The List Of Seven (19 page)

"He's past redemption."

They ran down the stairs and through the great hall. A heavy pounding began at the door. Windows shattered all along the front wall; an arm groped through an opening, hand looking for a latch. Barry led them away, through a knotted sequence of rooms to the kitchen and into the adjacent larder.

"Watch this," said Barry.

Barry pulled a sack of flour off a shelf in the larder; the opposite wall rose up and disappeared into the ceiling like a sash-weighted window, revealing behind it the mysterious door he'd described.

"Ingenious," said Sparks. "My compliments to the architect."

"Got a lock on it you won't find in some banks," said Barry, as he unfolded a cache of his tools and went to work on the formidable padlock.

A crash from somewhere deep in the house announced the invaders had breached the outer fortifications.

"Give me a hand here, Doyle," said Sparks, pushing a table against the kitchen door. They piled the rest of the room's furniture on top of the table, readied their weapons, and waited for Barry to punch through.

"What's your diagnosis of the woeful Charley?" asked Sparks.

"Incipient madness. Probably tertiary syphilis," said Doyle.

"Dead from the neck up. More holes in his brain than a beehive."

They heard hurried, muffled footsteps on the stairs and floors above. The thwack of Barry driving a spike into the lock resounded in that small space like a gunshot."

"Easy on, Barry."

"I'd use a blancmange, but I don't fink it would have the same effect," said Barry, annoyed.

"Thank you, Barry," said Sparks, batting back the sarcasm.

"I wish he'd remembered the name of that publishing house," Doyle said.

"We'll find it easily enough. Provided we make it back to London alive—how's it coming, Barry?"

"Have it off in a pig's whisper."

"Even allowing for the delusions common to his illness, it appears Lady Nicholson wasn't quite the innocent we took her for," admitted Doyle.

"Women seldom are."

Barry broke through the lock and pushed open the door. The smell that greeted them on the wind that rose from below was dank, ageless, and as stale as the grave. Sparks took the lead, and they went down the first few steps. Carved right out of the earth, they were steep, slippery with moss, and crudely crafted. The light from the kitchen penetrated only a short distance beyond where they stood before the steps disappeared into Stygian blackness.

"Got a lantern here," said Barry, plucking an oil lamp off a hook on the earthen wall. He struck a match and lit the wick; its pale amber glow plowed only a small dent in the subterranean murk. Sparks took the lantern and started down.

"Mind your step. It's slick as ice," said Sparks.

"Pull that knob by the jamb, if you'd be so kind, guv," requested Barry.

Doyle gave the knob a yank; the false wall slid smoothly back down into the larder, concealing the entrance.

"The door, too, if you would," advised Barry.

Doyle shut the door and laid across it a welcomely substantial iron bar sealing them in, committing them to their descent. The stairs seemed to go on interminably. Their footsteps echoed flatly, as the mossy dirt steps gave way to rough-hewn rock. The walls soon receded; sheer drop-offs into darkness fell away to either side. The lantern's faint illumination could only hint at the ghostly limits of a vast cavern opening around them. Wind whistled and howled. They heard the squeak and rustle of vermin below them scurrying away from human approach.

"What is this place?" asked Doyle.

"The only hand of man in here are these steps," said Sparks. "A natural formation. Topping house was constructed over it. Maybe a sea cave."

"We're a good fifteen miles from the shore."

"Thank you, Barry. An underground river then."

"Don't hear any water," Barry said skeptically.

"That doesn't mean there couldn't have been one here once, does it?"

"No," said Barry, his tone admitting to only the faintest possibility.

"Perhaps Lady Nicholson dug this pit so she could commune with Satan during the full moon," said Sparks, with a wink at Doyle. How could the man joke about such a thing? Doyle thought. And at a time like this.

"Will they follow us?" asked Doyle.

"It'll take some doing to find that door."

"Unless Nicholson gives it away." -

"The man can barely remember his name."

No sooner were those words spoken than their feet hit level ground. They paused to establish their bearings. The cavern felt as forbidding as a dark and deserted cathedral.

"A stiff wind's blowing through from somewheres," said Barry, sniffing the air.

"Then it's simple; we'll follow it to find our way out."

They moved away from the stairs into the cave proper, each step kicking up puffs of a fine black dust. Small wings fluttered in the currents above them, swooping acrobatically through the artificial night.

"Bats," said Sparks, prompting Doyle to reach for his hat. "Don't bother, Doyle. They see a good deal better down here than we do—"

With a loud clang, Sparks crashed into a solid obstruction and dropped the lantern, plunging them into a void of darkness.

"Hell!"

"You s'pose 'at's where we've wandered to?"

Despite the circumstances, Doyle was beginning to appreciate Barry's terse waggery.

"Be quiet, won't you? Help me find the lantern."

Doyle reached out and put his hands on the object with which Sparks had collided; it was rounded, cold and smooth, with machined edges, and it was massive. He knew what it was, but deprived of sight was unable to put a name to it.

"I fink you broke it."

"You think so, do you?"

"Seeing as how all I can feel wot's left is little pieces.

Would you like me to light the candle I've got 'ere in me pocket?"

"Why, yes, Barry, I'd like that very much."

Just as Barry's match was struck, Doyle realized what they had found.

"Good Christ! Do you know what this is?"

They were in darkness again.

"What's wrong now, Barry?"

"Dropped the candle, 'fraid the Doctor gave me quite a start—"

"Jack, do you know what you've found?"

"I would if Barry could find his candle—"

"Got it," said Barry as he lit another match.

"It's a train!"

And so it was. A jet-black iron-forged full-gauge steam engine, with a trailing coal car bearing a full load, on steel tracks curving away ahead of them into the darkness.

"A Sterling Single," said Barry. "A real beauty."

They climbed into the engine cab and examined the mechanics by the light of Barry's candle. Gauges and pumps were intact and seemed in working order. Water tank full. A bad of coal already sitting in the furnace.

''Looks as if someone was anticipating a hasty departure," ventured Doyle.

"Remember his repeated incoherent references to trains. I'd venture to say we have Lord Nicholson's indelicate condition to thank for this good fortune," said Sparks, as Barry lit an oil lamp set into the wall of the cab.

"'Why didn't he use it himself?" asked Doyle.

"Chances are he forgot it was here. Know anything about piloting a train, Doyle?"

"Light the coal in the firebox, for starters," said Barry, before Doyle could answer.

"Thank you, Barry, why don't you run ahead down the tracks and see if any switches need throwing?"

"I knows about engineerin'. Our old dad was a brakeman, see. Took us out on runs all over the south of England when he weren't drinkin'—"

"That's fine, Barry, do you suppose I'm entirely ignorant to the ways of the railroad?"

Muttering, Barry leapt down with his candle and moved along the tracks. Sparks contemplated the array of gears and handles that confronted them.

"Let's light the coal as Barry suggests, Doyle, and then"— Sparks bit on a finger as he pondered—"which one of these ooja-ka-pivvies do you suppose we should pull?"

They nurtured a fire in the furnace and bellowed it to full, red-bellied life. Barry returned to report that the track looked in good condition and ran ahead uninterrupted for at least a mile. Sparks asked if there was reason why they shouldn't proceed, gracefully allowing Barry an opportunity to scan the pressure gauge and humbly advise that they should wait until the boiler had built a full head of steam, then release the hand brake, engage the drive shaft, and shift the engine into forward gear.

"Have a go at it, Barry," said Sparks, as if having to call on his prodigious and intimate storehouse of train lore was the most tiresome task imaginable.

"Right," said Barry, with a privately amused smile.

Barry turned on the headlamp; its Cyclopean beam pierced the darkness like a ray of wisdom. Doyle and Sparks stood on the open platform at the rear of the cab, looking back anxiously from time to time at the stairs. No assault on the door above had reached their ears, but waiting was difficult nonetheless. Time seemed to stand still in the funereal vault. The rhythmic schuss of the steam valves echoed through the chamber like the breathing cycle of an enormous, slumbering beast. The weight of the cavern walls led them to feel they were in the belly of some monstrous, watchful dragon, patiently waiting for all human endeavor or ambition, no matter how grand and willful, to fail the test of mortality. The story of the great manor house on the rocks above, a three-hundred-year pageant of continuous human history—loves, births, schemes, marriages, victories, reversals, deaths, intrigues, betrayals, madness, melodrama; all reducible to dust—would scarcely constitute a single intake of breath in the life span of this leviathan. Kings and kingdoms might fall, but these walls would remain, self-sufficient, silently mocking. Few things are more routinely and cheaply regarded than human existence, thought Doyle, seldom less so than by those in full-blooded possession of it. An hour spent in the bowels

of this frigid, aboriginal cave was a harsh reminder that nature itself radiated the same heartless indifference.

Barry threw down the hammer; the pistons spasmed twice and then caught steel on steel. Friction threw sparks into the air. With the protesting shriek and groan of rusty muscles, the wheels inched slowly forward on the tracks.

"We're movin'!" Barry shouted over the engine. He stuck his head out the side window and guided them toward the tunnel, controlling his impulse to blow the steam whistle out of sheer exuberance.

"Where will it take us?" asked Doyle, nearly sagging with relief.

"On to London if our fuel holds and the tracks don't end," said Sparks, patting the cab wall like a canny horse trader. ¦I've always fancied a private rail car. This little charmer could come in right handy."

The chamber closed down around the tracks at the far end. Barry had to pull his head back inside the window as they rolled slowly into a narrow tunnel cleaving naturally through the earth. The walls squeezed in until their clearance was only a scant few inches.

"Do you suppose they'll kill them, Jack?" Doyle asked soberly, his mind still on the madman and his manservant.

Sparks grew more somber. "Yes, I imagine they will. I would imagine they already have."

"'Nicholson had something they wanted," said Doyle after a moment.

"Two things: his land and his son. Both of which they've now had in their possession for some months."

"The land could be for any number of purposes—"

"Agreed—too early to speculate. We need more information."

"But why the boy?"

Sparks thought for a moment. "Control. A way to control his mother."

"But it seems clear, doesn't it, that she was a confederate ill along," said Doyle, much as it pained him to think poorly :f the woman.

"A possibility, although we can't know what sort of coercion they brought to bear on her—precisely what the boy would have been good for."

"That seemed to be the case on the night she was killed."

"Consider the scenario that, feigned or genuine, her grief over the child's 'kidnap' was skillfully employed to lure you into their trap. Her usefulness expired, they double-crossed and murdered both the Lady and her hapless brother."

"It fits, although the brother's role is rather ill-defined."

"He's called away from school on urgent business; she's enlisted his help against coconspirators she can no longer trust. Or perhaps he was in concert all along, putting pressure on from another angle. You said he seemed to be berating her while they waited at the door."

"If I didn't know better, Jack, I'd almost think you were defending the woman." But in the dim glow of the lantern, Doyle could see a dark dissatisfaction lining Sparks's face.

"Something's not right," he said.

"On the other hand," said Doyle, remembering the light in her deep blue eyes, "all we have to support the idea she was in league with them are the semicoherent ravings of a deranged and jilted husband."

Sparks didn't reply, eyes withdrawn, lost in some private ratiocination. They rode slowly through the narrow tunnel in silence.

"There's a light up ahead!" Barry announced.

As best as the walls would allow, they peered out into the tunnel ahead where the beam of the headlamp was losing ground to the emerging light of day. Moments later the train broke free of the confines of the earth and spirited them into the open air for the first time since they entered the misfor-tunate house.

"Bravo, Barry!"

The tracks hugged the slope of a sheer ravine, a river running swiftly below. In the distance behind them, up a steep slope and above the trees, peered the machicolations of Topping's highest towers. Thick, quarrelsome pillars of black smoke spewed around them into a threatenmg gray sky. There might be rain, those clouds suggested. But even a deluge would not come in time to spare the venerable life of Topping Manor.

"They've put the torch to it," said Barry in dismay. "All that silver ..."

"Maybe they didn't find the door. Maybe they think we're

trapped inside," said Doyle hopefully. "If they believe we're dead, they'll slacken off the chase."