The Mechanical Detective

by John Longenbaugh

About the Author: John Longenbaugh is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest, whose multi-media Victorian Alternate History series BRASS has been heard across the country on radio, seen as a live theater show in Seattle, and available for viewing wherever you are via two new short films. Visit him at johnlongenbaugh.com and battlegroundproductions.org.

Excerpt

It was a raw April afternoon in 1889, the rain on the window pane streaked pea-soup yellow from the morning’s fog, and I was sitting in the parlor that I shared with Ponder Wright, the man known throughout London as the Mechanical Detective. He was reading a copy of the Times and I sat across from him, staring idly at my empty glass, half-asleep from the ennui of the weather and a day empty of employment. Abruptly my friend spoke, his voice carrying that odd undertone of metallic echo from the copper plating of his chin and upper larynx.

“The measurements are one point eight grams of sodium bicarbonate, and slightly less, one point six four, of tartaric acid. Both powders are located in the top left drawer of my laboratory desk.” He then turned a page of the paper, sending it and the sleeve of the red silk dressing gown he wore this afternoon fluttering. “And mind you measure them out precisely.”

I stared at him in astonishment. As his friend and mechanic, I believed I had a fair overview of Ponder Wright’s myriad abilities. Yet till now I had not been aware that he could read minds.

“What? Why?”

“Because, my dear Danvers, the gasogene that you purchased last Tuesday, which I deemed a silly frivolity, requires those two chemicals to operate.”

“And how did you know I was thinking of filling and operating the gasogene?” Wright lowered his copy of the Times and looked at me, his blue left eye merry and the lens of his right eye glowing an ember red from within the copper plating of the right side of his face.

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