The Aquila Project (2 page)

Saturday, 30 June, 1894, presented the thronging people of London with a cloudless sky and a hot summer sun. Arnold Box left his lodgings in Cardinal Court, Fleet Street, at eight o’clock, having breakfasted on bacon and egg, buttered toast, and generous spoonfuls of Crosse & Blackwell’s orange marmalade. Mrs Peach, his motherly landlady, had made sure that there was to be no scalding coffee tossed down at a stall in the street that morning.

As Box walked briskly along Fleet Street in the direction of St Paul’s, he recalled the detailed plans that Superintendent
Mackharness had put out for display in Room 6 at the Rents. Really, the guvnor was first-rate at that kind of thing.

The day’s great celebratory pageant would begin soon after eleven o’clock, when five semi-State carriages would set out from Marlborough House, just off Pall Mall. Four of the carriages were to contain a whole panoply of equerries, lords-in-waiting,
chamberlains
, various court ladies, and Princess Maud of Wales. The Prince and Princess of Wales would be in the fifth carriage, with the Duke of York and Princess Victoria of Wales.

Their route would take them along Duncannon Street and so into the Strand, whence they would all progress in stately fashion along Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, Cheapside, and so to the Mansion House. From there they would journey along King William Street, Eastcheap and Trinity Square, ending up at Tower Hill.

The streets were already crowded with spectators, and the
first-floor
fronts of many shops and offices were covered in flags, bunting, and coloured heraldic shields. When Box reached the Mansion House, he saw that the vast open space fronting the
official
residence of the Lord Mayor of London was filled with a cheerfully noisy crowd waiting to see the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs join the Royal procession.

The police were heavily supplemented by detachments of regular soldiers and militia, who were already taking up positions at key points along the route. All this formidable security, presented as so much colourful spectacle, would ensure that there could be no threat to the Royal personages here in the City. No; it would be on the bridge that deadly danger would lurk, if this man Grunwalski was to triumph that day.

Forsaking the crowds and their keepers, Arnold Box made his way down Garlick Hill, negotiated the heavy morning traffic in Upper Thames Street, and crossed to the Surrey side by way of Southwark Bridge.

From his vantage point on the roof of Carmody’s Wool Depot at the far end of Pickled Herring Street, Box looked down through his field-glasses at the southern abutment of the new Tower Bridge, its steel framework clad in Portland stone, rising, solid and sturdy, towards the clear June sky.

For the last week Box had been combing the popular
newspapers
for facts and figures about the new bridge. Beneath that stone cladding there were 12,000 tons of steel. Each of the piers carrying the main towers weighed 70,000 tons. Surely no little bomb could bring that massive creation tumbling down into the river?

He scanned the five wide arches containing the doors to the engine rooms. From right to left, they consisted of the first and second boiler rooms, the fuel store, which also housed two of the four hydraulic accumulators in a tower above, and then the two chambers containing the massive steam-driven pumping engines. The malevolent Fenian, or anarchist, or whatever he was, had chosen the first of the two boiler rooms to carry out his act of terrorism.

Those boiler rooms could be seen as the heart of the enterprise. The boilers heated the water, which produced the steam to drive the pumps operating the hydraulic system. A bomb, exploded down there, would empty the system of its power, leaving the two drawbridges that carried the roadway locked together, helpless. But how would the explosion affect the Royal personages crossing the bridge? They’d be shocked and shaken, no doubt, but that would be all. Did this man Grunwalski know that?

Away to the left, Box could see the magnificent baronial Gothic towers of the bridge, and the dual footways, 142 feet above high water level. It was a breath-taking sight, that seemed to be glowing with its own sun-like brilliance. Box felt that he could have stretched out a hand and touched it, it seemed so near.

Box’s eyes were suddenly dazzled by a brilliant flash of light from somewhere to his right, in the direction of Queen Elizabeth
Street, one of the tangle of roads and alleys crowding down to the river. Here, rows of stands were packed with children from the local schools, in the charge of their teachers. The flash was gone in an instant, but not before Box identified it as a momentary reflection from a telescope. Had somebody seen him there, standing on the roof of Carmody’s Wool Depot? Well, two could play at the game of I-spy.

Box was careful not to let the sun glance from his own powerful binoculars as he trained them tentatively in the direction of Queen Elizabeth Street. In seconds he had located the source of the flash. At the point where the road began to merge into Tooley Street, a handsome landau, drawn by a beribboned black horse, had drawn up to the pavement near a public house, which Box, who was no stranger to that part of the Surrey shore, knew to be The Tanner’s Arms. A man in capes, evidently the landau’s driver, was standing on the pavement, adjusting the horse’s bridle.

Sitting in the landau, a telescope across his knees, was a tall gentleman in a fashionable black morning suit and shining silk hat. In startling contrast to his sober attire, the man sported a massive mane of blond hair, which hung down over his collar. His hair was supplemented by a great bushy golden beard. A gaggle of excited children carrying Union flags ran past the carriage, and the man smiled and waved at them.

A little breeze suddenly ruffled both beard and hair, and Box was reminded of a picture he had once seen of a Viking warrior standing at the prow of his ship, a sword raised above his head. The Viking effect of the man in the landau was rather spoiled, Box thought, by the gold-rimmed monocle that he wore in his right eye, its black cord disappearing somewhere in the region of his double-breasted waistcoat.

The Viking suddenly stood up in the carriage, and once again applied his telescope to his monocled eye. Box realized that he was looking intently at the entrance to the boiler room under the southern abutment.

Or so it seemed! Many people would be out that day with fields-glasses and telescopes to get closer views of the Royal processions. It was a prime error to jump to facile conclusions. But it was an odd vantage point to choose, a bleak street some way from the bridge, on the faded skirts of Bermondsey….

Box swung his field glasses away from the Viking, and focused on the approach to the boiler rooms. Four men in stoker’s uniforms, each carrying a wide shovel, were walking rapidly down the slope to the boiler room. One of them had something wrapped in canvas under his arm. Yes! It was the man in the photograph, Anders Grunwalski. It was almost twelve. The man had aimed at planting his bomb just minutes before the arrival of the Royal party.

The door of the boiler room was opened from inside, and the four men passed from view. Down there, Box mused, hidden in various points of vantage, was a special police detail provided by ‘M’, Superintendent Neylan’s stalwarts from Blackman Street, Southwark, and with them, as a representative of Scotland Yard, was Sergeant Knollys. They would let Grunwalski position his bomb, in order to establish his guilt beyond doubt, and then they would quietly arrest him.

Box trained his binoculars once more on the Viking man in his landau. The world as glimpsed through binoculars was a silent world, but Box saw that the gentleman had just said something to his coachman, who leapt up on to the seat, and turned the horse’s head in the direction of Artillery Street. He’s going to cross the river by way of London Bridge, thought Box. Why hadn’t he stayed to watch the arrival of their Royal Highnesses? Or had he been there to witness the appearance of Grunwalski and his infernal machine? Mere supposition….

As Box turned his glasses back on to the southern abutment of the bridge, he saw a police constable emerge discreetly from a doorway some distance away from the boiler room. The man looked up at him, and waved his arm in a gesture that said, ‘All’s well.’

Before Box had turned away from the parapet, the door of the boiler room burst open, and Grunwalski, apparently running for his life, emerged on to the slip road, a pistol in his hand. He was followed by four policemen, two of whom staggered as they ran, blood pouring from head wounds. There was no sign of Knollys. At the same time, a tremendous cheer, sounding high into the air and across to the South Bank, told Box that the Royal carriage had started its progress across Tower Bridge.

A
T
NINE
O’CLOCK
that same morning, Detective Sergeant Jack Knollys left his lodgings at Syria Wharf and made his way on foot down to Swan Lane Pier, where one of Thames Division’s steam launches conveyed him under London Bridge and out across the river to a landing-stage below the Anchor Brewery at Shad Thames. By ten o’clock, he was walking rapidly down the slip road that would take him to the Number 1 engine room of Tower Bridge.

He gave a low knock on a stout door set in a stone arch below the southern approach to the bridge, and it was opened
immediately
by a man dressed in the dark blue overalls and glazed peak cap of a naval stoker. Knollys recalled having read somewhere that, in the peculiar way of English institutions, the new bridge had been registered as a ship.

‘Sergeant Knollys?’ said the man in the peaked cap. ‘Come in, and close the door behind you. I’m Inspector Hare, of “M”. The powers-that-be thought it right that this little posse should be made up of officers from Southwark Division, rather than asking City to do the honours. It’s a fine point of etiquette, Sergeant, which we’ll leave others to debate.’

Knollys glanced at Inspector Hare’s lined face, which bore the more or less permanent half smile of a born cynic. This man, he thought, is not taking our anarchist seriously. He probably thinks the whole affair is a pathetic stunt by a washed-out Fenian.

‘Is there any special reason, sir, why you’re dressed as a stoker?’ asked Knollys.

‘It was a whim of Superintendent Neylan’s, Sergeant. It’s supposed to be a disguise. I was obliged to comply. But I’ve got six properly dressed constables here, and there’s a man from the Home Office as well – a man who knows how to defuse bombs and suchlike. Come through into the boiler room.’

There was nothing of the damp crypt about the white-tiled chamber, well lit by glazed half-moon-shaped windows high on the walls. The centre of the room was dominated by two massive cylindrical Lancashire boilers, each thirty feet long, which hissed and bubbled, filling the chamber with an overpowering heat.

An archway to the left of the boilers led into the second boiler room, which, like the first, housed two gigantic Lancashire boilers, and here, Inspector Hare had assembled his posse of constables. They were all in uniform, and stood, tense and
expectant
, against the inner wall. Just feet away from them a team of stokers continued to fuel the twin fire-boxes of each boiler as though nothing untoward was going to happen.

‘Those men, Sergeant,’ said Hare, ‘must stay at their work, because the boilers have to be stoked constantly if the bridge mechanism is to work properly – which it must, on this day of all days. They work in both rooms, moving from boiler to boiler as the need arises.’

‘They look very experienced, sir.’

‘They are. They’re all ex-Royal Navy stokers. Now, when the shift changes, which will be at a quarter to twelve, one of the relieving stokers will be our anarchist. Apparently, it’s known that he’ll try to gain entrance by attaching himself to the relieving men. They’ve already been warned to accept him as one of their number as they walk down the slip road.’

‘Somebody, somewhere, sir, knows an awful lot about what’s going to happen.’

‘Somebody does, Sergeant Knollys. It makes you think, doesn’t
it? Still, ours not to reason why. We’ll do the job, and then fade into the background.’

Inspector Hare turned briefly to look at the sweating stokers, who seemed oblivious of the police presence. Their efforts were concentrated solely on keeping the fire-boxes supplied with coal. They had closed the furnace doors for a while, and were resting on their spades.

‘You men,’ said Hare, ‘mustn’t make any attempt to assist the police if this anarchist turns violent. When your relief party arrives, this dangerous man will be part of it. You must leave him to us. Climb up into the accumulator shaft, and stay on the
platform
there, until I give the all clear.’

The men nodded their understanding, threw open the doors of the fire-boxes once more, and replenished the glowing fires with vast quantities of fine furnace coal.

Mr Hare pulled a large turnip watch out of a pocket in his naval jacket.

‘It’s just gone half past ten, Officers,’ he said. ‘You’d better make yourselves as comfortable as you can on those benches against the wall. It’s going to be over an hour’s wait. Sergeant Knollys, the Home Office man wants to see you. He’s in a little tiled storeroom at the rear of Number 1 Boiler Room. He says he knows you.’

Knollys left the seven police officers to wait in nervous
anticipation
for the arrival of the destroyer, and went back into the first of the chambers. The boilers hissed and rumbled. The fingers on the gauges flickered behind their glass covers. Water ran fiercely through mysterious pipes.

The clean, modern room seemed tinder-dry, magnifying tenfold the heat of the June day. Knollys imagined the black smoke rising vertically from the tall chimney sited between the two boiler rooms.

In a small tiled room behind the boilers Jack Knollys found a morose, elderly man with a long drooping moustache. He was
sitting on a metal tool box, reading a backless book which looked as though it was regularly gnawed by mice. Beside him, on the toolbox reposed a black bowler hat and a claw-hammer. Despite the overwhelming heat, the man wore a thick black serge suit, and had wound a green muffler round his neck.

‘Hello, Mr Mack,’ said Knollys, ‘I thought it might be you.’

‘It’s nice to see you again, Mr Knollys,’ said Mr Mack. ‘I was hoping that you’d give me a hand here, if the worst comes to the worst, and this madman actually turns up. It sounds very peculiar to me. Some crazed individual with a grudge wants to rush in here with a little time-bomb, hoping it will blow Tower Bridge to pieces. Most unlikely, you know. It may have naval stokers, but it isn’t a ship. And it won’t sink. Still, the Home Secretary thought it was a matter for Home Office Explosions, which is why I’m here. Colonel Majendie’s in Cardiff this week, so it had to be me. I demurred, of course, but there’s no arguing with Mr Asquith. So we’ll all contain ourselves in patience until a quarter to twelve.’ 

It was at just twenty minutes to the hour that Sergeant Knollys, who had stationed himself behind the outer door of No 1 Boiler Room, heard the clatter of boots on the slip road which heralded the arrival of the relief stokers. He alerted Inspector Hare with an urgent whisper, and then rejoined Mr Mack in the tiled storeroom. The retiring stokers moved swiftly to the iron staircase rising up to the accumulator platform, and in seconds they had disappeared from sight. The police officers drew their truncheons and stood silently in the shelter of the inner wall.

At a quarter to twelve the door was opened, and four men came into the room. Three of them passed through the arch into the second boiler room, apparently intent on their work. Knollys saw the fourth man, who was dressed like the others in the uniform of a naval stoker, dart across the floor to the rear of the first boiler, and wedge a canvas-covered parcel underneath two of its supporting struts.

The man had taken no more than a couple of steps backwards when Jack Knollys, with a mighty bellow of rage, hurled himself on to the would-be destroyer and brought him crashing to the floor. At the same time, the posse of Bermondsey police rushed through the arch, truncheons drawn. In a moment, they had hauled the man to his feet.

Mr Mack had left his shelter in the storeroom, dragged the parcel from its hiding place, and unwrapped it from its concealing cloth. Knollys saw him raise his hammer, and smash a small glass dial let into the front of the device. Knollys had seen the old
explosives
expert perform that crude but effective remedy for timing-clocks before. For the moment at least, they were all safe.

Outside, beneath the blazing June sky, the Prince of Wales’s carriage passed on to the bridge. There came a sustained bout of cheering, and the band of the Coldstream Guards struck up ‘God save the Queen’.

Beneath the southern approach road, in the hidden boiler room, Inspector Hare confronted the man who had tried unsuccessfully to plant a lethal device beneath the first boiler. He saw a man of about thirty, with a long, narrow face, good features, dark hair, and cold blue eyes. His arms had been pinioned by two of the constables. His head hung down upon his chest in what looked like total despair.

Knollys, who had rejoined Mr Mack, turned round to look at the man, who raised his head and caught his glance, and there was something in the bomber’s expression that intrigued Knollys. He had expected anger, or even wild hatred. But this man regarded him with what seemed like reproach.
Reproach
?

‘You are Anders Grunwalski,’ said Inspector Hare, ‘and I arrest you—’

Grunwalski suddenly sprang back to life. With a shrill cry of rage he wrenched himself free from his captors, seized one of the constables’ truncheons, and used it as a deadly flail to cut a way of escape towards the exit. To the accompaniment of shouts and
curses from the dazed and bleeding officers, who had fallen to the floor, he threw the door open and dashed into the slip road.

Oh, no, my beauty, thought Jack Knollys, you’re not going to escape so lightly. He leapt over the injured men and darted out in pursuit. There he was, sprinting with an athlete’s effortless speed up the approach road. What was that sudden burst of cheering? The Royal carriage must have passed on to the bridge. All eyes would be on them: no one would take any notice of one single running man….

What’s he doing now? He’s pulled a pistol from his pocket! If I don’t catch up with him, thought Knollys, someone will be killed. He could hear the harsh panting of his own breath, and the faltering steps of the injured constables behind him. He summoned up sufficient breath to shout: ‘Stop that man!’ but at the same moment there came a wild and uninhibited chorus of steam whistles and church bells rising from the river and the
riverside
districts on both banks. Nobody would hear him above that din.

Pursuit of the fleet-footed assassin was useless. Knollys knew that he was built too heavily to catch Grunwalski before he gained the entrance to the bridge. Perhaps he had designs on one of the notables sitting in the pavilion at the north end? Had the business in the boiler room been a mere diversion?

It was then that Knollys saw a small detachment of soldiers assembled at the top of the slip road. He remembered Superintendent Mackharness’s great map of the day’s dispositions, and recalled that these men were a detachment of the 3rd Middlesex Volunteers. As Grunwalski neared the group of men, one of them saw the running terrorist and his deadly weapon. As swift as thought, the artilleryman drew his cutlass, and felled Grunwalski with a single blow from the flat of its blade. In seconds Sergeant Knollys was upon him. A moment later, the unconscious man was secured, manacled and fettered.

No one on the bridge, mused Knollys drily, and no excited
spectator
in the festive stands surrounding it, could have been aware of the deadly drama that had just taken place.

Arnold Box, still. at his post on the roof of Carmody’s Wool Depot, watched as Anders Grunwalski was carried unconscious down the slip road and into the boiler room. The frantic cheering of the crowds of spectators continued as the Royal procession reappeared at the end of Tooley Street on its way back over the bridge. The river rang with the hooting of steam whistles, and the deeper vibrant tones of the liners lying at anchor further
downstream
. No one had noticed the attempt to blow up Tower Bridge on its inaugural day.

Box trained his binoculars on to the Royal procession. He’d no idea who some of those people were – upper-crust folk crammed into carriages, and dripping with medals and diamonds. Ah! Here were the Prince and Princess of Wales.
She
looked lovely, as always, smiling and gracious. She’s wearing a silk dress – blue, it is, with silver threads in it. He’d tell Mrs Peach about that.
He
looked magnificent, as you might expect. Kitted out as a Field Marshal, by the look of it.

The incident at the bridge had disturbed Box. How had the man come to escape from a posse of seven police officers? It had taken a single young soldier to subdue him. Before that had happened, Grunwalski had produced a pistol. Why had they not searched him? The authorities should have let City handle it.

What would Inspector Hare do now? If he stuck to the plan pinned up in Room 6 at the Rents, he’d take his prisoner and the whole posse in a Black Maria to Weavers’ Lane Police Station in Bermondsey, where he’d lock Grunwalski up for the night. The whole business looked like the pathetic attempt of one disgruntled man to make his mark on history. Well, he’d failed.

It had been a heady morning for Superintendent Mackharness. Freed from the thrall of his dark office in King James’s Rents, he
had arrived at the long pavilion running up from Tower Hill to the northern end of the new bridge at half past ten. He was
accompanied
by his old friend from Crimea days, Lord Maurice Vale Rose, who had secured him a ticket. It would be an hour before the Royal personages arrived, but there was plenty to see. Aldermen and sheriffs, mayors wearing their gold chains of office, exotic foreigners in peculiar clothing – all these, and more, arrived in a steady stream.

Box would be stationed on the roof of Carmody’s Wool Depot by now. If there was anything untoward to see, then Box would see it. Sergeant Knollys would be under the southern approach road, adding his very considerable weight to the posse of police provided for the day by Denis Neylan. Surely nothing could go amiss? This Grunwalski was almost certainly acting alone. And in any case, what possible effect could a single bomb in the boiler room have upon the massive triumph of engineering rising giddily above them to the sky? The man was a lunatic….