The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man - By Mark Hodder Page 0,74

in the extreme.

One journalist wrote:

In all the fifteen years I have spent reporting court dramas, I have never witnessed such a shambolic performance as that offered by the Tichborne Claimant. That anyone can doubt he is anything other than an audacious confidence trickster fair boggles this writer's mind.

Another countered with:

For shame! For shame! That a man should return home and be subjected to this pitiful circus! What foul plot has Sir Roger Tichborne in its clutches? For none who see him can possibly believe he is anyone other than the person he says he is.

The questioning continued through into July. During those hot, clammy weeks, the Claimant visibly swelled, growing so obese that the witness stand had to be rebuilt to accommodate him. His gums bled constantly, and when three of his back teeth dropped out, his speech became so difficult to follow that an amplifying screen was erected beside him.

Hawkins, by contrast, had been loud, erudite, and devastatingly effective.

"This person who presents himself to you as a lost aristocrat," he'd proclaimed to the jury, "is nothing but a conspirator, a perjurer, a forger, an impostor, a dastard - a villain!"

He'd then brought forth the first of his witnesses and had begun, piece by piece, to tear apart the Claimant's story.

By the third week of July, the jury had heard enough. They stopped the trial and asked the judge to allow them to come to a verdict. He agreed to their request.

The Claimant was found guilty of perjury. He was immediately arrested and incarcerated in Newgate Prison.

It was now a criminal matter.

Scotland Yard began to investigate his background.

So did Sir Richard Francis Burton.

The king's agent had travelled to New Orleans on the troop-carrying rotorship Pegasus. There he'd boarded a steamer, which transported him down to Buenos Aires, where he'd fallen in with an Englishman named William Maxwell, who was searching for his missing brother. Burton had helped, and the subsequent adventure - which he intended to log under the title The Case of the Wayward Wendigo - had, coincidentally, led to the completion of his mission.

He now reported the result to Lord Palmerston: "I know where Tomas Castro is."

"The man whose name the Claimant borrowed?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

Burton told him.

Lord Palmerston's eyebrows did not shoot upward, but that was only because they were no longer capable of such a movement.

"You need to speak to him," he said.

The king's agent grunted his agreement.

They spoke for a further forty minutes, then the prime minister turned his attention to a pile of parliamentary papers.

"I have to deal with matters of economy and foreign policy now, Captain. You are dismissed."

Burton rose to leave.

"One more thing - "

"Yes, sir?"

"In your report - these Eyes of N?ga stones - "

"Yes?"

"They're not the only black diamonds in existence. Am I correct?"

"You are, sir. There are others. However, the Eyes seem to be the only ones possessed of the peculiar properties that Sir Charles Babbage noted."

"Hmm."

Burton made to move to the door.

"Wait!" Palmerston snapped. "I have - I have a confession to make."

"A confession, sir?"

"I have not been entirely truthful with you. At the end of the Spring Heeled Jack case, I informed you that Edward Oxford's time-jumping suit had been destroyed."

"It hasn't?" asked Burton, with mock surprise. He'd never believed that particular assertion.

"No, it hasn't. I wanted it examined. If you recollect, Oxford wore a circular device attached to the front of it."

"I remember."

"The machinery inside it is baffling. There are no moving parts, for a start. My people have yet to identify a single component of the thing they can understand."

"So?"

"So they found six small black diamonds fitted into the device."

"Do they emit a low, almost inaudible hum, Prime Minister?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, they do."

"Then in all probability, sometime in the future, they will be cut from one of the Eyes of N?ga."

The rapid clicks and scrapes of a fencing match filled Burton's study. It was combat a la Florentine - he and Admiral Lord Nelson were holding long knives in their off-hands, using them as a secondary defence.

Burton was being forced backward around one of his three desks by his valet. As he came abreast a bookcase, the clockwork man "broke time," suddenly changing the tempo of his attack, which caused Burton to miscalculate his parry. It was a classic move, but exercised with such speed and precision that it completely fooled the king's agent, whose foil flew wide. The brass man followed up with a balestra - a forward hop - and an attaque composee,