Benny Nutters: Secrets Under London

by Ann Michaels

  Chapter 10.

  A Fan of Nelson’s Words

  Now that I was alone, everything felt different. My breathing sounded louder and my heart seemed to beat faster, like a drum was being played within me. Even my thoughts felt like they were booming within my head and the odours and smells of this place were more strident and overwhelming, than they had been before. But at least, I still had Esmeralda, who was resting heavily in my arms, purring happily.

  I kept walking, down the endless, perspiring and dark passageway, not knowing where I was going. I just kept walking.

  Then I came to a dead end.

  I flashed the torch about, and saw a door which was shaped like a short column, with a fan on top and the words, Through the massy column to turn and fly, carved on the cement wall above.

  But how to open this door?

  I peered closer and saw some very small words written on the door: As those thin fingers, long and white, and a thing that looked like a handle. I pulled this and the door opened; sounding and feeling, like the door of the refrigerator.

  I slithered through the thin space and I found myself standing in windy and cold Trafalgar square, under a lead sky, looking into the eyes of a small child with a gaping mouth.

  I quickly pushed the drinking fountain closed and as I did so, I saw Alice and Owen bounding toward me.

  ‘Owen thought you might be here’, Alice beamed.

  ‘Let’s go and report old Bloodworth at that tiny police station, near here that, you were talking about last night’, Owen added, already leaping away.

  So off we tumbled, toward the southeast corner of Trafalgar Square: three teenagers and one cat, to report, what was a very strange and long story; which had resulted in an old man being tied up, after attempting to pinch some World War Two uranium, from a secret place under London. As I thought about it, I wouldn’t blame anyone, upon hearing our tale, for wanting to lock us up!

  ‘I couldn’t believe where we came out. It was in a tunnel leading to an underground train station’, Alice remarked, as she walked beside me and stroked the soft fur of Esmeralda, who had her head, and ears hidden in the crook of my arm.

  ‘That hidden door was very different from all the others’, I mused. ‘I think someone other than my grandfather, must have been involved with designing that one’.

  ‘Someone who likes disguises I would say’, Owen wryly said, as he came alongside me, and also began stroking Esmeralda.

  ‘The door in the wardrobe was more modern too. It was based on some kind of electronic recognition system’, Alice added.

  ‘My brain is beginning to hurt’, I pleaded.

  We soon came to the miniature police station, which looked like a fat post with a door; inside, we could see the same policeman, who had come upon us only last night, as we searched the lion statues’ in Trafalgar Square.

  ‘Well, now, It’s you lot again’, the officer boomed, as he opened the door to glare at us.

  ‘We need to make a special phone call’, I stuttered, ‘to Whitehall’.

  The officer stood there like a statue himself for a moment, and then, said, ‘righto, only one of you, though’.

  And, as I slipped into the room, which could have belonged to a gnome, but presently housed a giant, the police officer turned around and flipped a picture of our regal friend aside, which was hanging on the wall, and a small orange telephone popped out.

  ‘It’s never been used, this one’, rumbled the officer darkly. ‘But this must be the occasion for it’.

  I picked up the old fashioned receiver and immediately, a female voice asked, ‘how can I help you?’

  So I garbled and stumbled over the whole strange story, which finally led to the fact that, Rupert Bloodworth, was presently tied up with a rope, under London, with some uranium cylinders in a leather bag.

  ‘Oh, yes, I did see the whole thing unfold on the monitor’, the woman replied in a chatty, friendly manner, ‘but we couldn’t get down there fast enough, you see, as Bloodworth blocked our entry from Whitehall. There are other entries, of course, like number 10 and the Palace, but it takes us a bit longer to gain access. Anyway, I can assure you that, Bloodworth, has now been apprehended and is presently walking down Dead Man’s Walk, according to my other monitor; getting his last glimpse of sky, on his way to a secret holding cell in the Old Baily…..Oh by the way, the underground citadel and this whole episode with bloodworth, is top secret. None of you must breathe a word to anyone outside your immediate group. Secrets of the realm and all that, you know. You can of course discuss the case with Crispin, Millie and Cogwhistle… and good work, well done, we’ll talk again’. The phone clicked off.

  I put the phone back and the telephone zipped backwards into its compartment, behind the surface of the wall, and the picture flipped into place.

  The police officer towered over me expectantly, but I simply shrugged and stepped outside into the cooling air, to join Owen and Alice.

  I repeated what the nameless woman on the phone had told me, and for once, Alice had nothing to say, other than, ‘I’m fried. Gotta get some sleep, but how will you get home?’

  ‘I don’t reckon Esmeralda will like the train much’, Owen said, staring at my feline friend, with limpid, cow eyes.

  I looked up and down the street and watched, as the thin crowd of people, snaked along the footpath, hunched over as they were buffeted by the icy wind. The day was already growing dark, but none of this I had noticed until now. It was like, I had just landed in my spaceship, and I was looking around for the first time. I had been so absorbed, and simply hadn’t noticed my surroundings, until now.

  As I stood there with Alice, pondering how to get home from the middle of London with a cat, Owen whipped off, but soon retuned with three cups of steaming coffee. So we stood there and slowly sipped the nutty, milky brew, locked in our world, in the middle of one of the greatest and busiest cities in the world.

  Then, for some reason, I was inspired to break into a soliloquy, ‘I regard you all as kinsmen, familiars, and fellow-citizens — by nature and not by convention….’

  ‘What in the holy heck are you going on about Benny?’ asked Alice.

  ‘I was thinking about what the Sophist Hippias said to Athenians, that’s all; that our relationship to the rest of humanity, should be greater than any other loyalty’.

  ‘Sometimes, Benny, you lose me! Alice giggled.

  ‘And other animals too, ‘cos we’re all related’, Owen added, as he stroked Esmeralda’s velvety ears.

  ‘You do realise that we share 70% of our DNA with slugs’, Alice taunted, as she looked at me, contrary as always.

  Then, the screech of tyres caused us to turn our heads and we saw Uncle Crispy, rolling up the road, in his Bond Minicar. He screamed to a halt beside us, to the tune of tooting horns all around. With great relief, we jumped into the cosy interior and Uncle Crispy sailed away on three wheels. Almost immediately, Esmeralda, came to life and took her nose out of the crook of my elbow, and began to wash herself.

  ‘Scotland Yard called and said that, you lot, were waiting to be collected from the police station near Trafalgar Square. Almost caused me an apoplexy, I can tell you. Until they conveyed that, the situation with Bloodworth, was finally resolved,’ Uncle Crispy said, as he manoeuvred the car through traffic.

  ‘I thought he was creepy, and he smelt like mud’, added Alice.

  ‘Quite so, quite so’, Uncle Crispy agreed, looking somewhat confused. ‘There have been suspicions swirling about that fellow for many a year, but nobody could actually pin anything on him. My main objection to the brute was that, he began courting your grandmother, Clementine’, he said nodding in my direction, ‘not long after your grandfather disappeared in Africa. He was hanging about like a bad smell a lot, and then, I found him one afternoon in the laundry room, unconscious, clutching a piece of paper.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked in puzzlement.

  ‘Well the lion’s hea
d sconce in that room was dismantled and the door of the clothes dryer was hanging open. It seems the old reprobate was looking about for clues to the whereabouts of the uranium left by Phineas, and he found one. In his fossicking about, he must have left the door of the dryer open and then knocked himself out on it. It is one of those old, heavy duty ones.’

  ‘Or, it could have been Edgar, the ghost’, I offered.

  ‘Possibly’, Uncle Cripsy murmured. ‘But before I called for medical assistance, I did take the time to read the note’.

  ‘So, yeah, what did it say?’ Alice demanded.

  ‘It was just a line from that odious poem, The Siege of Corinth. It said, I have pass'd the guards, the gate, the wall. Bloodworth obviously felt he had gained a sufficient clue, and he soon dispensed with wooing Clementine. He transferred his affections to Millie after that’.

  ‘I’m glad he’s locked up’, Owen piped up. ‘But I have to wonder why Benny’s grandfather had to leave all these clues, a poem, and secret passages, all about the place?’

  ‘It is my view, my young friend that, this whole charade is the result of Phineas’ interest in Greek mythology. He was enamoured, since he had a young whippersnapper, with the ancient labyrinth built by Daedalus, for the King of Crete, to capture the Minotaur. I think that was Phineas’ initial inspiration, anyway’.

  We were almost at Knightsbridge now, close to where we would drop off Alice and Owen, who were yawning widely, when I thought to ask the reason why, the uranium was being stored under London.

  ‘That my lad is a complicated and long story’, Uncle Crispy sighed. ‘But it seems that the uranium did indeed arrive during the war, from Australia, and your grandfather did indeed, help it to go missing, an operation he called Prometheus. You see, there was a clandestine development program going on at the time, called Pipe Alloy. It was aimed at developing nuclear weapons. But Phineas and many others thought that, dabbling in such things, may bring about the end of the world, as we know it.

  ‘Prometheus was the Titan in Greek mythology, who tricked Zeus and stole the fire from the gods’, said the muffled voice of Owen, as he nuzzled Esmeralda’s fur.

  ‘That’s right, dear boy’, affirmed Uncle Crispy.

  ‘It sure was lucky that, I was wearing this frightful looking necklace’, I said, as I pulled the lion’s cross medallion out from under my kurta pyjama. It was indispensable’.

  ‘I have the same necklace and so did your father, grandmother, Millie and probably Cogwhistle,’ Uncle Crispy laughed. None of us ever wore ours, though. And I do recall both Clementine, and Millie, questioning your grandfather’s taste in jewellery’.

  ‘Oh! I thought that necklace was especially for me’, I blurted, as I looked down at the unattractive thing.

  ‘You were the only one who worked out how to use it, Benedict. And thanks to you, and your friends here, Bloodworth is finally where he belongs’.

  As the buses and Bentley’s brawled around us, in the 18th century thoroughfare, the car came to a stop, outside Owen’s and Alice’s apartment building. We sat and watched, as a gold Ferrari zoomed up from a nearby underground car park.

  ‘Greed may bring about our destruction, and money cannot purchase good taste’, concluded Uncle Crispy, as Owen and Alice jumped from the car, waving.

  ‘Bye and see you next week,’ we all called together. And then, Uncle Crispy, Esmeralda, and I, bowled onwards, toward Bayswater, and home.