Part Five: An Unfortunate Development

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part Five: An Unfortunate Development

I stepped into the main tunnel, my heart somewhere around my larynx and rising, my revolver ready to meet the spring of the hideous beast.

But no snarl met me; no lunge, roar or slaver. There was nothing there. I paused, staying in a crouch learnt on pampas, savannah and plain.

There was nothing. Not a sound. I rose from my haunches. Still nothing. I swept the raw brickwork with the shadow of my raised gun. Nothing.

 

I listened keenly, straining malleus, incus and stapes. My tympanic cavity could hear a bear breaking wind at ninety clicks. But – nothing.

‘These damned tunnels must be playing with my mind,’ I thought. But it would still pay to be careful. ‘Sam,’ I hissed. ‘Come out here.’

Phraxby’s voice quavered from his niche. ‘I don’t want to.’ ‘Sam, you ninny,’ I said. ‘Pull yourself togeth –‘ At a sound, I stopped.

It was the same dry, scaly scrabbling that we had heard coming down the tunnel. But now it came from directly below me. I looked down…

…and immediately jumped back! At my feet, looking up, squatted the most extraordinarily loathsome and outlandish creature I had ever seen!

It was humanoid. Ish. A foot tall. Orange-scaled. Its spine ran from its head into a long tail. Its legs, coiled, seemed well developed.

It gazed at me through wide yellow eyes, the pupils pulsing black raisins in loathsome custard. A reptilian tongue darted from its maw.

‘Sam,’ I hissed, not taking my eyes off the little beast. ‘Sam, get out here.’ ‘No,’ Sam said. ‘Phraxby!’ I said. The beast cocked its head.

‘Phraxby,’ I said. ‘Come here. I may not have found your supercrocodile, but I have something rather splendid for your specimen jar.'


Curiosity besting cowardice – as it always will – Sam stepped from his niche. The little beast looked from me to him, its tongue protruding.


'What d'you make of this?' I asked. 'Some sort of paleojurassic wotsit?' Sam goggled. Scientific prunes are apt to do that, I've found.


'Extraordinary,' Sam murmured. 'Quite extraordinary.' He squatted down and looked our little guest in its dreadful eye. 'Extraordinary.'

I suspected Sam would stay like this all night, poking the little brute and writing notes. He took off his glasses and put them back on.


'Yes, Sam,' I said, brusquely. 'Extraordinary. But what is it, eh? What precise kind, genus or species of blighter do we have here?'

'I have not the slightest idea,' said Sam, as the beast shifted on its haunches. Its legs seemed to possess huge strength. It looked at Sam.

And he looked back at it. 'Leinigen,' he said, 'd'you know, I think we have discovered a form of life quite unknown to classical science.'


That much was plain, but I didn't see how it would help our quest and I said so. Sam, irritated, snapped back. 'Just let me examine him!'


I itched to be off, but Sam had a flea in his ear. 'Perhaps this fellow is my Lambeth Treasure, eh?' he said. 'After all, he won't bite.'


I have no use for irony: such drawing-room notions are little good in the wild. Your Sioux or Thug, for example, rarely appreciates a quip.


Our little friend, however, did. As Sam looked away, and blinked owlishly up at me, it sprang and jabbed its darting tongue into his neck!

Time, in that awful way it has, seemed to slow down. As the cylindrical tube pierced his skin, Sam shrieked. Instinct bade me spring back.


I drew my gun, but if I shot the beast fastened to Sam's neck, I would shoot Sam too. 'Sam!' I roared. 'Leinigen!' he cried, turning white.


The beast... was... feeding. Sam writhed and blanched as the little thing sucked the blood from his body! 'Leinigen!' he cried. 'Leinigen!'


Had worse not been to come, the thought would wake me still. The thing on Sam's neck sucked and pulsed and as it pulsed it grew. And grew.


I roared, and leapt at is muscled and bulging form. The beast flicked its tail and sent me crashing into the tunnel wall! 'Sam!' I cried.

‘Leinigen…’ came Sam’s voice from behind the beast’s heaving back. Fading, behind a foul sucking noise, it came again. ‘Leinigen… Leinigen…’

‘Phraxby!’ I cried. ‘No!’ ‘Leinigen… Lei…’ Sam’s voice came no more. I lay, winded. The beast seemed to pause for breath, its back heaving

Then it stood, and turned. It was six-foot tall. Its eyes blazed not yellow, but red. Red with the very lifeblood of my friend, Sam Phraxby.

I looked at the beast. The beast looked at me. I shot it. It staggered, a hole in its side. Half-digested blood sloshed on to the floor.

The beast let out a dreadful cry… a low, rising, baleful moan. I raised my gun, but with a snarl the beast crouched and then sprang away.

It jumped fifty feet if it jumped an inch. I lay, astonished. The beast jumped again, with the same slow wind-up in its astonishing limbs. 

 

At a corner, a hundred feet from me, the Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure turned, its eyes red in the gloom. Again, hideously, it groaned.

And then it jumped away. Silence dripped from the walls. Sam’s dessicated corpse lay still. And I did something rather unusual. I fainted.

Part Four: A Terrible Cry in the Dark

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part Four: A Terrible Cry in the Dark

The stairs led down for perhaps a hundred feet. We descended slowly. At the bottom was a stone platform. We were in the Lambeth Labyrinth.

Don’t know if you’ve seen the film with that Welles johnny. You know, ‘The Third Man’. Chasing about in the Vienna sewers. Picture that.

Water dripped from the walls, upon which flickering torches were placed at regular intervals, revealing yellow-brick arches and culverts.

‘Crikey, Leinigen,’ Sam said. ‘This is it.’ ‘Ain’t it just,’ I said, pulling out my compass. Sam, unsure, asked: ‘Will that work down here?’

‘Should do,’ I said. ‘Not sure of the science, but we’re closer to the earth’s core here. All that magnetic business should be a doozy.’

And it was. My trusty red needle flicked and I knew the way. North by north-west would do nicely. Out under the Park, towards the Palace.

We made good time, Sam tottering a little but keeping his pecker up. As we progressed, we began to divine strange markings on the walls.

‘Phraxby minimus,’ I said, ‘you’re the scholar. What d’you say these are?’ Circles, bisected by wavy lines, had been gouged into the brick.

Sam studied the wall closely. ‘I’m not sure. Cabbalistic engravings, maybe. Possibly Pharonic. Couldn’t translate without my primer.’

I snorted and made to continue, but Sam stopped me. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’m really not sure how these marks were made. By whom or by… what.’  


He fell still. ‘What’s up, Phraxby?’ I asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ Sam stared at the wall, then reached forward a finger.

He scraped something from one of the symbols and held his palm to me. It looked like chalk dust, and I said so. Sam smiled a sickly smile.

‘That’s not chalk,’ he said. ‘It’s bone.’ My silence bade him continue. ‘The symbols weren’t carved with nail or stone. It was… a talon.’

I hazarded a guess. ‘Some form of overgrown, super-intelligent chicken?’ A terrified delight filled Sam’s face. ‘In a way,’ he said, ‘yes’.

I ventured to respond, but I was interrupted. From somewhere down the tunnel came a horribly familiar sound. A low, baleful, rising groan.

‘Leinigen!’ Sam hissed. ‘It’s the Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure!’ Once more I made two and two into a million. ‘This chicken of yours?’

The groan came again, drowning out Sam’s nervous and high-pitched giggle. ‘I wish it was,’ he said. ‘Leinigen, we should get out of here.’ 

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘The game’s hotting up.’ The groan came again, closer, echoing. And another sound… a sort of dry, scaly scrabbling.

‘Oh God,’ Sam gibbered. ‘Leinigen, we really must leave.’ He made to dart away, back to the stairs to Blake’s study. I took him by the arm.

‘Sorry to be rough,’ I said. Again came the dread groan, louder still. ‘Whatever’s making that infernal racket, we’ll face it and beat it.’ 

‘You don’t understand!’ cried Sam, as the scrabbling grew louder and the groan sounded again, round the next corner now. ‘It’s too late!’ 

The man was raving, so, for the good of both of us, I pulled him into a convenient niche in the brickwork and clamped a hand over his mouth.

‘Sam Phraxby!’ I hissed, as the terrible noise outside went on. ‘What the devil’s got into you? Tell me so I may plan a course of action!’

Sam nodded. I released my grip. The groan came again, terribly close. Sam stuttered three words. ‘Subterranean… paleojurassic… persistence!’

I looked at him. The groan was replaced by a strange, low, regular thrum. Breathing. ‘It’s your lizard?’ I asked. Sam nodded, slowly.

‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that the Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure is a supercrocodile, a prehistoric beast of terrible size and aspect!’ 

I scoffed. ‘Hah! I’ll make a handbag of the blighter!’ Sam was unmoved. As the breathing continued outside our refuge, he listed specifics.

‘Forty-feet long, armoured. One-hundred and thirty-two teeth. It ate dinosaurs.’ ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll make a set of matching luggage.’ 

Sam sagged against the wall, spent and terrified. Useless. I pulled out my revolver and cocked it. The groan came again, shatteringly loud.

‘Righto, you ugly brute,’ I said to our unwanted guest. ‘It’s time to meet your match.’ I took a deep breath, and stepped away from cover...

Part Three: A Perilous Game Afoot

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part Three: A Perilous Game Afoot

So here I was, an adventurer very much not abroad, turning out to be sat on top of a great treasure guarded by a made-up fifty-foot lizard.

‘Sam,’ I said. ‘We investigate, forthwith.’ The old buzzard clucked a bit, but I shushed him and set about preparing for the expedition.

Clad in Irish thornproof, I packed compass, gun and knife. Sam filled hipflasks with Clipstone’s and messed up two oilskins of sandwiches.

Moving stealthily through the dank Lambeth night, we arrived at Blake’s house in no time. Sam knocked while I lurked in flitting shadows.

A crone answered the door. ‘Yes, sirs?’ she lisped. ‘Mrs Cryptoides,’ Sam whispered. ‘Housekeeper. I water her radishes on Tuesdays.’

Evidently, Sam had the old lag’s trust – in moments we were sitting by a rather anaemic fire in what must once have been Blake’s parlour.

Cryptoides – Greek, I supposed, and bent double under a truly significant hump – clattered about in an adjoining kitchen. I turned to Sam.

‘I’ll keep Mrs C happy,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t see, hear, taste, smell or, ah, touch so well.’ ‘Righto,’ I said. ‘Upstairs,’ he said.

I slipped out. Musty stairs led upward. Upstairs to find a portal to a subterranean realm? Rum. But then, so was this Blake lad. I climbed.

The stairs creaked, but I could hear Sam talking loudly to the crone. Something about fossilised palm fronds. ‘Each to his,’ I thought.

Portraits lined the walls – birds in ruffs, blending to coots in stocks and kerchiefs. Literary chaps, I imagined. Milksops. I forged on.

At the top of the stairs, flickering gaslight lit a passage. More portraits – gooseberry eyes weakened by too many books in such poor light.

‘Exercise, lads,’ I murmured. ‘The great outdoors… shoot yourselves some big game… caribou to start you off, then elk, I should sa… Ah hah!’

Unfortunate habit, talking to myself. Not much use when stalking giant beaver on the Siberian tundra. But never mind. I had come to a door.

I pushed the door; it creaked open. I beheld a study. A desk, a chair, a sagging chaise longue. A don’s bolthole, I thought. But the smell…

Not dust. Something… older. The room hung with something between a mist, a pall and a miasma. Slowly, I realised what it was. It was time.

Silently, I drew my revolver. Cocking the hammer, I stepped into Blake’s study. Floorboards creaked. In the centre of the room, I turned.

Against the wall, opposite the desk, stood a bookcase. Dusty tomes leaned and sagged. Bibles. Theological commentaries. Prolix verbosities.

I turned away, but checked as something caught my eye. Just visible over the top of the bookcase was the top corner of a small metal door.

I edged the bookcase from the wall. Sure enough, I had cornered my quarry. Sam’s portal looked solid, but as I probed gently, it opened.

With a click, the doors swung. Inwards, luckily. A rush of damp air carried the flick-flack of bats’ wings and a faint taste of the Thames.

Squatting, I peered into the darkness. As my eyes grew accustomed I made out rough-hewn stone stairs, leading down to a faint glow of light.

This was it. Blake’s portal to the Lambeth Labyrinth. Below lay adventure. The unknown. Treasure and, maybe, an overgrown homicidal gecko.

I exulted. Thoughts of escape were for nought. All those years abroad, and such vaulting possibility had lain undiscovered here, in Lambeth.

Instinct told me to forge ahead, to plunge into the darkness. But decency spoke otherwise. I shut the doors, replaced the case and withdrew.

Downstairs, Sam massaged the bunioned feet of a snoring Mrs Cryptoides. I treated him to an arched eyebrow. We slipped into Hercules Road.

Conferring neath a bristling privet, I told Sam of my astonishing discovery. He blanched and swallowed, but failed to hide his excitement.

We seized our moment. I eased open the door of Blake’s house and we slipped back inside. Mrs Cryptoides snored. We climbed the dark stairs.

In the study, I revealed the portal. Sam gasped. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘The Lambeth Labyrinth lies below… the Lambeth Treasure too.’

I grinned. ‘Hard to be sure, ain’t it? But standing here won’t help. After you, old man.’ Gingerly, Sam stepped into the Labyrinth’s gloom.

Part Two: A Tall Tale, Well Told

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part Two: A Tall Tale, Well Told 

My teacup clattered. Phraxby winced. I apologised, gruffly, but instinct had been pricked. ‘The Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure?’ I asked.

‘The Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure,’ said Phraxby, replacing his spectacles on his nose. Outside, from the marshes, the groan came again.

‘Phraxby,’ I said. ‘Have you been at the Lavender Grey Oolong again?’ He blinked, owlishly. Alarmed, I’d put said potion on a higher shelf.

‘Not a bit of it, old chap,’ said Phraxby, with a smile. ‘That which you hear is the noise made by the Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure.’


 ‘Oh well,’ I thought. The poor fellow had obviously cracked. Too long in his study, with only carbonised woodlice in perspex for company.

'People tend to think it's the trains,' he said, 'groaning in and out of Waterloo.' I pshawed. It's a skill I have a learnt. 'Pshaw!' I said.

But the lad was not for turning. Pshawing my pshaw – and thus scoring double points, under Brockley rules – he did not moderate his gaze.

‘Shall I tell the story of the Lambeth Treasure?’ he asked. I sighed. Stories were for telling on lost whaleboats, to distract from hunger.

But he seemed bent on it. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the Lambeth Treasure.’ I poured a stiff measure of Clipstone’s, and Sam began.

‘Nobody knows what the Lambeth Treasure is or quite where it lies,’ said Sam. I snorted. He raised a schoolmasterly hand. ‘But it exists.’

‘There are clues in antiquarian texts. Medieval scripts; Roman scrolls found under the Guildhall. Renaissance and Enlightenment volumes…’

‘The Lambeth Treasure is a rich and wondrous resource, a great boon that will contribute to the advance and betterment of all mankind…’

‘… a source of wealth, whether temporal, or spiritual, or both. Some, such as Dr Ackroyd, say it may explain the origins of London herself.’

I interrupted. ‘Fascinating,’ I said. ‘But your Dr Ackroyds and co will blather for Britain if you let ’em. Tell me about this ‘Guardian’.’

‘Very well,’ Sam chuckled. ‘The Lambeth Treasure, we are told, is guarded. No one knows by whom, or rather by what. But guarded it is.’

‘The Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure lives, perforce, in proximity to the Treasure, somewhere under the streets of… well… Lambeth.’

Sam grinned. ‘And this Guardian is responsible,’ I said, ‘for’ – the baleful groan sounded outside – ‘this noise that disturbs our peace’?

‘Unless it is the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ said Sam, ‘bewailing his flock.’ He smiled. ‘No. That is the Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure.’

 I sat back and, ruminative, swirled the tea in my cup. It was a tall story. Too tall. But then, I was in need of diversion. ‘Go on,’ I said.

Sam went on. ‘The Lambeth Treasure lies somewhere in a maze of ancient tunnels beneath Lambeth Palace. And I know how to get down there.’

Leinigen may be an old dog, but old dogs’ senses prick at the hint of a chase. I prodded Sam, as they say in pulp tales, for ‘the juice’.

‘There is a house a little further down Hercules Road,’ he said, ‘in which once lived the poet, painter and visionary William Blake.’

Blake. I’d heard of the bird. Curious fellow. Wrote ‘Jerusalem’ while painting and envisioning and prancing about starkers in his garden.

‘In Blake’s house,’ Sam continued, ‘there is a portal to this magical realm, a door through which the Lambeth Labyrinth may be reached.’

‘Well then,’ I said. ‘We should take a shufti at this portal, no?’ Sam smiled nervously. ‘I could get you into the house,’ he said.

The word ‘but’ isn’t for me: it smells of caution and caveats that don’t figure when you’re in the lion’s maw. But… ‘But?’ I growled.

‘But I’m not sure I want to go into the tunnels.’ Sam coughed. ‘Have I outlined my theory of subterranean paleojurassic persistence?’

He had not. So he did. In short – necessarily so, here – Sam suspected the survival, deep below Lambeth, of certain prehistoric life forms.

Something to do with swamp gases from Lower and Upper Marsh and the flow of the Thames below the Albert Embankment. It seemed unlikely.

I told Sam as much, but in the spirit of the thing I put two and two together to make two hundred and fifty. ‘So you think the Guardian is…’

‘A survivor of the cretinophotovoltaic period of sub-Jurassic reptilian superdevelopment!’ Sam cried, before sinking back into his chair. 

Part One: A Cup of Tea With Phraxby

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part One: A Cup of Tea With Phraxby

Allow me to introduce myself. Leinigen’s the name. I’m a traveller, a soldier. A big-game hunter. An old-fashioned adventurer, if you like.

I’ve lived tall tales and I’ve told them; I’ve faced nature’s worst with nothing but know-how and the human spirit and I’ve come out on top.

If I have an address, it is ‘abroad’. I roam the Empire and beyond, from the Arctic to India and back – an Imperial savant, if you like.

So while this story was born in London it was conceived in Baluchistan, in some rum business with a monkey totem that belonged to the Shah.

It wasn’t official work. Strictly freelance. But when a kohl-eyed houri begs a favour of Leinigen, Leinigen acts. I swiped the dingus.

And thus found myself nastily close to a spot in chokey. Not being that kind of bird, I took the Embassy man’s hint and hopped a ship home.

Back to London. Imperial mother! Comforting bosom to the unlucky adventurer! London, source from whence the mighty British stream flowed! 

In scrapes, such visions and ideals sustain me. At the ice floe’s ominous crack, I hark back to the lights, laughter and love of Piccadilly… 

This time, sadly, I landed in Lambeth. But there lived an old friend, Sam Phraxby, so there I went to lie, as advised, decidedly low. 

 

Which proved all too easy. Old Sam made me welcome; stashed my canvas bag in the spare room, put out a towel. But Phraxby is a lonely soul.

He’s a tea importer, for Clipstone’s. Solid career for a stolid fellow. I met him at Oxford and he became a fast chum. He was a smart lad.

But he became a dowdy bird. Took up amateur cryptopaleontology. It kept him off the streets; his streets being in Lambeth, it was for the best.

Don’t know if you know Lambeth. The fellow Orwell did. The Comstock lark. Aspidistras. About right, in my experience. At first, at least.

It’s a pleasant enough spot, but without a hint of said ominous crack, let alone chances to hunt tigers or romance said kohl-eyed houris.

So within twenty minutes of settling in at Sam’s place, a Georgian lean-to on Hercules Road, I was in trouble. Listless. Out of pep. Bored.

Phraxby, being a decent cove, tried to help. Produced cards and cribbage. Mentioned a couple of the neighbourhood’s livelier saloon bars.

But I longed for the outdoors. Every sinew and fibre in my body reached for India, for Africa. For deserts, peaks and oceanic troughs.

I haunted Archbishop’s Park. Stalked pigeons. Used to bigger game, I chafed, impotently. Don’t recommend it. Chafing, impotently. It tires.

And so I gave in. Tried life at Phraxby’s pace. A cup of tea. Clipstone’s, of course. A companionable pipe in front of a flickering fire. 

We gazed together into the flames. I looked at old Sam and wondered what he saw. Unheard-of fossils, probably. Magnificent trilobites.

Poor chump, melon chock-full of dreams of glorious afternoon teas at the Kensington Institute and lionisation by spinsterish ‘lady’ dons.

I shuddered. To me, the flames in the grate became cobras. Vipers. The anaconda I killed with a spoon, four days out of Chotaltapec in ‘22.

But such memories, such dreams and fancies, could only nourish me but briefly. After two days in Sam’s staid company, I longed for the off.

Casting furtive glances across the river, towards the Service, I contemplated escape. Disguise. Shave the moustache. Hop a tramp steamer.

Forge north, into the herring grounds. Then leap on to a passing walrus, if I had to, and paddle the brute to Canada and back. Anything.

It seemed impossible. I drifted. But then, on the third day, when even my schooner of Clipstone’s palled on the tongue… I heard the noise.

It was a long, rising groan, baleful and otherworldly, and it came from the marsh mists, over near Lambeth Palace. I sat up in my chair.

‘Sam,’ I said. ‘What the devil was that?’ Phraxby woke absentmindedly from sweet dreams of ant excreta in amber. ‘What’s what?’ he said.

The noise came again. It sounded like a wounded tigress, keening for her young. If the tigress had been fifty-feet tall. ‘That.’ I said.

I’ll give old Phraxby this – he is, or rather was, a cool old hand. He swallowed and took off his spectacles. Polished them. ‘What?’

Again came the groan, a foghorn in a murky Atlantic night. A most obliging groan, I thought. ‘That,’ I said. ‘That terrible, ominous groan.’

Sam smiled the smile of a tea importer savouring the finest lapsang. ‘Ah, that,’ he said. ‘That is the Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure…’