Under The Library

Under The Library

The village of Temple Langley was assimilated into London town in the late fifteenth century and from then on became an unremarkable part of Southeast London. It had but one feature of any note on its high street and that was a fine old library.

It wasn't the load on its shelves that was particularly special, indeed it offered no books that couldn't be found in any small municipal library, it was the building itself that commanded attention and admiration from those who came there. Built of red sandstone it was one of the finer edifices of the Templar knights, and was in remarkably good condition for its years.

Mrs. Purves, librarian, 44 and married with three children was cock of this roost . On Thursday, May 12,1940 she was working as usual behind the thick mahogany desk in the main reading room on the ground floor. Checking books in and out, periodically returning them to their places - it was a humdrum form of work, but she excelled at it and so had sufficient energies to spare to be pleasant to people. She enjoyed reading herself and took special pleasure in seeing others benefit from the library. At about three o'clock that afternoon she was rudely interrupted in the midst of writing a request form for a regular customer, Professor Watkins. He wanted to order another of his own works for the public benefit. This, his fifth book to date, was entitled Swords Against The Saracen and was, so he informed her, the result of two years work and four trips to the Middle East, a fifth trip had been cancelled on account of the outbreak of war. Other than the professor there were just six other patrons in the building; the air was warm, still and soporific before the jarring wails of the air raid siren shattered their illusion of peace.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Mrs. Purves called out in stentorian tones. "I will have to ask you to kindly make way to Langley Park shelter." As she spoke the distant thunder of bombing became apparent, the volume of sound rapidly increased.

"There's insufficient time, Ma'am." Watkins interjected as the other patrons gathered by her desk. Indeed the ground was now shaking with the multiple concussions of Krupp's best munitions as they fell in an inexorable, catastrophic stream toward them. Mrs. Purves surveyed the gathering quickly as her mind raced. She knew them all as regular patrons, there was Col. Fisher r.t.d., Miss Gibbons and Miss Margolid, Mr. Lampeter, and young John Hynes. All looked to her for guidance.

" Well, um... The cellar will have to do." She grabbed the set of keys from their hook and guided the small group swiftly to the door beneath the stairs. As she thrust the right key into the lock (her practice of clear labelling saved their lives) the frightened group could now hear the plaintive whines of approach as well as the concussions. They hurried down the stairs and found themselves in the long rectangular vault below as bombs impacted the building above.

A cacophony of sound and vibration threw them all down in a shower of plaster dust. The bare bulbs of the two lights that served to illuminate the scene swayed violently, hurling the pillars' shadows wildly around the room.

"Oh Lord!" Quailed Miss Gibbons in terror. "Bloody Germans!" Cursed the Colonel. "We're all going to die!" Wailed Margolid in horror, but the first storm was already past, the explosions were now receding as rapidly as they had come.

"I say, is everybody all right?" Prof. Watkins inquired having felt himself all over to ascertain that he was indeed unscathed.

The party confirmed that other than a few bumps from falling over, they were none the worse for the bombing.

"That's all very well." John shouted. "But look at all the mess that's blocking the stairs!"

They looked. The stairs were choked with rubble.

"My library!" Mrs. Purves cried in indignant rage. "They've ruined my library."

Just then the lights went out, causing a simultaneous sharp exhalation of breath. Someone screamed.

"Damn, they've hit the power station." Someone said.

"I hate the dark." Someone else murmured miserably.

"Hold hands, everybody." Commanded an authoritative female voice.

There was a period of shuffling and stumbling.

"Ow! Hands, she said. That was my ruddy eye." came a complaint followed by a faint apology.

"What are we going to do?" quavered a lady.

"We'll be all right soon. They'll come for us." assured bravado from another lady.

"But what if everyone's too busy?" from the young man. "I have a lighter somewhere... here it is."

"Don't!" Shouted Mrs. Purves. "What if there's a gas leak?"

"Oh, yeah. Er. Does anyone have a pocket torch?" Answer came there none.

"We may be here for an hour, or two, but we'll be rescued. Count on it." From the Colonel.

Though the siren had fallen silent, they heard the ominous approach of a second wave of bombs.

Being bombed in the dark was far worse. The group huddled together for comfort as the world rocked about them. Like all things, it eventually passed.

"I think that will be the lot." The Colonel said. "They won't waste any more bombs on us, I shouldn't think."

"Ohh!" Came a sudden cry of female outrage. " How dare you take advantage of this situation!"

"What do you mean?" blustered the Colonel.

"Who said that?" Mrs. Purves cried.

Silence ensued. "Who was molested? Who isn't holding hands."

The ladies and gentlemen denied the outrage.

A low chuckle rose from their left, this was followed by a very uneasy silence.

"Clockwise we'll identify ourselves." Resolved the wise librarian. "I am Mrs. Purves, Librarian." She squeezed the next hand, it was young and hairy.

"I'm John Hynes, student of medicine." Hynes said.

"A pretty shabby student, too. I cheated in my entrance exams." His voice continued.

"I did not!" Gasped the voice. "I did, because I would certainly have failed otherwise and then I'd have had to join the beastly army!" It continued.

"What on Earth are you talking about?" asked Mrs. Purves.

"Shell shock!"

"That wasn't me!" from the student. "It's not true."

"Just say your name and your profession or trade." Said Mrs. Purves.

"Mrs. Gibbons, Greengrocer's wife." Most of them knew her.

"And notorious miser! My mattress is stuffed with notes." Her voice continued smugly. "I am richer than any of you worms."

A female gasp of horror dissolved into tears.

"She didn't say that!" Came the student's voice accusingly.

"I am not saying a word!" Miss Margolid said.

"On second thoughts, My name is Elsa Margolid, I have private income, but I also grow and sell hemp plants for recreational purposes and have upon occasion entertained unknown gentlemen at my apartments for financial gain."

"Oh!" "I say!" "Despicable!" "I do not! I have not! It's a damned lie."

"Colonel Fisher, as was, but busted to lieutenant for gross negligence, left the army in disgrace, don't y'know. I didn't bag any tigers either. I haven't actually been to India, ahem, ahem."

"Lampeter, my first name's Rupert. I am a public health inspector. Thursday's my day off, I often see Elsa in the evenings and I tell my wife Beth that I am working late. Ha ha!"

Stunned silence ensued.

"Professor Watkins. Retired Professor, I plagiarised Arthur Snodgrass fifteen times in my latest book and it was Laplace not myself who discovered the Monastery des Canardes. I bought his diaries after his death and so took credit for it."

"I did not ask for confessions! But, seeing as we are now aquainted. I suggest that we sit ourselves down and say the Lord's prayer." Mrs. Purves commanded in shocked tones.

They did so, and felt the better for it.

Time crawled by, a distant detonation marked the presence of a delayed action bomb.

"That was a Mark III air mine. They can take down whole blocks of flats at a time. Quite devastating." Someone said in a matter-of-fact sort of way. It was not a voice that they had heard before. It was quite neutral and held no trace of an accent.

"Who said that?" asked the Lieutenant. "Who is there? Where are you?"

"There's an unexploded airmine not twenty feet away from you." Continued the voice ignoring the questions.

"Approach the wall and feel along it some way, and you'll find displaced masonry, light your way if you want, there is no gas."

John released the other's hands and stood up. He lit his lighter and the small flame served more to dazzle than illuminate.

"Does anyone have anything burnable? Paper? Anything?" John asked.

They riffled through their pockets and handbags. Soon a small pile blazed. They saw the hole in the wall. John took a rolled paper and peered through the hole. He saw a dark receding passage partially blocked by debris and a large metallic cylinder with tail fins with an opprobrious reference to Herr Churchill painted on the side of it.

"It's true." He groaned. The others gathered around it with their own spills of burning paper.

Watkins was the first to speak. "We can't just stand here and wait for it to go off in our faces."

"Very true" Fisher observed "..and as we cannot go backwards, then it follows that we have but one course to take, this passage before us, wheresoever that should lead."

There was no dissenting opinion, but neither did anybody spring forward to take the lead and be first to squeeze past the sinister device.

It fell to Mrs. Purves to take the first step and she did so with a determination that impressed her companions. She carefully negotiated the rubble and skirted the metallic menace with her left hand tracing the jagged hole in the masonry for stability lest she should stumble. It wouldn't do to go lurching into the bomb - some featured trembler switches. Her spill burned out as she surveyed the emptiness of the passage ahead.

"Come on through the rest of you" she called with a faint quaver in her voice.

"Right ho." Fisher led the main evacuation and was soon standing beside her.

With the mine behind them and all paper gathered to the front of their column for illumination, the party felt considerably better about their predicament. The business of advancing into the dank unknown was considerably less fearsome a prospect than remaining in that chamber to be blown to pieces. They moved quickly and noisily down the corridor of dressed stone. It was wide enough for them to move three abreast. Purves, Watkins and Fisher were in the van. They led the party swiftly forwards with Watkins muttering remarks upon the stone work.

" This masonry is undoubtedly of mediaeval character, and expensive work at that. Under other circumstances, I think that we could congratulate ourselves upon having made an archaeological discovery of no little importance. See there!" he exclaimed excitedly as the passage opened into a square chamber with fine gothic vaulted ceiling. The four ribs met in a central carving of a bearded head. There were three passages leaving the chamber. The party piled up as the leaders pondered their options.

" Left! Go left. The river's that way." John shouted with ill-founded certainty.

"Should we not continue straight ?" asked the librarian "and put greater distance between us and the mine?"

"No. It is to the right we should be going, and quick about it." Fisher determined. "Trench warfare taught me that shrapnel doesn't round corners." He lit another spill and was off.

"Right is right," rang the deep voice that had perplexed them earlier, close, accentless and authoritative. They hurriedly followed Fisher as his spill receded down the passage ahead. Watkins, however, remained where he stood for a few moments longer - transfixed by his impression that the voice had come from somewhere above his head. He was the last to leave the chamber, and it was not fear of the air mine alone that enabled him to catch up with the others so quickly.

Fisher's headlong charge of forty yards faltered at another identical cross-roads and the end of his supply of burnable paper. As the others pushed up beside him, their spills too burned fingers and then fell, fading from cherry red to black. Some shoving and jostling ensued as their company filled the dark space.

"That's it for light." Fisher stated bravely but superfluously.

"That's marvellous!" Miss Margolid hissed bitterly. Miss Gibbons gave a quavering howl of despair. Someone called for quiet. John's lighter sparked twice and then cast a small flickering gleam.

"We must go straight ahead or left." advised the librarian.

"Straight will take us toward the river." John announced, apparently unconcerned that he had previously been advising quite another direction entirely.

"Quiet! Quiet." Called Watkins. "There may...there may be better guidance."

"Indeed," came the now familiar, but unidentified voice. "Turn left if you would find light. You will find what you need in a sconce a short way along on the left"

There was more consternation at this, but the party obeyed and amidst a profusion of gentle collisions they shuffled toward and then down the left passage. Mr. Lampeter and Miss Gibbons brought up the rear of the party.

After just twenty feet Fisher's questing fingers discovered a sconce. "It's here." He announced as his fingers groped among several articles that lay upon the dusty shelf. Some cylindrical, cool and soapy to the touch. Again John's small lighter provided dim, but essential illumination. "A candle! Here, light it." The wick sizzled and supported a tall orange flame which served to reveal two dusty wooden shelves bearing an assortment of things, all grey with dust.

"Oh, thank God! Light me one." Watkins asked and Fisher handed him a candle. "We need one, too." Called Margolid. As two other candles were lit and passed back, Watkins examined the two other shelves of the sconce.

" I say! These things are of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century, or I am mistaken." He raised his candle for a rapid inspection and rattled off an inventory. "We have a dozen or so candles, wax, thankfully, this corrupted mess will be tallow ones, I should think. This spiked platter is a candle stick typical of the period." He took down a black metal box and raised the lid, hinges reticent with age squealing defiance as they yielded. "Silver. An assortment of dry resinous cones. Incense perhaps? Hmm."

"Come on. We can't stay here." Mrs. Purves interjected.

"Quite right." Lampeter said "Every moment counts."

"Silver, did you say? What else is there?" Miss. Gibbons thrust Mrs. Purves aside.

" There's a ring of Keys!" Watkins held them up triumphantly, "And another small box, of wood, bound by iron." A series of distant thumps marked the explosions of mines with synchronised timers.

"We'll take it with us." Fisher commanded, "Now we really must go." He led the way, his candle guttering with the speed of his movement. The others followed much heartened by the light.

"No, I feel this... this is all wrong. We're going down." Mrs. Purves observed after the passage had assumed an incline for three minutes of fast walking.

"I knew it!" lamented Margolid, "This is quite awful. Why you should put your faith in that... that voice, I have no idea. It has already proved itself a liar, a .... a snide and malicious..."

"Look ahead. Another chamber." Fisher interrupted.

They emerged in a hexagonal chamber some twenty-five feet in diameter. Three things about it were remarkable and impressed the party simultaneously. There was a central dais about three feet tall, also hexagonal, and of a finer red porphyry stone, there were twelve alcoves bearing statues, two to each side (the Church-goers immediately recognised their apostolic nature) and there was no discernible exit. Where the vaulted ribs met in the centre of the ceiling, Watkins remarked an identical bearded head.

"We're trapped! You see. That voice.. whatever it is.. I don't like it. This is too strange. We have got to go back!" Lampeter trumpeted in panic.

"Yes, yes. Back. back." Margolid wailed.

"Nonsense, Man." Fisher turned on him. "Control yourself, Madame", he rounded on

Elsa Margolid.

"Shush!" Mrs. Purves bellowed insistently. Quiet fell on the chamber. " Our predicament is indeed strange. That voice is stranger still. But so far" the resurging panicky hubbub compelled her to raise her voice to restore silence again, "So far - our invisible companion has given us no cause, no cause, for distrust."

"What about the slanderous character defamation?" Miss Gibbons inquired.

"An invisible voice mimic! How perfectly horrid this all is."Margolid lamented.

"Will you be quiet, madam!" Fisher rounded on her.

"Colonel, are we far enough away from the bomb for safety?" John asked.

Fisher, a Colonel once more, shook his head. "Not nearly. By the size of it I'd say it was a thousand pounds, the angles will preserve us from shrapnel, but the blast, confined as it will be to these passages will make jam of us."

"Oh, how horrid!" Margolid wailed.

Watkins examined the dais, it had a circular cover sealed by a pad-lock that would be the pride of any museum. He pored wax on the porphyry, set his candle in it and then examined the keys.

John called out to the voice. "Who are you? Where are you?"

"I am who I am, and I am here." answered the voice.

The answer was hardly satisfactory, but was spoken with a finality that suggested that no more would be divulged. All six were quiet. Fisher spoke next.

"Do you mean us well or ... some harm?"

"Well. Oh, yes, well." answered the voice. Watkins tried several of the keys in the pad-lock.

"You might be lying. You might be leading us astray!" Margolid countered.

"If you wish to be jammed we can discuss the possibilities at length" the voice continued, "however, you have light now and can return to the next chamber and turn left toward safety."

"Thank you, we will follow your advice." Mrs. Purves declared and strode decisively back down the corridor.

With a metallic snick, the pad-lock sprang open in Watkin's hand. Pocketing it, he then heaved upon the iron latch and raised the wooden cover. As his companion's footsteps receded, he shone his candle down a narrow shaft with iron rungs that connected to a crowded chamber below.

He could barely discern some tightly packed canvas sacks. In several the mouldering canvas had split disgorging irregular bright yellow disks of precious metal. A second candle hovered at Watkins' elbow.

"Oooh. That's gold!" Miss Gibbons startled him.

"So it appears, if only we had time for further investigations." Watkins observed dryly as he dropped the cover. "Come, we must join the others, or be jammed." He grasped his candle and hurried out of the chamber. He thought that Miss Gibbons followed.

Sweat sprang from Watkins' brow as he hurried back to the previous chamber. The voice welcomed him there with the words "You are alone." A bald statement of fact that Watkins assumed to contain the 'you plural' despite the contradiction that that would entail. He turned left without pause and hurried on to catch the others. Another dull thump marked the passing of a distant mine, and fear lent wings to his heels. His candle blew out, but he saw faint light ahead and did not slow his pace. Afterwards he liked to think that at this point he still believed Miss Gibbons was behind him, but his stride lengthened selfishly and he never once turned to look over his shoulder.

Purves, Hynes, Margolid, Fisher and Lampeter had made good speed down the left passage and had found to their disappointment that this passage too, inclined downwards.

More disappointing yet, was the obstruction of their flight by a heavy wooden door, iron bound and unyielding to their strongest exertions. The cast bronze boss of a bearded head regarded them implacably from the centre of the door. They heard Watkins' approach and Mrs. Purves called out to him urgently.

"For God's sake, Professor, hurry with those keys!"

Hurry, he did.

"Pass them here." Fisher snapped, "Your dawdling could cost us all our lives."

"Where's Miss Gibbons?" asked Lampeter as Fisher tried key after key. There were six ones large enough to fit the lock. Fisher couldn't be sure if the mechanism was jammed or whether the keys didn't match the lock. He dropped the bunch in his panic.

Watkins looked behind him as he caught his breath, there was no sign of Miss Gibbons.

"I thought she was behind me." He stammered.

"It's no good. None of these keys work." Fisher sounded disgusted.

"We're all going to die!" wailed Margolid.

"Let me try." John volunteered wrenching the bunch from Fisher's shaking hands.

The heat from the candles and their exertions made the passage uncomfortable and airless.

"What can we do?" Mrs. Purves called out accusingly.

"Give me some room here, and some light, I can't see what I'm doing" raged Hynes.

One by one he tried the keys in the lock, the third attempt brought a grating clack as the locks tongue flicked back into the mechanism. "There. Help me push!" shouted Hynes.

Several shoulders thumped into the door.

"Pull or be jammed." The eerie voice corrected.

"No, no, no. Stop pushing you fools." Purves shrieked, "You heard it - pull."

The party staggered backwards as the door swung open towards them.

They rushed through and into a long oblong chamber lined with dust enshrouded shelves.

Hynes shut the door behind them. "Go, go, go!" he shouted at his companions hysterically. They rushed between the high shelves each laden with scroll tubes and vellum books.

"An entire library. Remarkable!" gasped Watkins as he grabbed an armful of tubes scattering others as he did so. "The sum knowledge of the Templars' world" he enthused.

"Where's the door? Oh God, where's the door?" murmured Hynes as he reached the far wall, also lined with shelves. These containing ceramic jars.

"There's no door out, there's no door out." Margolid cannoned into Fisher.

"Ahh!" Hot wax splashed his hand. They all paused and looked about them.

"What of Miss Gibbons?" Mrs. Purves asked breathlessly.

"What of us!" countered Margolid.

Hynes stared fixedly at the top corner of the wall in front of them . "Look there! He pointed. " Is that a door?"

Five feet above the top shelves there was indeed a wooden door. They stared at it in vexation.

"What the devil is it doing up there, twenty feet from the ground?" ejaculated Fisher.

"Either those Templars were acrobats, or there must be a ladder." Watkins reasoned.

"Fan out. Look for a ladder." Mrs. Purves ordered.

John began to scale the shelves below the door. They creaked ominously with his weight and the fourth shelf gave way pitching him and its charge of jars on to the floor with shattering force.

As John lost consciousness he heard Margolid's voice echoing as if from far away "Here's a ladder - with wheels."

Fisher risked the wormy ladder, unlocked the small door to reveal a slim passageway off, and then helped the others up. He brought John Hynes up by fireman's lift and Mrs. Purves prayed silently as their combined weight fully tested the ladder's reduced structural integrity.

Fisher and Lampeter carried the unconscious Hynes between them. As the party progressed along the passageway, they were aware of an approaching low rumble from the wall on their left.

"What now? What new horror is this?" Margolid cried in terror.

The sound increased as they continued and at its peak the very walls hummed with the monstrous reverberations. Such a concentration of powerful sound in such confined circumstances was horrifying. The party dropped to the floor with hands clasped to their ears as the awesome sound gathered strength. For the longest fifteen seconds of their lives dust fell from the stonework above their heads powdering them white. The floor shook beneath them. Then the sound fell off and died away as mysteriously as it had come.

"Are we to be beset by dragons now?" Fisher gasped in shock.

Watkins lay flat surround by a small heap of scrolls with his pocket watch held to his candle. "A punctual dragon is that" he announced, "I declare that that was the four o'clock to Paddington! I should know my regular train...." He was then rudely interrupted.

Back in the library below a carved head frowned. As the Templar's revered personification of Sophia - wisdom itself, Baphomet was unaccustomed to being mistaken.

"The Mark III's detonator cannot be set for a delay of more than an hour" his detached accentless voice reasoned, ringing clear in the darkness. "Perhaps it was a dud after al..."

A split second after the thunderclap the 90 kilogram library door was propelled cleanly from its hinges by a roiling orange cloud of rapidly expanding incandescent gasses. As the ceiling collapsed under tons of rock and moist earth, the graven head smiled, his wisdom vindicated to the last.

As for the six who were in the passageway, they found themselves being lifted from a rubble of stone, brick and tile-work in a section of the Langley tube some time later by the kind hands of the emergency services.

Temple Langley Tube station served as hospital for them as it did for many others that day. Their injuries were comparatively slight for the most part, but it was the doctor's opinion that they were "bomb happy". In the busy overcrowded field hospital, neither Doctor Jervis nor his volunteer nursing staff had much time for their curious jabber of invisible guides, talking heads, Templar treasure troves and a missing Miss Gibbons. Sedatives were liberally applied.

Addendum.

The young gentleman suffering from burns to his leg with whom Mrs. Purves conversed while recuperating in Temple Langley Tube station happened to be Simon Harris, a promising junior clerk at the War Office. Within the week she was convalescing at home and he was back at his duties, though sitting somewhat stiffly, and it was thanks to his report and to the perspicacity of his executive officer that covert excavations took place in the ruins of Temple Langley high street alongside the regular cleaning up.

A month after the destruction of Temple Langley library, Harris was waiting outside the office of the Prime Minister at the subterranean War Rooms in Westminster. In order to deliver some files he had been waiting fifteen minutes in front of the polished oaken door. The files were marked Proposed Convoy Systems - North Atlantic and Mediterranean respectively. The PM had been in conference for six hours. From within Harris heard muted voices in animated discussion and as his first loud knocks had been ignored he was wary about trying a second time. "Winnie" occasionally vented his strong temper upon people who had the best possible reasons for intruding on his time and at this point in time with U-boats wreaking havoc with the merchant marine and Rommel sweeping all before him in the western deserts, Harris did not expect a warm reception from the PM.

He summoned his courage and knocked again, louder.

The door whipped open and Churchill stood before him in a cloud of cigar smoke, his face like that of a benevolent pug. Harris could see no one else in the office, just a square tan brief case with something dark in it upon the PM's desk.

"The files you requested, Sir." Harris proffered them humbly.

"Very good, Harris, empty this will you." Churchill's ashtray was brimming, " and bring me a map of North Africa will you?" Make sure it has a place called Al Elamein marked."

"El Alamein." corrected a calm accentless voice from somewhere behind the great man.

"El Alamein." Confirmed the PM with a twinkle in his eye. "Cheer up, Harris, it's always darkest before dawn. We're going to win this war, Harris."

"Yes, Sir." Harris smiled with relief and walked stiffly to the map room.

The End.