Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy) (24 page)

He helped her down
, then tipped his hat. “If I was you, I wouldn’t come back this way, miss. It’s about the loneliest place around. On the far side of the cemetery to where we’re facin’, there used to be another cut-through across a stream; course that was when I was little. Just stick to the main path an’ you’ll find it if it’s there. It’ll lead you out to a row of riverbank cottages and a pub, the Queen Christina. Should be able to get a ride home from there without trouble.”

Meredith thanked him with an extra
five pound note, waited for him to leave, then selected the night-time lens on her goggles. The pearly mist now glowed with a wishy-washy emerald hue. From the pavement she saw wild tall grass and leathery creepers girdling the fence, some almost reaching the arrowheads, which were about fifteen feet high. She took her shoes off and crept in her stocking feet until the pavement ended and a crescent of red gravel, recently laid, formed a semicircle in front the massive iron cemetery gates.

Frank
’s carriage was nowhere to be seen. He must have opened the gates and driven through. But they were locked, and the lock, if it even qualified as such, presented no keyhole or aperture of any kind. Instead, an oval brass plaque jutted out from the fence at about chest height to the left of the gate. Its inscription read,
In Memory of the many persons who disappeared from Yew Bank in that fateful summer of..
. The rest was covered by a layer of grime. The plaque’s lid was hinged, so she lifted it.

Raised silver buttons bearing all the letters of the alpha
bet and two numbers, nine and zero, formed a concentric oval in the middle of the plate inside. But there was a conspicuous amount of grid-patterned space around the oval. A small, collapsible steel bracket attached to one corner of the plate was in the shape of a hangman’s post. Several grooved copper pipes fed from the underside of the plate and converged into the ground on the other side of the fence. When she touched them, her fingertips buzzed.

An electrified puzzle.

No sooner did she run her fingers along the plate than a heavy clanking sound erupted behind her, from some way up the road, inside the mist. It repeated, drawing closer and closer.

An automobile.

It had to belong to another sectarian running late for the eight o’clock confab.

Meredith spun
around but she had nowhere to hide. On either hand the fence was impassable. The gates were even higher still. She darted onto the pavement, crouched against the darkest, thickest tangle of overgrowth she could find, and prayed the mist did the rest. Her dark blue cloak might help camouflage her, but damn it, one attentive glance in her direction and the game would be up.

The clattering heap squealed to a halt before the gravel, and the driver, an elderly, moustached m
an wearing a flying jacket and a flat cap, leapt out muttering obscenities. He grasped a pocket watch by its chain. Never once looked anywhere but where he was going. As soon as he’d unlocked the gate—by way of the brass plate puzzle—it crept open on its own, but too slowly for him, as he shook his steering wheel impatiently from the driver’s seat and then hurled his hat at the fence in frustration when the car took its good time accelerating. He drove into the cemetery without looking back. The gate closed behind him.

Meredith fetched the
flat cap, thinking to use it as an excuse for following the man through the gates if she was caught—an attempt to return it to him. The time he’d spent besting the puzzle, no more than twenty seconds, encouraged her. He’d carried his Atlas pocket watch, too, so he had to have used the monocle. To read something perhaps? Something ordinary light would not reveal?

Hmm, i
t all seemed to fit. The steel hangman’s post with a magnet
on the end, to undo the case. The oval of raised buttons one could press till doomsday and not find the right sequence to unlock the gates, unless one had a correct code on the correct day? And the monocle, given to read the
real
buttons which...
yes, yes...
appeared in the empty grid squares around the oval. Flat, square buttons numbering from zero to nine that only revealed themselves when viewed through a pinkish-red lens. She had to breathe on the glass to achieve the right hue.

But what
’s the combination? The Atlas entry code?

The un
ique number engraved on her case—eight-two-six—was the only one she could think of. If this didn’t work, she might have to go—

It did.

As the imperious iron gates inched apart, a growing queasiness turned her stomach and the gravel path before her and this whole misadventure to quicksand. Uncertain ground. Beyond, danger most certain. It was the momentous moment of her life away from home, a point of no return, and that it drew her toward it rather than repulsed her satisfied Meredith deep inside. This she could do. This she would do. This...she was
born
to do.

The gates whined closed behind her, and she scurried off the path, flitting from yew to yew a whisper
away from an eternity of moonlit headstones.

Wheel tracks grooved the soggy path of compacted wood chippings until she could no longer see the gates behind her through the mist. A pungent smell of wet soil accompanied her off-road, while the occasional ship’s horn from the Thames provided the only sound. At first.

Heavy
footsteps disturbed the gravel ahead. She ran behind the nearest tree. The steps continued toward her, first at a slow walk, than at a trot—not a run, the thing now had more than two legs. It had started off with two, now it had four? Or perhaps there were two people and their steps had been in sync at first.

Raspy breaths, almost snarls, ricocheted quietly
around the cemetery. Closer. Now farther away. But where? What was it? She peeked around the tree but there was nothing there.

A wolf-like howl erupted, goosin
g her spine. Still nothing to see. Then a series of vicious snarls, as though the wolf was fighting with its prey. They couldn’t be...phantom animals, could they? She shook the idea from her head. The fool driver had planted that superstitious seed with his hinting at the full moon.

But what
is
making those noises?

I
f Sonja were here she’d tell Meredith to think this through with logic, deduction, a dispassionate mind. All sound had a source. And if she couldn’t see the source then it must be hidden. But why? Who would want to create this illusion? Someone intending to frighten people away. And who would do that?

Someone protecting a secret.

She crept by the second row of overgrown headstones until she was certain the raspy breaths and the snarls and the footsteps were emerging from the grass at her feet. Sure enough, a little rummaging among the weeds dislodged a metal speaker attached to a wire that fed into the ground, into the
grave.

How utterly ghoulish.

But the charade was clear—a cheap but effective gimmick to repel visitors from a place already conducive to people’s worst fears and superstitions. The cemetery. An ideal place to hide secrets.

Somewhere off to her left, an undead groan.
A long way up ahead, a ball and chain being dragged over the shale. They might scare the Dickens out of unsuspecting visitors—yes, they were straight out of
A Christmas Carol—
but Meredith merely shook her head. Then swallowed.

They
’d
best
all be fake.

The line of yews ended and still the
wheel tracks went on, dozens of them. They veered right at a cobblestone crossroads, into an imposing section of the cemetery where simple headstones gave way to ever larger, more elaborate and overgrown gothic crypts, some made of limestone, others of marble.

Partway along this
row, dense grass had completely covered the cobblestone. Here the tracks seemed to disappear altogether. An unnatural archway of ribbed wooden beams decorated with moss and fake bark seemed odd. From a distance it resembled trees bowing over the road. Perhaps that was the intent. Meredith backtracked to make sure she hadn’t missed a turning anywhere between crypts. No, and it didn’t make a jot of sense. How could vehicles
and
horses up and vanish without a clue in the middle of a lane? Unless...

She kicked at the edge of the grass, bent low to inspect the ground where stone met vegetation. Hmm, it
appeared
normal, natural, but something had to be amiss. The crypt buildings opposite were very old, partially thatched by the tangles of dead brown creepers. Outside the one on the left stood a discoloured brass plaque on a stone pedestal. Again, to the unsuspecting eye it didn’t seem unusual, but Meredith was starting to think like an Atlas agent.

If a vehicle can
’t disappear from thin air, then it has to have been moved.

After lifting the plaque lid as she had at the gate
—the latch on this one was disguised as a gilded octagon—she re-entered her code on the identical buttons, using the tinted monocle to read the hidden digits. A distant ratcheting of metallic cogs and gears made her step back from the cobbles. A vibration underfoot tickled her soles and shins.

The entire r
oad ahead began to slide away. The thick grass was merely camouflage on the roof of some sort of underground vault. This roof was moved by means of two huge iron chains attached to a steam-powered crank. The hot vapour cloud billowed out of an exhaust grid in the ground near the left hand crypt.

A shallow concrete slope led down inside the vault, a
nd here she saw the continuation of damp wheel tracks leading far, far below the graveyard.

So here we
go...

A McEwan
ventures underground.

The purpose of the artificial archway was now clear, too
—it hid this operation from spying airships.

If it had been
more cramped inside she might not have risked it, yet there was room enough for horses and carriages and great big clunking cars: hopefully more than enough room for her to hide in.

After removing her shoes (again) she g
ripped the Atlas case in her gloved hand, said a prayer, and stole inside the vault.

At the foot of the slope,
gas lamps stood equidistantly along the walls of an enormous concrete sanctum, not home lights but full-sized streetlamps. A lever next to the first lamp recovered the roof. Meredith hoped no one was close enough to hear it.

All right, now what?

A doorway in the left hand wall beside the ramp led to a staircase, presumably accessed from the crypt up top by those who came on foot. She followed the faint muddy boot prints and wheel tracks downhill until they turned left into a vast tunnel at least sixty feet wide, fifteen high. She couldn’t see its end. It seemed to dip and then rise concavely for half a mile or so. Dozens of broad white portcullises barred regular entry points into either wall of the corridor. Each was lit by a streetlamp, and all appeared to be closed. So where had the vehicles gone? All the way up the corridor?

Eight
thick, raised, parallel metallic lines ran along the floor of the passage, four on the left, four on the right. There was a walk space in the centre, and another on either flank. The lines started after the second portcullis. They gleamed, appeared to be brand new. Electric cables fed from the lines up the wall on either side. They attached to curved apparatuses resembling broad, upside-down periscopes in the ceiling. These measured the width of each set of four lines. The same set-up repeated at regular intervals along the tunnel on both sides, the periscopes on the right hand side facing the opposite way.

It
behoved her to be extra cautious from here on as there was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to retreat to, should she brave this enormous passage. The flat cap might be a decent disguise if only she weren’t dressed like a tsarina.

She backed up. B
eyond the turn into this central corridor, shadowy alcoves surrounded a large, empty rectangular space with a low ceiling. Two or three sets of footprints headed in that direction. It had the feel of a utility area, and might provide her with a way to orient herself, to learn more about this underground sanctum.

In the first alcove she found a dark
, musty room about the size of a work shed. Strange metallic sleds of various sizes, some twice as big as her, hung on padded wooden racks from floor to ceiling. The smaller sleds weighed almost nothing but seemed firm enough; she could neither warp nor press the metal. The bottoms were lined with a curious layer of something thin and grey.

A sign
on the wall said, Undersides Made of Pyrolytic Graphite. Handle With Care.

Whatever that was
.

Workmen had left overalls and
mining helmets on hooks in one corner. A few pairs of Wellingtons stood underneath. They all smelled like underpants in summer but she’d come too far to quit now, and a disguise—any disguise—was essential if she wanted to go further. Relief from her constricting dress and stays left her a little giddy, energised. She imagined Sonja beside her, egging her on, rattling off nautical terms a mile a minute to frame all this as an adventure, something they
should
be doing as McEwans. It was in their blood, didn’t she know?