The Yellow Glass

by Claire Ingrams

  “It was an accident but, yes, it’s rather blown our cover for the time being.”

  “She didn’t touch any of theirs’, I hope.”

  “She had orders not to, Tamang.”

  He nodded.

  “It is always best to know what one is dealing with, so I’ve been working on a little device for you, Mr Upshott. It’s here somewhere . .”

  Professor Monkington (‘The Monk’ to all and sundry) was the head scientific honcho at HQ, but it hadn’t taken the great man long to recognise Tamang’s extraordinary ability and he’d given the boy a corner of floor space all to himself in which to play. There, Tamang had accumulated enough technical hardware to fill a large warehouse and one took one’s life in one’s hands venturing anywhere near it, it was piled so high with God only knew what. A heavy spanner had once toppled off a six foot high stack of rolled wire and very nearly brained another boffin; if forced to approach Tamang’s lair, most people tiptoed with extreme care and some even removed their shoes. I stood well back while he rooted around.

  “It’s not a watch, is it? There are only so many watches one can wear. Or a cigarette lighter; so easy to lose and then one feels so bloody guilty.”

  He laughed in the affable way he had:

  “I wasn’t able to miniaturise to quite that extent. Ah, here it is. Please take it, Mr Upshott.”

  Tamang handed me a brown fedora hat with a narrow brim. I turned it over in my hands and looked inside. It was an up-market model, with white silk lining and leather stitched around the underside of the band. I’d have said it was a fraction heavier than the norm but, apart from that, appeared to be a perfectly ordinary gentleman’s hat for a perfectly ordinary gentleman.

  “I’d have preferred charcoal grey, personally.”

  “Apologies. Any ideas?”

  “At a wild guess, I’d suggest there was something in the band. Something flexible, like a plastic ruler. Will I be undercover measuring, Tamang?”

  “You are not as wide of the mark as you might think, Mr Upshott!” The boy looked delighted. “It is, indeed, in the hatband, but it’s no ordinary ruler. See . . .” He slipped the long, rectangular object out of one end of the leather band.

  I put my ear to it; now that it was released, I could detect an audible ticking coming from the thing.

  “Tell me it’s not a bomb, Tamang. I’d really rather not have one of those wound around my brain.”

  “It is an instrument for detecting the emission of nuclear radiation!” He exclaimed.

  “A Geiger counter, you mean?”

  “Not exactly. It counts nuclear particles, but, technically, it’s more of an ion chamber because it can measure the highest ranges of beta and gamma radiation, which a Geiger is unable to do. If such levels are present when you are wearing the hat, you will be able to sense a sharp increase in those clicks against your forehead; there will be no need to remove the hat or to extrude the device. What’s more, the clicking will be completely silent to those around you.”

  “Why, thank you, Tamang.”

  I could see that the hat might prove extremely handy and I was just so relieved he hadn’t given me another cigarette lighter.

  “It was nothing,” he bowed his head, all modesty. “Just, please don’t get it wet. I’ve taken a lot of trouble to set it correctly, you see. Too low and no pulsing, too high and the discharges cascade. Moisture will completely de-stabilize it and undo all of my hard work.”

  “I promise. Scout’s honour.” (Not that my time with the scout’s had been one of my finest hours.) “No more jumping in the Thames for me.”

  “You have been jumping in the Thames?”

  Jay Tamang adored to hear about the gung-ho aspects of the job, buried, as he was, in the fathomless depths of HQ.

  “Mmm, but that’s another story. Christ, is that the time?”

  I’d glanced at my watch and discovered that it was eleven-thirty at night. If I was going to redeem myself, I must get a move on.

  6. Down the Slide

  I found Kathleen in the garages, as I’d thought I might. They had some interesting vehicles there (that I wasn’t sure she should be looking at), but she’d managed to get the night-shift mechanic wound around her little finger, and was being given a full-blown tour. He’d even rustled her up a cup of tea.

  “Tristram! Take a look at this Aston Martin, darling. How come you’ve never been given one of these?”

  It was a lovely, pale blue number and I had an idea who it belonged to[13].

  “I’d hate to think what one would have to do to earn that, Kathleen.”

  She looked like whatever it was would be well worth it, peering in to look at the dials and the upholstery, sighing over the car as if it were a child.

  “It’s never out of the workshop, this one,” remarked the mechanic. “Who knows what ‘e finds to do with it.”

  “Come on Kathleen, I think I’d better get you home.” I turned to address the man, “Has my wife’s car been given the thumbs up, or have you something else we could drive?”

  “Back window’s a write-off and some damage to the front fender. What’s more, none of the papers’ been signed. This should do you. Over here. Not so much to look at, but she’s a great little mover.”

  The great little mover in question was a two-tone Hillman Minx in shades of shrew.

  Kathleen sighed. “That’s a bit of a come-down. I don’t think you can have been working hard enough, Tristram. Still . . I hear they corner well.”

  “Oh no you don’t! I’m driving us home and I don’t want any arguments, so let’s get cracking.”

  I took possession of the keys and signed the car off, which - like a whole raft of new procedures at HQ - seemed to take an interminable amount of time.

  It was while I was tossing Tamang’s hat onto the back seat that the idea first occurred to me.

  “How’s the slide, these days?” I asked the mechanic.

  Let me elaborate. The slide is a tunnel that lies fifty feet beneath HQ which has, on the odd occasion, been used as a secret exit. I believe it’s part of the network of underground tunnels and shelters that were used during the war: parts of it having been built at that time of maximum civilian danger, on top of other parts which were already in existence, either from when they built the Tube, or from when Bazelgette[14] built the sewers back in the mid-nineteenth century. The slide will get an operative to Borough High Street, with an exit just before London Bridge - should he wish to leave there - or it will carry on, burrowing lower, until it reaches the deep-shelter beneath Chancery Lane tube station, which is 130 feet down. That’s one of the second-wave of deep-shelters originally built for Londoners after the Blitz, you remember . . those shelters nobody wanted to use because they were just too far down and people didn’t fancy being buried alive. It’s my understanding that Chancery Lane became a bolt-hole for a top-secret branch of HQ[15], instead, which is why the slide lands up there. However, on this occasion I fancied that Borough High Street would do the job.

  “That’s a bit irregular, Mr Upshott,” the mechanic scratched his head. “I don’t know that I can help you there . .”

  “I know, I know . .” I sighed, “I’d have to get permission and sign some more bits of paper and so on and so on. The Services are dwindling to desk jobs for the shifting of ever more bits of paper.”

  It was damn frustrating, especially as I knew that the only executive left in the building was Hutch and Hutch would never agree to a night ride down the slide. Not unless World War Three had been declared.

  “What is the slide?” Asked Kathleen. “It sounds like fun.”

  The idea was growing on me. We had to get out of HQ without a tail and what better way? Getting Kathleen back to our house in Chelsea in one piece was the number one priority. I was sure that Rosa had never mentioned my full name to Magnus Arkonnen and that he hadn’t seen Kathleen’s famous face; it was unlikely that Arko’s gang knew who I was, or where I lived. Not yet, anyhow. Tomorro
w I would find a safe house for her, but she could sleep in her own bed that night. I was more and more determined to use the slide. If I could only find somebody with the know-how to get us through the door and into the tunnel, Hutch need never find out. What was required was a bod with a technical head on their shoulders.

  The small figure of Tamang sat all alone in his gloomy citadel, guarded by his towers of bric-a-brac. He was at his desk with a salt-beef sandwich in front of him - gherkins, mustard, the whole shebang.

  “All alone, Tamang? The Monk left you in charge, has he?”

  “Mr Upshott! What brings you back so soon?”

  “I need your help.” I played my trump card. “We need your help.” I stepped aside to reveal my wife.

  He stood up, slowly, brushing crumbs from his mouth and lap.

  “Good evening,” said Kathleen. “I love your office. What on earth do you get up to down here?”

  Tamang appeared mesmerized. His black eyes widened and he opened his mouth to reply. I cut him short; it was unwise to ask Tamang anything at all about what he’d been up to down there because he was liable to tell you.

  “Tamang is one of the masterminds behind all the technical gubbins, Kathleen. Sorry, let me introduce you two. Jay Tamang, this is my wife Kathleen. Kathy Smith to her fans, of course. Now, as I said, we need your help.”

  “Apparently we have to go down a slide,” Kathleen added.

  He was taken aback.

  “The slide?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “There are eyes out and about and we need to avoid them. The slide seems the obvious solution. We just want to get it operational and then we can slip out and nobody will be any the wiser.”

  Tamang smiled, “You mean, you haven’t got permission from upstairs, Mr Upshott?”

  “Not as such, no.”

  “The Stone girl smashes my glass and now this . .”

  “Rosa smashed some glass?” Kathleen asked. “Can’t you just glue it back together again?”

  “Never mind that,” I interjected, keen to change the subject, “there’s been one hell of a blowback and we’ve already had tails behind us with shooters several times tonight . .”

  “Several times? Not when Rosa was with you? Tristram?” Kathleen broke in.

  “ . . and it’s vital we go to ground safely. If you could just get it operational, Tamang, I’ll take any flak that comes our way, tomorrow. What do you say?”

  Tamang looked dubious, then shook his head, vigorously. It wasn’t encouraging. Frankly, he was my last hope; if the boy couldn’t help then I didn’t see how I was going to get the idea off the ground. That is . . until my wife piped up.

  “Oh, come on Mr Tamang,” she said, “we can’t hang about here all night. Whatever this slide is, why don’t you come down it, too? You’d be doing me a favour. I tell you, the way I’m feeling at the moment, if I’m left alone with my husband, I’m liable to commit murder.”

  God knows how, but Kathleen had instinctively found a way to get through to him. I supposed it was working in a job where all the excitement happened to other people that did it. (I mean, if you were left in a dark corner to re-wire sprockets, or whatever it was he did, and - even when you’d re-wired your sprockets and invented some ingenious bit of kit - you knew that you’d never actually get to see any of it in action, well, wouldn’t you jump at the chance to speed along the slide at midnight with a glamorous blonde in tow?)

  Young Jay Tamang’s dark face lit up:

  “I shouldn’t be doing this, Mr Upshott. I’m sure Professor Monkington would not be pleased, but . . give me a minute and I’ll be right with you.”

  He dived into a shrouded area of his den and began to toss things about.

  “Well done, Kathleen,” I thought I’d give her her due.

  However, now that we were alone, she appeared to be hyperventilating.

  “Rosa got shot at? And now Rosa’s disappeared?” She hissed at me, like a goose. “I cannot believe how you could’ve been such an arrogant sod as to’ve involved her in this, Tristram!”

  I did my best to ignore her. There was plenty of time for all that later. We had to get cracking.

  “Hurry up,” I urged Tamang. “What’s taking so long in there? Can’t you just find the switches and levers for us?”

  Tamang reappeared bearing a small, rectangular object. He was beaming from ear to ear, so I was surprised by his reply.

  “I’m sorry, I cannot do that for you. I have no idea where the switches and levers are.”

  Well, that seemed to be that. (However, the fact that he was pulling on his duffle coat and stuffing the remains of his supper into a pocket suggested it might not be that.)

  “But I do have this little device, Mr Upshott and I would be most interested to have the chance to test it out. That is, if you and Mrs Upshott have no objections?”

  He didn’t wait for a reply, but dashed towards the basement stairs.

  “Come!” He grinned at us. “I’m presuming we have a car?”

  Even the sight of the shrew-coloured Hillman Minx didn’t dampen Tamang’s enthusiasm.

  “I hope you don’t mind sitting in the back, Mrs Upshott?”

  He held the door open for Kathleen, before he jumped in next to me and began to fiddle about with his little box of tricks. After which, he gave us a short description of what the box did (well, as short as Tamang could ever make it, which wasn’t terribly short at all), before rolling down his window and leaning forward in his seat, little box to the fore. He looked like a small boy on Christmas morning. I switched the engine on and began to glide towards the rear garage wall, to where I was reasonably sure the entrance to the slide was hidden; a ventilation duct the only clue as to its whereabouts. We drove past the Aston Martin and then past a jacked-up Land Rover and then straight past the exit to the anonymous Waterloo backstreet where HQ was located.

  “Oy!” The mechanic had seen us and spurted out of his cubby hole. “Where d’you think you’re going?”

  “Christ, I hope that thing works, Tamang,” I said, between gritted teeth, “because we’re heading right into the bloody wall.”

  And we were; we drove straight at the wall, like a drill into mortar. Kathleen stifled a scream, ineffectively. Then, just when it seemed like we were about to get our heads smashed in, Tamang pointed his box and pressed his thumb down, hard and . . . ‘Open Sesame’! The wall swung open, proving to be a steel door behind a single layer of bricks, and we shot through into a dim, narrow tunnel. Tamang turned around to aim his box through the rear window and the door promptly swung shut again. I screeched the car to a standstill. For a moment we sat in complete and utter darkness, before I switched on the interior light. Somewhere, water dripped on stone.

  “How about that!” Tamang crowed. “It works!” He turned to Kathleen in the back. “My distance controlling device works, Mrs Upshott!”

  Kathleen’s grey look had returned, but she mustered a smile for him.

  “Fabulous.”

  “It works on a similar principle to the controls they use to open garage doors in America, you see. They are also developing such devices for use on television sets, for those people who are so unbelievably lazy as to wish to change channels without getting up from their chairs. Can you believe that?” He raised his eyebrows. “But I’ve been applying the technology to lights and, indeed, all electrical circuits. The difficult part is making it universally applicable and that was where I was less than one hundred per cent certain of the response . .”

  I let him burble on for a bit and then I switched on the headlights.

  We gazed down the slide and I pointed the Hillman’s nose down. There was nowhere to go but down. It was more of a bricked pipe than anything else, a perfect circle of bricks with a mere foot of air between the car and the wall at all points. If we’d been in Kathleen’s Austin Princess we’d never have squeezed through - we’d have jammed like a cork in a bottle. It was clear that we were inside one of Joseph Bazelgette’s Vi
ctorian sewer pipes. It was slick with running moisture - not sewage, I hasten to add - and the walls were striped green with moss and algae. I wondered whether melting ice from the February freeze had drained down through the slide and been trapped with nowhere else to go, for a small stream ran along the pipe, glinting in the headlights. It was a cold, disorientating place to be.

  Kathleen tapped my shoulder.

  “Let’s make a move, shall we Tristram? I’d rather not sit here any longer than I have to.”

  “Absolutely, darling.” I took a deep breath. “Are we all set?”

  Tamang nodded, vigorously, beside me and I caught my wife narrowing her eyes in the mirror.

  “Then let’s go!” I slammed my foot to the floor.

  The Hillman bombed down the slide, surfing through water and gaining momentum as we descended.

  “Tristram!” Kathleen screamed. “Slow down, Tristram!”

  But it had been one hell of a day and and I needed to let off steam. And what a way to do it! How often can a man drive across London unimpeded by other cars and traffic lights and the endless petty restrictions of life in town? It felt absolutely fantastic. Top hole. The tunnel magnified the noise of the car engine into a magnificent roar and I felt as if I were racing Formula III at Brands Hatch. I glanced sideways at Tamang, to see how he was taking it. He still had his window wound down and his black hair was plastered to his skull, but the thrill of the ride was plain to see in his wide grin. I felt rather glad to be giving him his money’s worth.

  However, all good things must come to an end and the sight of a couple of concrete bulkheads in the distance, rearing up to either side of the tunnel wall, forced me to brake. The tunnel seemed to be widening and changing until it wasn’t a tunnel at all, but a colossal cave with concrete slabs laid on the floor and a ridged and vaulted ceiling.

  “What’s this, I wonder?” The acoustics had altered noticeably at that depth and my voice boomed out.