That actually made sense. ‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And don't call me “Sir”,’ he added, still peering down the corridor, his back to me. ‘If somebody catches you doing it, we will be under immediate suspicion. We wear uniforms of the same rank.’
A grin spread across my face. ‘Do we, now?’
‘Mr Linton?’
‘Yes, Si-um, I mean, yes, mate?’
‘I can feel your smile. Dispose of it immediately.’
‘Yes, mate!’
‘And don't call me mate. Only drunken sailors do that.’
‘Yes, Si-ma- um… thingy.’
‘Mr Linton?’
‘Yes?’
‘Be silent! I am trying to listen.’
I decided against giving an answer. I had run out of forms of address in any case, and I was just as interested as he to hear what was going on up ahead. Straining my ears, I tried to catch the voices he had mentioned. There was something… Not voices, only indistinct noises. A clang of metal here, a dull thump there, that was it.
Then it came: a low shout, just before the next thump. Again a shout, a bit like a command, but not really, and then another thump.
‘What do you suppose it means?’ I whispered.
His hand jerked up.
Blast! I had forgotten: no whispering. Quickly, I continued in a more normal tone of voice: ‘That doesn't sound like an office, does it?’
He shook his head.
‘Well? What is it?’
‘I am reluctant to venture a guess with only audible data at my disposal, Mr Linton. But it sounds very much like a dock. Like a ship being loaded.’
‘But… we’re still a long way away from the docks, aren’t we?’
‘Yes.’
Without any further explanation, he started forward again.
Yes? That’s all you’re going to say?
Cursing inwardly, I hurried after him. He still marched along the corridor as if the whole place belonged to him, as if he had a right to be here that nobody could dispute. I did my best to imitate him, but probably didn’t quite succeed. Slowly, the noises up ahead grew louder, the voices clearer. It was clear now that things were being loaded. I could hear the recurring thumps of the load as it was let down from high above, and the squeak of what I supposed were pulleys and cranes.
The shouted commands made it certain:
‘Two yards to the left!’
‘Down! Now!’
‘A bit to the right!’
‘You’ve got it! Gently now, gently. This stuff is valuable!’
I could see light up ahead. Suddenly, the corridor opened in front of us into a wide hall. I wanted to duck back, but Mr Ambrose hissed at me out of the corner of his mouth: ‘Don’t you dare! They have already seen us!’
And he was right. The eyes of several soldiers who were standing on a gallery that lead all around the room were on us. They were out of hearing range, but they could see our every move.
‘Oh my God!’ I breathed. ‘What now?’
‘Do as I do,’ he hissed. ‘Exactly as I do, on the other side. Now!’
And he took a few steps to the right, until he stood at the left end of the corridor, and assumed an erect position, his arms clasped behind his back, his legs clamped together. Having no idea why, I did the same, and felt pretty silly about it.
After a few moments, the soldiers on the gallery seemed to lose interest in us. Their eyes wandered on to more important things, like the crates full of dried cod that were piled on top of one another in a corner of the hall.
I stared at them, fixedly, waiting for the ‘Seize them!’ or ‘Shoot!’. But no such command came.
‘What is the matter?’ I asked out of the corner of my mouth. ‘Why aren’t they suspicious? Why aren’t they even looking at us anymore?’
‘Because we are acting as soldiers are supposed to act,’ Mr Ambrose replied. I had no idea how, but he managed to speak without actually moving his lips. ‘We are standing guard.’
‘Standing guard? Over what?’
‘The entrance to this corridor, of course.’
‘What would anyone want to guard it for? It’s just a corridor!’
‘Soldiers aren’t trained to think about why they do things, Mr Linton. If they were, nobody would ever get an army together. Now be silent!’
Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at his face. It was as cool and still as a block of ice. How could he do it? Inside me, fear, excitement and stress were writhing like a wounded snake. He didn’t show the least emotion. But then, he never did.
Oh yes, he sometimes does - in your imagination he does a lot of things…
Behind my back, I clenched my hands together. No! I couldn’t follow that train of thought, not now, not here of all places. Quickly, I let my eye wander through the hall to find something to distract me.
There was certainly enough to see.
At first, the red coats of the soldiers, flaring up like signs of danger, had distracted me from the rest. But now that they seemed to have lost interest in us entirely, I took in the rest of the giant room.
‘Room’ probably was not a big enough word. It was a cavern, a man-made cavern, almost as big as the entrance hall of Empire House. I could see that Mr Ambrose and his nemesis had the same penchant for giant proportions. Yet where in Mr Ambrose’s hall there had been a monument of cold barrenness, although it was the entrance to his headquarters, this hall in a simple East End outpost of the East India Company was flaming with sumptuous colour.
The walls were dark, red brick, interspersed with wooden beams painted red and white. Up above, the beams arched to support a flat ceiling. Torches hung from the wooden supports, plunging the whole scene into sinister shades of dark gold and orange. In the flickering torchlight, the glinting barrels of the soldiers' guns looked like the torture instruments of Satan’s disciples in hell.
Shadows flickered over the ceiling and the gallery that surrounded the room. Shadows also moved with the soldiers who were marching along the gallery, watching the scene below. And shadows were thrown by the gigantic contraptions that filled the centre of the hall.
I hadn’t been wrong. There were pulleys, cranes, ropes and even lorries in abundance. They formed a labyrinth through which hundreds of workers scuttled like ants over an anthill, carrying, fetching, shouting. If all things around them left bizarre shadow-paintings on the wall in the flickering torchlight, they themselves painted entire ghastly frescos in black and dark orange. The cranes were the arms of giant black octopi, and the ropes on the pulleys were snakes, waiting to strike and bite.
Under the ghastly play of shadows, on each of the four walls of the hall, hung a gigantic tapestry displaying a coat of arms: two roaring lions on either side of a shield showing a red cross on white ground. Although I had never seen this particular crest before, and the shadowy monsters on the wall made it hard to see, I had no trouble guessing what it was.
We were in Lord Dalgliesh’s lair. There was only one thing it could be: the official coat of arms of the Honourable East India Company.
Under the farthest of the tapestries, the one directly opposite me, the entrance to a tunnel gaped like an open maul. Tracks ran down into the tunnel, disappearing out of sight to God only knew where.
One thing was for sure: This was no mere warehouse or office building.
Slowly, I raised my eyes again to the towering golden lions above the entrance to the tunnel. Come on, they seemed to say. Dare approach. Dare enter into our forbidden realm. We will tear you to shreds before you’ve taken one step.
Nonsense! Taking a deep breath, I straightened and tried to look unconcerned.
Get a grip, Lilly! Those lions are just pieces of printed cloth. Do you want Mr Ambrose to think you’re scared of giant coloured bed sheets on a wall?
No. I did not want that. Particularly after the incident with the wooden dragon.
I glared at the lions, meeting their bold, glittering gaze head-on. My eyes fell on a blue band that wound like a snake under the lions' paws. There were letters on it. Yet even though they were printed in bright gold, in the semi-darkness of the hall they were nearly impossible to make out. Was this English? No, it looked more like a foreign language…