Mr. Browne was a little hysterical, but presently, under threats from Sydney, began.
"I can't understand—do you know, madam, that there's another London underneath the ground, with thousands of miles of tunnels and passages, railroads and rivers—and—well, there is!
"Three nights ago, Sydney and I were off duty, and he was in my room telling me——"
"This man," my Lord interrupted sharply, "can smell things just like an animal, and as to his sight and hearing, they're very witchcraft."
"People here," said Browne, indignantly, "are blind, deaf, dumb, and their noses fit for nothing but catching a cold. Why, if Sydney turns round a corner he's lost. Anyway, that night I heard something underground, crowbars, I thought—anyway, men at work. We knew there must be something wrong, so we armed ourselves and bolted down to the cellars. There's acres and acres of palace down underground, and what with the darkness, the hundreds of different sounds, and all the mixed smells——"
"What smells?"
"Why sawdust, madam, and wine casks and stores, machinery—all sorts of smells. I couldn't tell where to look. We were off near the south-west court, when all of a sudden I smelt sumach leaves rotting after a frost—Sydney made out it was drains, and that was no dream either when we got a little nearer. It came through a door, and behind we could hear men at work trying to keep quiet—shouting in whispers, and splashing as if they were all having a bath. When we broke through the door we found it opened into a ventilator shaft which goes up three hundred feet through the south-west tower. Close under us it opened down into a big tunnel half full of water, sort of railway tunnel it looked, but Sydney says it's a sewer."
"It's the Tyburn," my Lord explained.
A thousand years ago the Tyburn was a brook, and one can trace its valley still through Tyburnia—the Mayfair district, the dip in Piccadilly, and the hollows of Green Park and St. James's Park, to where it ran into the Thames at Westminster.
"The Tyburn," said my Lord, "has become a sewer, and it flows right under the Palace."