'Figured this for a setup job,' said Larry, lining his center bit up on the padlock. 'Got in a mite too easy, didn't we?'
'Why didn't you say something?' said Doyle.
'Not my place, is it?'
Sparks knocked on the iron door and got back a booming, hollow echo.
'Listen to that. Hardly sounds like the end of the passageway, does it?'
'We gots a right rusty padlock to get through before we find out,' said Larry, pounding on his center bit. 'Bloody stubborn.'
'I say, Larry,' said Doyle, 'you didn't happen to venture down that tunnel the other way before coming here, did you?'
'No, sir—come on, give!'
'I only ask, you see, because we heard what sounded like someone walking toward us from that direction.'
'I wouldn't know about that—bloody bastard!' Larry hammered away again at the lock.
'Hold up for just a moment, Larry,' requested Sparks.
Larry paused. The echo of his last blow faded, and issuing out of the quiet that descended they heard the same relentless step-drag approaching from the south. Only now there were multiple variations of that familiar rhythm: three, four, five footfalls, possibly more—whether there were actually others present or it was simply some acoustic peculiarity of the tunnel was impossible to determine.
'Proceed, Larry,' said Sparks, moving back toward the curve.
'Anything I can help you with, Larry?' asked Doyle.
'One-man job, idn't it?' said Larry irritably.
Sparks used the light to scan the walls. Lifting a second torch from the clutch of another iron sconce, he set it aflame and handed it to Doyle.
'Do you think it's gray hoods?' said Doyle quietly.
'They're a good deal swifter afoot than whatever we're hearing at the moment, wouldn't you agree?'
'Yes.'
'And if someone did close that door with the intention of trapping us here, it's not unreasonable to assume they must be confident something was going to stand rather forcefully in the way of our escaping.'
The footsteps grew close enough to hear intermittent splashing and not promisingly, the pace of the steps seemed to be quickening.
'More than one now,' said Doyle.
'More like ten.'
Doyle and Sparks moved back away from the turn.
'Come along now, Larry,' said Sparks. 'Speed is of the essence.'
'Got it!' said Larry, as he pierced the lock with a final blow and ripped it off the clasp. 'Give a hand, gents.'
All three men grabbed one side of the double doors and heaved. The neglected hinges protested mightily but began to resentfully yield. Doyle looked behind them as they labored; he saw the outline of a column of tall black shapes emerging from the darkness fifty feet behind them.
'Pull, damn it! Pull!' exhorted Sparks.
With Sparks's and Doyle's ability to apply useful leverage hampered by the torches in their hands, the gap grew to an inadequate six inches. They dropped the torches and put then-whole backs into the effort, but the door stubbornly gave up only fractions of an inch at a time. Larry squeezed through the crack and pushed back on the door toward them. Hinges wailed like a wounded ox; the breach widened another inch. Doyle chanced another hurried glance backward; the tall shapes formed a picket line of angular, indistinct, but decidedly human silhouettes, lumbering and weaving toward their position at the doors. There were considerably more than ten of them. The three men were apparently visible to their pursuers now, for a collective sound came out of the pack, a hideous, breathy, burbling snarl. Redoubling their assault on the door with the inspired strength of angels, they secured another precious two inches of space.
'Go, Doyle, go!' said Sparks.
Doyle turned sideways, shoved himself through to the other side, put his shoulder to the door, and pushed back with all his might, as Larry stuck out a hand and pulled Sparks through.
'The torches!' said Sparks.
Doyle reached back into the gap. As he took hold of the torch, a blackened, fingery mass of exposed sinew, tendon, and bone, dripping seared and tattered rags, clamped a vise-like grip on his wrist; Doyle bellowed in pain and surprise. In one swift move, Larry drew a knife from its holster and swiped the attacking arm. The blade sliced cleanly through its tissues as through wax paper; an appalling howl clawed the air as the severed limb fell away from the hand. Doyle shook the hand frantically off his wrist as Sparks took hold of his
collar and yanked Doyle back through the opening, the torch still clutched in his hand.
'Pull, pull it shut!' Sparks shouted. 'Help us, Doyle!'
Doyle scrambled to his feet and joined them as they grabbed a handle fixed to the inside of the door and pulled for their lives, the memory of their ancestors and their progeny to come. The hinges moved more cooperatively back toward them, and the gap quickly closed, but not before they saw a squalid, feverish windmill of fetid arms and hands foul the air they'd just been breathing. Frantic, frustrated squeals worthy of a saint's last temptation tormented their ears, and a smell of a hundred desecrated sepulchers made a mockery of innocence before the void was sealed. They quickly lifted and slid a thick steel bar designed for such a purpose through the twin handles of the doors, securing their position, at least for the moment; the pounding and pummeling and scratching of nails on the other side of the iron doors that followed made speech, if not thought, impossible. At a signal from Sparks, pointing the torch in the direction he wanted them to go, the three men moved quickly and gratefully away from the doors.
They ran headlong, without a thought to direction or distance. As their senses returned from the brink, and the torchlight revealed their surroundings, they realized this was no continuation of the tunnel; they were greeted by dimly lit vistas of a vaulted, train-station-sized chamber, where boxes and crates of every imaginable size, shape, and function were stacked like building blocks, forming a jagged-toothed skyline* They stopped to catch their breath and still the awful beating of their hearts. The hammering on the doors behind them continued, but at enough remove to allow them the luxury of brief respite.
'Jesus Christ!' said Larry. 'Spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch, wot the bloody hell!'
'It was going to crush the bones of my wrist or pull the arm right off my shoulder,' said Doyle, testing the area for trauma.
'The devil's own punchbowl is what that was,' said Larry. 'That was old Horns and Hoofs himself nearly put the pinch on us. Up your uncle, Nick!'
'Easy,' cautioned Sparks.
Knife still in hand, Larry would not be stilled, angrily semaphoring an eloquent series of obscenities back in the direction of their attackers.
'Feather and flip you, daisy boots! Back to hell where yer mother waits patiently! I'll carve you like a Christmas pudding, you mingy pross! I'll sort you out large, Sinbad the Sailor your skidgy hide, 'n' have your guts for garters! You twig me, yobbos? A handful a' fives for you!' '
The pounding on the door stopped abruptly. Larry took a couple of deep breaths, then slumped exhaustedly down onto a crate. 'Lord, I need a drink,' he said, his head in his hands. 'I'm whacked to the wide.'
They regained themselves in the shelter of a cove of crates. Time slowly resumed its normal curve, and Doyle's attention was drawn to the sea of curiosities surrounding them. He joined Sparks, who was standing on top of the tallest box surveying their position, holding the torch high. 'Good Christ ...'
The room stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see. The landscape was populated by small principalities of statuary: kings, queens, artists, scholars, scientists, foot soldiers and generals on horseback, heroes and villains of antiquity and folklore captured in their defining moments of triumph or infamy, parliaments of demigods and goddesses, their white marble skins aglow with a milky, luminescent sheen.
'What is this place?' asked Doyle. 'I believe we are in a subbasement of the British Museum,' said Sparks.
