The Death Collector

Chapter 22

Light smeared painfully over Liz’s eyelids and she blinked. The first thing she saw was the scar. A single image, stamped across her retina — the scar running down Blade’s face directly in front of her.

‘She’s awake, Mr Lorimore.’ Blade grinned at Liz before moving away.

The second thing she saw, as her eyes refocused, was Sir William Protheroe sitting in the chair beside her, one of Lorimore’s thugs close behind him.

‘I trust you slept well,’ Lorimore said in his shrill almost birdlike voice. ‘At least you were spared the indignity of being brought here kicking and screaming like Sir William.’

Liz’s head felt as if it was about to split open, and when she blinked residual images of lightning flashed behind her eyes. But slowly she was able to look round and observe her surroundings.

She and Sir William were sitting on upright chairs at the back of a large laboratory. The three outside walls were dominated by large windows, and Liz could see the fog pressing in from the outside, and the hint of stars. The moon was just visible within the fog as it shone down through a vast, domed glass ceiling. Behind her, when she turned to look, Liz found another of Lorimore’s henchmen standing guard. Clearly Lorimore was taking no chances this time. Beyond her guard, Liz could see double doors that gave into the main drawing room of the house.

But this laboratory was clearly where Lorimore conducted his grotesque work. A large wooden workbench, similar to the one Sir William had used, dominated the space in front of them. Spread across it was all manner of equipment and specimens. Bones, fossils, large jars of murky liquid that contained things that Liz would rather not look at.

Lorimore was at the workbench, Blade assisting him as he pieced together more apparatus. Wires and cables were joined into a metal bowl. In the other direction they trailed across the workbench, down to the floor, to a huge iron tank standing at the side of the room.

Sir William was also watching with interest. He glanced at Liz, and saw where she was looking. ‘A battery, I believe,’ he said quietly. ‘A means of attaching electrical power to that metal bowl, in which I imagine he intends eventually to place the egg.’ He clicked his tongue as if about to admonish a dim student on his slow progress, and quickly explained the significance of Eddie’s stone. ‘How are you feeling, by the way?’ he asked when he had finished.

‘Apart from a headache, not too bad,’ she said, making light of how she really felt. ‘What about you?’

‘I feel rather stupid to have got myself — and you — into this,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I have no complaints.’

‘I should think not,’ Lorimore said from the other side of the workbench. As he spoke, heavy clouds drifted across the moon, throwing his face into sudden shadow. ‘I am hoping that we are in for a storm,’ Lorimore went on, looking up. Somewhere in the distance was a rumble of thunder. Or possibly the roar of the monster Liz guessed was roaming the grounds outside to keep out any locals who slipped past the guard at the gate.

Whichever it was, it pleased Lorimore. ‘Excellent.’ He turned to Blade. ‘Exactly as forecast. Which will save us worrying whether the battery power is sufficient for reanimation. Put up the lightning conductors, will you? I think we can afford to wait a little while for the storm to break.’

‘Of course, sir.’ Blade spared Liz and Sir William a scowl as he strode past them and into the house.

‘You propose to reanimate the egg?’ Sir William said. ‘With electrical energy, is that correct?’

‘Absolutely correct.’ Lorimore paused in his work and walked round the workbench, coming over to them. ‘You are a very clever man, Sir William. Such a shame your intelligence has been so wasted up until now. But at least you will be a witness to this historic moment.’

Sir William snorted with apparent amusement. ‘You really think this mad scheme of yours will work then?’

The change in Lorimore was abrupt and frightening. His face paled, even in the dim light, and his eyes flared with anger. ‘Of course it will work. I have calculated everything down to the last detail. My foundries are already hard at work. You can’t stop me now. No one can stop me now. All I needed was Glick’s discovery. Now I have that — I have the power to create life. And I intend to exercise that power.’

Liz had no doubt that Lorimore believed he could do it. ‘How long?’ she asked, her voice shaking. ‘How long before this happens?’

‘Once Blade has put out the lightning conductors, and I have completed the circuitry. An hour perhaps.’

‘And what if there is no storm, no lightning?’

Lorimore smiled again, anticipating the moment. ‘Then we shall manage without. The battery will be sufficient, though it may take longer to build to a useful level. A sudden jolt of high power would be a far more effective and rapid way to reverse the process of fossilisation and infuse life into the egg.’

‘And then what?’ Sir William demanded. ‘Once you have a living egg, what will you do?’

Lorimore strode back to the workbench. ‘Why, let it hatch of course,’ he told them. ‘And use the creature that emerges. No need for the intricate, time-consuming surgical replacement then. With the techniques I have pioneered on our friend Albert Wilkes, I can adapt it, control it, be its god. And unlike Wilkes, it will not rot and decay. It will be alive — the first of a new race that will combine animal and mechanical. Dinosaur and steam power. The start of a new world.’

Liz turned slowly towards Sir William, conscious of the two men standing silently behind them. ‘He’s mad, isn’t he?’ she said.

Sir William’s answer was matter-of-fact, as if he was discussing some trivial matter of politics in his club. ‘Oh yes, my dear. Utterly mad. And very dangerous.’

They worked for what seemed like hours. George’s first thought had been to go to the police. But Eddie had persuaded him that this would not be the best course of action.

‘They’ll think we’re barmy’ he said. ‘They won’t believe a word of it. They might listen to Sir William, but he ain’t here.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ George admitted. After all, he himself scarcely believed the events of the last few days, and he knew them to be true. Setting their improbable story against the reputation of an establishment figure like Augustus Lorimore, and Eddie was right — the police would be no help.

Which meant they were on their own. ‘What can we do?’ George wondered out loud. He looked round the laboratory — the floor strewn with debris, the workbench lying on its side, the door a tangled, splintered mess. He did not think they wanted to be there when the first Museum staff began to arrive in a few hours.

‘We’ve got to rescue Liz and Sir William,’ Eddie told him.

‘That won’t be easy. And we also have to get back your stone.’

‘The dinosaur egg. And we have to stop Lorimore.’ Eddie was picking through some of the broken apparatus lying on the floor. ‘There must be something here that can help. Something we can use to fool Lorimore, or distract him or something.’

George could see nothing. He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and sighed. Then he smiled, feeling the cold hard metal in his pocket. The glimmerings of a plan were beginning to shine deep inside his mind. ‘There may be something,’ he said. ‘Something we can adapt. But not here, come with me.’

‘Where are we going?’ Eddie wanted to know as he hurried after George down the passageway, and up the main stairs.

‘I’m going to show you where I work,’ George said. Blade had returned from deploying the lightning conductors and was now up a ladder, connecting cables to metal brackets set into the ceiling of the laboratory.

Sir William had earlier got to his feet, smiled affably at the man standing guard over him, and tried to stretch some life back into his tired limbs.

Lorimore glanced up from his intense work. ‘I do apologise for the delay,’ he said. ‘But everything must be exact, as I am sure you of all people will appreciate. By all means feel free to look round. I have some fascinating automata and specimens in my collection. You may go into the drawing room, but no further.’ He paused, before adding for the benefit of the two guards: ‘Miss Oldfield may go with him. If either of them touch anything or attempt to escape, kill them both.’

It was said in such a straightforward tone of voice that it took a moment for Liz to register what he had said. She swallowed, her throat dry with fear.

‘Shall we?’ Sir William suggested.

‘I suppose we might as well.’

They left Blade up his ladder, reaching for the glass roof and the metal sockets set into the supporting braces. Cables trailed down to the metal bowl on the workbench below.

‘We have to do something. Escape or anything,’ Liz whispered to Sir William once they were in the drawing room. The two guards with them could probably hear her, but she didn’t care. Without specific instructions she hoped they would do nothing.

But Sir William ignored her too. He was peering in fascination at one of the automata — a train that was fixed to a loop of track running under a mountain. ‘I imagine that once wound, the train runs round the track, and the mountain is somehow made to smoke in sympathy. Like a small volcano.’ He smiled at Liz. ‘It really is very clever and intricate.’

Liz sighed, not at all interested. ‘But what are we going to do?’

Sir William shrugged. ‘As things stand at the moment, my dear, I don’t think there is anything very much that we can do. Except wait.’

‘For what?’ she demanded in exasperation.

‘For help. Though I must confess I have no idea whether it will come, or if it does what form it will take.’

From out in the hallway came the sound of a bell ringing insistently. It seemed somehow out of place in the still of the house.

‘Who can that be at this hour?’ Lorimore’s voice demanded from the laboratory behind them. ‘It’s not yet six in the morning. Blade, see who it is.’

‘Sir.’

Blade barely glanced at them as he strode past on his way to answer the door.

‘Help?’ Liz suggested quietly. She hardly dared hope.

‘Who knows?’ Sir William whispered back.

They did not have to wait long to find out. Blade returned within a minute, carrying a wooden box the size of a small suitcase. Liz and Sir William exchanged glances and followed the man back into the laboratory, where he set the box down on the workbench in front of Lorimore.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know sir. The boy said he had strict instructions to deliver it here as soon as possible. That he had been told Mr Lorimore would want to see it straight away.’

‘Boy? What boy?’ Lorimore asked suspiciously.

‘Just a delivery boy. Barely more than an urchin by the look of him. He didn’t wait — in a hurry to get home.’

Lorimore considered this. ‘I wonder.’ He glanced at Liz and Sir William. ‘But what can they do?’ he murmured. His fingers tapped against the top of the workbench like the legs of a spider. ‘And we can do nothing either, not until the power builds to a precipitate level. So, open it, Blade,’ he ordered, nodding at the box. ‘But, be careful.’

Liz and Sir William watched curiously from the back of the room as Blade took out his knife and levered the lid off the wooden box. Nails squealed in protest as the lid tore free. Blade pushed his hand under it and ripped it away, dropping it to the floor. Frowning, he reached inside the box and carefully lifted out the contents.

Lorimore had come round the workbench to see what it was, blocking Liz’s view. Whatever Blade was holding was obviously large and heavy. Lorimore swept the empty box off the workbench and gestured for Blade to set down the object.

‘No packing slip, sir,’ Blade said. ‘Nothing to say who sent it.’

‘There will no doubt be a letter in the first post this morning, Blade. But let us be cautious, just in case …’ Lorimore’s voice was hushed with awe, his suspicion diluted as he examined the object on the workbench. ‘Look at this. The workmanship, the skill that must have gone into it. Look!’

As he spoke, he stepped aside so that now Liz was afforded a clear view of the object on the table. She heard Sir William’s sharp intake of breath as he too saw it.

It was a model ship, exquisitely made from wood and metal and about a foot long. Without realising it, Liz had walked with Sir William across the laboratory and joined Lorimore and Blade as they stared down at the impressive craftsmanship.

‘Magnificent,’ Sir William said.

Lorimore looked up at him, with the trace of a smile. ‘Indeed.’ His eyes were shining with enthusiasm as he gently turned the ship round. ‘And see, here, on this side — it is a clock.’

There was, Liz could now see, a clock dial set into the side of the ship. It was showing the right time so far as she could tell — several minutes to six. She could see the intricately fashioned figures of the captain and his crew going about their business on deck and in the rigging — ticking through the everyday motions as the second hand clicked round. But this was not what surprised and interested her most. Her eyes were fixed on something else and she stared at it as hard as she could, willing Sir William to see what she could see.

Set into the deck was a silver plate where one might expect to see a hatchway down into the hold. The middle of the plate was indented, gently sloping inwards to form a shallow bowl. It was a plate she was sure she had seen before — in the hands of George Archer. But now, resting in the centre of the plate was a small wooden barrel — a powder keg. A tiny fuse was sticking out of one end of it, and a sailor stood beside it, his hands outstretched towards the fuse.

‘I have seen something like this before,’ she said quietly to Sir William, hoping that Lorimore would not pick up on her meaning.

Lorimore ignored her. But Sir William met Liz’s gaze. He was smiling, and nodding. ‘So have I, my dear,’ he replied in the ghost of a whisper, so quiet that only Liz could hear him. ‘So have I.’

Before he could explain further, Sir William gasped. Lorimore looked up at him sharply, but the gasp had become a cough, and Sir William whipped out a large handkerchief and blew his nose noisily.

Lorimore frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Perhaps we should leave our examination of this exquisite but unexpected gift until after we have completed our more pressing tasks.’ He tapped a long finger on his chin. ‘It may be from Lord Chesterton. He sent me Thierry’s monkey only last week …’ He shook his head. ‘No matter. Mr Blade.’

Blade nodded and returned to his work, connecting up the final cables. This done, he moved the ladder to the side of the room, out of the way of the trailing wires. Then he attached the other ends of the wires to a set of three heavy levers attached to the end of the workbench, close to the metal bowl.

But Liz barely noticed. She had glanced at where Sir William had been looking — at one of the enormous windows looking out on to the grounds of the house. Liz could see the fog pushing in against the glass, blurring the lawn beyond as the first light of dawn struggled to illuminate it. And, pressed up close to the window, looking in, were two faces. George Archer and Eddie Hopkins, watching Lorimore as he returned to his business, Blade as he completed his work, and Liz and Sir William as they stood next to the model ship on the workbench.

Liz looked quickly away again. She struggled to make no sound that might betray what she had seen. Lorimore glanced back at her as he worked, and smiled thinly. The slightest reaction from Liz could betray her friends.

But it was hard not to react, not to shout and point and try to warn them as a huge reptilian shape of metal and bone solidified out of the foggy air behind them. An angry roar split the calm of the morning, like an express train speeding past. Steam and oil sprayed across the window, blotting out Eddie and George as they turned in surprise and alarm.

‘Ah my friend,’ Lorimore said without turning. ‘Not long now. When the power builds and I throw these levers to channel it into the egg. To create life itself …’

The glass cleared, and Liz stared at the window, desperately trying to see what was happening outside. But there was only the grey of the fog, the snarl of the creature outside, and her own pale frightened face reflecting back at her.