by Tony Pollard
‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ suggested Perry, gently waving his pistol. ‘Strickland, take their weapons. It would not do to have our baby damaged by a stray bullet.’
To my right, the chair man stepped forward from behind a wall of crates. At the same time we were bathed in light shining down from above. Looking up, I saw a third man standing on top of the crates, with his gun covering us from on high.
Strickland, also brandishing a gun, patted his free hand against Ockham’s side, grinning as he pulled out the pistol William had liberated from Bittern the night before.
‘I would rather surrender mine than have him come anywhere near me,’ I said, doing nothing to disguise my revulsion for the man.
Perry nodded. ‘Very well, but be careful.’
Putting the lamp on the bench, I reached inside my coat and pulled out the revolver, clutching the butt with thumb and forefinger.
‘Now put it on the bench next to the lamp,’ ordered Perry. ‘Strickland, take the doctor’s gun.’
‘How did you know to expect us?’ I asked. ‘We didn’t exactly announce our arrival.’
Satisfied that we no longer posed a threat, Perry leant casually against a box. ‘Expect you? Who do you think opened the hatch for you? You didn’t seriously think your clumsy attempts at breaking and entering were enough to get you in here, did you?’
‘And there was me thinking I’d found my true vocation,’ said Ockham.
But Perry was not finished. ‘The fact that you killed that terrible little man Bittern was calling card enough.’
‘Good news travels fast,’ threw in Ockham, apparently unperturbed by our rapidly worsening situation.
Perry was clearly getting a little annoyed by Ockham’s quips. ‘Tell them, Strickland,’ he barked.
Strickland needed no second bidding. ‘There was no travelling involved. I saw you do it, simple as that. I had just taken delivery of the heart and was on my way back here when I heard the shot. I dipped into an alley and saw you run past.’ He gestured to Ockham with his gun.
‘That reminds me,’ said Perry. ‘We’ll have the razor as well, Mr Ockham, or should I say Lord Ockham?’
Ockham reached into his boot and pulled out the folded razor, handing it across to Perry’s waiting hand.
He opened the blade and studied it for a moment. ‘A primitive weapon, and certainly not that of a gentleman, but apparently effective enough.’
Strickland’s version of events had taken me a little by surprise. ‘We thought you’d had the heart for a while. Bittern had been seen spending large amounts of money.’
‘Your intelligence was not at fault, just your interpretation,’ replied Perry arrogantly. ‘The money he had been spending was merely a down payment, to guarantee delivery. Strickland paid him the balance on receipt.’
I almost blurted out that we hadn’t found any money but then the penny dropped, or at least the couple that William had closed his fist around. I just hoped that William had a few more surprises up the same sleeve in which he had hidden the bundle of banknotes.
‘Tell me about Bittern,’ I asked. ‘Did he steal the heart just on the off chance that he could sell it, or was he in your employ all along?’
Perry looked like the cat who had caught the canary. ‘Why, the latter, of course. I came by the heart through careful planning, not via good fortune. I trust nothing to chance, doctor.’
I was more confused than ever. ‘But what about his friendship with William – are you telling me that he was also part of your plan?’
Perry laughed. ‘No, you fool. I employed Bittern after your colleague had drawn him into your desperate scheme to bury the heart with Brunel.’
‘But how did you know about that?’
‘Let’s just say you would have done well to limit your minute-taking to the meetings of the Lazarus Club. One of these days that journal of yours will get you into trouble.’ Then he grinned: ‘Oh, I forgot: it already has!’
‘You found the journal? I thought it was well hidden.’
‘It may be,’ he shrugged, ‘but all we needed to do was get to your ash pan before the dustman.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, encouraging him to continue with his irritatingly smug exposition.
‘Remember our little visit? Well, while we were looking around your place we came across some charred notes in the grate of your fire, and a few more in the waste bin. Not much, just blackened fragments, but enough to make it worthwhile for us to pay regular visits to the dust heap behind your building. Most of the time there was nothing, but every now and then a singed scrap of information would turn up. One of them was a rather disparaging remark about a drunken old resurrectionist called Bittern, and then the rest was straightforward – find the man and ply him with drink. He told us about your plan to visit a grave. He didn’t know whose grave, of course, but given that Brunel had not been long dead it seemed reasonable to make the connection. All we had to do then was offer him more money than you had.’
‘Clumsy of me,’ I said, now feeling quite the fool. I had gone to great trouble to hide my journal from prying eyes but had obviously been a little slapdash with my disposal of the notes I sometimes used as aides-mémoire when writing it.
‘I wouldn’t take it too much to heart, old chap. In truth, that note was a real stroke of luck. Until then we were convinced that Brunel had abandoned the project, that the device didn’t exist.’
‘Glad to know we did something right.’
‘I must say, even I was rather surprised by the extreme lengths to which you were prepared to go to keep the thing away from us.’
‘I had my reasons.’
‘Alas, we don’t have time to go into them just now – but there is one question you could answer for me. How did you tie me into the affair? You didn’t get the information from Bittern. He only had contact with Strickland.’
‘Russell,’ I said, seeing no need to keep his name out of matters.
‘Ah yes, our Scottish friend. I had hoped that our intervention on the ship would keep him in his place.’
‘And there I was thinking you’d blown up the ship just to get back at him for letting you down on his side of the deal. But perhaps you misjudged him. The man still has a conscience, at least enough of one for him to unburden himself.’
‘Quite the confessor, aren’t we, doctor? Mr Russell has been nothing but a thorn in the side from the very start. If ever there was a man in the wrong job, then it is he. A talented marine engineer, I am sure, but an absolute disaster as a businessman. I don’t know how Brunel put up with him for so long. But that was all to our benefit. His need for additional funds to support that ridiculous ship project put him right where we wanted him.’
‘And that would be in your pocket.’
‘Exactly. But then, when he couldn’t get Brunel to donate his little contraption to the cause we had a problem. And so we find ourselves here tonight.’
Perry was clearly enjoying himself, but the delivery of so much information could only mean one thing and, as if to dispel any doubt as to what that might be, Strickland cocked his pistol.
‘You don’t even know whether the thing works yet,’ I pointed out, rather desperately. ‘Perhaps you’d better keep your options open until you do?’
‘By keeping you alive, you mean?’ He shook his head. ‘The surgeon doctor who can’t settle to his work and the opium-smoking aristo? I don’t think so. We’ve already delivered the first of them. It’s still a prototype, but our client is very pleased with progress.’ He stepped forward and slapped his hand against the nose of the torpedo as if he were patting a prize bull. ‘And for good reason: what we have here is the most sophisticated anti-shipping weapon ever devised.’
A door clattered back on its hinges. ‘Mr Perry, sir!’ came a shout. ‘Mr Perry!’
‘What is it, for God’s sake? I told you to watch the gate!’
The owner of the agitated voice appeared from behind Perry. ‘Fire, sir
, there’s a fire over at the lumber store!’
Perry let out a curse, his face twisted with rage. ‘Get the pumps working, man! If that gets to the ammunition store we’ll all go up!’
‘They already are, sir, Gilks and Saunders are on it, but it looks pretty bad – one of the sheds has already caught.’
‘Well, get back out there and lend a hand. Get a hose on the store, and more men. Go on, move!’
Perry assisted the underling on his way with his boot. ‘Watch them, Strickland,’ he ordered, leaving his position by the crate and rushing over to a window. He threw back the shutters to reveal flames licking against a building at the far side of the yard.
‘My God!’ he yelled. ‘We’ll never put that out.’
His cool evaporated, he rushed to a cupboard and, unlocking it, pulled out a small box. Apparently oblivious of our presence, he ran to the coffin-like crate on the back of the ramp and taking hold pushed it up so that it fell back on to the floor on the other side. Underneath was another torpedo, its nose pointing down the ramp.
I turned to Ockham. ‘That’s not a jetty, it’s a launch ramp. They’ve built a shore battery!’
Meanwhile the flames rose even higher, their intensity increasing as they engulfed more sheds. They were getting closer.
‘What shall we do with them?’ called out Strickland, who had also noticed that the fire was fast approaching.
‘Kill them of course,’ shouted Perry, without looking up from his task. He had by now removed the heart from the box and was placing it in the torpedo, dropping it in through a small hatch in the top.
It was then I saw Ockham make as if to scratch the back of his neck, his hand creeping behind his ear. Something flashed through the air as his arm shot forward. A razor, released from its hiding-place somewhere in his collar, skated across Strickland’s cheek, opening a deep gash in the side of his face. Letting out a dreadful yell, the bleeding man opened fire, sending bullet after bullet in the general direction of Ockham and myself.
I dived to the floor and scrambled for cover behind the far end of the bench. There was the sound of a tussle and between the legs of the table I saw Ockham and Strickland engaged in a deadly hand-to-hand struggle, the latter’s gun held at bay as the other tried to force him to the ground. A bullet thumped into the wooden surface of the bench just an inch or so away from ear; my hiding-place provided no cover from the man standing on the crates.
There was another pistol shot, but this time from behind me. I looked to see whether Perry had now joined the fray, but he was still there tinkering with the torpedo. The man up on the crates doubled forward, his pistol clattering to the ground, before he too fell with a sickening crash on to the stone floor. His fall had also dislodged one of the crates, and it slowly tilted over before joining the cascade. The lid splintered open and its cargo of rifles spilled out on to the floor. All of a sudden I had an entire arsenal at my fingertips but, doubting that any of them were loaded, I made a dash for the pistol, which unlike its owner had hopefully survived the fall.
‘All right, sir?’ asked William.
‘I thought you’d never get here,’ I cried.
‘Well, that fire-starting business ain’t as straightforward as it looks, you know!’
William was reloading his pistol – or should I say my pistol, as he had drawn the short straw and once again been issued with the most primitive of the firearms available to us. It was the second time in twenty-four hours that the old man had saved my skin.
‘Help Ockham, I’m going to stop Perry.’
Another shot rang out, this time from Ockham’s direction. Strickland had fought his way free but not before Ockham had recovered his pistol from the other man’s pocket. An exchange of fire was now taking place between the two of them.
‘Ockham, William’s here!’ I yelled, not wishing the old man to be mistaken for one of our foes.
Knowing that Perry too had a revolver in his possession, I approached him cautiously, using the crates as cover and moving at a stoop. He was still hunched over the torpedo, working away with a spanner with all the concentration of a surgeon performing a tricky operation. Only when I was in a position to get a clear shot did I feel confident enough to remind him of my presence.
‘Perry!’ I yelled. ‘Step back from the torpedo – it’s too late. The yard is lost.’
His response was to send two bullets in my direction, both of which smashed into the crate behind which I was crouching. Shifting position slightly, I caught another glimpse of him and was horrified to see him bolting closed the access hatch on the torpedo.
‘That may be!’ he shouted back. ‘But I’ll be damned if you’re going to get what you’re after before it goes. Do you know what this is, doctor? Of course you do. It’s the heart, the one we took from Bittern. The father of many more, perhaps, but still your one and only, and now you’re about to lose it for good!’
I pointed the pistol and fired. The bullet ricocheted with a piercing whine off the side of the torpedo, having missed him by only a fraction. The near-miss did nothing to distract him from his task, which now had him furiously pumping backwards and forwards on a lever attached to a barrel-like contraption beside the torpedo. I guessed he was priming it, compressing the gas which would cycle like blood through its copper veins and arteries. Like a baby wakened from sleep, the thing began to cry and a metallic whine settled into a pulsing, whirring sound as the propeller’s revolutions increased in speed. It was now or never.
Ignoring the sound of gunfire from behind me, I once again took aim, imagining that the back of his head was one of those many bottles I had shattered in my father’s yard.
I squeezed the trigger, but the resulting explosion was more than I had bargained for. Boxes and crates flew through the air as though they were paper kites. A window shutter fluttered by, turning end over end in a hailstorm of glass shards. Thrown to the ground, I was plunged into darkness as a crate tumbled across my head but, fortunately, it came to rest on another before it crushed me to a pulp. The fire had at last overwhelmed the ammunition store and the explosion had blown in an entire side of the torpedo shed.
Pulling myself out from underneath the crate, I staggered to my feet. The room was full of dust and smoke, and the heat coming through the ragged gap in the wall made the place feel like the hell of my nightmares.
I looked back across to the ramp, which to my dismay appeared entirely unscathed by the blast; the only thing that was missing was the torpedo, and Perry of course. Running across to check, I yelled out for my companions. ‘Ockham! William! Are you all right!’ There was no answer.
As I had feared, the ramp was entirely undamaged, the hatchway lay open and what looked like an umbilical cord hung loosely from the lever-sprouting barrel I had seen Perry pumping at. He had succeeded in launching the torpedo. Desperately in need of some consolation, I looked for his battered corpse and had high hopes for a sack-like pile lying beneath an upturned trolley, but it was just that: a sack.
‘We had better get out of here,’ said Ockham, limping out from behind a mountain of debris, still carrying his handgun, his face streaked with blood – only then did I notice that my fingers seemed to be glued around the grip of my own revolver.
‘Where’s William?’ I asked through dry lips.
‘I don’t know.’
‘And Strickland?’
‘Dead.’
‘Good. You?’
Ockham nodded grimly.
Then, to my relief, I saw William standing at the far end of the hall. Cast into silhouette by the sun-like inferno behind him, he seemed to have grown in stature and girth. He also appeared to have two functioning arms, one of which was holding a pistol to his own temple.
Perry was standing behind him, his own head now coming into view as he checked on our position.
Ockham levelled his pistol at the two-headed man but lowered it when I gestured for him to do so.
‘Shoot the bastard,’ cried William. ‘Don’t w
orry about me – I had my time.’
‘Let him go, Perry, you have nothing to gain by harming him.’
Perry hit his hostage with the pistol. ‘Don’t discount the pleasure of killing the man who burnt down my future.’
‘He was only following my instructions. Take me instead.’
‘Very noble, I am sure, but I intend to see you all dead. You will notice the fire around the boxes.’ He gestured with his free hand, giving William the appearance of a man with three arms. ‘Any moment now it will ignite the explosive charge in the nose of the unfinished torpedo. I doubt you will clear the building in time to escape the blast. Goodbye, gentlemen.’
‘Be good enough to answer me one question before we go. Who’s your client? Which foreign power is paying you for the torpedo?’
‘Foreign power!’ Perry cried, before letting out a cruel laugh. ‘You really have no idea, do you, doctor? You should have stayed in the hospital where you belong.’
At last, I thought, we are going to learn what lies behind all this, albeit just before dying; but instead of continuing with his exposition Perry seemed to take stock and checked himself. It was possible that even here, where dispensing such information couldn’t possibly harm his cause, he could not shake off the cloak of secrecy, or perhaps it was just that the advancing fire was making him nervous.
‘Please go on, sir,’ I yelled at him, my lips tightening in response to the heat. ‘We are keen to hear who pulls your strings.’
Perry’s reply came not from his mouth but the muzzle of his gun, which gave out a flash of light followed by a report as sharp as a cracked whip. In response, William’s head dropped to one side and, as if falling through heavy air, he slipped slowly to his knees before slumping forwards on to his face.
Letting out a yell, Ockham and I raised our pistols as one and let fly with every bullet we had left. But Perry was gone, darting through a void in the wall just moments before it was filled by a curtain of flame. Bullets crackled like fireworks as an ammunition box succumbed to the wave of intense heat.