within its very heart. Bryant wished he was at home, surrounded by his records, his books, and his memories. It seemed such a grotesque, undignified way for life to leave him.
He twisted his head to watch as Tomlins swung insanely at the wall. In his impatience to fill the room, he was trying to open up the entire drain. Each blow carried the frustration of a blunted life. The wall was cracked in several places, and had begun to bow outwards.
Tomlins, blinded by his bitter zeal, driven by a lifetime wasted in subservience, once more charged the bricks with his sledgehammer. Suddenly the concrete membrane bulged and split wide in a tsunami of water and brick. Tomlins was lifted from his feet and hurled backwards as the deluge burst over him, slamming him against the fallen astrolabe.
As the unleashed river rocked his metal prison, Bryant seized the moment, shoving against the brass bar across his chest. He could summon little strength. The freezing water was rapidly dulling his senses. He hammered against the bars again, and was astonished to find the cage rising of its own accord.
“You’re pleased to see me this time, are you?” asked Jerry Gates, holding out her hand. Amazed, unable to catch enough breath to reply, Bryant reached out and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. “John!” he gasped, pointing to the figure floating facedown in the rising water.
Jerry steadied him and set off to help his partner.
Bryant pushed himself free of the mechanical rings and began wading across the room to help her. Through the hole in the wall he watched as the black torrent rushed past. The stench rising from its foul waters was unbearable. The river of darkness thundered on beyond the shattered wall, denied access to the world above.
He had waded halfway across the room when a pair of wet arms seized him around the neck and pulled him back beneath the surface of the vile torrent.
Tomlins’s hands sought purchase on his throat, but as Bryant struggled to twist free, one of them pushed down on the top of his head. The detective forced his eyes to remain shut in the pulsing effluent, knowing that the poison content of the river would kill him if absorbed for too long. Now both hands were locked firmly over his skull, holding him under.
A dull booming sounded in his ears as the deluge thundered through the steel cage, twisting it back and forth. Red flares of light exploded against his eyelids. His lungs were filled with fire.
And then the hands went limp, and Bryant’s head bobbed up above the surface of the river, suddenly released. Tomlins had rolled back in the water. His upper arm had become trapped in the shifting blades of the astrolabe, pulling him beneath the surface.
Bryant fought free as the structure groaned and shifted once more. As soon as he was unsnagged, he allowed the current to carry him across the room. Jerry was wading over in his direction. He could not tell if John May was alive or dead.
He looked back in time to see Tomlins’s arm lift from its mooring as his body swirled towards the opening in the wall, where it was sucked back into the fast-flowing river, to be swept off into the pounding Stygian darkness.
¦
The three of them sat beside one another in the back of the patrol car, soaked and shocked, wrapped in blankets, as an officer drove them to the nearest hospital clinic.
“Do you mind if I open a window, Sir?” asked the driver. “I can’t breathe.”
“Are you insinuating that we smell?” asked Bryant weakly.
“Well, you did get dipped in sh – er, the sewer, Sir.”
“Oh, all right.”
May turned to Jerry. She looked as if she was having a wonderful time. “Why did you follow us back to the guild?” he asked.
“I went to the unit to find Sergeant Longbright, and they told me where she was. I was there in the car when you radioed in your destination. The main door to the building was open, and there was an incredible noise coming from the back of the hall. I just followed it down.”
“But what possessed you to come here?”
“Thought I’d return Mr Bryant’s bleeper,” she answered, pulling the bulky box from her sodden coat. “He’d dropped it again.”
“Why on earth didn’t you wait and give it to him another day?” demanded May, amazed. “He never uses the bloody thing.”
“I had to return it immediately,” said Jerry. “His apartment keys are taped to the back.”
May’s mouth fell open.
“That’s the point,” said Bryant, taking the bleeper and turning it over to reveal a pair of labeled Yale keys sellotaped in place. “I thought I wouldn’t lose it if I needed it to get into my apartment.”
“Do you mean to say that I owe my life to – to – ”
“That’s right,” said Jerry, pleased with herself. “If it wasn’t for your partner’s annoying little habits, you’d have drowned.”
The patrol car sped on across the bridge, towards a lightening sky.
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
53
Captain of Industry
For once, Charles Whitstable was at a loss for words. He was still wearing the previous day’s clothes, and had not slept.
“We just want to know how you did it,” said May, hunching forward on his chair. The workmen had made a surprise return to Mornington Crescent, and there were tools all over the floor. There was also, inexplicably, a large hole in the ceiling.
“I’m not sure what you’ll even be charged with,” added Bryant, “but it’ll certainly be as an accomplice to murder. Try to explain what happened. Then we’ll decide what you need to put in your official statement.”
Charles lifted his head from his hands and attempted to smooth his hair back in place. “All right,” he said, resigning himself to the first in a series of trials. “When I went to Calcutta, I found the guild’s group of companies still operating under archaic conditions. There had been no technological advances, no updating of the infrastructure. The offices were staffed by the grandsons of the original owners. Bureaucracy was rampant, even by Calcutta’s standards. Nothing had changed from James Whitstable’s time.
Back in London, Peter and Bella were moaning about profits dropping. They were all complaining, even the damned lawyers, and no one had the balls to come and sort out the mess. Everything was left to me. I soon noticed that certain ‘obligations’ transmitted from London were being honoured by staff members. Every once in a while, someone would disappear for a few days on ‘company business,’ financed by money orders transferred through the lawyers’ office in Norwich. That staff member would then reappear and continue working without a word of what had transpired. Apparently, this had been going on for years.
I noticed a pattern in the type of people chosen for this clandestine work. They were always the sons and grandsons of men who had been granted a great favour by the guild at some point in the past.”
“What sort of favour?”
“The usual sort of thing – a cash advance for a newlywed, an executive post for a son – a favour that demanded repayment at some unspecified point in the future,” explained Charles. “Employees of even the most distant branches of the Watchmakers could, in extreme circumstances, be granted special deals in the form of large low-interest loans. In return, a brown-paper package was delivered to the home of the borrower, to be kept within the family and opened at a time specified by the company.
When the time came, instructions were to be carried through to the last letter. The debt was canceled once the rival was out of action. There could be no defaulting on repayment. At least, that was how the system had worked in the past. I arrived to find dissent. People had begun to refuse to honour these ‘obligations.’ They’d been held to promises by their fathers, their grandfathers, but couldn’t see why they should perform favours for the English any more. Victoria’s reign might have gone, but it was a damned long time dying. Our employees had been kept in place with threats and superstitions, but they no longer feared the power of the alliance. India now had its
