Langdon St. Ives: Beneath London Part 22

"Stand aside," Tubby told him. He carried the crowbar now, which he jammed in beside the door, leaning hard into it. There sounded a sudden creaking and rending, and the door tore open and banged back on its hinges. In they went, Alice and Hasbro carrying lanterns. Kraken held a small sledge-hammer of the sort that Thor might have carried. It wouldn't be easy to wield quickly tiring but it would only require a single blow to crush a man's head. Tubby carried his cudgel. Mother Laswell dug the pistol from out of her bag and gave it to Hasbro, who was the deadliest shot among them.

"Five rounds in the cylinder," he said to St. Ives.

They lit the lanterns, pulled the door closed behind them, and followed Alice through several rooms into the center of the house, where a broad stairway ascended toward the second story. Despite the Turkey carpets and ancient furniture, the shuttered house had the air of a mausoleum about it. The back of the stairway was paneled with age-darkened oak, and there was no sign at all of a hidden door until Alice pushed on the edge of a panel midway along it. The panel shifted inward, and Alice slid it fully open.

St. Ives wondered at the secret panel having been shut. Why hadn't Klingheimer left it open, given that he would return this same way? He was clearly wary of being followed, and so they must be equally wary. They descended the long stairway, Hasbro going along ahead, his pistol at the ready. They arrived at the landing, the stairs taking a right turning and disappearing downward. On the left-hand side, however, stood a ruined door. It sagged on broken hinges, having been smashed to pieces, the jamb torn free along with the door.

"Was this door here before when you descended?" St. Ives whispered to Alice, who shook her head.

Hasbro held up a restraining hand, crouched down, and peered past it into the darkness, looking and listening for a long moment. "Nothing," he said.

"Would they be at all likely to wait for us?" Tubby asked. "Simply in order to waylay us?"

"Perhaps," St. Ives said. "Klingheimer means to retrieve Clara, however, and he can scarcely be certain that anyone is following him. He'll suppose that we might be, of course, and he'll murder us if he has the opportunity, but he'll waste no time on us until he has overtaken Clara."

"Neither he nor his men will give us any quarter," Alice said, her statement surprising St. Ives, who was used to her advising restraint. "He'll be b.l.o.o.d.y-minded given how things have gone for him today."

"Then we sail under a black flag," Tubby said. "We'll strike first or we'll be a pack of dead fools."

"If we're pressed," Hasbro said, "stay out of the way of the pistol so that I can have a clear shot at them."

The went on now, single file, quickly deciding that the lanterns would be beacons, alerting their enemies below. And yet there was no going on in the pitch darkness without a glimmer of light. "Let's shade the lanterns," St. Ives said, and they did so, using Mother Laswell's winter shawl and Hasbro and St. Ives's coats.

Perhaps they would have the advantage of Klingheimer, St. Ives thought perhaps they would see Klingheimer's lanterns before he saw theirs.

THIRTY-EIGHT.

THE PAINTED BOX.

Mr. Klingheimer had never been fond of the darkness, and he kept the lamps in the house on Lazarus Walk perpetually lit. Now, in the gloomy lantern light, he was surprised to see that his skin glowed that he himself was in essence a walking lamp, which had a fine metaphorical ring to it. Since he had begun to harvest the fungus in quant.i.ty, he had increased his consumption of the elixir, which no doubt explained it, as well as explaining his renewed vigor, as if age and time had been set in reverse.

It was a savory thought that he was the one man alive who could travel in the underworld without a lantern or a torch to light his way. He would be a tolerably easy mark if the darkness were complete, of course no hiding from his enemies, although it would not come to that in any event, he being the hunter and not the hunted. There were three armed men with him, however. The boy Jenkins was at his back, carrying the head of Maurice de Salles. He had a ready need for money, his mother being ill and his manifold brothers and sisters as skinny and malnourished as he. Jenkins, however, could have little idea what they were about, and he could not be counted upon absolutely. He might run if there was trouble. Flinders, carrying a rifle, came along behind Jenkins. Shadwell, also armed, strode ahead with a lantern. Except for Mrs. Skink, the rest of the house had been out beating the bushes a reprehensible crowd of nitwits who had allowed four easily identifiable people to elude them. Perhaps he should have rounded up more men and left Jenkins behind, but in the meantime Clara would have been ever more distant.

He considered his likely enemies as he paced along. The women were of no account. Clara was blind, easily frightened, and now shared his blood. She would yield to him, under compulsion if necessary. The other woman, whoever she was, would not have the pluck to stand up against men carrying rifles. That left the dwarf and the boy. The boy was enterprising: he had hidden from the men searching for him and then had fought his way out of the house. It would be more difficult for him to elude a bullet, however. The dwarf played the fool as if he was born for the stage, but he was no fool, and he knew the underworld well. Quite likely he would vanish into the darkness and never be seen again, for he owed n.o.body anything and had no notion of loyalty. In that regard he was the most dangerous of the lot.

Who might be coming along in back of them, then? It had been Mother Laswell's man Kraken capering in the alley behind Peavy's this evening, obviously unhinged. That meant that the voluminous woman who had stood in the shadows must be Mother Laswell herself, whom Shadwell had allegedly disposed of in Aylesford. Had there been unseen others?

St. Ives had been secured in the decapitator, and Peavy had but to trip the switch to remove his head from his body. Jimmy was armed with a pistol, and Willis Pule was looking after Alice St. Ives, who was a perfect hostage. Surely nothing could have gone awry. And even if it had, it was unlikely that any of these interlopers knew of the tunnel or knew that the others had descended into the underworld.

He stilled the chatter in his mind and compelled himself to seek the mental disposition that allowed him to open the lens of his third eye. He was practiced at the art of it by now, well on his way to becoming an adept. He began now at the beginning: breathing evenly and carefully picturing the hinged lid of a wooden box slowly opening the very same wooden box that he'd had as a boy, the box in which he stowed the things of his childhood. There was a picture painted upon it of green mountains with a waterfall tumbling down the slope. Birds flew in the blue sky. The painting was something that he had believed in when he was a boy, and he had longed to discover where those mountains stood somewhere in Wales his father had told him, although even then he knew that it was probably a ready lie. Now he knew that the painting was a shabby bit of sentiment, but picturing the box came naturally and instantaneously to him, quickly focusing his mind.

He compelled himself to gaze upon the box until it lay squarely behind his eyes, which looked inward now. The lid rose silently on its hinges, allowing him to slip into the dark interior like a wraith. Once inside and out of the world, he was able to range forth into what seemed a vast nothingness. Very soon his mind began to ascertain its surroundings and the nothingness took on dimension. He made out mysterious but evident horizons in the far distance, and he observed other questing minds, perceiving them as psychical scents and their thoughts as whispers in the dark vastness.

He was well aware that he was walking felt the ground beneath his feet, heard the footfalls of his companions but his essential mind was afloat in the dark, immeasurable night. Incorporeal shapes flitted past like the shadows of birds and insects. Some pa.s.sed ghostlike through him, and he felt momentary, detached sensations of misery or ecstasy or fear or longing. These emotions, such as they were, pa.s.sed quickly away, having no connection to Jules Klingheimer.

When Clara's essence the perfume-like quality of her mind and memory pa.s.sed through him he recognized it instantly. She could not simply flee away. Clara and he were one under the flesh. She would be aware that he was near, and she would know that he had come for her.

His reverie was jangled by a sudden recollection of the silver bees that had attacked him when he had communed with her at Peavy's. That had been a peculiar business indeed. As a child he had dislodged a wasps' nest from where it hung in a barn, and he hadn't been able to run fast enough to outdistance them. Perhaps the silver bees had been the playing out of a nightmare that had lain hidden in his mind all these years nothing but an effaced memory. He considered whether it had been Clara who was responsible for the incident, or, more dangerously, whether it had been the work of Sarah Wright. Either way, he would know it if it came again or anything of the same sort and he would be prepared to overcome it by a force of will, just as one compelled oneself to awaken from a nightmare.

THIRTY-NINE.

COMMODORE NUTT.

How long they had traveled, Finn couldn't say. For the last ten minutes they had traversed a downward-sloping field of stones, with occasional monoliths, the upper parts of which were invisible in the darkness overhead. They had left the long stairway and the sound of the river far behind.

"Is he come?" Finn asked Clara.

Clara answered, "Closer," as she had answered the last time he had asked. "His mind found my own some time back, but I did not engage him. Now that he's found me, I can find him quite easily, and I hope to keep him at a distance. Will you put these somewhere?" she asked, and she took off her lead-soled shoes and gave them to him. "They'll do nothing but hinder me if I wear them." There seemed to be no point in asking why, so Finn silently stowed them in Beaumont's flour sack.

Some minutes later they came out onto level ground among small fields of toads that were cut with a winding stream. Their path, a dark, meandering ribbon, pa.s.sed illuminated pools of water and would have been very nearly cheerful if it weren't for the stink, which was powerful now. Although Beaumont had told them where they were bound, Finn was astonished to see a stone hut standing a short distance away, built against a sheer, black wall. The roof was thatched, and lantern light shone from two small windows. They drew to a halt and Beaumont asked, "Who the devil is this now?"

"A man," Clara answered. Finn could see only a shadow moving on the wall within, but he had no reason to doubt her.

"Aye," Beaumont said, "a man who has no business in Beaumont's hut, the thief, nor hunting pig in my territory. I'll brace him."

Beaumont set out forthrightly toward the hut. When he was several paces from the door, however, a round-shaped man stepped out, his head bald but for tufts of hair on either side. He held a lantern at head height and peered into the gloom, the light falling on his face, which looked as if he had been in a b.l.o.o.d.y battle. "Who goes there?" he asked.

It was Gilbert Frobisher, and the sight of him confounded Finn, just as it did Miss Bracken, who cried, "G.o.d in heaven!" and ran forward. "Don't strike him!" she shouted. "You mustn't harm that man! It's Gilbert Frobisher, and a glad day!"

"Is the man known to us, then?" Clara asked Finn, as they moved along toward the hut now. "I sense that his wits are sadly scattered."

"He is known to us," Finn said. "It's Tubby Frobisher's uncle." Miss Bracken had spoken of him when they had taken shelter under the rail bridge, but Finn had no idea that she meant this particular Gilbert, or how she had come to know him.

"Tubby, did you say?" Clara asked. "I don't recall a Tubby."

"The two of them are the Professor's great good friends."

The old man looked from one to the other of them in a befuddled way. "I do declare," he said, bowing, "I'm certain that I behold Blind Justice aboard a mule Lady Themis herself, no doubt. And you, my small friend," he said to Beaumont, "I believe that I have the pleasure of addressing Commodore Nutt. How very good of you to visit me here in this h.e.l.lish place."

"Who is Commodore Nutt?" Clara whispered to Finn.

"A circus midget," Finn said. "I met him once, and Tom Thumb along with him, when I was in Duffy's Circus, near Edinburgh. "That was ten years back. Commodore Nutt has been dead these five years now."

"The poor man," Clara said. Finn didn't know whether she meant Commodore Nutt or Gilbert Frobisher.

"My own Gilbert," Miss Bracken said breathlessly, stepping past Beaumont now and taking Gilbert by the arm. He gazed upon her with no recognition at all. Then he looked hard at Finn with the same result.

"Do I know you, my good woman?" he asked, patting Miss Bracken's hand.

She gawked at him. "Tell me, sir, do you know who you are?"

"I... That is to say, not entirely. I found myself in this dark land, apparently having fallen into a pit, and I wandered until I came upon this rude dwelling, which has become my home. Come in, my friends. Come inside."

"Aye," Beaumont said. "Everyone in, the mule as well. We'll want stone walls roundabout us before we're through. We must sit, or we'll be naught but targets. They'll be armed when they come. Take care if you go a-gawking out the windows."

Clara climbed down from Ned's back and led the mule in, everyone else following. The floor of the hut was covered with pieces of carpet, so that it was comfortably padded, and there was a stuffed tick against the wall where Gilbert had obviously been sleeping, for a woolen blanket was folded at the foot. A heap of oilcloth lay in the corner, with a rifle standing upon it, leaning against the wall. A box of cartridge sat alongside. The hut was crowded, but there was enough room to sit comfortably, with Clara and Miss Bracken sitting on the bed and Gilbert perched on a small stool. Finn fetched out Clara's leaden shoes and set them neatly on the floor beside her. Beaumont stood. He seemed to be considering things in a restless manner, as if he was uncertain what to do.

"I'm afraid I'm a poor host," Gilbert said. "I can offer you hard-tack and dried meat edible, I believe, but scarcely food to dine on, so to say food for the belly but not for the soul. I cannot recommend that you consume the fish that swim in these ponds. They taste of filth, although the water is safe to drink if one holds one's nose. I have a capital bottle of rum, however, and I can offer you a tot, although I've only the one gla.s.s to drink from. Would you condescend to drink a gla.s.s, my dear?"

He said this to Miss Bracken, who nodded politely and said that if ever she had need of a tipple, it was now. She threw back the rum in a single swallow and then said forthrightly: "Now, Gilbert, listen to what I say. I am your Miss Bracken, Cecilia Bracken. Don't you know me, sir? Recollect now, with all your powers."

He closed his eyes, evidently recollecting, but shook his head unhappily and said, "I cannot say that I've had the pleasure of meeting you before now a lamentable fact."

"Have you lost your mind, then?" she asked him.

"I very much suspect that I have. My mind seems to have been holed with roundshot, a veritable Swiss cheese. I recall having known a Miss Bracken once although she would be a woman twice your age. Alas, that was in another country, and I've been told that the wench is dead."

"Lord have mercy," Miss Bracken said. "The man has gone off his chump." As no one else was interested in the rum, she allowed Gilbert to pour her another dram, which she drank off before wiping the gla.s.s out with the hem of her dress.

"Harkee, sir," Beaumont said to Gilbert. "There's villains a-coming for us. A bad lot. Very. They mean to take Clara."

"Not while I draw breath, by G.o.d," Gilbert said. "There stands a rifle, Commodore. You have a reputation for being able to use such an item."

"He's coming now," Clara said, with a sharp intake of breath. "Two of them now. They'll soon be upon us Mr. Klingheimer and the man Shadwell."

"Just those two, do you say?" Beaumont asked. "Were you sure of the four earlier on?"

"Quite sure."

"Then two turned back," Beaumont said. "Why? Because Klingheimer wonders were they followed, that's why."

"My mother has come for me," Clara said abruptly. Her eyes were shut, and she seemed scarcely to be breathing.

"Mother Laswell?" Finn asked. "That's good news. I pa.s.sed her a message and told her that we were going underground for Margate. She'll have given it to the Professor and Hasbro."

"No," Clara said. "I mean my own mother."

Finn had nothing to say to this. He had seen Sarah Wright's head sitting in a barber's basin.

Beaumont asked, "What's this message, Finn? Do you mean these others know where we are?"

"Leastways they knew where we meant to go," Finn said. "They would follow if they could."

Beaumont apparently considered this for a moment and then, gesturing with his thumb, he said, "I'll tell you the plain truth. There's treasure in a sack buried in yon corner, what I've collected since I was a boy." He stood up and walked the three steps to the far corner of the carpet, pulled it back, and began shoveling stones away from beneath with his hand. Within moments he drew out a leather bag that might have held a large and lumpy pomelo. "Will you take me, ma'am?" he asked Miss Bracken, holding his treasure aloft and gazing at her intently.

She stared at Gilbert for another moment, and he stared blandly back at her. And then to Beaumont she said, "If you consent to parting with that terrible hat, I will take you."

Beaumont nodded once, removed the hat, and pitched it into the dug-up corner before running his hands through his hair. He opened the leather bag, held it under the light, and said to Miss Bracken, "Take a look within, then."

Miss Bracken arose and looked into the bag. She gasped and put her hand over her mouth in surprise.

"He's come!" Clara said.

"Listen now," Beaumont told them. "They dursn't shoot into the hut. Mr. Klingheimer is come for Clara the living girl, do you see? He wouldn't have come else. You must stay inside, for he'll shoot you dead if he sees his chance. I'll see what I can do to help, but I'd be a fool to die here now that I'm to be wed." He grasped Miss Bracken by the wrist, and said, "You're a good lad, Finn. Mayhaps we'll meet along the way." The two of them went out through the open door, Miss Bracken carrying the flour sack, pa.s.sing the window at a brisk pace, and very soon gone into the darkness.

FORTY.

THE BLACK FLAG.

"If I might have a word, Professor," Mother Laswell said as they descended, her voice just above a whisper.

In the low light of the darkened lamps, St. Ives saw her as a mere shadow. "a.s.suredly," he said. They had come a good distance from the upper world by now and had long since pa.s.sed the first patches of fungus. There was the sound of rushing water, although dim, and it seemed to St. Ives that they might soon encounter the long stairway.

"Sarah Wright is woefully uneasy," Mother Laswell told him. "She is aware of my presence, I believe, but her mind wants order. I cannot speak with her, if you follow me. I cannot penetrate the chaos of her psychical being. I know only that she is sadly agitated, whereas when I first took her from you her mind was very nearly at ease."

"Perhaps the increasing air pressure as we descend is the cause."

"It might be, now that you say it, but even if that is so, her will is very powerful, possibly because of the violence of her death. I believe that we are nearing our destination and that she senses Clara's mind. Much was left unsettled between them when Sarah was murdered. And Clara, of course, is in grave danger. The sense of pending danger is very nearly primal, Professor. I myself am uneasy within my mind, although whether from premonition or plain fear I cannot say."

"How can I be of service? I could carry the burden again, if you'd like. I'd certainly be less sensible of Sarah's... emanations."

"No, sir. What I mean to say is that if something comes amiss trouble of any sort I intend to go on as quickly as ever I can. Bill will not leave my side, of course, and so we won't stop to parlay first. And if something happens to me and I cannot go on, someone must carry Sarah downward at once if we're to succeed. She must be brought as close to Clara as possible. I do not for a moment believe that Clara will return to the surface with this Klingheimer. Clara will be in need of an ally when she does battle with the man, and none of us is more suited to the task than Sarah Wright, her own mother."