First Three Chapters of:
London, Where It All Began
Dr. McTrowell Alights
Entry for July 5, 2010 Written by Katherine L. Morse
In the hustle and bustle of the London airship port, she was hardly noticed. The ground-sweeping leather duster would look out of place on the Marleybone high street. It was only slightly unusual among the international air travelers owing to its being worn by a woman and a slight one at that. One or two of the air stevedores took note of the wisps of blonde hair poking out from under her aviator’s cap and the well-turned ankle barely concealed by buttoned ankle boots, but the icy look in her eyes when she removed her goggles suggested more trouble than such a small morsel might be worth. She signaled one of the air stevedores with a whistle and pointed to several travel-worn trunks. From a pocket concealed inside the duster she produced an engraved calling card and an elaborately enameled pen. She flipped over the card and rapidly scrawled an address on the back. Pulling a florin from another hidden pocket, she handed both to the stevedore, turned on the heel of her boot, and strode off into the melee of the airship port, completely trusting that the generous tip would be sufficient to ensure the safe delivery of her belongings. The stunned stevedore bit into the coin to verify it and checked the address. He heaved the trunks onto his cart. Only then did he turn over the calling card. It read simply, Dr. Sparky McTrowell.
Curious to a Fault, in which Chief Inspector Drake is Introduced
Entry for July 19, 2010 Written by David L. DrakeThe furniture wasn’t actually new. The desk showed signs of wear, and one of the drawers didn’t operate smoothly. The springs in the chair that allowed it to rock back a bit squeaked, and the wheels had seen better days. But for Chief Inspector Erasmus Drake, the office felt new. With his recently appointed title, and the office that went with it, Erasmus sat and looked out at the teams of constables, taking on the myriad of minor cases that had popped up today. But in the wake of the last major case, all of these were standard procedure, run of the mill crimes. The perpetrator was most likely known, in most cases already in lock up, and if protocol was followed properly, going to be tried and sentenced without incident. Three such cases had been turned over to the magistrate this morning. Scotland Yard was running in its usual efficient manner.
Erasmus was taking all of this in. He was in his den of quiet reflection, while the workers buzzed in the hive. He was rewarded for a job well done, after months of grueling police work, and here he sat.
The comfort of success lasted less than five minutes. The leftover details, mostly unrelated to the closed case, were gnawing at his penchant to resolve loose ends. There was that eyewitness who mentioned the unexpected overwhelming smell of freshly ground coffee in the back of a temporary exhibit room at the grand pavilion. Or was it cocoa? The room was for electrical apparatus, not the dispensing of food, nor entertaining. What was the name of that witness? Mr. Hamstead? It would be in his notes, he knew, but why ferret them back out. They were filed away with the closed case.
And this wasn’t the only remaining unturned stone. Why was Mr. Hamstead, if that was his name, who was of questionable character, running errands for the likes of Professor Farnsworth? The professor had many students who could perform these manual tasks for him, and with greater clarity of purpose.
These questions not only nagged at Erasmus, but set up shop in the back of his mind, and went about tinkering in such a manner as to spring to life more questions, who then joined in with their shop-mates.
“Enough,” he thought. He sprung up from his chair, grabbed his cane and bowler, and headed out of his office, into the bustle of the precinct, and toward the street. “This curiousness will not stand unsolved.”
Bloomsbury
Entry for July 26, 2010 Written by Katherine L. MorseToting only her commodious flight surgeon’s bag, Dr. McTrowell headed toward the line of hansom cabs. While such a mode of transportation was unseemly and “racy” for a lady of quality, it wouldn’t be her most inappropriate activity of the day. As she approached the first cab in the line, the driver gave her attire a quizzical look. Surely a woman wasn’t going to hire his cab alone. She strode up to his cab smartly. He gave her another quizzical look as it became apparent that she indeed intended to hire his services, but he kept his mouth shut since money is money, after all. “University College, please,” she said to the driver as she stepped up into the hansom without hesitation. He was beyond astonishment as he mumbled, “Yes mum.”
The scene in Bloomsbury was incongruous to say the least. While most of the streets reflected their usual quiet, residential nature, if one turned off the busy thoroughfare of Euston Road onto Gower Road, one would have been greeted by the site of a melee of cabs and private carriages disgorging a motley crew of variously attired characters. Some would have appeared normal if rendered in a broadside illustration, but only because such an illustration would not reflect the garish colors of the living soul; perhaps the wearers were colorblind. Others wore more restrained hues, but combined contemporary attire with recognizably anachronistic articles of clothing as if they were time travelers lacking effective research skills. One such individual, a strikingly handsome and exotic young man, appeared Indian to Dr. McTrowell. Many carried parcels of varying sizes or contraptions and mechanisms of unfathomable function. And then there were those truly remarkable individuals who exhibited the totality of these anomalies including some who appeared to be wearing their inventions.
Dr. McTrowell observed the maelstrom from her cab while she waited for the driver to maneuver her closer to the curb in front of University College, London. Certainly there was no guessing what was in the closed parcels, but she could divine the intent of some of the openly carried contraptions. The wood box with the miniature steam engine attached to the outlet valve of a glass sphere of ether was probably an ether compressor. The oxygen depriving facility of such a device could be very dangerous in an enclosed space. As she was contemplating the sort of mind that could devise such a dastardly contrivance, her mood was lifted by the arrival of an individual riding rather than carrying his contrivance, or rather, conveyance. It was a spider-like walking machine that chugged and lurched toward the building, its “driver” smiling triumphantly. And then he attempted to surmount the stairs. The spider tottered; the gears ground as he shifted them; he grabbed and adjusted several levers; the steam engine on the back wheezed and strained; and spider toppled, unceremoniously dumping its inventor on the ground. Dr. McTrowell did her best to suppress an uncharitable smile.
Just as she was turning around from paying the cab driver, she spotted a couple just entering the building. No, not a couple per se, but a man and a woman simply walking together. Seeing them from the back and at a distance she couldn’t be sure, but they looked like Mr. Babbage and the Countess Lovelace. Well, they would certainly lend an air of respectability to the proceedings. With her attention diverted to the pair, she didn’t turn quite in time to get a fix on something just at the edge of her vision, something of a brown shadow…and a bowler. She shook her head to try to erase the tingling in the back of her neck. As she entered the building, she passed a sign on an easel with elaborate lettering, Annual Symposium of the Occidental Inventors’ Society.
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