Страница 83 из 91
“Not very sporting!” exclaimed the corpse at his feet. “Hittingme in the knees like that. How am I supposed to toddle about?”
Honesty ignored the question and took a step toward his men. Thefallen Rake grabbed his ankle and unbalanced him. He hit the groundface-first.
“I demand an apology!” said the Rake.
The detective sat up, twisted around, and thumped a truncheononto the cadaver's head.
“Ouch! Good grief, man! What sort of an apology is that?”
The weapon descended again, harder.
“You should go,” said the Rake, in a slurred voice. “I'll justlie here for a bit.”
His head caved in under the third blow and he lay still.
“Purple flowering laburnum,” said Honesty. “Very hardy. Growsanywhere.”
He got to his feet.
An arm wrapped around his neck and yanked him backward. One ofhis truncheons was wrenched from his hand and thrown into the fog.He felt teeth sink into his left shoulder and tried to yell in painbut his throat was too constricted. He struggled, his visionblurring. Bells began to chime insistently in his ears.
He pitched sideways and hit the ground. His assailant's gripbroke and Honesty rolled free, lay on his back, and gulped at thedirty air.
A foot slammed down onto his hand. He cried out as his fingersbroke around the grip of his remaining truncheon. A body thumpedonto his chest, its knees on his shoulders. Hands seized his neckand tightened around it like a band of metal.
The ringing in his ears increased, yet, somewhere behind thecacophony, he heard an approaching rhythmic thunder, too.
The ground started to tremble beneath his back.
Through a red haze of pain, Honesty looked up and saw that hisassailant was the bearded man with the dent in his cheek.
Detective Inspector Trounce was covered from head to foot ingore. His truncheon dripped brain tissue. His mouth had frozen intoa ferocious snarl and his eyes were blazing. He stood on a pile ofmotionless Rakes and waited for the next one to come. It was not along wait. A man lurched into view and ran toward him. He wasdressed in evening attire and there was a monocle jammed into hisright eye socket. He'd obviously already been in battle, for hisjaw was broken and hung loosely with the tongue flapping over it.It didn't matter to him; he was already dead.
The Rake scrambled over his fallen fellows. Trounce sprang tomeet him and swept his weapon down, double-handed, onto the barehead. The skull broke with a horrible noise. Trounce hit it againand again and again.
The Rake went limp and still.
There was a moment of respite.
The Scotland Yard man wiped his sleeve over his eyes and peeredaround. Through the dense murk, he could see shadowy figures lockedin combat. A great many constables lay dead or wounded in the road.Rakes milled about.
“How many heads have I smashed in tonight?” he rasped. “Andstill the bloody stiffs keep coming!”
He turned his head and saw Detective Inspector Honesty sprawledin the road, his face turning blue as a Rake, kneeling on hischest, throttled the life out of him.
Trounce took a step, lost his footing, slipped, and slid acrosscorpses to the cobbles. He scrambled to his feet and made to run tohis friend, but he'd taken no more than a single stride before twowraiths suddenly wafted into view and grabbed him by the arms.
“No!” he croaked, as, struggling furiously, he was dragged intothe fog, borne away from his dying friend.
The wraiths came to a halt as Krishnamurthy emerged from thehaze. The ghostly figure of a top-hatted man loomed behind thecommander.
“Watch out!” Trounce cried. “And save Honesty! He's back therebeing strangled to death!”
“I'm sorry!” the Flying Squad man gasped. “I-I can't-can't-”Lifting his truncheon high, he approached his superior. “Tichborneis-is i
“Krishnamurthy!” Trounce yelled. “Pull yourself together,man!”
“The op-oppressors must-must die!”
He swung his weapon back, ready to sweep it down onto Trounce'shead.
Thunder sounded: Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom!Ba-da-da-doom!
The ground vibrated.
A police whistle shrieked repeatedly.
A powerful gust of wind suddenly swept over Trounce, and the twowraiths lost hold of him. They were ripped apart and blown away.Behind Krishnamurthy, the top-hatted apparition disintegrated.
The commander looked over Trounce's shoulder, his eyes wide withastonishment, his mouth gaping.
The detective turned.
“Bloody hell!” he gasped. “I'm seeing things!”
It came pounding across Waterloo Bridge, and when it entered theStrand, the cobbles cracked and powdered beneath its hammeringhooves.
Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom!
It was a colossal horse, a mega-dray, and on its back, lookingas tiny as a child's doll, sat Algernon Swinburne, a Pre-Raphaeliteknight, his fiery red hair streaming behind his head, atremendously long, thin lance gripped in his right hand.
He was blowing enthusiastic blasts on a police whistle, and,perched on his shoulder, a little blue and yellow parakeet wasgaily screeching insults at the top of its voice.
As the enormous steed came charging out of the fog, the base ofa pantechnicon, to which it was harnessed, followed. The wagonpresented the incredulous spectators with an even more fantasticvision, for mounted vertically upon it was a huge spi
From the wheel, a series of simple but extremely well-designedgears and crankshafts drove a mammoth pair of bellows up and down,and snaking away from the nozzle, a tube ran up to the top of atower at the rear of the wagon and into the back of a ca
The whole contrivance was a masterpiece of engineering, for itdepended upon neither springs nor complex machinery, and was sosimple in design that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had been able tobuild it in a matter of hours.
As the mega-dray pulled the wagon onto the wide thoroughfare,Bhatti directed the jets of air hither and thither, and, though hisrange was extremely limited, the wraiths caught by the strongblasts were ripped out of existence.
A great cheer went up from constables as they scattered out ofthe horse's path.
Detective Inspector Trounce and Commander Krishnamurthy lookedon in amazement as Algernon Swinburne lowered his lance and aimedits tip at the back of a Rake's head.
Charles Altamont Doyle pressed his dead fingers into DetectiveInspector Honesty's neck.
“Squeeze!” he said. “Squeeze the life out of you and intome!”
A fairy pranced at the periphery of his consciousness.
“Recurrence comes!” it sang.
“No! Life comes!” Doyle whispered. “Start again. Get it right.Mend my mistakes.”
He felt something touch the back of his neck. From theperspective of his astral body, which drifted through the fognearby, he could see that it was a long lance held by a small manon a big horse.
His head burst into flames.
“Now!” said the fairy.
The fire ate into his face and scalp, clawed hungrily into thebone and tissue beneath.
He rolled off the police officer and collapsed onto the ground,thrashing wildly as the flames gouged deeper and deeper into hisdead flesh.
The lance touched him again, on the chest, and his entire bodyignited.
He felt himself being consumed, found that he could struggle nomore, lay still, and allowed the conflagration to suck him intooblivion.
Nearby, swirling through the fog, he watched and felt himselfburn.