by Andrew Lane
‘George Clarke.’
‘He’s the man you wrote to your brother about.’
Phillimore’s eyes opened wide. ‘You read my letter? My brother read my letter?’
‘And he’s here. We came to help you.’ Sherlock set the lantern down and pulled the sword from his belt. ‘Stay very still – I’m going to cut through the threads.’
‘No!’ Phillimore cried, ‘you’ll provoke them!’
‘Not if I’m careful.’
‘Just kill them! You’ve got a sword!’
‘They’ve got hard shells, and besides, I might miss them and stab you – which would be a bad thing. No, the safest course of action is to allow them to leave, and then give them a reason to leave.’
Sherlock reached for the nearest scorpion. Without touching it, or pulling on the thread, he gathered the thread into a loop. He held the loop closed with two fingers while he slipped the blade of the sword into it with his other hand and sliced through the thread. The scorpion stayed where it was, unaware for the moment that it had been freed. ‘One down. How many are there?’
‘Five, I think.’
Sherlock did the same thing with the cotton on the second scorpion. ‘That’s two.’ He moved the lantern closer, forcing the creatures to flee from the light, chasing them down Phillimore’s body until they ran on to the packed earth and scuttled away.
The third scorpion was larger than the first two. Sherlock could see the glitter of multiple eyes on its blunt head. Its pincers twitched as Sherlock got close.
He repeated the trick with the thread, but this thread was shorter than the others, and he had to get his fingers closer to the scorpion. Just as he was about to cut the thread he saw the thing’s tail stiffen. Quickly he moved the blade of the sword, intercepting the stinger as it arced forward above the scorpion’s head and plunged downward. The stinger hit the metal of the blade, leaving a smear of poison. Before the scorpion could try again, Sherlock sliced through the thread and then, inserting the sword blade beneath the scorpion’s body, flicked it away.
The fourth scorpion was hiding beneath Phillimore’s jacket, on his shirt. Sherlock had to pull the jacket further open to find it. The creature’s stinger would have injected poison just above Phillimore’s heart if it had struck, and Sherlock suspected that – despite what this George Clarke had said – that would have proved fatal. Once Sherlock had cut through the thread holding it, the creature tried to take refuge in the darkness between two of his shirt buttons, but Sherlock blocked its path with the blade of the sword and instead it moved on to his jacket. Again, Sherlock flicked it away into the corridor.
Phillimore didn’t know where the fifth scorpion was, and Sherlock couldn’t see it. Eventually he had to slice the ropes on Phillimore’s wrists and ankles and help him very slowly into a sitting position. Even then he couldn’t see it. He moved the lantern all around the man, trying to work out where it was, but there was nothing.
He was almost about to believe that the scorpion had got loose by itself and scuttled away when Phillimore said in an overly calm voice, ‘There is something moving on my head.’
Sherlock looked closer. The scorpion was moving through Phillimore’s hair, near his ear.
‘Please, remove it,’ Phillimore said. His voice sounded close to cracking.
‘I can’t,’ Sherlock admitted. ‘I don’t see where the thread is. I think it’s somehow wound the thread in with your hairs.’
‘If you don’t remove it now, I will smash my head against the wall to kill it.’
‘Don’t do that.’ Sherlock put his blade down and reached gingerly for the scorpion’s tail. In order to distract Phillimore, he said: ‘Did you discover what George Clarke’s plan actually is?’
‘I did. He intends to set the Suez Canal on fire.’
Sherlock closed his finger and thumb on the end of the scorpion’s tail, being very careful not to let the stinger itself touch his skin. It felt hard, and yet slightly squishy beneath his fingertips.
‘Did you warn Monsieur de Lesseps?’ Phillimore whispered.
‘We tried,’ Sherlock admitted, ‘but without any knowledge of the actual plot we couldn’t convince him.’
Sherlock pulled the scorpion away from Phillimore’s head. Its eight legs and two front claws waved vainly, trying to get a grip, but it came away easily. Sherlock could see the cotton thread now – longer than the others had been, and tied to a button on Phillimore’s collar. He picked the sword up with his left hand, pulled the thread taut by holding the scorpion as far away from Phillimore as it would go, and then sliced through it.
‘Done,’ he said as he threw the scorpion into the darkness. He felt, rather than heard, Phillimore’s heartfelt gasp of relief.
‘Let’s get you out of here,’ he said, standing up and extending a hand to the man on the ground. Phillimore took it gingerly. His hand was dusty, and Sherlock could feel it trembling.
‘Do you have any water?’ Phillimore asked as he stood stiffly upright.
Sherlock passed him the flask that he had hanging on a strap around his neck. ‘Don’t drink it all,’ he warned. ‘Sip it, otherwise your stomach will rebel and you’ll bring it all up again.’
Phillimore nodded, and gratefully drank some water. He closed his eyes in bliss. ‘I have dreamed of this,’ he said.
‘How on earth was George Clarke going to set fire to the Suez Canal?’ Sherlock asked, his mind finally getting to grips with what Phillimore had said.
‘He has had his own workers lining some of the deeper rooms and corridors of these tombs with metal,’ Phillimore replied, and took another sip of water. ‘They have been converted into tanks, and he has filled them with oil.’
Sherlock remembered the black stain on the floor of the tunnel that he had noticed earlier. ‘And he intends, what? Somehow getting this oil to the canal and then setting it on fire? That seems like a plan that could go wrong in so many ways.’
Phillimore shook his head. ‘No, he has thought it through very thoroughly. The tanks took over a year to construct, and another six months to get the oil transported here in hundreds of barrels. It’s a special kind of oil, one the Greeks used to use in warfare to set enemy ships alight. “Greek fire” it was called by the ancients. Once started, the conflagration cannot be put out.’
‘But how would he get the oil from the tomb here to the canal?’
‘His workers have laid their own pipes in secret from the tomb to the canal. They are buried beneath the sand. One of the steam-powered digging machines standing on the banks of the canal has been built to Clarke’s specifications, not Monsieur de Lesseps’s. Clarke will use the steam engine to pump the oil out of the tomb and into the canal, where it would spread across the surface.’
Sherlock shook his head. ‘But not all the way down the canal – that would take too long, and there can’t be enough oil in the tomb, surely?’ He remembered the mirrors and the telescope on top of the tomb, the ones he had found earlier. ‘Of course!’ he said, hitting his forehead. ‘He has similar oil tanks in similar old tombs all the way down the length of the canal. His men, once they are in place, will signal to each other and release the oil at the same time. The whole canal will be covered, from Port Said down to Suez!’
‘And that’s when they will use Chinese fireworks to set the oil aflame – almost certainly at the moment that the canal is declared open and the first official convoy of ships passes through.’ Phillimore shook his head. ‘It will burn for days, weeks, even months. The damage to ships would be huge, but the damage to the reputation of the Suez Canal Company would be . . . infinite. The canal would be a catastrophic, monumental failure.’
There was silence in the tomb for a few moments as they both imagined the sight if the oil was released and set aflame.
‘Then we have to stop it,’ Sherlock said quietly.
Phillimore sighed. ‘I tried. After my attempts to warn the company failed, I investigated Clarke’s activities myself. I broke into
his office and examined his receipts and work orders, and I followed him here, but he heard me and took me prisoner. He wanted to know how many people I had told, and what I knew, but I wouldn’t tell him.’ He drew himself up: proud despite his crumpled and dirty appearance. ‘I wanted him to believe that other people out there were working to stop him. He was torturing me with the scorpions to find out the truth.’ He looked around. ‘We should get out,’ he said weakly. ‘Alert the authorities.’
Sherlock shook his head, realizing that the gesture was almost invisible in the darkness. ‘No – I want to see the oil reservoirs first.’
‘Don’t you believe me?’ Phillimore seemed affronted.
‘I believe you, but I always like to see the evidence for myself.’
Phillimore nodded in resignation. Instead of heading back towards the way out, he led the way across the room where he had been imprisoned and into the dark doorway on the other side. Sherlock followed with the lantern.
The tunnel split into two a little way along its length, and then again a little way later, but it always led downward, and Phillimore always knew which way to go. Sherlock kept an eye out for the scorpions, but the only things he saw moving away from the light were beetles. He wondered idly, as they walked through the warm dark air, what the beetles ate. Each other?
After a while Sherlock realized that he could smell something: a warm, heavy odour with a pungent edge. It became more intense the further they went.
The tunnel ahead of them gradually broadened out into another room – much wider and deeper than the one Phillimore had been tied up in. That had been a lobby: this was a chamber. Stairs led down into it from the corridor, but the floor beneath wasn’t visible. The chamber was filled, right to the level of the last step, with a black liquid that sucked in the light from the lantern. Cast-iron pipes descended from holes in the stonework of the ceiling and plunged into the blackness.
Sherlock knelt down and touched the surface of the liquid. It was sticky, and left a black residue on his fingertips. It smelt faintly sharp, like pine needles.
‘Greek fire,’ Phillimore said. ‘The weapon invented by the Byzantine Empire and used successfully for centuries, lost for even more centuries, and somehow rediscovered by George Clarke.’
‘Oh,’ a voice said from behind them, ‘I cannot take full responsibility. Apparently the secret recipe was written down in papyruses held in the archives of the British Museum.’
Sherlock and Phillimore turned around. There, behind them, was a small man with a mass of black hair that stuck up, like a brush. His expression was calm, almost serene, but he was holding a revolver which was pointed loosely in their direction.
‘The papyruses were only translated three years ago by a scholar in Oxford,’ he went on. ‘When it was realized what they said, the British Government declared the whole thing a state secret, and hid it away again.’ He smiled at Sherlock. ‘I do not believe we have been introduced. My name is Clarke – George Clarke.’ He nodded at Phillimore. ‘Jonathan and I are already acquainted, of course.’
Sherlock glanced at Phillimore. The man seemed hypnotized by Clarke, terrified by his very presence. ‘So the British Government are behind all this?’ Sherlock asked.
Clarke shrugged. ‘Parts of it are. Not the whole thing. The British Government is a vast and slow bureaucracy. There are bits of it that operate entirely independently of other bits. I work for one of those bits.’
Sherlock straightened up, wondering whether he could pull his sword from his belt and lunge for Clarke before the man could pull his trigger. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t make it. Despite the casual way the man was handling his gun, Sherlock thought he could bring it to bear pretty quickly. ‘And you’re just following orders?’ he asked. ‘You’re going to set fire to one of the great wonders of the world, the biggest engineering project since the Pyramids, and you don’t have any regrets, any concerns?’
‘You’re trying to appeal to my better nature,’ Clarke said, nodding. ‘Understandable. I would do the same in your circumstances. What you don’t understand is that I don’t have a better nature. I am being paid so much – into a secret, untraceable bank account – that I had it surgically removed.’
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. ‘Seriously?’
Clarke shrugged. ‘You’re right – I jest. Actually, I have never had a better nature. I cheated at school, I cheated at university, and I cheat in my work. It’s what I do.’
‘People will die,’ Sherlock pointed out. He was looking around Clarke for some advantage, something that could be used, but he couldn’t see anything.
‘Probably. The most effective time to pump the oil out into the canal and set fire to it would be when the inaugural column of ships is passing through. That will grab the newspaper headlines. More importantly, that will grab the attention of the investors. They will sell their shares in a panic, the Suez Canal Company will collapse, and the British Government will quietly buy up those shares. Eventually they will control the canal – whether it reopens quietly in a decade or whether they keep it shut. The French will have no say in the matter, and the British Empire will still control half the world.’
‘And you will retire happy – where?’ Sherlock asked. He looked sideways at Phillimore, to check he was all right. The man’s eyes were wide, and his face was white. He was either going to pass out or launch himself at Clarke. Either, Sherlock thought, would be bad. ‘The South Seas? The Caribbean?’
‘Oh no. I have had too much of hot temperatures. I was thinking of trying my luck in the Antarctic. There are several engineering projects there that I could help with.’ He made a little gesture with the gun. ‘The two of you, of course, will be retiring here, I’m afraid. You will never leave this tomb.’
‘What about finding out who Jonathan Phillimore has told about your plans?’ Sherlock asked rapidly, aware that Clarke’s gun could fire at any moment.
Clarke laughed. ‘I think we have established by now that nobody knows anything in the Suez Canal Company, and anyone in the British Government who has any idea will keep very, very quiet about it.’
Phillimore twitched. Sherlock reached out to take his shoulder, trying to hold him back. He didn’t want the man to be killed needlessly. Having said that, he realized that he had no real idea how to stop either of them being killed needlessly. That would require some thinking, and he didn’t have much time. Seconds, in fact.
Something moved on Phillimore’s jacket, emerging from the folds of the gag that was still loosely tied around his neck and scuttling over his shoulder.
It was one of the scorpions – the largest one. Sherlock hadn’t managed to flick it away after all. It had found a convenient fold and stayed where it was.
As it emerged into the light, Sherlock slid a finger beneath it and flicked it at Clarke.
The scorpion flew through the air in a shallow arc that ended at Clarke’s face. Sherlock had a confused impression of its legs folding up beneath it and its tail clenching to strike. Clarke saw something and raised his free hand to his face, but too late. The scorpion struck, and struck.
Clarke screamed. He dropped the gun and raised both hands to his face, back arching. The scorpion dropped to the ground and scuttled away, but the damage had been done. There was blood on Clarke’s cheek.
Clarke was staggering around now in agony, clawing at his eyes. Sherlock bent and snatched his gun from the ground, but it wasn’t needed. Clarke stumbled past Phillimore, still screaming. Phillimore moved aside to let him pass.
And Clarke fell into the oil.
He missed his footing where the tunnel ended in a step, and toppled forward. Water would have splashed, but the oil just seemed to accept him, closing up around his body as if nothing had really happened.
Sherlock and Clarke stared in horror for perhaps a minute, but his body didn’t float back to the surface. A lone bubble eventually rose from the depths and very slowly popped. That was it. That was the last of George Clarke – engineer
and saboteur.
Eventually Sherlock turned to Phillimore. ‘We need to destroy this,’ he said.
‘Why? The man is dead.’
‘There might be others. There are others. He wasn’t working alone.’ Sherlock thought quickly. ‘The best thing to do would be to set fire to the oil, burn it all up. The trouble is, if we use the lantern to do that, we’ll never make it back to the surface. There are mirrors up there, and a telescope. If we can arrange the mirrors to reflect the light of the rising sun all the way down the tunnels, then we might be able to use the lenses from the telescope to focus the light on to the oil, heat it up and cause it to catch fire.’
Phillimore reached up to the cloth gag that was still around his neck. ‘Or,’ he said, we can use this, soaked in oil.’
Sherlock looked at him for a long moment. ‘Or we can do that,’ he said.
It took them less than a minute to tear the gag into strips, tie the strips into a long rope of cloth, dip the rope into the black, viscid oil, and then lay it in a trail along the hard-packed earth floor. It led in a wavery black line all the way to the point where the corridor split.
Phillimore looked at Sherlock. Sherlock looked at Phillimore.
‘The lantern?’ Phillimore asked.
Sherlock nodded. He knelt, picked up the end of the cloth, raised the glass shield on the lantern and touched the cloth to the flame.
It caught fire in a flash of blue flame which began to travel slowly along the cloth towards the pool of oil in the chamber.
‘Time to go, I believe,’ Phillimore said.
They ran back up along the tunnels, past the junctions, through the lobby where Phillimore had been imprisoned, around corners and towards the blinding daylight shining through the doorway of the tomb. Sherlock’s breath rasped in his throat as they ran. The fresh scar on his ribs was burning with pain. Phillimore’s thin arms and legs waved wildly as he sprinted beside Sherlock. They reached sunlight at the same time, throwing themselves outside the doorway, hitting the sand.
And behind them, the tomb shuddered.