Thaddeus wondered how long it would take for the river to follow them up the tunnel once the tide turned. He knew how fast the water could cover the shore – it was one reason he never liked going down onto the sand. He’d almost been caught when he was a boy. He hadn’t seen the water coming until he’d turned around and realized his way back was cut off, and with no other way out. He’d clung to one of the wooden bulwarks for hours, his arms aching until at every second he thought they would give out. It was only luck that saved him – a passing eel fisherman spotted his plight and pulled him to the safety of his tiny boat.
Thaddeus was so lost in that memory that he didn’t realize Rémy had stopped. He collided with her, knocking her off balance. She yelped and he reached out, anxious to steady her before she fell. He caught her around the waist until she regained her footing.
“Sorry,” he said, struck – and not for the first time – by how very small she was.
“Clumsy oaf,” she muttered. As she put her hands over his to push him away, he was surprised by their warmth. He had come to think of her as a cold creature, somehow. “Watch where you are going, yes?” she said, her voice softening a little.
“Why have we stopped?” He peered over her shoulder. The tunnel had come to an end, opening into deeper darkness that even their night-glasses could not penetrate.
He felt Rémy pat his shoulder, as if to comfort his nerves. He turned to look at her, taken aback by the gentle reassurance. She had obviously surprised herself, too, because she looked away immediately, dropping her hand.
“Don’t go no further,” J warned, standing at the very mouth of the darkness, “there’s a fall down there’d break yer neck.”
“What do we do now?” Remy asked, frustrated. “These glasses are broken!”
“No,” said Thaddeus, “they just require a little more light. Isn’t that what the Professor said? That’s why he gave us the candles.”
“Tha’s right, Mr Rec,” said J, brightening. “That Professor, ‘e finks of everyfing.”
Thaddeus took his pack from around his shoulders and pulled a short, fat white candle from its depths, along with a slim box of matches. “I’ll light mine – you two save yours,” he said. “They won’t last long.”
Thaddeus struck a match and held it to the candle’s wick. The yellow glow of the flame gleamed white and pale green in front of his night-glasses. He stepped back, leaving the candle standing on the rough stone floor.
Rémy gasped. Thaddeus turned to see what she was looking at, the glow of the candle giving the glasses just enough light to illuminate the dark space before them.
The darkness had hidden a space that opened before them like a vast wasteland. The level where they stood dropped to a floor more than a hundred and fifty feet below, cut out of the clay of London itself. Above them was more rock, as if they had stumbled into a cave. Except they obviously were not the first to find this place, not by a very long shot.
The giant room was crowded, but not with people. It was almost like a larger version of the Professor’s workshop, but more orderly, and the more terrifying for it. The space was filled with large structures of the like Thaddeus had never seen before, but somehow recognised. In one corner were rows of what seemed to be modern suits of armour. They were made of shining silver metal, with mechanical parts at their knees and arms and glass domes to completely enclose the wearer’s head. Each had a tube leading to a patterned metal cylinder, strapped to the back. There were at least a hundred of them.
Beside the suits stood something that looked almost like a boat, though the deck was completely encased in a double layer of glass so that anyone operating it would have seemed to be inside a bubble. In the glass had been cut portholes made of silver – not to see out of but to let in air, Thaddeus supposed – and they matched its body, riveted together from sheets of clean, taintless metal.
There were steam engines – two of them, though they were like no locomotives that Thaddeus had ever seen. There were no tracks leading to them. Instead, they had great wheels like those on the most basic cart, but made of metal rather than wood. The wheels were bound together by huge strips of leather, studded with bolt heads filed into savage, shiny points.
There were so many machines like these that Thaddeus could not take them all in. To him, they were terrifying, but magnificent.
“Mon Dieu!” Rémy whispered beside him. “What are they?”
Thaddeus shook his head, as awed as Rémy was. He realized that the tunnel they had been in, rather than opening onto a sheer drop as he’d first thought, actually led onto a small wooden platform, about ten feet deep. It was enclosed almost completely by a metal handrail, apart from a gap directly before them that was about the same width as the tunnel. Immediately to their left there were steep narrow steps cut out of the stone, leading down to the lower floor. In the rough wall above the top step had been set some kind of large lever – it looked like the sort used on the docks at Limehouse, to turn the winches on and off. Thaddeus stepped forward onto the wooden platform to get a better look at the wondrous cave, Rémy and J following his lead.
Directly below them was another huge machine. It looked almost like a diving bell, but was a hundred times the size. Thaddeus leaned over the thin rail at the platform’s edge, trying to get a closer look.
“Amazin’ eh?” J said quietly. “Scary, but amazin’ all the same.”
“What are they?” Thaddeus asked. “What is this place?”
“Somewhere we were never meant to see,” Rémy said, in a hushed voice. Thaddeus looked at her and was surprised to see fear in her eyes.
“And all this – this is Abernathy’s doing?” Thaddeus asked.
“Oh yeah. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, neither,” said J, turning to move from the platform towards the steps. “Come on, let’s–”
There was a scuffing sound as J tripped over the candle. He swore as it skittered away, the candlelight flickering violently as it rolled, bouncing down the steps. J lunged after it, trying to stop it before the light was snuffed out completely. Thaddeus saw him lose his balance and reach out to steady himself against the wall…
“J,” Thaddeus and Rémy shouted as one, as they saw the boy’s searching hands grasp hold of the metal lever. But their warning came too late. Just as the candle went out, there was the sound of old, disused metal scraping as it moved.
“Oh, bleeding ‘eck!” cried J through the darkness.
There was a sudden groaning noise, the sound of metal shearing against metal, and a whirr so loud it shook the platform on which they stood.
“What’s that?” Thaddeus shouted, over the noise. Then he looked down between the wooden planks that made up the platform. “Oh my God – that machine – that machine has started up!”
It was true. The mighty contraption below them was creaking into life like a huge, metal giant. An eerie blue light, brighter than phosphorus, glowed below them. There was an upward blast of heat, too, as if someone had lit a fire. No, not just a fire, it was too intense for that. It was a furnace.
And then the platform began to tip. Thaddeus felt it, falling away from beneath his feet. He stumbled and reached out to catch the rail as he heard Rémy scream.
“J,” she cried, “the lever! Push it back up! Push it back up!”
“I’m trying,” J cried. “It’s stuck! It won’t move! Quick – back into the tunnel! We got to–” but it was already too late. The platform must have been on some sort of mechanical hinge, because it jerked and then began to tip, and even if they had been able to scramble to the top of the platform, the gap would have been too great to cross. A moment later, Thaddeus felt himself begin to slide down the smooth wooden planks of the platform, down towards the cold rock floor of the vast room. Below him, he could see the machine opening like the jaws of a great, metal beast, ready to devour them all.
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“Thaddeus!”
At her cry, Thaddeus looked up at Rémy. Nimble as ever, she had wrapped her arms and legs around the narrow section of handrail at the top of the platform. She was reaching one hand out towards him.
“Catch my hand,” she shouted over the noise of metal and wood. “I can pull you up! Quickly!”
“I’m too heavy!”
“I am stronger than I look! Be quick!”
He tried to reach for her, but he was too far away. Their fingers brushed, but could not grasp. He saw her let go with her arms completely, until only her legs were around the rail, as if she were back in the circus tent. Her hands caught his wrists, but he knew at once that she should let him go.
“I can’t,” he said. “Rémy, it’s too dangerous. You’ll fall…”
“I can hold you!”
“Don’t worry about me! Get J!”
The terrified boy was clinging to the opposite rail, trying to scramble over the side to the steps that led down to the floor. The platform was almost vertical now. It reached its apex with a sudden, sharp, jarring jerk that shook them all.
Rémy screamed again as Thaddeus slipped from her grasp.
Eleven
Trapped
Rémy watched helplessly as Thaddeus plummeted off the end of the platform and into the depths of the machine below. There was a whirring sound and it began to shut, two halves sliding together until they were a seamless whole. The policeman disappeared from sight, trapped inside a riveted silver monster.
“Rémy!” She looked up to see J still clinging to the rail, a horrified look on his face.
The platform began to right itself again. Rémy held on to the rail until it was back in place, stunned by what had just taken place. It had all happened so quickly. One minute Thaddeus was there, the next he’d gone, just like that.
“‘E’s going to roast! Look at them flames!” J sobbed, as Rémy ran down the stairs towards the contraption.
The machine was cylindrical, but tapered to a point at the end that had opened to swallow Thaddeus. It had a large window in its side but she couldn’t see through it. The machine was standing on struts, also made of metal. Between the struts, fire belched in three great streams so hot that the centre of the flames burned white as they hit the scorched ground.
“It’s my fault,” J wailed, stumbling after her. “It’s my fault!”
She turned to him. “It was an accident, J. Just an accident.”
“I started it off! I didn’t mean to!”
The poor boy was crying piteously now, staring at the machine with tears cutting through the dirt on his face. Rémy crouched down in front of him, gripping his shoulders.
“J, listen to me. He is not dead.”
“But look at them flames!”
“There’s a window, J. Why would there be a window if it was not supposed to have people inside? Hmm?”
J blinked, looking at the metal monstrosity as his tears stopped. “Cor,” he said. “You’re right.”
“He is trapped, yes? We must get him out. And turn it off. ”
“But the lever’s broke,” whimpered J. “It won’t budge, Rémy, not for nothing.”
“There must be another way,” said Remy, hoping against hope she was right. “A machine that big, they would not have only one lever, yes? Think, J – think! The last time you were here. Can you think of anything you might have seen? More levers, somewhere else?”
J swiped a hand at his damp face. He looked blank for a moment and then brightened up, nodding. “Yeah! Yeah, there are more levers, right enough. This way!”
Rémy followed him across the room, towards the far wall. She’d lost her night-glasses, dropping them from the platform as she’d tried to save Thaddeus from falling, but luckily, seeing her way wasn’t a problem. The belching flames of the machine sent out a hot, bright glow that illuminated the cavern and cast huge, menacing shadow-shapes against the walls.
Although Remy had tried to sound confident when she reassured J, she felt anything but – her heart was pounding and she felt sick. Thaddeus couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t – could he? Not just like that, not so fast, not so suddenly. Rémy kept seeing his face as he fell away from her. He must have been scared, but he hadn’t made a sound. The last words he’d spoken had been to tell her to save J rather than himself. A brave man, indeed.
“‘Ere,” J sniffed, as they arrived at a bank of four huge metal levers. “But how do we know what one is the right one? Or if any of ‘em are? They might all be for somethin’ else.”
“We will just have to try them all,” said Rémy, though her heart was pounding. What if they started up another of these awful monstrosities? What if they made things even worse for Thaddeus? But what other choice did she have? Rémy and J grasped one each, and pushed them down. Nothing happened.
“It must be one of these,” Rémy said, of the last two. She pushed one and a huge light swelled into the cave, so bright it almost drowned out the bonfire brightness of the flames.
“Not that one!” J said, panicked.
“D’accord, d’accord…” Rémy pulled it back down, and the incredible light died again. She grabbed the final lever and wrestled with it, forcing it into position. This had to be it, or…
At first, nothing happened. The flames continued to belch, giving off a tremendous heat that could be felt even across the room. But then they began to sputter. One by one they guttered out.
“Yes!” J cried, jubilant.
Rémy wasn’t ready to celebrate yet. She went back to the machine, looking for a way in. There was one panel that wasn’t riveted – could it be a door? She pushed at it, but it did not budge and there was no handle. Rémy thumped against it, and then placed her ear to the smooth silver panel. She could hear nothing – the cylinder might as well have been solid inside. The metal was mysteriously cool, as if the flames below had had no effect on it at all.
“J,” she said. “Search for something that we can use to pry this open. Anything. Quickly!”
J ran off as she went to the window. It seemed to be covered in something that made it milky and unclear. She frowned, frustrated and bemused – why have a window that it was impossible to see through? She thumped against the glass, trying to peer through. If there was a door, why hadn’t he used it yet? Unless… unless he really was dead… She pushed the lingering thought away.
“Thaddeus!” Rémy shouted. “Thaddeus Rec! Can you hear me? Can you see me? Are you – are you alive?”
There was no answer except from J, who appeared at her side, puffing hard and with empty hands. “There’s nothin’,” he said. “Nothin’ I can lift, anyways. And what do you mean, is ‘e alive? You said –”
Rémy held up her hand. “Let me think, J. Just – let me think…”
J obediently fell silent as Rémy looked around the room again. She noticed three tunnels leading out of the cavern and into darkness. How far would they have to walk down each of them before they found something that could help them get into the machine? Then her gaze fell upon the empty suits that stood in silent rows. They had been fashioned out of the same silvery metal that made up the machine’s panels, making them impenetrable. At the joints were cogs and gears, presumably to make their weight easier to move. Though the suits seemed to be mechanical, they didn’t look as if they could move on their own. They were hollow inside, so surely they must have been designed for a person to wear.
What if she put one on? If she did, her hands would be encased in metal and would become big and heavy. Would she then be strong enough to punch a hole through this infernal contraption? Could her fingers possibly pry open that door? Or perhaps even the metal trap that Thaddeus had fallen though, if she could climb up to it in the suit? But would she even be able to work out how to control it, once inside?
&nb
sp; * * *
Thaddeus watched from inside the machine. He banged on the glass and shouted, but they didn’t seem to hear him. He couldn’t understand why. Rémy had walked right up to the glass and looked in, but her eyes stared through him as if blind. How could she not see? She’d been staring right at him!
He’d watched as they’d worked out how to turn off the flames. The heat from them must have been intense, but he couldn’t feel it. It was as if the skin of the machine deflected the heat, so that the interior was completely cool and comfortable.
Well, not exactly comfortable. Thaddeus had hit his head as he’d fallen, and the gash above his eye was still bleeding. He looked around for something to hold over the cut, but there was nothing. He pulled his sleeve over his hand and held that to his head, instead.
“Rémy,” he shouted again, as she stood at the window, staring up at the machine. It looked as if she were contemplating scaling it. “Rémy Brunel! I’m here! I’m here!”
He looked around him. Everything was strange and out of place. There was a chair, but it was fixed to the wall of the machine, directly below the window rather than facing it, so that it pointed up towards the angled ceiling, the one through which Thaddeus had fallen. That had sealed shut so solidly that it looked as if it would never open again. In front of the chair was a curved silver desk, covered in tiny levers, dials and switches. There were silver cabinets fixed to the walls. As he looked at them now, it seemed as if he was seeing them sideways. It was almost as if the entire machine was designed to tilt, so that what was now the wall would become the floor.
Thaddeus began to feel claustrophobic – as if he’d been buried alive. Every time he shouted, his voice fell like a lead weight, dead against the metal. He noticed what looked like a door in one of the walls, with a handle, but it wouldn’t budge, even though he pulled with all his might. He struggled up to the chair and into it, pulling lever after lever, but there was no response. It were as if the machine was completely dead. Perhaps turning off the flames below had cut off all power to its insides, too.
The Diamond Thief Page 10