Old Pete rounded the corner into Abaddon Street and glowered up at the sheer glass monolith. “Progress,” he spat, rattling his ill-fitting dentures. “A pox on it all.” His bold stride suddenly became a hobble once more as he passed into the bleak shadow of the imperious building and sought the entrance. A faceless wall met his limited vision. Another painful hundred yards, a further corner, and another blank wall of featureless glass. “Damned odd,” wheezed the ancient to his dog as he plodded onwards once more. The entrance to the building could only be in the High Street. To Old Pete’s utter disgust and still increasing fury, it was not.
He now stood leaning upon his cane beneath the night-black structure, puffing and blowing and cursing loudly whenever he could draw sufficient breath. There was simply no way in or out of the building, not a doorway, not an entrance, not a letter-box or a nameplate, nothing. Young Chips cocked his furry head upon one side and peered up at his ancient master. The old boy suddenly looked very fragile indeed. The snow-capped head shook and shivered, and beneath the frayed cuffs of his one suit, the gnarled and knobby hands with their blue street-maps of veins knotted and reknotted themselves into feeble fists. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” snarled Old Pete, still undefeated. Once more raising his stick and this time striking at the dead-black wall towering towards infinity. The blow did not elicit a sound and this raised the ancient’s fury to cardiac arrest level. Pummelling for all he was worth he retraced his steps and staggered back towards Abaddon Street.
As the aged loon lurched along, raining blows upon the opaque glass, a hidden probe, shielded from his vision, moved with him, scanning his every movement. Digesting and cataloguing the minutiae that made up Old Pete. Through an advanced form of electro-carbon dating it penetrated the bone rings of his skull and accurately calculated his age to five decimal places. Its spectroscopic intensifiers analysed the soil samples beneath his fingernails and generated graphs which were no matters for jest. Fluoroscopes X-rayed his lower gut and ruminated upon the half-digested lunchtime pork pies, which contained no traces of pork whatever. The probe swept into the fabric of his wartime shirt, illuminating a thousand hidden laundry marks and cross-indexed them. It moved down to his underpants and hurriedly retraced its metaphorical footsteps to areas above belt-level. It checked out the tweed of his jacket, measured the angles of the lapels and, through numerous esoteric calculations, tracked down the suit’s manufacture to a Wednesday in a long hot summer prior to the Great War. The computer banks gulped it all down and gorged themselves upon the feast of data; gurgled with delight and dug in ever more deeply in search of further toothsome morsels. They entered secretly into his head and chewed upon his brain cells, ravenously seeking the possibility of electron particle variabilities in the codex of his cerebellum.
Within.666 of a second they had done with their main course and were seeking a mangey-looking half-terrier for afters. The read-out which followed, had it been broadcast in standard five-point lettering, would have formed an equation sufficient to engirdle the Earth several times around. Summing up, the computer pronounced Old Pete a harmless loony and no threat to security. It did, however, suggest that certain discrepancies existed regarding multiple payment of pensions in the past and that the data relating to this would require a prolonged period to assess accurately. It refused to comment on Young Chips, offering only a cryptic remark that the wearing of flea collars should be made compulsory.
Old Pete finally gave up his unequeal struggle and limped off down the street effing and blinding for all he was worth. Young Chips lifted his furry leg contemptuously on to the dull black-glass wall and skipped off after his master. The Lateinos and Romiith mainframe filed away Old Pete’s vitals and beamed a triplicate copy of the now completed programme to the bio-gene constructional workshop, twenty-six storeys below. The probe moved up once more to the building’s roof and turned itself to more pressing business. Included amongst a billion or so other tiny matters which required attention was the removal from this plane of existence of a certain local Professor and his unclassifiable house-guest.
The sensory scanner criss-crossed the triangle of streets and houses, prying and probing. The X-ray eye of the great machine penetrated each dwelling, highlighting the plumbing pipes and television tubes. The house-owners were tiny red blotches moving to and fro, going about their business unaware that all was revealed to the voyeurist machine which lurked above their heads. The data whirred into the computer banks, but at intervals the motors flicked and whined as a patch of impenetrable white light appeared on the screen. As the macroscope focused upon the area of disturbance and intensified its gaze, the area revealed itself to be a large house and garden set upon the historic Butts Estate. The data retrieval cross-locators coughed and spluttered, fruitlessly seeking a snippet of relevant information, but none was to be found. The white patch glared on the screen, the missing piece of a great jigsaw. The best the print-out could come up with was “Insufficient data, scan penetration negative, over-ride and re-submit.”
20
Professor Slocombe rewound the great ormulu mantel-clock and, withdrawing the fretted key from the gilded face, set the pendulum in motion. The sonorous tocking of the magnificent timepiece returned the heartbeat once more to the silent house.
Sherlock Holmes entered the study through the open French windows. “It has stopped again?” said he.
The Professor nodded sombrely. “The mechanism has become infected, I believe.”
Holmes slumped into a fireside chair. “You have had the electricity disconnected, I trust?”
“As we discussed, we will have to be very much upon our guard from now on. I have taken what protective measures I can, but my powers are not inexhaustible, I can feel the pressure upon me even now.”
Holmes slid a pale hand about the decanter’s neck and poured himself a small scotch. “I have just spent a most informative hour with Norman Hartnell. A man of exceptional capability.”
Professor Slocombe smiled ruefully. “He keeps us all guessing, that is for certain.”
“I discovered the hand of a duplicate replacement at work in his shop and sought to question it.”
Professor Slocombe raised his eyebrows in horror. “That was a somewhat reckless move upon your part.”
“Perhaps, but when confronted by the gun you gave me, the thing took flight, literally, through the ceiling of the shop. To my astonishment the real Mr Hartnell appears from his quarters. The mechanical double was, in fact, something of his own creation. To spare his time for more important matters, according to himself.”
Professor Slocombe chuckled loudly. “Bravo, Norman,” he said. “The shopkeeper does have something rather substantial on the go at the present time. It is of the utmost importance that nothing stand in his way.”
Sherlock Holmes shook his head. “Your corner-shopkeeper produces an all-but-perfect facsimile of himself with no more than a few discarded wireless-set parts and something he calls Meccano and you treat it as if it were an everyday affair.”
“This is Brentford. Norman’s ingenuity is not unknown to me.”
“And do you know how his mechanical man is powered?”
“Knowing Norman, it probably has a key in its back or runs upon steam.”
“On the contrary,” said Sherlock Holmes, taking the opportunity to spring from his chair and take up a striking pose against the mantelpiece, “it runs from a slim brass wheel set into its chest. Your shopkeeper has rediscovered the secret of perpetual motion.”