The Firebird Mystery (28 page)

She placed her face so close to Jack he could smell her stale breath. ‘I have the Josephine Diamonds, I have the bombs and you're about to die.' She grabbed Jack's left earlobe in a pincer grip. ‘But first I will make you suffer.'

‘No! Why?'

‘Why?' She grinned. ‘Because I like to hurt things.'

Lucy pressed down. She squeezed so hard that Jack could not stop himself from crying out. She stared at him, watched the pain and fear in his face and enjoyed every second of it. Jack looked back into her eyes and saw complete madness. The woman squeezed harder.

‘Leave that boy alone!'

Lucy fell away from Jack in astonishment. Standing in an alcove on the other side of the room was Ignatius Doyle, a gun in his hand.

‘This entire area is surrounded, Lucy,' Mr Doyle said. ‘It's over. You will go to jail for the rest of your life—which will probably not be very long. We still hang criminals here in England. You're a sick, evil woman and I'm sure many will believe the world a better place without you.'

‘How?' Lucy seemed to choke on the word. ‘How did..?'

‘You need not worry about that. Suffice to say that London will live to see another day.'

‘London will not,' Lucy said. Her mouth turned down at the corners. From her sleeve sprang a revolver that snapped into her hand. ‘And neither will you.'

She pulled the trigger.

‘No!' Jack cried.

The bullet struck Mr Doyle in the chest, spinning him around and sending him flying. Lucy grabbed the chairs.

‘I had hoped to stay and watch you die,' she told them. ‘
C'est la vie
.'

‘No!' Scarlet screamed. ‘No! You can't!'

Lucy tipped the chairs onto their back legs and pushed.

Jack landed headfirst in the water. He jerked his body forward and spun the chair around. For a brief moment his head floated above the surface. He caught sight of Scarlet's desperate face as she struggled in the water next to him.

‘Take a deep breath!' he yelled.

‘That will only prolong the inevitable,' Lucy said, watching them as dispassionately as a small child torturing an insect. ‘The bomb will not be found in time. Looking for it will be like searching for a needle in a haystack.'

Scarlet gave a cry as she sank beneath the surface. Despite Jack's struggles, the chair dragged him down into the icy depths with her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The freezing flow of the water was instantly numbing. Jack held his breath as he sank. He only had a minute, maybe two at the most, before he drowned. Scarlet lay at the bottom of the pool, her red hair drifting like seaweed on the floor of the ocean. Her green eyes were wide as she fought with the handcuffs. Jack saw a spurt of air escape her lips.

Hold on
, he wanted to say.
Help will come.

But that was a lie. Not only were they drowning, but
Lucy Harker had shot Mr Doyle in the chest!
The great detective lay dying on the cold stone floor a few feet away.

Jack had to save Mr Doyle and Scarlet, and he could only do that if he stayed calm. He had to think.

Think!

He jerked on the handcuffs. First he would have to escape from the chair. The seat was made of wood. If he had an hour he could break it apart with his body weight, but as he only had minutes to live he needed to choose Plan B.

The lock pick.

Jack arched his back and jiggled. It took a moment, but the device slid from his pocket. He manoeuvred the chair and his hand closed around it.

Now it got difficult. Jack shifted the lock pick, trying to insert it into the key hole of the cuffs. But the angle was all wrong. He braced it against the stonework, trying to activate the trigger.

He couldn't reach it.

A shot of breath burst from his nostrils and liquid trickled in.

Stay calm
, he told himself.
Or I'll die and so will Scarlet and Mr Doyle.

If Mr Doyle wasn't dead already.

He stretched with all his might and pressed the trigger. The device sprang to life, but the cuffs remained tight.

Why wasn't it working?

He wrenched his head back and saw that the mechanism that should have been inserted into the lock had slipped out. Jack adjusted the lock again to line up with the pick. Another burst of air shot from his mouth. A strange pressure built behind his eyeballs.

An image came into his mind. His mother sitting on a static trapeze. She was dressed in the costume they all wore for their performances. A white cotton jumpsuit with black wings embroidered on the shoulders. She called to him.

Try. Try harder.

He refocused on the lock pick. He inserted the end into the lock and this time reached with all his might to touch the trigger. The handcuff loosened.

The lock pick had opened the cuff far enough to allow Jack to slide his hand free. Another shot of water lurched into his nose and he coughed. More liquid poured into his mouth. He looked over to Scarlet. Air streamed from her mouth. Gone was the light that had danced in her eyes.

Jack's vision blurred. Inky black spots bounced around in the gloomy, gaslit water. He saw his mother again, but now she stood on a platform high above the ground. She spoke to him from the shadows of the big top. He couldn't hear her words.

I have to keep going
, he thought.
Scarlet and Mr Doyle need me. Don't give up!

He tried one last time to insert the lock pick. The handcuff snapped open. With his lungs about to explode, Jack placed his feet against the chair. He shoved as hard as he could to propel himself to the surface.

Not hard enough. Just two more feet. He tried to swim, but his arms had no strength. In vain, Jack reached for the meagre light. His energy was gone. The black dots joined together to form a dark, rolling ocean. He saw the terrible pressure in his head. The force behind his eyeballs, pressing on his brain, had turned into a steam-powered press. Men shovelled coal into the burner. Pipes heated. Boiled water. Produced steam. But instead of rolling clouds of white steam, he saw blackened pools of billowing vapour, surrounding him, carrying him away to some other place.

Then an arm shot towards him and grasped his outstretched hand. It pulled so hard that his shoulder shrieked with distant pain, but that was all right because now something cool danced across his face.

Air.

Someone slammed him facefirst onto the rough stonework and pushed on his back. Liquid spurted from his nose and mouth. The calm inky night he had comfortably swum in changed to ice. Water splashed onto stone. Someone choked. Cried out. Jack took a gasping breath. Coughed. Vomited.

‘There, there,' a voice said. ‘Breathe. Just breathe.'

Jack continued to vomit as reality pressed in on him. Tunnels. Stonework. Oil lamps. The hands pushing down desperately on his back. Now the sensation to vomit lessened and Jack eased over onto his side.

Scarlet was on the ground next to him. Her hair was a mess, her face pale, but her eyes were open. The death in them was gone. She wiped mucus from her lips as she sat up and focused on him.

‘Jack?'

‘Scarlet?'

He twisted about to see a familiar face.

‘Mr Doyle?' He gripped the man's arm. ‘Is it really you?'

‘It's me,' he said. ‘Are you feeling better?'

Before he could reply, he threw up more water. He stood, gripping the older man's arm for support.

‘I would offer you some cheese,' Mr Doyle said, ‘but it may not help.'

‘Mr Doyle,' Jack said. ‘You were shot!'

‘I was shot,' the detective agreed. ‘But it seems the angels were kind.' He reached under his shirt and pulled out the dog tags that had belonged to his son, Phillip. ‘Or one angel, at least.'

Jammed in the middle of one of the tags was a bullet. A marksman could not have planted it closer to dead centre on the piece of metal.

‘The bullet struck me and bowled me over. I hit my head and was knocked senseless. When I came to, I realised where you were and came to your aid.' The great detective shook his head. ‘I should have told you my suspicions.'

‘About what?'

‘About Lucy.'

Scarlet's eyes widened. ‘You thought she was involved in this?'

‘I even thought she was M.'

‘What?
'

‘You may recall I noticed a bruise on her ankle when we were on the airship in Switzerland.'

‘Yes.'

‘I believe it resulted from Jack wrapping the string about it to trip her up on the train. And then there was the bloody handprint near the body of her father.'

‘There was a strange mark on one of the fingers,' Scarlet said. ‘I thought it was a scar.'

‘I believe it was. I noticed Lucy had scars on her fingers from sewing.' Mr Doyle appeared glum. ‘Then there was the map on the ship owned by the Phoenix Society. It was all too convenient that Lucy found it. The clues pointed to Lucy, but I could not believe a woman was capable of such evil. I was very foolish.'

‘It's not your fault, Mr Doyle,' Scarlet said. ‘And now we must find the bomb.'

‘How will we do that?' Jack asked. ‘We don't even know where it is.'

‘Maybe we do,' Scarlet said.

Jack and Mr Doyle stared at her.

‘Does this have to do with Boxy Butterbum?' Jack asked.

‘It's Brinkie Buckeridge!' Scarlet stamped her feet. ‘And no. There was something Lucy said before she left. It was after she pushed us into the pool.'

‘Yes, I remember,' Jack said. ‘She said something about a needle.'

‘She said, “Looking for it will be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”'

‘That is a figure of speech,' Mr Doyle said. ‘People say it all the time.'

‘No,' Scarlet said. ‘It was the
way
she said it.'

‘I think you're right,' Jack agreed. ‘She had a funny look on her face. Like she was having a joke at our expense.'

‘But what could it mean?' Scarlet asked.

‘There aren't any haystacks in London,' Jack said. ‘Are there?'

‘No,' Mr Doyle frowned. ‘But there is a needle. Cleopatra's Needle.'

Jack and Scarlet stared at him in astonishment.

‘It's an obelisk located on the Victoria Embankment not far from here,' Ignatius Doyle explained.

‘That must be it,' Jack said.

‘It's that or nothing,' Scarlet agreed.

‘How do we get out of here?'

‘We must find the exit,' the detective said. ‘I was lying to Lucy when I said the area was surrounded by police. We must use our own resources.'

They hurried along a tunnel. It met a circular chamber with passageways running off in several directions. They started across the room. Jack felt his foot catch on something. He glanced down to see a tiny thread running across the floor. Mr Doyle saw it as well.

‘Back!' he yelled. ‘Get back!'

They raced to the nearest passageway.

The detective said, ‘That was some sort of...'

Ka-boom!

The blast threw them to the ground. The roar was deafening. The chamber behind them collapsed and the gaslight died. They drowned in darkness as dust choked the air. Jack struggled for breath, coughing. His ears rang.

This time we're dead
, he thought.
It's over.

But then Mr Doyle produced a box of matches and a candle. The night withdrew. The dust settled. Jack heard a voice.

‘Lucy must have set a booby trap to hide her tracks,' Mr Doyle was saying.

‘What will we do now?' he asked.

‘Find a way out. We've got to get to the Needle as soon as possible.' He pointed down a corridor. ‘We'll try that way.'

They followed the passage for several hundred feet until it reached another junction where a multitude of tunnels ran off it.

‘This is terrible.' The detective went pale. ‘I have no idea where we are. The London sewer system is notoriously complex. People have been lost in here and never found. If we knew what direction to head…'

Jack cried out as if bitten. He plunged his hand into his pocket, half expecting it to be empty. After all, he had jumped and rolled and been turned upside down and drowned in the last few hours. By all rights, his belongings should probably be back on a dark road in the countryside, or in the cold black pool that had almost killed him.

He pulled out the compass. The glass was cracked, but the device was still working. The iron needle hovered uncertainly for a moment before it pointed north.

‘Hooray!' Scarlet yelled.

‘Excellent!' Mr Doyle beamed.

The detective orientated the compass and motioned them on. The corridor swung around to the right for a hundred feet before it met stone steps.

Ten minutes later they arrived at a metal staircase that wound its way up to the street. Jack inhaled fresh air deep into his lungs as they found themselves on a quiet alley near St Paul's. As they started along a road, Mr Doyle related how he had come to be in the tunnels.

‘I got a message through to MI5,' he said. ‘They gave me the name of the owner of
Featherwick
. A man called Smith!' Mr Doyle gave a brief laugh. ‘They were able to tell me the same owner also had property not far away.'

‘The railway tunnel!'

‘Indeed,' Mr Doyle said. ‘The tunnel was part of a project that went bankrupt during the war and was never completed. I was able to gain access to it a few miles down the track and follow it to you.'

‘Mr Doyle,' Jack said.

‘Yes, my boy?'

‘You really are the world's greatest detective.'

Mr Doyle looked embarrassed. ‘I have a cousin who is rather good too, but he's another story.'

They turned a corner onto a wider street.

‘It's so quiet,' Scarlet said. ‘London has become a ghost town.'

‘Not completely,' Mr Doyle said. ‘I can hear a vehicle.'