“He made two rotations in this fashion, passing near to me both times, a strangled ‘help!’ coming from his lips. I knew he was doomed to drown and in the worst way imaginable. As much as I disliked the man, I was not about to let him die if I could do something about it. I took off my jacket and lay myself down on the tunnel floor, the filth pouring beneath and over me, and I dangled the jacket sleeve out as far as I could. ‘Buckle!’ I shouted. ‘Grab on!’ and on the next rotation, as he passed by, he reached out and miraculously caught hold of the jacket’s sleeve. I braced myself against the tunnel wall, hoping to God the stitching would hold and I began to pull the man in, inch by inch. We were making progress. His body was gradually coming free from the pull of the spinning pool. I felt certain that I was going to save him, and I would have done it too, I would have saved him, had Hess not emerged from the mire, a dead-eyed ghoul right behind Buckle, wordlessly wrapping his arms around Buckle’s middle. Buckle began to panic, to scream: ‘Let me go, Hess! Let go of me!’ But Hess would not. And the weight of the two men was too much and Buckle’s grip loosened and all of a sudden he was gone, sent spinning off into the pool, the two whirling bodies dashed against one of the brick walls with a sickening wet thud before being dragged down into the swirling mass.”
* * *
Back in the little room at the War Office building, the real Buckle added the final lines to his report, the only sound in the room the scratching of his fountain pen against paper. He stabbed a full-stop then set aside his pen and leaned back in his chair, mulling my story over. He stroked at his moustache with thumb and forefinger, pursed his lips and hummed a few notes of sympathetic concern.
“Hmmm… hmmm… hmmm. By the looks of things, you uncovered an enemy conspiracy, right below the streets of the capital. Who would have believed it? I knew my impostor had been up to no good, but this?”
“Then you do not think me mad?”
“Mad?” He turned his face to mine, eyes wide, mouth open, as if the idea were preposterous. “Most certainly not. Just by looking at you I can tell you have witnessed things no man should have to. Clearly you’re traumatised by these events. Now,” he held up one fat finger. “I wasn’t there with you. I can’t validate what you saw with your own eyes, but I am a man with an open mind, so I will not discount it either. I would be a fool to do so. Besides, despite your career history, you speak from the heart. I believe you, old boy. I believe you.”
It was a great relief simply to be believed. Throughout, Buckle had barely found cause to question my account, had seemed to take me at my word from the moment we met. For a thief, a dishonest man who mixes with similar dishonest men, this was something of a new experience. I was touched, could not express how grateful I was. In the end I settled for a brief, “thank you.”
“And how are you feeling now? I note your hands have stopped shaking,” the real Buckle said. I looked down and saw that he was right. My hands were still again.
“Yes,” I said. “I suppose just telling you my story has helped settle something inside of me.”
“A burden shared… yes? I’m glad, old boy. Glad we could help.”
The real Buckle took out a packet of Woodbines, offered me one first and after I had refused, took one himself, lit it and began to puff away.
“So, what happens now?” I said.
“First of all I shall report these events to my superiors at once, and I shall be sure to let them know the part you played in stopping this wicked conspiracy. You have done your duty. Your country owes you a great debt.”
I had not been referring to myself when I had asked my question, rather I had been thinking of the safety of my country and her people. I had interrupted one ritual beneath the city streets, but who was to say there were not others being planned, or in progress at that very moment? Who was to say the sewers were not crawling with Nazis and collaborators? Buckle had told me that other men had been dispatched to America and Argentina to locate the other copies of the book. America, of course, was an ally, and Argentina was officially neutral, but there was every chance the Nazis could get their hands on another copy of the Al-Azif eventually.
“There will be an investigation?” I asked. “Evidence will need collecting so my story can be verified, then others can be warned. You’ll send men down there, into the sewers? I should think a full sweep is in order. I will gladly show the way to the ritual site.”
Buckle flapped a hand. “No need,” he said. “I expect all evidence will be gone by now, flushed out into the Thames. No, I’ll put in my report and then we’ll make sure it’s thoroughly looked into. Don’t worry yourself. You have been through quite enough already.”
‘Thoroughly looked into’. How terribly vague, I thought, and I suddenly feared the man might merely by humouring me and that the moment I left the room he would throw the report he had written into the wastepaper bin. Yet there could be no denying he had shown me kindness, ever since I had turned up at the War Office to report one of their own a Nazi collaborator. And he believed me, or at least he said he did. The least I could do was explain my concerns to him.
“Mr Buckle,” I said. “Forgive me, but I worry the authorities will not move quickly enough on this. By the time your report arrives with the right person, something terrible might have happened.”
Buckle eased his bulk out form behind his desk to perch on its end and stand over me. He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Let me worry about that, yes?” he said. “It might not seem like it sometimes, but we do know what we’re doing here. Trust me. We take this sort of thing very seriously.” A smile appeared beneath his moustache and I was immediately disarmed. “And what about you?” he continued. “Still aiming to leave the city?”
I had not given the matter much thought since those awful events down in the sewers. I could barely remember my journey back to the surface, had all but blocked it out, and I had only truly come back to myself whilst arguing with the doorman at the Savoy. I could hardly blame the fellow for not letting me in, seeing as I was covered from head to foot in stinking sewage. Once I had managed to get back to my room and once I had scrubbed myself raw and gotten the stench out of my nostrils I had begun to think about telling the authorities about what I had seen. Given my history with the police, I thought the War Office the best bet. So what now, now that the truth was out? It was a most curious thing. I felt a thrill in the pit of my stomach, a flock of hummingbirds taking flight, and it was the same thrill that I had felt many times before when successfully picking a pocket or escaping from the police, only this time I had done something good. I had acted in the interests of others, and it had pleased me to do so. Who would have thought it? As if to test this new way of thinking I realised at that very moment that my fist, buried deep in my pocket, had closed around a handful of coins meant for the Auxiliary Fire Service. I decided I would make it my first order of business, after leaving the War Office building, to hand it back to them.
“I’m not entirely sure now,” I said. “I feel… changed by everything that’s happened.”
“Changed? In what way, old boy?”
“I can’t say for certain, but, do you know, Buckle, I might like to reverse some of the damage I have done in my… career. And most of that damage was caused in this very city.”
“That is true,” said Buckle, “but you would do more good having rested up for a while. This city, eh? All these bombed out houses. It’s enough to depress a man for the rest of his life.”
He was right. People already spoke in self congratulatory fashion about the ‘spirit of the Blitz’, as if, amidst the ruined buildings, the bombed out streets like mouths with missing teeth, the still-standing chimney stacks pointing up to the passing bombers accusingly, there was great good to be found. It was a myth then — and still is now. It was a time when human nature stooped to its lowest, both on the front and at home. Crime was rife. Looting and forgery and fraud and draught-dodging and theft were everywhere. And this is why the
smallest moments of kindness; an air-raid sing-a-long or a community working to pull a child from the rubble stood out. They’re simply examples of decency from a time when half the world seemed to have forgotten what decency was. But still, in that room at the War Office, a stirring inside of me told me that it didn’t have to be that way.
I could go straight for one. I could stop thieving. And I could help, for another.
“I just think, after all that has happened, that I should stay… that I could do some good, given the chance. If we got the word out, if we told people what to look out for and if people knew that the Nazis were operating underground, that they were trying to get hold of ancient books and they were getting into the sewers, then people could help. I could help spread the word. I could talk to people. I’d be happy to do it. The American’s and the Argies… well, they’ll need the whole thing explaining to them and I could be the right man for the job…”
It seemed to me like the most common sense thing in the world. I had seen what they were capable of first hand, and I had managed to stop them. I could travel the country telling people what to look out far and I could share this information with our allies.
I could so some good for once in my life.
Buckle did not seem to agree. “Listen here,” he said. “I’m going to do you a big favour, perhaps the biggest anyone will ever do you in your whole life. Leave this matter alone. Walk away from it, do you understand me? Some things are best forgotten.”
“But I can’t just forget it,” I told him. “After what I saw?”
Buckle shook his head. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “You were released from Pentonville by a man impersonating a War Office official, a criminal no less, using forged papers. Now, seeing as you have done the country a great favour we can work to overcome this, but if you start speaking out about what you have seen, if your name gets in the papers, if others start to know of what happened, why, you’ll end up back in Pentonville for certain. Don’t you see? Your whole story ties you to a series of art thefts on a scale never before seen in this country. All those great works, gone forever. If word of this gets out, you’ll be made an example of. No matter what good you intend to do the country, I’ll wager they’ll want to see you hang for the bad you have done already. So, I say again, leave this matter alone.”
Of course, seeing as the original Buckle had been an impostor I technically still belonged in the Ville. Whatever wish I now had to do some good would come to nought if I was sent back there.
“But, Hamilton…” I pleaded.
“Don’t worry lad. I’ll smooth things over here. Just get yourself away, don’t wait around to get yourself in trouble. And as for being good, find some other way. Go somewhere new, contribute to society. Join the Red Cross, the A.F.S., the Home Guard.”
I stood and the real Buckle enveloped my hand in his and slapped me on the back and directed me to the door. After so much plain speaking it felt like a rather hurried farewell, as if he was now keen to get rid of me, but it was not this that so disturbed me as I readied to leave. Instead it was the sight of a pristine grey homburg hanging from a hook behind the door that made me stop in my tracks.
“What is it old boy?” Buckle said behind me.
I turned, saw him lean over to snuff out his Woodbine in the half-full ashtray.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing Buckle. Thank you… for all your help.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said and he came over from his desk and escorted me through the door. “You can get the lift, right there,” he said, pointing, and I headed down the long corridor and he watched from his doorway while I called the lift and he only retreated back into his office once I had stepped inside and the lift-doors had closed.
* * *
The moment I laid eyes on that homburg hanging behind the door a sense of unease blossomed in my belly and began to grow, to fill me up from the inside so that, by the time the lift was announcing its arrival at the ground-floor with a chime, I was full to the brim with doubt and disbelief.
I was beginning to question everything the ‘real’ Buckle had told me.
In the grand lobby of the War Office building I spied a water closet and headed for it, locked myself in a cubicle and sat on the lavatory with the seat down trying to gather my thoughts.
Beyond the fact that the real Buckle had been wearing a tatty brown porkpie hat when I had met him — that homburg meant things were not quite as they seemed. The hat was clearly his impostor’s headwear of choice. Coincidence? Maybe, but there was also the desk calendar, left unattended for five days while other parts of the office were spotlessly maintained. In fact, hadn’t Buckle himself looked rather out of place in his own office? A gruff and slovenly fellow, with tatty shoes and a great beer belly, out of sorts in the pristine room? And just moments ago, as I was leaving, he had snuffed out his cigarette, a Woodbine, in an ash-tray all but brimming with the twisted butts of spent Dunhills. Another coincidence? Perhaps he was not fussy about which brand he smoked and he switched at whim — but hadn’t the old Buckle smoked Dunhills? I was certain his cigarette case had been full of them back in the Governor’s office at the Ville. I tried to reason out these matters, but as soon as I had dismissed one element as too trivial to be truly meaningful, another sprang up in its place. How convenient, for example, for Buckle to have papers proving his identity so near to hand at the very moment he needed them? There had not been so much as a second’s delay before he had presented precisely the right documents to me — and who has such things to hand the moment they need them? And what of the fact that I had followed the old-Buckle and picked up his trail as he had exited this very building? If he were an impostor, how would he have gained access, and even if he could have, why on earth would he have risked doing so?
No, the ‘real’ Buckle’s story did not add up.
A sinking feeling came over me, for I had come to like, and dare I say it, trust the man a great deal. He had believed me, seemed to care for me even, and now here I was doubting him. Was I being unfair? Had all my years mixing with dishonest men made it impossible for me to trust anyone? I did not think so. It was simply a matter of too many questions left unanswered.
I pondered the matter for a full fifteen minutes then made my decision.
The real Buckle was a decent and patient sort, he had already proven that much. So there were inconsistencies in his story, fine. I would simply ask him about them. I would tell him of my worries and he would undoubtedly explain them away. Might the hat, for example, have been left behind somewhere by his impostor and claimed as evidence? Or suppose the real Buckle had only just moved into his office, was yet to have all his belongings moved in with him? And he might have retrieved his identity papers from the files while I was sat in the building’s lobby waiting to be seen.
I left the W.C., returned to the lift and rode it back up to the fourth floor. I wound my way through the dimly lit Whitehall corridors until I arrived back at the door to Buckle’s office, and there I stopped, one fist raised ready to knock. The door had been left slightly ajar and there were voices coming from inside the room.
Had I only turned back then while I had the chance, I might well have save myself from the nightmares that followed. As it was, my curiosity got the better of me. I closed one eye, pressed the other against the crack in the door.
There was Buckle, sat back behind his desk with another Woodbine on the go. He was leaning forward, grinning beneath his moustache. He had in his hand an upended bottle of Pol Roger which he was distributing into three glasses arranged in a neat triangle in the centre of the desk.
He finished pouring, picked up his glass and held it aloft.
“Cheers, Mr Buckle,” he said.
“Cheers to you, Mr Buckle,” came a familiar voice in reply.
There were two other men sat opposite him, and my restricted view would not allow me to see their faces directly as much as I tried, but I could make them out well enough by their reflections in
the window behind the desk. It was the impostor who had spoken, the old Buckle, he of the grey suit and the fine long nose. He lifted his glass and knocked back the contents, and then from his left came another ‘Cheers’. Glasses were clinked, and the mad Nazi Rudolf Hess knocked back his drink too and he lifted a heavy item from his lap and set it upon the desk with a great thump.
It was but a fleeting glimpse of what was happening in that room, but it chilled me to my core and I did not wait a moment longer. I set off down the corridor at a run, did not take the lift, could not stand the thought of standing there waiting for it to arrive. I took the stairs two, sometimes three at a time, and it is a wonder I made it back to the lobby without breaking my neck. All the while I was shaking my head, trying to dislodge the awful thoughts that were now crowding my mind: there were two Buckles, not one; both worked for the War Office; both were in league with the Nazi, Hess. Whatever was going on deep down in the sewers was not for the benefit of the enemy, but for the Allies! And by far the worst of all, old Buckle and mad Hess, two men I had seen pulled down into a great pool of filth and slime, drowned in the worst way imaginable, were still alive, or, more accurately, were alive again. And the wicked book that had made all this possible? The book I had stolen from Montacute House, handed over to Buckle and subsequently watched vanish in that filthy underground river? Why, that book, the Al Azif, was back in their hands. And I came to understand, as I ran from under the portico of the War Office building and set my course for Euston, determined not to stop until I was seated on the first available train heading out of the city, that the Al Azif, that wicked book, was somehow alive as well.
THE CURSE OF CTHULHU
By Jake Webb
YOU probably won’t believe me, reyt, if I tell you. You’ll probably think I’ve gone proper mad, I need to get out more, make some friends, spent too long online, staying up late watching horror movies and smoking dope. I’ve never smoked dope in my life, pal. Makes you paranoid, that does. And there’s enough to be paranoid about without making it worse for yersen. You know what I mean, right? Yeah. So… maybe you will believe me when I tell you what happened.
Dark Tales From the Secret War Page 31