The Underground City(58)

Now this was important because until then, it was actually Murdo that had done all the thinking. Murdo said do this, and he did it! Murdo said go this way, and he went! Murdo was always there to see him safely home! Life without Murdo was, in fact, totally uncharted territory and the only thing Wullie was quite sure of was that if he wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t get home. He’d get lost. And that freaked him out because if he got lost, the ghosts would get him!

Now, although Wullie’s thoughts didn’t exactly move with the speed of light, they were nevertheless logical. He lit another cigarette and thought some more. He wasn’t sure about the street that went to the Assembly Hall, even though Murdo said they wouldn’t have heard the bang from up there. But the bang had been a while ago, surely? This reminded Wullie that he had a watch on. He peered at it through the drum-beats of his thumping headache and saw to his amazement that it had been ages since they’d blown the vault. This cheered him up no end. With a bit of luck, he thought hopefully, the ghosts might, by this time, have gone to bed!

But he made his decision. He wouldn’t go near the Assembly Hall. He’d stick to the way he knew. He’d take the old familiar passage to Deacon Brodie’s Tavern and get out through their cellars!

Struggling to his feet was a delicate process as every movement jarred his thumping head and sent lights flashing before his eyes. However, he managed it without too much trouble, lit another cigarette and fifteen minutes later was carefully plodding up the steep slope of the little alley, shining his torch over what, to him, was reassuringly familiar ground.

It was when he heard a strange, horrible, gargling sound and saw some white ghosts heading his way down the alley that Jaikie picked him up in the crystal ball.

Now, Wullie hadn’t seen these ghosts before and although they didn’t look particularly nice, his vision was still desperately blurred from the crack on his head, with the result that the nitty-gritty details of the swooping horrors were totally lost on him. Murdo, too, had very successfully instilled the notion into his thick head that the ghosts, however awful they looked, couldn’t do him any real harm. And as Murdo was always right, the upshot was that he didn’t pay the plague ghosts a blind bit of notice. This rather stopped them in their tracks as they weren’t used to being ignored and it made them gurgle and groan even louder as they swooped around him.

The MacArthur, Rothlan, Ellan and Jaikie all watched in fascinated horror as Wullie calmly stopped, lit up again and plodded to the top of the alley with the ghosts streaming behind him! He looked around and ahead of him saw the familiar route to the cellar stretching ahead. Not long now, thought Wullie!

He noticed, however, that the bubbling, moaning noises of the ghosts swirling around him seemed to have subtly changed in tone and now that his head was feeling slightly better and the cigarettes were kicking in, looked at them with more attention. The bubbling noise was now more like a choking, gargling sound and the awful faces were curling up frightfully at his cigarette smoke. One ghost was doubled up in convulsions, another was coughing fit to burst and a third seemed to be in the process of complete disintegration!

The MacArthur and Lord Rothlan looked at one another in startled amazement and Wullie beamed as realization dawned!

It was his fags!

Now revenge is sweet and Wullie hadn’t by any means forgiven the ghosts for all the shoves, pushes and icy-cold blasts of the past. He inhaled deeply and blew smoke in their awful faces, watching in delight as they gasped, coughed, choked and more or less creased up. More and more came swinging along the alley and as he lit up again and again, he took them all on quite happily, even waving his arms from time to time so that the fumes of long-standing that lurked in his overcoat wafted towards them and doubled them up in an agony of self-destruction.

It was an unequal battle at best and one that Wullie won, hands down.

“Well!” said the MacArthur, when they had all stopped laughing, “that’s certainly solved all Sir Archie’s problems, hasn’t it?”

“It has that!” Lord Rothlan said, shaking his head in awe as he watched the last of the ghosts fizzle and disappear. “The man deserves a medal!”

Wullie, who hadn’t, until then, appreciated the fact that he was a walking weapon of mass destruction, looked round in satisfaction at the empty alley, but it was only when he was convinced that all the ghosts had choked their last that he resumed his journey, a misty figure enveloped in a gauzy haze of cigarette smoke. On reaching the pile of crates that gave onto Deacon Brodie’s cellars, he scrambled through the trapdoor and replaced it gently with a sigh of relief. He felt a great sense of achievement. Murdo would be proud of him!