TOURS IN BILLINGSGATE
Respectable young ladies of gentle nurture do not as a rule haunt the
obscure purlieus which lie east of London Bridge, down towards the
river, at one o'clock in the morning; but then, although Susan
Hawthorne might have pleaded guilty to the gentle nurture part of the
clause, it is doubtful whether she would have admitted her
respectability. Respectability and old Smiler, her beloved father,
tutor, friend, and companion in the all-important years between
fourteen and twenty, were two factors which in the eyes of the
initiated were about as likely to merge successfully as oil and
water. Certainly, when Adventure loomed ahead, the teaching of old
Smiler took no stock of convention.
"If there's Trouble with a big T at the end of anything," was his
oft-inculcated maxim, "life isn't worth living unless you're making a
bee-line for it. And if, on the way, you come up against something
you know you CAN'T do, and it's in the way, well--DO IT, and hell to
the consequences."
A pernicious doctrine by almost any ethical standard, but one which
by frequent repetition had become as much a part of Susan's life as
old Hawthorne himself. Which goes to explain why she sauntered down
Lower Thames Street on a certain evening on felony bent. There was
no hesitation in her lissom stride--she even hummed a little tune.
Nerves? You don't know her! Susan Hawthorne, who on one occasion
had stuck up His Excellency the President of Olvidada at the end of a
six-shooter, in his own Illustrious Palace, for six measured hours,
what time she--er--persuaded him to issue divers orders anent the
constitution of that misruled Republic--orders which made His
Excellency shudder and gasp and fume impotently--Susan Hawthorne, I
say, and nerves? Not in your sweet natural, stranger! Nothing so
amateurish as taut muscles, quivering ganglions, and a disconcerting
void in the gastric regions--nothing more tremulous than a faint
pleasurable tingling of anticipation.
To the casual eye she was simply a weedy youth trudging towards his
favourite pub. A moist and melancholy-looking cigarette dangled from
the corner of her mouth; her face and hands were convincingly grimed;
her shoulders slouched. The corduroy trousers were artistically
torn, the ill-fitting coat dusty and clumsily patched, the tweed cap
pulled down over her eyes in the approved rakish manner. There were
only two things about her attire to distinguish her from the original
of the part she was playing, and neither of these obtruded itself.
One was her shoes--light black pumps with soles as thin and flexible
as rubber wafers, which made no sound as they plodded lightly over
the cobbles---the second was a little instrument of blued steel which
nestled against her hip, for Susan Hawthorne had spent most of her
unusual adolescence in those parts of the world where, the wise go
heeled and the foolish are all dead.
So Storm had decided that she wasn't to be in the Triangle picnic,
had he? Well, he'd got another guess coming, she reflected grimly.
Keep her out of it, when in her time she'd been through more
hair-raising adventures, in company with old Smiler and Kit Arden,
than she could remember in detail? Not much!
She was swift on the uptake, was this slim girl. Storm had rambled
on unsuspectingly about the mysterious warehouse in Billingsgate, and
Uncle Joe had spoken sombrely of the mysterious Mr. Raegenssen. The
faculty of adding two and two, and unfailingly producing a tentative
dozen, was hers in a marked degree, and a few discreet investigations
had done the rest. Oscar Raegenssen himself, that eccentric
gentleman, was the worthy burgess who numbered that curious
"saw-mill" among his goods and chattels, and the coincidence required
closer scrutiny. There had remained only the minor problem of the
escape from the watchful eye of Terry Mannering, and from the even
more intent care of the plain-clothes watch-dog whom Storm had set
over her.... To one of her breed, that difficulty was exceeding
small. She chuckled reminiscently as she recalled the simple ruse
she had employed to circumvent it.
The Sud-Scandinavia Sawmill stood a little way back from the narrow
street, occupying a whole block, and fronted by a wide stretch of
pavement, not a hundred miles from Nicholson's Wharf--a gaunt sooty
building from which by night and by day issued the muffled swoosh and
clang of a tireless plant. A forbidden place--glancing up as she
approached, she took in its massive dullness; the intangible air of
secrecy; the barred and shuttered windows placed high up in the
walls; the single narrow rat-hole-like entrance with its
steel-mounted door. The demesne of Sud-Scandinavian Wood was going
to be difficult.
But it took a lot to daunt Susan, once she had definitely embarked on
an enterprise. In one lightning summary of the situation she laid
hold of the fact that nothing short of dynamite could force an
entrance into that building, if so be the occupants earnestly desired
to prevent ingress. Dynamite, or low cunning. Dynamite being
clearly out of the question, stealth became the order of the day.
All this she had grasped and docketed in the couple of dozen paces it
took her to reach the place, and she never paused as she approached
the small door. Under the light of the lone flare which guttered
over the lintel, she studied the masonry on either side and located a
bell. Her finger pressed it with a firm touch.
A while she waited, and when no response came she pressed again.
Straining her ears, she caught the tread of heavy feet coming towards
her. There was something threatening about their slow progress which
would have alarmed most people--it was as if the janitor knew that
the one outside was no regular visitor, and was suspicious. Came the
gentle slither of bolts in well-oiled grooves--she counted four of
them--and then the protesting snap of a big lock. The door swung
back a couple of inches, and part of a scowling face appeared in the
gap.
"Vat ees?"
"An urgent message. Hurry up and let me in, you fool!"
As the man perceived her slightness and the fact that she was alone,
the door creaked open a further six inches.
"Hom from?"
"The Chief."
"I know no Cheef," said the man, and began to close the door again,
but Susan already had her foot in the jamb.
"The Triangle, you infernal idiot," she hissed.
"Vich Triangle?"
She played her trump card. Something silvery glittered in her open
palm as she thrust it towards the man's eyes--Joe Blaythwayt had
begged it from Mr. Teal as a memento, and Susan had abstracted it
from Uncle Joe's treasury without that formality, in preparation for
just such a contingency. The charm worked. The door opened wide
enough for her to pass.
"Com."
She entered, and heard the door close and the bolts snick back into
place. The darkness closed down inkily, and then the shuffling of
the janitor's feet stopped and a switch clicked. Over her head a
frosted bulb broke into a dim radiance.
Without embarrassment she crushed out the stump of her fag on the
dusty floor and took another from a gaudy packet. She knew that she
was being inspected closely, but, secure in the efficiency of her
disguise, this fact troubled her not at all.
At length the man seemed satisfied.
"Vid hom do you vish to spik?" he queried deferentially.
This was a development which she had not had time to reckon with, but
her brain moved fast, and she covered up her slight hesitation by
striking a match and lighting her cigarette before replying.
"Is Prester John here?" she asked.
She was bluffing desperately on the fragmentary and secondhand
knowledge of Joe Blaythwayt, and prayed that Prester John might be
absent. Even if he was there, however, she had her plan mapped out
by this time, and she knew her escape was certain--which it assuredly
was not if Prester John were away and she went on with her attempt as
she had planned.
"I vill see," said the man, and she braced herself up to the
knowledge that it was now a case of no retreat, no retreat.... "You
haf not been 'ere before?"
"No. I'm always with the Chief."
"Ze Cheef, _hein_? A graate man, but he hass not enof time for ze
ladies, _non_?"
He leered at her, and for a moment she dreaded that he might have
penetrated her make-up. And then she realised that he took her for a
lad of his own type and leanings, and she smiled. What was more, she
entered her part so thoroughly and she permitted herself a coarse
reply which would have sent the simple Joe, had he been there to
hear, purple to the ears.
"In zat room"---he jerked his thumb--"you vill find friends. I vill
present you."
"Right you are," she agreed gruffly. "Oh, listen. If John isn't
here, you needn't bother to tell me. Just send him along as soon as
he arrives. The Chief wants him in a hurry. If he doesn't turn up
in half an hour I'll have to leave a message and go along and try to
find him somewhere else."
He nodded, and turned to her as though an idea had struck him.
"Zere is somzing beeg an' secret---'ow you say?--in ze air to-night,
_n'est-ce-pas_? You air ze second urgent messenger ve 'ave 'ad. Not
ten meenits ago zere com a beeg man viz 'urry call for Morini, but
Morini is not yet arrive, so 'e attend him."
"There is something in the wind," Susan said easily. "But the Chief
doesn't like questions."
The man shook his head.
"Somtimes I 'ave fear of 'is secrets. Even ve do not know quite 'ow
beeg are 'is plans. Zere is zis tunnel, now. Even zose 'oo work do
not know vhy for eet ees mak'. Zere ees a new _ingénieur_ down zere
now 'oo mak' inspection. Ze Cheef send 'im wizout varning--a
clevaire _Espagnol_ 'e 'as recruit. _Mais que faire? 'Y'a du
pèse--nous sommes ses esclaves._"
The Latin's halting speech broke into a torrent of grumbling French,
accompanied by much head-shaking and gesticulation. He was still
babbling on volubly as he opened the door he had indicated and waved
her in.
She found herself in a broad, low-ceilinged room that looked as if it
had been rigged up as a doss-house at short notice--which was the
fact. Around the walls ran a double tier of bunks on which men slept
or smoked or read according to temperament, while others carried on a
low conversation. In the centre of the room, under the hanging oil
lamp, stood a greasy table about which sat a dozen toughs gambling.
The air was thick with smoke and heavy with the nauseating reek of
stale beer. It seemed as if no window had ever been opened upon it.
Few of the men spared her a second glance. The alert silence which
had succeeded her entry dissolved into a murmur of talk.
She crossed the room to a row of barrels which seemed to do duty for
chairs, and sat down, blinking through the smoke which wreathed
before her eyes from the dangling fag-end in her mouth. Her hand
came in contact with a bottle. She picked it up by the neck and
drained the small quantity of bitter fluid there was left in the
bottom, and set it down again with a clatter, wiping her lips on the
back of her hand.
After a while she strolled over to the table.
She recognised the game they were playing, and was amazed that they
should know it, for thugs of that class do not as a rule patronise
Monte Carlo, and yet they were undoubtedly on familiar terms with
chemin-de-fer. While she watched, a burly ruffian in blue jeans
swung round and caught her arm.
"Comin' in on this yer game, cuddy?" he asked.
"Don't know it," she answered, playing her part smoothly.
"Come on!" he insisted boisterously. "Yer c'n learn, same as I 'ad
to. It ain't much of a game, but there's dam' few Britishers 'ere
an' it soots these bloomin' furriners."
She understood then that the cosmopolitan crowd who provided the
majority of the gathering in the room were the cause of the departure
from the time-honoured gambles of the Englishman, and to save trouble
she took the place the patriotic tough made for her.
It was getting her no farther in her quest, however, except that it
gave her time to deduce that the French janitor had not found Prester
John. In a few minutes the gamblers were deep in a hated wrangle
about the destination of certain stakes, and, taking advantage of the
diversion, she slipped from the bench and sidled unostentatiously to
the door.
The passage outside was in darkness, but in a moment a thin pencil of
light flicked out from her hand, roving across the walls. The man
who had admitted her had not entered the doss-room, so she gathered
that other rooms were similarly equipped. It would be necessary to
proceed warily. Directly across the corridor her torch revealed a
door like the one through which she had just passed, and, stealing
forward, she heard through it a subdued hum of talk. That, at least,
was a spot to avoid. Turning to her right, the beam showed that the
far end of the passage twisted abruptly to the left, and she crept
towards the bend, using the flashlight sparingly.
Round the corner the corridor widened out into a spacious hall. To
one side a flight of stone stairs ran upwards; opposite these,
another flight ran down into blackness. On each side were two doors,
and a fifth door faced her--an incongruously elegant portal of
polished oak adorned with grotesque carvings and half masked by rich
velvet hangings. The soles of her supple shoes made no more than a
soft slithering sound on the concrete floor as she moved forward. At
the end she paused undecidedly. That fifth door was intriguing;
intriguing also, after the janitor's vague references to a tunnel,
was the flight of stairs that disappeared in the direction of the
vaults. Susan solved the problem in a reckless way that would have
earned the admiration of Smiler: she took a coin from her pocket and
held it between her palms.
"Heads the stairs, tails the door," she murmured, and opened her
eyes....
Heads.
A whiff of dank, clammy air met her as she felt her way over the
first step. Luckily, the stairs were concrete, as was the upward
flight, and there was no danger of creaking boards or a rotten tread.
Her light showed her a small landing where the direction reversed.
She took the corner and continued downwards.
The cellars seemed to extend over the whole ground space of the
building, most of the weight of which appeared to be taken by a
number of massive pillars. She could only guess at the actual area,
for little but the ceiling was visible. Every available cubic inch
of space was filled from the floor with great mounds of earth,
tightly packed. There must have been tons of it, piled and
compressed into stacks. All the thoroughfare that remained was a
narrow lane which wound between the huge dumps, and these had been
buttressed up on either side of the path so that the last fraction of
volume might be utilised. Down this lane danger lay, for in that
insignificant width there was not much chance of avoiding anyone who
happened to be coming towards her. Moreover, the path was lighted at
intervals by electric bulbs fixed to the side boarding. Switching
off her torch, she transferred her automatic from her hip to her
jacket pocket, where it would be quicker to reach, and went on.
There was a silence in that weird cavern, which was accentuated
rather than relieved by the dull rumble of the plant overhead. That
the true purpose of this plant was to provide power she gathered from
the insulated cables which snaked along on each side.
Presently a yawning hole, fitfully lighted by bulbs suspended from
its earthen roof, confronted her. So this was the tunnel of which
the Keeper of the Door had spoken. She entered it resolutely. The
quality of the air had altered subtly: it had taken on a puzzling,
faint, acid tang, which she could not account for until she came to
the exit. She must have travelled three hundred yards before that,
and then she noticed that there was only darkness in front, and the
bulbs no longer hung from above. She switched on her flash again,
and a moment later she left the tunnel.
A blank, tile-faced wall was before her, and she looked from right to
left in surprise. She was in a second tunnel which ran almost at
right angles to the one she had left, and at distances lights hung on
the walls. She bent the rays of her torch downwards, and they were
reflected by three parallel ribbons of gleaming metal.
And then she understood. She was in the Tube!