He felt a clinging, clawing feeling in his chest, and his skin began to prickle, and his head felt fuzzy-dizzy as a midnight drunk, as if he might faint. What if I were to faint here? Wake up with five beasties chomping away at my flesh?
“Let me the hell outta here!” he shouted now, running back toward the door and the guard, not caring if the museum man called him a coward or not.
Behan found himself rushing, tripping headlong down the shaft the way he’d come. The odor of sewage, earth, and mold still dizzying, filling his nostrils and brain, Behan fell headfirst into the light the other side of the door.
“Are you all right?” asked his guide, helping him to his feet.
“I…I must have a condition.”
“Yes, and you left the lamp down in there. Shall I fetch it, Inspector?”
“You do that. I’m going for men and dogs.”
“Whatever did you see, sir?”
“I…I’m not sure but there was movement, and I heard strange noises. Someone is down in there and it could be-”
“Not Leather Apron? Really?”
“We need a thorough search with a lot more men.”
“Aye…if that is the rascal that you fellows are after, I agree one hundred percent.”
“What about the lantern?” asked Behan, indicating the light some forty or so yards in.
“It’s not my lantern,” said the guard.
“Shut it up and lock the door, then,” replied Behan, getting to his feet and going for the stairwell, shaken and wondering how his best friend, Logan, might be faring about now, and wondering too about Alastair Ransom’s progress.
Alastair also heard the strange noise that Behan hadn’t been able to decipher. Neither man could know it’d been the death throes of Jedidiah Logan, but Ransom’s instincts were sharp enough to insist that he douse his light when he’d heard the bizarre sounds that had lazily wafted down the corridor toward him. He doused the light by dropping the door that acted as a gauge, allowing air into the glass and metal casing of the handheld lantern, a Chicago Police issue and regardless of its clumsiness, a wonderful improvement on earlier cop lights.
Now Alastair stood in near absolute darkness, but somewhere in the distance ahead of him, he saw some small light source. He imagined it one of the vents mentioned by the guard. How long ago had he had that conversation? A few minutes before? It felt like a week.
He checked his pocket watch to note how much time had elapsed, but even before popping the cover, he realized he’d not be able to read it in this blackness. So he moved on toward the light source ahead.
Ransom felt his way along, hand over hand, following the earthen walls that’d been cut out by men and machines. As a result, his hands became dirty and cold, but there was no help for it-except his cane. He began using his cane to tap his way along the side wall. Between his cane and the lantern, which he most certainly would need coming back, he realized his hands were literally full. If he must pull his gun at any time, he’d have to drop either the cane or the lantern, and he loved his cane.
These thoughts filled his mind as he continued down the now too quiet passage. If there were rats down here, why hadn’t he heard rodent sounds? Not so much as a rodent peep-only that odd, all-too-human cry he’d earlier heard. He’d also heard muffled laughter and shouting that seemed to be filtering in from above at the fair, crowded to capacity.
The absence of a large rat population meant one of three things. The guard had exaggerated? The rats had run ahead of Ransom? Or had the rats run ahead of others lurking here?
Perhaps the most deadly animal scurrying about here was man and woman, and children born of them.
Another hundred yards and he found the source of weak light. Indeed a vent built into the wall on lakeside. He peered out through the mechanism to see only grim darkness outside, roiling, angry clouds out over the lake. The vent was a concrete bowl meant to fill up and spill into the tunnel should the lake rise over its banks, and indeed a metal mesh cover had been ripped away by human hands. Pranksters or monsters, he wondered, sizing up the vandalism. Getting out this way, especially with water rushing in, appeared unlikely and at best a difficult battle. He imagined a series of such vents filled to the brim could create a drowning pool where he stood.
A strange noise commanded his attention, and he wheeled, his wolf’s-head cane raised to strike out at a rat scurrying toward him. The creature barely acknowledged him as a threat and moved to the grillwork and climbed out into the world.
“Smart fellow…knows when to walk away,” Alastair said of the rat as his tail disappeared over the lip of the vent. “Perhaps smarter than I.”
Cook County Morgue same time
“Where is he, Christian?” Jane had come to Cook County in a state of terror. She had not seen Alastair the entire day, and she sensed he was in trouble. Her daughter Gabrielle was with Dr. Fenger, the two of them doing an autopsy on an unidentified body found in the river. Fenger was determined to create as complete a description of the unknown victim as possible, regardless of the likelihood of the John Doe going off to Chicago’s potter’s field to be buried at city expense. Christian remained determined to keep Gabby Tewes away from the Leather Apron victims, and to do so, he kept her busy with more run-of-the-mill autopsies such as this.
When Gabby learned that Ransom had come to the hospital earlier in the day to see Christian, she joined Jane in pursuing Dr. Fenger over the matter of Alastair’s whereabouts. It took some hard talk, but eventually Fenger told them of Alastair’s interest in the passageways below the World’s Fair.
“Why would he go there alone? Is he mad?” Jane asked.
“Well, as I understand it, he took Behan and Logan along with him. Besides, it’s just a suspicion that may or may not come to-”
“But why not flood the area with an army of police?”
“Because a bloody army of police are moonlighting these days to control the crowds at the fair!”
“Alastair should have backup,” said Gabby, “and I think I know how to get it.”
Jane turned to her daughter, asking, “What’ve you in mind?”
“A call box near the fair. That is an automatic guarantee of twenty-four men and a wagon.”
“But you need a key to open a call booth,” countered Jane. “Don’t you?”
“Mother, I know people on the force now.” Gabby tore her medical frock away while going for the door.
“But what if Alastair is in no danger, and you call out a squad of cops for no reason?” asked Fenger.
“I am willing to take that chance,” said Jane.
“And pay the fine?” he asked.
“And pay the fine, yes!”
“You might just anger Alastair. I suggest you two give this more thought!” Dr. Fenger shouted as they rushed out of the morgue for the nearest cab. “Damn,” he cursed, tore off his medical frock and rushed out after them.
CHAPTER 19
Alastair pushed on through the black void, determined to gain as many footsteps in this underworld as possible before having to return to his starting point. In the semi-dark near the vent, he’d read his clock, opening it on its chime-the music being “Green Sleeves.” The time read 8:44 p.m. Complete darkness in the storm outside only made the passageway he stood in blacker as he’d continued on.
Silence here proved complete save for the gay sounds of the fair overhead, noises filtering in through the same vents as the light. “Light…sound…OK…water not so good,” he said to himself, trying to dispel the gloom. His own voice seemed the only warmth here, the only tie with a world outside of this place. If these tunnels were built for a purpose, he could not tell; he imagined they must’ve been useful during the winter months of preparation for the fair to move goods, lumber, and materials to work sites.