Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy) Read Online Free Page B

shite.”
    “Sure, didn’t I run into a lad from Killarney the other night in Shaughnessy’s? Lad’s come in from Ellis Island not three nights previous. Come to New York looking for his mother, he says. She came here six months ago, says he. Tells me her name, and I say, as God is my witness, that I knows her. Sends him up to Bowery Mission with a tear in me eye, and isn’t he so overcome with gratitude that he gives me this bottle?”
    “Away with ye!” laughed Martin. “That’s ten Hail Marys at least.”
    “Ah, but it’s worth it, eh?”
    “Sure is, Paddy-boy,” said Martin, taking another drink.
    The crane lowered its cargo to the deck, and the strange workers began fixing it to the deck plates with rivet guns and long lengths of chain. Whatever it was, they were keen to keep it covered, but the winds whipping in off the East River had other ideas. A gust caught the edge of the tarpaulin as it was lifted aside to enable one of the big men to reach something underneath, and it blew up and over the object.
    “Well would ye look at that, Martin?” said Patrick.
    Amid shouting voices in a language neither he nor Martin understood, the workers tried to cover the object up again. Patrick saw a flash of bronze metal, curved enough to suggest that what lay beneath was roughly spherical in shape and adorned with gleaming metal protuberances that didn’t look like any piece of drilling equipment Patrick had ever seen.
    Martin handed the bottle back to him.
    “Looks like some kind of diving bell,” he said.
    “Aye, that it did,” said Martin, the matter already slipping from his thoughts. Patrick saw him glance surreptitiously at the bottle and knew he was angling for another drink. Patrick obliged him as the foreman shooed curious riggers away from the freshly covered object.
    “It looks like a diving bell, right enough,” said Patrick. “But you and I both fitted those bloody big cable drums for that frame, and as sure as me father was the best pub fighter in Cork, I know for a fact there’s thousands of meters of cable stored below decks.”
    “So?”
    “So I ask you, Martin Quinn, what sort of diving bell goes down that deep?”
    “I dunno, Patrick,” replied Martin. “What kind?”
    “No kind,” said Patrick. “I can’t be sure what that thing is, but it ain’t no diving bell.”
    * * *
    The athletics field was now a crime scene. The area around the body had been roped off and two police Model Ts were parked on either side of the running track. Crowds of rubberneckers had already begun to gather on the bleachers, ghouls hoping for a better look at the body. Dr. Vincent Lee climbed out of his car and nodded to one of the young cops, a rookie he hadn’t seen before, and made his way toward the roped off area of the track. Luther Harden was already there, kneeling beside the body and lifting strips of black material to get a better look.
    “Please don’t do that, Detective Harden,” said Vincent. “No one should touch the remains until I have had a chance to examine them.”
    Harden looked up, the brim of his trilby pulled down over his forehead and his ever-present cigar rolling at the corner of his mouth. His complexion was ruddy, and his eyes regarded Vincent as though he were a potential suspect. In his mid-forties, Harden was—as far as Vincent could tell—an honest cop, but one who didn’t suffer fools and always looked for the simplest explanation. Blue smoke coiled from the stogie and Harden wiped his hands on his trousers before holding one out to Vincent. As his jacket shifted, Vincent saw the butt of a department-issue revolver.
    “Whatever you say, Doc,” said Harden.
    Vincent declined to shake Harden’s hand, finding the man’s lack of respect for the dead distasteful. He nodded toward the stained patch of ground behind the man and said, “The same as the others?”
    “Sure seems like it,” agreed Harden.  
    “Who found her?”
    “A student from Miskatonic,” said