The Devil's Workshop

It was true. There was no way forward. The only choices they had were the staircase and the tunnel behind them, and Cinderhouse didn’t want to have to turn back. But he couldn’t bear the thought of descending into the blackness below, with no idea what might wait for them down there. He was about to suggest that they try the tunnel again and keep a sharper eye for branches that might be dug into the walls, but Griffin spoke first.

“Here,” Griffin said, “let me see the lantern for a moment, will you?”

“Why?”

“I think I see something up above. Maybe some other way we might go.”

Cinderhouse handed the lantern over. Griffin took it by its wire handle and turned around. He set it on the floor of the tunnel behind them and turned back to the bald man.

“Why did you—” Cinderhouse began.

Griffin swung a blow at him that the bald man did not see because the lantern was behind Griffin, making him nothing but a vague silhouette in the darkness, a yellow rim around a hole in the black mouth of the tunnel.

Cinderhouse yelled, but he was already turning away, covering his head. He ducked down, a thing he had seen many children do when he had punished them, crouching and covering their heads and necks. He felt the breeze from a second blow pass over him and heard a yelp as Griffin overcompensated. The other man had expected to meet resistance at the end of his fist and had not braced himself properly. The force of his swing pulled his shoulder around and he went forward across the top of Cinderhouse’s cowering body. His left knee hit the bald man’s back and he bent forward, his own weight carrying him over Cinderhouse and down the clay steps in front of them.

There was a great deal of thudding and thumping and yelling, moving away from Cinderhouse and down, and then there was silence again. Cinderhouse opened his eyes and stood. He picked up the lantern and held it out over the top of the steps.

“Griffin?”

There was no answer.

He tried again. “Griffin? Are you all right? Were you hurt just now?”

Again, no answer.

Well, this is a fine thing, the voice in Cinderhouse’s head said. Now you’re alone again.

Will you make up your mind? Cinderhouse thought back at it. First you don’t want him around, now you do.

The voice went quiet and Cinderhouse thought about his choices. They were the same as before, only now Griffin might be waiting to ambush him at the bottom of the steps. Cinderhouse took a step back into the red clay tunnel and stopped. The prospect of traveling back down the entire length of it, completely alone, did not appeal to him one bit. He turned back and looked into the tunnel ahead that led down and down, past the edge of the lantern’s light. He put a foot on the top step and then he put his other foot on the next step and he moved down like that, never resolving to actually go all the way down the entire staircase. But then he was far down it already and there seemed to be no point in turning back, and he had the lantern, which was more than Griffin had. If Griffin was even awake down there. Or alive. And then there were no more steps ahead of him, just hard-packed mud with traces of the red clay from above.

Griffin lay on the floor of this much larger passage, five feet from the bottom of the steps. Cinderhouse could see from his perch on the bottommost step that Griffin was still breathing, but his leg looked strange. When Cinderhouse drew cautiously near the other man, he could see a bit of pink-smeared bone sticking out through the trouser leg of Griffin’s prison uniform. Cinderhouse’s stomach turned over and he almost vomited, but he had eaten nothing since the evening meal at Bridewell and was able to swallow his rising gorge.

Then Griffin opened his eyes. They locked on Cinderhouse’s eyes, and Griffin screamed.

Cinderhouse swung the lantern in a wide arc, saw the mouth of a tunnel beyond Griffin, and ran. He felt Griffin’s fingers grasp for him as he passed, felt them snag the hem of his trousers and then fall away, and Cinderhouse was free. He ran and he ran, and it took some time before he finally heard that voice in the back of his mind giggling.

It sounded like the voice of a small child.

9

Inspector Walter Day scanned the crowd outside the prison entrance, looking for other policemen, and specifically for other members of the Murder Squad. His wagon had broken a wheel and he had run the final half mile to Bridewell, cursing his luck all the way. He spotted Inspectors Tiffany and Blacker near the edge of the gathering and made his way over to them.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said.

Tiffany scowled at him. Jimmy Tiffany wasn’t the most sociable of animals in the best of times, and this clearly didn’t qualify as the best of times. “We’re to start out there”—he pointed to some distant point—“and make our way back to here.” He pointed at his own feet.