At any rate, I was beginning to drift off into a bored doze, as I might have done on any lengthy journey, especially on top of such a long, gruelling day and after so little sleep. Then Cauchemar announced that he spied something ahead. It was a plume of smoke, glimmering in the twilight haze.
But not a single plume.
There were two.
“It’s as I thought,” he said. “De Villegrand has his own locomotive, one to whose design I contributed, back when it was just a rough sketch on paper. The Duc En Fer, an Iron Duke to rival the fastest British engine of that name. Rival it and surpass it in so many ways.”
De Villegrand’s Duc En Fer was a sturdy black beast, big around the belly, with three huge driving wheels and two sets of bogies, fore and aft. It chugged hard along the rails, pistons pounding. Embers poured from its funnel along with the smoke, their glow lending the locomotive’s coachwork an infernal orange lustre. Behind trailed a single carriage that was enclosed on all sides and windowless, like a freight wagon.
A mile or so up the track, the Royal Train was also making good speed. Its rolling stock comprised four carriages and a brake van. I pictured the royal family within one of the carriages, seated in sumptuous saloon accommodation. Their mood would be apprehensive, perhaps, but they could little realise how imminent the danger was, how an implacable foe of Britain was even now snapping at their heels.
The Duc En Fer was gradually gaining on the Royal Train, eating up the remaining distance between them.
“But where did he build the thing?” I said. “And, more to the point, how did he manage to get it onto the track? Didn’t Mycroft see to it that no other trains were allowed on this route but the Queen’s?”
“Here, I fear, is where we may detect the malign influence of Professor Moriarty exerting itself,” said Holmes. “He implied to me that he has some stake in the bombing campaign and its ultimate outcome. In order to further his own ends, he has been helping the Hériteurs de Chauvin from the sidelines. I wouldn’t put it beyond his abilities to bribe or threaten railway officials to look the other way while de Villegrand’s train takes to the rails and to switch points so that it would have a clear run. As for building it, de Villegrand must have done so somewhere in England. He could hardly have exported an entire completed locomotive across the Channel, not without arousing attention. On the other hand, a rail shed somewhere, perhaps one owned by Moriarty, part of an extensive property portfolio... It’s the most plausible explanation. Do you not agree, Mr Tilling?”
“I don’t know as much as you do about this Moriarty,” said our pilot, “but I have heard whispers, and if he is half the scheming genius people say he is, then he and de Villegrand are a match made in heaven. Or rather, hell.”
“A finger in every pie, has Moriarty,” Holmes muttered, “and the pies all laced with arsenic.”
Cauchemar poured on acceleration, and at the same time pumped air into the ballonets so that the Delphine’s Revenge’s neutral buoyancy was reduced and the airship began swiftly to descend.
“What is our plan, Mr Tilling?” my friend demanded. “I defer to you because you know more about the Duc En Fer than I do. I imagine you have some means of putting it out of action.”
“The Delphine’s Revenge is equipped with a pair of modified self-powered recoil-operated Maxim guns, firing point-four-five-inch rounds at a rate of six hundred a minute. Simply put, I intend to disable de Villegrand’s locomotive by blasting away at it until it cannot go on. And,” he added, picking up his helmet and fastening it on his head, “it is not ‘Mr Tilling’ any more – it is Baron Cauchemar.”
“Very well,” said Holmes, rapping his knuckles on that metal cranium, which still bore the dent from one of de Villegrand’s bullets. “Then aim true, my good man.”
The Delphine’s Revenge levelled out. Cauchemar brought us in right at the rear of the Duc En Fer. He flicked a couple of switches, and the stocky barrels of the Maxim guns eased out in front of the viewing portals. A lens with crosshairs descended from the ceiling on the end of a telescopic arm. Cauchemar put his helmet’s demonic face to it, sighting on the train. We were close enough now that I could just make out a pair of figures in the cab of the locomotive: one at the throttle, driving; the other shovelling coal for all he was worth. Both were silhouetted against the glare of flames from the open firebox flap, so that their faces were lost in shadow, but I nonetheless recognised them by their physiques and profiles. They were Torrance’s associates from the Stepney graveyard, Gedge and Kaylock.
The absence of de Villegrand and Torrance on the locomotive gave me pause. If they were not immediately visible, then where were they?
I was about to give voice to my puzzlement when it happened.
The covered carriage opened up, roof and sides drawing back like the mouth of a snake when baring its fangs. Hinged metal plate folded against hinged metal plate, concertina-fashion.
“Oh,” said Cauchemar. “That’s new.”
In the space of a few seconds, we were no longer looking at a freight wagon. Rather, it had become a flatbed truck on which was mounted one of the largest pieces of field artillery I had ever seen. The retracted plates which had been concealing this now formed a housing, within which two men, a loader and a gunner, stood alongside a stack of shells.
Torrance and de Villegrand.
The artillery piece’s barrel angled upwards until it was pointing straight at the Delphine’s Revenge. The three of us in the gondola stared into the rifled aperture as though into some pitiless Cyclopean eye.
De Villegrand had the nerve to offer us a wave – bidding us adieu, I’ll be bound.
Then he yanked the lanyard and the big gun fired.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A WHALE HARPOONED
“Brace yourselves!” Cauchemar cried, and he thrust the steering column to the side as far as it would go. The airship canted steeply to starboard -
- an immense ripping sound -
- a rumble as of thunder -
- a terrible splintering and shuddering -
- and then the Delphine’s Revenge was spiralling helplessly through space, like some airborne whirligig. Holmes and I were tossed about inside the gondola, battering ourselves on hard surfaces and bruising each other with our elbows and knees. The world through the viewing portals was a smear of green and grey, land and sky careening madly around us.
Cauchemar fought to regain control of the aircraft. He steered against the rotation of our spin, directing the rudders and elevators to counteract it and powering up the propellers to apply a braking force. With much shaking and straining, the Delphine’s Revenge gradually stabilised. He brought us about to face the Duc En Fer again.
“A glancing blow,” he said. “She’s still airworthy.”
“Not for much longer if you don’t take evasive action.” Holmes pointed. “Look. De Villegrand is busy finding our current range.”
The artillery piece was revolving. Torrance hoisted a fresh shell, one-handed, into the breech. De Villegrand cranked the barrel higher, taking aim.
Cauchemar raised the airship’s nose sharply. I heard the shell launch and come screaming towards us. I felt a huge pressure bearing down on me as our pilot throttled up and we shot skywards. There was no impact this time. The shell passed harmlessly below us.
“Enough of the ducking and scurrying,” Cauchemar said. “Now we take the offensive.”
The Delphine’s Revenge switched from climb to dive in a single lurching manoeuvre, twisting and plummeting at once. My stomach ended up somewhere near my mouth. For a few disagreeable seconds I felt all but weightless.
Cauchemar lined up the Maxim guns on the artillery piece and opened fire. Parallel jets of bullets raked the flatbed truck, the wheels, the big gun itself, and the housing within which de Villegrand and Torrance sheltered. The two men were safe behind several thicknesses of metal plate. As for the artillery piece, it was of sturdy construction. The bullets bounced off, ricocheting in al
l directions, leaving dents and scratches but inflicting no serious damage.
“Damn it, I need to get closer,” said Cauchemar.
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Holmes said, but the enquiry fell on deaf ears. Cauchemar seemed to have forgotten about his passengers. He was focused exclusively on de Villegrand.
“First I shall cripple your gun, Thibault,” he said. “Then you.” His amplified voice sounded eerily uninflected and detached, as though once he had his full armour on he ceased to be wholly human.
The Delphine’s Revenge zeroed in on the speeding train. Cauchemar swerved right and left in order to throw off the vicomte’s aim. The nearer we got to the big gun, however, the larger a target we presented.
He let loose with the Maxims again, strafing the truck from end to end. De Villegrand, with something like nonchalance, continued adjusting the artillery piece’s direction and elevation. All at once a third shell was sailing our way, and this one hit dead-on.
I don’t think I shall ever hear a noise as heart-stopping and stomach-turning as the sound of that projectile tearing through the balloon envelope of the Delphine’s Revenge. I picture it like a harpoon penetrating the blubbery hide of a whale. The rending of sailcloth and steel strut was akin to a scream of pain.
The entire airship recoiled, like a man when punched. Rivets popped from the gondola’s seams. A reinforcing brace by my shoulder buckled.
“She’s fine,” Cauchemar maintained, but the Delphine’s Revenge was not fine. Even a novice aeronaut like me could tell that. Cauchemar struggled with the controls, but for all his valiant efforts with the throttle and steering column he was getting little in the way of a result. We were aloft but adrift. I could feel the airship sagging, losing altitude.
“Set us down,” Holmes urged. “It’s the only way.”
“No,” said Cauchemar. “No, I can regain mastery...”
“You cannot! Don’t be an idiot, man. The vessel is doomed. Find somewhere to land safely while you can, before the option is taken out of your hands and we crash.”
Cauchemar relented, accepting the sense of Holmes’s argument. “But if we just put down any old where, we will lose de Villegrand. We will never be able to catch up with him again in time. The Queen is as good as dead.”
“What if we bail out onto the Duc En Fer?” Even as the words passed my lips, I could scarcely believe I was uttering them. Was I mad?
The avid glint in Holmes’s eye told me that I was, but that he himself had run through all the possible scenarios and the one I had hit on was the only viable solution to our dilemma.
“Cauchemar,” he said, “do you still have sufficient command of this thing that you can pilot us over the train and we can climb out?”
“Probably not,” came the reply. Cauchemar consulted the dials and meters in front of him. “The envelope is compromised. Helium is escaping. The balloon is deflating rapidly. We have a couple of minutes’ buoyancy left, if that. Once it’s gone, I might as well be flying Westminster Cathedral. But,” he said with bright resolve, “I shall do my damnedest, Mr Holmes. For England’s sake.”
He addressed himself to the controls once more. I heard him talking in a faint voice, murmuring to the stricken airship as though it were a sentient thing. “Come on. I built you well. Stay alive just a little longer. You can do that for me, I know you can.”
The Delphine’s Revenge sluggishly responded to his manual ministrations, if not to his verbal cajoling. He managed to eke out enough speed from the airship to match that of the Duc En Fer. In moments, we had drawn alongside the locomotive, and then we were directly above it, and though I feared another salvo from de Villegrand’s artillery piece, it turned out that being in such immediate proximity to him was our salvation.
“He doesn’t dare take a shot at us,” said Holmes. “We’re so low that hitting us means we might come down on top of him. Point-blank, and his gun is useless. Ha!”
“But I can’t hold us in position for long,” Cauchemar warned. As if to underscore his statement, the Delphine’s Revenge jerked violently sideways. He counter-steered and succeeded in bringing us back to where we had just been. “So I would abandon ship now if I were you.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I was already turning the locking wheel on the hatch in the gondola’s belly. No sooner did I have it open than I tipped the rolled-up rope ladder out. It unfurled, lashing and flailing.
“What about you?” Holmes said to Cauchemar.
“I have to play pilot. If I don’t keep the Delphine’s Revenge steady and on course, you and Dr Watson don’t stand a chance.”
“How will you follow us out, then?”
“I shall find a way. I’m armoured, after all. I can survive what you could not. Now stop nannying me and go!”
I must say I didn’t fancy essaying that ladder, so I was glad that Holmes seized the initiative and clambered down first. His body weight did much to quell its midair whipping and twisting. When I added mine, the ladder became more or less rigid.
Nonetheless we were barrelling along at something in the region of eighty miles an hour. Sheer speed drove the ladder back at an acute angle, and the hurricane-like force of motion did its best to blow Holmes and me off our perches. Every handhold and foothold had to be established with the utmost care. Our descent was as precarious as it was painstaking.
And all in order to climb atop a locomotive travelling at full pelt! I have surely performed crazier daredevil stunts in my time, but if so, I am hard pressed to think of one.
Then, to add to our woes, shots rang out. Torrance had hoisted himself on top of the artillery piece’s housing and was firing a revolver at Holmes and myself. We would have been the proverbial sitting ducks but, fortunately, the rope ladder was still swaying to and fro somewhat, and the flatbed truck was juddering along the rails, and the two things conspired to foil Torrance’s aim. His bullets whined past us but, thank God, all missed.
Holmes alighted on the Duc En Fer’s sand dome and grabbed hold of one of the valve rods that ran along its upper surface, securing himself.
I spidered my way down the last few rungs, ready to join him. It was a drop of a yard or so onto the locomotive. Before taking the plunge, I paused to glance up at the Delphine’s Revenge.
No longer was it a sleek leviathan of the skies. The punctured envelope was puckered and sagging. There was a tattered hole where the shell had entered, with spars of twisted steel projecting outward like broken ribs. One propeller was almost entirely gone, its blades sheared off by de Villegrand’s first shot. The whole aircraft looked as though it was about to collapse at any moment, imploding in on itself. Cauchemar’s creation was in its death throes, yet still it forged dauntlessly on, nursed and spurred by its pilot.
I should not have hesitated, for as I watched, the Delphine’s Revenge shuddered horribly and its envelope suffered a sudden, catastrophic loss of integrity. It had had enough and could take no more. The balloon crumpled, as though a gigantic unseen hand were crushing it, and the gondola became just so much dead weight, with only momentum keeping it in the air.
The shock transmitted itself along the rope ladder, which seemed to convulse under me. I lost my grip.
Then I was falling, and all I could think, as I fell, was that this was a deuced stupid way to die, but at least it would be quick and I probably would not feel a thing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
HUMAN JETSAM
What I did feel, in the event, was a hand clamping about my wrist, a set of fingers digging into my flesh with considerable wiry strength.
Then I swung and slammed chest-first against the locomotive’s flank. The wind was knocked out of me.
“Watson!” cried Holmes. “I have you, but I cannot hold you for long.”
I dangled there, suspended from Holmes’s grasp, heaving for breath. The Duc En Fer’s pistons pounded back and forth beside my shins, like the arms of some mighty metal boxer. The cinder path raced by below, mere inches from
my toecaps.
“Watson!” Holmes yelled, louder than before. “If you do not help me, I will drop you. For God’s sake, focus, man!”
A bullet zinged past my ear, so close that I swear I felt the shockwave of its passage.
Nothing galvanises a fellow quite like having his brains nearly blown out. I reached for the valve rod, which was just within my grasp, and by dint of my own efforts and Holmes’s, I managed to scramble onto the boiler’s summit. I knelt, breathless, the hammering of my heart louder than the clatter of wheels on rails.
“Thought you were a goner there, old chap,” said Holmes.
“So did I,” I gasped.
“Now, you get your breath back. I’ve an appointment with a train driver about an emergency stop.”
He set off in the direction of the cab, crouching low, arms outstretched against the locomotive’s rackety sway. Torrance, meanwhile, was squatting on the coal tender. He was reloading his revolver, a tricky business if you have only one arm. He gripped the gun between his knees, using them like a vice while he fed bullets into the cylinder one after another.
I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. I drew my revolver and cocked the hammer.
At that moment, the Delphine’s Revenge emitted one last dire groan overhead and came crashing down.
It landed, whether by luck or calculation on Cauchemar’s part, atop the artillery piece. Airship and gun became entangled with an ear-shredding shriek of metal twisting against metal. Under the sudden imposition of additional weight, the entire train shook tumultuously. I feared a derailment was about to occur and every one of us was about to meet a horrible, mangled demise. I clung on for dear life, as did Holmes.
The screeching and rending continued. The gondola’s aft end was impaled on the gun barrel. The other end swung out and down, until the hull of the thing was dragging on the ground. We were travelling along a raised section of track that cut through farmland, and the gondola ploughed the earth of the embankment, kicking up great churning waves of sod and soil. The deflated balloon was coming to pieces at the same time, individual ballonets bursting and ripping. The Delphine’s Revenge was being dismantled before my very eyes, shaken to pieces, flayed. Bits of it went sailing off down the track and bounding across the fields.
Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares Page 23
