The Case of the Night-walking Automaton

(Originally published in eSteampunk, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2013)

“The thefts occurred here,” said Mr. Caldwell of the Bank of England.

Miss Holmes and I stood in the vault of his Paris branch, surrounded by walls of small steel compartments. Those compartments concealed enormous wealth.

“Since I wrote to Sherlock Holmes,” he continued, “two more thefts have occurred, Mr. Booth.” The banker clasped his hands anxiously. “I had hoped that as a fellow Englishman, Mr. Holmes would respond more quickly.”

“Mr. Holmes’ demise was unexpected,” I said. “You were fortunate that I am here in Paris as his solicitor, delivering his unsolved case files to his French daughter.”

“I was not aware that the esteemed Mr. Holmes was married.”

The young woman rolled her eyes, and I gave an embarrassed cough. Miss Holmes had no patience for the expectations of polite society.

“Would you indicate the burgled compartments, s’il vous plaît?” she asked.

As he had previously, the banker feigned an inability to understand her Parisian accent. He would communicate only with me, as if I were a medium for the late Sherlock Holmes’ spirit. I repeated her question to Mr. Caldwell.

He referred to his ledger book and pointed out the four compartments. All four were within the same steel wall, but not in close proximity. Unlocking any security box required two keys: one possessed by the bank and one by the client. No client was allowed in the vault without the presence of a bank employee.

“Clearly an inside job,” I stated, using the vernacular of crime novels I had read.

The banker frowned. “I assure you that all my men are of the most upright moral character.”

Miss Holmes took a vanity compact from her handbag. Opening it, she blew puffs of white powder around one of the security boxes the banker had pointed out.

Mr. Caldwell looked aghast. “What is the woman doing?”

“Observe the circles,” said Miss Holmes.

I saw that the dust faintly outlined circles approximately two inches in diameter. Miss Holmes and her compact followed the trail of them horizontally and vertically. The trail ended at a box below the level of her bodice. She blew more powder around that box.

“Nine sets of tracks,” she said. “Nine boxes have been burgled.”

“Nine!” exclaimed the banker, not bothering to conceal that he understood her this time. “Not possible. There were only four thefts.”

“Four reported so far,” she said. “Who owns this box, s’il vous plaît?”

He turned to me, obliging me to repeat her question, then replied, “The Bank of England honors the confidentiality of its clients.”

“If you wish the crime solved,” she insisted, “I must examine the contents of this box.”

After much protestation, Mr. Caldwell agreed to open the box using the bank’s master keys, but not in our presence. We seated ourselves comfortably in leather armchairs in the client parlor, where a French butler offered us tea.

After a few minutes the banker rejoined us, a puzzled expression on his face. “You may inspect the contents.”

His change of heart surprised me, but I soon saw the reason. He had slid the drawer out of the compartment, setting it on a marble tabletop. Within, almost filling the box, lay the most curious piece of machinery I had ever seen.

Miss Holmes pushed me aside for a better view.

“Babbage cards,” she murmured, indicating a rack of cards in the mechanism. “But miniaturized as I have never seen.”

“For a Difference Engine?”

“Far cleverer than that, monsieur. Do you hear the ticking?”

I heard a noise within the apparatus. “Perhaps it is a music box.”

She gave her quiet French laugh, then lifted the mechanism from the drawer. Cradling it like a baby, she pointed out details of its construction.

“Observe the clock here, monsieur. Not set to the current time, but running in reverse, counting time until the automaton is activated at night. These sets of wheels are rimmed with India rubber suction cups that press against the smooth wall to ensure an adhesive seal.” She turned the mechanism upside down. “Do you see the two keys held by clamps? The automaton walks along the wall like a wall lizard, measuring out steps as instructed by the Babbage cards. When it reaches the compartment to be burgled, it extends and turns the keys, partially withdraws the drawer and transfers the contents to its holding bin.”

“And then returns here,” I marveled, “where the owner of this box removes the contents when the bank reopens the next day.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“I shall notify the authorities at once,” said the banker, his face flushed, “and have the scoundrel apprehended.”

“It will be in the Paris journals, of course,” said Miss Holmes casually. “Nine boxes burgled at the Bank of England.”

The blood drained from the banker’s face. “The publicity!”

“My associate and I could...” she offered.

“Apprehend the thief? Jolly good!”

“But we can’t–” I began.

Miss Holmes kicked my shin sharply, barely ruffling her skirts. Mr. Caldwell saw nothing.

“We are honored to offer assistance,” she said. “We shall require the name and address of the owner of this compartment, as well as those of the burgled compartments.”

Mr. Caldwell nodded understandingly. “So as to recover the stolen property, of course.”

Miss Holmes and I left the bank shortly thereafter, list in hand.

“Are you daft?” I hissed. “I am no pugilist. What if this thief is a hardened criminal, even armed?”

“That should be the least of your concerns,” said Miss Holmes demurely, “for we are dealing with a secretive brotherhood, not just one man.”

“What?!”

“When I turned over the automaton, I observed a symbol on its base for Les fils de Napoléon: the Sons of Napoleon.”

“Then we must certainly go to the police!”

“The motives and methods of Les fils de Napoléon are obscure, Monsieur Booth. But one thing that is certain is that their members pervade many elements of French society. The gendarmes, for example.”

“Even the police? But they must be stopped! British citizens have been robbed!”

“British? Monsieur Caldwell’s list shows that the proprietors of the burgled compartments were Prussian.”

“That means nothing! Even my queen’s lineage is steeped in German blood.”

She sighed. “You fail to see the patterns at work here, Monsieur Booth.”

I could not parry her argument, for I rarely see the patterns Miss Holmes sees. She can find clues in a dropped matchstick or a scent in a room.

“Despite what I said to Monsieur Caldwell,” she said, “my first objective is not to apprehend Monsieur Lefèvre, the box owner, but to observe him. I predict we shall find an inventor whose motives go beyond mere burglary.”

Paris lacks the underground trains of London, so we hired a steam carriage to take us to Mr. Lefèvre’s address. Miss Holmes insisted we stop a block away.

“This is the District of Machines,” she said, pointing out the tall smokestacks of steam engines towering around us. The air vibrated with the clank and rumble of machinery. Ash drifted down from the sky. So many powered conveyances traveled the streets that I doubted anyone would have noticed the simple one we left awaiting our return.

Mr. Lefèvre’s home was more than a house. It was a small factory. What it manufactured was a mystery, though, for the high windows were shuttered, their louvers tilted upward to let in light but not prying eyes. Along the walls grew flowering shrubs as tall as my head. An infestation of hummingbirds darted from flower to flower.

Miss Holmes pushed through the shrubbery to the wall and opened her handbag. From within she drew out a thin brass telescoping rod, which she extended to its full length, and a small convex mirror she attached to the rod. The window was still too high up the wall. She stooped to unbutton her calfskin shoes, then turned to me.

“Would you be so good as to...?”

I cupped my hands as if helping her to mount a horse.

Not satisfied with that height, she clambered onto my shoulders. Her skirts draped my head so I could see nothing in front of me.

“This is most improper!” I whispered.

“Undoubtedly.”

“What do you see in your mirror?”

“The factory is building automatons.”

“For more bank-burgling?”

“No. These are steam-powered giants twice the height of the men working on them. Each rides on three lorry wheels and has articulating steel arms operated by gears and pulleys. They are painted in the tri-colors of the French republic.”

Light as she was, her stockinged feet upon my shoulders were becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

After a few minutes, Miss Holmes climbed down and put her shoes back on. She hummed thoughtfully.

“These Napoleons are building an army!” I whispered.

“Scarcely an army,” she said calmly. “I counted twelve. And each steam engine must be stoked with coal, each set of Babbage cards prepared for an operation. One does not wage large scale war thusly.”

“Each operation in a campaign?”

“Order of questions is important, Monsieur Booth. When comes before what. I observed that all twelve of the machines were in an identical, completed state. The workers were no longer assembling, but rather polishing. A white-bearded gentleman at the front of the factory sat punching holes in Babbage cards. Preparations are nearly complete.”

“Complete for what?”

“Next comes where, Monsieur Booth.” She pushed aside the shrubbery to point to the street. “As we approached the factory, I observed twelve identical steam lorries parked alongside. Do you see what is painted on the sides?”

The lorries were marked Frères Lefèvre, Expositions de Son et Lumière. It took me a moment to translate. “So they are mere carnival entertainers?”

Miss Holmes sighed deeply. “These are members of Les fils de Napoléon, who have burgled the Bank of England.”

I furrowed my brow. “Then who are they entertaining? Of course! Who is the next question. And Queen Victoria arrives at the Palace of Versailles tomorrow for a celebration in her honor.”

Miss Holmes nodded.

“Then we must notify the embassy at once!”

“Neither you nor I have the reputation of my esteemed father, Monsieur Booth. And we have no proof.”

“But the banker...”

“Wishes no publicity.”

I thought for a bit, arriving at no solution. “What’s to be done?”

“We must be at the Palace of Versailles tomorrow.”

#

“We could still warn them,” I grumbled. It was the next day, and we stood with the crowd, all clothed in their finery and awaiting the queen’s steam carriage.

Miss Holmes, dressed in the colors of the republic, shook her head. “I believe Les fils de Napoléon have France’s honor at heart. They have no quarrel with our ally Victoria. Indeed, if they accepted daughters as well as sons, I might have been lured into their ranks. No, there is something else afoot here.”

I feared that Miss Holmes’ French sympathies blinded her to the danger to my queen. Mr. Lefèvre’s lorries had stopped in the open square, the Place d’Armes, unloading his automatons. With the machines’ painted French uniforms, the crowd believed they were entertainment for the queen. Each held a French flag rippling in the breeze, but they stood motionless as Mr. Lefèvre’s men fired their boilers. Then on Babbage-programmed cue they began wheeling along the avenue as onlookers clapped. The automatons paused every hundred feet to spin in a circle as they waved their flags. The spectacle seemed harmless enough, but I watched them suspiciously.

Miss Holmes, however, was looking neither at the automatons nor in the direction of the royal carriage. She watched a side street. I followed her gaze to see three steam cars blocking the passage like a cork in a Champagne bottle. All three had their boilers fired, gray smoke puffing from exhaust stacks.

Abruptly, with a shriek of steam, the car in the middle rose on hydraulic pipes attached to the cars on either side. The bonnets of all three vehicles slid to shield the glass windscreens and the drivers within. This new arrangement revealed that the center car had a naval cannon mounted in front.

“A trick!” I cried. “The automatons were only a diversion!”

The side cars surged forward under full steam. The center car, now twenty feet in the air, tilted its cannon downward. The crowd screamed, panicked men and women running to get out of the way. As the weapon on wheels reached the main avenue, it turned, accelerating toward the queen’s carriage.

But in the avenue before it, I saw men by the twelve automatons pull a lever on the back of each. Babbage cards spilled onto the cobblestones.

“As I surmised, they prepared a second program,” explained Miss Holmes calmly.

Indeed, the brightly painted automatons now dropped their flags and stretched arms to link together. They rolled not toward the queen, but toward the cannon tower on wheels.

The racing steam cars at the weapon’s base slammed into the barrier of automatons. With a roar of exploding boilers, the automatons fell like dominos. But their arms were still locked together, and the steam cars jerked to a halt in the wreckage. The center car atop the hydraulic pipes swayed like a drunken puppet, then toppled forward, crashing cannon-first onto the cobblestones.

For a moment there was only the hiss of steam from twisted machinery. Then scattered shouts grew into cheers from the crowd.

French gendarmes surrounded the wreck, rifles trained on the three smashed steam cars. Slowly the doors opened and soldiers emerged from within, hands in the air. They wore uniforms of the German Empire.

“The Kaiser’s men!” I said.

Miss Holmes nodded. “They meant to strike fear into the heart of our alliance.”

“And the burgled compartments at the bank were Prussian.”

“Oui,” said Miss Holmes. “So Monsieur Caldwell need not expect the owners to return to the bank.”

“And the inventor?”

“I expect he will soon be painting medals on a new batch of automatons.”