Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables (29 page)

That was just one of countless run-ins the Bowery Boys had with other street gangs, but thanks to the amazing Mose, they always gave better than they got.

I
t was some months after Professor Tolliver’s visit that Sykesky came hurrying into the Green Dragon Saloon, carrying a broadsheet he’d torn from a wall. “I told you that professor was trouble!” he exclaimed heatedly.

Mose frowned at the poster, which was printed in the florid type usually reserved for circuses and political rallies. “What’s it say?” he asked as he eyed the illustration depicting a man in a frock coat and glasses standing on a stage, pointing to a bulky, square-shouldered giant who was wearing a suspiciously familiar stovepipe hat and carrying a fire axe in one hand.

“‘The Esteemed Professor Tolliver Will Be Demonstrating His Automatic Fireman to All Interested Parties This Thursday Evening at Campion Hall at Eight O’clock,’” Sykesky read aloud, contempt dripping off every word. “‘See the Automatic Fireman Extinguish an Inferno! See the Automatic Fireman Perform a Rescue from a Great Height! Marvel at the Future of Automatonic Firefighting! The Automatic Fireman Is the Greatest Firefighter of This or Any Age! Greater Than Even the Famed Mose the Fireboy, the Colossus of Broome Street! An Educational and Edifying Evening Is Promised to All Who Attend! Admission Is One Half Dime.’”

“It says
what
?” Mose exclaimed, biting his cigar in two as if it were a piece of cheese. He snatched away the offending broadsheet and pushed his stovepipe forward so that the brim dipped down onto his brow. “We’ll just see about
that
!”

“P
-p-please, sirs!” the usher said, holding up his hands in a feeble attempt to halt the angry wall of young men bearing down on him. “You can’t enter the lecture hall without paying admission!”

Mose’s response was to grab the usher’s shirtfront with a
hand the size of a Virginia ham, lift him off his feet, and deposit him to one side of the door as easily as he would move a potted plant.

The audience turned as one as the doors to the auditorium slammed open and a battalion of angry soaplocks poured across the threshold, yelling at the top of their lungs. Upon seeing the swarm of uncouth, working-class slum dwellers, the gentlemen in attendance shouted in outrage, while several ladies dutifully fell into swoons.

Professor Tolliver stood on the stage, addressing the crowd from behind a lectern. Standing next to him was a massive metallic figure, ten feet in height, that was, at least in its general dimensions, an exact replica of Mose fashioned from copper, right down to his signature beaver hat. However, although it shared the Bowery Boy’s height and bulk, its jointed metal right arm ended in a fire axe, while its left arm was made of a corrugated metal tube. It had a face similar to those found on the mannequins at the wax museum, save for its eyes, which resembled the large, circular lenses found in telescopes, but with mechanical irises. A series of canvas hoses were connected to the automaton, with the farthest ends attached to a small pump engine and a leather helmet fitted with strange goggles and a large metal box covered with levers and dials, affixed to a heavy leather vest. Both of these unusual articles of clothing rested atop a table next to the podium.

“Here, now!” the professor said sharply, his pince-nez dropping from his nose. “What is the meaning of this interruption?”

“You know why we’re here, Professor!” Mose replied. “When I agreed to let you study me, I didn’t know you were plotting to replace me with a damned windup toy!” Upon hearing the collective gasp from the audience, the gang leader turned and tipped his gargantuan hat. “Please pardon my French, my dear ladies.”

“Mr. Humphries,” Professor Tolliver replied icily, “I most distinctly recall informing you of my intention to make available to every municipality in America its very own Mose the Fireboy. You never asked me
how
I proposed to do so. And as for my Automatic Fireman being a ‘windup toy’—I’ll have you know he is the
latest advance in automatonic technology, combining clockwork, steam power, and hydraulics in one package.”

“It’s still backstabbin’, whatever you call it!” Sykesky growled. “You’re tryin’ to put us out of business!”

“As well he should!” shouted a man in the audience, his face red with indignation. “Fighting fires is far too important a task to be left to gangs of toughs looking to line their pockets at our expense!”

A couple of the Bowery Boys stepped forward to beat an apology out of the man, but Mose waved them back into line. “Now, that’s gratitude!” he spat. “We risk our lives every day: Hogleg Jack got burnt up in the South Street fire just the other day; Scotty Brown had a roof fall on him; Soapy Miller lost a leg when he dropped through the floorboards cartin’ an old lady out of a fire on Delancey. All we ask for our efforts is an honorarium from the insurance companies. But you act as if we set the fires ourselves!”

“Sometimes you
do
!” the angry man replied. “And then you steal half of what you ‘save’ from the fire!”

“Perhaps the Dead Rabbits are low enough to resort to arson to drum up business, but I assure you, my good man, that the Bowery Boys do not stoop to such methods!” Mose said firmly.

“I’m not looking to put you and your compatriots out of work, Mr. Humphries,” Professor Tolliver explained. “I’m trying to make your job easier and safer. You yourself just stated how hazardous firefighting can be. My Automatic Fireman can do anything you and your men can do, without fear of losing human life or limb. In this day and age, there is no need to recklessly endanger the welfare of humans if a machine can be made to do the same job.”

“That’s what they told my grandfather when they brought in the spinning wool-carders,” Sykesky said bitterly. “Machines be damned! My boss can best that clockwork man of yours! Ain’t that right, Mose?”

Mose nodded, folding his apelike arms across his expansive chest. “I’m willing to put myself up against your Automatic Fireman, but not as part of no two-bit dog-and-pony show. If you
want to prove your Automatic Fireman is up to snuff, it has to be during a
real
fire.”

“Very well, Mr. Humphries,” Professor Tolliver replied with a confident smile. “I accept your challenge.”

T
he clock was striking midnight as the Bowery Boys made their mad dash from their firehouse toward the ruddy glow on the horizon. The fire was on Ludlow Street, and Mose could already tell by the wind blowing fresh from the river that they were going to be in for a bad fight.

Flames raged from the third-floor windows of the five-story tenement, illuminating the neighborhood for some distance. Disoriented parents, who had escaped the blazing inferno, roamed the street in nothing but their nightclothes, desperately seeking other family members, while terrified children called for their mothers amid the turmoil. Despite the lateness of the hour, the street was thronged with hundreds of spectators from the neighboring, closely packed buildings, who were fearful of remaining in their homes should the conflagration spread even farther.

A cheer rang out from the crowd as they saw Mose’s strapping silhouette outlined against the flames. As he turned to instruct his men, there came a piercing wail, like that of a kettle on the boil, only a hundred times louder. Mose turned in the direction of the noise and saw what looked like a man wearing an octopus on his head, riding on a pump engine pulled by the Automatic Fireman.

Billows of steam rose from the automaton’s stovepipe hat, feeding the whistle attached to its brim. A set of casters were affixed to the Automatic Fireman’s feet, allowing the machine to propel itself down the street like a skater gliding across a frozen pond. As the outlandish fire engine came to a halt, Mose realized the man on the engine was none other than Professor Tolliver, and what he had mistaken for an octopus was actually the Medusa-like helmet he’d glimpsed at the lecture hall. He was also wearing the leather vest with the control box mounted on his
chest, its coils tethering creator to invention like a bizarre marionette.

The moment the Automatic Fireman’s odd chariot came to a halt, a couple of young college students leaped down and quickly set about removing the rigid pipe that connected the automaton to the pump engine’s reservoir and replacing it with a lengthy canvas hose. Also riding along on Tolliver’s pump engine were a number of journalists, including the reporter from the
National Police Gazette
.

“Are you daft, man?” Mose bellowed.

“
Au contraire
, Mr. Humphries.” Professor Tolliver smiled, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead in order to look the Bowery Boy in the eye. “I have never been saner! This is the perfect setting for our challenge, don’t you agree? Tonight we’ll see which makes the better firefighter—man or machine!”

“Just keep your tin soldier out of the way of my men!” Mose growled, eyeing the welter of canvas hoses that surrounded the automaton. “And if you got anything else to say to me, say it as an American, not a Frenchman.” Mose exchanged a disgusted look with Sykesky, but neither man had time to waste on the inventor. In order to collect their fee from the insurance company, their brigade not only had to put out the fire, but had to rescue as many personal belongings from the building as possible. “C’mon, lads! Break out the ladders! Sykesky! Get those brakes pumpin’! I want this fire out before it brings the roof down!”

“You heard the boss!” Sykesky yelled. “Get to work!”

Mose and his men aimed their hoses at the red tongues of flame that licked greedily from the windows of the building. The water from the pump engine made the fire hiss and sizzle like an ancient dragon, but it was only a drop in the bucket. A smaller number, dressed in heavy canvas coats with handkerchiefs tied about their noses and mouth, ran into the burning building to retrieve furniture and other belongings.

Suddenly the crowd behind Mose cried out in horror. He turned and saw a woman, barefoot and dressed in nothing but a linen nightgown, standing on a narrow second-story ledge, while
the window behind her belching clouds of black smoke. There came a strange whirring sound, and the Automatic Fireman came striding forward, its casters now retracted into its metal “boots.” Professor Tolliver twiddled a knob on the control box mounted on his chest while his students frantically pumped the brakes on the engine, and a set of spikes shot from the Automatic Fireman’s feet, anchoring it securely to the pavement, as its metallic legs telescoped upward. Within seconds the automaton was more than twenty feet in the air.

The woman trapped on the ledge, already half mad with fear for her life, screamed as the Automatic Fireman’s flexible left arm shot forward and wrapped itself about her waist like an elephant’s trunk and yanked her off her feet. It then swiftly plummeted back down toward the ground, causing her to go into a dead faint.

“Behold, gentlemen!” Professor Tolliver told the reporters as his associates extricated the unconscious woman from the Automatic Fireman’s snakelike embrace. “Not only is my Automatic Fireman equipped with a built-in ladder and fire axe, but also its own fire hose!” In demonstration, he threw one of the knife switches on the box affixed to the vest, and the Automatic Fireman raised its left arm and unleashed a powerful geyser of water from its palm. “The idea behind the Automatic Fireman is to enable containment and rescue without endangering the lives of volunteers, and to cut down the number of men needed to successfully fight an inferno such as this. By working the pump engine, my students are generating pressure, which not only provides the water used to fight the fire, but also primes the Automatic Fireman’s hydraulic system and feeds the boiler in its belly. Clockwork, steam power, and hydraulics alone would not provide enough force to propel my Automatic Fireman, but combined in such a dynamic manner they prove more than enough to handle the situation!”