Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  We went back to the Crooked Billet, I drank more than I had intended to, and Challenger railed against the stupidity of man. As we left in darkness to catch a late train back into town, the military were cleaning up. I learned from a reporter from The Thunderer that the official story was of a gas buildup in old mine workings under Penge, and that no other explanation was forthcoming.

  Once back at the Express, I told my tale to McGuire. I even wrote it down, much as I have here. But in the morning, the headlines were all the same. There had been a gas explosion. If we had indeed had a visit from our Martian neighbors, the world at large never heard of it. As I remember the slumping things in the red desert, and the way that my mind had been violated, I can only hope that they never do.

  Drums in the Deep

  It was a month or so after the strange affair in Penge before I met Challenger again, and it was not in the best of circumstances. I had spent the morning crammed in a train carriage with a group heading for Scotland on a fishing weekend. Besides having to endure their frankly foul tobacco, a cheap blend that stung my throat and nostrils, I had listened to enough tall tales of monster salmon, near-catches and drunken evenings with local lasses to last me a lifetime.

  Given my assignment, I was not exactly happy to disembark in Newcastle, but I was relieved all the same. The last part of my journey, although much more pleasant, consisting as it did of a solo carriage trip along the coast, gave me a chance to reflect on McGuire’s statement of that morning.

  “It’s a bad one, Malone,” he had said. “A hundred and more trapped, and God knows how many dead. Get up there sharpish, and get me a story. And try not to step on any toes. This one’s going to be delicate.”

  I got my first clue as to the scale of the possible disaster as we approached Ellington Colliery at lunchtime. The sound of crying and wailing carried to us on the wind even before I saw the crowd gathered at the colliery gates.

  “This is as far as I can take you, sir,” my driver said. “And if you want my advice, you’ll turn around and head back to the toon, for naebody’s going to be getting inside; not until the bosses decide what story they want told.”

  I happened to be of the same opinion and the idea of retreating to a town center bar was most certainly appealing, but I owed McGuire better than that. I shouldered my overnight bag and threw myself into the crowd, pushing my way through to the front. I got there just as a portly man in a suit that had seen better days approached from the colliery office. He stood on the other side of the gate and addressed us directly, having to wait until the hubbub died down before he could be heard.

  “They’re safe,” he said, having to shout above the clamor asking for news. “All of them are safe. We’ll have everybody up by the end of the day. But they’re out of immediate danger.”

  A wave of relief washed through the crowd. It seemed that my trip had been for next to nothing, in terms of a headline story. At least that is how McGuire would see the news.

  “Any gentlemen of the press here?” the portly man shouted. “We can have you in and give you the details if you’d like?”

  I recognized the type; get ahead of a bad news story by keeping the press on your side. I supposed that in the colliery game, particularly such a risky one as undersea mining, it made good business sense, for bad news was more common than not.

  Four of us put up our hands. The gate opened, and I was about to be ushered inside when I heard an immediately recognizable bellow from behind me in the crowd.

  “Malone! You’ve got to get me in there.”

  I turned to see Challenger forcing his way through a crowd, using his beefy arms like oars to force his way against the tide.

  “You owe me a favor for Penge,” he said as he arrived at my side.

  The portly colliery manager did not seem too keen at this turn of events, but he knew which side his bread was buttered on, and when I told him I was from The Express both the Professor and myself were shown inside.

  The colliery manager led us to a long wooden hut that proved to be the main canteen facilities of the site. A dozen weary men, faces black with soot, eyes red from tension and tiredness, sat, slumped and quiet, nursing mugs of piping-hot tea and smoking thin hand-rolled cigarettes.

  “These men are the first to be brought out,” the manager said, as if it were cause for celebration. “As you can see, they are all quite well.”

  That was not how I would have described them. I realized that I still, as yet, had no real idea what had led McGuire to send me here, beyond the fact that there had, for a time, been a large group of miners trapped miles underground. I started with what I hoped was a simple question.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It was all a big fuss over nothing,” the manager started, then went white as one of the miners turned and looked straight at him. The miner said nothing … he didn’t have to … that look told me everything I needed to know. Whatever had happened down in the mine, it was more than nothing.

  Maybe a lot more.

  “Tell me,” I said, talking to the miner and pointedly ignoring the colliery manager.

  He took a long draw on his cigarette before replying, and when he did so it was in a dull monotone, as if all emotion had been stripped out of him.

  “We were down in number one shaft, right at the far end, when number two blew a leak,” he said. “That’s all I know. That and the fact that we’ve just walked four miles in the dark with no lights and water up to our knees, not knowing if each breath was to be our last.” He turned and looked at the colliery manager again. “A lot of fuss about nothing,” he said sarcastically.

  The colliery manager preened himself up like a fighting cockerel. “We’ll have it pumped out and ready for work again in a day or two,” he said.

  “Maybe so,” the miner replied. “But mayhap you won’t have any men willing to go back down there. Not until you get them drums sorted out.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard the man correctly, but Challenger started to pay closer attention.

  The manager went red in the face. “I won’t have you bothering the press with your superstitions,” he said, loudly so that everyone in the hut would hear. “And I won’t have you lot making another attempt to skive off from your work. We have a contract.”

  “And you know what you can do with that,” the miner said, and stood up, fists clenched.

  The manager backed away, fast. “Those … drums, as you call them, are nothing more than the sound of the pumps echoing through the shafts,” he said.

  The miner laughed, and some of the other men present joined in.

  “Then you’ll have no problem coming down there with us, will you?” he said.

  The manager didn’t reply.

  But Challenger did. “I’d like to hear them,” he said. “Tell me more.”

  That was more than the mine manager would bear. “There is nothing to tell,” he said. “I will prepare a proper briefing for the real gentlemen of the press this evening. In the meantime, if you would excuse us, we still have many men down below, and I’d like to get them all safely up by nightfall.”

  It seemed that we were dismissed, but even as we turned away, the miner who had spoken earlier put a hand on my shoulder.

  “The bosses just want us all above ground sharpish so they can start pumping the deep shafts out and get us back down there working again. And we’ll go, right enough, for we need the money. But there’s summat down there with us, sir. Summat wrong. Get yoursel’ down to the village boozer, and ask for old Ted. He’ll tell you things that’ll make your hair curl.” I thought he was done, but he had a parting thought for me, spoken in little more than a whisper, his eyes wide with fear. “There are drums down there, sir. Drums in the deep.”

  Half an hour later we were ensconced in the Smuggler’s Tavern, an establishment that had clearly seen its best days at least a century before. But the ale was passable enough, and their pork pies were as good as any in the country. It also contained
one other thing of note, in the form of “old Ted,” a wizened old fellow of somewhere between eighty and ninety years old who turned out to be a natural storyteller, and drinker of copious quantities of ale, as long as someone else was paying for it.

  I resigned myself to making a hole in my expenses budget and got a round in for the three of us. By the time I got back from the bar the other two had smokes lit, so I joined them, filling up a fresh pipe. Ted waited until I was sure it was lit before starting his tale. As befitting his status as storyteller supreme, he started in a rather roundabout way.

  “There’s aye been summat queer about folks in these parts,” he started. “From right back to when the Romans came … and mayhap even further back than that. The wet country, they call it, and it has aye been a place where things are done different. Used to be that only locals lived here, back when I were a lad, and we could keep such things to oursels. But that mine has brought people to the town from all over. No good will come of it, you mark my words.

  “I told them so, at the council meetings when the mine was first proposed. I even went to the toon to see the top man. But they wouldn’t listen. They never listen. Now things that were best left quiet have been woken, and who kens where it will lead?”

  He paused, took a gulp of ale and looked down into the now-empty jug. I knew my place in this scheme of things. I motioned to the barman with my hand, making a circle over our drinks, and the barman nodded. Satisfied that another ale was imminent, old Ted continued.

  “My time is near,” he said. “So I won’t see what is to come, here. But it won’t be good. I suspect it won’t be good at all.”

  “What are we talking about here?” Challenger asked. “I take it your fears have something to do with the drums?”

  “The drums, yes,” old Ted replied. “And worse.”

  “This kind of worse?” Challenger said and took something heavy from his pocket to lay it on the table.

  The old man’s face went pale.

  “Put it away, man. You don’t know what peril you’ve put yoursel’ in, showing that here.”

  Challenger made the thing disappear into his pocket quickly enough, but not before I got a good look at it. It was then that I started to get an inkling of what had brought the Professor here.

  It was a hand, but a hand unlike any I had ever seen. At first glance I took it to be something broken off a statue, so gray and cold did it seem. But then I saw the indications of arteries and muscle structure at the wrist, where it had been crudely hacked from its body. The skin itself looked moist, somewhat greasy. It seemed to be totally hairless. And between each finger, there was a peculiar thick webbing, such as one can see between the digits of amphibians.

  I was quite in shock at what I had glimpsed before Challenger put the thing away in his overcoat, but managed to hide the fact by taking a gulp of bitter ale from the fresh tankard that the barman put in front of me at a very propitious moment.

  “I was right then,” Challenger said. “The drums and the hand go together. They mean something?”

  “Oh, they mean plenty,” old Ted said. “And I can guess where you came by it too. They’ve been bringing up all sorts from yon new shaft they’re digging. One of the men … and it can’t have been a local … must have spotted the chance of making a few bob and swiped it out of the slurry before the management could dispose of it. I hear they’ve been disposing of plenty other bits and pieces … bits of arms, legs … and even a head or two.”

  Ted cackled as if something was funny, then went back to getting as much free ale inside him as he could.

  “Wait,” I said, being careful with my words, wanting to be sure I understood. “Are you saying there’s something living down there? Something like a man?”

  “Like a man, mayhap,” the old man replied. “And living, mayhap. All that is known is that they are older than we are. They were here long afore we came, and they will yet be here after our time has come.”

  “I must get down there,” Challenger said.

  “Good luck with that, old boy,” I replied. “That mine manager won’t be letting you within a mile of the shaft.”

  Old Ted cackled again, and shook an empty pint pot in my face.

  “There might be another way,” he said. “If you can spare some more beer and a few smokes?”

  That was the signal for a long evening of what Ted called “negotiation,” and I called scrounging. He knew all the tricks of obfuscation and avoidance, all the while racking up free beer after free beer. At the same time he kept providing us with a list of what we’d need … and, of course, the cost for him to source these things for us from “a friend of a friend.” By the end of the night, which ended just in time, before Challenger lost what little temper he had left, we had agreed to purchase ropes and lamps, and hire a guide, for what we were promised would be an expedition that would answer all our questions.

  By that stage I was too tired to think. The long journey, the ale, and the lack of food caught up with me. I took a room for the night in the inn, and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  It took a hearty breakfast of eggs, ham and sausages to revive me in the morning. Challenger joined me at the table, and we reviewed our conversation of the night before. We realized we had not actually learned a great deal, beyond the fact that there might—and it was a big might—be something worth investigating, and that a guide would be turning up within the hour to lead us to a destination that was, as yet, a complete mystery.

  “I’m just glad I don’t have to report to McGuire until this is over,” I said as I lit up a post-breakfast smoke. “He’d have my guts for garters for heading off on a wild goose chase without any evidence.”

  Challenger patted the bulge in his pocket. “Evidence enough, old chap,” he said. “And more to come, if luck is on our side.”

  We had just finished our smokes when our guide showed up. I had been expecting a dour old northerner built from the same mold as old Ted, but was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a young chap barely out of his teens who seemed eager, almost excited, to get on with the task.

  “Granddad said that you chaps want to see the cavern?” he said by way of introduction.

  “Well if that’s what your granddad said, it must be true,” Challenger replied, and gave out one of his trademark bellowing laughs. I saw that the boy was somewhat intimidated by the Professor, and resolved then and there to take him under my wing for the duration.

  We set out into a clear morning, and for the first mile it was a pleasant walk along the top of a sea cliff; a path well worn by many feet. I was slightly encumbered by a large knapsack that contained ropes and lamps, but the straps were sturdy and did not chafe, and I soon got used to the extra weight of it.

  The colliery sat to our left, some distance inland, but we could hear the thump of the big pumps even at that distance, and they did indeed sound a lot like distant drums.

  I was feeling rather warm in the sun after fifteen minutes or so, but any warmth quickly dissipated as Tom, our guide, led us down off the cliff into a secluded cove, the bulk of which sat in deep shadow.

  “Not many people come down here,” Tom said, which seemed to give a lie to the well-trodden nature of the path by which we had arrived. I held my tongue. There were secrets here to be uncovered, and my nose was telling me that keeping quiet would garner me more information than direct questioning.

  Challenger, however, had no such qualms. “Is this one of the places where they are seen?” he said. His too-loud voice echoed around the cove.

  The lad took the question in his stride. “Not here, no. We have a ways to go yet.”

  He turned and led us round the cove until we came to a cave mouth several feet above the high water mark. It looked dark and forbidding and I felt my heart sink as I realized he meant for us to go inside. He was already taking a lamp from his own knapsack, and had it lit in a thrice.

  “How far in do we go?” I said, trying to keep a tremor out of my
voice.

  “It’s not the in that is the problem,” Tom said. “It is the down.”

  I had one last look round at the sun playing on the waters of the cove, then followed Tom and Challenger into the darkness.

  The going was easy at first, and the single light carried by our guide proved more than sufficient illumination to lead us into a large sepulchral chamber of hanging moss, twittering bats and rushing water. My hopes of more of the same were dashed almost immediately.

  “Best get the ropes out,” Tom said. “It starts to get a mite tricky from here on in.”

  The lad proved to be a master of understatement, as he then proceeded to lead us down a dizzying array of caves, tunnels and precipices, far beneath the earth. I was all too aware that we were also now far below sea level and, if my own sense of direction was still working, were already some way under the North Sea. I was also by now thoroughly damp and my legs had started to ache from the strain. Challenger, to my annoyance, was in high spirits, even going as far as to sing some walking songs, his deep ringing tones echoing around us and sending more bats fluttering.

  Tom lit another of the lamps as the darkness seemed to close in tighter around us, and he led us as we picked our way more carefully down the pathways. There were no obvious indications of what might be the correct direction, but the lad showed little hesitation despite there being many different passages to choose from in what was a warren of tunnels.

  We stopped for a breather on a ledge above what seemed to be a sheer drop into darkness. Challenger offered me a cheroot and I took it gratefully, not trusting my cold hands with the job of filling a pipe. And that’s when I heard it: a rhythmic thumping that seemed to come out from the rocks themselves.

  Tom must have seen something in my face, for the lad laughed. “Nay, sir. That’s just the colliery pump that you’re hearing. We’re not far off the main shaft here. It’ll get louder yet as we go deeper.”