“Don’t thank me, pal,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Is Elsie Granger in on this?” I asked.
“‘Course she is,” he said, as though to an idiot. “She and your old lady are thick as thieves right now. They needed someone on the inside, and muggins here gets the job. Hard bloody work it is, too.”
“I know,” I said.
“Suppose you do.” He looked me up and down. “It’s good you’re still in one piece. Try to stay that way, or I’m wasting my bleeding time.”
This expression of concern, rough and self-interested as it was, was strangely touching. Smith was no sort of friend, and had been largely indifferent to me. But somehow, the fact that I mattered to someone, that they were counting on me in some way, made all the difference. And Sally was behind it. I was part of a team again.
“What’s happening out there?” I asked. “It’s been getting noisier these last few days.”
“Some of them kick up a racket after they’ve been treated,” he said. “Just be grateful it ain’t you.”
“Dr Nye?” I asked.
“I keep out of his way,” said Smith, flicking his cigarette butt into the grate. “Gotta go.”
“Cheerio,” I said. “Thanks for the porridge.”
“You’re welcome to it,” he said, a little ungraciously.
Smith’s visit left me elated and full of questions. Some of those were answered the following Sunday, when, by a minor miracle, I was let out and escorted for visiting again. Against all hope and expectation, Sally was waiting for me. I could not quite believe it. Against all expectation, and despite of all common sense, she was still with me.
She was dressed for an evening out, with her hair brushed and silver bangles on her wrist, looking rosy and healthy as a milkmaid. Her face lit up when she saw me. Arthur had visited me out of a sense of responsibility. Sally was here because she wanted to be.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said, overwhelmed by a jumble of emotions. There was shame and embarrassment for my situation, and more than a little relief for seeing her, and gratitude, and other feelings which I could not so easily put a name to.
“I wanted to see you for myself,” she said. “Sorry I didn’t write.” She leaned closer, and I could smell her perfume. “Letters get read.”
“Smith told me what you were doing,” I said.
She looked at the other inmates, their visitors, and the attendants, who stood straight-backed against the walls like stone sentinels. “And how are you?” she asked quietly.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know,” I said. “You’d better ask the doctors.”
Sally shook her head. “They don’t know anything. You tell me what happened.”
Reluctantly, and in a low voice, I tried to give an account of the escape, Ross’s plan, our attempted flight, and its incomprehensible conclusion.
“That’s how I remember it,” I finished, a phrase I had cause to repeat several times during the narrative. And then, without even meaning to, I added: “It seemed so real at the time.”
Her brow had creased when I described the strange flight and the way the attendants had appeared out of the air, walking along the wing, but she seemed to take it in her stride. I was worried that once she heard what I had to say, she would change her mind and decide that I was not worth helping. But that apparently never even crossed her mind.
“I don’t suppose a lock pick would be any use,” she said. We had talked about lock picking long ago. It was one of the topics covered in my correspondence course, and I had failed to master the skills on the basis of the scant instructions provided. “Whatever you need, though, I’ll get it for you.”
“I’m not sure what’s what anymore,” I said hesitantly. I had to be honest. “Sally, I’m not even sure I ought to be outside.”
“Harry, look at me,” she said. My gaze had drifted down to the table in front of me. Her eyes were bright and fierce. “You don’t belong in here. There’s something bad at work, I know that. I don’t know what it is, but nobody can stop it but you.”
When I did not reply immediately, she began counting off points on her fingers. “That strange film at the cinema and the projectionist going mad. The man here who died, Gillespy. Hooper, that other one who worked for Miss De Vere. Dr Beltov dead. All that story that Ross told you. I’m not a genius, but there are facts there. It’s not only in your head—or if it is, it’s in my head, too.”
The web was far more fragile than she made it sound. I had been through it many times myself. “Sal,” I said, and I reached out and took her small hands in mine. “These things can be looked at more than one way.”
“And don’t you go forgetting that gipsy fortune-teller, saying you’d meet a man with wings. This Ross, he’s a man with wings. Isn’t he?” I had completely forgotten this episode, but to her it was a clincher. “How much proof do you blooming well need?”
“I don’t know –”
“Remember,” she said, cutting me off, “that you’re talking to a woman who got propositioned by a walking corpse, and ended up screaming her head off. Nobody ever believed what I saw, until I didn’t know whether to believe it myself. They thought I was mad. But it was true – you proved that. The nuns would never have let me go if it wasn’t for you. So you can leave this ‘don’t know’ right out. You need to pull your socks up, Harry Stubbs, and start acting like a man.”
That was telling me. I stared back. She was right.
“Yes or no?” she demanded.
“Sal, you’re a wonder,” I said.
“I am glad you finally decided to start listening to me,” she said. “That long face doesn’t suit you. And with your shoulders slumped, it looks like there has been a landslide.”
I squared my shoulders. She was right. My trainer would have been horrified to see me in that posture.
“You know,” she said. “This is like one of those prison films, isn’t it, where the moll visits her gangster in prison? Do you remember Convict 13? It’s harder than they make out, though. You know they searched me on the way in? There’s a woman warden for that, and she’s a hard-faced baggage if ever there was one.”
“Vanstone’s wife,” I said absently.
“Hard to get anything in, but Smith might be able to. Speaking of films,” she said, “I got that reel. The Phantom of the Cinema. Before they could show it like you said.”
“What? How did you do that?”
“The new projectionist, he’s very young,” she said, with what I could only call a coquettish smile, an expression I had not seen before. “I dressed up nice and gave him the eye. He let me into the projection box, and I nicked it when he was changing reels.” She laughed at my shocked expression. “Don’t worry, he didn’t try anything. He’s only a boy.”
I could never have seen Sally as Mata Hari. She always presented herself as just another girl working at the pickle factory. She was more resourceful than she let on.
“The reel is in a safe place,” she went on. “Getting you out, though… I don’t put too much reliance on Smith.” He was on the far side of the room, watching one of the inmates arguing with another man. “Elsie reckons he wants to impress her, but he’s not Douglas Fairbanks hero material. He says he can’t work out how to get all the doors open to get you out on his own.”
“I don’t know if I want to get out,” I said. “No, I’m not starting that again. I mean, I think I need to be in here. I’ve got to tackle Dr Nye.” I had some inkling now of what I was up against.
“How are you going to get to him?” she asked. “Maybe I should do it.”
I had a vision of Sally marching in and demanding to be let in to Dr Nye’s office, with a pistol concealed in her handbag. She would do it, too. I could not believe that it would serve any purpose. Nye could bend and twist reality to his ends. If she tried to shoot him, Sally would find herself looking at a photograph of Nye on the wall, with a cap gun in her hand, or some other twisted version of reality—
along with Vanstone’s wife with a straitjacket to haul her off to a women’s institution—and she would be as baffled and mad as me at the shift in the world.
If I was not mad, then Nye could warp reality into any shape he pleased, making reality into madness and madness into reality. You cannot fight such power with ordinary weapons. The answer, if there was one, lay with Ross.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said.
“You do that! About time, too. Oh, and I mustn’t forget this.”
She produced a long, flat object, wrapped in brown paper, from her handbag. It was the biggest bar of chocolate I had ever seen.
“To keep your strength up,” she said. She smiled at me then, and in spite of it all, I could not help but smile back.
Chapter Eighteen: Fight Your Demons
Ross was only two doors down from me in the segregation block. There were no convenient pipes to tap on—not that I could remember Morse code, anyway—and I could not figure a way of using the drain that ran under all the cells. Smith accepted the task of messenger, but the answers he brought back were oblique in the extreme.
“He says you have to hold on,” said Smith. “He says it’ll all come right. You just have to ‘fight your demons’.” His tone belied the words he was conveying.
“Ask him—”
“I’m not asking him anything. I’ll get another load of guff back.” He mimed a talking mouth with his hand. “Ross is happy enough. Don’t worry about him.”
Smith did at least accept another commission: retrieving the storm glass from my box of possessions. I had little idea of what it might tell me, but I had all the time in the world to watch it. Wisps of green precipitate would form and dissolve at certain times. Each day they became more defined and lasted longer.
Smith also brought other things along with the dinner tray some days later.
“Message for you,” he said.
“From Ross?”
“From ‘is royal highness, FitzRoy. Sends his best wishes and that.”
“What for?”
“As if I know anything about it,” grumbled Smith. “He reckons you’ve been thrown in the dungeon unjustly. He doesn’t like Nye.”
“How do you mean?”
“Incidents,” Smith said without elaborating. “You’re lucky you’re in here and don’t have to join in the Kinotherapy sessions. All we do is stick them in a room and play a film, but they come out of it like bloody animals. Nye reckons it’s helping.”
It occurred to me then that Nye must be employing Eric Woods to make more films. Showing them to the patients pushed them to further extremes. The Sarcophagus would then record their brain waves, which would go into making the next film, and so on, in an ever-increasing spiral of insanity. It had to be stopped – but I was trapped here, and Smith was not about to take any chances by throwing a spanner into the works.
“Anyway,” said Smith, “I also bear a love token from your lady friend.”
I did not know what he meant until I lifted the plate and was surprised to find a pair of knuckledusters, extra-large size. My knuckledusters, reserved for those rare occasions when serious violence might be afoot. Sally must have gone to my rooming house and ferreted them out of the bottom drawer.
Of all the absurd things. A file, or bolt cutters, or some other sort of implement, that might have been of some use. But the idea that I could punch my way out was ridiculous. And there was an added risk: if they were discovered in my cell, further measures would be taken. Maybe I would be put under restraint and tied to the bed. Maybe they would discover Smith and fire him, or worse.
Ross wanted me to fight my demons. Sally wanted to help me fight someone. We must all have been as mad as each other.
I will always remember one occasion during the war, when I was with my battery, and we could hear the battlefront moving closer. The artillery tractors were standing ready, like great mechanical oxen. As soon as the order was given, we could hitch the guns up and haul the battery to a position farther back.
Our guns were silent; heavy artillery could do nothing when the armies were mixed up with one another. We sat around the big howitzers, their muzzles pointing at the sky, and the action moved so close that we could hear individual rifle shots popping from among the background noise.
“Sergeant,” one youngster burst out, “they’re getting closer.”
“Very true,” our battery sergeant said. He was regular army, and singularly unimpressed by us wartime recruits. He had fought in the Boer campaign, and was as tough as nails and respected for it.
“Sergeant, what do we do if the order to pull back doesn’t come?”
It was possible that the line of communication would be broken, or even that German storm troopers, who were the new crack troops, had broken through and overrun our headquarters. It had happened before.
“In that case, lad,” said the sergeant, “we will just have to stay here and fight. And die like men.”
It seemed like a cruel answer for a frightened young man needing reassurance, and the gunner looked like he had been slapped in the face. After a minute, though, he straightened up and stopped shivering. His jaw was set. Vague and unknown dread had troubled him, but dying like a man was something else. It had a concreteness to it, and it gave him a goal to achieve.
The order did not come, but neither did the Germans; their assault was repelled. None of us manning the guns had to die like men that day, but we were ready.
The brass weapons before me looked bright and new. I picked one up and sniffed, detecting a hint of vinegar. Sally must have cleaned them in a pointless-but-thoughtful womanly gesture.
I fondled the knuckledusters then slipped them over my hands. They were solid and reassuring. They reminded me of other times, of other tight corners and impossible situations. This is who I am, and this is what I do. There was something else, too. It was like holding hands with Sally at one remove. She was there with me in spirit, and she wanted me to keep fighting. It always helps to have someone on your side.
“Nothing has changed, Stubbs,” Ryan’s voice told me. “Except you’re slipping into delusion.”
I was in no mood for his sniping. “Either say something helpful, like telling me the best place to punch a tiger, or else keep your trap shut. I’ve had enough of you.” It was rude, but he had been harassing me for some time. And since he was a part of my internal self, I wasn’t really insulting anyone else.
For all Ryan’s urgings, I was certainly not going to kill myself. Not now. Maybe the others had not killed themselves, either, at the last, even though somebody wanted them to. Those deaths had been a little suspicious at the time, but there had been no physical way a third party could have been involved.
As a man who had been dragged from an aeroplane at five thousand feet straight into a drawing room at ground level, my faith in the solidity of things and the relative powers of mind and matter had been severely tested. If we accept that reality is more plastic than we thought… then what? You can tear up the manual, and nothing makes any sense at all. Perhaps there are limits to the powers of everything. Otherwise, why all this charade and sneaking about?
There must be some limitations, because… The thought almost eluded me, but I caught it mid-flight. Because Nye needs to have a solid base to work from. If everything about him was changeable and insubstantial, his own hands would turn to smoke, leaving him unable to hold anything, and he needed to have some things fixed in place. Without any rules at all, there is no game. And he was certainly a player of games.
As soon as Smith left, I checked the storm glass. The cloud had congealed into a half-recognisable shape which did not dissipate. Not quite a tiger, but similar in some ways, and clear enough to recognise. It was close. Tonight would be the night, and I finally had some idea what I was facing. There had been plenty of time to figure it out. I may have been a plodder, but plodding will get you anywhere if you are persistent enough at it. And I had to be ready to fight.
; Boxing was the only thing I had ever been really good at; if I was going to fight my demons, that was how I would do it. I would change my cell into a stronghold, from a place of execution to my home turf.
A proper competition boxing ring is twenty feet square, though some are as small as sixteen feet. I had fought in confined spaces before, but I really preferred more room. Half the skill of fighting is movement, and if you’re in a broom closet, you lose the advantage of that skill.
I paced up and down then dropped into a fighting stance. I shuffled and jumped about, getting the feel of the size and the angles of the space. I could dodge about quite well by pushing off the walls. There was no need to get trapped anywhere, except the bed was inconveniently placed.
A more formidable weapon would be handy, not that I really knew how to use any sort of weapon except the knuckleduster. Hercules used a club, and I reckoned a decent club might be more useful than a machine gun at that point.
The room was completely bare. The only furniture was the iron bed, which was bolted to the ground. If I could dismantle it, the legs would make pretty decent clubs. And iron would do well. According to folklore, iron has always been hated and feared by things from beyond, which I took to include demons. Nobody had ever succeeded in detaching a bed, as far as I knew, but maybe nobody of my size and strength had ever tried.
I explored the situation on my hands and knees. The bolts were firmly in place on three sides, but the fourth, which was at the bottom of the bed on the side away from the wall, had some play in it. No more than an eighth of an inch, but that was enough.
Heaving on it from the standing and kneeling positions did no good, so I lay on my back and braced my legs against the bed frame. I taxed the bolt with a series of sharp upward thrusts, pushing as hard as I could. Then I used the bed cover as padding, as the frame was digging into my thin shoes, and pushed even harder. The bed groaned but did not shift.
I could feel my face turning the colour of beetroot and veins standing out on my forehead. After a minute, I stopped, lay back, and relaxed. It was ridiculous; I was acting like a madman. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of men had been confined in that cell, and none of them had ever succeeded in breaking the bed. Misery and defeat threatened to engulf me.
Master of Chaos (The Harry Stubbs Adventures Book 4) Page 21