We had reached the end of our frog-marching and stopped outside the door of some kind of cell. One of the thugs jerked his thumb at Charlie and, when he failed to move, the others grabbed him and began to haul him away.
‘Charlie!’ I cried. ‘You fiends! Get your ruddy hands off him!’
I was then bundled unceremoniously into the total blackness of the cell. The clang of the door behind me was like the Last Trump.
I sank to the floor and wiped the streaming sweat from my face. How far below the ground I was I could not tell but the heat was almost unbearable. And all the time came the constant thrum-thrum of mighty engines.
I crawled over to the wall and blindly examined the structure of my confinement. There was no hope of escape. The walls were of solid rock and the floor, though softer, was hardly less impenetrable. I could only wait until they came for me and then attempt to flee. If they came at all. Perhaps they meant me to boil alive in here as the great volcano erupted!
I was left alone in the pitch-black cell for perhaps an hour and my head was nodding on my breast in the stuffy darkness when, at last, there came footsteps. The light from the corridor flooded the cell and I shielded my eyes as the door swung open and Venus stood before me, his swarthy face wet with perspiration, his dark eyes shining malevolently.
‘Very sorry to have kept you, Signor Box,’ he said with palms outstretched. ‘But now all is prepared.’
‘All what is prepared?’
‘I wish you to see my little project. I would not have you die in ignorance.’
‘Not today, thank you,’ I cried cheerfully and turned my back on him.
‘It is important to me that you appreciate the sheer scale of my achievement,’ insisted the deadly beauty.
‘Is it? Well, yes, I can see that from your point of view it probably looks that way but, forgive me, what’s in it for me? I mean, surely, after the shilling tour, you’re going to bump me off.’
‘Not I. I have very little quarrel with you, Mr Box. In fact, I have enjoyed our brief association immensely. I only wish we could have known each other better.’
‘There’s still time!’ I cried, turning to face him. ‘What say we find somewhere nice and cool and have a little lie down, hm?’
But Venus evidently didn’t take to my kind of flippancy. That smooth hand cracked me nastily across the kisser. ‘It is my associate Mr Unmann who will do the deed. I believe he has something particularly unpleasant in mind.’
He threw back his head haughtily, and gestured to the corridor beyond. The guards dragged me from the cell and we retraced our steps up the corridor. Venus paused and leant across to the crystalline window, wiping away the condensed steam that clouded it with one delicate hand. Evidently satisfied, he pulled open an iron door. As I was about to be pushed through, I strained at my captors’ hold and jerked my head back.
‘What’s going on there, Mr Morraine? Your lackeys are sabotaging the lifts. Are we all to die in this great revenge of yours?’
Venus merely smiled and I was hurled through the door into what I can only describe as a mechanical cathedral.
It was a vast chamber, hewn from the very rock, perhaps half a mile across and so high that its upper portion was obscured by clouds of steam. Behemothal brass and copper pipes as thick as tree-trunks fanned from a central, organ-like structure resembling tentacles on some giant metal squid. Said pipes had been channeled into the glistening rock-walls, leading, I imagined, deep into the very heart of Vesuvius. Vast pistons slammed into one another, sending up great clouds of super-heated steam and flooding the floor with gobbets of black grease. Above all this wonder had been erected a network of spindly galleries and platforms, all connected by row after row of spiral staircases. Helmeted zombies swarmed everywhere, monitoring switches and levers and cranks, attending to the minutiae of Armageddon.
Seated in four chairs near us, their wrists and ankles securely bound, were Mrs Knight and Professors Sash, Verdigris and Quibble. The effects of the purple poppy seemed to be gradually abating. All four were stirring slightly in their bonds.
‘I always need an audience to bring out the best in me,’ trilled Venus.
One figure detached itself from the crowd of helmeted workmen and came towards us. It was wearing some kind of protective clothing, fashioned from rubber and a helmet with square glass eye-holes. He removed the mask revealing himself to be none other than Mr Tom Bowler of Belsize Park. Or Stromboli, as I now realised he must be.
‘You!’ I hissed.
‘Me. Hullo, Mr Box. So sorry I couldn’t help you with your bereavement. I promise to be very attentive, though, when it comes to your own interment.’ He flashed a horrible smile and turned to Venus. ‘We are almost ready to begin the ceremony.’
‘Wonderful!’ enthused Venus. ‘But first we must show Mr Box our little toy.’
I stared at Bowler. ‘Great God, man!’ I shrieked. ‘Why are you doing this? What hold does this creature have over you?’
He wiped at the sweat that was pouring into his eyes. ‘This is the future, Mr Box! A new world of machines and engines! We shall control the magma flows of this entire planet and once the world witnesses the destruction of Naples, they will give us anything we want!’
Something about Bowler’s tone gave me pause. He obviously had plans beyond this day of destruction. The destruction of Naples was to be a grand demonstration, not a suicidal act of revenge that would consume all Italy. I seized upon this chance. ‘There’s more to it than the end of Naples!’ I yelled above the clanking din. ‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘Silence him!’ cried Venus.
‘Tell him, Venus! Tell him about the chain reac –’
I felt a rough gag being fastened over my mouth. In the filthy, steaming heat it was a desperate struggle to breathe.
I was dragged back (which is better than being dragged up, like mein host).
Bowler gave me a strange look then shook his head and returned to his diabolical work.
Venus grabbed me by my shirt-front and pulled me towards the centre of that soaring chamber. At the heart of the forest of boiling pipes stood a curious round structure, riveted together in brass panels like the segments of an orange. Steps led to it and Venus dragged me up them until we were looking down on the brass globe. A glass panel occupied its upper surface and Venus forced my head down so that I could see inside.
Within, surrounded by a mass of wiring was what I knew must be the convection bomb. The whole interior of the thing sparkled with power.
And stuffed in like a rag-doll beside it, his eyes wide and terrified, was Charlie Jackpot.
Venus rose to his full height on the steps, held out both his arms wide, then began spinning about, like a giddy child. His peculiar chuckle merged with the pounding thrum-thrum of the colossal machines as he gloated in the midst of his infernal creation.
‘Behold!’ he thundered. ‘Behold the Engines of Vulcan!’
He stood in a frock, I stood in mute impotence, the thugs restraining me as those fearful contraptions hammered and shuddered all around. What was I to do? I could feel the veins throbbing sickeningly in my head.
Venus began to grow calmer and then, with a jerk of his head, indicated that I was to be taken away.
‘To Signor Unmann,’ he cried, flashing me a dreadful grin.
Protesting and stumbling I was hauled from the room. I managed at least to shoot one last pleading glance at Bowler.
After the hellish atmosphere in the bomb-chamber, the grey featureless corridors came as something of a relief. It was to be a temporary respite only, however, as I was hauled into another room, one dominated by a huge iron pipe, in which Cretaceous Unmann awaited my convenience.
Unmann, holding the fearsome mask – that of Etna – regarded me impassively as I was hurled to the rocky floor, and then rattled out an order. I was pulled up on to my bloodied knees and securely bound hand and foot. Finally satisfied that I posed no immediate threat, Unmann indicated that we sh
ould be left alone.
‘Where is your oh-so elegant poise now, Mr Box?’ he taunted.
Filthy and gagged, I was in no position to reply.
I tried to assume an air of nonchalance. Terribly difficult when held captive by lunatics beneath an active volcano, I’m sure you’ll agree.
‘How you patronized me!’ hissed Unmann. ‘Took me for a shambling fool. Yet now it is you that kneels before me!’
He paused. Perhaps realizing that a one-sided rant is nowhere near as interesting as a taunt-based dialogue, he crossed the floor towards me and pulled down my gag.
‘Much obliged,’ I panted. ‘Listen, old man. I’ve no doubt I misjudged you but you did put on such a good display of playing the fool. Now, can’t we talk this over like gentlemen?’
If I’d hoped to appeal to our national sense of decency I was sorely disabused.
‘Gentlemen?’ he spat. ‘How trivial you are, Box, when there are matters of the greatest moment on hand.’
He seemed to require prompting. ‘Will you not at least tell me,’ I said wearily, ‘how the blazes you got caught up in all this nonsense?’
Unmann chuckled to himself. ‘There’s little to tell. But, after all, why not? Venus was abandoned by that Medea of a mother of his and drifted into crime where I was already happily billeted though the Service knew nothing of it. We began our little enterprise by founding the Vesuvius Club. It paid awfully well. At first it catered purely to, shall we say, the more straightforward desires but there is always a ready market for those of our persuasion, eh Mr Box?’
‘I’ll thank you not to lump me in with you two,’ I muttered. ‘I find frock-coats more convenient than petticoats.’
Unmann scowled at me. ‘Venus is Victor Morraine’s true self. The self he retreated into when his life was torn apart. The self who has schemed and plotted all these years to avenge his father’s humiliation.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I cried. ‘But why kill Poop?’
Unmann shrugged. ‘We have been relieving Pompeii of its treasures in order to finance the glorious technology you see about you.’
I nodded slowly. ‘And that poor sap Poop stumbled upon the truth?’
‘He barely glimpsed the truth! But that, sadly for him, was enough. I lured him out to the harbour and bashed in his brains.’
I sighed exhaustedly. Unmann seemed to have stalled again. ‘And what of your plans for the professors and Mrs Knight?’
‘They will witness the end of all Italy as they are consumed in the fire. It will be a quick death. I think Venus is being immoderately merciful. Not a courtesy I will be extending to you, Mr Box.’
Sweat was trickling down my back. Unmann rapped hard on the door and bellowed for the guards.
The door flew open and the thugs entered. They seemed to know what was required, pulling me up by the arms and pushing me towards the great iron pipe.
Unmann slipped his fingers around a small handle and pulled at it. With a metallic screech some species of hatch was revealed. I struggled to take in the details, my eyes awash with sweat – a grilled section was fitted across the pipe and its twin was positioned directly above, so that a small cage was effectively formed, allowing a man to crawl inside and inspect the interior, albeit with some difficulty.
I knew at once that I was to be that man.
‘Hey-ho,’ cooed Unmann.
I was lifted bodily and thrust into the pipe.
‘It will not be comfortable for you, I’m afraid.’ Unmann smiled. ‘It is somewhat akin to the medieval torture I believe they called “Little Ease”. But whereas those unfortunates were kept crook-backed for years your time inside will be brief.’
The grille supported my weight, neatly caging me.
‘This pipe acts as an exhaust from the steam-pumps. Every few hours, a vast jet of surplus steam is channelled through here and out on to the surface.’
He let the implications of this sink in.
‘I had considered all manner of delightful demises for you. But time is pressing and I really cannot imagine anything much worse than having the flesh boiled from your bones by a stream of super-heated steam!’
Nor, for that matter, could I.
‘Oh fuck!’ was all I could manage. So much for last words.
‘Close the hatch,’ he said, his face settling back into a mask of impassivity.
One of the guards eased the hatch back into place.
‘Ciao!’ I heard Unmann cry over the rending creak of the iron shutter.
Then all was hot, unbearable darkness.
XX
DEATH BY STEAM
ALTHOUGH dear Mr Unmann hadn’t furnished me with a precise time, I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long, stuffed like a plug of tobacco in an iron pipe, for my end to come. I also knew that it was ludicrous to think of shinning my way upwards. Even if I could get out of the bonds that imprisoned me, it was clearly a very long way to the surface. No, I had one chance and that was to get down the pipe and into the bomb-chamber.
All this flashed through my head as I sat there, my lungs burning in the airless tube, my head throbbing appallingly as I fought down the urge to panic.
I am no escapologist but had taken the very basic step (heaven bless my tutoring at Lady Cecely Midwinter’s!) of expanding the sinews of my forearms and ankles as much as possible so that, when relaxed, there was at least a little give in the ropes.
I tested that give now and found that it was inexpressibly comforting.
I would not be saved from being boiled alive like a crab in a kettle by having my hands and feet free, however. My immediate priority was to break through the grille upon which I was perched.
Conscious that Unmann and his thugs might still be in the room I began to press down as silently but as hard as I could on the meshed surface. Cramped by the identical grille above me it was almost impossible to get any kind of momentum going but I struggled on, sweat coursing down my body, occasional jets of steam warning me of the horror to come.
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I brought both feet down harder and harder on the grille yet it seemed scarcely to yield an inch. Now caring not a whit that my actions might be overheard, I slammed my whole bodyweight on to the grille, grunting in frustration and pain as the heated metal bit into my flesh.
At last I felt a tiny movement. The grille had drooped at one edge. I felt with soaking fingers and touched bare, sharp metal. Elated, I moved my hands towards the break and began to rub my bonds rapidly over it.
From deep below came an ominous rumble.
I had to escape at once! The bonds were tearing. If I didn’t, then I was doomed. They seemed about to give! If only I could get a chance to talk to Bowler. His mania – one rope gone – seemed only for power – a second bond snapped – not the wanton destruction of the whole of Italy – Free!
I manoeuvred myself round in that tiny space and wrenched at the broken grille with my hands. The deep, disquieting rumble, like a giant clearing its phlegm-choked throat, sounded again.
As I forced the grille back upon itself, it sent out a dreadful shriek of tortured metal. Without a second thought I wriggled like a caterpillar into the shaft beneath it and let go.
Under different circumstances it might have proved exhilarating but my head was pounding sickeningly, my arms and legs ached and bled and I was still in imminent danger of tumbling straight into the bowels of that infernal machine.
As it was, I skittered pell-mell through the great iron pipe until I crashed, feet-first into another grille. I sank back and yelled in pain as my knees cracked on impact. A great trembling began in the pipe and red-hot vapour began to bleed upwards through the grille. The steam! The steam was coming!
Where there was another grille there had to be another inspection hatch. I began to kick frantically at the grille beneath me. If I could only get through it and into the next of these cramped chambers, I might effect an escape through the side of the pipe. It mattered not that I might find myself amongst th
e enemy, that I might even flop out at Venus’s feet, if I didn’t get out of there in minutes I was doomed.
I kicked again and again and still the temperature rose. Sweat seemed to gush from my face and arms as I rolled on to my back and rammed my feet against the metal floor for all I was worth.
Then! A gap! I squeezed myself through, the wire tearing at my flesh and immediately pressed my palms to the hatch. With a shove, the latch broke and the door crashed open. I tumbled through into light.
The cooler air hit me like an Arctic front. I dragged myself out of the pipe and slammed shut the hatch just as a colossal blast of steam came soaring upwards.
Falling to the floor, I pressed the door closed with my feet. I watched the pipe tremble and bulge and rattle, and even through the soles of my shoes I felt a terrible heat rise, then all was quiet.
Scarcely able to believe I was alive, I took stock of my situation. I looked up and saw the pipe extended upwards as far as I could see. Below, through clouds of steam and some kind of gantry I was standing on, I could make out the great volcanic chamber and, at its heart, the convection bomb.
I was on one of the catwalks that criss-crossed the upper levels of that vast, rocky chamber. Incredibly, because of the tremendous noise and confusion all around, I had not been observed.
Reduced to a sodden wreck in shirt-sleeves, I crept along the gantry, stealing occasional glances over the railing at the scene below.
Helmeted men were milling everywhere, checking gauges, monitoring the great motors, affixing God knew what to the great brass globe in which poor Charlie lay. I spotted Bowler, hard at work inside some strange brass and mahogany panel shaped like a church pew. And there were the berobed Venus and Unmann, crossing the floor of the chamber arm in arm, like Bertie and Alexandra on a blasted state visit. They approached the imprisoned quartet of Mrs Knight and the professors and there was some talk and mocking laughter, though I could make out nothing specific above the din. With a final flourish, Venus and Unmann put on their grotesque ritual masks and separated, Unmann towards my side of the cavern, Venus up a spiral staircase and into a small hut that projected from the rock walls like a wasps’ nest.