Doktor Glass (35 page)

Inside the hut, Langton paced the small room and watched the lines of honored visitors arriving. Men in formal suits, top hats, silk waistcoats. Shivering women in fine gowns carrying parasols and
winter bouquets fresh from orangeries and hothouses. Langton tried not to imagine them lifeless and inert. God, what was keeping Fallows?

Then he saw the major hurrying against the tide of arriving guests.

“What the hell’s going on, Langton?”

“Close the door.”

“Just tell me—”

Langton slammed the door of the guards’ hut and set his back to it. “Kepler and Durham were your agents. You sent them down here to sniff out a Boer plot, but when Kepler discovered too much, the plotters killed him and frightened off Durham.”

Fallows made for the door. “This is none of your concern.”

Langton still blocked his path. “I’m concerned about the deaths of these people. There is a plot. I don’t know what it is yet, but I have no doubt it exists. None.”

Fallows stared at Langton for a moment. “We heard rumors of Boers planning to attack the Span.”

“So you sent Kepler and Durham? Or whatever their real names are.”

“I arranged posts for them inside the Span Company,” Fallows said, checking his fob watch. “They kept their eyes and ears open, visited the pubs and workingmen’s clubs, the shebeens and whorehouses. They sent regular updates.”

“And?”

Fallows looked at the crowds beyond the glass. “There was something planned. They were sure of it, but they had nothing definite. That’s why Kepler died; he overreached himself trying to get proof.”

“Is that what Durham says?”

“Durham has not contacted me since Kepler’s death.”

Langton almost told him of Durham’s visit in the early hours; the fugitive had said he trusted no one, not even Fallows. Did that work both ways? “You suspect Durham, don’t you, Fallows? You wonder whether Durham killed Kepler and joined the plotters.”

“I cannot discount it, Langton.”

From the concourse outside came a sudden ragged fanfare as the military band practiced. Langton tried to remember all he could about Durham and Kepler. “Kepler was an Irregular.”

“He was many things, both for the Boers and for our country. He’d been one of my best agents before he started drinking. Still, he was ideal for this; he had a history with the Boers. The plotters would trust him.”

But the plotters weren’t Boers,
Langton said to himself.
It was Doktor Glass. And she hates the Boers.

“Now, what’s going on, Langton?” Fallows said. “My men have found nothing, no explosives or Boers or anarchists. What makes you think something will happen today?”

Langton looked at the immense first tower of the Span. How much could he tell Fallows without giving away Sister Wright, and Sarah? “Reefer Jake, one of the Jar Boys we caught, had a complex key from the Span.”

“So? What does it fit?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to find out.”

“What does this Reefer Jake say?”

“Nothing. He died in the cells,” Langton said. Fallows would never believe what happened after that, or Langton’s theory about the massive attractor machine possibly assembled nearby. “Jake’s key is no coincidence.”

“It’s hardly proof, Langton.”

“I spoke with someone inside the gang, and I’m sure that something will happen here today unless we prevent it.”

“What, Langton? Tell me. Give me details, specifics. Something my men can watch out for.”

“I can’t, Fallows. I don’t even know what to look for myself.”

Fallows stared at him for a few seconds like a constable gauging a drunk or street madman. “I wonder whose side you’re on, Langton.”

How could he answer that? He wasn’t even sure himself. “I just don’t want any more murders.”

As Fallows glanced through the window to the waiting guards, Langton slid one hand to the Webley. He wondered if he could knock Fallows unconscious before the man called in the guards. Langton shifted his weight and edged a little closer.

Fallows turned to him and nodded. “I’ll tell my teams to increase their vigilance. Although how they can stop something you only hint at…If you see anything definite, Langton, give three short blasts on this.”

Langton took the strange device from Fallows. Heavier than its small size implied, it had a stubby aerial connected to a waxed voltaic battery cell no bigger than a matchbox. “Why don’t I simply use my police whistle?”

“Because this emitter is ultrasonic,” Fallows said. “It sends out a signal slightly above the usual range of hearing.”

“Then how will your men hear it?”

“Sympathetic vibration,” Fallows said, and took out from his right ear a small metal drum the size of a pea. “This is keyed to the sound waves from the device. Something to do with the diaphragm resonating at a certain frequency. The important thing is, any of my teams hearing this will be able to respond quickly.”

Langton pocketed the device. “And none of the public will hear it and panic.”

“Exactly. Now, put this pin in your lapel—it will identify you as one of my team. There.” Fallows checked his fob watch for the sixth or seventh time, then made for the door. “If you see anything suspicious, anything at all, let my men know.”

Outside, Langton stuck the gilt-and-red pin in his lapel, looked around, and wondered where to start. In front of the Span Company offices stood the temporary tiered seating and the royal family’s enclosed booth. Most of the arriving guests milled about the area between the two, greeting acquaintances or just being seen for the sake of it. Everywhere Langton turned he saw newsreel cameramen, the
cinématographes
: on scaffolds, on the backs of wagons, on roofs, and
even on boats in the nearby docks. The whole world would see this day. Would they watch a triumph or a disaster?

The international cameramen, leaning over their metal boxes on tripods, resembled strange five-legged hybrid creatures from mythology. Could Sister Wright have passed off one or more of her gang as newsmen? It could be anyone: guests, guards, servants, policemen…

Langton still thought of her as the dedicated nurse he’d first met in the Infirmary. He had difficulty seeing her as cold, ruthless Doktor Glass. Did she have trouble splitting those two halves? Everybody had some contradictions within them, Langton knew, but was it actually more severe with Sister Wright/Doktor Glass? Had she fractured into insanity?

Langton pushed through the crowd, not bothering to murmur apologies. He tried to look everywhere: at the dockside, now clean and scrubbed; at the smiling guests; at the curving sweep of the Span’s entrance ramp, the suspended road and rail deck, and the serried ledges of the tower above. The thump and bray of the brass band distracted him, as did the smells of cigars and cigarettes, and the traces of a hundred perfumes.

He froze. A delicate hint of an odor gave him an almost physical momentum, a rush of movement back through the years. Sarah had used that perfume. The hint of orange blossom and freesia. She liked to dab it behind her ears, at the curve of her long, slender neck…

Langton shook his head as if drunk. He forced himself to pay attention to his surroundings. He had to concentrate. His hand found the key in his pocket. Jake’s key. And up ahead stood the Span Company head office. Langton pushed his way to the building’s lobby and saw the doors open, uniformed commissionaires standing either side. “I need to speak to someone in your administration. Anyone who deals with keys.”

The commissionaire, a burly bruiser with the barely hidden tattoos of an ex-seaman at his wrists, glanced at Langton’s lapel pin. “I’ll see if anyone’s in, sir.”

While the man leaned into the switchboard cubicle, Langton paced the echoing marble lobby. He checked his watch. Eleven forty. Just over three hours until the Queen opened the Span.

The commissionaire returned. “Mr. Harrison from engineering is on his way down, sir.”

Harrison, a grey man of less than thirty years, shook Langton’s hand and asked how he could help. He examined Jake’s key in the light of an electrolier, squinting along the barrel and feeling the jagged notches. “Very strange.”

“What do you see?”

“Well…off the top of my head, I’d swear it looks like one of our caisson master keys. But I thought—I’m sure—they were all locked away. Very strange.”

“What would it open?”

Harrison looked up. “Open? Why all the doors in the caissons. Every last one of them.”

Langton took a deep breath. “What exactly are the caissons?”

Harrison led him to the lobby entrance and pointed to the nearest tower, the first of so many that stretched across the Atlantic. He pointed to the stone base that disappeared into the water. “You see there? The caissons were the wood and metal structures—like great bells hundreds of feet across—that we sank onto the seabed. After the masons dropped inside and built the foundations for each tower, we peeled away the caisson’s outer shell and reused it, but the core remains. The original masons’ access passages and stairwells were never filled in. This key fits the pressure doors to those.”

Could that be the way Sister Wright would destroy the Span? Get into the tower’s base and…what? Plant explosives? Undermine the foundations?

Langton tried to imagine the immense weight of the Span bearing down on its squat tower bases, each one a hundred feet across where it entered the water. Millions of tons of steel, granite, brick, iron. As well as the decorative stone panels flanking the soaring steel structure.
From this distance, the angular Egyptian figures looked monolithic and faintly threatening.

Harrison continued, turning the key in his hand. “This gives the workmen access to the inner maintenance corridors and ladders, right up from the bottom levels to the top of the towers. She needs a great deal of care and attention, the Span.”

Again, the use of the female. “So, with this key, someone could attack the Span from inside?”

Harrison looked horrified. “I should hope not.”

“But it’s possible.”

“Major Fallows’s men have been all over the Span,” Harrison said. “They’ve checked for sabotage and explosives, even for gas. I myself walked every foot of the first and second towers this past week. There’s no sign of interference.”

Or the signs are so strange or subtle that we don’t see them,
Langton thought. He held out his hand. “Could I take that?”

Harrison clutched the key. “I should lock this away with the others. Do you really think you’ll need it?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

Harrison hesitated, glanced at the Span’s first tower and then dropped the key in Langton’s palm. “I’ll have to tell Lord Salisbury.”

“Of course.” Langton shook Harrison’s hand and dropped down the steps, but turned when the engineer called him.

“Do you think there’s a threat to the Span, Inspector?”

Instead of answering, Langton said, “Major Fallows and his teams are confident they’ve checked everything.”

Langton made for the freshly painted iron railings that guarded the edge of the quay. Beyond them, the sandstone blocks dropped away to the grey water of the dock. And fifty yards away stood the first tower. Solid. Immense. Apparently immovable.

Langton gripped the cold railing and felt the military band music vibrating through the iron. A chill wind skimmed the water. He remembered Mrs. Grizedale’s vision, absorbed by Sarah from one of her
jar’s “clients”: the dancing bridge. If it meant anything, how could that solid structure warp and shift? How could Sister Wright contort steel and stone?

A hand on Langton’s shoulder made him spin around. He’d found the butt of the Webley before he recognized the man. “Professor.”

“Inspector. I’m glad to have spotted you. I thought we should talk.” Professor Caldwell Chivers didn’t appear too happy; in fact, his expression, his hands clasped behind his back, and his rigid stance all made him look like a headmaster about to punish a pupil. “I believe you forced your way into my house without any provocation or good cause, threatened my staff, and left without any explanation for your behavior.”

“Professor, I—”

“I don’t take offense easily, Langton, but this is beyond the pale. I’ve a good mind to bring this up with the Chief Constable. Only Sister Wright vouching for your character prevented me from doing so already.”

Langton stared at the Professor. “You’ve seen Sister Wright?”

“Of course. She’s here as chairman of the nursing guild, and as my guest. Now, sir: an explanation.”

Langton nodded. “You deserve one, but this isn’t the time.”

“Look here—”

“Someone means to harm the Span,” Langton said, lowering his voice and taking a step closer to the Professor. “I thought it was you—that’s why I burst into your house. I’m sorry.”

The Professor gaped at Langton. “Me? How could you even think that?”

Langton waved that away; he didn’t want to expose Sister Wright. Not yet. Perhaps never.

Instead, he said, “You designed part of the Span, didn’t you?”

“Only the cladding, the bas-reliefs and such. Why?”

Langton took a deep breath. “If you wanted to destroy the Span, how would you do it?”

“Are you mad?”

“Possibly, but humor me. How?”

The Professor looked at the tower, at the milling guests, then back at Langton. “There are so many ways; the crudest would be explosives at the base or on the support lines. Gas, methane or natural, piped into the caissons. Sabotage, such as cutting through the cables…these have been anticipated and checked, surely?”

“They have, but what about something more subtle?”

“What do you mean?”

“Something out of the ordinary, something we wouldn’t expect…” Again, Langton thought of Mrs. Grizedale. “What would make the bridge dance?”

This time, the Professor stared at Langton as though sure he was insane.

“Think, Professor. What could twist the Span out of shape?”

A pause, then the Professor smiled. “Galloping George.”

“Pardon me?”

“A suspension bridge over the Charles River in New British Columbia,” the Professor said. “Even in relatively low winds, the bridge used to ripple and sway. The locals nicknamed it Galloping George. And they weren’t surprised when it shook itself to pieces in only a moderate gale. They had time to clear the bridge and call in a newsreel camera. I’ve seen the footage; the whole structure oscillated horizontally and vertically. An amazing sight.”