Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) Read online

  “I'm supposed to find a yellow beard,” I explained.

  “What?”

  I showed them the scrap. The Doll wrinkled her nose at it.

  “Skeptical,” she said.

  I shrugged and watched as she again took out a small, golden tube.

  “What is that?” I asked. “I saw you with it on the tour.”

  She pulled off the top and revealed a fresh roll of lipstick.

  “A gift,” she proudly said.

  “Where'd you get it?”

  “Woman in the sky.”

  “I wouldn't use it.”

  “Of course. You’re a boy.”

  “I mean, you shouldn’t use it, Dolly.”

  “Why not? It's pretty.”

  “It came from someone else. How clean do you think it is?”

  “She said it was brand new.”

  “Just the same...”

  The Watchmaker's Doll went ahead and ignored me, pursing her lips and lifting the tube to them.

  “Dolly—“ I began.

  “Hush. Now, hold still. I need your face.”

  “Eh?”

  She pushed one of her small hands against my cheek, steadying my head, and leaned forward to me. I realized she was peering into my green half-glass. Or rather, her reflection in it. Then, studying the mirrored image, Dolly took her lipstick and began painting. Softly, like a baker drawing lines of frosting across the top of a great cake, she traced the girlish shape of her lips and puckered once, then twice.

  “How do I look?” she asked me.

  “Fine,” I said, looking at my boots. “Um, pretty nice.”

  She puckered again and then let out a soft moan.

  “I'm bored,” she announced.

  “Me too,” Kitt agreed.

  “This place is muddy.”

  “A little bit,” I admitted. “You want to move on?”

  “To where?” Dolly asked.

  I shrugged again. She moaned again. Kitt rolled his head.

  “Someone lost their balloons,” he said, looking up at the sky. I glanced skyward. An entire cluster of hydrogen-filled, toy balloons, blue with yellow stars, were floating above our heads.

  “Flock of 'loons,” the Doll said to her own amusement.

  “Where do you think they came from?” I asked.

  “There's some kind of caravan on the other side of the park,” Kitt said. “Looks like they were selling things.”

  The Doll perked up and gave Kitt a hopeful stare.

  “Do you suppose they sell 'loons?”

  The fox grinned.

  “Perhaps... Don't know...but perhaps...”

  “Say Pocket...”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you mind taking an intermission for a minute? I've gotta run these old glasses to the back.”

  “I can talk pretty loud. You'd probably be able to hear from back there.”

  “Eh, don't wanna risk it. It'll be just a minute, I swear.”

  “Sigh...fine. Oh. Hey, Alan. There's someone knocking on the front door.”

  “Tell them we're closed.”

  “I don't work here.”

  “Pocket, I've got my hands a little full at the moment.”

  “All right. I’ll handle it. Just—Hang on! I’m coming for the door! One moment! Let me get it—ah! There we are. Hello?”

  “…hello…”

  “Hello, miss. I’m sorry, but we've already closed for the night.”

  “...closed…but I…”

  “Yes. Afraid so. Bad timing.”

  “...oh...I see…”

  “Probably best that you head back from where you came. Shelter up. Get out of the weather.”

  “...suppose I should...”

  “Uh, are you all right, miss? Miss, I...what…excuse me, what are you—“

  “Goodnight.”

  “Um, goodnight to you, madame…huh…odd…”

  “Pocket?”

  “Yes, Alan?”

  “What was that about?”

  “I'm not sure. Some woman looking for a drink. Told her we were closed and she started whistling in my ear.”

  “Whistling?”

  “Isn't that the damndest thing?”

  “Probably a drunk at this time of night.”

  “Right...”

  “Come on. Back to the bar and sit down. Get on with that story.”

  “Uh...sure...I mean, right, of course. Where was I?”

  “The Dolly wants some balloons.”

  “Mmm...”

  “Pocket?”

  “Right! Sorry, Alan. I was...that whistling, something about that tune that—“

  “Pocket.”

  “What?”

  “Balloons.”

  “Right, right.”

  The caravan Kitt had noticed was parked on its red-and-mud-painted wagon wheels on the other side of the clearing. Fold-out shelves revealed numerous knick-knacks and contraptions while a large banner was hung above the whole operation. “THE MARVELOUS MARINS' MODERN CURIOSITY SHOP AND CURE-ALL TRAVELING PHARMACY,” it read.

  Medicine peddlers. No thanks.

  A hissing sound was heard from the side of the caravan and the Doll hurried over without thought. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and grudgingly followed behind.

  A round-faced man with a wild look in his eyes sat bent over a set of small steps that led up to a breakaway wooden stage that had been erected and slammed against the wagon. A cluster of yellow-on-blue balloons were bunched together and tied by their strings around the man's left shoe.

  A long, yellow beard flowed from his chin.

  Under his arms was a large, and noticeably rusty, canister with a coiled nozzle springing from the end. He was in the act of stretching a deflated balloon over the nozzle with one hand while turning a valve with the other. It squeaked at his touch and the balloon began to expand.

  “That's pretty neat,” Kitt said. The man turned his eyes on him and the balloon popped off of the nozzle, the air inside firing it like a shot into the trees.

  “Oh...” Kitt said. “I'm sorry. Do you need some help with that?”

  The man just gave a wild grin and began to giggle. A second voice came from inside the wagon.

  “The good doctor is a modern man!” the voice from within shouted. “He needs no assistance with the grapples of technology!”

  Grapples of technology?

  “Let him be with his craft! Let him be!”

  We looked at the man, the “doctor,” for confirmation of this claim. He widened his grin and puffed up his cheeks.

  “My brother is excitable,” the yellow-beard chortled, reaching for a fresh balloon. “What do you need from me?”

  “Nothing,” I tried to say over the Doll's persisting questions.

  “You are the keeper of the balloons?” she asked. “Are they for sale?”

  He somehow managed to widen his grin even further.

  “Everything is for sale.”

  He launched into an excited pitch into the simple wonder of balloons, such a subtle luxury for our day and age. He recalled a hunting expedition he claimed he had once led through the frozen Arctic at the ends of the world. He spoke of rolling over ice-coated fields, spearing mammoths and polar bears from his perch upon a large, gas-powered traveler's balloon.

  “You can balloon through the Arctic?” I asked dryly.

  He giggled again and tipped his toes toward us, moving the cluster of inflated balloons for the Doll to view. She bent forward and softly poked her finger into the middle of a yellow star. The group bounced against each other.

  “I had another bunch,” the doctor said, referring to the flock in the sky. “But they must've jumped ship.”

  I was tempted run off into the distance as quickly as my legs could take me, but then the strange balloonist began stroking his yellow beard and I remembered my fortune. Surely it must be a coincidence, but as a man of stories and limericks, of legend and myth and tales grand, I was compelled to...no, actually, I
still wasn't buying into it.

  But regardless...

  I planted myself and listened to what he had to say, which was surprisingly little. He spoke in brief statements and chuckles, letting his gazes and gestures instead do the telling. I was waiting for the inevitable moment when he would start throwing price tags at the Doll, whose deep eyes would turn on me or Kitt in inquiry of how such a glorious thing as a balloon could be in her sweet possession.

  Before that scene was able to play out, however, the voice from the wagon decided to return.

  “Brother!” it shouted. “The frog's loose again!”

  The doctor sighed and twisted his neck towards the wagon.

  “Well, put a bit of cheese in his cage and he'll wander back!”

  “I did!”

  “Which cheese?”

  “The yellow!”

  “Not that cheese! The good cheese! Are you trying to insult him? The whiter bits.”

  “Fine!”

  A man kicked open a door and stomped out of the caravan, picking rags off of his body. The rags were instantly recognizable to me and I began grinding my teeth. The would-be beggar from the park plucked off his impoverished costume, revealing a rather stately, albeit slightly beaten and torn, waistcoat monogrammed with a capital “P” over the breast pocket.

  “Though if you ask me, the frog should start pulling his weight around here if he expects to dine upon...oh...hello.”

  He had caught sight of me. I crossed my arms and frowned.

  “Trust the golden beard, right?”

  The doctor giggled at his brother and let another balloon off into the sky.

  “So I see you met the Marin boys.”

  “You know them, Alan?”

  “You joking? You can't get away from them in this city. They drive that heap around, shouting about the progress of society and the mechanical future, and sell you soap.”

  “That seems about right.”

  “They told me they were financial opportunists, riding the—”

  “The wave of tomorrow on the back of innovation.”

  “Right. You didn't buy anything off of them, did you Pocket?”

  “No. To keep me quiet about the fortune teller scam, they gave the Doll a clump of balloons free of charge. Why, have you?”

  “Miracle soap.”

  “How'd it work out?”

  “Turned my toes three colors I didn't know existed.”

  “Miraculous.”

  “Exactly.”

  The Doll sat and admired her acquisition as the Marvelous Marins formally introduced themselves. The man with the balloons and the maniac's grin stood, bowed, and peeled the false horsehair beard off of his actual naked chin. He was wearing a jacket, similar to his brother's, monogrammed with a “D” but in slightly better wear. D. Oswald Marin, or Doctor D, as he dubbed himself, was the self-described “eyes” of the peddling outfit. Speaking of outfits, his was a sight. Every piece of clothing he was dressed in was tagged and priced, as the man was literally quite eager to sell the shirt from his back. And it wasn't just clothing that he wore. Draped across his entire person were pieces of available merchandise. Slightly-used pots and pans hung from his waist on ropes, as did shoes, cutlery, teacups on a string, and even children's toys. He was a storefront on two legs, an ornament of seller's tags.

  His twin brother, the quite vocal P. Cosgrove Marin, alias Doctor P, was the self-proclaimed and obviously-evident “voice” of the operation. Doctor P was the proverbial silver-tongued merchant, singing in the streets to man and woman, elder and child, dog and cat, whoever would listen and stood a chance at buying what his brother had gathered to sell. Doctor P was also never above putting his own safety on the line to clinch a sale, as when he once donned wheeled skates and...heh, well, I'll get to that later.

  The Marin boys specialized in peddling rare potions, creams, balms...

  “Soaps...”

  “Soaps, right. Thank you, Alan.”

  ...random amenities of house and home, and what they considered “modern gadgetry.” They painted a verbal picture of me and Kitt ascending to a position of men of industry, leading Britain in its march toward a technological era of prosperity.

  “These guys are sounding like the King with a worse shave job,” Kitt whispered to me.

  “Not interested in progress, Kitt?”

  “Oh sure, I am. I guess. How does one, uh, progress to an era of prosperity?”

  “Best I can figure, by buying their junk.”

  “Are you being sarcastic, Pocket?”

  “Yes I am, Kitt.”

  The Marins also tried to build up the Doll with the idea of becoming a modern woman, but she ignored them, much more taken with playing with her balloons. I apologize, reader, listener, Alan, or whoever, if my narrative representation of her is striking you as overtly childlike. I am aware that she has these tendencies, but I can assure you...well...she is also so much more.

  Anyhow, the Marins insisted that we look about their mobile shop before leaving the park. They simply wouldn't take “no” for an answer, which is unfortunate, as I wasn't prepared to offer anything else. But they seemed altogether harmless so I smiled and let them show me their shop. Weird gadgets lined their shelved. They appeared to be small machines, but different from the machines that I had found strewn throughout the watchmaker's basement in that the watchmaker's devices appeared to be functional. Kitt picked up an apple-shaped contraption and rubbed some grease off of it.

  “That's eight pounds,” Doctor P said.

  “Weight or price?” Kitt asked.

  “Hrmmm...” He shot a look to his brother who made a string of silent hand signals back. “Both.”

  “What does it do?”

  “It cures madness.”

  “Madness?”

  “Yes. Revolutionary thing. Cobbled by a Swiss mathematician who dabbled in these things.”

  “Dabbled in what now?”

  “The device, quite ingeniously, reads your fingershapes.”

  “Prints.”

  “Reads your fingerprints and calculates from the shape the very nature of your mental instability, you know, finger pattern, brain pattern, and radiates a certain pheromone, it's invisible and odorless, don't try to detect it, radiates a pheromone that when taken in through the nostrils adjusts your mental chemistry to that of a completely normal state.”

  “And it works?”

  “Of course it works! Think I'd sell it if it didn't?”

  “Well...”

  “And it's legal, sure, just new. Society always scoffs at the new at first. That's why you don't read about these in the papers. Innovation is always controversial, am I right? Right. But only a matter of time, days, I'd wager, until you see these things in every hospital and asylum and birthing room in London. Best to snag one now while the price is cheap!”

  “But...” Kitt continued, determined to take this seriously. “If it releases a pheromone, couldn't someone nearby the...crazy person...risk sniffing and injecting the wrong chemical calculation?”

  “Agh! Questions, questions! That's all progress ever gets! Look, that's why you don't stand by people with devices and go sniffing at them! Poor manners as well!”

  “Very poor,” I added with a laugh.

  “Thank you, yes. See, your friend with the spoon in his hat understands sensibilities.”

  “I don't know,” Kitt said.

  “Then put it down and try another. Watch. Do you see this?”

  He was clinching a long, metal, pump and nozzle device.

  “Now,” he said. “What do you suppose this is?”

  The Doll looked up and began running her eyes over the piece.

  “No idea,” Kitt said.

  “Well!” the doctor said, tossing it in his hands. “What if I was to tell you that this component, when attached to the underside of any standard electric carriage, any standard one, creates a scientific field of human energy...”

  “Human energy...”

>   “...that's right, a powerful field of science that allows the vehicle and its passengers to travel forwards and backwards across the whole of time itself? What if I was to tell you that?”

  “It's a steam injector,” the Doll said, returning her interest to her balloons. We all stared at her. She noticed and said, “You know. Like from a steam engine. It coverts...um...fluid pressure. Some of these balloons are bigger than the others. I enjoy that.”

  How could...

  Kitt and I shared an unspoken conversation on this odd girl, and then, desperate not to lose the moment, Doctor P grabbed the fox boy and continued.

  “Well, yes, sure, you can use it for that too, I suppose. If you want to be mundane. You know what? Forget it. I've got better. How about this? This one chews your food for you. Save precious minutes and years of cheek decay.”

  I sat down with the Doll and watched Kitt play with “progress” for a bit. Then an idea struck me.

  “Mister Marin?” I called.

  “Doctor.”

  “Right, sure. Why not? Doctor D then, was it?” I asked, as the man’s brother talked Kitt's head off.

  “Yes.”

  “I understand you gather these oddities from across the globe.”

  “I do,” he proudly replied. “And I have never found an oddity or curio that I have refused to sell.”

  “Really?” I began to smile. “Then perhaps I can interest you in another acquisition.”

  I'll skip the oncoming disaster. The Marins refused to purchase my bottle of faerie juice, despite much banter and begging on my part, on Doctor D's rule that “a wise man does not peddle what he cannot sample.”

  “So why not let him taste the stuff?”

  “Because...ug...I couldn't.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I've...eh...never been able to remove the cork.”

  “What?”

  “From the bottle.”

  “Ever?!?”

  “I've tried. A lot. Nearly broke my thumb once.”

  “And that's why you've never—”

  “Never tried it. That's correct. And stop laughing.”

  After trying in vain for a good twenty minutes to remove the cork from my bottle, I gave up and asked once more if the gentlemen would reconsider buying it on good word.