'I am. That is, the son-'
'Yeah, right. Sure.' The lady looked up at him and squeezed his arm in some manner of signal. He fell silent, frowning and pinching his lower lip, as if gathering his thoughts. When he spoke again, his words were wrapped in a mannered formality.
'Mr Dower,' he said, bowing slightly. 'I have the pleasure of your acquaintance. Um, that is, let me introduce myself. Scape – Graeme Scape.' He shifted the cane and extended a gloved hand, then, upon receiving another warning squeeze from the lady, withdrew it while muttering another incomprehensible word under his breath. 'This is Jane – I mean, Miss McThane. May I present. Whatever.'
She parted the folds of her shawl enough to reveal the white curve of her throat. I stammered some simple pleasantry, the heat of my blood blossoming across my face. The smile Miss McThane bestowed on me was of a disturbing frankness that I had encountered only once before, when, a fresh-arrived innocent in London, I had chanced to stroll through the Burlington Arcade and had been approached by a seeming lady and greeted with a such-like smile and a murmured 'Are you good-natured, dear?' – an offer clear to even one as naive as myself. Then I had been able to flee that precinct of glittering jewellers'-windows and even more glittering women, and thus maintain my innocence. In the confines of my own shop, however, I felt myself cornered and stalked by the scarlet smile and discreetly lowered sable lashes.
My transfixed gaze was broken away from hers by the sharp rap of Scape's cane upon the floor. As though startled awake from a guilt-provoking dream, I looked around at him.
'Mr Dower.' His smile pulled his mouth lopsided, as though we shared some conspirators' knowledge between us. 'I'd like to talk some business over with you. Okay? I mean… that all right with you?'
Some aspect of his manner, an oddity in his bearing, puzzled me. He had not the polished presentation of self that marks the aristocratic gentleman born to wealth and position. Nor the assured forthrightness, blunt of word and face, that characterizes the new entrepreneurial class whose money and mercantile ideas have obscured so much of the national landscape within this generation, like the smoke from their foundries and chuffing engines of commerce. Not a foreigner; however strange his choice of phrase, it seemed clear that English of some district was his native tongue. Charlatanism or knavery of another ilk rose in my mind as the possible explanation, yet the gentleman – if gentleman he was – displayed no part of that sidling, herpetoid insinuation by which the diddler places himself inside the victim's confidence. In the space of a few seconds, my mind skittered from one hypothesis to the next, all the while pursued and confused by the ineradicable image of dark eyes and snow-white throat.
'Well? You okay?'
The impatient bark of the self-designated Scape brought me out of my muddled reverie. The blue lenses drew closer – to my face, the eyes behind endeavouring to discern my health.
'Yes… yes, of course.' I stammered out the words, watching myself in the dark mirrors of his spectacles, careful to keep my gaze from straying to the gently smiling visage of his companion. 'Terribly sorry; the fatigue of a long day, I'm afraid.' I stepped behind the shop counter and spread my hands along its smooth surface. 'How may I assist you?'
Scape disengaged his arm from his companion's embrace and folded his hands upon the silver head of his walking stick. Miss McThane drifted with her teasing smile to examine one of the clocks on the wall, staying within hearing distance of any talk. 'Maybe you've heard about me already, Dower.' He lifted a hand to withdraw a card from an inside pocket; which he then laid on the counter in front of me.
'I don't believe so.' Ordinary courtesy, and a shopkeeper's self-interest, ruled out a direct disavowal. 'Perhaps…' I looked down at the pasteboard square on the counter. In florid lettering, it announced
The word Automata triggered a wary attitude on my part. Of that segment of my father's career concerned with the production of lifelike human figures capable of motion, speech, and other appurtenances of flesh and blood, I had, from the bitter upshot of my own dabbling with the devices my father had left behind, learned to deny any knowledge. The scenes of chaos inside the church of Saint Mary Alderhythe, kept from public scandal by the good offices and influence of the parish authorities, had been sufficient warning for me. If this gentleman's interest in my wares and services were limited to clockwork jiggery that imitated corporeal habits, then there was no possibility of commerce between us. The inflections of my voice were guarded as I pushed the card with one finger back across the counter.
'No,' I spoke, shaking my head, 'I'm afraid not. Doubtless, if I had more time for edifying culture, I would be familiar with your contributions. Still-'
'Don't sweat it,' interrupted Scape, dismissing my ignorance with a wave of his hand.
'Pardon?'
'I'll send you some tickets, next time we play London.' He swayed on the pivot of his cane, watching his uplifted hand paint an imaginary scene above our heads. 'Bright lights, names all lit up in neon; you bring your girlfriend around to the box office, they'll give you the best seats in the house-'
'I'm not sure I follow…' His manner had become excited and effusive, and I didn't catch the meaning, possibly lewd, of some of his words. His companion laid her hand on his arm, which had some calming effect.
'Forget it,' said Scape. 'No problem.'
Miss McThane brought her sly smile around to me again. 'We've been touring abroad a great deal. It rubs off, you know? The way they talk, and stuff.' In this, the longest speech she had directed to me, the same odd accent and diction appeared, that I had noticed in the gentleman's voice.
'Yeah, right,' agreed Scape. 'Those crazy Italians. Hah. Wild – really wild.'
'How may I help you?' I said, hoping to move the conversation to a productive vein.
'Business – yeah.' He swivelled his gaze around, searching among the clock faces, then back to me. 'These, uh, automata I got – I take 'em around to places. And they do their bit. You follow me?'
I could see my politely reserved expression doubled in the blue lenses trained on me. 'I believe so. You refer, I take it, to musical performances-'
'You got it, jack.'
'And these mechanical devices that form your troupe – are they of your own creation?' I wished to draw him out, gently as possible, to find the actual extent of his knowledge of clockwork musicians.
'No – no.' Scape shook his head. 'I got 'em from what's his name…'
'Jackey Droze,' supplied Miss McThane.
It took a moment for the words to spark anything in my memory. 'You mean Jacquet-Droz,' I said. The name of the eighteenth-century Swiss watchmaker, and the two sons that followed in their father's career (with more success than I had on a similar course), was familiar to me, as it had once been to all Europe. Indeed, Creff had informed me that my father had once travelled expressly to Lisbon in order to examine the devices christened by their maker Charles the Scribe, Henri the Draughtsman, and The Musician. The senior Dower's interest in, and efforts towards perfecting, the mechanical similitude of human action, presumably dated from that Portuguese visit.
'That's the guy,' said Scape.
'You are, then, the current owner of the celebrated organ-playing figure?' I knew that the mechanical woman, reputed by some to have been modelled by Pierre Jacquet-Droz after his own wife, had changed hands many times after the watchmaker and his sons had toured with their creations before the Continent's crowned heads.
'Uh, no, actually-' An echo of my own wariness entered Scape's manner. 'Some other ones that he made.'
'Others?'
'Yeah. A, uh, trumpet player and a couple of… what's that other thing called… with the strings? – cello. That's it – two cello players.'
'Extraordinary.' I rubbed my chin, feigning the depth of my musing. 'I never heard tell of any such musical devices crafted by Jacquet-Droz.'
Scrape gave a diffident shrug. 'Well, you see, he never showed 'em to anybody. They just sorta stayed in the family, you know? And then I bought 'em off the old guy's great-grandson.'
'I see.' Indeed I did; whatever suspicions I'd had of this extraordinary person's less than honest intent had been all but confirmed by his exposition. Jacquet-Droz's skill in clockwork had, by all reports that have come down to the modern day, been eclipsed only by his genius for showmanship and self-promotion. The notion that he would
