The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) Read Online Free Page A

certainly been an awful lot of money poured in over the years.’ He smiled. ‘“Trains in drains”, they called it in the early days; now it is seen, quite rightly, as one of the greatest achievements of the Empire.’
    ‘Quite so,’ agreed de Chardin. ‘We have an awful lot to lose if this situation is allowed to continue unchecked. The investment made thus far in the new atmospheric railway is nothing short of staggering, but it will all count for nothing if we have no one to drive the trains or maintain the system. And there is another question to consider,’ he added.
    Blackwood arched an eyebrow. ‘Which is?’
    ‘Why now?’ said de Chardin. ‘Engineers and architects have been disturbing the ground beneath London for very nearly forty years, yet only in the last few weeks have serious incidents of this nature been reported. What has happened recently to give rise to them?’
    Blackwood chuckled. ‘I think, Detective, that we now come to the real reason for my involvement.’
    ‘You guess correctly, sir; for Her Majesty wonders whether there is some greater and more sinister agency at work here. Perhaps it is supernatural… or perhaps it is all too human. In any event, she wishes the Bureau to join forces once again with the Society for Psychical Research and the Metropolitan Templar Police to investigate the matter.’
    ‘Human or supernatural,’ Blackwood mused. ‘An intriguing question. And with the combined talents of the Bureau, the SPR and New Scotland Temple, I’m quite sure it is one to which we shall ultimately find the answer!’

CHAPTER THREE:
At Bethlem Hospital
    The building was vast, grey and foreboding beneath the overcast sky. Above the tall, copper-covered dome which dominated the facade, a bank of livid, smoke-like clouds hung in the damp air of mid-afternoon, as though a great fire were burning somewhere in the heavens.
    To Lady Sophia Harrington, the image which had suddenly struck her was an appropriate one, for were not the fires of insanity burning in the minds of so many poor men and women in that place? She glanced at Thomas Blackwood, who was sitting beside her in the hansom as it clattered along the great, sweeping drive towards the hospital’s main entrance. His finely-drawn features were immobile; his eyes, the colour of the angry clouds above, were fixed straight ahead, and Sophia had the impression that he was just as reluctant as she to enter that place of misery and madness.
    Blackwood had called for her at her Kensington apartments, and together they had gone to the Bureau’s headquarters in Whitehall, where Grandfather had briefed them on their assignment. Sophia had been surprised at Grandfather’s manner: during the affair of the Martian Ambassador, he had been his usual self – gruff and business-like, with a hint of exasperated impatience – but during their meeting he had displayed none of those characteristics. Instead, there was a look of bafflement and even fear in his eyes, which she had never seen before, and which had unsettled her even more than the situation that had occasioned their presence.
    Whatever was happening on the Underground clearly had Grandfather completely flummoxed, and it was equally obvious that he didn’t care for the experience. Sophia supposed that this was natural: Grandfather was still a military man through and through and was used to dealing with situations which could be evaluated and responded to with cold, hard rationality and well-planned logistics. However, Sophia knew from personal experience that supernatural events rarely followed such rules: they obeyed laws of which humanity knew little or nothing, and when they impinged upon the human world, they did so on their own terms. That was what made them so dangerous.
    The cab drew up alongside the massive portico with its six Doric columns, and without a word, Blackwood descended and turned to offer Sophia his hand. She took it and stepped down into the clammy air,