Beneath London (50 page)

Ahead of them, at a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, crouched a tall, heavily built old gentleman – Klingheimer without a doubt – and the villain Shadwell, who held a rifle. One of the covered cages sat on the trail between them. Mother Laswell stared at the object, knowing that the cage contained the head of her late husband. There could be no doubt that Klingheimer meant to use it against Clara. It seemed very like madness, however, for the man to bring the head along with him, and she wondered at the extent of Klingheimer’s powers – whether they were a long enough spoon to protect him, so to speak, when he supped with the devil.

Both Klingheimer and Shadwell looked ahead, apparently studying a hut very like those of the troglodyte village away to the left, but roofed, and with lamps burning. There were people within – their shadows revealing their presence. One of them was Clara, of that Mother Laswell had no doubt, and surely Finn was with her.

“Shadwell won’t shoot because he’s got no target,” Bill whispered. “That’s plain.” He lifted his blacksmith’s hammer and dropped the head of it into his open palm with a light smacking sound. “How’s Sarah Wright in her mind?” he asked.

“Troubled, despite the nearness of Clara. But there’s something worse. Much worse. I must tell you that the cage between the two men holds the head of my dead husband, Maurice de Salles. He was an evil man, Bill. He is the source of Sarah’s agitation, and my own.”

“All right, then,” Bill said. “We’ll go back up to high ground. I’ll come back down with Sarah Wright alone.”

“No, Bill. I must see this through. It’s my destiny to do so.”

He stared at her, his face set, dropping the head of the hammer into his palm. “What are you thinking on?” Mother asked him.

“I’m thinking on taking that there rifle away from Shadwell.”

“Don’t be hasty, Bill.”

“If I take that rifle, Klingheimer’s ours, do you see? I’ll feed him this hammer as a choke pear, and then I’ll beat that cage flat with the head inside. We’ll be done with them all, and can go home peaceful like.”

“Don’t speak so terribly, for heaven’s sake.”

“Heaven’s heard worse,” he said. “You stay low, behind this here rock, and settle in with Sarah Wright. I aim to stop this here and now. I don’t hold with hocus pocus, nor with the filth like this crowd is mixed up in it. Here’s what I say. If they catch sight of me, I’ll take to the rocks and come back around to you. They won’t have time to shoot me. If you see trouble, douse this here lantern, slip back a nip, and wait for me. I won’t leave you alone.” He winked at her and started forward in a crouch without waiting for a response, creeping through the shadows from rock to rock.

Mother Laswell said a prayer for them all and watched him go. But he hadn’t covered sixty feet before there was a movement in the window of the hut – Finn Conrad’s face looking out, but keeping well down. Quick as a snake, Shadwell brought up the rifle, having a target at last, and Mother Laswell nearly cried out a warning to Finn and to Bill both. In that moment, however, she heard the report of yet another rifle, and she saw Shadwell jerk sideways before crumpling to the ground, a gout of blood spurting from his neck, dousing Klingheimer as if from a hose. Klingheimer staggered aside, crouched behind a handy rock, and stared down at Shadwell’s shuddering form for a long moment. Abruptly he darted out, snatched up the fallen rifle and the head of Maurice de Salles, and fled away into the field of standing stones.

Mother Laswell, filled with both horror and relief at seeing Shadwell dead, looked behind her up the path, thinking that the Professor and the others might have come down behind and shot Shadwell from a distance. There was no sign of them, however. Bill had turned back now, coming along quickly and crouching beside her, both of them well hidden, but with a good view of what lay below.

Within moments two people came into sight, crouched and running across the front of the hut and away along a narrow trail toward the troglodyte village. One of them was a dwarf, carrying a rifle. Incredibly, he held the hand of Miss Bracken. There was once again the sound of a rifle firing – Klingheimer, she thought, endeavoring to shoot the two runaways. Very soon they were hidden among the ruins, however, and he had missed his chance. She saw the two reappear after a moment, heading downward along a stream that sparkled with green light. They walked easily now, like a mismatched couple out of a fairytale taking a ramble. It appeared to her that the dwarf was playing a flute, and there was the high, thready sound of “Bobby Shafto’s Gone to Sea” clearly discernible on the still air.

“It were a
dwarf
,” Bill said now in a surprised and unhappy voice. “Shadwell was
mine
, by God, and then a
dwarf
what plays a flute up and shoots him through the neck. Did you
see
it?”

“Indeed I did, Bill.”

“I’m to be deprived of killing Shadwell my own self, then.”

“Perhaps it was God’s will – a way to preserve you from taking a man’s life in a state of pique. That would be a lot to account for on the Day of Judgment.”

“But God went ahead and let the
dwarf
shoot him?
That
just don’t seem right.”

“Who knows what’s right, Bill, when you’re a mile underground in the darkness? We’ll make our stand here, come what may. Here’s what you must do: If I slip away – trance-like, I mean – watch over me. Maybe I won’t, but I must do my part. I’ll come back to you when it’s done, and we’ll go home.”

* * *

S
t. Ives moved toward Hasbro, looking back down the trail as Tubby pushed past, growling like a beast. He took in the sight in a moment – the fallen lantern and the flaming lamp oil revealing a lanky boy who knelt on the trail behind a dead man, the dead man’s face blasted half away, a red bowler hat lying nearby. The boy looked downward and held his own rifle out with both hands, like an offering.

Hasbro had been shot through the thigh, St. Ives quickly discovered. He was also unconscious, his breathing labored. There was very little bleeding where he had hit his head – perhaps a depressed fracture.

“It’s Mr. Jenkins!” St. Ives heard Alice say, apparently to Tubby.

Tubby asked, “Do you
know
this villain, ma’am?”

“Yes. Club him only if he threatens to run,” she said, “and please refrain from cutting his ears off.” She turned and knelt next to St. Ives.

“Press steadily against my kerchief here over the wound,” St. Ives said to her. “The bullet went through, but there’s a mort of bleeding. That’s right – hard as you can. You won’t hurt him.”

He removed the laces from Hasbro’s boots now, twisted them together, and wrapped them around the thigh above the bleeding wound. “Lend me your sheath-knife, Tubby,” he said. “And your coat, also, if you don’t mind. It’ll be less of a coat when we’re done, but we must get Hasbro topside and we’ll want a stretcher. The boy’s coat also. Three should do it.”

Tubby, keeping an eye on Jenkins, passed St. Ives his knife, which he used, sheath and all, to twist the tourniquet tight around Hasbro’s leg, hooking it back through the lace to hold it. “We must loosen it from time to time,” he said to Alice, “or we’ll damage the leg.” He looked at Hasbro’s head again, moving his hair aside. “Nothing to do here,” he said, “except get him to hospital. We’ll make a stretcher of the coats – frap together the rifle barrels for the second stave. My stick will work for the other. It’ll take the lot of us to carry it, and it means that we must abandon our friends.”

“It’s a matter of practicality, surely,” Alice said.

“
Practicality
, yes,” he said. “It sounds like damnation, but of course you’re correct. We haven’t a choice. Who is this boy, then? Can he be trusted?”

“This is Mr. Jenkins, an employee at the Metropolitan Board of Works,” Alice said, standing up and looking at Jenkins, who was in a state of advanced fear, regarding Tubby warily. “He’s an associate of Mr. Lewis at the Board of Works, who I am quite certain set off the bomb that nearly murdered you in the second collapse.”

“I’m no friend to Lewis!” Jenkins said. “I did what he and the others told me to do, or they said my family would cop it. I haven’t held a rifle except to shoot hare and suchlike, not till today when Mr. Klingheimer said I must come along with him underground.”

“When you and I first saw each other, Mr. Jenkins, did you know what was afoot? That Mr. Lewis was sending me into danger? The truth now.”

“
Danger?
No, ma’am. Not that. I give you a look. Do you remember? I didn’t know what more to do, so I done what I was told, which was to tell them you were going down to…”

“I believe you, Mr. Jenkins. You have a chance to redeem yourself now, sir. We’ll want your jacket, your outer shirt, and braces, if you will.”

“Bootlaces, too,” Tubby said.

“But do you remember the look I give you, ma’am? I didn’t mean for…” He began weeping now, mopping his eyes with the side of his forearm as he fumbled with his braces and jacket.

Tubby was at work on the stretcher. He threaded the staff and the rifles through the sleeves of his coat, which he buttoned over the top, and then set about strapping the rifles together along the overlapped barrels, yanking Jenkins’s coat over the other end, the two coats neck to neck.

“I
do
remember the look,” Alice said, “lucky for you. I should have heeded it. Here’s the ribbon from my hat, Tubby.”

“And if I might borrow the hat-pin, also. I’ll want to tie these jackets shut, but I must pierce the fabric to do so. The buttons alone won’t hold.”

St. Ives loosened the tourniquet for a moment and peered under Hasbro’s eyelids. After securing the tourniquet again, the four of them picked Hasbro up and laid him on the makeshift stretcher.

“Fall in line, Mr. Jenkins,” St. Ives said. “Put a hand under the frapping, there, so as to support it. And Tubby, you also, if you don’t mind. We cannot afford to drop him. God help us – this is a jury-rig if ever there was one. I’ll carry the lantern. Lift now! All together!” And away upward they went at a shuffling, steady gait, Hasbro’s weight shared among them.

FORTY-ONE

J
ules Klingheimer sat in a limestone alcove, illuminated by his own phosphorescent flesh. The head of Maurice de Salles sat in its cage, which also emitted the green light. It emitted other things as well. There was something disturbing about the head, a mental decay that was almost like an odor. The man had been evil incarnate in his day, brilliantly so, but the emanations from within de Salles’s mind now were essentially idiotic, and more essentially evil because of it – a bestial insanity that was appalling even to Klingheimer, perhaps uncontrollable.
But why should it be?
he thought. The head was a mere
thing
– a force, yes, but one that could be hammered into a jelly with a stone. Jules Klingheimer, being a living man, had the choice not to be disturbed by it. It was as simple as that. He gave the cage a kick with his foot.

By shifting just a bit he had a clear view of the hut in which the boy and Clara sheltered. He had seen another face within, that of a man who must be Gilbert Frobisher. None of them could leave without Klingheimer knowing of it, and he was fully prepared to follow them – to shoot the two males if he had the chance. He would rather wait until Flinders and Jenkins returned, however, so that he would not have blood on his own hands, if only in deference to Clara, who had innocent sensibilities.

The side of his face, unfortunately, was sticky with Shadwell’s blood, which very nearly sickened him, since he put a high value on personal cleanliness. His irritation, however, was offset by his happiness that the man was dead. Shadwell’s failures were the cause of the day’s distractions, and certainly of these unnecessary difficulties with Clara. Shadwell had instilled a deep fear within her instead of a trust that could be increased and played to advantage. Shadwell had been weak – a nasty-minded, mean-spirited bumbler when all was said and done, with only a passing usefulness.

It was because of Shadwell’s ineptitude that they were here now, far beneath London rather than seeing to the preparations for tomorrow’s wedding. Women had a high regard for ceremony, especially a country girl like Clara. It would be strange if she did not come around once she allowed him to show her the way, which for Klingheimer proceeded ever upward.