My Clockwork Muse (21 page)

"Go away!" Witherspoon cried. I could see his
face in profile through the crack. "Please, just leave me
alone."

I signaled to Olimpia and she locked the
front door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. When she lowered
the shade, the room dimmed noticeably.

"What is it, Witherspoon?" I inquired hotly.
I shoved, but, even though the chemist was not a big man, I could
not budge the door. I decided to appeal to his reason. "Look!" I
thrust the vial towards the crack, hoping he might be able to
glimpse it. "I brought you the substance I was telling you about.
My investigation—"

"I'm not interested!" he cried. "Please go
away!"

"Damn-it-all, Witherspoon! What has gotten
into you?"

I waved Olimpia towards me and indicated the
door. She understood and, taking a few quick preparatory steps,
added the weight of her shoulder to mine. Together, we pushed and
the door budged a few inches. Witherspoon cried out in anguish, but
the chemist held firm against us.

"Please, sir," the obviously terrified
Witherspoon pleaded. "I have a wife and children to support—"

"What is this about, man?" I cried in
exasperation. "Just yesterday, you were—"

"I have been warned about you," Witherspoon
blurted out all at once. I could hear the strain in his voice as he
labored against the door. "The police were here and they told me—"
He cried out in fear again as Olimpia and I gave another shove.

My stomach lurched at the mention of the
police. I should have known. "What did they tell you?" There was
almost enough space now for me to squeeze my body into the
crack.

"I was warned to be on the lookout for a man
calling himself Dupin—a wanted murderer! You!"

I burst out laughing. "And who told you this?
Was it a man named Gessler?"

I could sense Witherspoon's confusion. "Yes,"
he said. "Gessler, it was. Just as you say."

"Ha-ha!" I cried. "Only the very man I am
investigating!"

"What's that you say?"

I could feel the pressure on the door
slacken. The words began to spill from my lips. I found it
surprisingly easy to lie. "Gessler. He is the man under
investigation. It is strictly an internal affair, Mr. Witherspoon,
involving corruption and—indeed!—\s 12murder, as you say. But not
committed by me. Ha-ha! Oh, no. This Gessler is slippery indeed,
sir. He has got to you before me."

"It is this ... other man ... who is the
target, then?"

I could fit my entire head through the crack
now. I was able to look Witherspoon in the eye.

"Trust me, Mr. Witherspoon. You
had
been
face to face with a murderer—but not now. Your fear is
misplaced. Gessler was attempting to trick you. Who knows where
else he has spread his lies?"

"But why me?"

"Perhaps because he knows I have
this!
" I awkwardly reached my hand through the gap and
showed him the vial. I kept hoping the sight of it would rekindle
the enthusiasm I had witnessed in him the day before.

"This is the poison?" he asked.

"That is for you to determine."

Witherspoon took the vial and held it between
his thumb and forefinger. Even with my head thrust into the gap, he
kept his shoulder pressed against the door, forcing me to maintain
a strong counterbalance to prevent being crushed. I could feel my
muscles begin to cramp. "I see..." He scrutinized the vial
carefully. "The label is torn. It says—"

"'Laudan'. Yes, I know. But it is the
substance itself that is important. See there in the bottom of the
glass."

"Ah, yes... And you say Gessler used this
to—"

"I don't know how he used it. It was found at
the scene of a murder. Please, Mr. Witherspoon, may I come in?"

Witherspoon scowled in thought. "I fear I may
regret this, but ... Oh, very well." He stepped back from the door.
It suddenly gave way and I stumbled into the room, nearly losing my
feet. I straightened and faced him.

"That's far enough, Dupin." Still wary, he
looked me up and down. "Well, I guess I can trust you— Good God,
man! Your clothes!"

"Ah, yes. You noticed." I tried to put on a
calm demeanor but I found myself chuckling nervously as I brushed
at my trousers and straightened my coat. I was not fit to be on the
street, much less posing as a police investigator. My mind worked
quickly. "I come to you fresh from the scene of an investigation,
rather dirty work, I must tell you. Under normal circumstances, of
course, I would have changed first, but the urgency of my task does
not permit me to ... Ah ... I should say, rather ... The importance
of the substance in that vial you now hold in your hand—"

"What kind of investigation?"

Witherspoon's suspicions were back. I had to
think quickly. "Murder most foul, Mr. Witherspoon," I said in an
ominous tone. "There is dirty work afoot, to be sure."

"You're talking about this Gessler
fellow?"

"None other."

"But he seemed—"

"Of course that's how he
seemed
, Mr.
Witherspoon. But don't let him fool you. He had one purpose in
coming here, and one purpose only—to prevent the nature of that
substance from becoming known. But
we
can thwart him,
Witherspoon. You and I, working together—"

Witherspoon threw up his hands. "I'm sorry,
Inspector Dupin. I cannot do this. This murderer, as you say, has
already been here once. When he knows I have this ..." He held up
the vial, shaking his head. "I cannot. I have had my fill of police
work. I want no more."

He grabbed my wrist and was about to thrust
the vial into my palm when he suddenly froze, his hand suspended in
mid-air. A strange look came over his face. I followed his gaze and
saw Olimpia standing in the doorway. Witherspoon was
transfixed.

"So you are the man who is going to help us.
Is that true, Mr. Witherspoon?" Her low, sultry voice seemed to
fill the room as she sauntered inside. Witherspoon licked his lips
and nodded, his eyes never leaving her face.

Olimpia laid a hand on his shoulder. Through
his grasp on my wrist, I could feel him shudder at her touch.
"Inspector Dupone tells me—"

I cleared my throat loudly. "That's Dupin, my
dear." I chuckled. "She has trouble with the French pronunciation,
I'm afraid."

Witherspoon looked from one to the other of
us. Olimpia went on, "The inspector tells me you have a magnificent
new microscope."

For an instant, I believed the chemist was on
the threshold of fainting. I had to admit, I had never seen Olimpia
quite in this way, alluring and forward. I might have fainted
myself had I been in Witherspoon's place.

"Oh, yes ... Yes, yes, I do," he stammered,
releasing my wrist. I was pleased to see that he did not relinquish
his grasp of the vial. In fact, he seemed to take possession of
it.

I could see Olimpia's fingers brushing his
bare neck just above his collar. "I would love to see it in
operation."

"You would?"

"Oh, most certainly I would. Won't you show
it to me?"

Witherspoon uttered a plaintive little moan.
I was afraid now that he was going to bolt for the door. I took a
step towards it just in case. But he held his ground, despite his
shaking knees. "Show
what
to you?" he asked in a tremulous
whisper.

"I want to see how it works. Eddy says—I
mean, Inspector Dupin says it is ever so big. Oh, is this it?" She
spied the microscope on the workbench. She walked over to it and
squinted into the eye hole. "Is this where you're supposed to look?
I can't see anything."

Witherspoon seemed to wake all at once.
Pushing past me, he rushed to her side.

"Yes, that is indeed where you look. Here, I
will show you, Miss ..."

Olimpia turned her head and gave Witherspoon
a playful smile. "Call me Olimpia," she said, and then leaned over
the eye hole again.

Witherspoon turned bright red. "Yes, of
course, Miss—Olimpia. Well, look here. You turn this knob like so
..."

"Like this?"

Witherspoon moaned again. "Oh, yes. Here, let
me get something for you to look at..."

Less than a minute later, I had a heartfelt
promise of Witherspoon's help. Come Hell or high water, he assured
me, murderers or no, I would have the identity of the mysterious
substance in the vial, by God. The fiend would be brought to
justice, he declared.

I went away with a good feeling about A.G.
Witherspoon's devotion to our cause, even if it sprang only from
his hope to see Olimpia again.

Outside in the carriage, we settled into our
seats. "I'm glad you're on my side," I told Olimpia. It didn't seem
so bad now having a boxful of extracted teeth in my pocket. In
fact, I had almost forgotten about them.

"I
am
on your side," Olimpia said.
"We're a team, Eddy."

That was fine by me. I thrust my head out the
window. "Home Dansby!" I cried.

I had a clockwork cat to dissect, after
all.

Dr. Coppelius slipped his scalpel under the
cat's skin and made a short, delicate incision that terminated at
the spot of the fatal bullet wound. Then he made two more slits at
either end of the first and peeled back the flaps of fur, exposing
the internal workings of the feline mechanism.

I was astonished by what I saw.

Inside the flexible framework of the cat's
artificial skeleton was a complex network of gears and springs. I
could see where I had reached in and yanked out a mass of the
apparatus. Mangled lengths of tiny brass tubes still dripped the
same translucent red substance I had noticed before. Under
different circumstances, I might have believed it to be blood. In
this case, however, I took it for some form of machine oil. I
reached my finger inside.

"Don't touch it!" Coppelius snapped, and I
withdrew my finger at once. "We don't know what it is." In rebuke,
he pointed his cloudy blue eye at me sharply. His other—that is,
his good eye—peered at me through the eyehole of the small mirror
he wore fixed to a leather band around his head. The sudden flash
of reflected light temporarily blinded me and I stood blinking in
the gloom of the doctor's laboratory as he turned his attention
back to the cat. Now directing the lamplight onto his subject, the
mirror starkly illuminated the web of interlocking components that
comprised the cat's man-made guts. Coppelius probed inside with his
scalpel and expressed surprise that so much damage should have been
caused by a single small caliber bullet. I confessed to my clumsy
surgery back at the cottage.

"Ah, that explains it," he said. Something
suddenly captured his interest. He set aside his scalpel and
plucked a forceps from the table. He grasped one of the cat's
'bones'. It flexed like rubber. "Pure genius," Coppelius muttered
under his breath. Olimpia and I might not have even been in the
room with him. "An utterly unknown substance... Far advanced beyond
anything we know... Look here. The flexibility allows it to mimic
natural movement. Yet it maintains a perfectly rigid form..."

Coppelius' laboratory was in the basement of
his house, a subterranean chamber of rough hewn stone walls. It
seemed to be a combination of medical facility and handyman's
workshop. Tables covered with tools for both wood and metal-working
lined two of the walls. A cold furnace squatted in a corner.
Half-finished projects lay hidden under canvas sheets, their
details hinted at only by the tantalizingly mysterious peaks and
valleys they made in their coverings. His medical tables included
many jars of colored powders and vials and glass tubes of variously
hued liquids. A velvet-lined wooden box contained his surgical
tools and he picked them out one after the other as he examined the
cat. When he finished with one, he would hand it to Olimpia who
replaced it with the utmost care. They had obviously worked
together many times, and few words passed between them. But for the
little sphere of light thrown over the operating table from a
single oil lamp, the laboratory was shrouded in gloom.

Coppelius had been gone when we arrived from
Witherspoon's the night before. As eager as I had been to uncover
the mysteries of our mechanical Pluto, I was happy for the
opportunity to get some rest. After dinner, which Olimpia and I
enjoyed alone, I spent an hour or more soaking in a steaming tub.
In the morning, we found that Coppelius had returned. When I showed
him the cat, I was braced for a flurry of questions, perhaps even
accusations. Who knew how a man would react to such an alien, and
some would say frightening, thing? But Coppelius was delighted. To
my surprise, he seemed less interested in how such a thing might
come to be in the first place than how I myself came to be in
possession of it. I told him of my adventure, of my somnambulistic
trance and my wayward pistol shot into the bush. He clapped his
hands together as if I had told him a light-hearted story instead
of the rather dreadful tale that still sent shivers of terror
shooting down my spine. He grabbed the cat and, taking up a
lantern, rushed immediately down the narrow curving stone staircase
to his laboratory with Olimpia and I following hot on his
heels.

He was giddy at first. "I don't know if I
need my surgical kit or my toolbox!" he quipped with a laugh. But
he became more subdued the further he dug into the workings of the
feline automaton. His dissection absorbed him more and more until
he scarcely seemed to be aware of my presence in the room with
him.

As each idea struck him, he would quickly
call for a different instrument which Olimpia expertly placed in
his palm. I could see that he was working his way towards the
thing's head. As he pried apart the ribcage, he drew back with a
start.

"My God," he exclaimed.