He didn’t come my way. He turned away at the bottom of the stair and I stuck my head round after him. A great kick of luck: he had two flimsy papers in his hand. I was a step or two behind him as he knocked at the first door on the starboard corridor. By the time he was fully inside I was passing the doorway, and a glance confirmed my calculation and my hope: this was the wireless telegraph room. Chummy was bringing a couple of messages from the bridge, to be sent off. Bit of business with the harbour-master, perhaps, or more likely Hertenstein’s first crow of triumph back to HQ.
I’d not covered a dozen paces down the starboard corridor before I heard him coming out and the door closing. He was immediately away back up to his station on the bridge, and again I turned and retraced my steps. A deep breath. I copied his knock on the telegraph room door, and stepped inside.
The telegraph operator was sitting in front of his apparatus, his back to me. He did no more than glance round as I entered. He was used to it. The paper was more important than the face.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have any paper and my face was worth looking at. His glance found my bandage and my hand again adjusting it, and he turned to look at me more fully. He said something in German.
I said ‘Verdammte Skotish’ and added a sort of scornful grunt in lieu of the German for ‘burning railway company cushion’. He said something back to me, and I grunted loudly in agreement with whatever it was. And then I started humming the first thing in my head – it was ‘The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery’, apparently popular this season at Jolly’s Theatre – and looking at his desk.
I saw a block of blank telegraph forms at the back of the desk. Still humming, I tore off a couple, clapped him on the shoulder and left.
69.
As I was taking the stern stairs up to the deck I saw that underneath them there was a line of portable oil lamps hung on hooks. For night use, presumably. It made me remember that evening must be coming on. Sure enough, the sun was low in the sky when I got up on deck.
It was a bit of a shock. At first glance, I couldn’t see any sign of land at all. We might have been in the middle of the Irish Sea already. My toing and froing below deck had surely only been a few minutes. But we’d boarded well out along the Clyde, and Hertenstein wasn’t dawdling, and now the river had become an estuary and the estuary was widening as we raced westward towards the sea and the long route round to Germany.
I came up on deck cautiously. They might have restrictions on who came and went up here. They might have a guard on the crate. And Hertenstein was the sort of chap to keep his eye on a prize like this himself.
As I came fully upright, the crate filled my vision. It had been lashed to the deck just in front of the steps.
I saw no one. I checked around me again. I peered forwards past the crate to see if anyone was watching from the bridge.
There was still a bit of traffic around us in the Clyde estuary, yachts coming in towards Glasgow before the sun went, and cargo ships finding their anchorage. To the south, far off the port bow, I saw the great bulk of a battleship.
It wouldn’t be the Colossus: we were well west of her now. This ship seemed to be anchored near the shore, but it was afloat. This should be the H.M.S. St Vincent, and the St Vincent was a fully operational Dreadnought.
She seemed a long way away. I checked around me again, and then ducked into the open side of the crate.
This was what it had all been about; the whole madness.
It was my first encounter with a fire-control table. The real thing had the same effect as the drawings had had: the same intricacy; the same incomprehensibility; the same mystery.
I reached out my hand, and ran it over the iron base, and the tiers of wheels and levers and devices above. The summit was a large flat dial marking the full 360 degrees, and a confusion of other signs and symbols.
The light was weakening in the sky. I had so little time.
My hands touched this apparatus of the most modern science, more or less witchcraft to me. My feet felt the constant throb of the yacht as it hurried towards the sunset, and its escape.
In less than a minute I was below again, and hurrying forwards along the starboard corridor. And then back again as quickly, and up on deck. I felt the freshness of the wind around me now, felt it whipping at my hair, felt it like freedom.
The shattering of the glass of one of the oil lamps against the crate seemed strangely muffled, in the vastness of the estuary. But it was loud enough to be heard along the deck.
70.
They were alert, and fast. Within moments there were two of them, advancing on me with pistols drawn. And then there was Hertenstein, appearing between them. Just like old times.
I pulled the bandage off my head, and let it fall. Hertenstein considered me, interest and amusement.
‘You do not give up, Delamere, do you?’
‘You ain’t dead yet’, I said. ‘After you.’
The smile faded. ‘And here on my yacht you hope to achieve… what exactly?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I had been planning to stop you.’
He looked around into the dusk, the Clyde estuary falling behind us. The amusement was back. ‘And yet we still seem to be moving. Good steady course. This craft indistinguishable from any other: the battleship St Vincent is just over there, but even if the word is out, we will not be noticed; we will not be stopped.’ He shook his head. ‘Bad show, Delamere.’
‘I know. It’s damn’ frustrating.’
The swine had the cheek to look really regretful. ‘And now Delamere, I fear that you have run out of river. On this voyage I am bringing no passengers.’
‘Ah yes, of course. You’ll want to make me walk the plank, like all good pirates.’ He didn’t quite get it, but he knew he’d won and the smile stayed. I looked around me, into the half-light; the sea either side, the stern half a dozen yards behind me.
It wasn’t a bad spot for an ending: the last of the sun on the sea, the emptiness and the air around us. ‘Look old chap, I know it’s a cliché, but would you grant me a last cigarette? As one hunter to another?’
He chuckled. An elaborate wave of the hand, magnanimous acquiescence and smug superiority. But he was wise enough to throw me the cigarette instead of passing it, and his henchmen were watching me intently.
‘Everything got soaked in my swim’, I said. ‘Could I trouble you for a match?’
No trouble at all, for Hertenstein the triumphant. He threw me a box. ‘How marvellously British you are, Delamere. All the style. All the running around. And it means nothing.’
‘In my defence,’ I said, ‘the idea was fair enough. As you said, there’s no way for the police or the navy to know that this is the yacht to stop. Dozens like it on the estuary. No time to summon reinforcements, or organize a blockade. H.M.S. St Vincent there ain’t going to start taking pot-shots at random.’ He was frowning slightly now, wondering where I was going.
I patted the crate beside me. ‘The good old fire-control table. I don’t have the first idea how this thing works, but I can take a bearing all right from the dial on top of it. A few bearings, indeed.’
Now the frown was clear. He still couldn’t see the threat, but he didn’t like the way things were headed. ‘Once I’d done that, I added a message to the pile that your telegraph man was sending out. He’d no reason to suspect that the data I sent weren’t a progress report from you. The navy and the police will have picked up my message – they’ll be listening desperately for any clue as to where you are and where you’re going – and it had my initials. It pinpointed this yacht’s location by time and by bearing from three landmarks, and gave its course.’ Real concern on his face. He glanced across the water, to the outline of the St Vincent half a mile away. ‘The Navy are going to be pretty unhappy that a washed-up soldier is the first man to use their top-secret apparatus in action. But I’m afraid you’re a lot easier to find than you hoped, Hertenstein.’
We gazed at each other. He was b
reathing heavily, eyes angry. ‘Yet still we escape, Delamere. You got your message away, but it achieved nothing. Nothing from the battleship. Only us, and night falling, and the open sea.’
‘Quite right. Frustrating, as I say. That was where the plan rather broke down. I told the navy whereabouts to look, but they still need to be able to see you clearly, make sure they know what they’re shooting at. I had it all worked out, Hertenstein, and at the very last step I found I was missing one vital element.’
‘What?’
I held it up. ‘A match, Hertenstein. Cheerio.’ The match flared, and dropped, and the deck around us was a carpet of flame as the oil I’d poured ignited. I was already free and running, half a dozen desperate steps. I managed a racing dive off the stern just as the first shells from the guns of H.M.S. St Vincent were coming in.
71.
As every soldier knows, the Navy are rotten shots; and this lot hadn’t fired a gun under fighting conditions for decades. But I think that made them more enthusiastic. I didn’t seem to have taken more than a few strokes through the water when the world exploded behind me, and the air was thick with bits of yacht and German. I hoped the Navy wouldn’t mind that I’d persuaded them to blow up the most precious bit of technology in the British Empire.
The explosion, so close behind, was staggering. The waves of sound and shock battered me, and I was left half-conscious and drifting and unable to communicate to my arms and legs. I was aware of them waving vaguely around me, and everything was misty, and I was reaching and falling and I think I saw Victoria, and Bliss, tasted the moistness of their lips, felt the embrace around me, and to be honest that’ll do for paradise.
‘All right now, sir; let’s be having you.’
I’m not much of a theologian, but I’d be pretty sure that God isn’t Cornish.
‘Easy now. Here we are.’
He certainly sounded Cornish. I continued to drift and drown.
‘If you’ll just stay still sir, I’ll have you safe in a moment.’
‘Quinn? What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Just passing, sir.’
‘In the middle of the ocean?’
‘Hardly that, sir.’ He was pulling me backwards with easy rhythm. ‘More like a pond, this. Not a proper ocean like the Atlantic. Now…’ Our progress slowed for a moment, and I trod water. ‘There’s a launch about here somewhere.’
‘A launch?’
‘Miss Bliss commandeered it. She somewhat exaggerated your status and her own, I suspect.’
‘Ah, marvellous. Playing the duchess at last.’
We drifted off into the evening, and I managed an intermittent back-stroke and watched the stars coming out.
72.
The Thames Ironworks Company shipyard was silent. As silent as the grave which it had become, for two men at least.
As I trod carefully through its darkness, remembering its weird night-time shapes like old friends, the ghosts came at me. Poor Sinclair, and Tulliver the night-watchman, and Merridew the old union lion. And those on the other side of the ledger too: Greenberg, with his macabre death in my arms; the two killers in the forest; Hertenstein the first, staring up at me as he fell to his death on the Jolly’s stage; his brother, and his brother’s crew, now just flotsam in the Irish Sea. One doesn’t exactly regret them, but you’d rather it wasn’t necessary.
I splashed through something that felt thicker than water, and cursed. Once his adrenalin had subsided, I’d have a pretty grumpy Cornishman in my retinue. My best country suit had been lost at sea. There’s only so many times you can have a fight to the death in gentleman’s correct evening wear before it starts to look rather shabby. My dress shoes hadn’t been in great shape to start with, Quinn had had two heroic efforts at cleaning them after my previous visits to the shipyard at night, and here I was again.
The great void loomed up out of the gloom. H.M.S. Thunderer. The start of it all. No place more fitting for the conclusion.
As its darkness rose over me, I reached out my hand and pressed it against the chill hull. Such an impassive monster, to have caused so much chaos.
Among the web of scaffolding that covered one section of the hull, I found the steps to the entrance doorway halfway up one side. There, I was swallowed by the battleship. Now I used my torch. I hadn’t wanted to outside. In here, I’d get lost forever or fall to my death inside a minute.
Jonah inside the whale.
That was about right. Wrong place, wrong time, and taking the blame for everyone else’s mischief.
Up on the main deck and enjoying the night air again, I made my way towards the bow. The battleship was an extraordinary vantage point. To the west, I could see the lights of London, a twinkling horizon. Around me the dark jungle of the shipyard. Behind me, the river. Sometime, not too far off, the Thunderer would slip back into the river, and point her bow towards the sea and Germany.
From the bow, I could look down and see the yard offices, scene of my skirmishes with fire and with mob. Far below me, against the keel, was where Sinclair had died.
I switched off the torch, and waited.
Life was getting back to normal. Whatever that meant. Quinn had kicked me out of my rooms for a few days, while he oversaw the redecoration of the sitting room and told heroic lies to the tradesmen to get a bit of extra credit. So I was still dossing chez Bliss, which was fine. No more congenial place to lie low and recuperate.
Sir Henry Irving, to whom Bliss kept referring, turned out to be her bloody cat. So that was one bit of mystery cleared up without too much melodrama.
I was pretty sure there was no one chasing me now. Even Bunce, though he wasn’t convinced that I didn’t deserve to be banged up for something, had accepted or been told that he should lay off.
The whole business had been hushed up, of course. I don’t know whether anything was ever said, but in effect the Foreign Office politely overlooked the fact that the German Embassy was running a wholesale programme of sabotage and murder out of Carlton House Terrace, and the Germans didn’t make any fuss about the Royal Navy declaring war on a German pleasure yacht. Funny business, diplomacy.
Hertenstein, and his yacht, and the German scheme, were debris in the current of the Irish Sea now. So was the navy’s fire-control table. The Germans never got their hands on one, but the programme was delayed nonetheless. I gather the government got more cagey about how the thing was being managed and looked after, and it was another year or two before they were being installed in Dreadnoughts.
I was in reflective mood, melancholy if you like, as I stood on the deck of H.M.S. Thunderer and waited for my guest.
It seemed colder now, high above the docks, far from the lights of the city. I fancied I felt the first spots of drizzle.
‘Delamere? That you?’
The figure rose out of the darkness of the deck. It became a shadow, and the shadow took on contours, and at last the lights gave it features.
It was Hugh Stackhouse, of course.
‘What the hell do you mean, dragging me out here like this?’
‘What the hell do you mean, Stackhouse, by accepting?’
He was silent.
‘What on earth would tempt you to traipse out here, after such a bland message from me?’ Nothing. ‘Something on your mind?’
‘Something’s on yours, clearly.’
‘Mm. Yes indeed.’ Against the distant lights of London, and the few lights below us in the yard, Stackhouse seemed as he’d always seemed: an indistinct presence; an outline. ‘You got a middle name, Stackhouse?’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Humour me.’
He grunted scorn. ‘Marston.’
I heard it with a sigh and a smile. ‘Thank you. A private bet with myself. I won.’
‘It’s cold out here, Delamere. When you’ve finished fooling around…’
‘I’ll be more than glad to be shot of this business. But the story’s not done yet. I told Victoria Carteret that I’d find ou
t who killed David Sinclair. Tonight, I fulfil that promise.’
‘Your German friends, surely. You proved that.’
‘No.’
His face was becoming more distinct to me now, as my eyes adjusted. Steady; watchful.
‘No. That would have been the last thing they wanted. They were aiming at some discreet espionage. They wouldn’t want blood. They wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves. No one had known that anything was happening at all. Then, in the instant of Sinclair’s death, all London was paying attention. Same with the trades union men. Last thing they’d want would be that kind of attention; that kind of suspicion. No, Stackhouse. Someone else. There’s always been someone else.’
Still the shadow was silent.
‘The Germans wanted a fire-control table. They had a few preliminary attempts at it. They found that the secrets were too closely guarded at the Dreyer company where it’s produced. So they shifted their attention to the Thames Ironworks Company, to see if there might be opportunities there. I suspect they were instrumental in stirring up some of the union trouble, but that was just for distraction. What they really wanted was someone on the inside; someone they could persuade to work for them.’
Stackhouse shook his head. ‘Poor David.’
‘He was ideal, wasn’t he? Congenial chap; addicted to gambling; constantly in debt. The Embassy had a front man for this sort of business: Samuel Greenberg, and his sham Commercial Codswallop and Chaos outfit. He got friendly with Sinclair, and worked it so Sinclair was heavily in his debt – for favours; for money. Soon he was in a position to offer to wipe the slate clean, and more, in return for just a tiny favour of his own. Perhaps he presented it as engineering curiosity, nothing sinister.’
Death and the Dreadnought Page 26