The Somnambulist

Chapter 17

A little over an hour after the death of Ned Love, two advertisements appeared in the personal columns of the Echo, the Gazette, the Times and the London Chronicle (evening editions only).

The first read:

INFORMATION WANTED

Anyone who works or has worked

in the Underground tunnels

in the areas of

Eastcheap and the Monument.

SUBSTANTIAL REWARD

Apply in person to Mr. M.

There then followed the address of a celebrated city hotel which, for obvious reasons, I have elected to censor.

The second, far shorter and enigmatic entry ready simply:

LUD

Come at once. Much at stake.

E

Regrettably, the man for whom this last, cryptic message was intended never had an opportunity to read it. At the time of its publication he was being detained against his will in a manner he had entirely failed to predict.

Cribb had been walking alone, his head full of a jumble of ill-considered thoughts and half-digested philosophies, when he was surprised to see a carriage pull up beside him and its driver beckon him across. Cribb played his part, walked over to the vehicle and listened as its occupant asked him for directions to the Tottenham Court Road. Needless to say, Cribb was quite unable to resist such an invitation, or the temptation to add a number of interesting historical tidbits. He was still speaking, and in the midst of a droll anecdote about the medieval witch of Kentish Town, when the stranger invited him into the carriage, the better (he said) to consult a map in his possession. Cribb did as he was asked, but given his talent for prognostication ought perhaps to have recognized the insignia stenciled discreetly on the carriage door — a black five-petaled flower.

Two men sat inside — thuggish, burly types, the kind who break people’s arms for a living, professional maimers. As Cribb entered the carriage, one of them plumped a fist meaningfully into his outstretched palm and smiled greedily.

“I was expecting you, of course,” the ugly man noted. “I’ve seen the future, you see. I know the plot.”

At this, one of the men shoved him against the back of his seat and began what many of us have long harbored aspirations of doing. He pummeled Cribb repeatedly in the head until at long last (and still stammering something about time flowing in a different direction for him) the ugly man fell unconscious.

Mrs. Grossmith, meanwhile, felt happy. Wonderfully, improbably, deliriously happy.

She all but skipped into her employer’s bedroom, not even bothering to knock before she entered.

“Mr. Moon!” she trilled in a girlish falsetto. “Mr. Moon!”

But as she came into the room she felt chastened and ashamed, like a wedding guest who gatecrashes a funeral by mistake. Transparently irritated by the interruption, three men glared back at her — Mr. Moon, the Somnambulist and a loutish-looking stranger.

“What do you want?”

In the decade or more that she had spent in his employ, Mrs. Grossmith had become accustomed to Moon’s testiness and abrasive manner, and she took this latest snappish remark, delivered like a prosecuting counsel hurling questions at a defense witness, as she had all the many other slights and dismissals over the years — by pretending not to notice, by giving him her biggest smile and carrying on regardless.

“Sorry to disturb you. I wonder if I might have a word?”

“Not a good time.”

Mrs. Grossmith persisted. “I’ve news. It can’t wait.”

“Mister?” the stranger interrupted. He nodded toward Grossmith. “’Scuse me, but this is important.”

He was a grimy, lean, leathery man, engaged in unfolding a series of maps on the table in the center of the room. The Somnambulist, apparently fascinated by all this cartographic paraphernalia, peered, enthralled, over his shoulder.

Moon waved vaguely toward him. “This is Mr. Clemence. He answered my advertisement.”

“Call me Roger,” the stranger said and offered Grossmith a lascivious wink.

“Mr. Clemence,” Moon said, “what was it you were about to tell me?”

Clemence gesticulated at one of the maps. “See here. Here’s where it happened.”

Mrs. Grossmith began to protest but the conjuror cut her short. “Please. This is of the utmost importance.” As he strode across to examine the map, Mrs. Grossmith could only sniffle forlornly, her earlier ebullience quite gone.

Moon relented slightly. “This gentleman was formerly employed by the city railway. Love have their headquarters underground. We’re trying to find a way down.”

The housekeeper sighed. “Very interesting, I’m sure.”

Clemence pointed to a section of the map. “See there. Under the Monument. All that’s abandoned track. They’d planned an extension to King William Street Station. It would have been directly beneath Love’s offices. Never happened, of course.”

The Somnambulist, eager to be a part of the conversation, nodded in sober agreement.

Clemence leant across the table, rustling the maps. “If you’re serious about going down there, you’ve a right to know the truth.”

Mrs. Grossmith cleared her throat. “I really need to tell you something.”

“Not now,” Moon growled. “Wait.”

Clemence lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I knew some of the men who worked on the King William Street extension. All trustworthy, believe me. Oh, one or two of them might have liked a drink from time to time, but they can’t all have been wrong. They saw something down there. No question.”

“Tell me. Tell me what they saw.”

“Tunnels — tunnels that weren’t never on any plans, tunnels that ain’t been built for no railway. Great, fantastic warrens of them, like giant rat holes leading into the dark. Some sort of jade door, set into the ground itself. And something lived down there — that’s what they said. Two of the men went missing — just vanished, never seen again, like. After that, the rest of them got nervous, superstitious, started saying they didn’t want to work there no more.”

“What happened?”

“The work got abandoned in the main. A few of ’em wanted to stay on, of course. The brave ones, or the stupid. Still, maybe not so stupid. Most of ’em are rich now — far richer than any railwayman has any right to be. Those that didn’t end up in the nuthouse, that is.”

“Nuthouse?”

“Something happened. One of the men had to be committed. Poor beggar started seeing things and babbling like an idiot. Course it might just have been that place. Down there, underground, in the dank and the dark… Your mind plays tricks on you.”

“Some vanished, some became rich. And some went mad.” Moon sounded as though he was thinking aloud. “Thank you, Mr. Clemence. This has been invaluable.”

“Pleasure.”

The conjuror proffered a handful of coins, but as Clemence reached forward to grab them, Moon closed tight his fist. “Can you take me there?”

The railwayman looked uncertain. Moon glanced meaningfully down at his clenched hand.

“I’ll take you to the entrance of the tunnel,” the man said doubtfully. “No further. What I’ve heard… I wouldn’t go down there for anything.”

“You won’t have to. The Somnambulist will be with me. Can we do it tonight?”

Clemence thought for a moment. “Shall we say midnight, at the Monument?”

“Excellent,” said Moon, shepherding him to the door. “I’ll see you then.”

Clemence nodded politely again, then sloped away, incongruous against the spotless beige of the hotel corridors. On his way, he passed a beaming Arthur Barge, bustling toward Moon’s rooms.

Barge knocked politely, sauntered in and made a beeline for Mrs. G., immediately clasping her hand in his, as unselfconscious as lovers half their age meeting after a long separation. In fact, they had seen each other at supper barely an hour earlier.

“Have you told him?”

Mrs. Grossmith sighed. “I haven’t had a chance.”

“Told me what?” Moon asked testily.

“I’ve been trying to say ever since I got here, sir. You wouldn’t listen.”

Moon softened. “Then tell me now. You have my full attention.”

“It’s good news.”

“Delighted to hear it.”

When she spoke, Mrs. Grossmith gripped Arthur’s hand all the tighter and the words tumbled out overeagerly, scrambling over one another in their haste to be heard. “Earlier this evening, Arthur did me the honor of asking me to marry him… And I’ve accepted, Mr. Moon, I’ve accepted. I’m going to be his wife!”

There was a moment’s silence. The detective managed a thin-lipped smile. “Well done,” he said eventually, speaking as one might to an old dog who had finally mastered a new trick.

The Somnambulist tried his best to write CONGRATULATIONS but misjudged the length of the word and got in a terrible muddle with his spelling, with the result that it actually read:

CONNGRATT

followed by an indecipherable scrawl.

Mrs. Grossmith understood enough, however, to appreciate the sentiment. “Thank you.”

Barge disentangled himself from his fiancee and stepped up to Moon. “It must seem awful sudden to you,” he began. “We’ve only known one another for a month or so, but something just seemed right between us from the first. We understood each other. And at our time in life you can’t afford to wait, if you catch me meaning. We all deserve some happiness. And I think we’re going to be happy, Emmy and me.”

It was obviously a well-prepared speech. Moon listened as graciously as he was able and, when it was over, added rather pompously: “You have my blessing.”

“Well, thank you, sir,” said Barge. “That means a lot to me. Truly it does.”

Moon turned to his housekeeper. “But am I to understand, whilst these glad tidings mean that Mr. Barge is to gain a wife, that I am to lose a housekeeper?”

Grossmith looked embarrassed. “I don’t… That is, we haven’t decided.”

“I’ve enough to keep us both,” Barge said proudly. “Her skivvying days are over.”

“Well, then, I wish you joy.” Moon turned away and busied himself with clearing up the maps and plans of underground London. “Eggs and bacon, if you please, Mrs. Grossmith. We’ve a long night ahead of us. And I sincerely hope that at the end of it we’ll finally have some answers.”

“Emmy,” he murmured once the couple had left, no doubt to canoodle in the kitchen over a frying pan. “Short, one presumes, for Emmeline… I must confess that, until today, I never even knew that was her name.”

There is something both melancholy and oppressive about a schoolyard at night. Melancholy because one sees only silence and empty space where, according to the natural order of things, there ought to be laughter and movement and learning; oppressive because despite its desolation there is a strong and persistent sense of other people, of strangers present but unseen. Stand alone in a deserted playground at midnight, long after its daytime inhabitants have been tucked in to bed, and it is easy to imagine oneself surrounded by a thousand ghostly schoolboys — easy, too, to glimpse the whirl and bustle of their play, hear the shouts of their games, the thud of ball on bat, the groans of disappointment as the bell calls them back to study. Mr. Skimpole had never been an especially imaginative man — had prided himself, in fact, on his regimented common sense and rigorously practical mind — but even he could feel something of this eerie sensation as he waited alone in the playground of Gammage’s School for Boys.

He had never liked schools, of course, whether fully occupied or not. Evil memories crouched behind the blackboard; they strutted along the cricket pitch and strolled with deceptive nonchalance across the yard, where the spectral outline of a long-abandoned game of hopscotch could still be dimly traced.

He shivered and checked his watch again. They ought to be here by now.

A sudden gust of wind, a cloud edged across the moon and all at once the shadows crowded eagerly about him. Skimpole felt a surge of dizziness and took deep, gulping breaths, but still he felt queasy and uncomfortable. He had no desire to check but he was certain that some of his sores were bleeding. The stains, he reflected, would be impossible to get out.

Over the course of the day, the lesions had grown infinitely worse. He had changed after dinner and found them — flaky, livid, puckering red — covering most of his belly and moving inexorably up his chest, toward his neck. One had already appeared on his face, high on his left temple, though Skimpole was relatively confident that he had managed to disguise it by artful positioning of a stray strand of hair. He hoped that his son hadn’t noticed.

Where were they? They must come soon or he feared they would arrive only to find him sprawled unconscious (or worse) upon the asphalt.

“Hello?” the albino called out to the darkness. He coughed. A small amount of phlegm came up, but the vulgarity of spitting in public having been instilled in him as an infant, he forced himself, with some discomfort, to swallow.

“Hello?” he said again, more gingerly this time. “I’m here. I’m waiting.”

Still nothing. He pulled his coat tighter about him, did his best to remain calm and, not for the first time that day, wondered whether he was truly doing the right thing.

At last he was disturbed by the sound of an unfamiliar voice calling his name. Two strangers stood before him, and he realized with some astonishment that they must have crept up without him hearing, a feat he had long believed impossible.

“Well, chop off my legs and call me Shorty,” said one, peering curiously at Skimpole. “What a deuced queer-looking johnny. I was expecting someone taller. Bit less pale, ruddier of cheek. Weren’t you?”

“Abso-bally-lutely, old chum,” said the other. “He’s a rum ’un and no mistake.”

In all his extensive experience of the weird and grotesque, these two men were by far the most singular individuals Skimpole had ever encountered. The first was big and brawny, the other small and neat, and they spoke in cheerfully upper-crust, well-bred accents, their voices thick with money and casual privilege. But what was most striking about them was the fact that whilst they were evidently well into middle age, both were absurdly dressed in matching school uniforms. They wore identical bright-blue blazers, school ties and gray flannel shorts cut off just above their gnarled and hairy knees. The smaller man wore a little stripy cap.

Skimpole stuttered in disbelief. “Are you really them?” he managed at last.

The big one grinned. “I’m Hawker, sir. He’s Boon. You can call us the Prefects.”

His companion frowned. “Hang it all. That’s my speech you’ve just pilfered. I always say that. It’s practically a tradition.”

“Don’t I know it,” Hawker protested. “About time I had a crack.”

“But we always agreed I’d say it. You’re a wretched sneak to go back on your word. If old Skimpy weren’t here I’d give you a sound hoofing.”

“I’d like to see that, you silly young josser. Little Poggie Thorn and ‘Baby’ Wentworth from the lower fifth could trounce you in a scrap and you jolly well know it.”

“You can be the most priceless idiot sometimes, Hawker.”

“Rather that than a born sniveler, Boon.”

“Pipsqueak.”

“Beast.”

“Hog.”

Skimpole could only stand there and blink in bemusement at this remarkable exchange. Briefly, he toyed with the idea that these apparitions might be some by-product of his illness, phantasms conjured by his febrile mind as his body sped toward total shutdown.

Boon broke away from his argument and turned back to the albino. “Awfully sorry, sir,” he said. “You must think us the most fearful asses to stand here joshing like third-formers.”

“Jolly decent of you to call,” Hawker said, their spat seemingly forgotten as quickly as it had flared up. “Boon and me had been bored to tears on our hols and we’d been simply dying to bunk off for a bit of fun.”

“Why here?” Skimpole asked.

“We thought it apposite, sir,” Boon replied.

“Apposite,” Hawker mused. “Good word. Might write that down. Boon’s a veritable thesaurus, Mr. S., once he’s in the mood. Oh yes, he knows how many beans make five. Though I’ve never been so hot at study myself. Between the two of us, I’m rather a prize dunce. Boon here rags me raw about it.”

Skimpole tried to steer the most bizarre conversation of his life back toward some semblance of normality. “I meant to ask about the book-” he began.

“Confused you, did it, sir?”

“Baboozled, were we? All of a fluster?”

Skimpole struggled to understand. “It’s blank, apart from the page which had this address on it.”

“Devilish tricky thing, that book,” Hawker said, with faux gravitas.

Boon agreed. “Can’t let it out of your sight, sir. Heaven knows what mischief it gets up to when we’re not around.”

“I don’t understand,” Skimpole said weakly.

“All you needed was an address,” Boon said. “We got your telegram and hey presto, here we are. In this day and age there’s no need for anything more complicated.”

Hawker brought out a bright, green apple, rubbed it against the lapel of his blazer and took a big, crunchy bite. “Course, in other times and places it might have looked different. Might have been stuffed with funny symbols and sigils and squiggles and suchlike.”

“Or rows and rows of numbers,” Boon added helpfully.

“Do you always…” Skimpole whispered. “Do you always look like this?”

“I’ve always looked like this, haven’t I, Boon?”

“More’s the pity. You’re the ugliest man in the first fifteen.”

“Bosh, tiffle and pish.” Hawker punched Boon playfully on his shoulder and the little man reciprocated in kind.

“Please,” Skimpole said, “we haven’t much time.” He coughed again.

“Nasty cough you’ve got there, sir.”

“Hacking, sir. Positively grisly, if I might say so.”

“You ought to get that looked at, sir. Go along to Matron and let her take a gander. Might get a chit for games.”

“Please,” Skimpole muttered.

“Quite right, sir,” Boon said.

“Awfully sorry. Just horsing around,” Hawker added.

“We might seem like a couple of young scamps to you,” Boon insisted, “but believe me, ask us to run an errand and we’ll do it better than any other boy in school. They didn’t make us Prefects for nothing. Spill the beans, Mr. Skimpole. We’re dying to know — what can we do for you?”

Before Skimpole replied there was a pause in which he considered for the very last time the possibility of taking another path, making a different choice, a quieter, more mellow death. But he ignored the screaming of his conscience and pressed on. “There are men I want… removed,” he said. “I need you to murder them for me.”

Thomas Cribb opened his eyes.

By virtue of his curious existence, memory must have worked rather differently for him than it does for the rest of us. Presumably he was able to remember what was about to happen to him rather than what had already taken place. Assuming, of course, that you believe him.

Whatever the truth, when he opened his eyes and saw where he was, he had no idea how he had got there. “There,” as it happened, was completely unfamiliar to him. A gloomy room, dank and airless, its walls peeling, sweaty and blistered.

“Hello?” he said, not really expecting an answer. “Anyone there?”

Nothing happened. Feeling foolish, he fell silent.

Numbed by pain, cold and the journey, only now did it come to his attention that he was sitting upright, somehow stuck to a chair. Experimentally, he tried to move a leg.

No good, of course — he was bound tight. His hands, too, were trussed to the chairs arms, rope cutting hard into his wrists, sensation fading from his extremities. Evidently he was being held captive and, strangely, he wasn’t altogether surprised by the fact — in the course of his long, long existence he had made innumerable enemies. He had a sensation of weightlessness, a woozy, floating feeling as though he had been removed from his life and was staring down at it from some great distance.

He heard a thundering rumble, painfully loud and coming from somewhere nearby. A train? He couldn’t be sure.

Suddenly he was aware of another presence. A match flared before him in the gloom, a lamp was lit and he saw exposed at last the grim dimensions of his cell. He wasn’t altogether certain he didn’t prefer it in the dark.

A woman’s face, familiar but maddeningly nameless, swam in front of him. “Mr. Cribb,” it said. “Welcome to the Summer Kingdom.”

He managed a defiant kind of mumble. “What do you want?”

“We want to help you,” she said in a singsong voice. “We want to show you Love.”

Cribb remembered. “You’re Charlotte Moon.”

The face gave a sweet, seraphic smile. “You must be mistaken,” she said, still in that same hypnotic tone. “My name is Love.”

It was then that Cribb heard himself scream. During that impossibly long night it was to be the first of many.

Hawker and Boon — known collectively as the Prefects — had long been objects of terror in the city: implacable, remorseless purveyors of death and destruction to anyone foolish or unwary enough to cross their path. Nobody had ever suffered their ire and survived. Even criminals — the worst, most brutal and perverted recidivists the city had to offer — all were scared to death of those two men. The smallest rumor of a sighting set the underworld quivering as one.

I should add that their notoriety was far from being restricted to London. Baba Abu, the infamous Bombay assassin of the last century, was said on one occasion to have vomited copiously at his dinner table at the mere mention of their names.

It was two living legends, then, with whom Mr. Skimpole found himself confronted in the playground of Gammage’s School for Boys. By right, their appearance ought to have been comical — the albino should have had great difficulty keeping a straight face — and yet the emotion evoked upon encountering these curious men-children was not laughter but its polar opposite. There was something horribly, indescribably wrong about the pair of them. They seemed to exist a little outside reality, hovering an inch or two above the real world.

Hawker chortled in agreement. “Topping.”

During their long and highly successful career, the Prefects had encountered men and women who had seen fit to laugh at their speech patterns, to mock the unmistakable patois of the playground, their trademark idiolect. Needless to say, few of these would-be satirists were ever able to laugh again. Dribble, yes. A thin moan, perhaps. Blink their eyes once for yes and twice for no, without a doubt. But laugh? Never.

Mr. Skimpole did not feel like cracking so much as a smile. His clothes were soaked with sweat, those parts of his body which were covered in lesions wept and itched abominably. “Please,” he said. “I’m in deadly earnest. I need you to kill two men.”

“Wrong ’uns, are they, sir?”

“Ne’er do wells?”

“Bounders?”

“Rotters?”

“Cads?”

“Give us their names, sir. Do.”

“You understand that I do this not out of revenge,” Skimpole said carefully, “but only to protect my work.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Say no more.”

“Well, then.” Skimpole coughed painfully, at which Hawker and Boon tutted in noisy sympathy. “The Directorate is under attack. A man has been set on our trail. Ex-Okhrana. The best assassin they ever had. And the only real intelligence we have on him is his code name.”

“Tell us, then, sir.”

“Let the cat out of the bag.”

“Spill the beans.”

Skimpole swallowed hard. “The Mongoose.”

Hawker let out a low whistle. “Coo!”

“You’d like us to deal with him, would you, sir?” Boon asked.

“Give him a dashed good slippering?”

Skimpole nodded weakly.

“You ought to be at home, sir.”

“Tucked up in bed with a hot-water bottle and a steaming rum toddy.”

“Wait,” Skimpole said. “There is something else.”

“My my. You are in a bloodthirsty temper.”

“The Directorate has an enemy in Whitehall.”

“Shifty lot, these politicians.”

“Nasty glints in their eyes.”

“Never trust them, sir. Never.”

“His name is Maurice Trotman. A man from the Ministry. He wants…” Skimpole sniffed. “He wants to close us down.”

“Gosh.” Hawker sounded sympathetic. “Are you frightfully raw at the chap?”

“Had words, did you, sir?” Boon asked.

“Fisticuffs, were there?”

“Can you do it?” Skimpole gasped. “Can you kill them?”

“Deuced if I can’t see why not,” said Boon. “How about you, Hawker?”

“Absolutely, old fruit. Point of fact, I’m looking forward to it.”

“You’ve asked the right chaps, sir, coming to us. There’s none better in the sixth form.”

“Boon’s an absolute brick in a scrap. Take it from me — he’s a real game cock when his dander’s up.”

“What do I owe you?” Skimpole asked.

“Owe us?” Hawker affected incomprehension. “Owe us? Whatever do you mean by that, sir?”

“We’ll let you know our fee, sir, soon as the job’s done,” Boon said.

“You ought to get back home now, sir. Check on that young lad of yours. You’ll catch your death if you stand out here much longer.”

“Can’t you give me an idea?” Skimpole pleaded. “Of the cost?”

Boon beamed. “Oh, I think you’ll find our price quite within your means, sir. Quite within your means.”

“We’ll be in touch.”

“Goodbye, then,” Skimpole managed.

Boon touched the brim of his cap. “Tinkety-tonk.”

With this last perplexing valediction, the two anachronisms turned and vanished into the dark. Shaking with a mixture of pain, confusion and the cold, and trying not to think about the nature of what he had set in motion, Skimpole pulled his jacket tight about him and started for home.

No doubt Mr. Clemence did not intend to appear as suspicious as he did whilst he waited beneath the shadow of the Monument. But as he paced shiftily up and down, two dimmed lanterns by his feet, checking his pocket watch far more often than was necessary, he could scarcely have drawn more attention to himself had he worn a placard around his neck proclaiming his imminent intention of breaking the law.

Without warning, the shadows disgorged Edward Moon and the Somnambulist.

“My apologies if we’ve kept you waiting,” the conjuror said.

“Not to worry. Though if we could hurry, gentlemen, I’d be grateful. The sooner we get out of here, the better, if it’s all the same to you.”

“We’re ready.”

Clemence led them away from the Monument and toward the darkened flight of steps which led to King William Street Underground Station. A metal grille, padlocked shut, was pulled across the entrance. Clemence produced a key from his pocket, snapped open the lock, pulled back the grille. It groaned and complained in response and they all stood still and silent, waiting to see if the noise had attracted any attention. Nothing.

This was the financial district of the city, invariably deserted at night as the bankers, brokers and moneymen scurried home to their supper and an evening by the fireside. Besides, all this took place on a Sunday, when even the most fiscally devoted stayed in with their wives and children or (in at least two dozen cases of which I am personally aware) with their mistresses and lovers.

The last time Moon was there he had been walking with Cribb, as the ugly man kept up a steady stream of fantastical chatter, speculating wildly about London’s history, anecdotalizing about the great Stone and propounding the most curious notions concerning the relative heights of the Monument and Nelson’s Column. But now, at midnight, the place was a ghost town, barely recognizable but for the great needle of the Monument keeping its silent vigil like some landlocked Pharos.

Clemence passed one of the lamps to the Somnambulist. “Follow me.”

Looking around for a final time to check they were still unobserved, the three men stepped through the gateway and into the gloom, down the staircase, past the ticket office and onto the deserted platform. For an instant the Somnambulist fancied that he could hear the familiar clank, whistle and chug of a locomotive, but when he listened again the sound had vanished.

Clemence beckoned for them to follow. “It’s not far.” He clambered down off the platform and onto the tracks.

“You’re quite sure they don’t run trains down here?”

“At this time of night?”

Moon sighed. “We’re in your hands, Mr. Clemence.”

The railwayman strode away and they followed, leaving the relative safety of the platform behind as they headed into the tunnels, those mysterious warrens beneath the city, glimpsed by her inhabitants only as a monochrome whirl passed during the course of a journey back to the light.

Moon felt a sudden need to fill the silence. “Mr. Clemence? Are you a superstitious man?”

“Can’t say as I am. I’m a practical sort. Level-headed.”

“Then you don’t believe in fortune tellers? Clairvoyants?”

“Not given it much thought. Why do you ask?”

“I knew one.”

“That so?”

“And if she was correct, then today is the day that the city shall fall.”

“Ah, she were probably just making it up. Most of her sort are jokers, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Perhaps.”

The walked along the track for what Moon estimated must have been about half a mile, brushing past the grime and dirt encrusted onto the walls like plaque on rotting teeth. The Somnambulist felt a strong sensation that they were being watched: he could hear the skittering and scratching of the little creatures whose home this was.

Clemence stopped short as the track split into two. “We’re about halfway between stations. Here’s what the men were working when the trouble started.” He pointed ahead. “That track leads on to the next station. But this-” he gestured toward the track which curved to the left into a narrow tunnel — “this was abandoned.” He walked on, the lamplight straining against the darkness which down here seemed thicker and more complete than ever.

The track petered out a few minutes’ walk from the main tunnel. Clemence apologized. “They stopped in a hurry,” he said, moving past the remnants of the track and into the dirt and shale. “Here’s why.”

Set into the ground was a wooden trapdoor, painted a faded green. If one were to have chanced upon it above-ground, one would most naturally assume it to be an entrance to a cellar or a basement, containing nothing more sinister than firewood, or coal, or a collection of half-forgotten old junk. But here at the end of a tunnel far beneath the surface, it was distressingly peculiar, filled with incongruous menace.

Clemence seemed unaccountably pleased with himself. “This is it.”

Moon said nothing. Struggling for a moment, he eventually succeeded in pulling up the trapdoor. Darkness yawned beneath them, a deep vertical tunnel with a flicker of light gleaming distantly at the end of it. The Somnambulist moved his lantern closer, revealing a metal ladder clinging to the inner edge of the hideous drop.

Clemence gave a nervous cough. “Here’s where I leave you.”

“Thank you.” Moon passed the man his handful of coins. You’ve been a great help.”

“Pleasure.” Clemence began to move away, transparently eager to depart. “Mr. Moon?”

“Hmm?”

“Be careful.”

He vanished back into the outer tunnel. Moon watched him go. “We climb toward the light,” he said and swung himself into the tunnel, grasping the ladder firmly, and began to move slowly downwards. He called up to his friend. “Coming?”

Frantically the Somnambulist tried to remind Moon of his fear of heights, but his efforts were rendered invisible by the gloom.

“Don’t worry,” Moon said lightly. “It’s too dark to see how high we are.” He clambered further down and the giant followed suit. Had he been able to mutter resentfully under his breath, no doubt he would have done so.

Roger Clemence emerged back onto the station platform to find a well-fed, ruddy-faced man waiting for him, clutching what looked like a half-eaten pastry.

“Evening, Mr. Clemence.”

“Mr. McDonald.”

The fat man took a meaty bite, chewing noisily, like a dog truffling through a bowl of leftovers. “It’s done, then?”

“Signed, sealed, delivered.”

“At last. We were starting to wonder if he’d get there at all.”

“He’s not what he was, you know. He’s past his best. Worn out. Used up. Shop-soiled.”

“I know.” Donald McDonald smiled. “That’s precisely why we want him.”

After an age of climbing, Edward Moon and the Somnambulist emerged into the light. Shaking a little from his ordeal, the giant stepped with obvious relief from the final rung of the ladder back onto solid earth. They looked around them, drinking in the sounds, sights and smells of Love.

At last, Moon broke the silence. “I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed.”

The Somnambulist just looked glum. They were in some kind of storeroom, surrounded by empty boxes, old bottles and rotting sacks. There was an unpleasant odor, too, as though meat had been allowed to spoil. Moon walked toward the door. “Let’s hope things prove more interesting out there.”

They found themselves in a big round room, currently deserted but evidently used as a dining hall or refectory of some kind. Chairs and trestle tables were set out before them in regimented rows, and at the far end of the room, beneath a balcony arranged for public address, a gigantic banner hung upon the wall. It depicted a symbol they had seen many times before: a black, five-petaled flower.

Moon could not resist an exclamation of delight. “At last.”

The Somnambulist looked less overjoyed — already suspecting, perhaps, the true nature of what they had stumbled into.

“Edward!” The voice reverberated across the room.

Moon turned around. A gloriously familiar figure stood before them.

“I’m so glad you made it.”

Moon laughed with a mixture of gratitude and relief. There may even have been tears nudging the corners of his eyes. “Charlotte! Thank God. Are you all right?”

Miss Moon gave a beatific smile. “I’m fine. In fact, I’ve never been better. Through I’ll thank you not to call me by my old name.”

The Somnambulist shot Moon a concerned look.

“Old name?” Moon said carefully, as though by slowing his conversation down he might somehow delay his fast-approaching realization of the truth.

“That woman is dead,” his sister said cheerfully. “I’ve been reborn in her place. From now on you must call me Love.”

Moon was appalled. “Charlotte.”

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Moon edged gingerly away, as if backing off from some savage animal for whom sudden movement would be an incitement to kill. “Oh, yes? Who’s that?”

“He’s a very, very dear friend. A great leader. A hero. Any my inspiration.”

At last Moon began to understand what was happening. “Then he’s the man behind it all,” he said, suddenly furious. “The prime mover in the murders of Cyril Honeyman and Philip Dunbar. The mastermind behind the attacks on the Directorate and the plot against the city.”

“You’ll like him,” Charlotte said sweetly. “I’m sure you’ll get on famously.”

“What have they done to you?”

She looked up. “He’s here now, Edward. He’ll explain everything.”

A stranger glided onto the balcony. He had been waiting outside, biding his time in order to make the most dramatic entrance possible. Slight and narrow-featured, he was an unassuming little man, his skin pockmarked, lined and swollen. But despite these shortcoming he was not without a certain nobility, an innate dignity. When he spoke his voice was soft and low and seemed to pulse with hypnotic power. It was the voice of someone accustomed to being obeyed without question, whose every utterance was treated with reverence and awe.

“My name,” he said, “is the Reverend Doctor Tan.”

But you will know me better, dear reader, as your narrator.