“Yeah, but—”
“Bluff and bluster are often superior to stealth. You and I will march up there as though we are in charge. Flash them your badge. Just make sure they don’t have time to read it. Eh, Detective Sutcliffe?”
Blenkinsop frowned with puzzlement. “Sutcliffe? But me name is—” And then a smile broke across his face. “Ah, I tumble it. Very good… Doctor Watson. Shall we?”
The two men stepped onto the road and walked briskly up to the knot of police officers. But as they drew close, an officer in plainclothes noticed them and threw down the gauntlet.
“Who are you two, then?”
Judging by the man’s bushy brown moustache, martial bearing, and flat-footed stance that comes from years of pounding the beat, Conan Doyle guessed they had run into a plainclothes inspector. Blenkinsop flashed his badge, one finger held across it so no one could read the number.”
“Detective Sutcliffe.”
“Who? What you doing here, sonny Jim? This ain’t your manor—”
“Commissioner Burke sent me personally. Told me to get down here sharpish and fetch a doctor.” Blenkinsop indicated Conan Doyle with a nod. “Course, you got a problem with that, you could take it up with the commissioner when he arrives.”
Invoking the name of the police commissioner worked its magic. The inspector was suddenly all smiles. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound narky.” He extended a hand. “The name’s Barnes.”
“Good to meet you, Inspector Barnes.” The two men shook hands. “So, what’s happening?”
“Beggared if I know. We been here all night. No one’s allowed to go in until his nibs gets here. He don’t want nothing disturbed.”
“Yeah,” Blenkinsop quickly ad-libbed. “Commissioner Burke wanted the doctor to examine the victims’ bodies and have a report ready for him.”
Conan Doyle spoke for the first time. “So why three hearses?”
“Three stiffs. The murderer, the fat banker himself, and a butler copped it as well. Old army lad. Put five rounds in the murderer. Only the geezer had a bomb strapped to his chest. Butler found it with the fifth round, didn’t he? KA-BOOM!”
“Déjà vu?” Conan Doyle muttered to Detective Blenkinsop.
“Any witnesses still breathin’?” Blenkinsop asked.
“Maid. Name of Myrtle. Saw the murderer doing the dirty. A monster, she called him. Of course, you know women and their hysterics. But he was a big bastard as you’ll see from what’s left of him.”
“Right,” Blenkinsop said. “I’d better get the doctor in there before the commissioner arrives and thinks we’re all slackin’ off.”
They made a move to step past, but Inspector Barnes held them back with a gesture. “Wait, before you go in.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial rumble. “There’s something queer about this one. The victim looks like he went ten rounds with a circus gorilla. And you should see the state of the room…” The inspector shook his head. “… in bits.” He squinted up at the second story balcony. “So maybe what the maid said ain’t so daft after all.”
With that, Detective Blenkinsop and Conan Doyle passed unmolested through the gaggle of constables and entered the house. In the entrance hall, a solitary constable slouched against a wall, but jerked to attention as they entered.
“Oi! No one’s allowed in here—”
Blenkinsop flashed his badge. “Detective Sutcliffe. I brought the doctor with me.”
“Oh, right. Second floor. Can’t miss it.”
The two men ascended a grand staircase that spiraled upward in a swirl of polished mahogany balustrades. From behind they heard the constable guarding the door shout up to them: “Hope ya got a strong stomach.”
As they reached the first floor, a greasy haze hung suspended in the air and their mouths filmed with the acrid tang of scorched hair and burned flesh. They found the butler’s body sprawled close to the stairs on the second-floor landing. His eyes were open, shocked wide, as if surprised by his own death. His right hand still gripped a pistol. The blast had merely singed him, but a weeping hole in the middle of his forehead showed the cause of death. When Conan Doyle bent closer to look he found a brassy bolt protruding from the skull.
“Nasty,” Blenkinsop commented.
“Yes. No doubt a component from the bomb.”
They stepped carefully around the butler’s body. The blast had stripped the fine flock wallpaper from the wall and it hung in peeling curls. Farther up the hallway, the assassin’s corpse lay on its back: a hulking form with the mass of a toppled idol, heavy with inertia. Even in death it radiated menace and threatened to jerk to life at any moment. The yellow eyes were wide, the dreadful gaze scorching the ceiling.
“Charlie Higginbotham!” Detective Blenkinsop hissed from several feet away, his legs unwilling to carry him any closer.
Conan Doyle stepped close and dropped to a crouch over the body. The tattered remnants of the shirt were burned black and crispy. But most remarkable was the perfect rectangular opening in the middle of the chest, out of which a thin gray tendril of smoke still curled.
“You can see he had a bomb strapped to his chest,” Blenkinsop observed. “It’s blown a hole.”
Conan Doyle leaned closer, peering into the smoldering cavity. “No. This hole is far too neat and regular to be caused by an explosion. The chest has been cut open by someone with the skill of a surgeon using a bone saw.” He grunted with astonishment and looked up at the young detective. “The heart… it’s gone!”
Blenkinsop’s mouth dropped open. “What? How? How is that possible?”
Conan Doyle looked around the hallway and spotted a twisted metal box lying several feet away. Even from a distance, he judged that its dimensions exactly matched the rectangular hole in the assassin’s chest. He arose from the corpse and stepped over to pick it up. The oblong metal box was constructed of machined plates of shiny metal, held together around the edges by precise rows of brass bolts. One bolt was missing — likely the one that wound up in the butler’s forehead. An outward-puckered hole in the metal showed where a bullet had punctured the casing. Beside the bullet hole was what appeared to be a gauge, although the face was unreadable behind cracked and blackened glass. Something rattled loose when he shook it and fell out on the hall rug. He snatched it up. The heavy cogwheel had been formed from a solid chunk of metal, exquisitely machined so that it iridesced in the light. Conan Doyle wrapped it in a handkerchief and tucked in his pocket.
“This is not a bomb,” Conan Doyle announced.
“What, then?”
The Scotsman shook his head. “Some kind of infernal device.”
He turned it over and froze. A sick heat washed through him followed by a chill as sweat dried on the back of his neck. A tangle of rubber hoses dangled from the backside, and a trickle of blood now dribbled from one.
“Good heavens! It appears to be some kind of… mechanical heart!”
Before he could speculate further, a booming voice vaulted up the staircase ahead of its owner: “Come along, Dobbs. Don’t dawdle, man!”
The two companions shared a look of alarm. Blenkinsop ducked back down the hallway, darted a quick look down the stairs, and quickly jerked his head back.
“Commissioner Burke!” he hissed in a low whisper. “If he finds us…”
“Come!” Conan Doyle urged. He set the metal box down where he had discovered it. “There must be a servant’s staircase somewhere.”
The two hurried along the hallway as the tramp of climbing feet grew louder.
“So no one’s been in here?” Burke bellowed.
“No, sir.” The voice belonged to Barnes, the inspector they had bluffed their way past. “Just Detective Sutcliffe and the doctor you sent for.”