Langdon St. Ives: Beneath London Part 21

Tubby got a more expansive look at the place now. It was scrupulously clean and well lit, but there was the stink of a horse stable on the air and a severed head in a basin upon a nearby table. Scientists were a strange crowd, Tubby thought, discounting St. Ives out of loyalty. He saw that Dr. Peavy had been strapped into the heavy chair, although the wooden yoke that had been placed over St. Ives's head was set aside, the wicked-looking, ring-shaped saw blade visible now. Peavy's face held a look of intense loathing, and his eyes were unfocused, no doubt from the truncheon blow.

"Dr. Peavy should not have used me so," Pule was just then saying to St. Ives, his voice at a high pitch. "Close onto ten years I've been tortured in this house. I won free three years ago, but he found me and brought me back. That's when he put a drill into my head and inserted the wires. He has a machine that sends out waves so that my mind goes dark and I scarce know who I am. He threatens me with the saw, saying he'll have my head off and pitch it into the fire. You don't know what all he's done to me, sir."

Pule wept now, a pitiable creature, great heaving sobs that rattled his frame. St. Ives looked at Tubby and shook his head.

"Get your things, Willis," St. Ives said to Pule. "Hurry. The authorities will be here soon and we must be gone before they arrive."

As Pule hurried away, Tubby asked, "Is that wise? Setting the man free?"

"Wisdom is a great mystery to me at the moment. I thank you, however, for saving our lives here Alice's as well as my own. Another few minutes and..." He shook his head. "Here's what we're about. I've sent Hasbro to Devons.h.i.+re Hospital to report the trouble here. He will reveal just enough to bring them running. The hospital is in the old Buxton stable block not two hundred yards distant, so we cannot tarry. We'll get away in the wagon parked behind the building the only conveyance that will hold the lot of us. Hasbro will alert the hospital in a quarter hour's time and then wait for us at the top of the street."

St. Ives stepped across to the basins, which gurgled away as ever. He considered Sarah Wright's head, the only one of the three remaining. There could be no leaving it behind, hooked up to the percolating fungal juices, which would cease to percolate shortly after the authorities arrived. Better to take her along. Mother Laswell would have some idea what to do with it. He disengaged Sarah Wright's basin from its tubing and slid it into one of the cages, securing the cage door and covering it with a drape. "I'll just see if everything is running smoothly in the lobby," he said and hurried out.

Tubby was left alone with the head and Dr. Peavy. Tubby looked closely into Peavy's face, which was disfigured with loathsome emotions, his eyes twitching, and his very active, mustached upper lip looking overmuch like a vile sort of sea creature. Tubby knew nothing of Peavy, although Pule's testimony and the severed head on the table made the man's character evident.

"Quite comfortable, are you, Doctor?" Tubby asked him. "Everything to your liking?"

Without looking up, Peavy spat at him, most of the spittle landing on Peavy's own leg, but a dribble spotting Tubby's lapel. Tubby heard laughter from the distant lobby, and then a number of voices rising in song the "Old Hundredth," sung with a will and a certain amount of high-pitched hooting.

"I wonder what sort of head you'd make, were you on a plate," Tubby said cheerfully. "A formidably ugly head, I don't doubt." He fixed the forehead strap around Peavy's head, yanked it tight, and then picked up the decapitator, settling the yoke on the man's shoulders. "I'm no scientist, mind you, but I'd imagine that the electric fluid that drives this machine is conveyed through this cord. Can you tell me how one activates it? A switch, perhaps? A lever?"

There was no response except for inhuman noises in Peavy's throat.

"I'll ape the scientist, then, and experiment with it," Tubby said, picking up the electrical cord that led away toward the apparatus behind him. Peavy began to struggle in the chair, making further noises in his throat. After a moment Tubby stepped quietly up behind him and shouted, "Boo!" into his ear, and Peavy let out a wild cry.

Tubby, seeing St. Ives coming back in through the door now, said, "What ho, the lunatics?"

"Major John English of the Scarlet Lancers has formed them up as a choir," St. Ives said. "Our lot went out through the front and are loading into the wagon as we speak." He noticed that the saw now encircled Peavy's neck, and he gave Tubby a startled look.

"An experiment in human fear and regret," Tubby said, "unfinished, alas."

"He'll hang, Tubby. Better that someone else releases the trap, so to speak. You don't want it in your dreams."

Tubby shrugged and followed St. Ives toward the door, St. Ives carrying the cage with the head of Sarah Wright in it. Willis Pule had come into the room and was apparently regarding the back of Peavy's head. He glanced back at Tubby with a wild glint in his eye. Tubby gave him an indifferent shrug and then stepped out through the door and pulled it closed.

Kraken sat on the bench of the wagon, the reins in his hand. Tubby clambered up onto the bed, aided by Mother Laswell and Alice. St. Ives handed up the cage, saying, "Keep it level if you can," and Tubby took it from him, setting it on the floorboards as St. Ives boosted himself up and onto the bed. Hasbro would ride on the box with Kraken. At last they were moving, past the covered van, its patient horses out of the wind, the high wall sheltering them. Their wagon wheeled around the circle and away up the alley toward Devons.h.i.+re Street and the waiting Hasbro.

Tubby looked back at Elysium Asylum. The heavy smoke ascending from the chimney seemed to be writhing with demons as the wind tore it. It came to him that he could make out the droning noise of the saw now, and he heard wild screaming rise in volume for a brief moment before it diminished again, obliterated by distance and the clattering of the wagon. On the instant he knew what Pule had done, and that there was no undoing it.

"There he stands!" St. Ives said, pointing at the figure of Hasbro, who hurried down the alley toward them now. Kraken stopped the wagon, and Hasbro climbed onto the bench. They were off again, although in the moment that they turned out of the alley and onto Devons.h.i.+re Street, Tubby looked back and saw the dry goods van enter the alley, Willis Pule at the reins. Tubby tapped St. Ives on the shoulder and gestured at the fleeing Pule, who made away in the direction of the river, carrying Dr. Narbondo in his vivarium.

THIRTY-SIX.

NARBONDO'S ALLEY

The sky was full of broken, fleeing clouds when Finn climbed out of the hea.r.s.e in the alley behind Narbondo's abandoned house, the night dark for a moment and then brightly lit when the moon appeared. There was the smell of pending rain on the wind. No one was in sight either up or down, just a gray cat running into the nearby shadows. The headlights of a coach crossed the alley far down the way, and Finn could hear the clanging of a s.h.i.+p's bell and the night sounds from the river. He put his head in at the door and said to Miss Bracken and Clara, "The wind is chill. Best to stay inside the coach until I open the gate and the way is clear."

He closed the door and climbed atop the hea.r.s.e. From that height he could see that there was nothing along the top of the wall but a broad coping no gla.s.s or metal shards to deter burglars. Nothing stirring in the alley yet, either. The gray cat sat on the limb of a tree in the yard opposite, watching him. Finn leapt across to the wall, grabbing the coping and using the momentum of the leap to catapult him to the top, dropping straightaway to the other side.

He put his back to the wall immediately and looked around, but nothing moved, and the place had a deserted air. Moonlight shone on a great pile of excavated dirt and stone the mouth of the tunnel that Beaumont had spoken of. The digging had undermined the foundation of a single-story stone room at the corner of the house, the room's many windows giving it the look of a conservatory. The weight of the room rested temporarily on posts and beams. There was a half-built arched wall rising toward the exposed foundation. With another day or two of work, the wall would be made to support the corner of the house, a door would fill the arch, and it would appear to open onto a cellar, or perhaps a tool shed.

The broad tunnel that led away beneath was pitch black no lamplight inside, although certainly there must be lamps somewhere, since there would be no working below ground without them. He saw a canvas-covered pile against the wall, with a lean-to roof over it to keep out the weather. He hurried to it, casting the canvas back and finding a wealth of tools, as well as a dozen or more lanterns and cans of lamp oil. There was a heavy, iron crowbar in among the tools. He had it out in a trice and ran to the gate, where he jammed the crowbar beneath the bolt and threw his weight against it. The heavy screws held for a moment and then tore loose with enough force to throw him down onto his breech. Already he could hear the hea.r.s.e rattling away, and Beaumont at the gate, pus.h.i.+ng it open.

His three companions came straight into the yard, Beaumont leading Ned Ludd. As the gate was swinging shut again, Finn looked up and down the alley. A dog slouched along in the distance, and his friend the cat was still at its post, but there wasn't a human animal to be seen. It was good luck, without a doubt, and he was emboldened to say so to Beaumont. "Have we duped them, then?"

Beaumont shrugged. "Klingheimer might know I'll go under. He's a rare old bird for knowing. Let's fetch some stones, Finn, to brace this gate shut." Together they hauled two or three hundredweight of stone from the debris pile and heaped it against the gate good for nothing if Klingheimer's men came in through the front of the house, but it was the work of only a few minutes. While they hurried the stones across, Miss Bracken slit the side of Clara's dress with Finn's knife to make it less c.u.mbersome, and then cut off the bottom two feet of her own dress.

They picked up a coil of rope, two of the lanterns, and a can of oil. Beaumont lit the lanterns, and then they all walked in through the half-built arch of the supporting wall and into the tunnel. Finn was anxious to be away far enough and deep enough where their lantern light couldn't be seen by pursuers. He calculated the distance to Margate in his mind too far to go without food or sleep but they could be miles from London before they were forced to stop and rest, at least if the way was easy.

He realized now that Beaumont wasn't following, and he saw that the dwarf stood contemplating the pilings that held up the foundation of the conservatory.

"We'll take it down," Beaumont said.

"Take what down?" Miss Bracken asked.

"Them two posts what are holding things up top."

"Block the tunnel, you mean?" Finn asked.

"Just so. That there post isn't fixed, do you see? It's just the weight above that's holding it." He tied a quick loop in the end of the line. "Fix this around the pommel," he said, handing the line to Finn. "Ned Ludd's going to pull down Jericho's wall, just like in the Good Book."

"It's a lot of weight," Finn said.

"We'll pull along with him," Beaumont said. "He'll follow Clara. I know he will."

"Yes," Clara said, and she held onto the bit in Ned's mouth while Beaumont tied the rope to the base of the post that held the bulk of the weight. He tied a second loop into it twenty feet farther along and slipped it over his head so that it wrapped over his chest and under his arms.

Beaumont walked forward to tighten the line as Clara led the mule farther down the tunnel. Finn took the line over his shoulders and put his back into the pulling, and Miss Bracken set the lanterns and Beaumont's beaver hat on the floor and stepped in between Finn and Beaumont. "I'm no weakling," she said, putting both hands on the rope.

The lot of them set out, heaving away as Ned strained forward, Clara speaking into his ear, and then suddenly sprang forward as the post gave way with a roar of falling debris. Beaumont was flung to the ground, and Finn caught Miss Bracken's weight as she slammed into his back, the two of them staggering forward. A blast of windy dust flew past them, and the debris continued to fall, until there was a walled heap of stone and timbers where the tunnel mouth had been, the new wall with its arch completely buried.

Finn heard a low, creaking sound, and for a moment he thought the roof was coming down upon them. Then he realized that it was simply Beaumont laughing as he cast off the rope and began to coil it, his chest heaving up and down with the exertion.

"There's one in your eye," he muttered, no doubt meaning Klingheimer's eye. Then, taking his hat from Miss Bracken, he said, "You don't lack for bottom, Miss, by which I mean fundament, or some such. If we find your sweetheart, then he's in luck. If we don't, then I mean to try my hand at wooing you. I tell you that plainly."

Miss Bracken smiled and nodded, and then whispered to Finn as he helped Clara up onto Ned's saddle, "I believe that Mr. Beaumont proposed to me."

"I believe he did, ma'am. I thought he was sweet on you."

"He's a good man, despite his awful hat. He killed Smythe, and for that I'm grateful grateful to be alive, I mean. I abhor violence, of course, unless the dirty pig deserves it, which men so often do. I don't include you, Finn, nor Mr. Beaumont."

Clara sat easily atop Ned Ludd, her hand curled in Ned's short mane. Beaumont slung the flour sack, knapsack, and the can of lamp oil over the back of the saddle, and Finn moved straightaway down along the tunnel into the darkness, holding Ned's reins and carrying one of the lanterns, Beaumont coming along behind with the second lantern. Miss Bracken, carrying her bag, walked beside Beaumont when the trail was wide enough.

Some fifty feet farther along and thirty feet below ground, they came to a door set into the rock, cleated with iron. There was a heavy wooden bar leaning beside it. A ribbon of iron ran along the top and bottom sides of the bar. "Now that the tunnel's blocked," Beaumont said, "they'll come from inside Narbondo's house, through this here door, like they been doing, given it ain't barred." With that he picked up the bar and settled it squarely into iron brackets on either side. "That'll thwart them for a time, the reptiles."

They went on, Beaumont and Miss Bracken chatting amiably in low voices, Miss Bracken quizzing the dwarf, and he growing more and more voluble. They traveled into the depths, the steep trail zigzagging for a time, pa.s.sing the first small fields of luminous fungi, which amazed Miss Bracken, who said cheerfully that the smell reminded her of her dead husband, after he'd begun to stink. Finn heard Beaumont mutter something and then laugh, to which Miss Bracken giggled and then said, "Oh, you are a wag, sir!"

A dark shape the size of a moderate pig moved across one of the green fields, going away from them at a good pace, its shadowy form vanis.h.i.+ng the instant it moved out of the green toad light, as Beaumont called it. They paused to listen from time to time, but there was no sound of pursuit, no sound at all, for that matter. Finn began to feel at ease for the first time that day, and he considered putting his hand on Clara's hand where she held onto Ned's mane. He made up his mind to do it, and laid his hand on hers, squeezing it lightly. "We're going to be all right," he said.

"Yes," she said, and patted his hand in return.

Beaumont told them of a fine great pig he had shot below ground some years back, that he had butchered and hauled to the surface on his back, selling it in Smithfield, but leaving much of it below, the pig being so hugeous, with tusks ten inches long. Miss Bracken said that it was a stupendous tusk to be sure, and that she had heard that men of Beaumont's persuasion, dwarfs that is to say, often had tusks of a similar length.

Finn didn't attend to Beaumont's reply, but said to Clara, "I brought you a gift. Not rightly a gift, but you gave me Black Bess, and... Hold your hand out, if you will." He fetched the carved owl out of his pocket. "Here." She took it from him and ran her fingers over it. "Do you know what it is?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "It's an owl. And very real seeming, too. I can make out the shapes of things, you know."

"How does that work your elbow? Do you know?"

"I do not. I don't use it much at all, only when there's need. Do you know how your eyes work?"

"No, they just do," Finn said. "When they're open."

"Yes. That's the way of it with me. I could see, you know, when I was a girl, and I remember colors and light. There's no more color or light, just shapes. Light doesn't matter to me. Night and day are the same. This is a good owl, Finn."

"I'll take you to see him, the real owl, he and his mate, when we're home. Would you like that?"

Clara said nothing, but sat very still now, her face blank.

"I didn't mean see," he told her, thinking that he had blundered perhaps he was too forward. "I meant..."

"He's coming," she said aloud. "Mr. Klingheimer is at the gate. Along with others."

"Is he?" Beaumont said, not questioning Clara's knowledge. "Can you say how many?"

After a moment she said, "Four."

"So soon," Beaumont said. "And it was me who told Klingheimer that I knew the way below ground to Margate. A man's mouth is best off closed lest there's something to eat or drink."

"What's to do?" Finn asked. "We can't fight. Can we outrun him?"

"No. I have a hut down below that my old dad built. There's food and a rifle. It's backed against a cliff, so they can't get around behind us."

The path ahead angled sharply downward, zigzagging again. Finn kept up a steady pace; glancing back he saw that Miss Bracken was coming along at an easy gait, holding on to Ned Ludd's tail. Finn strained to hear any sounds of their followers, but aside from their shuffling and the clopping of Ned's hooves, there was still nothing but the close, silent darkness surrounding them. The trail turned again, between walls of stone that rose precipitously on either side. The air was cool and smelled of water now, and Finn thought he could hear the sound of it not far off an underground river, perhaps.

"How did you know that Klingheimer had followed us?" he asked Clara. "There was no sound of it."

She was silent for so long that Finn wondered whether she was simply declining to speak, but at long last she said, "Dr. Peavy put Mr. Klingheimer's blood into me, and mine into him. He meant for us to be married. That's what he said."

She fell silent again, unable to continue, perhaps. Finn reminded himself that she was given to silence, and he let her be. After a moment she said, "I'll die before I'll go back."

"I won't let them take you back," Finn said, hoping when he said it that it wasn't just bluff. He heard her weeping quietly now thinking of her mother, perhaps, and of being torn away from Hereafter Farm, and of the way Klingheimer had used her putting his blood into her. Finn could think of nothing further to say, and so he once again put his hand upon hers where she held Ned's bridle, and let it lie there.

As if from a great distance now came a sound like a kettledrum being beaten. The sound seemed to be tumbling down toward them from above a low, "boom... boom... boom..." at measured intervals.

"They'll be through the door quick," Beaumont said. "Step out hearty now."

The wall at their left side fell away now, and the sound of falling water was very loud, although the lantern light wasn't strong enough to show it. Far below them lay a cloud of green light, like a meadow ma.s.ses of toadstools, no doubt, with dark geometric shapes among them. How far off it lay, Finn couldn't tell, and there was nothing for it but to go on. The lantern showed a flat place ahead, and then the first of what appeared to be stone stairs leading ever downward.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

THE CHASE.

They went by way of Lazarus Walk, St. Ives anxious to see what Klingheimer's lair looked like, and also on the off chance that something was afoot. It could be that Finn and his comrades had been apprehended. In that case they would have to act immediately, possibly violently. But the house was largely dark, and there was nothing stirring.

Alice and Mother Laswell had summarily dismissed St. Ives's suggestion a few minutes back that the two of them retire to the Half Toad in order to be out of the way of danger. "You want watching," Alice said to him. "It is unbelievable to me that you walked straight into this Doctor Peavy's hospital and begged him to cut off your head."

His parry was to say that she oughtn't to have walked into the dead house without Kraken at her side, but she dismissed that also. She had no notion that Mr. Lewis had sent her into danger. This was spoken as if in good humor, both of them loathing a public squabble, but St. Ives knew that for Alice this was no laughing matter, although it had turned out well so far, thank G.o.d.

He held the cage that housed the head of Sarah Wright, which was covered with a cloth through which its handle protruded. It didn't bear looking at. What he intended to do with it, he didn't know. Klingheimer understood the head to be alive, and although St. Ives for the most part had no regard for what Klingheimer claimed to understand, he himself had seen the eyes and mouth move. St. Ives had to suppose that the head was alive in some sense of the word. When he took it out of Peavy's asylum, he had committed himself to keeping it so. It was a c.u.mbersome thing to carry, and now that it was disconnected from the dripping elixir, there might come a time when it when she must be allowed to expire.

The wagon drew up to the back of Narbondo's house. Again, all was quiet, the gate shut. Hasbro made a back for Bill Kraken, who stepped up and scaled the wall. There was the sound of Bill dropping to the ground, and then, as the rest of them climbed down out of the wagon, St. Ives heard him say something about "these here stones," followed by the thumping sound of heavy objects being pitched aside. The gate swung inward now, and they went through in a body, Hasbro driving the wagon in behind them.

St. Ives saw that Klingheimer's carriage stood in the yard, moonlight s.h.i.+ning on the glossy coats of the horses, and that a heavy crowbar lay beside the wall, and the lock on the gate had been pried off. Klingheimer would not have needed to pry off the lock in order to get in. It stood to reason that Finn had got into the yard before Klingheimer did, and that the lot of them were underground. They pushed the gate shut and secured it with stones once again. St. Ives dusted his hands and then picked up the cage, seeing that Mother Laswell was giving him a significant look.

"I'll carry her, Professor," she said to him. "Sarah Wright was my friend, and her business is my own and no one else's. You're correct in supposing her to be alive, or something close to it. I can feel her mind turning. She's searching for Clara, I believe, and might well be a lodestone in the underworld. In any event, I won't abandon her. Good or ill, what happens to her will be my doing." She looked steadily at St. Ives, evidently meaning what she said, and he handed the cage to her with a sense of relief.

He took in the heap of rubble where Klingheimer was evidently opening a pa.s.sage to the underworld, and he wondered who had collapsed the corner of the house in order to block it. Unless it was accidental, it was no doubt Finn's work, he and the dwarf.

"There ain't no time to dig through that there rubble," Kraken said. "Them others knew it and didn't try, for there stands their coach, and them villains ain't a-standing with it. There's another way in, and they took it."

"Yes," Alice said. "There are secret pa.s.sages in the house. The dwarf took Eddie and me through them, under the road and up again into the Cathedral from behind. The pa.s.sages are quite deep. I counted twenty-six steps downward before we arrived at a landing."

"Fetch out three of those lanterns from that tool pile, Bill, if you would," St. Ives said, "and anything that might make a useful weapon." St. Ives rescued a pole some two-meters long from the debris pile that would be useful as a walking staff and weapon both. He stepped up the several stairs and tried the rear door of the house, which was locked tight.