Pax Britannia: Human Nature (26 page)

Cautiously, one hand on the pistol underneath his arm, Nimrod eased open the door. The hinges complained loudly in the twilight stillness, the protesting metal seeming to scream into the November night. But, when no one shouted in surprise or leapt at him from the darkness, Nimrod stepped inside, closing the door carefully behind him.

Inside, the cottage was just as he had left it before, only now it was in utter darkness. Nimrod knew that if he was going to find anything else here he was going to need to light a lamp, despite the risk that it would alert anyone nearby to his presence within. However, that one slight risk was nothing compared to the terrible fate that could befall his master the more time he wasted here, blundering about in the dark.

He could see a hurricane lamp on a window sill, silhouetted against the window behind it: that would do. With the lamp lit, its warm amber glow suffusing the cottage, playing a game of cat and mouse with the shadows at the corners of the single room, Nimrod took another, closer look around.

Last time he had only really been looking for the gamekeeper, or any sign of a connection to the Barghest beast. Now he was looking for anything,
anything
that might give him a clue as to what might have happened to his master. And it wasn't as if he could just walk in through the front door of Umbridge House. That was how Master Ulysses had made his move and, chances were, that was what had got him into trouble. No, he had the certain growing suspicion that he had missed something the last time he had been here and that he was missing it all over again.

Standing in the middle of the room, he held the lamp high and looked all around him, peering into every darkened corner, at every piece of furniture.

There was a simple sink and a stove next to the small hearth built into the chimney breast. In one corner stood the gamekeeper's rough, unmade bed, a chamber pot underneath. In the opposite corner was a rocking chair with a knitted blanket thrown over one arm.

There were other seemingly incongruous homely touches - the rag rug on the floor, a picture of an old mop-capped woman, that might have been the man's mother, over the range, an anonymous brass trinket of some kind - but on the whole it looked like precisely what it was, the simple home of a middle-aged man with few, if any, attachments in the world, a man with simple needs, the torture of defenceless creatures being one of them.

Nimrod turned around to look at the other side of the room and felt something shift beneath him, heard the subtle creak of wood giving under his weight.

He stopped and looked down at the rug on which he was standing. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other he heard the creak again. Stepping off the rug, he took hold of a corner and lifted it up. Pulling the rug away completely, there, revealed in the middle of the flagstoned floor of the hut, was a trapdoor.

Nimrod's pulse began to quicken. He took hold of the iron ring recessed into it at one end and pulled it open. A waft of cold, earthy air hit him full in the face. He could see a set of worn stone steps leading down into the dank darkness below.

Laying the open trapdoor carefully down on the discarded rug, so as not to alert anyone who might be down there already, Nimrod crouched down, lowering the hurricane lamp into the hole.

Six feet or so down, the steps met with the floor of a rough-hewn tunnel, cut from the rock and earth that lay beneath the foundations of the cottage. Here and there he could see where tree-roots penetrated the underground passageway. He breathed deeply and caught the aroma of peaty soil and mould.

Who knew how far down the tunnel went or where it led, other than that, to begin with at least, it appeared to lead in the direction of the house? The steps certainly didn't lead down to a cellar - after all, why would such a small dwelling even have one - and it seemed as likely that the tunnel would connect it to the house, as anywhere.

There was nothing else for it. If Nimrod was to find out where the tunnel led for sure, he was going to have to follow it.

Lantern held high to illuminate his way, eyes peering into the darkness at the limit of the lantern's sphere of radiance, ears listening for any indication that he might not be alone down there, Nimrod descended the steps and set off along the tunnel. Taking care to place his feet lightly on the dirt floor, he had to crouch to keep from grazing his scalp on the low ceiling of the passageway.

The tunnel proceeded in a straight line for some forty yards until it reached another set of steps. These had been cut from the bedrock itself, rather than being laid stones, like the first flight, and were slick with water. Steadying himself against the sides of the rock-cut passageway, Nimrod descended still further, the uneven, steps twisting this way and that down through a chimney in the rock, a natural formation in part creating by the erosive action of water seeping through from the moors above and into the fissure-riven sandstone on which Ghestdale rested.

Reaching the bottom of this haphazard flight, Nimrod found himself on one side of a wide gallery, the roof of which ascended out of reach of the lantern's circle of light, and knew exactly where he was. He could make out the marks left by digging tools on the rocks around him quite clearly. The air was moist down here and Nimrod found himself pulling his coat tighter about him against the bone-numbing chill that permeated the tunnels.

He was inside the hollowed-out innards of an abandoned mine, any deposits of jet it might once have had having been stripped out long ago, possibly as far back as the end of the nineteenth century. It had since become absorbed into the Umbridge estate, providing a network of secret tunnels that connected the gamekeeper's cottage to the main house, Nimrod expected, and who knew where else? Nimrod surmised that there were half a dozen hidden entrance points up on the moors and possibly as far away as the coast and Beast Cliff itself that led into and out of the Umbridge estate.

One of them could even have been the shaft into which Master Ulysses had first bundled the Barghest. And if the beast had originated from somewhere within the estate, it may well have already been familiar with the tunnels, using its enhanced sense of smell to sniff its way out again, and back onto their trail.

The Barghest may well have known its way around these tunnels, but that did not change the fact that Nimrod did not. And so, although he might know in principle where he was, he didn't know where he needed to go next. And so the question remained: which way should he go now?

Hearing the skitter of stone on stone he held his breath. In the eerie stillness he listened for the sound again. And then, there is was; the sandpaper scrape of grit on stone. It had come from his right.

Nimrod set off. There was no point dousing his light - without it he would be utterly lost. Instead he reached for his holstered pistol.

He could hear the footfalls ahead of him quite clearly now, their pace quickening, any pretence at stealth rejected in favour of flight. His quarry was on the run.

Picking up the pace, Nimrod hurried on through the worked-out mine. The tunnel twisted and turned, the ceiling of bedrock undulating above him, so that from time to time he found himself having to duck again to avoid knocking himself out on the downward pointing rocks.

For a moment he saw the bobbing will-o'-the-wisp flicker of another light source ahead of him. But then it was gone. He came to a halt. The running footsteps were gone too.

Slowly, ever so warily, Nimrod continued his advance, trying to tread as lightly as he could on the sandy floor of the tunnel, avoiding the noisy ripple and splash of stepping into puddles. Gun in hand, he kept going, trying to judge at what location the second light had disappeared.

Ten yards. Nine yards.

He kept going at the same steady pace, pistol tight in his hand, muzzle pointing forwards.

Five yards. Four.

His steps slowed, footfalls near silent in the smothering darkness, the only other sounds disturbing the oppressive stillness, the
drip-drip-drip
of water elsewhere within the mine, the sound carried as hollow echoes by the eerie acoustics of the place, and -

Two. One.

- nervous, panting breaths.

Nimrod spun round, shining his light into the natural cleft within the rock face in front of him, taking aim with his pistol.

Something hideous and misshapen - a lumpen body, uncoordinated limbs, a face that was only human thanks to it having the requisite features - surfaced from the thickly-cast shadows like a phantasm walking through a wall.

Its equally misshapen mouth agape, fists like cudgels raised before it, pin-pricks of eyes amidst the mass of deformities that was its face glittering in the light of the hurricane lamp, strangled vocal cords giving voice to a terrible wailing howl, the horror threw itself at Nimrod.

Chapter Eighteen

An Appointment with Doktor Seziermesser

Ulysses half-opened his eyes and then shut them again tightly, against the brilliant fury of the lights in front of his face. Aware of the glare now, he tried again, still blinking against the harsh glare. He could feel the raw heat of the bulbs against the skin of his face, hot as sunburn.

He tried to raise a hand to shield his face from the incandescent glare. It was only then that he realised his arms had been restrained at the wrists. And now he was also aware that he was lying prostrate on his back. That certain knowledge didn't help how he was feeling right that moment, not when he considered what had almost happened to him the last time he had come to lying on his back and restrained.

He tried his legs but these too had been strapped down, restrained by what felt like a leather strap around his ankles. Somebody didn't want him going anywhere in a hurry.

He turned his head as he tugged against the restraint binding his left arm. The old injury his shoulder had suffered nearly two years ago now - as his hot air balloon plummeted groundwards amid the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, the basket locked in a spiralling, deathly embrace with the Black Mamba's gondola - grumbled in protest.

He understood now: he had been strapped to some kind of operating table. His arms had been restrained so that they were at right angles to his torso. They were held tightly at the wrists by buckled leather straps and Ulysses could also feel a tightness just below the ball and socket joints of both his shoulders. And he was shirtless.

In frustration Ulysses pulled and kicked and attempted to arch his back, but all to no avail. There was another belt strap around his middle.

He still felt muzzy-headed, his recollections of what had happened to him prior to ending up in this most undignified and uncomfortable of predicaments a jumble of sepia-blurred images, like out of focus photographs. Focusing all his mental energies on recollection, Ulysses tried to piece together what had happened. If he could re-order his dream-like recollections perhaps he then might remember who it was that had done this to him and why? And if he could understand his enemy's motivations, then he might yet talk his way out of this predicament.

He remembered the meeting with the industrialist. He remembered being escorted to the front door by the dour-faced butler. Then he remembered the first itch of prescience at the back of his skull, a moment before the butler opened the door and a hulking silhouette appeared there, quickly resolving into the outline of the elusive Mr Rudge.

Ulysses was already going for his sword-cane and pushing Jennifer aside as the brute came at them, cosh raised. And there had been someone else with him, a snivelling weasel of a man. Ulysses remembered thinking that two against one weren't such bad odds but then his tingling sixth sense screamed a warning and he turned to see that it wasn't two against one at all, but three. As the butler came at him with the chloroform-soaked handkerchief, Rudge barrelled in too.

Distracted, suddenly forced to defend himself on two fronts, with Jennifer's screams filling his ears, he took on none of his attackers particularly effectively. His broken fingers didn't help. Rudge's cosh descended, black stars going supernova inside Ulysses' brain, and then the butler's doping cloth finished what the thug's beating had started.

Cold panic gripped his heart and squeezed, as Ulysses' mind turned to thoughts of Jennifer. What had happened to the girl?

Violently twisting his head from one side to the other, Ulysses struggled to see if she was anywhere nearby. He tried calling her name but his tongue felt thick and heavy inside his mouth, and all that came out was an incomprehensible splutter.

'Ah, I see you are awake.'

Ulysses turned his head in the same direction that the voice had come from. It took his addled mind a moment to realise that the words he had heard had been spoken with a clipped German accent.

An indistinct shape moved between him and the punishing lights. His eyes taking a moment to adjust to the sudden change in light levels, Ulysses peered at the features now sharpening into focus from the man-shaped shadow before him.

There was something unsettlingly familiar about the man's appearance, as he regarded Ulysses from behind curiously protruding, telescopic spectacles, a haughty expression on his time-worn face. It felt to Ulysses as if he must have once run into the man's son, or the man himself, only when he was younger. He was wearing what must have once been a white lab coat, but was now a faded grey, interspersed with patches of rusty brown.