The Death Collector

by Justin Richards

  ‘I’m afraid the noise may have alerted this man’s colleagues,’ Sir William said breathlessly. ‘If,’ he added as he stooped beside George to examine the body, ‘he really is a man.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Liz was picking herself up and brushing unsuccessfully at the muddy stains down the front of her dress.

  ‘Is he dead?’ George asked. He half hoped the man was, though he shuddered even to think of it.

  ‘He should be,’ Sir William said. ‘Just one of those blows should have shattered his skull.’ At this point the huge man snored, loudly. Sir William was feeling round the top of the man’s head. Apparently satisfied, he turned his attention to the rest of his body – prodding at the arms and legs and mumbling to himself. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he decided at last. ‘Just as I thought.’ He looked up at George and Liz as they stood watching. ‘Just as I feared.’

  ‘We should hurry,’ George said, alerted by the sounds of cries and shouts from somewhere behind them.

  ‘Yes.’ Sir William got to his feet and retrieved the pieces of his broken cane. He looked at them sadly. ‘I think the gates must be just up here. He was probably left to guard the exit.’

  Sir William led them quickly along the path and they soon reached the back gate out of the park. It was locked, but Sir William produced a small metal tool from inside his jacket, and in moments the gate was open. It creaked ominously in the still of the night, and Liz froze, half expecting hordes of Lorimore’s strongmen to descend on them out of the darkness. But all remained silent.

  ‘You think we’ll find a cab?’ George asked.

  ‘Later, perhaps. I’d like to take a short walk first.’

  ‘A short walk?’ Liz was appalled. ‘Poor Eddie will be heading back to the Museum looking for us, possibly with all manner of blackguards on his tail, and you feel the need for a constitutional?’

  Sir William smiled. ‘All in a good cause, I promise. But if you want to go straight back to the Museum, please don’t let me stop you.’

  ‘Where are you thinking of going, sir?’ George said before Liz could reply.

  ‘It’s only a short way to Lorimore’s main foundry,’ Sir William explained. ‘I have a notion it might be worth a quick look, since we happen to be in the vicinity.’ He looked from George to Liz. ‘What we have seen tonight, the incredible strength of that man for instance – and I do mean incredible – has somewhat piqued my interest. The back of his head, for example, seemed to be made of metal. And where do you suppose Lorimore would have the facilities to make a metal headpiece, hmm?’

  The probing hand felt round the hole, scrabbling at the rough metalwork inside. Eddie watched it, transfixed as if by a cobra. He held his stone poised, ready to slam it down on the hand should it come too close, or if the owner tried to pull himself through the hole in the underside of the statue.

  Time seemed to have slowed down – it took an age for whoever was attached to the other end of the arm to decide that he was wasting his time and withdraw it. Eddie had to force himself not to sigh out loud with relief. He could hear two men outside talking, but their voices were muffled now and indistinct. Perhaps because they were facing away, perhaps because of the fog, perhaps because they were leaving.

  Even when it was completely silent outside, Eddie remained frozen in position. He could feel the rough metal through the material of his trousers. When he did move his knees would be embossed with a relief map of the inside of the statue. Gently and silently he edged closer to the hole. He clutched the rounded stone as if it was a talisman, reassured by the way it fitted so well in his hand, ready to strike at anything that moved.

  But the only movement was the slow drifting of the wisps of fog between the underside of the statue and the ground several feet below. Cautiously, Eddie lowered his head through the gap, looking all round to be sure there was no one in sight. The mist had rolled in again as the air near the water warmed with the approaching threat of dawn. He waited a full minute to be sure he was indeed alone. Then he allowed himself to fall forwards through the hole, his arms outstretched in front of him to take his weight.

  The ground was slippery rock, and he was hampered by the stone he still held in one hand. He slipped and crashed to the hard ground, grunting in pain and annoyance as the air was knocked out of him. Eddie lay there, staring up at the underside of the dinosaur as he got his breath back. He was also thinking, trying to remember the way back to the park entrance. Could he retrace his steps? Would Blade have left anyone on guard at the entrance? Come to that, was it the only way out of the park? If there were others, maybe Eddie had a better chance of avoiding Lorimore’s men and making his escape.

  Eddie knew he had to get moving, but he did not want to. He wanted to stay here, in the shadow and safety of the dinosaur. The best way to break the spell, he knew, was not to think about it but just to do it.

  So without really picking the moment, Eddie got to his feet and stumbled out from under the statue. He made his way cautiously back down the slope towards the lake, peering into the mist in an effort to make out his surroundings, listening carefully as he hurried back to the path. He could hear nothing, but did that mean that Blade and his men had given up? Or were they hiding, waiting for him?

  This was the path back to the main gates now, he was sure. Eddie hastened his pace. Just another couple of minutes and he would be out of the park and safe. Getting back to Holborn might take him a while, but maybe he could get a ride with a milkman heading that way to start his rounds, or a postie …

  The smoke from Lorimore’s huge foundry thickened the fog for miles around. The noise of the machinery inside was almost deafening as they approached it. The enormous building straddled several streets – massive and grey and featureless, its chimneys rising out of sight above the building.

  George and the others ducked into the shadows as a large man walked past, his massive, ape-like silhouette easily visible through the mist.

  Sir William nodded grimly, before leading them to a side door. Like the park gate, he set about opening it with the metal tool from his pocket. In moments, they had slipped inside and closed the door behind them before the guard could return.

  It was as if the fog had crept inside the great foundry, thickening and billowing. Smoke and steam mingled, clawing at the back of George’s throat as he followed Sir William. He held tight to Liz’s hand, so as not to lose her. Sir William was as faint as a figure behind a muslin curtain, all but swallowed up by the heavy air.

  Struggling not to choke on the hot, acrid fumes, George followed. He could hear Liz clearing her throat beside him, but could barely see her through the yellowed mist. Then, in a moment, they were through and the air cleared enough to see the great factory floor stretching out in front of them.

  ‘An updraft of some sort,’ Sir William said. He almost had to shout above the rhythmic metallic thump of the machinery. It seemed to have increased as they emerged from the smog. ‘Deliberate ventilation, I imagine. It would be no good if the workers couldn’t see what they were doing.’

  ‘Even if they can’t hear themselves think,’ Liz remarked.

  George was surveying the scene in front of him. ‘What are they doing?’ he wondered.

  There were several dozen men working in the factory. So far none of them had noticed Sir William and his friends. But soon someone was sure to spot them, George realised. If there was anything to be learned here they needed to do it fast, and then get away. He pointed this out, and Liz nodded in agreement.

  ‘We need to get up higher,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So we can see what they’re doing. Like seeing the stage from the gallery – you get a better view of the whole layout. It is easier to make out what is happening.’

  ‘Splendid idea,’ Sir William agreed. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  There was a metal gantry running round the wall, perhaps twenty feet above their heads. A ladder led up to it from several yards away. Liz led them over to it, an
d George went first, then Liz, with Sir William bringing up the rear.

  The ventilation Sir William had described was drawing the smoke and fumes up from the clanking machinery on the ground and high into the structure of the building to be vented through open skylights in the lower part of the sloping roof. Soon George found himself climbing through a moist, warm mist. Looking down, the foundry floor was wreathed in thin clouds of smoke. The huge iron machines rose up above the swirling fog, reminding George of the gravestones in the cemetery.

  They reached the gantry, and George led them along to where they could get a good view out over the entire enormous space below. Slightly further on, another ladder led up to another gantry high in the roof space. There were dozens of the steam-driven engines on the floor below, each working away. Smoke and steam rose through the metal grille of the gantry, swirling round them as they watched. Pistons slammed in and out, and chains clanked as they were drawn through the machines, emerging with glowing metal components hanging from them like washing from a line. The glow dulled as the chains moved along and the metal cooled.

  The chains seemed to link groups of the machines together, daisy-chaining them so that components manufactured by the first engine were modified by the next, refined by another, finished by a fourth. Finally, the chains all met and together were hauled through a huge vat of oily water. The metal hissed and spat as it sank into the churning depths, to emerge blacked and smudged with oil on the other side.

  Here men took the metal components – rods, wheels, bolts, casings – and assembled them. George peered through the drifting steam in an effort to see what they were constructing.

  ‘It appears to be some sort of exoskeleton,’ Sir William said, pointing to the nearest group of assembly workers.

  ‘A what?’ Liz asked.

  ‘A frame, to hold something inside it together,’ George explained. It was difficult to make out the exact shape, but Sir William was right. There were dozens of the completed frames standing in lines at the side of the work area. ‘What can they be for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sir William confessed. ‘But I have several very unpleasant suspicions.’

  ‘Relating to that man’s head?’ Liz asked, remembering why they had come here.

  ‘I thought we were never going to stop him,’ George admitted. He was still shaken by the experience.

  ‘I think we are very lucky that we did,’ Sir William told them as he watched the activity below. ‘He was no ordinary thug. His cranium, as I say, had been plated with metal. The end result was so thick I doubt it left much space for the brain. And his limbs were lengthened and heavy. From a very quick analysis, and of course I am no expert, I would say that the man’s bones were larger and considerably more dense than human bones.’

  ‘He wasn’t human?’ George asked, trying to understand what Sir William was telling them.

  ‘I believe he was, once. But just as poor Albert Wilkes’s bones had been replaced, albeit in a somewhat rudimentary manner, here the transition was rather more advanced. The process had been completed.’

  ‘But what process?’ George asked.

  Sir William nodded at the men toiling below the gantry. ‘A process to replace a man’s brain with something less sophisticated, something with a much reduced reasoning capacity. The ability perhaps merely to understand and carry out simple instructions.’

  ‘And the bones?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Intriguing, isn’t it?’ Sir William said. ‘A man whose bones had been replaced, I believe, with the bones of a long-dead dinosaur. But,’ he went on, ‘there is no reason why they should not be replaced by metal too. Or even,’ he added significantly, ‘by an entire metal frame.’

  ‘But why?’ Liz demanded. ‘What is he doing this for?’

  ‘I can only speculate,’ Sir William offered. ‘But everything here would seem to support my theory. He is, as we can see, an industrialist. He runs factories like these where workers manufacture goods, or smelt metal. How much more efficient if he could staff those factories with labourers each of whom has the strength of ten men, and who doesn’t have the mental capacity to complain about the working conditions, or demand more pay? Human machines.’

  George was about to ask whether this was really possible when there was a shout from the floor below. One of the workmen was pointing up at the gantry – up at George and the others. More of the men turned to look. There was a stiffness to their movements. They seemed cumbersome, like the man who had attacked them in the park, George realised.

  ‘Time we were going,’ he said.

  ‘A little too late for that,’ Liz said. Her face was white as she pointed to where more of the men were already starting up the ladder towards the gantry.

  ‘There must be another way down,’ George said.

  ‘There is.’ Liz pointed further along the gantry.

  But through the steaming yellow-tinged mist rising from the machines, George could see more workmen climbing that ladder too. ‘They’re coming at us from both sides,’ he realised. ‘We’re trapped.’

  Chapter 19

  Sir William shook his head. ‘There is one other way we can go.’

  George and Liz both looked each way along the gantry. Men were now climbing on to it from the ladders, starting along the narrow metal walkway towards them.

  ‘I don’t see …’ George started. Then he stopped, realising that Sir William was pointing to the ladder just ahead of them. It led upwards, towards the roof. ‘You have to be joking,’ George finished.

  Sir William raised his eyebrows. ‘If you have a better idea, young man, then I suggest you come out with it pretty sharpish.’

  George looked at Liz. He looked at the men making their ponderous way along the gantry towards them. He looked at the ground, twenty feet below, and imagined being shoved over the flimsy guard rail that ran along the gantry. Then he looked back at the ladder. ‘I’ll go last,’ he said. ‘In case they try to follow us.’

  ‘And what do we do when we can’t go any higher?’ Liz demanded, following Sir William as quickly as she could up the ladder.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ George hissed back at her.

  Sir William’s voice floated back to them through the thickening mist. ‘We climb out of one of the skylights and down the roof, of course.’ This time, George could tell he wasn’t joking. The skylights were level with the next gantry, wide open and sucking the smoke out into the cold night beyond. He hurried up the ladder after Liz and Sir William.

  This ladder was much the same as the one they had already climbed. But higher up, it was full in the path of the rising steam. The bolts holding the ladder to the walls of the foundry were rough with rust, flaking away as the ladder strained against them under the weight. George watched black showers of corroded ironwork drop away from the bolts, the rungs, the sides of the ladder as he climbed. Looking down, he saw the first of their pursuers starting up the ladder after them. The ironwork creaked and groaned in protest and he shouted for Sir William to hurry.

  Sir William stepped out on to the upper gantry, just as the ladder pulled away from the wall. One of the upper bolts sheared, the extra strain immediately breaking the bolt on the other side with a screech of tearing metal. The top of the ladder lurched outwards. Liz screamed, and Sir William had to lunge to make it to the upper gantry.

  ‘Go on, quickly!’ George shouted.

  Sir William was reaching across for Liz. She grasped his hand, jumped. She slipped, her feet suddenly dangling over the edge, in space. George reached out desperately, managing to get his hand under one of her feet and push upwards just as Sir William heaved Liz towards him.

  With a gasp of relief as Liz joined Sir William on the safety of the gantry, George hurried to follow. The ladder was pulling further and further away from the wall, away from the connection to the gantry. He would have to jump. Liz was beckoning for him, ready to try to catch him. He braced himself as he reached the top rung.

  And a hand closed over his lower leg,
gripping it tight. George gave a yelp of surprise. He kicked out with his other foot, holding on tight to the sides of the ladder with both hands. The grip loosened, and he managed to rip his leg free. He jumped at once.

  Just in time. The ladder continued to break away. Several more bolts sheared off and fell heavily into space, clattering to the lower gantry thirty feet below one after another. The top of the ladder was swinging more rapidly now, pulled over by the weight of the men climbing up it. As George’s stomach crashed into the gantry, as he struggled to hold on, as he hauled himself on to it, the ladder finally tore from the wall with a squeal of tortured metal. Liz helped him to his feet, and they both glanced down as the ladder crashed to the floor below.

  Sir William was also looking down. But not at the falling ladder, or the men sliding angrily back down to the gantry below. He was looking out over the manufacturing floor. Liz joined him, breathing heavily. Standing behind them, George too saw the larger metal exoframes arranged behind the ones they had seen before. And beyond that, the shadowy outline of more ironwork being assembled from the most distant engines and furnaces. Silhouetted in the drifting smoke, George could see the vague shapes of struts and braces sticking up like broken teeth.

  ‘Glad you could join us, young man,’ Sir William said. ‘But I think we should hurry.’ He led them over to a skylight, fastened open to allow the smoke and steam to escape. It was easily large enough to climb through, and Sir William called back that there was a ladder down on the other side.

  ‘Lucky,’ Liz said.

  ‘An informed guess,’ Sir William called back. ‘They need to get in from the outside for maintenance after all.’

  George let Liz follow Sir William. ‘They’ll soon realise where we’re going. We’d better get a move on or we’ll find them waiting at the bottom of the ladder.’ He pushed through the open section of roof after Liz. The steam and smoke swirled round him – wet and hot. Outside the London smog was cold and damp. For a moment, caught between the two, eyes stinging and unable to breathe, George imagined what hell must be like.