Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

“For all we know, it’s got too hot for ’em, and so they mighta moved on,” suggested Ken Behan.

“They’re homeless and without resources,” Alastair replied to Ken.

“If they did shove off,” replied Logan, “they did so afoot or by jumping onto a freight car.”

Alastair had passed through marvels of modern technology, exhibits showcasing such amazing inventions as the steam engine and the McCormick Reaper, machines that revolutionized production and agriculture.

The guard who had ushered Ransom to his point of departure was given strict orders that if he did not return to this door within twenty minutes, he was to alert police and organize a search party-ostensibly for Alastair or his dead body. Behan and Logan made the same demand of their guides.

Most definitely, Christian Fenger knew what he’d been talking about. Before Alastair lay a fluctuating chasm of darkness, a tunnel that seemingly led to Hades itself. It was at once in stark contrast to the brightly lit exhibits upstairs and in consort with them, for huge steam-driven machines had created these tunnels. “And you say it goes from here to the Natural History exhibit building?”

“It does, sir.”

Working with the wick, his cane dangling on his forearm, Alastair lit the lantern he’d brought with him. It had a several-hour’s-long wick and reservoir. Immediately on lighting the lamp, the odor of kerosene filled the small space here as light flooded the tunnel ahead of him.

“Nothing like announcing yourself,” he muttered to the museum guard.

“Are you sure you want to make this trek alone, sir?”

“Why?” he asked. “Is there something in there to fear? What do you know of it, man?”

“I’ve not seen anything, no! But I’ve heard noises on occasion, noises I’ve taken for rats.”

“Rats? Why’d it have to be rats. I hate rats, but tell me, how can rats’ve gotten down in here?”

“There are vents, and where there are vents-”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“One purpose of the tunnels is to take runoff as well.”

“Runoff?”

“Water from the lake during bad weather, sir, so that any overflow is run away from the Midway and the pavilions.”

“Aye…so no one at the fair should be inconvenienced. Wouldn’t want anyone getting her Buster Browns wet.”

“It’s a complicated system, but it has to do with the creation of the lagoon.”

“Of course, of course.” Alastair again cursed the fact that the man most knowledgeable in all this was out of the country. He’d even tried to locate the man’s assistant on the project and his foreman, but not too surprising everyone “responsible” for the fair had abandoned the city for some peace.

In a month or two, the fair would be shut down permanently.

“You will be careful, Inspector, as there is a storm brewing overhead,” said the guard when they both heard rumblings of thunder.

“Who mans the gates on the locks controlling the water?” asked Ransom. “I certainly have no desire to drown down here.”

“Actually, sir, no one mans the gates.”

“What do you mean, no one-”

“The marvels of modern technology at work, sir.”

“You mean, they open automatically when the lake rises to a certain level?”

“Aye, sir.”

“I see.” Ransom sighed heavily, turned and started down the tunnel he had chosen, the largest of the three, wondering if Behan and Logan were as well informed as he, and wondering if both or either would balk at this game when faced with the enormity of it all. “Look, those vents, are they large enough for a full-grown man to clamber down into?” he asked the guard where he turned for a final look out into the safe confines of the sub-basement.

“They are indeed, but wire mesh prevents-”

“And are there such vents in all three networks?”

“There are, sir.”

“I see, then there well could be people living down here.”

“If so, their eyes will have adjusted to the lack of light.” The guard indicated the police lamp in Ransom’s hand. “They’ll know you’re approaching well in advance.”

He cut down the intensity of the lamp by controlling the window. “I’ll not stumble about in pitch dark,” he said and ambled down the subterranean corridor with its wet, earthen walls lathered as if sweating, breathing, reflecting the light. Ransom thought it looked like a lot of his nightmares, like he’d stepped into the maw of Hell itself. The floor here added to his disorientation as it was on a gradual incline that increased with each step.

The reflected lamplight off the stone floor glowed copper red and blood orange. Perhaps I am on the path to Hell, he thought.

Not far from Alastair another tunnel wall radiated off in another direction and in it Jedidiah Logan slowly descended. He too had heard the rumblings of an imminent storm out in the world overhead, as it reverberated underground, making him feel as if he were inside a drum or a human heart when his police lamp turned the walls a garish purple-red hue. Silly, he told himself. Steady.

For a long stretch of his search, his light held before him, Logan thought of how little he had upstairs in the world both at the office and at home. He felt an overwhelming loneliness creeping in with the dampness here, and he wondered if he were to die tonight, if anyone in Chicago would care, and further if anyone at all would recall his name or his face.

He’d had poor luck all his life with making friends of a lasting nature, especially with women. Yes, he was married but theirs was a childless marriage and a loveless one at that. He and Molly simply tolerated one another’s existence in the cramped quarters of their small apartment. She took in washing, and he brought home a cop’s salary. Not much to show for a life, he was thinking; then he thought how she’d give him hell if he came home with muck and grime on his pants or coat, and here he was faced with wading in brackish water that looked only deeper ahead. He saw no way around it, if he were to do a thorough job here. Else he could lie to Alastair and tell him he’d done the job, but Ransom was observant; he’d notice if he returned too clean. Molly be damned, he told himself and started into the ankle deep water, black and shiny as oil against his lamplight.

Two steps farther and he could not understand how the water had seeped through his shirt and coat at his abdomen. Out of nowhere came a thick wetness smelling of acrid copper, and it struck him that his stomach was in pain, aching.

His legs still continued ahead, but he felt a sudden faintness. At first, he thought it some sort of annoying stomach problem, but the immediate wetness, like pissing himself on a drunk, struck him as so odd as this was at his abdomen, while the wetness only increased. Trouble like a rupture. He held tight to the lantern like a lifeline with his right hand, while his left investigated the cause of the wetness. His left hand hit the strange hilt of a knife sticking from his gut, and this came as a surprise, like finding something completely out of place. He’d not heard it fly into him; he had not felt it slice through his coat, and a part of his mind refused to believe it’d happened.

It makes no sense, and yet it made all the sense, he thought, not realizing he’d gone to his knees, his legs having buckled.

Still Jedidiah held firm to the lantern. In fact, some mad notion inside his dying brain had his hands tearing at the lantern, ripping apart its metal casing to get at the kerosene screw nut, tear it open and with the flame taking on the fumes and kerosene licking the surface of the water around him, Logan covered himself in fire, choosing his death by fire, refusing to allow the dirty bastard who’d knifed him the pleasure of saying his blade had killed Jedidiah Logan.