A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (21 page)

Tracy stayed himself no longer. His revolver appeared in his hand and, as he kicked the door wide, he shouted defiantly, “This is the law and you are all under arrest!” then sprang into the room.

There were shouts, shots, muffled screams as Gus plunged forward, hurling himself without hesitation into the unknown fray, into a large cabin seemingly filled with rushing men. One of them tried to escape but Gus was in his path and a hard fist in his middle bent him double, lowering his chin to the correct spot to connect with the other fist on its way up. Gus plunged on into the melee and raised his arm to prevent a blade from descending that was slashing at his throat and a red arrow of pain shot through his biceps as the blade cut deep. But he still had a good arm that ended in an equally good fist that dropped the attacker on the spot.

With that the battle was over although Gus did not know it as he struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain of his wound. Disreputable men damaged in various ways lay sprawled about the room while Billygoat sat astride the single conscious survivor banging his head against the deck so that he could join his comrades in unconsciousness. Tracy moved quickly about putting handcuffs on any that showed signs of life while Billygoat ceased his banging and rose, dusting off his hands and pointing at a closed door on the far side of the cabin.

“He went through there during the fracas. The Gray Man, the one in charge.”

Tracy took in the situation in an instant and kicked a wicked looking automatic pistol across to Billygoat who swooped it up.

“Guard the prisoners then because I want as many as possible alive.”

Even as he spoke he was hurtling across the room to smash his shoulder into the flimsy connecting door, bursting through it with Gus, who had tied his kerchief about his wounded arm, right behind, straightening up and raising his gun and saying, “You will stop right there for the jig is up.”

The man he had addressed did stop what he was doing and straighten up slowly with a sheaf of papers in his hand. He had been thrusting these along with others of their kind into a metal wastebasket within which a smoky fire flared. As soon as Gus was aware of this he leaped past the Pinkerton man and kicked the basket over to stomp out the smoldering flames. Only when this task was done did he straighten up and look at the man they had captured, the secret protagonist at last.

He was indeed a gray man as Billygoat had said. He stood erect beside the desk there, one fist pressed to it, the other to his chest, swaying slightly. From toe to top he was gray, clad completely in gray from the gray spats that covered his gray shoes, gray top coat and gray suit, of a good cut, gray broadcloth shirt with matching gray tie, a gray fedora upon his head and a mask of gray cloth that concealed his face except for the pair of holes cut in the fabric through which peered a pair of gray eyes.

“Do not make a move,” Tracy ordered as the man’s hand moved towards the desk. The gray man jerked back his hand and responded in a strained whisper.

“There is money in the drawer here, much money to pay those outside.

It is all yours, thousands of pounds. All you must do is turn your back for a few moments, that is all I beg of you. Let me leave—”

“You take me for a fool, sir! I am of the Pinkerton’s and in the employ of The Transatlantic Tunnel Company, and there is no bribe in the world big enough to tempt me to compromise my honor. You are taken and that is the end of it. The game is up.”

At this the gray man crumpled, in such a tragic manner that Gus was tempted to go to his aid. All semblance of power was gone now and the figure trembled, groping behind for a chair to drop into. The professional Pinkerton operator was as unaffected as Gus was touched, for he had apprehended many a hardened criminal before, so that when he spoke it was harshly.

“Now sir, you will remove that mask—or shall we do it for you?”

“No… please, no…” was the gasped answer, but it touched Tracy not.

Gun held at the ready he stepped forward, seized mask and hat in one hand and, with a single gesture, hurled them aside. Gus gasped.

Sitting there, the mask removed, was someone he knew, someone he would never have suspected, someone who could not possibly be in this place at this time.

“Do you know who that is?” asked Gus.

“A hardened criminal,” Tracy responded.

“No, it can’t be, he is not. But still he is here. It is unbelievable.”

“You know him then?”

“Of course I do! That is none other than Henry Stratton, a respected financier from Boston and a member of the New York branch of The Transatlantic Tunnel Board of Directors.”

“Well then, it seems we have our man at last. A member of the Board of Directors indeed! It is no wonder the criminals were privy to all your secrets and could strike wherever they wished.”

While they spoke Stratton sat with lowered eyes, limp with exhaustion and defeat, uncaring. However when they had finished he struggled himself erect and a little of his old fire returned to his voice that no longer whispered.

“I beg of you gentlemen to release me. The disgrace, my family, you cannot understand. If I am released I promise—”

“No,” said Tracy and in his voice was the immutability of doom, the monolithic force of destiny, so powerful that Stratton wilted again under the irresistible assault.

“Yes, you are right, I should not ask, a last desperate attempt of a desperate man. I am doomed and have been so since the beginning had I but the wit to realize it.”

“But why?” Gus burst out. “What could lead you, a respected member of the community, to such reprehensible actions?”

Stratton looked up at him slowly, then smiled a wintry smile that held no slightest touch of humor.

“Why? I might have expected you to ask that kind of question, Washington, since you are the sort that is never bothered by the kind of human problems that trouble others. You are a machine for building tunnels, that is what you are, and do not suffer from the frailties of we mortals. You ask why? I will tell you and it is a sordid story indeed, a progress into hell that began with but one false step.

“I am a member of the Board and have invested my all in the company.

But I was greedy and wished more, so secretly sold some stock from an estate for which I am executor to buy more tunnel stock, meaning to return the money as soon as the first dividends were paid. But these were stocks in a certain shipping company, for mine is a family with old shipping interests, and I never knew that I was being closely watched. I was approached by—shall we say, parties in the shipping business—who knew everything I had done. They promised to help me, and they did, so my thefts would not be discovered, and I had but to render them certain small services in return. I did these things, acting as a spy within the Board for them, passing on information until I was too compromised to back out. Then they pressed for more and more services until I ended up where you see me now; on the one hand a respected member of the Board, while on the other I direct the secret agency that is doing its best to destroy the tunnel. Gad! I am glad it is at an end at last.”

“Who are these people who have done this to you,” asked Gus.

Stratton waved a weary hand in the direction of the papers scattered about the cabin.

“It is all there, you will find out for yourself soon enough. Shipping interests, foreign countries, all the men of power and men of evil who felt that the tunnel would do them no good, the countries who wish England and the Empire ill will at all times. A consortium of crime such as has never been seen before. It is all there, my correspondence, carbon copies, notes, directives, every bit of it for I am a thoroughly organized and efficient New England businessman and whatever business I transact, no matter how low, it is done in a meticulous manner. All you need is here.

With it you will be able to destroy the ring and the saboteurs forever, you have my word on that. It will all come out, I can see that now, and my good name will be ruined forever. Therefore, I ask you but one favor.

Gather up the papers and quit this room for a few minutes. I will not be long. There is only the single tiny porthole so you know I cannot escape in that manner. Please, I beg of you, as men of honor.”

“No,” said Tracy, firmly, “for you are our best witness.”

“Yes,” said Washington with the voice of command. “We have prisoners enough outside, if it is prisoners that you are interested in. What I care about is stopping the sabotage and exposing the fiends who are behind it—and we have them here in these papers. Look at these names!

Respected men, powerful companies! There will be arrests and some sliding stocks in the market and the sabotage will end once and for all. The foreign governments can’t be touched, but their active interests can be exposed and that will keep them in line for a good while. We have what we need here. I insist that we grant Mr. Stratton’s request.” Tracy hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “Justice will be served and my fee will be just the same. If you insist—and take full responsibility for the decision.”

“I do. And I know Sir Winthrop will back me up.”

As they gathered up the papers and prepared to leave the voice of the ruined man hissed after them. “I hate you, Washington, you and all the things you stand for. But, for my family’s sake, I begrudgingly offer thanks.”

Soon after the door was closed behind them a single shot broke the stillness and after that all was silent again.

III. DANGER IIN THE DEEPS

Here, two miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic, was the realm of eternal night; dark, silent, and still, an empty world of black water. The surface of the ocean with its winds and weather, breaking waves, surging currents and burgeoning life was more than ten thousand feet above. That is where the sunlight was and the plankton, the microscopic life forms that cannot live without it, and the small fish that graze upon these seagoing meadows, and the larger fish that feed upon them in turn. Up there was the sun with its energy and the oxygen that made life possible in the ocean depths, and just as the depth increases so does the quantity of life decrease until, a mile down, the tiny piscine monsters who dwell at this dark level are few and far between. Strange creatures of needle teeth and bulging eyes, with rows of lights like portholes down their sides or hanging out in front, tiny mites of ferocity like
Chiasmodon niger,
just two inches long but so voracious it swallows fish bigger than itself. But this was the last battleground, for below there was little life and less motion, until the bottom was reached at a depth of three miles where a great current flows in the direction opposite to the Canary Current on the surface above. But here it was black, empty, lifeless, still, unchanging.

Yet, can it be, is that
something
approaching far in the distance?

Lights, yes indeed lights, pinpoints of brightness in the endless night, moving steadily along. A school of fish perhaps, for the lights grow more and more numerous until they stretch away and dim out of sight. Wait, there seem to be two different species here, smaller fish, though small only in comparison for they are as big as blue whales, surrounding an immense sea snake that undulates through the water with serpentine skill, a snake with its own rows of lights down its sides that go on and on, an incredible creature that is over a mile in length. But what is this? The snake is held captive by the smaller fish, linked to them with strong bonds, pulled along by them. What manner of creatures are these with hard, smooth skins, eyeless yet with burning lights, humming and thrashing loudly as they disturb the stillness of the deeps? No living beast at all, but metal shells containing the only living creature that dares to enter this lifeless realm, man, the most daring animal of all.

Ahead of all the other submarines was the
Nautilus II,
far mightier and more complex than her atomized namesake, with a crew of thirty needed to manage all the machines and devices she contained. Few of them were needed to control the submarine, for she was as simple to operate as her predecessor, but were there instead to manipulate the ancillary apparatus.

Steel cables ran from reels set into her keel, stretching out to the front of the mile-long tow, controlled by automatic devices that monitored these cables constantly, keeping them at a certain tension, letting out a length of cable when the pressure rose too high, reeling in some when it dropped.

The information about the tension on the cables was fed along electric wires to an enormous Brabbage computer engine that took up almost a quarter of the space in the submarine, that received information from the cables of every other one of the submarines as well, monitoring them all, adjusting tension and pull so they moved as one with their immense burden. No material wires connected the engine to the other submarines; communication was carried on by immaterial wires of another sort—beams of light, coherent light from the numerous lasers that studded the hulls. These laser beams penetrated the water with ease and their energies were modulated to carry the needed information. All went well, all worked well, a tribute to the innate ingenuity of man that had conceived this project in the first place, of which this was the final section.

From New York City the train tracks now sped, to dive under the waters and rush across the ocean floor in the newly manufactured tunnel there to enter the fracture zone that split the ocean bed, to rise up through this into the mountains of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where they ended at the very tip of the canyon that bisected this ridge. On the far side of the Atlantic a similar length of track left London and entered the tunnel there and moved out to the Azores, to lift up briefly before diving again to the abyssal plain, reaching next the fracture zone and the opposite edge of the canyon. There the two tunnels ended, their blank ends facing one another across a mile of empty water at the very edge of the Rift Valley depths that plunged far out of sight below.

Here now, at last, swimming slowly to its destiny, came the incredible sea snake of the mile-long tunnel that was both tunnel and bridge, an upside-down bridge that floated, that would pull
up
against its supports instead of hanging down, a steel and concrete, cunningly contrived bridge-tunnel that did indeed undulate like a snake as it swam along. The secret of its motion was the joints between sections, bellows-like constructions of solid steel, steel strong enough to resist the great pressures of the deeps, yet flexible enough to bend as needed. This was the mighty construction that would finish the Herculean labor at last, this was the final link in the tunnel between the continents.