The Firebird Mystery Read online

  Jack passed through the door into an enormous chamber. A large desk crowded the entrance. He stepped around it, his eyes widening. The apartment seemed to take up the entire top floor. A maze of brass pipes and tubing, leaking steam and smoke, ran across the ceiling. Rooms appeared to have been jammed into the space like boxes of different heights. None of them stretched as far as the roof. Rectangular windows allowed slanted prisms of light into the cavern. Piles of books and odd-looking contraptions made the place resemble a junk shop. Low tables, filing cabinets and shelves created corridors through the chaos.

  Jack’s eyes gradually focused on strange items within the confusion. He saw:

  A stuffed owl and a stuffed rabbit

  A miniature Ferris wheel

  Animals preserved in jars

  A plaster of Paris bust of a man

  A life-size mannequin of a woman with a missing head

  A chemistry set with Bunsen burners and beakers.

  Without doubt, this was the strangest place he had ever seen. He half expected a white rabbit to leap out from behind a shelf, checking its watch. Easing the door shut, Jack looked around the ramshackle interior for signs of life.

  Harry had told him about a racket where children were sold into slavery and sent to faraway places like India. There they worked in the mines until they died of old age or exhaustion—whichever came first. Jack had laughed at him, but a seed of doubt had been planted.

  Now he heard a shuffling sound from behind him. Beyond another desk, jammed between two Grecian columns, a man leapt up wearing a bizarre mask—a beekeeper’s hood.

  He waved a gun at Jack.

  ‘Don’t move,’ the masked man ordered.

  Bang!

  Jack threw himself sideways, hitting the ground. He rolled once, leapt to his feet and tugged open the door to the reception area. Gloria cried out to him, but he ignored her as he hurtled down the corridor. When he reached the elevator he heard the man’s voice.

  ‘Wait! Stop!’

  Not bloomin’ likely, Jack thought.

  Waiting for the elevator would take too long. Jack charged down the stairs in terror, his heart banging like a hammer as the gloomy stairwell closed in around him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Harry’s words rang in Jack’s ears.

  ‘They kidnap and drug you…you wake up on a boat...forced to work in the mines…feed you scraps...’

  As far as Jack was concerned, no-one was drugging him, forcing him to work in a mine or feeding him any scraps. He would rather live on the streets. The elevator clanged behind him as he sped down the stairs two at a time.

  Was his assailant after him?

  The stairs seemed to take forever. Finally he saw the old drunk at the bottom. He sailed over him in one smooth leap, just as the elevator reached ground level. The metal door chuffed open and a well-dressed man stepped out. He held the beekeeper’s mask in one hand. It was the man who had shot at him. It was Ignatius Doyle.

  Ignatius Doyle: man with an infirmity.

  Ignatius Doyle: child kidnapper and slave trader.

  Ignatius Doyle: scoundrel.

  ‘Wait!’ Mr Doyle cried out. Jack ignored him and bolted outside. When he reached the footpath he darted left and right.

  Where to run? Where to hide?

  A small group of people were waiting to cross the street. Jack pushed between them. A woman cried out as he started to run.

  His feet slipped on the cobblestones.

  A horse screamed.

  Jack looked up to see a team of horses charging towards him. He tried to stand, but slipped again in the muck on the road. He could see the froth running from the horses’ mouths, their noses snorting, their legs bearing down on him…

  ‘Blimey,’ Jack breathed.

  A hand darted out of nowhere, grabbed his coat and dragged him sideways just as the carriage charged by. One more second and he would have been finished. He stared up into the face of Ignatius Doyle.

  ‘You need to let me explain,’ the detective began. But he got no further as a dainty fist collided with his shoulder.

  ‘Mr Doyle!’ Gloria was crimson with fury. ‘How dare you scare the boy! He’s only just walked in the door!’

  ‘I was merely testing a hypothesis,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘Can a gun be accurately fired whilst wearing a beekeeper’s hood?’

  ‘Mr Doyle!’ Gloria drew Jack close to her. ‘I’ve told you before about shooting inside!’

  The detective stuck his bottom lip out like a schoolboy caught doing something wrong. ‘A little bullet here and there won’t hurt anything.’

  ‘A little bullet,’ Gloria muttered, turning Jack around to face her. ‘Don’t you mind Mr Doyle. He’s a good man, but a tad eccentric. You know what I mean?’

  ‘Uh,’ Jack began. ‘I think I do.’

  He studied Ignatius Doyle for the first time. He wore a bowler hat with goggles wrapped around the brim, a long black coat and a brown chequered cape. He was slim, wiry and about sixty years old. His face was animated, as if he were thinking of three things at once, but his eyes were kindly as he peered at Jack. He looks like the sort of person who would throw a stick of dynamite into a fire, Jack thought, just to see what would happen.

  Mr Doyle took a step and Jack noticed he moved with a slight limp; he favoured his left leg. ‘I apologise for the scare,’ he said.

  ‘You come on back to the apartment,’ Gloria said to Jack. ‘Mr Doyle will make you a nice hot drink and sort everything out.’

  Ten minutes later Jack found himself back in Ignatius Doyle’s lodgings, standing in almost the same place as he had been when the detective had fired his weapon. Now that he thought about it, the gun had not actually been pointing at him.

  Ignatius Doyle bustled over to a dartboard on the opposite wall and surveyed it.

  ‘Just as I thought!’ He turned to Jack. ‘The Queenscliff murder could have been committed by the beekeeper.’ He lurched forward and held out a hand. ‘Ignatius Doyle.’

  Jack studied the hand uncertainly for a moment, then clenched his jaw. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  ‘Jack Mason.’

  ‘Jack,’ Mr Doyle mused. ‘That’s a good name. Did you enjoy the orphanage?’

  ‘Not very much. I’m glad to be out of there.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘Hmm.’

  The detective limped over to a small table. Jack realised the piles of furniture and bric-a-brac formed a sitting room. Mr Doyle inspected a collection of Bunsen burners and chemicals filtering their way through a maze of tubes and curved piping. He removed a large flask of bubbling brown liquid. ‘Care for a hot chocolate?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jack said, his mouth watering. ‘Please.’

  Mr Doyle indicated mismatching seats squashed around a fireplace. Jack glanced out a window and saw a woman hanging washing on a makeshift line slung between two balconies. On another level, a few floors below, two men sat on a pair of stools drinking cups of tea. One of them burst into laughter and fell backward off his seat. Jack suspected there was more than tea in the cups.

  Pushing aside a pile of books and a statue of the Eiffel Tower, Mr Doyle planted two mugs of steaming chocolate between them. ‘Hot chocolate,’ he said. ‘Elixir of the gods.’

  Jack gingerly sipped his drink. It was delicious. But...

  Could it be drugged? Mr Doyle and Gloria both seemed friendly, but was it all part of an evil plan? The temptation was too strong. He took another sip.

  Goodbye London, he thought. Hello India.

  ‘Ah, Bertha,’ Mr Doyle said, rising to his feet. He crossed to an empty fish tank, pulled a dead cricket from a nearby jar and dropped it in. Jack watched in some horror as an enormous spider scurried over to the cricket and started to devour it.

  ‘Haplopelma lividum,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘The Cobalt Blue Tarantula.’ He gazed fondly at the creature. ‘Do you have a favourite arachnid, Jack?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said. ‘Any spider that’s under my sho
e while I’m wearing it.’

  Mr Doyle looked at him, stupefied, until he got the joke and burst out laughing. ‘Oh, very droll. But I must warn you that Bertha can only be handled by someone trained in arachnology. I must ask you not to play with her unsupervised.’

  ‘I promise,’ Jack said, seeing no problems in keeping that particular pledge. He sat back and came face-to-face with a jar containing an eyeball.

  ‘Never fear,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘That’s not a human eye.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘At least, I don’t think it is. Now I must give you the grand tour.’

  The grand tour was something like a cross between a jaunt through the British Museum and navigating a jigsaw puzzle. Mr Doyle pointed out various objects of interest. ‘Shrunken heads from the Amazon. My complete collection of cigar ash from the Birmingham and Leeds districts. Now this is interesting.’

  They paused before a cupboard. On one shelf, assorted plates held samples of bread in different stages of decomposition. Moulds of various colours sprouted over the food. A small plate with a piece of cheese sat next to the others.

  ‘I’m conducting an experiment into the rate of decomposition of bread at room temperature,’ Mr Doyle explained. ‘It’s for a case I’m handling for the Surrey police.’

  ‘And the cheese?’

  ‘That’s just yesterday’s lunch. Left it here by accident.’ He popped the piece into his mouth. They continued around the apartment until Mr Doyle stopped before a picture in the hallway. It showed him when he was younger. An attractive woman stood next to him with her hair made up into a bun. She looked like she could have been a stage actress. A young boy stood between them.

  ‘My wife and son,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘Sadly, I lost Sarah to cholera. A tragic waste.’

  He did not mention his son. Clenching his jaw, Mr Doyle motioned Jack down the hall.

  ‘Here are your lodgings,’ he said.

  Jack looked through the door. His mouth fell open. My lodgings, he thought.

  The room measured about twelve square feet. Back at Sunnyside, Jack had shared an area of this size with seven other boys. Four sets of bunk beds crammed inside. The cell had contained a single window, a small, book-sized square of glass set high up on a wall, and at night a solitary gaslight lit the chamber in the brief hour before the boys went to bed.

  Jack stepped into his new bedroom. Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating a wardrobe, chest of drawers, a perfectly made bed and a desk. The walls were freshly painted. A sketch of a dog leaping over a stream decorated one wall. A door led off to one side.

  ‘Your bathroom is through there,’ Mr Doyle explained.

  My bathroom, Jack thought. I have a bathroom.

  He staggered over to the door. A toilet, shower, hand basin and bathtub filled the interior. Black and white tiles decorated the floor. A vase with a small bunch of posies sat on the basin.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind the flowers. They were Gloria’s idea.’

  Jack found it hard to speak. ‘The flowers are fine.’

  ‘My room is down the hall. Gloria lives at the far end. There are several other chambers I’ll show you later.’ Mr Doyle motioned about the room. ‘I should warn you: I will be testing your powers of observation. Do you notice anything unusual in here?’

  Jack peered about. ‘There’s a bone hanging on a hook above the doorway.’

  ‘Good boy.’ The detective told him it was the femur of a goat as he snatched it down. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ he warned. ‘There will be other tests.’

  Mr Doyle continued his tour through the huge apartment. Another experiment was being conducted on top of a filing cabinet—this one to discover how long it took for maggots to turn into flies.

  ‘Uh, Mr Doyle,’ Jack started.

  ‘Yes, my boy.’

  ‘What exactly is it you do?’

  ‘What do I do?’ Mr Doyle raised his eyebrows. ‘Why, I thought you knew.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’m a consulting detective,’ he explained.

  ‘And what is a consulting detective?’ Jack asked.

  Mr Doyle led them outside to a balcony overlooking Regent’s Park. Lines of airships formed a grid across the sky. Smoke rose from a thousand coal fires. A steam train chuffed between buildings as horns sounded distantly from the river Thames. The detective settled his thin frame into a wrought-iron chair and indicated for Jack to sit. He took another moment to pack a triple-chambered brass pipe with tobacco and light it.

  ‘The world has changed, Jack,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘And so have the criminals. The police are good enough when dealing with a run-of-the-mill scoundrel. Such a vagabond will often be caught in the act, or will simply confess when confronted by a burly constable.

  ‘But what can the police do when they are forced to deal with a criminal matching their own brainpower? Or an adversary of greater intelligence? Such people can get away with murder.’ Mr Doyle leaned forward. ‘When the police are stumped, they turn to me.’

  ‘I don’t keep up with the news,’ Jack said. ‘But I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you.’

  ‘I’m sure you have not,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘I am not keen to attract attention and the police are equally sparing with their recognition.’

  ‘And you solve all these crimes?’

  ‘Not all,’ the detective admitted. ‘I have an adversary, known only as Professor M, who has thwarted me for years. He is a puppet master. Others carry out his deeds and then he kills them before they can identify him. So I am not always successful, but I usually am.’

  ‘But how do you do it?’

  ‘I use the powers of observation and deduction,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘People frequently look, but rarely do they see. It is the role of a detective to collect the pieces of the jigsaw and assemble them into a comprehensible picture.’

  Jack glanced back into the apartment and noticed a sepia photograph on a small coffee table near the door. ‘Mr Doyle. Is that who I think it is?’

  Mr Doyle glanced at the picture. ‘Only if you think it is the King. If you thought it was a hump-backed gorilla, you would be mistaken.’

  ‘And you’re standing next to him!’

  ‘I assisted His Majesty in a small matter involving a diamond necklace, a plum pudding and a cat with three legs.’

  ‘That sounds amazing.’

  ‘I have solved far more interesting cases.’ Mr Doyle waved his pipe airily. He stood and paced the balcony. ‘That was in my younger days.’ The great detective fell silent. ‘Of course, I’m not the man I was. Oh, mentally I am. Probably more so. No, it’s my body, Jack. I’m not as fast, not as strong, and certainly not as sprightly.’

  Jack sat silent.

  ‘That’s where you come in,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘That’s why I need you.’

  Jack Mason tried to think of how he could be of assistance. ‘You mean, to run messages…or...?’

  ‘More,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘Possibly much more. I need someone who can go places where I cannot. I need a person with a younger mind. A fresh perspective! And I understand you come from a family of circus performers.’

  ‘I do.’ Jack felt a stab of pain at the memory. ‘We were trapeze artists. The Flying Sparrows. We were very good.’

  His mind drifted back to the circus, remembering how he had bounced on the net as his mother flew through the air from one trapeze to another. His father caught her and they both looked down at him and smiled.

  ‘I understand your parents were killed in an accident.’ Mr Doyle gave him a sympathetic look. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  Jack nodded. ‘We were one of the best troupes in the business.’

  ‘And now? How are your acrobatic skills?’

  ‘I’m a little rusty,’ Jack admitted. ‘I’ve tried to keep in practice. Still, I think you might be better with someone older...’

  Mr Doyle interrupted. ‘An adult can do many things, but you can do so many other things. Sometimes a young person may
ask questions or go places without fear or favour, all the while wearing a mask of innocence. I think you will be perfect for the job. If you’re interested, that is.’

  Jack gazed out at the skyline. Darkness had begun to fall and the first chill of night filled the air. He thought of the children back at Sunnyside. They would be eating their evening meal right now. An hour of free time would follow, then bed. Tomorrow would be the same pattern. And the day after.

  Mr Doyle seemed to sense his hesitation. ‘You don’t have to decide immediately. I’m sure you’ve had an enormous day. You must eat and rest. Would you like some cheese? I think there’s some in my pocket.’

  ‘No thanks, Mr Doyle.’

  The detective led Jack back to his bedroom. He spoke as Jack peered about the room again. ‘I have arranged a tutor for you. Miss Bloxley. She will teach you maths, French and Latin, history and politics.’

  ‘Latin,’ Jack repeated the word, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  The detective grunted. ‘I always hated it too.’ He motioned to the chest of drawers. ‘A selection of clothing. I hope it fits. I checked your size with Mr Daniels at the orphanage. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it and see you in the morning.’

  ‘Uh, Mr Doyle…’

  ‘Yes?’

  Jack pointed up at the hook above the door. ‘There’s now a piece of burnt toast up there.’

  ‘Good boy!’ The detective removed the toast and placed it into his coat. ‘I’ll save that for later.’

  Jack closed the door and changed for bed. The pyjamas were a little large, but very comfortable. Before he turned off the lamp, he reached into his jacket and examined the picture of his parents.

  It showed the three of them in their costumes. Above them hung a banner—The Flying Sparrows. His father was tall with a thin handlebar moustache and a cheery smile. His mother was very pretty; she looked like she could have portrayed Helen of Troy in a Grecian painting, except she wore a mischievous grin as if she’d just told the punchline of a joke. With some surprise, Jack realised he resembled his mother. He had never noticed before.

  He missed them. He missed the fun and the laughter and everything that made up their small family. It was always The Flying Sparrows versus the world. Turning the light out, he lay back and listened to the sounds of London: horse-drawn carriages, steamcars, men and women walking the neighbourhood. The faint glow of the gaslit streets cast ghostly shadows across his walls.