Beneath London (46 page)

“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 Devonshire 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 Devonshire 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 Devonshire 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

T
he sky was full of broken, fleeing clouds when Finn climbed out of the hearse 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 ship’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 hearse. From that height he could see that there was nothing along the top of the wall but a broad coping – no glass 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 hearse rattling away, and Beaumont at the gate, pushing 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 cumbersome, 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.”