The Aquila Project Read Online Free Page A

error to jump to facile conclusions. But it was an odd vantage point to choose, a bleak street some way from the bridge, on the faded skirts of Bermondsey….
    Box swung his field glasses away from the Viking, and focused on the approach to the boiler rooms. Four men in stoker’s uniforms, each carrying a wide shovel, were walking rapidly down the slope to the boiler room. One of them had something wrapped in canvas under his arm. Yes! It was the man in the photograph, Anders Grunwalski. It was almost twelve. The man had aimed at planting his bomb just minutes before the arrival of the Royal party.
    The door of the boiler room was opened from inside, and the four men passed from view. Down there, Box mused, hidden in various points of vantage, was a special police detail provided by ‘M’, Superintendent Neylan’s stalwarts from Blackman Street, Southwark, and with them, as a representative of Scotland Yard, was Sergeant Knollys. They would let Grunwalski position his bomb, in order to establish his guilt beyond doubt, and then they would quietly arrest him.
    Box trained his binoculars once more on the Viking man in his landau. The world as glimpsed through binoculars was a silent world, but Box saw that the gentleman had just said something to his coachman, who leapt up on to the seat, and turned the horse’s head in the direction of Artillery Street. He’s going to cross the river by way of London Bridge, thought Box. Why hadn’t he stayed to watch the arrival of their Royal Highnesses? Or had he been there to witness the appearance of Grunwalski and his infernal machine? Mere supposition….
    As Box turned his glasses back on to the southern abutment of the bridge, he saw a police constable emerge discreetly from a doorway some distance away from the boiler room. The man looked up at him, and waved his arm in a gesture that said, ‘All’s well.’
    Before Box had turned away from the parapet, the door of the boiler room burst open, and Grunwalski, apparently running for his life, emerged on to the slip road, a pistol in his hand. He was followed by four policemen, two of whom staggered as they ran, blood pouring from head wounds. There was no sign of Knollys. At the same time, a tremendous cheer, sounding high into the air and across to the South Bank, told Box that the Royal carriage had started its progress across Tower Bridge.

2
The Deadly Stoker
    A T NINE O’CLOCK that same morning, Detective Sergeant Jack Knollys left his lodgings at Syria Wharf and made his way on foot down to Swan Lane Pier, where one of Thames Division’s steam launches conveyed him under London Bridge and out across the river to a landing-stage below the Anchor Brewery at Shad Thames. By ten o’clock, he was walking rapidly down the slip road that would take him to the Number 1 engine room of Tower Bridge.
    He gave a low knock on a stout door set in a stone arch below the southern approach to the bridge, and it was opened immediately by a man dressed in the dark blue overalls and glazed peak cap of a naval stoker. Knollys recalled having read somewhere that, in the peculiar way of English institutions, the new bridge had been registered as a ship.
    ‘Sergeant Knollys?’ said the man in the peaked cap. ‘Come in, and close the door behind you. I’m Inspector Hare, of “M”. The powers-that-be thought it right that this little posse should be made up of officers from Southwark Division, rather than asking City to do the honours. It’s a fine point of etiquette, Sergeant, which we’ll leave others to debate.’
    Knollys glanced at Inspector Hare’s lined face, which bore the more or less permanent half smile of a born cynic. This man, he thought, is not taking our anarchist seriously. He probably thinks the whole affair is a pathetic stunt by a washed-out Fenian.
    ‘Is there any special reason, sir, why you’re dressed as a stoker?’ asked Knollys.
    ‘It was a whim of Superintendent Neylan’s, Sergeant. It’s supposed to be