The Aquila Project Read Online Free PDF

darted out in pursuit. There he was, sprinting with an athlete’s effortless speed up the approach road. What was that sudden burst of cheering? The Royal carriage must have passed on to the bridge. All eyes would be on them: no one would take any notice of one single running man….
    What’s he doing now? He’s pulled a pistol from his pocket! If I don’t catch up with him, thought Knollys, someone will be killed. He could hear the harsh panting of his own breath, and the faltering steps of the injured constables behind him. He summoned up sufficient breath to shout: ‘Stop that man!’ but at the same moment there came a wild and uninhibited chorus of steam whistles and church bells rising from the river and the riverside districts on both banks. Nobody would hear him above that din.
    Pursuit of the fleet-footed assassin was useless. Knollys knew that he was built too heavily to catch Grunwalski before he gained the entrance to the bridge. Perhaps he had designs on one of the notables sitting in the pavilion at the north end? Had the business in the boiler room been a mere diversion?
    It was then that Knollys saw a small detachment of soldiers assembled at the top of the slip road. He remembered Superintendent Mackharness’s great map of the day’s dispositions, and recalled that these men were a detachment of the 3rd Middlesex Volunteers. As Grunwalski neared the group of men, one of them saw the running terrorist and his deadly weapon. As swift as thought, the artilleryman drew his cutlass, and felled Grunwalski with a single blow from the flat of its blade. In seconds Sergeant Knollys was upon him. A moment later, the unconscious man was secured, manacled and fettered.
    No one on the bridge, mused Knollys drily, and no excited spectator in the festive stands surrounding it, could have been aware of the deadly drama that had just taken place.
     
    Arnold Box, still. at his post on the roof of Carmody’s Wool Depot, watched as Anders Grunwalski was carried unconscious down the slip road and into the boiler room. The frantic cheering of the crowds of spectators continued as the Royal procession reappeared at the end of Tooley Street on its way back over the bridge. The river rang with the hooting of steam whistles, and the deeper vibrant tones of the liners lying at anchor further downstream . No one had noticed the attempt to blow up Tower Bridge on its inaugural day.
    Box trained his binoculars on to the Royal procession. He’d no idea who some of those people were – upper-crust folk crammed into carriages, and dripping with medals and diamonds. Ah! Here were the Prince and Princess of Wales. She looked lovely, as always, smiling and gracious. She’s wearing a silk dress – blue, it is, with silver threads in it. He’d tell Mrs Peach about that. He looked magnificent, as you might expect. Kitted out as a Field Marshal, by the look of it.
    The incident at the bridge had disturbed Box. How had the man come to escape from a posse of seven police officers? It had taken a single young soldier to subdue him. Before that had happened, Grunwalski had produced a pistol. Why had they not searched him? The authorities should have let City handle it.
    What would Inspector Hare do now? If he stuck to the plan pinned up in Room 6 at the Rents, he’d take his prisoner and the whole posse in a Black Maria to Weavers’ Lane Police Station in Bermondsey, where he’d lock Grunwalski up for the night. The whole business looked like the pathetic attempt of one disgruntled man to make his mark on history. Well, he’d failed.
     
    It had been a heady morning for Superintendent Mackharness. Freed from the thrall of his dark office in King James’s Rents, hehad arrived at the long pavilion running up from Tower Hill to the northern end of the new bridge at half past ten. He was accompanied by his old friend from Crimea days, Lord Maurice Vale Rose, who had secured him a ticket. It would be an hour before the Royal personages