“I’ll just bet,” said Tim, “that this pentagram-shaped flying circus will be hovering directly over the inverted pentagram formed by joining the sites of the Ripper murders. What do you think, Will?”
“Exactly,” said Will.
“Bullshitter,” said Barry.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Sorry?” said Tim.
“Barry,” said Will.
“So,” said Mr Wells. “We have to await Count Otto’s return.”
“I’m good with this,” said Tim. “Christmas is coming up. I’ve never enjoyed a Victorian Christmas. Will we have crackers and Christmas pudding and Tamagotchis?”
“Perhaps the first two,” said Will. “Please get another round in.”
Tim went up to the bar and got in another round.
“This is a particularly splendid ale-house,” said Mr Wells. “The beer is beyond reproach, the service remarkable, the seating most comfortable.”
Tim returned from the bar. “There’s a big bargee and a small bargee buying drinks up there,” said he. “And they keep looking over at our table.”
“I’ll go and have a word with them,” said Will.
“No need,” said Tim. “I did. The part-time barman is throwing them out.”
Will looked up. And indeed the part-time barman was.
“Top bar,” said Mr Wells.
“You’re not wrong there,” said Will. “So this is the plan.”
“Just one thing,” said Master Scribbens, “before you outline your plan. I am contracted to appear, ‘by popular demand’, at Count Otto’s circus during the New Year celebrations.”
“A man on the inside,” said Tim.
“You really want to do that?” Will asked.
“The money is good and I need it.”
“Mr Wells,” said Will. “Do you believe that this Doomsday Programme will be on board Otto Black’s flying circus?”
“I have no reason to doubt it, do you?”
Will shook his head. “So we have to do it then. When his circus reaches England and hovers above Whitechapel on the thirty-first of December.”
“And we enjoy Christmas in the meantime,” said Tim. “Where shall we spend it? Do you know any other posh hotels you can talk your way into, Will?”
“Many,” said Will. “But that’s not how we’re going to play this. Action now is what is called for. We will dispense with the fifteen days in between and go directly to where the action is.”
“And how do you propose that we do this?” Tim asked.
“Barry,” said Will.
“Zzzz,” went Barry.
“Barry!” went Will once again.
“Oh-ah-what, chief?”
“Barry, it is time to rouse yourself and go into action.”
“Have you messed up already, chief? Sorry I missed it.”
“No,” said Will. “I haven’t. But there’s something I want you to do for me. Remember when you told me that you could not take me to the exact time and place when the big trouble was going to occur?”
“I do indeed, chief. If it was only known to me and not to you, then I can’t do it. Outside my remit. Sorry; that’s the way it works.”
“Well, Barry,” said Will. “Now I do know where and when I want to be. Exactly where and when. So you can take me there right?”
“Certainly can,” said Barry.
“So I’d like you to take all of us to—”
“All of you, chief?”
“All of us, Barry.”
“No can do, once more, chief. I can take you and Mr McGregor, but not Mr Wells and Master Scribbens.”
“No matter,” said Will. “They can meet us there in the future.”
“How far?” Barry asked.
“Not far,” said Will. “Only fifteen days.”
“Ah,” said Barry.
“Ah,” said Will. “Take Tim and me to the circus.”
41
It was a wonder.
Even in an age of wonders, it was a wonder.
Count Otto Black’s Circus Fantastique hung in the night sky above Whitechapel. The vast star-shaped blimp sparkled with thousands of light bulbs which flashed on and off, the way that some of them do, spelling out Count Otto’s name and tracing the outlines of galloping horses, gambolling clowns and dancing bears, high-wire walkers and jugglers, mimes and marmosets too.
It was the thirty-first of December, the year was eighteen ninety-nine, it was half past nine and it wasn’t raining.
Will and Tim emerged from the Naughty Pope public house into a thoroughfare that jostled with New Year merrymakers. Almost everyone waved a Union flag and most were already drunk.
Will looked up and whistled. The sheer scale of the flying circus was awesome in the absolute. “That is big,” was all he could manage for the moment.
Tim shook his head and patted down his wandering hair. “It’s beyond anything,” he said. “But I just don’t get it.”
“What is it that you just don’t get?” Will was jostled by revellers. A young ragamuffin called Winston, who had recently failed his interview for the job of curator at the Tate Gallery and decided instead to join the rest of his brothers and pursue a life of crime, deftly relieved Will of his wallet.
“It’s technology,” said Tim. “Astounding technology. Count Otto Black designed the flying circus himself, didn’t he?”
“It said so on the flyer we were reading in the pub.”
“So why go to all the trouble and expense, if at the stroke of midnight, his Doomsday Programme kicks in and the whole caboodle goes belly up, ceases to exist, in fact?”
Will shrugged. Winston’s brother Wycliff deftly relieved Will of his pocket watch.
“It’s a fiendish plot,” said Will. “And fiendish plots only really make sense to the fiends who plot them, I suppose.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” said Tim.
“Curious, that,” Will smiled, “considering that everything else so far has made such perfect sense.”
“That would be irony, right?”
Will nodded unthoughtfully. Winston’s other brother, Elvis, relieved Will of his circus tickets.
“Ah, no,” said Will, taking Elvis by the wrist and hauling him into the air. “I didn’t mind about the watch or the wallet, but I need those tickets.”
“Right you are, guv’nor,” said the dangling Elvis, as Will plucked the tickets from his grubby little mitt.
“Good boy,” said Will, and he set Elvis down.
Winston’s other brother, Kylie, deftly relieved Elvis of a digital wristwatch that Kylie had recently swiped from a toff named Burlington Bertie.
Tim reached down and deftly relieved Kylie of a packet of Spangles.
Will, in turn, deftly relieved Tim of his straw hat.
“I wasn’t wearing a straw hat,” said Tim.
“That’s mine!” said a lady, snatching it back.
“Sorry,” said Will. “I got carried away.”
The lady, once more in her straw hat, kicked Will in the ankle. Winston relieved her of her bundle of War Crys.
“Stop it now,” said Will. “It’s all getting out of hand.”
“Who’s nicked my boots?” said Wycliff.
“Let’s go, Tim,” said Will.
“Do we have to?” Tim asked. “I’ve acquired a packet of Spangles. Oh no I haven’t, they’re gone.”
“We have to go,” said Will. “It’s not clever and it’s not funny.”
“What swab’s scarpered with me wooden leg?” cried a pirate, collapsing into an ungathered heap of the pure.
Will and Tim buttoned up their coats, thrust their hands into their pockets and pressed forward into the noisy crowd.
Street sellers were out in force, hawking Union flags and roasted chestnuts, centennial souvenirs and pictures of Little Tich.
“Mud on a stick, squire?” asked a young rapscallion.