29
Our destination was west of London, an area I had not visited since coming to town. Many of Barker’s cases had taken us to the East End or the City but not to the west. Still, we were traveling by river which is the same from Hampton Court to Woolwich. After dinner we were soon to meet a boatman at a dock in Brentford.
“Per’aps I should go with you,” Jenkins suggested, from the security of his booth. He was the Rising Sun’s premier patron, in residence from five thirty to nine every night that the pub was open. To deviate from his chosen schedule was unthinkable. Profits would tumble, the crown slip from Victoria’s brow, and the earth veer from its axis.
“That will not be necessary, Jenkins,” Barker murmured. “Thomas and I shall get along well enough.”
“Right,” Jenkins said, having made the offer. I think he was relieved to be dismissed, but then, he’s no tiger like Mac. He’s more for creature comforts like good ale and conversation.
“Do you punt?” Barker asked me as we left Whitehall.
“Punt? Good heavens, no. Punting was never part of my curriculum at Magdalen College. I could not afford the time or the money. I assumed you hired a steam launch or something.”
“No, no, merely a punt. It is vital that we don’t attract attention to ourselves by arriving with a loud, steaming boiler. Besides, the exercise will do us good.”
Every time Barker says something will be good for me, I know I shall live to regret it and that night was no exception. We arrived at the docks around eight o’clock, and Barker spoke to a sailor who led us to our vessel for the evening. I paid the old salt more than double the price he deserved and surveyed our transportation dubiously.
Cyrus Barker was not as rich as Croesus, but I suspected he had a pile of money from his days as a captain in the China Seas. He is a generous man, but he is also a Scot, and these two opposites in one man sometimes cause war within. At times, he could be especially generous, always seeing that my tailor was well paid, but at other times he was appallingly cheap, as with the dusty warehouse and the mattress. He himself is naturally stoical. All this I contemplated as I looked down at the vessel that Barker would punt all the way to the Dashwood estate.
“It’s not the newest boat in the fleet,” I noted, studying the bare, gray wood of the punt. It had begun its days several decades before on the more prestigious Oxford portion of the Thames, but after it lost its looks, had been sent over to this working end of the waterway. The most I could say in its behalf was that it looked sound, by which I mean it did not have six inches of water in the bottom of it.
“Here, put one of these on,” Barker said, handing me an oilskin coat in dark gray. The coats must have been included in the price. The old sailor seemed to take grim delight in our donning these villainous garments, rank with sweat and fish scales.
“And just why am I wearing this?” I dared ask.
“We do not want to attract attention.”
“Two gentlemen punting in the dark when anyone else on the river would be camping for the night? Couldn’t we have gone by train or something?”
“This was the way the original denizens of the Hellfire Club came, and I have no doubt this is how they shall arrive tonight.”
“How do you know Miacca really exists? Couldn’t he be an invention of the Hellfire Club to cover their illicit activities?”
“No, lad. My professional experience tells me that those letters are genuine. Only a very warped individual would think like that.”
The moon had risen, a pale yellow crescent with the features of a man curious about our endeavors. Clouds moved slowly across the sky, concealing and revealing the moon, like a bull’s-eye lantern. Barker stood in the stern, pulling the pole out of the sediment behind and setting it down in front of him. It is not a fast means of transportation, but he got into such a steady rhythm, I was conscious of the passage of land on either side.
I soon saw why he had chosen this mode of transport. Once out of the town proper, we reached a series of locks. In some cases, the lockkeepers were vigilant, and in others, they had to be hailed. Money changed hands in two instances. On others, we punted to the side, and bodily dragged the old boat around the lock.
“Come here, lad,” Barker ordered. “I’ll teach you how to punt.”
He showed me how to stand with my feet braced and to pull and push on the long length of spruce. Like all things new, it was awkward at first, until I got accustomed to it. As long as I was not interrupted by another lock, my pole sunk into sandy silt and all was fine.
The moonlight, when it wasn’t playing peekaboo with the clouds, painted everything in argent hues. It was cool and there was a light breeze, but my exertions made me want to take off my oilskin and jacket and roll up my sleeves. The town had given way to open countryside where all sensible people had gone to bed. There wasn’t a light to be seen anywhere.
“Lad, pull over to the bank quickly.”
The Guv hadn’t shown me how to stop, so it was awkward, but I still managed to guide the boat over to the side, though I lost my footing, falling into the stern.
“What is it?”
“Shhh!”
A boat was coming along behind us. We huddled down and tried to look inconspicuous, as though we were anglers fishing by moonlight. I heard the steady putt of a steam launch, and over it, the sound of men singing. I could hear the words distinctly across the water, though the singers tended to slur their words, a song about a maiden aunt whom a family would not acknowledge after she had run off to Paris. The song was bawdy, and the singers, young rakes of university age or older, sang it with fervor. There was nothing out here to interest them, save the very meeting we were going to disrupt. I wondered how many people would actually be there.
The launch passed with a wake that set us bobbing and soon Barker was punting again. A half hour later, we floated under a bridge, and on the other side, my employer ran the boat aground. We dragged it up on shore against the side of the bridge and began walking.
“We are in Buckinghamshire,” he said. “The baron’s estate is less than a mile away. I thought he might have men at the dock, and we do not wish to be seen.”
The two of us crept along a wagon path. I saw the estate in the distance, well lit against the dark night, and my mind imagined something sinister about it. Barker lit a dark lantern of his own and shone the circle of light upon a large scale ordinance map. A breeze came up, and I felt a chill despite the oilskin.
My employer led me into a valley, and we approached a structure standing tall in the night, a church or abbey. It had a circular courtyard and a pair of open gates lit by torches that bathed everything in a shimmering light.
“That is the entrance to the caves,” the Guv explained.
“It looks deserted,” I said.
“They may be within the labyrinth. It was heavily quarried, according to Dashwood’s design, with some sort of temple at the far end, deep within the earth.”
“How do you know so much about it, sir?” I asked as we came up to the entrance.
“I thought the subject worthy of study. I have a book upon it in my garret back in Newington.”
“I don’t hear anything,” I whispered. “Should we go in?”
“We have come this far,” came the reply.
“Dare I hope you brought a pistol?” I asked.
“It wasn’t wise,” he answered. “This is private property and we are trespassers.”
We headed into the cave. The tunnel was narrow and faced with brick, an endless corridor of gothic arches.
We followed the corridor to the left and had only gone a few yards when I heard a chilling sound, the squeal of gates behind us. They crashed together, setting off echoes throughout the cave.
“Caught like a rat in a trap, Barker!” a rough voice echoed down the corridor. “We have been expecting you.
