The Thieves' Labyrinth (Albert Newsome 3) (44 page)

Sir Richard nodded slightly to his Thames Police superintendent and whistles began to blow. The vessel was secured and planks were dropped. The superintendent let forth a blistering military
yell:

‘Truncheons at the ready, men! Take all miscreants into custody! Surround and secure the warehouse! Go! Go!’

Uniformed police poured from the launch with a collective cry and added their truncheons to the violence already vividly extant.

Following them at a more studied pace, Mr Williamson latterly descended the plank bereft of hat or weapon, moving somnambulistically to where bars and fists flew with bloodied abandon.

‘George – what are you doing!’ cried Sir Richard from the prow, too far away now to be heard amid the cacophony. ‘Wait for the uniformed men! George, you might be
killed!’

But there was another matter even more pressing – one that none of the combatants had yet had occasion to notice. A Custom House officer arrived panting by Sir Richard’s side.

‘Commissioner, sir!’

‘Yes, what is it?’ said Sir Richard, still watching Mr Williamson’s stately progress into oblivion.

‘Sir – the river . . . it is still rising . . .’

‘Of course it is. Why are you bothering me with this news?’

‘I . . . I think you do not understand me, sir. High water was fifteen minutes ago according to the almanacks, but – see – it continues to rise and rise. The north-easterlies,
sir . . . it is going above the wharf edge. It may flood the whole of Wapping as it did a couple of years past. Millions of pounds’ worth of cargo may be lost to the flood!’

Sir Richard looked where bidden and saw that the river level was indeed at the very limit of the wharf and beginning to lap over it. He recalled with cold dread what had happened at the last
such tide: Bankside submerged from St Saviours to Holland-street . . . Blackwall entirely under water . . . warehouses and cellars breached as far as Vauxhall . . . corn, flour and tobacco stocks
ruined by the turbid waters . . .

The men of the Thames Police would again be urgently required to help rescue cargo and citizens all along the river, and yet here they were engaged
en masse
in a furious battle at Frying
Pan wharf. The newspaper reports would be scathing . . .

‘My G—,’ muttered Sir Richard, realizing where the greater responsibility lay. ‘We must call back the uniformed men. We must sound the retreat.’

‘But Mr Dyson is already inside the warehouse, sir . . .’

‘I know that, but the Thames Police does not serve him alone. I have no doubt he can protect himself. Now – sound the retreat and see about securing as many pumps as you can . .
.’

And as the constables of the Thames Police were recalled with great difficulty from their violent endeavours, the river went on rising. It rushed up stairs, inundated quays and encroached ever
further into the thoroughfares themselves. At Bermondsey and Shadwell, rats poured in their hundreds from the sewers to be attacked by men armed with shovels. Cellars filled with filthy streams;
fires were doused in the very hearths of riverside public houses; wherries drifted beneath gaslamps in streets rendered abruptly Venetian. Even Tower and Custom House wharfs were covered, and
Scotland Yard itself became a muddy lagoon.

By three o’clock, much within the immediate river basin was below water and the river had risen higher than at any time in the previous five years. Barrels and sodden bales drifted amid
vessels. Horses pulling wagons of fugitive stock were splashed to their bellies. Everywhere, the men of the Thames Police were labouring to minimize the damage.

No lives had yet been lost to the flood – but at least three were in immediate peril within a secret subterranean cell . . .

‘Ben? Can you hear that?’ said Mr Cullen.

There was a grunted affirmative.

‘It sounds like water . . . flowing water. It seems to be behind the walls.’

They listened in the blackness to what seemed a distant stream. The rasping breath of Eldritch Batchem came thickly from the space between them.
He
had not stirred or spoken for some
time.

‘O! My legs! Ben – my legs are wet! The water is coming in somehow!’

Both men stood splashing to their feet.

‘It smells like the river. If it rises as high as the mark I saw on the wall, we will be in trouble for sure, Ben.’

Silence from Benjamin, then a bubbling from the figure at their feet.

‘O, he is drowning!’ said Mr Cullen.

A sodden body was dragged blindly from the centre of the floor to where it could be propped sitting against a wall. The water was now ankle-high.

‘Where is it coming from, Ben? Up through the floor?Beneath the door? I cannot tell. Can we plug it? We must do
something
. . .’

Doubly silenced, Benjamin waded to the iron door and began to feel around it for any hint of weakness. There was no discernible flow beneath, indicating that the exterior was flooding at the
same pace. He hammered on it with a meaty fist and found it utterly unyielding.

‘Ben? What are we to do? The water is now almost to my knees. How are we to escape? I see no . . . I see no possibility of survival.’

Benjamin sighed, and spoke. Tongueless as it was, the utterance seemed clear enough:

‘No-ah.’

‘That is a nasty cut you have on your neck,’ said Noah, standing before the Italian.

The latter gave a half smile. His pistol remained steady. He used his free hand to indicate where he had similarly marked Noah in their altercation at Ratcliff-highway.

‘Yes, you are a skilful enough fellow,’ said Noah. ‘Perhaps you are a thief; perhaps you are a murderer. I do not care – I have no argument with you. I care nothing for
the cargo in this Aladdin’s warehouse, or for its origins. I am not a policeman. I seek only my friend the Negro. Where is he?’

The Italian gave no sign that he had heard or understood.

‘Now is your chance to flee,’ said Noah. ‘A hundred policemen and Customs officials will descend upon this place in moments – you must know that. Is there no other way
out of this chamber? Take it now. I will not stop you.’

The Italian’s eyes seemed to flicker momentarily towards a thick, iron-banded door to his right.

Noah caught the glance and smiled. ‘The exit is there? But if it were, I suspect you would already have used it. Ah . . . perhaps your master is still here, in that room there, and you are
afraid to flee until he has made his own escape. That is a commendable act of duty. But, as I say, the raid has already begun and . . .’

Noah’s pause was occasioned by a startling change in the Italian’s expression. Rather than staring intently at the intruder’s face, he was now seemingly transfixed by the pool
of water trickling from the platform and spreading outwards across the dry floor of the warehouse.

Noah looked up and saw that the brick shaft through which he had descended was now quite streaming with water. He remembered the abnormally low morning tide and made the automatic
connection.

‘My friend – the Thames is clearly in flood. In a matter of minutes, all this will be chest-deep in water. Time is short. What are you going to do?’

As if to reinforce his words, a crash and urgent voices echoed down the shaft from the warehouse above.

The Italian raised the gun and sighted along its barrel at Noah’s heart.

‘
Halt!
Thames Police! Drop your weapon!’

Both Noah and the Italian started at the cry. A figure holding a pistol emerged from behind a stack of crates – a thoroughly begrimed fellow reeking obscenely of the sewers and with a
thatch of curly red hair seemingly aflame atop his head. A constable’s bullseye lamp was strapped to his chest and his eyes burned with a lunatic intensity.

‘Inspector Newsome – I never believed I would be pleased to see you,’ said Noah.

‘I care nothing if he shoots you, Mr Dyson. It is his testimony I seek to secure . . . put that gun down, I say!’

The Italian now grinned and slowly turned his weapon on Mr Newsome.

‘This is my final warning . . .’ said the latter.

There was a sharp report and the pistol jumped in the Italian’s hand. Inspector Newsome dropped to the ground with a grunt and lay immobile.

Noah was already in motion and reached the Italian before he could turn in response. The base of the seaman’s knife connected solidly with a temple and the Italian collapsed to his knees
half-sensible.

‘The Negro – where is he? He has a scar about his thr—’

But the blow had been too powerful. The Italian’s eyes rolled upwards into his scull and he toppled on his side.

‘———!’ screamed Noah, kicking at the unconscious form.

His cry resounded within the lofty chamber. The cloud of smoke from the discharged weapon hung still in the air. He withdrew a pair of handcuffs and tethered the Italian wrist-to-ankle before
going to examine Mr Newsome’s body.

It was unmoving. Noah slapped the face for a reaction and saw none. A dark stain was spreading from beneath the bullseye lamp on the chest. He searched roughly through the pockets for anything
of use to the investigation, finding only a large rusty key on a cord, a dagger, a box of lucifers, a gold coin and the large animal tooth wrapped in a piece of cloth. He put all into his own
pockets and looked about him. Soon, policemen would find the shaft and begin to descend. Where was Benjamin?

The iron-banded door. Noah ran at it and aimed a tremendous kick just above the knob. The lock ripped through the jamb. The door flew open in a shower of splinters.

Empty. The room looked like a clerk’s office: a broad wooden desk with neatly sorted piles of paper, a bookshelf with ledgers, a large-scale map of the river with all stairs, wharfs and
docks marked upon it. A fire smouldered in the grate. There was no other exit to be seen.

He sniffed the warm air within. There was a scent of cigar smoke and of a match having been struck. There was the smell of a man. Whoever had fled had done so recently.

Water seeped black and silent over the threshold and into the room. The voices of policemen continued to echo distantly from the warehouse above, though there was no movement of the platform.
Noah returned to the vault and looked wildly for another door or passage. There seemed to be a gallery running around the upper portion of the walls.

‘Ben! Ben – can you hear me? Make a sound if you can hear me!’

The space swallowed his voice.

There was a thud of boots as one of the
Prince Peacock
’s ‘crew’ landed at the bottom of the shaft. The fellow observed the two bodies and Noah standing between them. He
nodded an understanding and set to work with the hand crank to raise the platform and bring more men.

Then a noise: a distant clanging of metal that came to Noah indistinctly through the labyrinth. There was a pattern to it – a regular beat of desperation, a hand where no tongue could cry.
Benjamin . . .

Mr Williamson passed like a spirit through the fury of the wharf. Weapons struck, arms flailed and curses were hurled, yet he walked unarmed and unscathed amid the madness.
Even as the tide of men turned at the sound of the retreat, he continued towards the warehouse doors as if borne there by the rising waters.

Inside, he moved automatically towards where a few of Noah’s plain-clothes crew were peering down a brickwork shaft and calling to one of their number who had evidently dropped there. One
of the group noticed his approach and stood to attention:

‘Sir – we heard a gunshot below! Robinson is raising the platform now.’

A top hat emerged gradually from the hole, followed by a face and a torso working an iron mechanism with great excitement.

‘All aboard, lads!’ called he who had raised the platform. ‘There’s a giant warehouse below. Two bodies lie dead already.’

Four of them jumped the remaining two feet and beckoned for Mr Williamson to join them. He may have worn no uniform but, to a man, they knew exactly who he was.

‘What bodies? Who did you see?’ said Mr Williamson as they descended.

‘It was very quick, sir. One fellow lying in cuffs . . . he had long dark hair. The other was more distant, also on the ground. Mr Noah Dyson was standing between them and acknowledged me.
Sir . . . I wonder if we may ask you: who is this fellow Dyson? The superintendent suggested he is some manner of agent . . .’

‘Then an agent he is.’

The platform descended into water and the men gazed in muttered wonder at the reflected spectacle before them. Two inert bodies lay as islands. There was no sign of Noah.

‘To work, gentlemen,’ said Mr Williamson. ‘Detain and arrest whoever you find.’

The men splashed away like hounds after a scent and Mr Williamson approached the first body: the Italian. Lying awkwardly on his side, he was not dead but breathing shallowly in his oblivion. A
pair of police handcuffs bound his left wrist to his right ankle. Noah’s work, perhaps.

The other form lay supine, its submerged red hair a straggling coral growth about the head and the face frozen in the grimace of its end. Inspector Newsome – even in death did he frown at
the world. Mr Williamson searched himself for grief or sorrow and found neither.