sister ships?”
“It just sounds so far-fetched,” said Thomas.
“But think of it, Thomas—information like that, The Cunard Line would kill for
that kind of paperwork, the designs, White Star’s plans.” Declan nodded successively.
“It’s not as if we’re talking government secrets, envoys, and battle plans,”
countered Thomas.
“Oh but it is,” said Wyland.
“Have ye no imagination, Thomas?” asked Declan. “It makes sense in a world
where, more and more, information is knowledge, knowledge is power, and power
converts to money.”
“Makes no damn sense to me! Again, sir, you’re implying some dirty
underhanded dealings!”
“Easy lad!”
“Uncle Anton was in no schemes or dirtiness! I won’t have it.”
“But given the size of the powers they may have been going after, perhaps your uncle saw it as fair play perhaps, and not at all evil to involve himself since no Irishman good enough to burn rivets into the hull of this monster’s good ’nough to serve tables on her!”
Thomas fell silent, giving this some thought. “I know my uncle has a keen sense of justice.” Then Thomas’ nose began twitching uncontrollably. “Gawd, that’s a putrid stench, isn’t it?”
“You’re right about that!” agreed Alastair even as his own nose began to twitch.
“That smell,” began Declan. “Worse than the dissecting room, eh, Tommie?” “Smell of death for sure.”
“Coming up the shaft.”
“How far down does this damn thing go?” Wyland was having second thoughts about the wisdom of coming into this inky black hole when the platform hit bottom and tilted sharply, hanging there. The jolt knocked Thomas into Declan and the boys fell; Wyland had grabbed onto a railing and kept his feet.
“What’ve we hit?” asked Declan.
“Most likely whatever it was fell earlier from the rock ledge.” Wyland trained his lantern over the side of the lift, dust raining round them even as the two lanterns illuminated a black torso—a dead man. “I believe we’ve found one of the missing men,” he calmly said.
Thomas rushed to Wyland’s side and held the second lantern over the body. “It’s not my uncle—too tall, too thin… besides it must have been here for weeks… if not months.”
“But how then… I mean anyone coming down the shaft had to’ve…” began Declan, shaking his head.
“Not here,” countered Wyland. “First off, no one wanted to come down; there’d been a cave-in here. Secondly, judging from the position of the body, it had to’ve been placed here—or perhaps dropped here.”
Declan worked to bring the lift up a foot, then two, trying to get it straightened out and hovering above the blackened body. “Never seen such absolute decay; not even our oldest corpses at the medical school look this bad —and trust me, they are vile.”
“I’ve seen a lot of dead men,” said Wyland, his gaze grim. “But nothing like this.”
“Who could it be if not O’Toole or McAffey?”
Wyland shone his light on a helmet nearby with the name McAffey across it, and he indicated stitching on the dead man’s blackened shirt, Tim M. it read, no doubt stitched on by a loving wife.
Using his wolf’s head cane to offset a serious limp, Wyland carefully made his way to a kneeling position over the body. Leaning in for a closer inspection, he snatched out a a handkerchief and placed it over his nose against an odor reminiscent of sulfur. “We’re bound to involve the police, have an inquest, have the body autopsied. Either of you boys want to find the nearest phone?”
“Back at the mining office—’less there’s a police call box closer, but without a key…”
“Smash it with a pick axe or something,” suggested Declan.
“Yes, you do that, Thomas. I suspect Walter will know where the man’s house is?”
“Most likely; the miners are a close knit bunch,” said Declan.
Thomas lingered to determine what Wyland was up to.
“Can I trust you to get this into Walter’s hands, and can we trust Walter to get it to the man’s wife?” Wyland extended a money purse he’d found on the corpse. “Things like this tend to get lost real fast when police arrive.”
Thomas had held himself in check to witness this exchange, and he nodded appreciatively before asking, “Nothing in the purse to identify the poor devil?”
Wyland shook his head and complained of how his shoes would never be the same, adding, “Purse is just shy of forty pounds, I’d say. No paper. Now be off with you both—Declan to see to the paltry sum, you, Thomas, to make that call.”
Thomas rushed off in search of the phone.
“We should get Dr. B to look this over,” said Declan, who had not budged. “See if he knows what killed this fellow, McAffey.”
“Dr. B?” asked Wyland.
“Bellingham, an excellent physician and inquest expert—teaches surgery at the Mater Infirmorum—our teaching hospital.”
“Whatever is going to work—and Thomas—do hurry. Getting ranker by the moment here.”
“Frankly, Mr. Wyland, I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t remain here any longer.”
Declan’s remark halted Thomas who held the lift. “Are you two coming?”
“Need to do a bit of a walkabout,” said Alastair, but you go with Thomas, lad,” he added for Declan’s sake as an out for him.
Still Declan didn’t budge. “This man looks the victim of some awful disease—perhaps some form of a Bubonic Plague.”
Wyland added, “Oh dear, the Black Plague, you think?”
“Here in Belfast in 1912?” said Thomas from the lift platform.
“Not likely but who can tell, really.”
“Looks nasty enough to be a new strain of Black Plague; the disease took people’s lives overnight. Terrible scourge from all the etchings I’ve seen,” remarked Thomas.
“Can’t rule it out from down here, but it could as well be something else.”
“What else can you be talking about?” Wyland poked at the body with his cane.
“Something new, diseases crop up in the strangest of places.”
“Damn nasty business this underground work,” Wyland mused, looking at the sheared off ceiling and flashing his light about the wet, black reflecting walls.
“Wonder where the other miner is?” Declan muttered as if to himself.
“We’ll search the terminus of the shaft. But first, let’s get this man onto the platform so when Thomas goes up for help, we have the body at the surface for this Dr. Bellingham to examine.”
The three of them took careful hold of the absolutely stiff man who seemed more like a log than anything human, and they placed the corpse onto the lift. “Get him topside while we investigate further,” said Wyland to Thomas who needed no second telling. While riding up to the surface with the awful corpse, Thomas cupped his hands and shouted to Declan and the detective, “Damn thing looks like a blackened mummy!”
But Alastair Wyland had already set out searching about the mine, thinking the second missing miner—at very least—must be down here and whoever claimed to have seen him leaving the shaft had it wrong; as to the shipyard watchman, Thomas’ uncle, he hadn’t a clue.
Declan followed in Wyland’s wake as now there was only one lamp, and every corner here was blacker than an Irish midnight.
The lantern picked up the area where the shaft roof had collapsed, and at the base of the scattered loosened rock fall, lying in a silence as deep as an empty forest grave, there lay the body—covered in a tarp. “See that? It’s gotta be the other miner.” Alastair was excited, and he momentarily wondered if the families of the men might spread the word about his powers of detection, although he had done nothing save travel down into the mine shaft that others feared. The thought made him silently chuckle.
“Is he… is he like the other one?” asked Declan, shaken on seeing the prone misshapen figure below the
