‘That’s not information I can share with anyone outside the Department of Supplies,’ he replied.
‘Don’t be an ass, James,’ said his brothers.
‘Colonel,’ Colonel Moriarty said, ‘you’re to swear on your honour not to reveal anything you might learn of this machine…’
It was all I could manage not to laugh in his face. I held my hand up as if pledging a solemn oath — which I’m breaking by writing all this down. Dearie me, I’ll be sent to bed without supper.
‘…there’s Lampros, supervising the Greek Fire tests… Major Upshall… we call him the pilot, you might think he’s an engine driver… Berkins — no, wait, you threw him out… two assistant technicians from the Royal Engineers, don’t know their names… a recording clerk, Philip Gould… and Ram Singh, my immediate junior in Supplies.’
‘They’re all almost certainly dead.’
‘That’d be a nuisance.’
The Colonel had the traditional Moriarty reverence for the lives of his fellow men. Not that I’m any different.
‘Except Lampros,’ said the Colonel. ‘He’ll need Lampros.’
‘Your alchemist hasn’t given you his formula, then?’ I asked. ‘He mixes up his own batches of Liquid Inferno, and your stinks profs can’t work out the recipe?’
The Colonel nodded. ‘Bright boy. Preserve a secret since 672 AD and it’s hard to let go. Once you’ve shared, you’re not special any more. Not essential to the program. And if you’re not essential, you’re surplus.
‘We need that formula and we need Lampros,’ the Colonel continued. ‘More than the Kallinikos, it’s what this project is about. The train is a moving platform for the fire weapon. A replaceable prototype.’
‘I’ll remember you said that,’ I said.
The next compartment contained sighting and firing mechanisms for the fire nozzles. I found three dead men, trussed and hanging from the canvas straps. Not a mark on them, but faces twisted enough to indicate their last moments had been unpleasant. These were the two sappers whose names the Colonel hadn’t bothered to learn and the recording clerk, Gould. All wore overalls and rimless caps. Gould had a green eye shade and an inky right hand. Whatever he’d been keeping records in — a logbook or ledger — was missing.
I peered through a periscope-like apparatus, and saw Cornish fields whiz by. Some sort of green-tinted, see-in-the-dark lenses were involved. Fiddling with the thing in the hope of sighting a road sign or landmark, I twisted the wrong knob.
A bright, burning stream arced across the countryside and scattered like twenty gallons of flaming puke. We sped on, so I don’t know if I awoke some rustic by burning the thatch over his head or harmlessly set fire to a pile of rail-side gravel.
Beyond the firing compartment was the currently leading engine. Our shadow man must be at the controls. I had my revolver up, determined to put bullets into soft living flesh rather than dangerous combustibles.
My inadvertent test-firing of the flame cannon must have drawn attention.
The compartment door — a concertinaing, semi-transparent sheet of something chitinous like isinglass — was crinkled aside. A dark silhouette stood in the breach, eyes angry in mask-slits, gun in hand.
I shot first and a ragged red hole opened in his chest. My ears rang from the report. My kill collapsed, in a mess. No, not a kill. I’d plugged a decoy. Tumbling to the mistake, I threw myself to one side.
I heard a puff. A six-inch nail juddered in a bulkhead, a breath away from my ear.
‘Nice bit of kit,’ I said. ‘But only at close-range. For a distance shot, an air rifle can match any gun. But air pistols are one-shot toys.’
The dead man’s gun — empty, I’ll be bound — was fastened skilfully to his hand with twine. His skin was white, so he wasn’t Ram Singh. That made him Upshall. The shadow man had put his clothes on the pilot, but kept the chest armour which had saved him earlier.
I stepped through the door, into the worm’s head.
The ringer hadn’t had time to pump his pistol again. Of course, I’d have come a cropper if he’d had a brace of the things… but he hadn’t. He carried a back-up gun, but that was tied to the late Major Upshall’s hand.
There was a stench in the air, worse even than the foul smell elsewhere on the Kallinikos. A dead body lay across the floor, face smashed into a contraption of glass tubes, tanks and copper wires. Acid was eating through his head. So much for Ram Singh of Supplies.
In command of the train was the fake Finglemore, the fake fake Carnacki. The shadow man now showed another face. Beaky nose, high brow, hawk eyes. He could have been anyone. He wore Upshall’s overalls.
He had one hand on what I took to be the throttle of the Kallinikos, and the other about the throat of a stocky, olive-skinned gent. This could only be George Lampros: Keeper of the Flame, Greek patriot, political naïf, valuable item.
‘Stay back, Colonel Moran, or I’ll kill him.’
His fingers squeezed the Greek’s plump neck, thumb working up around the ear for a snapping grip.
‘Let me take care of that for you,’ I said, and shot Lampros in the face.
VIII
I’d just killed the only man in the world who knew the secret of Greek Fire. We’d have to make do with all the other ways of setting light to each other’s houses. I recommend a bucket of coal oil poured through the letterbox, some rags shoved in afterwards to soak it up a bit and a slow taper to give you time to be somewhere else when the blaze catches. No doubt a new, even-more-devastating method of burning half the world would come along in a minute.
The shadow man was surprised, though. Hawk eyes a-goggle. I had a warm thrill — as if I’d lost every hand for an afternoon and evening, but a single turn of the cards had put me back in chips.
I took aim, again. It would have to be another head shot, since he still had armour under his overalls.
Forestalling his execution, he chucked Lampros at me.
He had a caber-tosser’s strength. The heavy Greek landed on me like a sack of melons. A lot of blood from the grapefruit-sized hole in his face got in my eyes.
The ringer wrenched the throttle-handle loose and stood over me with the broken-off iron bar raised like a club. I tried my best to shift the dead Greek so I could kick the spy master in the shins. He brought the handle down, but I got Lampros’ head in the way.
He didn’t try that again, but turned his club to the controls of the Kallinikos. He battered a brass panel, smashing dials and knocking off switches. Sparks cascaded from a broken meter. Then he grabbed a canvas strap, pulled himself up like an acrobat and disappeared through a hole in the roof.
I freed myself from the corpse and assessed the controls. Even if they hadn’t been ruined, I wouldn’t know how to toot the whistle let alone throw the brakes. On recent experience, I’d be likely to yank the wrong chain and blast us all to flinders.
I peered through the green-tinted, eye-shaped portholes which studded the worm’s head. The Kallinikos was making express time. It was also tipping from side to side alarmingly. I had doubts it was up to anything but a straight stretch. Lighter, and more flexible, than an ordinary train — those scale-like armour plates rattling against each other — it might come off the rails at any moment.
I went back to share the news with the Moriarty brothers and found them bickering. It might have all gone back to the unsettled matter of who scoffed the last picnic pastry on that outing to the Great Exhibition for all I knew.
‘James, James, James,’ I shouted. ‘Everyone on the crew is dead. The ringer’s on the roof. He wrecked the controls; I assume he took the brakes. The train’s going to crash.’