No, this was rummer than a baba.
More torches had been lit and now I could see that there were maps and what appeared to be charts pinned to the walls. I looked more closely at the four chairs. Bizarrely, the straw figures had been shackled to their seats, as though to prevent their escape.
Vesuvius set aside the gavel and spread his hands wide, looking for all the world like a sinister masked version of the Messiah from Da Vinci’s
I narrowed my eye in an effort to see more. Now I realized that the place was littered with curious paraphernalia, scattered about like grave goods in a plundered tomb. There were great brass bowls filled with what looked like spice standing on piles of glittering rock. Red candles were held in tightly bound bundles atop a mahogany rail that ran right around the room.
Still the shrill note continued. As I watched, they picked up the brass bowls and carried them over to the centre of the table. Stromboli’s robed chest rose and fell visibly as he began to scoop out handfuls of mauve- coloured powder — a colour that was beginning to make me uneasy.
Vesuvius turned his masked head and, just for a moment, I had the curious sensation that his fixed features were moving, glowering. The painted mask gave him a strange pagan appearance and behind the diamond-shaped slits, his eyes were merely black hollows.
Stromboli handed him a brass goblet, into which the mauve powders were rapidly poured, then placed two of the black rocks into his outstretched hands. I saw now that they were chunks of raw flint.
«O Vulcan!» bellowed Stromboli. «Son of Jupiter and Juno! Forger of Creation! Labourer beneath the slopes of great Etna. Smith of the Gods!»
«Vulcan!» cried the assembly.
I strained to hear.
The intonation rose ever higher. «Builder of the brass houses,» thundered Stromboli. «Shoer of the golden shoes with which the gods trod on wind or water.»
Something about wind?
«Ye who shod the mighty steeds of Jove’s chariot! We honour thee!»
What was that? Cobblers?
«Vulcan! We honour thee!»
Stromboli brought his hands together with a great crack as he smashed the flints against themselves. At once, they sparked and in the blink of an eye, the ruddy powder that lay piled high in the goblet caught and flared up with a glorious purple flame. Yet the smoke did not seem to choke the assembly as it had with Charlie and me. Rather they seem to relish it, swaying gently as though in the grip of some powerful drug.
The hem of his velvet robes rustling over the flagged floor, Stromboli strode towards the wall.
«Now! In honour of the mighty volcano of Vesuvius, we offer our sacrifice!»
With great precision he took hold of one of the torch-sconces and pulled it toward him.
At once unseen gears began to clatter into life. Then, to my astonishment, the great round table began to hinge open like the lid of some titanic coffee-pot revealing, beneath it, the top of a stone-faced well. A waft of dank air came flooding towards me. It reminded me of the bottom-of-the-vase stink of Tom Bowler’s office. Then, with the sound of further machinery, the whole roof began to open, as though some baleful eye was set there. What I first took for a puppet began to droop downwards. In the guttering torch-light I could see bare feet and legs, then, with a crunch of gears, a whole body flopped into view, suspended by its arms above the hole in the floor.
It was Charlie Jackpot!
He had been beaten, manacled at the wrists and hung from chains, clad only in a pair of grisly grey undergarments.
«Oh Christ!» he groaned. «What do you want with me? Let me go!»
Stromboli was standing with hands on hips, surveying his nefarious handiwork. With a great clank like the moving hand of a town-hall clock, Charlie fell another few inches.
«Please!» he begged. «Don’t hurt me!»
«Our gift to Neptune!» For the first time, the pomposity of the ceremony was broken as Stromboli burst into throaty laughter.
Charlie’s chained form descended a foot further towards the well. The boy cried out but the figures remained unmoved.
«So much for traitors,» hissed Vesuvius.
Then, with a snap of his fingers, he turned on his heel and marched out with Stromboli, Etna scurrying behind them. The yellow door slammed shut.
Footfalls on the spiral stair told me that these strange apostles of the volcano, were passing right by my hiding place. I waited until their steps had receded and then, taking a chance, I slipped out from behind the tapestry and dashed down the spiral stair towards the door of the round chamber.
With a quick look around, I pulled it open and nipped inside.
The air was still thick and unhealthy. Above me, Charlie, eyes closed, was groaning softly to himself. The strange system of cogs and pulleys that suspended him juddered again and his bound body descended another inch.
«Hello, Charlie,» I said, leaning against the edge of the well.
His eyes flicked open and he stared wildly down at me.
«Oh thank God! Mr Box!»
I, in turn, looked down into the dark water below. It was moving — either a sewer or an underground river of some sort. Either way it would be enough to dunk Charlie to death like a human madeleine cake.
«Glad to see you hale and hearty. Now where were we? You were, I believe, about to tell me something rather important.»
«Mr Box! Please. You got to get me out of here!»
I shrugged casually, jumped up on to the lip of the well and grabbed at one of the boy’s shoulders but only succeeded in setting him swaying to and fro in a fashion that endangered us both. The mechanism dropped again; it seemed to have increased its speed. Charlie groaned pitiably.
«Can you move your hands at all?» I cried.
«No,» he gasped.
With a great creaking shudder, he dropped a whole foot into the well and gave a little yell.
I shook my head. «If I can’t stop this infernal device of theirs then you’ll drown for sure.»
«Thanks a million.»
Again, Charlie’s chained form dropped alarmingly. Now his head, hair stiff with sweat and grime, was level with the lip of the hole. Rushing to the wall, I scrabbled about amongst the maps and charts that littered the wooden rail. One, its colours gleaming darkly in the torch-light, was some kind of tough paper stretched between two cream-coloured tubes of metal. Snapping the thing together I moved quickly to the lip of the well and thrust it up towards the mechanism. On cue, the great cogs turned again and Charlie disappeared into the hole. Only his manacled arms projected now.
I strained on tip-toe but finally managed to shove the tube into the gears. At once the cogs seized, although it was obvious I hadn’t bought Charlie much time. The oily teeth of the machine were already squeezing and crushing the thin metal of the map-tube.
Throwing myself over the stones of the well I pulled Charlie’s arms towards me with one hand and tore the knife from my watch-chain with the other.
Feverishly, I pierced the lock of the manacles with the thin blade and rattled it about inside.
«Quickly, sir!» squealed Charlie, his voice a hollow echo. «Oh, quickly!»
The lock snapped open. I slipped the blade between my teeth and, forcing the metal cuffs apart, I dragged Charlie from the hole just as the map tube was ground into pieces and the cogs resumed their inexorable round.
Little pieces of the destroyed chart fluttered like dead leaves all about us. Panting for breath, I found myself on the floor with my arms around Charlie as the now-empty manacles continued their descent into the depths.
