The Ebb Tide (the adventures of langdon st. ives)

by James P. Blaylock

  “Commodious wardrobe,” he said in a low voice.

  “Just so,” St. Ives said. “Just so.” He darted a glance up and down the corridor. “Jacky, watch the door,” he whispered. “Give us a whistle if anyone appears.”

  But there was no need to whistle, because no one, apparently, was interested in us, a fact that had begun to seem peculiar to me. The entire mob had been aware of our entering the place. Someone, you’d suppose, would begin to wonder what we were about. I looked back to see Hasbro fiddling at the lock with a piece of wire and St. Ives endeavoring to see behind the wardrobe, which appeared to be pressed tightly against the wall, perhaps affixed to it. I wondered why the wardrobe would be locked at all, but just as the question came into my mind, the door swung open to reveal that it was utterly empty.

  “Interior lock,” Hasbro said, indicating an iron latch that was attached to the inside of the door, identical to and directly behind the outside latch. There was a key in it, which Hasbro removed and slipped into his pocket.

  St. Ives reached in and pushed on the panel at the back of the wardrobe, fiddling with the mouldings, and very shortly the panel slid sideways to reveal a dark passageway beyond. Without an instant’s hesitation St. Ives stepped through the door and ducked into the passage, waving at us to follow. I was quick enough to comply, half of my mind worrying that someone from the tavern would look in to see what we were up to, the other half worrying that they hadn’t already done so.

  I glimpsed a precipice ahead — stairs leading downward beyond a small landing, more or less in the direction of the river. St. Ives was already descending along a rusty iron railing. Hasbro followed behind me, swinging the wardrobe door closed, the passage instantly disappearing into utter darkness. I heard him step out onto the landing, and then the panel in the wall at his back slid into place with a clicking sound.

  “Steady-on,” St. Ives said from somewhere below.

  There was a cool updraft, and a wet, musty smell that might have been the river itself. I heard what sounded like the roar and hiss of a boiler letting out steam. “Can you find your way, sir?” Hasbro whispered into my ear in a disembodied sort of voice.

  I told him I could, and I stepped off, one foot in front of the other, gripping the railing with one hand and feeling my way along the wall like a blind man with the other, hoping that no rotten stair tread would catapult me into the abyss. Soon, however, I found that I could see tolerably well. There was light somewhere below, which brightened as we descended.

  A vast room — more a cavern than a room — opened out, and we paused for a moment to take in the sight below us. The floor lay at a depth that must have been beneath or near the level of the river. On that floor lay two strange undersea craft set on stocks, one of them evidently half built. Roundabout them lay a litter of metal panels, casks of rivets, and heavy glass sheets in wooden racks. One of the ships was the length of a yacht, and might have been completely built for all I could see in that dim light, with a shape that reminded one of an oceangoing prehistoric monster — finny appendages and convex, eyelike portholes. The other vessel was smaller, just a shell, really, of a similar craft. Some distance away stood a third craft, exceedingly strange and unlikely, a sort of elongated orb standing on bent iron legs — apparently an underwater diving chamber. It had nothing of the diving bell about it, but was altogether more delicate, built of what appeared to be copper and glass, and probably capable of independent movement, if the jointed, stork-like legs and feet were any indication.

  A few feet beyond that lay a broad pool of dark water, the lamplight glinting off little eddies and swirls on its otherwise still surface, as if it were flowing eastward, perhaps a subterranean channel of the Thames, or a backwater of one of the underground rivers that transect the city — the Walbrook, perhaps, or a branch of the Fleet.

  The ceiling soared away overhead, supported by arches of heavy, cut stone. There were gaslight lamps some distance up the walls, with iron ladders leading up past them to a web of narrow walkways. The walkways ran hither and yon far above our heads, linking platforms on which lay what appeared to be tools and crates, perhaps shipbuilding paraphernalia, too dim in the gaslight to make out clearly from where we stood near the base of the stairs. The platforms, evidently, could be raised and lowered: they dangled from heavy chains that angled away in a complicated, block and tackle system. The boiler and coal oven of an immense steam engine hissed and glowed beyond.

  We were apparently alone in the room, and we descended the last few steps warily, the bottom stair-tread hanging a foot above the stone floor, held aloft by heavy chains suspended from above. The entire bottom flight shuddered with our movements like a ship in a cross sea. I was on the lookout for some sort of activity, and a little surprised (I speak for myself again) not to find any, especially with the boiler stoked and glowing. No one with legitimate business in this vast place would have any reason to hide. We were the intruders, after all, just as we had been intruders in the gin shop above.

  St. Ives, however, didn’t have the air of an intruder. He stepped down off the precarious stairway and walked eagerly to the half-built ship on the stocks. “A submarine vessel in the making!” he said, his mind instantly taken up with questions of science and engineering. He pointed at slabs of neatly stacked grey stone, weighted down by pigs of iron. The stone looked as if it had been cut out of blocks of sea foam. “Pumice,” he said. “Do you see this, Hasbro? They’ve cut it into slices and encased it within the aluminium shell. Ingenious.” He stood looking for a moment at a tub full of water nearby. Wires looped down into either end of the tub, dangling beneath floating rubber bladders with tubes running out of them. “They’re producing hydrogen gas,” he muttered, rubbing his chin. “I believe they’re pumping it into the shell of the craft to further increase buoyancy. But what motive power? Electricity, surely, but what source…?” He went on this way, peering into recesses of the craft, talking mainly to himself, pointing out incomprehensible odds and ends, apparently having forgotten what we’d come for.

  But what had we come for? If we were pursuing the simian man who had failed to steal Merton’s map, we hadn’t found any trace of him. Instead we had found a subterranean shipyard, very nice in its way, but another riddle, not a solution. I looked around warily, my mind far removed from questions of scientific arcana. I’ll admit, craven as it sounds, that I was thinking of the potential for escape. Back up the stairs and into the Goat and Cabbage? The idea was almost welcome. At the downriver end of the cavern, I saw now, stood a pair of high doors, closing off an opening wide enough to cart in any sort of freight — the way in, no doubt. The wardrobe door was simply a bolt-hole.

  And then something happened that was almost disorienting under the circumstances: I smelled pipe tobacco, faintly but distinctly. I looked around sharply, peering into the dim and distant recesses of the enormous room, but I saw nothing. My imagination? I heard a scraping noise from somewhere overhead, and I glanced up sharply at the walkways, where I glimpsed the small glowing circle of a lighted pipe. Someone leaned on a railing, looking down at us. He was tall man, I could see that much, and he was evidently in no hurry, but was considering us as if we were animals in a cage, which wasn’t far wrong. The light was too dim for me to make out his features, but I knew well enough who he was. I saw a second man on one of the platforms now, also making no effort to hide.

  “There they are!” I shouted, but my words were buried by the abrupt ratcheting, clattering sound of winches turning and of heavy chain hauled through iron rings and the whistle and gasp of steam. The entire system of chains and pulleys and winches seemed to be moving now, the cacophony erupting from far and near. The three of us turned as one back toward the stairs.

  But the lower flight of steps was hovering some few feet above the floor, hauling slowly upward on its chains, already moving out of reach. We were trapped, just as I had feared. I realized with a cold start that my feet were wet. There was an inch of water on the floor now. S
luice gates — they had opened sluice gates. The dark river beyond the diving chamber had risen — was rising — and the truth, pardon me for saying it, flooded in upon me. We had been lured here, hoodwinked, the biter bit.

  “The freight doors!” I shouted, probably worthlessly in that ongoing cacophony of noise, and I pointed wildly toward the distant doors and set out at a splashing run. Before I’d taken six strides, there was a hand on the back of my coat and I was stopped in my tracks, the water swirling around my ankles. I turned to see Hasbro gesturing in the direction of the diving chamber, which St. Ives was examining with a trained eye. Of course, I thought, wading after Hasbro, looking hastily into the maze of catwalks overhead, where the tall man still watched us. He was holding a rifle now, leaning casually against the railing as if he meant to shoot squirrels.

  The ratcheting and banging ceased abruptly, throwing the room into an eerie silence but for the hissing of steam. There was a gurgling noise and a soft splashing of water as the tide rose abysmally fast — knee deep now, cold and dark as death. St. Ives had the hatch door open and was climbing in, one foot on the nearest outstretched, bent leg of the craft, his hand on an iron rung. He disappeared inside briefly, turned around, and looked out at us, leaning forward and waving me along, although I had no need of encouragement. I found the rungs easily enough, my hands made nimble by fear, to tell the truth. St. Ives ducked back into the chamber to allow me room to enter the surprisingly spacious compartment, where I slumped down on a padded bench and sagged with relief.

  Hasbro’s face loomed into view outside the hatch now, and I bent over to give him a hand in, hearing at that moment a small explosion — the crack of a rifle. Hasbro teetered backward off the rungs, holding on momentarily with one hand. I leaned out, grabbing for the lapel of his coat, but finding empty air, watching him tumble into the black water and disappear. St. Ives was so concentrated on the controls of the craft that he was oblivious, and I shouted incoherently at him, turning around and backing out into the open again, hunched up like a man trying to cram himself into a box, anticipating the bullet that would surely follow, and did follow. It glanced off the metal shell of the chamber near the side of my head, so close that I heard the ricochet along with the report of the rifle.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Bottom of the River

  Hasbro lurched up out of the flood, his hand gripping his upper arm, and I let loose of the rungs and splashed down alongside him, going under for one dark, cold, horrifying moment before getting my feet under me, river water streaming into my eyes, my clothes sodden. Hasbro waded forward, putting his hand on a rung and feeling blindly to get a purchase with his foot. He climbed heavily as I pushed from below, trying to keep at least partly protected by the curved wall of the diving chamber. St. Ives leaned out and hauled Hasbro in from above, and I scrambled up after him, finding myself inside for the second time, kneeling in a pool of water on the deck, gasping to catch my breath, and too stunned and flummoxed to know how cold I was.

  The hatch was already slamming shut, but there was one last report from the rifle, only a dim crack, like two stones knocked together, and the sound of the bullet pinging off the interior walls of the chamber, four rapid, distinct pings, and then the flattened bullet dropping to the curved floor and sliding down into the shallow pool of water. I realized, as I plucked the spent bullet up from where it lay and put it into my pocket as a souvenir, that the chamber was illuminated now, a soft glow emanating from overhead lamps, and there was the sound of a beehive-like humming on the air.

  St. Ives twisted closed the latch that secured and sealed the door from within, nodded his head with satisfaction, and said, “We’re carrying dry cells! She’s an independent traveler!” The statements meant nothing to me, but his apparent joy bucked me up just a little. He worked at the controls methodically, manipulating levers and wheels, cocking his head with concentration. I helped Hasbro off with his wet coat, the inside of which was a marvel of pockets. After he extracted a roll of bandage and a flask of the cask-strength malt whisky that he carried against emergencies of all sorts, he worked his shirt down over his arm, exposing the wound. The bullet had scored the flesh and then had gone on its way, thank God, although there was a prodigious quantity of blood, which we staunched with the steady pressure of a wet kerchief folded into a compress. Hasbro dribbled whisky over the wound and I tied it with the bandage, making a neat job of it. I was reminded of poor Merton, beaten bloody in his own shop. We were getting the bad end of things, and no doubt about it — apparently played for fools all along.

  “Thank you, Jack,” Hasbro said, offering me the flask. I raised it in a brief salute and took a swallow, nearly gasping at the strength of the whisky, and then gave the flask to St. Ives, who was smiling like a schoolboy. “Oxygenators,” he said cryptically, nodding his head toward the controls. “Compressed air, so it’s a limited supply, but it’ll do if we look sharp. Jack, you’ll be on call to let in fresh air when we need it — that lever on the port side, there. But be as stingy as a landlady with it.” He turned the air lever downward, and there was a sort of metallic swishing sound, air through pipes, the exhaled air tasting cool and metallic.

  St. Ives took a quick drink from the flask before handing it back to Hasbro and turning again to his work. Hasbro followed suit and then slipped the flask back into his coat. I won’t say that we felt like new men after the whisky, but at least not so old fashioned as we had felt a few minutes earlier. There was a constant hum and mutter and whoosh now, the chamber having become a living creature. St. Ives turned to us and nodded, as if to say, “What about that?” and with Hasbro attended to and apparently well, there was nothing to be done but to let St. Ives go about his able business, and I for one was happy to let him do it.

  I watched the water creep up the side of the heavy glass portholes, my mind beginning to turn, trying to come to grips with what this meant, this watery entrapment. We had neither food nor drink, aside from the flask. Perhaps, I thought, we could wait until the water reached its zenith and then open the hatch, flood the sphere, swim to the surface, and try to find our way up the stairs, which might be reachable in the high water. Or might not. And of course our friend with the rifle might simply be waiting for us, conspicuously closer now on his perch overhead, which would make matters difficult indeed.

  My spirits declined even further when I suddenly recollected Finn Conrad emerging from across the way last night at the precise moment that I was surveying the street. I wondered, perhaps unkindly, whether the boy hadn’t simply been waiting for us, whether he was an even better actor than he was an acrobat. It was he, I thought darkly, who had led us to the Goat and Cabbage, the Pied Piper turned on its head, and him cheerfully eating chestnuts outside on the street as we witlessly filed in through the door, avidly pursuing our doom….

  The thing suddenly seemed to be a certainty, and that was a damned shame. I liked the boy, and I was shocked at the level of loathing I felt for scoundrels that would lure such a likely lad into a life of dishonor and falsehood. He had been monumentally helpful at Merton’s, but now that seemed evidently suspicious. Of course he would have been helpful, if his goal had been to lure us into the gin shop, where we would almost certainly discover the secret door, one thing leading to another. He hadn’t known about the map in the armadillo’s mouth, I reminded myself with some small satisfaction: the vital secret was still safe. But then I recalled Merton uttering the word, “reproduction” in his enthusiasm last night, and my satisfaction fled.

  I sat there with a heavy heart, with nothing to cheer me aside from the faded glow of the whisky, which had seemed sufficient only moments ago. But I sat so only briefly, because the water outside had risen beyond the tops of the ports and I found myself looking out into the inky black of subterranean water. Lamps came on outside the craft, illuminating things, and I saw fish — eels of some sort — darting away into the darkness. The chamber tilted abruptly, as if it wanted to float, and I shifted on the seat, tryi
ng to distribute the weight so that we didn’t simply fall over like a dead thing.

  “Hold on,” St. Ives said, opening a valve and listening, his head bent and eyes narrowed. “I think I’ve…”

  There was the sound of water rushing into what must have been ballast chambers, and we settled on the floor once again. St. Ives tentatively began to work the several levers that rose from the deck of the chamber, manipulating the thing’s legs, the chamber rising and settling, pitching backward and forward in a way that was distinctly unsettling. I thought of an upended beetle, struggling to right itself, its myriad feet utterly useless to it, but I swept the thought away, aware that we were creeping along now with a slow, ungainly gait. “A drop of air, Jack,” St. Ives said, and I dutifully let in a few seconds’ worth.

  “Where are we bound?” I managed to ask after I had done my duty. We could hardly climb the stairs, after all, and merely creeping about the floor of the shipyard would accomplish little.

  “Out,” St. Ives said. “We’re bound for points east. It’s my idea that we have no choice but to make away with this marvelous craft. We’ll borrow it, I mean to say. If we could find the owner and ask permission, we’d do it, but under the circumstances it’s quite impossible, ha ha. And of course we have immediate dire need of it, which justifies our actions somewhat.” He furrowed his brow and shook his head, as if this were a thorny moral issue, but it was evident that he was elated, that he couldn’t have asked for a more suitable answer to our dilemma.

  The elation faded into puzzlement, however, for right then the water outside our craft was illuminated far more brightly, and a large, moving shadow hove slowly past. It was the submarine that had sat on the stocks, suddenly alive now, making its way out of the flooded cavern. We watched in mute astonishment as it passed slowly by, one of the lighted portholes revealing the frozen profile of Dr. Hilario Frosticos himself, clearly having been aboard all along, waiting in the darkness. He was sitting at a desk in a cabin full of books and nautical charts, looking down at some volume as if unaware of our existence. And in the moment before he and his submarine passed out of sight into the depths, he glanced sideways into a cheval glass that sat before him on the desktop, and I saw his abominable reflection staring back at me, his ice-white visage perfectly composed and disinterested.