission of electricity. And in eighteen eighty-five, the Martians did
not
attack England.’

‘They did
not
?’ I said. ‘So where
did
they attack? Surely not America?’

‘Not anywhere,’ said Mr Bell, ‘because there never were any Martians. Martians do
not
exist. They never did.’

‘Of course they existed,’ I said in protest. ‘If they never existed, how could we have travelled through time in a Martian spaceship?’

‘Mr Ernest Rutherford did win a Nobel Prize,’ said
Cameron Bell, ‘but not for mastering time travel. There never ever was any such thing as a time machine, except in the fictional work of H. G. Wells.’

‘But
we
are here,’ I said. ‘
We
are alive and real. You are Mr Bell, the greatest detective of our age, and I am Darwin, the educated ape.’

‘Characters in a children's book and nothing more, it so appears.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. We
are
real, I
know
we are real.’

‘Are we?’ asked Mr Bell.

‘Yes, we are. Of course we are.’

Mr Bell sighed terribly and I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

We sat in silence and gazed into the distance.

An aeroplane passed overhead, its engine coughing fearfully. A steam train
poop-pooped
in the distance.

The smell of smoke was on the wind.

And all, it appeared, was lost.

My friend sat and thoughtfully nodded his head. His face expressed great inner turmoil, as might reasonably have been expected. I offered him my opinion that all was well and truly lost.

Mr Bell cocked his head on one side. ‘Not
all
,’ he said to me.

‘You have arrived at a plan that will lead to a satisfactory conclusion?’

‘Not as
such
.’

‘But you remain quietly confident?’

Mr Bell bobbed his head from side to side.

‘We are doomed,’ I said in a voice of gloom. ‘We are done for, are we
not
?’

‘We are
not
!’ said Mr Bell, and with that he jumped to his feet. ‘Do you fancy a day at the seaside, Darwin?’ he asked.

‘Not particularly,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Because we are going to Hastings.’

I shook my head and asked why once more.

‘To see an old friend,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘To see a
very
old friend.’

14

etherwood was a run-down boarding house. It was a
very
long walk from the station. There had been a taxi available, but Mr Bell decided to keep his watch chain.

We trudged up a gravelly drive to the late-Victorian eyesore that was Netherwood. Paint peeled from crumbling timberwork and brown-paper tape had been pasted in crosses over the windowpanes.

Mr Bell had decided not to tell me who we were visiting so that it would be a nice surprise. He tugged upon a bell-pull which came away in his hand, but a distant bell succeeded in drawing the attention of a ragged-looking fellow who smelled very strongly of cheese.

‘A toff and a monkey,’ this fellow said, looking us up and down. ‘It takes all sorts, I suppose.’

Mr Bell presented his card. ‘My name is Cameron Bell,’ said he, ‘and I have come to visit one of your lodgers – Mr Aleister Crowley.’

The ragged individual took my friend's card and slammed the front door shut upon us. I gaped up in horror at Cameron Bell. In horror, because I knew of Aleister Crowley.

‘That man is a monster,’ I said. ‘A black magician. The papers were full of his magical shenanigans. He styled himself the Beast, six-six-six. They say that he sacrificed children.’

Mr Bell laughed somewhat at this. ‘His reputation for wickedness far surpasses the facts in his case. But he was a wicked fellow.’

‘I do not wish him to put a curse upon
me
,’ I said.

‘He will not curse you, Darwin,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Just pay attention to what is said and act accordingly.’

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. ‘I am not happy,’ said I.

‘Nor me. But we must learn what we can. I trust it will all make sense when it is explained. Crowley and I were students together at Oxford, you know.’

‘I did not,’ I said. ‘And I care not for it.’ And with that I folded my arms.

The ragged man once more swung wide the door. ‘The master will see you now,’ he said.

He led us along a grimy hall and up a bare-boarded staircase. An unpleasing miasma stifled the air and Mr Bell made coughings.

‘His brand of tobacco remains the same,’ he muttered as he coughed. ‘Perique soaked in rum with a sprinkling of black Moroccan.’

A grubby door was knocked upon, was softly answered, and we were ushered into the bedroom of the Beast himself.

It looked to me the very place for an ancient magician to lurk. An alchemist's den, piled high with books, strange paintings upon its walls. The smell was rank, the air befogged, and a frail figure sat in a candle's gleam.

He was wrapped in an antique dressing gown, a frayed velvet smoking cap perched on his old yellow head. I recalled the press photographs of the sprightly, athletic young
Crowley, a scaler of mountains, a man about town, a rubber of shoulders with the upper-class set. Here was a frail and broken parody. I almost felt sympathy.

‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,’ quoth the elderly mage, in a wheezing tone that spoke of damaged lungs. ‘Is that my old chum Bell I see before me?’

Mr Bell approached the shrunken figure. He extended his hand and a significant handshake was exchanged.

‘Crowley,’ said my friend. ‘The Logos of the Aeon. You would appear to have fallen upon hard times. Have you so far failed to change base metal to gold?’

Aleister Crowley gave a hideous cough, then dabbed at his mouth with a most unsavoury hankie. ‘I am expecting a cheque from America. L. Ron Hubbard, my magical son, will shortly be making a very big name for himself.’

‘Always tomorrow.’ Mr Bell seated himself on a Persian pouffe.

‘And who is this?’ asked Crowley, spying me. ‘Your familiar, is it, Bell?’

‘His name is Darwin,’ said my friend. ‘My travelling companion.’

‘Indeed, indeed.’ The magician's face was lined with age. A few sprouting hairs formed a half-hearted goatee and his fingertips were nicotine-hued. All in all, he was most unsavoury.