The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) (10 page)

De Chardin glowered at the man. ‘Her interest is the same as yours should be, sir: to get to the bottom of the curious events which have been occurring throughout the Underground network. Now, if you don’t mind, Mr Blackwood and I would like to examine the tunnel in which last night’s occurrence took place.’

Jones’s tone turned to one of defence. ‘I assure you, Detective, that I’m doing everything in my power to resolve the situation – at least, here at Aldgate.’

‘Is there any sign of Seamus Brennan?’ asked Blackwood.

‘Not as yet. I have track-walkers making their way along the lines in both directions out of the station, but so far, there is no sign of him.’

‘I take it you are aware of Barrymore Tench’s claims,’ said de Chardin.

‘I am.’

‘What do you make of them?’

Jones hesitated. ‘If this… incident… had happened in isolation,’ he said, ‘I would have had a very clear theory as to what actually happened. I would have suspected that Tench and Brennan had an argument of some kind while in the tunnel, that Tench killed his friend and hid his body somewhere, and that he concocted this story to get himself off the hook. But after everything else that has been happening on the Tube network over the last few weeks… well, I am not normally given to ghost stories and the like…’ Jones’s voice trailed off, and he gave Blackwood and de Chardin a troubled look. Presently, he continued, ‘I apologise for my earlier impoliteness, gentlemen. The fact is, I’d greatly appreciate any help you might be able to provide.’

‘Apologies are quite unnecessary, Mr Jones,’ said Blackwood, with a smile. ‘We understand that you must be at your wits’ end with this business – after all, shutting down an entire section of the Tube is no trifling matter.’

‘Indeed not,’ Jones sighed. ‘Well, please feel at liberty to look around. I am needed elsewhere, so if you will excuse me…’

‘Of course,’ Blackwood nodded, as William Jones headed off across the ticket hall.

De Chardin watched him leave, then turned to the Special Investigator. ‘Let’s get down to the platform,’ he said.

Sophia’s carriage came to a halt outside the offices of the Central and South London Railway in Piccadilly. She looked up at the facade of the five-storey building, which looked drab and a little grimy in the watery yellow light of early afternoon. The impression was more than a little at odds with what she had learned of the powerhouse of a man whose office lay within.

She had returned to her own office while Sir William wrote her letter of introduction, had switched on her cogitator and connected it to the Æther with the intention of getting hold of some information on Mr Charles Exeter, Chairman of the CSLR, in preparation for their meeting. The machine had scoured the Akashic Records, the semi-material, plastic field of energy which surrounds the Earth and retains an impression of every event, thought and action that has ever occurred, and had displayed the results in the cogitator’s scrying glass.

Exeter, she learned, had been born in Philadelphia in 1837, and his early life was overshadowed by tragedy and ostracism: his mother died of puerperal fever when he was five years old, and his father was expelled from the Society of Friends as a result of his remarriage to a non-Quaker. This did nothing to dampen Exeter’s thirst for power and success, however, and by the time he was twenty-two, he had established a successful brokerage office, which secured for him a large fortune, thanks to his innate shrewdness and ability to read the bond market.

His success was not to last, for the financial panic caused by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 left him insolvent and unable to repay the $400,000 of public money he had used to fuel his financial speculations. Convicted of embezzlement, Exeter was sentenced to thirty-three months in the notorious Eastern State Penitentiary. However, he was released after only seven months, having secured an official pardon in return for his silence regarding the affairs of two influential Philadelphia politicians.

Exeter then left Philadelphia and moved to Chicago, where he immediately took an interest in the city’s public transportation network. Through a highly complex (and not entirely ethical) financial arrangement of construction companies, operating companies, holding companies and interlocking directorships, he managed to gain control of a large proportion of Chicago’s street tramways.

His dubious business methods, reported on more and more frequently in the American press, eventually damaged his reputation to the extent that Exeter realised he could no longer function profitably in that country, and in 1896 he had sailed to England, where he focussed his attention on London’s public transportation system, and, using the methods familiar to him, set about building a new empire in the ancient city. Once again, his ruthlessness and audacity served him well, and during the last three years he had risen to a position of great power and influence.

Sophia had read all this quickly and with a keen eye, and by the time Sir William had drafted the introductory letter, she felt that she had gained a fair measure of the man.

She stepped down from the carriage and asked her driver to wait for her there, before climbing the steps to the building’s entrance and slipping quickly inside.

She went to the reception desk, introduced herself and briefly explained the reason for her visit. The clerk, a young man who appeared to be in his early twenties, flushed as he took in her beautiful face and elegant bearing, and he asked her to wait while he sent someone up to Mr Exeter’s office with her letter of introduction. Sophia thanked him with a warm smile, which only served to increase the colour in the lad’s cheeks.

As she waited, she took in her surroundings. The large foyer was filled with activity: neatly-suited clerks hurried here and there, clutching papers and whispering excitedly to each other, as though they had just heard of some great, or perhaps calamitous, event. Sophia regarded their faces and decided that their frenetic animation was born more of worry or fear than anything else. She was hardly surprised: if half the things she had read about Charles Exeter were true, he must be climbing the walls of his office at this moment, fulminating against the turn of events which threatened his latest business interests. For a moment, she wondered whether her journey had been wasted. Would he agree to see her, with such weighty concerns on his mind?

The answer came a few minutes later, when the messenger returned to the foyer and asked Sophia to follow him. Mr Exeter, he said, had agreed to spare her a half hour out of his busy schedule. The expression on the messenger’s face told her that this was not a common occurrence.

Sophia followed him up three flights of stairs and along several corridors before arriving at a door bearing Exeter’s name on a polished brass plaque. The messenger knocked, bid Sophia good day and quickly withdrew, as a voice from within barked, ‘Enter!’

She opened the door and stepped into a large and luxuriously appointed office. Exeter, clearly, was a man who liked to display his success. As she crossed the thick-piled carpet towards the vast oak desk behind which the director sat, she took in the valuable antiques displayed atop elegant tables lining the walls, the leather-bound volumes ranked, sentinel-like, within tall, cherry bookcases, and the large conference table, surrounded by beautifully upholstered leather chairs, which dominated one half of the room. To the right of Exeter’s desk was another table, on which stood a highly-detailed model of a curious cylinder-shaped contraption. The air was heavy with the scent of expensive cigars.

Charles Exeter stood up and moved out from behind his desk as Sophia approached. Balding, heavy-set, with neatly-trimmed whiskers and a penetrating gaze, he looked every inch the successful entrepreneur, and Sophia had the profound sense that to get on the wrong side of him would be a very bad mistake indeed.

‘Your Ladyship,’ he said, bowing formally and, Sophia thought, a little ridiculously, ‘welcome.’

Normally, Sophia disliked her title – or rather, she considered it irrelevant to her life and the pursuit of the interests which mattered to her – and frequently asked new acquaintances to dispense with it when addressing her, but with Exeter and people like him, she found herself more than happy for her social status to be acknowledged. In fact, she insisted upon it.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice, sir,’ she replied, taking the chair he proffered.

‘May I offer you some refreshment?’

‘Thank you, no.’

Exeter seemed relieved at this, although at that moment, Sophia couldn’t decide whether it was because he was anxious to get the interview over and done with and be rid of her, or because he wished to avail himself of her help without delay.

She suspected it was the latter and was gratified when he retook his own seat and said, ‘I’m real glad you decided to pay me a visit, your Ladyship.’

Sophia suppressed a smile at the American’s curious mode of expression, at once formal and casual, and replied, ‘It’s my pleasure, Mr Exeter. As you may know, we at the Society for Psychical Research take a keen interest in the kinds of phenomena that have recently been reported on the Underground. Our knowledge and experience in such matters has been sought on many occasions by Her Majesty’s Government, and we have worked closely with various official departments.’

‘And you’ve been asked to look into this affair by Her Majesty as well, haven’t you?’

Sophia raised an eyebrow at this, and Exeter gave a low chuckle. ‘I have no special wisdom, your Ladyship, but I
do
have many sources of information, and I’m aware that the government has got itself mighty worked up over this – as well they should. What’s going on down there is crazy, beyond belief, and I want an end put to it as soon as possible.’ He lifted Sir William’s letter of introduction from the blotter on his desk and waved it as if it were a banknote of a particularly low denomination. ‘That’s why I agreed to see you. I’m running out of options, see? Pretty soon, the world’s first and most extensive underground railroad system will be empty: there’ll be no trains running, because no one will want to drive them, and the system will fall into ruin because no one will want to maintain it. That’s a problem for all of us.’

‘And for you especially, Mr Exeter,’ Sophia could not resist observing. ‘Not only do you own the Central and South London, you also have invested heavily in the new deep-level line from Bond Street to Westminster. You stand to lose a great deal if the Tube Railway should fail.’

‘You’ve done your homework,’ said Exeter with a thin smile. ‘But the fact remains, we’re all in this together. I’ll lose a heck of a lot of money, sure, but Great Britain will lose a heck of a lot of prestige if the Underground goes belly up… a
heck
of a lot.’

‘Then I suggest we get down to business,’ said Sophia. ‘What can you tell me about the new deep-level line?’

Exeter gave her a puzzled look. ‘Why do you want to know about that?’

‘It may be relevant to the current situation.’

‘In what way?’

Sophia gave him a smile every bit as thin and humourless as the one he had given her. ‘I don’t know until you tell me. But I must ask you to be completely honest with me and to withhold nothing.’

Exeter was silent for some moments, and Sophia took in his expression. She had clearly hit a nerve: she could see it in his eyes, and in the apprehensive drawing together of his lips.
You may be a good businessman
, she thought.
But I suspect you’re a terrible poker player
.

‘Something happened down there, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘During your excavation of the new tunnels… you found something.’

She watched as Exeter’s expression darkened, and she continued to meet his gaze until, presently, he dropped his eyes to the desk and gave a low chuckle. ‘You certainly
have
done your homework, ma’am. I congratulate you.’

Sophia shrugged. ‘We at the SPR
also
have our sources of information, Mr Exeter.’

His well-manicured fingers drummed upon the ink blotter for a few moments, as if he were debating with himself whether to accede to Sophia’s request that he share all relevant information concerning the new excavation. Sophia waited patiently, for she knew that, ultimately, he had no choice.

Presently, Exeter stood up and moved to the table beside his desk, on which sat the model of the curious contrivance. ‘Let me show you something, Lady Sophia.’ He indicated the model. ‘This is a Greathead tunnelling shield – a remarkable piece of equipment. The ground beneath London is mostly clay, relatively easy to tunnel through, but not particularly good for it.’ He glanced at her with a half smile. ‘Too soft, has a tendency to cave in. The shield prevents that. It’s an iron cylinder, twenty-four feet in diameter and sixty feet long, and fitted with pneumatic jacks which allow it to be propelled forward an inch at a time.’

Exeter pointed to the front of the model, which contained two levels nestling within a complex arrangement of iron braces and girders; each level contained a number of tiny human figures representing workmen. To Sophia, who was not an engineer, it was a hideously ugly thing, which looked like some loathsome, fat mechanical worm with a gaping maw in which the figures seemed trapped.

‘It’s an elegant solution to the logistical and engineering problems of tunnelling through clay,’ Exeter continued. ‘The men at the front of the machine excavate the working face as the shield is moved forward, supporting the newly-cut tunnel, while behind it the lining of cast iron segments is fitted into place.’

‘You make it sound easy,’ said Sophia.

Exeter laughed. ‘It’s anything but that. It’s slow, dirty, dangerous work, but the tunnelling shield is the only practical means we have of excavating the deep-level Tube lines. We have three of them – one of which began work on the new line between Bond Street and Westminster three months ago.’ He hesitated, as if he were recounting the events from an unreliable memory. ‘We… did find something. Yes… we did find something.’