Free Beyond Rue Morgue Anthology by Paul Kane Page B

is this being done?”
    Driscoll didn’t seem inclined to dignify that question with an answer, so Flood obliged us instead. “He already told you, you moron. These workings ain’t safe. Twenty men died here.”
    “Twenty men died here,” Dupin agreed, “but not because of the presence or absence of adequate building standards.”
    “And you’d know?”
    “Yes. I would know. They were murdered.”
    Flood’s face went through a series of discrete states, like a slide show. Astonishment, then a sort of ghastly dismay, then anger. “You fuck!” he spluttered. He balled his hand into a fist and drew it back.
    Driscoll caught it in mid-air and held onto it. He moved as quick as a snake, and he didn’t seem to be exerting any particular effort to hold the constable immobile. “I think you should get your friend home, Mr. Nast,” he said mildly. “Otherwise, I’ll have to arrest him for breach of the peace.”
    “Breach of the peace?” The Frenchman glanced at me with an interrogatory expression.
    “Means you’re stirring up a riot,” I translated. “Come on, Mr. Dupin, we’re leaving.”
    “Yeah, you better,” Flood spat. The sergeant gave him his hand back and he glared at us, rubbing his wrist, as I hauled Dupin over to the ladder.
    “I have further questions for the gentleman in charge,” Dupin protested.
    “They’ll have to keep,” I muttered. “Trust me, these two will break your head as soon as look at you.”
    “They are agents and representatives of the law.”
    “Nope, of the city. Not the same thing at all.”
    I steered him ahead of me halfway up the ladder, but then he stopped—which meant I had to stop, too, since the only way up was through him. “Monsieur!” he called down to Sittingbourne. “Hola, monsieur! Who put out the lanterns?”
    Sergeant Driscoll slipped his nightstick out of his belt and tapped it meaningfully against his palm.
    Sittingbourne made a helpless gesture. Dupin tutted, and carried on up. But he’d got the bit fairly between his teeth now, and he certainly didn’t seem interested in leaving. He went over to the steam pump and started to walk around and around it, inspecting it from all angles. It looked a little beaten up here and there—especially around the protuberant valve assemblies to which the hoses were attached. A pump such as this was like a heart in a human body, working mightily without cease. It was an amazing thing in its own right, that allowed even more amazing things to be done.
    “You know how a caisson works?” I asked Dupin.
    “Yes,” he said. “I believe so. It is a hyperbaric environment, no?”
    “It’s a what?”
    “It utilizes air at higher than atmospheric pressure to create a dry working space below sea level. Or, in this case, river level. Air is pumped in by artificial means to maintain the pressure, which may be two or three times greater than that in the ambient air outside the caisson.”
    “Well, yeah,” I said. “That’s more or less how it’s done.”
    Actually, Dupin seemed to understand the process better than I did. He was starting to fiddle with the controls on the steam pump now, and the foreman came running over hell for leather.
    “Say hey, now,” he yelped. “You don’t want to be messing with this. This is delicate equipment. And that outlet connection there is loose!”
    Dupin gave him a withering glare. “Nonsense!” he snapped. “This is a Jacquard-Sevigny pump, made from a single molding. You could take a hammer to it—and indeed, it looks as though someone has—but still it would not break.”
    O’Reilly faltered a little, but only for a moment. “It’s private property,” he said. “You keep your hands off it, or I’ll sic the police on you, see?”
    I felt like we’d had more than enough of that already, so I took Dupin by the arm with a view to getting him moving again, but he slipped out of my grip and went after O’Reilly like a terrier after a rat. “You found the