“The name of John Chandros is familiar, but I can’t quite place it.”
“Former members of Parliament, from a northern district, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Land developer. Steel plants. Enormously wealthy.”
“Wasn’t Chandros involved in the prison-reform movement?”
“And chaired the prison commission for two terms. His name also surfaced in my investigation of the Nicholson-Drummond transaction; he owns a sizable freehold of land adjacent to the property sold by Nicholson to General Drummond.”
“No coincidence there, I’d say.”
“There is no such thing as coincidence. We now have a twofold connection from Chandros to Drummond to Rathborne Nicholson. How Gull fits into this mesh we have yet to discover.”
“What of the others?”
“I am acquainted with the name of Bishop Pillphrock. Church of England. His diocese is North York, near the port of Whitby. Vamberg and Graves are unknown to me. What is the common thread?” asked Sparks searchingly. “Wealthy, powerful, prominent citizens. Four with ties to Yorkshire, where those convicts were allegedly sent. Chandros on the penal commission. All united through a false business front…”
“Isn’t it possible. Jack, that this company is nothing other than what it appears: a small, albeit well-capitalized, firm of modest ambitions, with a board of experts to advise them on various areas in which they wish to publish—Drummond for military works. Gull for medical text, Chandros political perspective, Pillphrock the theological, and so on?”
Sparks nodded thoughtfully. “With due consideration given to the other variables, I’d say there’s a ten percent chance of that. If not, there is every reason to believe that what we have in our possession here is nothing less than a list of the Dark Brotherhood’s innermost council. Seven names: Seven is a profane as well as sacred number.”
“Strikes me as a bit of a leap of faith,” said Doyle, as a thin line of white under the blotter on the desk caught his eye. He lifted the blotter and pulled out a creased square of slick paper, unfolding it to reveal a poster advertising a theatrical troupe’s appearances in London. The play dates listed were for a run of one week in late October of the previous year.
“The Revenger’s Tragedy,” read Doyle. “I’m not familiar with it.”
“Court melodrama, late Elizabethan, attributed to Cyril Tourneur. Adapted from Seneca. Grim piece of business: plot-heavy, lots of onstage violence. Deservedly obscure. I don’t recall this production.”
“Seems they came and went fairly quickly,” said Doyle. “The Manchester Players.”
“I don’t know them, but there are dozens of companies touring around Britain at any one time. More to the point, what was this doing here?”
Doyle refolded the poster and lifted the blotter to slide it back into its hiding place. As he did so, a fountain pen rolled off the blotter and fell to the floor. Sparks pushed the chair away, knelt with the candle to retrieve the pen, and noticed a set of matched diagonal scratches at floor level on either side of the desk.
“Hold this for me, would you, Doyle?”
Doyle took the candle. Sparks inspected the edges of the desk where it rested ponderously on the varnished wood. He took a small vial of liquid from his pocket, uncorked it, and poured its contents out onto the floor. Mercury.
“What is it. Jack?”
“There’s a seam here in the flooring where there shouldn’t be one.”
The quicksilver beaded up on the wood, and then, in a single rush, vanished down in between the floorboards. Sparks leaned in and ran his hands around and under the desk.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’ve found a hook. I’m going to give it a pull. I shouldn’t stand just there for the moment, Doyle.”
Doyle stepped away from the desk. Sparks pulled the hook; the flooring at the hidden seam lifted up and slid neatly back under the desk, diagonally scratching its facing on either side and leaving a hole two foot square directly under where the president’s chair had been resting.
“Uneasy sits the head that wears the crown,” paraphrased Sparks.
Leaning over to have a look, Doyle saw a bolted steel ladder descending straight down a masoned shaft too deep by the light of his candle to spy the end of. The air wafting from below was fresh and smelled of water.
“I daresay your garden-variety publishing company would have little use for such an exit as this,” said Sparks excitedly.
“None I can immediately think of.”
Sparks clapped his hands. “By God, we’ve found them out! The Brotherhood quartered less than half a mile from my flat. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.”
Sparks gave one quiet bird whistle, and moments later Larry appeared in the doorway.
“Tunnel. Larry. Have a look, eh?” asked Sparks.
“Straightaway, sir.”
Larry stripped off his jacket, took out his own candle, cadged a light from Doyle’s, and nimbly scampered one-handed down onto the ladder.
“Perhaps you’d better take this as well,” said Doyle, extending his service revolver to him.
“Thanks just the same, guv,” said Larry, lifting aside his vest to display a brace of holstered knives. “I’m a blade man myself.”
Larry began his descent. Doyle and Sparks watched the warm glow from his candle quickly diminish to a thin, shimmering halo.
“How is it, Larry?” asked Sparks down the shaft, his voice husky and low.
“There’s an end to it just ahead.” Larry’s voice echoed metallically back up to them, along with his footfalls on the ladder. “The ladder stops here. Open space beneath. Can’t tell how big. Somethin’s down there… I can see…wait a moment…good ’eavens…”
The light from the candle disappeared. Then silence. They waited.
“What is it, Larry?” asked Sparks.
No answer from below. Doyle looked to Sparks, who appeared equally concerned. “Larry? Are you there, lad?”
Still no reply. Sparks gave out the whistle with which he’d summoned Larry into the room. Again nothing, Sparks took off his jacket.
“I shall have to go after him, Doyle. Coming with me?”
“I don’t know that I’m properly equipped—” said Doyle evasively.
“Fine, then if I disappear as well, you will have to come after me alone.”
Doyle took off his coat. “Will you go first, or shall I?”
“Me first, with your revolver, you following with the candle.”
“Right,” said Doyle, handing over the revolver, his heart beating wildly. He was not overly fond of heights or tight places, and the shaft below served up a generous helping of both. And if whatever was down there had already gotten the better of the ever-capable Larry—that’s quite enough of that line of thinking, Doyle; one rung at a time. Jack in the lead, hold the candle and your peace. Sparks went down. Doyle steadied himself on the edge of the trap, then lowered himself in until he found purchase on the ladder with one foot and then the other.
“Mind my hands as you go,” said Sparks, a few rungs below. “And don’t speak unless you absolutely must.”
Breathe, Doyle, don’t forget to breathe. He quickly realized that much as he’d like to keep eyes forward, he was going to have to look down continually, if only to keep from crushing Jack’s hands. Fortunately the supply of candlelight was so meager that the sheer dizzying depth of the shaft beneath him lived only in the mind, not the eye. Unfortunately, in the absence of the visual, his mind perversely manufactured images far more terrifying than any hazard that was likely to be waiting below.
The descent was laborious. The first thirty feet took nearly ten minutes but seemed endlessly longer. In order to obtain the vaguest idea of what lay ahead, Sparks was obliged to stay within a few rungs of Doyle and their source of light. One-handed as he was, Doyle refused to take the next step down until his free arm was securely entwined in and around the ladder. A steady drizzle of hot wax spilled onto his candle hand. Bot
h palms were slippery with sweat.
What if I should drop it? thought Doyle. What if a gust of wind comes up; how would I ever relight the damn thing?
“Stop there,” said Sparks finally.
“Where are we?”
Glancing up the shaft no longer gave any indication of where the door above was in relation to their position, a limbo precisely defined by the limit of the candlelight.
“Hand me the candle, please, Doyle.”
Doyle carefully transferred the light down to Sparks’s outstretched hand, grateful that for the moment he was now able to hug the ladder with both arms. Sparks hung down by one hand, leaned over, and held the candle as low as he could carry it.
“The ladder ends here, as Larry said,” said Sparks. “There’s a drop-off.”
“How far?”
“I can’t make out. This is where he called us from: I hear water moving somewhere below.”
“What should we do?”
Just then they heard the scrape of wood on wood from far above and a sound like the sealing of a tomb. The silence that followed was deafening.
“I say. Jack.…”
“Ssshhh!”
They listened. Doyle kept quiet as long as he could bear.
“I think someone’s closed the trapdoor,” he whispered.
“Do you hear anyone above you on the ladder?” Sparks whispered back.
Doyle slowly turned to look up the shaft “I… don’t believe I do.”
“It’s possible that the trap closed automatically. That it has some sort of mechanical timing device.”
“Yes, well, anything’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Do you prefer to believe someone’s just imprisoned us in this vertical hell?”
“No harm in considering the full range of possibilities, Jack.” Doyle’s heart hammered like operatic timpani. He struggled to keep it from bleeding into his voice. “What do you suggest we do?”
“I don’t recommend climbing. Even if we find a way to open the trap from this side, if someone is waiting for us—”
“With you all the way on that one.”
Sparks paused and peered down into the Stygian darkness below. “You will have to lower me by hand.”
“Is that our only alternative?”
“Unless you prefer that I lower you. Need I point out you’re a good deal more stout than I—”
“Point well taken.”
“Can you get your braces off? We’re going to need some sort of reinforcement.”
“I don’t really fancy my trousers falling down in the middle of this—”
“Without belaboring the point, your buttons are near enough to bursting that I don’t honestly see it as a problem—”
“Right, you will have them,” said Doyle, irritation getting the momentary better of fear.
Maneuvering one hand at a time, Doyle peeled the braces off his shoulders, unbuttoned them from his waist, and handed them to Sparks. He looped both ends through the tops of his own braces, which he still wore, and handed them back to Doyle.
“Ever done any mountain climbing?” asked Sparks.
“No.”
“Then there’s no point in my describing what we’re about to do in mountaineering terms. I shall hang down by hand from the last rung as you wrap the braces twice around the bottom of the ladder. Hold the ends tightly in your hands; give me any additional slack if I ask you for it.”
“What if they won’t hold?”
“We’ll find that out soon enough, won’t we?”
“What are you doing to do with the candle?”
“For the moment, I shall hold it in my mouth. Quickly now, Doyle.”
Sparks bit down on the candle and lowered himself, hanging off the bottom rung with both hands. Doyle crabbed cautiously down to the ladder’s final station, quickly wrapped the braces twice around the steel as instructed, and grabbed hold of the reins.
“All set. Jack.”
Sparks nodded, let go of the ladder with one hand, and took the candle from his mouth.
“Here I go then,” said Sparks.
He let go with his other hand and fell away. The force of his weight hit the braces hard and nearly pried Doyle loose from the ladder, but the braces held. Sparks bounced and swung gently below in the open air, holding the candle out into the darkness.
“It’s an entirely new shaft.” said Sparks. “Runs horizontally. Much wider. Ours empties out into its middle. Water trickling down the center.”
“Sewer tunnel?” said Doyle, straining to hold him.
“Doesn’t smell like it, does it?”
“Thankfully, no. Any sign of Larry?”
“Not as yet.”
“How far to the ground?”
“Another twenty feet or so.”
“What do you suppose Larry was reacting to?”
“Must have been the large Egyptian statue standing directly below me,” said Sparks.
“Large Egyptian statue?”
“I can’t quite make out who it is from this angle. Looks jackal-headed—”
“Did you say large Egyptian statue?”
“Yes. Possibly Anubis or Tuamutef—funereal deities, similar purpose, concerned with weighing a man’s soul as he passes to the other side—”
Doyle’s muscles were shaking violently with exertion. “Could we forgo the mythology lesson long enough to decide if you’re heading up or down? I don’t know that I can hold on much longer.”
“Sorry. If you let me down slowly, Doyle, I think I can grab hold of the statue, let go the braces, and climb down the rest of the way.”
“Fine.”
Doyle lowered Sparks until he could reach down with one foot and steady himself against the statue’s shoulder. He un-snapped his own braces, and both pairs flew into the air. Doyle reached out, caught them, and slumped back against the wall in relief, the knots in his arms relaxing into merely agonizing spasms.
“I believe it’s definitely Tuamutef,” said Sparks, sliding down the figure’s body to the ground. “Quite rare outside of Egypt. Remarkable. I can’t actually recall ever seeing one this size before.”
“How interesting for you. What do you suggest I do now, Jack?”
“Tie off the braces and lower yourself down. You really shouldn’t miss this, Doyle.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Doyle collected himself, tied the braces as securely around the ladder as his knowledge of seafaring knots would allow, and let himself ever-so-gently down into the arms of dog-faced Tuamutef.
“Tuamutef assisted Anubis in the preparation of bodies for mummification and burial,” said Sparks, walking around with the candle, inspecting the statue at its base as Doyle attempted a difficult, chafing passage down Tuamutef’s bumpy torso. “His particular province was the stomach, specifically the removal and preservation of the viscera for the journey into the underworld.”
“This, I can say with some assurance, is as far into the underworld as I ever hope to go,” said Doyle, finally touching down beside him.
“The viscera were packed in airtight jars with a compound of herbs and spices that delayed decomposition, so you could take them out and stick the organs right back into place once you reached the other side,” said Sparks, preoccupied to the point of obliviousness.
“Fascinating, truly, but Jack, if you don’t mind my asking, if someone has in fact sealed us in down here with evil intent—one of many possibilities, I realize, but one we really ought to consider—don’t you think it would be a good idea—a really first-rate idea, in fact—for us to quickly find our way out of here?”
“Right.”
Sparks looked off in both directions. Doyle couldn’t help but notice that their candle was growing perilously small. Behind the statue, he spotted what appeared to be a blackened torch set in a bracket on the wall and quickly retrieved it.
“This appears to be an old Roman conduit—can’t seem to shake off those persistent old buggers, can we? London
’s lousy with them. This one has been rather extensively refurbished. Aside from the parties responsible for the construction of the shaft we just descended, a fairly recent addition, it’s likely no one else is even aware this tunnel’s down here. And if the used torch you’ve just handed me is any indication, it has been used by those parties sometime within the last few days.”
Sparks ignited the torch from the candle, filling the chamber with twenty times the previous supply of light. A huge, pulsating shadow of Tuamutef was thrown menacingly onto the opposite wall.
“Which way should we go?”
“The tunnel runs north to south.” He pointed south, where the walls curved gently away around a turn, just as a muffled scuffling issued faintly from the direction.
“What was that?” asked Doyle.
They listened. The scuffle repeated, slowly and rhythmically. It seemed to be moving toward them.
“Footsteps?” said Doyle.
“The person is injured. Dragging one foot behind.”
“Larry?”
“No, they’re not wearing shoes.” Sparks turned back to the north and examined the bricks on either side of the water. “If we follow the wax drippings in this direction, which Larry has thoughtfully provided for us, we will much more quickly discover his whereabouts.”
Maintaining the same sluggish pace, the footsteps behind them drew closer to the nearest turn.
“Then who do you suppose that is?” asked Doyle, lowering his voice.
“I never ask questions I don’t really wish to know the answer to. Let’s move on.”
They sloshed through the shallow water and made for the north.
“As to what Tuamutef is doing here a hundred feet below the offices of Rathborne and Sons…” Sparks mused as they walked.
“You mentioned the removal of the viscera. Similar to what was done to the body of that streetwalker Leboux showed to me, isn’t it?”
“The thought had occurred to me. It suggests the Dark Brotherhood is paying obeisance to an ancient Egyptian deity.”
“You mean as a sacrificial offering of some kind?”