11 What Happened to David?

R.M. Hamilton

David gripped the steering wheel and gazed with horror at Milton Park. Gamaliel had clearly arrived. The fire alarm was blaring into the night and people were pouring out from every door. The Orangery, with its wrap around glass windows had been smashed open, as though something very big and scary had walked straight through the wall.

“Gamaliel,” said David grimly.

Suddenly, he saw Cauldron Bubble. But it was not the Cauldron Bubble of an hour ago. This Cauldon Bubble was running for his life, bounding down the main steps from the hotel with terror plastered across his face.

And behind him, gleaming horribly in the light of the porch lamp was Gamaliel. But this was not the Gamaliel of an hour ago either. He had tripled his size, widened his girth and all about his enormous body, new clogs and gears cranked and clicked. He appeared to have stolen every item of clockwork he could find at the clockwork convention, and he had added it to himself. He had also found another gramophone and he shouted as he ran, “I’m not going back into that box! Never, never! Not ever!”

He seemed to be shouting it at Cauldron. Cauldron thought so too. He ran even harder towards his car, parked in front of the hotel.

Sticking out from the dashboard of the Daimler was an enormous key. It ran into the clockwork motor of the car and David hastily turned it around and around. He had a feeling he had a lot of fast driving ahead of him and he didn’t want to run out of power.

He was right. The moment Cauldron got to his car he plunged in and turned on the engine and went screaming down the long driveway that led from the hotel to the road.

After him pounded Gamaliel. Not even the scent of the clockwork motor in the Daimler was enough to distract him.

David threw open the car door and shouted at the hotel manager (he was obviously the manager because everyone was loudly blaming him for the ordeal), “call the police!”

Then he slammed the door and sped off after Gamaliel who was in hot pursuit of Cauldron.

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In the front of the truck, Jezebel was still arguing loudly with her brothers when her phone rang. She put it on speaker.

“Jezebel,” screamed Cauldron’s voice from the phone. “The plan is off! This town is a freak-show! Tell your brothers to wait for me at the Berrima gaol with their truck full of the art we stole and have the motor running! We’re getting out of here tonight!”

“We can’t, Cauldron,” yelled Keith as he slammed his foot onto the gas. “Dumb old Jezebel brought a whole group of people to the gaol and then she blabbed out the secret in front of them. We’ve got them and the artwork in the truck and we’re already leaving.”

“Do as you’re told!” shrieked Cauldron. “Go to the governor’s mansion and take every clock you can find out of the house and put it outside on the road in front of the house. If you don’t, you can forget about me turning you into a billionaire!”

Keith turned the truck turned around.

Once outside the governor’s mansion he parked it. “What are we going to do about the people in the back of the truck?” he asked.

“Leave them,” snarled Ernest. “They won’t make any noise the way I scared them.”

“Why does Cauldron want us to put clocks on the road?” asked Jezebel, powdering her nose.

“That’s the first smart thing she’s said all night,” said Keith to Ernest. “It’s a crack pot sort of thing to put on the road.”

“You know what he’s like,” said Ernest with a shrug. “He’s elaborate. I could have just sent him a text when the paintings were arriving and he could have picked them up but no, he had to have Jezebel leave ladybug balloons on the golf course full of code. He could have had me deliver the paintings directly to his house, but no, he had to use a historical jail with a ghostly reputation.”

“I couldn’t always get ladybug balloons. The library up in Sydney put in a bumper order.” said Jezebel. “I used a unicorn once. It made Cauldron ever so mad, but I liked it.”

Her brothers ignored her. “Cauldron just thinks he’s smart,” said Keith coldly. “All his ideas are rotten and I’m sick of doing things the dumb way. No wonder him and Jezebel are an item.”

“HEY!” yelled Jezebel.

“That’s so true,” agreed Ernest. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking Cauldron needs some sort of roadblock and being Cauldron, he thinks clocks are the best way to block a road.”

“We’re not going to try and block the road with clocks, are we?”

“Of course not! We’ll take all the big furniture out of the house and stack it on the road. We should have stopped using Cauldron’s brain years ago. Get the prisoners out of the truck and tell them if they don’t help quietly, they’ll be shot.”

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Over on the other side of the Southern Highlands, David was beginning to discover why no one else in the world had a clockwork car. The motor was winding down and the Daimler was getting slower and slower. “I’ll never be able to keep up at this rate,” he muttered grimly. He was right. The car gave one final tick and slid towards a ditch. David frantically tried turning the giant key sticking out of the dashboard, but it was stuck.  In the distance, he could see both Gamaliel and Cauldron Bubble getting away.

Hastily he got out of the car. He had been careful to pack a flashlight before he set out and now, he was thankful he had. He went to the front of the car and began to struggle with the ropes he had used to attach the clockwork motor to the car. Soon he had them unknotted and lying in a pile by his feet. “I need to unjam the key from this side,” he explained to an owl who was watching him from the tall branches of a gum tree.

The wind began to blow. It made the line of gum trees shake gloomy, spindly pale branches down the road after Gamaliel. And the smell of the clockwork motor, the only smell that Gamaliel could smell with all his cranking cogs, floated on the breeze to where Gamaliel was still pursuing Cauldron.

He turned and began to run down the road, straight towards David!

 Come back next week to find out what happens next! Follow me on Facebook and Instagram at Ruth Marie Hamilton to never miss an instalment.

The photograph of the moon is courtesy of Pixabay. The writing and the designs belong to R.M. Hamilton.