Страница 84 из 91
“No!” he thought. “What about all the things I still have todo?”
A powerful gust of air tore into him and ripped him apart.
Charles Altamont Doyle dispersed into the atmosphere and ceasedto exist.
Trounce and Krishnamurthy saw the Rake erupt into flames androll off Honesty. Their friend crawled weakly away from the blazingcorpse.
They hurried forward and dragged him to safety.
Trounce looked up and noticed that four cylinders were slungover the mega-dray's haunches. From them, tubes ran up into thehilt of the lance.
“Inflammable gas,” he suggested.
“I would venture so,” Krishnamurthy replied. “Some sort offlame-throwing weapon. Detective Inspector, I don't know how toapologise. They got into my head. I couldn't control myself.”
“Accepted, lad. Say no more about it. Detective InspectorHonesty is injured-let's get him onto the back of that wagon.”
They helped their colleague to his feet and guided him towardthe pantechnicon.
“Lily of the valley,” Honesty wheezed. “The flower of thepoets.”
A Rake approached them, waving his rapier. His eyes hadretreated far into their sockets and his skin was horribly loose,as if the flesh were sloughing off the bones beneath.
He attempted to address them, but his tongue and lips were tooslack and only a horrible moan emerged.
“I'll get this,” Trounce said.
“Allow me,” came Swinburne's voice from above.
The lance touched the decaying, sword-wielding corpse, whichcombusted, fell to its knees, and toppled onto its face, burningfiercely.
“What ho, fellows!” Burton's assistant shoutedenthusiastically.
“Hallo, Swinburne!” said Trounce. “Honesty is injured!”
“Oafish knuckle-dragger!” Pox squawked.
“Hoist the old fellow onto the wagon. Miss Mayson will keep himcomfortable until we can get him to safety.”
Trounce and Krishnamurthy lifted their comrade and carried himto the pantechnicon.
“His throat,” said Trounce to Isabella Mayson, as they laid himon the flatbed.
“I think his fingers are broken, too,” Krishnamurthy noted.
The young woman nodded. “Don't worry, I'll make sure he'scomfortable.”
Up on the horse, Swinburne whispered something to Pox andwatched as the brightly plumaged bird launched itself from hisshoulder and disappeared into the fog. He looked down at hisfriends and called: “In the absence of litter-crabs, what say youwe clean up this street ourselves, hey, chaps?”
The two police officers brandished their truncheons.
“Ready when you are,” Trounce grunted.
H igh above the fog, glinting silver in the moonlight, anornithopter flapped, circling the Strand at a distance of twomiles. A long, irregular ribbon of white steam curved away behindit, marking its course through the sky.
It was controlled by the clockwork man of Trafalgar Square, and,in the saddle at his back, sat Sir Richard Francis Burton.
The flying machine soared northward over the Thames, banked tothe left as the Cauldron slipped past beneath it, and headed eastuntil it was over King's Cross.
A parakeet suddenly fluttered out of the cloud below and caughtup with the machine. It landed on Burton's shoulder.
“Hello, Pox.”
“Lice-infested chump!” the bird whistled. Then: “Message fromAlgernon Fuddlewit Swinburne. The game has commenced. Messageends.”
Burton addressed his companion: “It's time. Take us down.”
His valet yanked at a lever, sending the ornithopter skewingthrough the air as it veered sharply to the south. He switched offthe engine and the trail of steam ended abruptly. The machine'swings straightened, and it began to glide down toward the blanketof cloud.
“Here we go,” Burton muttered. He placed a hand on the brassman's shoulder. “Now we shake things up. This time, the police arethe decoy and you are the main event!”
They sank through the chilly night air.
“Whatever might happen to me,” Burton said, “you must completethis mission. However, I have to tell you, I'm acting more onintuition than intellect. Many would think it madness to place somuch faith in a dream and I might be completely wrong in my readingof the situation. Do you at least understand my reasoning?”
The brass man nodded his canister-shaped head.
Cloud enveloped them.
Burton sent Pox back to Swinburne.
He checked his harness. He was tightly strapped in.
“I hope your calculations are accurate,” he said.
Another lever was pulled. All along the back edges of the wings,wide but thin metal feathers emerged. The machine's nose rose andits silent, powerless descent slowed dramatically.
The king's agent was shaken by a thrill of fear. He could seenothing but thick vapour. For all he knew, they were seconds awayfrom smashing into the ground.
He reached down and released four grappling hooks from thefuselage. They were attached to it by means of long, thin chains.He held two hooks in each hand and waited.
In front of him, a mechanical arm rose. At its end, threefingers and a thumb were extended.
The thumb curled in.
Four.
A finger folded.
Three.
Another.
Two.
The last.
One.
The roof of a large edifice rose up out of the miasma. Withbone-jarring sudde
Feeling as if he was being shaken half to death, Burton threw agrapple; then the second; then the third.
The right wing collided with a chimney stack, sending themachine slewing sideways as bricks exploded and bounced aroundit.
He flung the last grapple overboard, hung on tight, and calledupon Allah.
The vehicle grated across the roof, hit the parapet, wentstraight through it, and plummeted over the edge.
There was a moment of weightless terror, a shriek of stressedmetal, and a tremendous jolt that caused Burton's face to slap intothe back of his valet's head.
He blacked out.
Disorientation.
Eyes coming back into focus.
The harness was digging into his chest. He sucked in ashuddering breath, shook his head to clear it, and looked to hisleft and right. The ornithopter was hanging against the side of thebuilding, between the big, flat, white letters “A” and “R” of thesign, VENETIA ROYAL HOTEL. The machine's wings were buckled, andthe left one had broken through a window.
Screams and shouts echoed up through the fog. There wasobviously a battle occurring in the Strand below.
“Good show!” the king's agent muttered.
He braced his feet against moldings in the fuselage, gripped thelip of the saddle, checked that his cane was still securely thrustthrough a loop in the waistband of his trousers, and unbuckled hisharness.
“Are you all right?” he asked the man of brass.
He received a nodded response.
“I'm going up. Follow.”
Transferring his grasp to one of the taut chains from which theflying machine hung, he swung free and pulled himself uphand-over-hand until he reached the roof. With a sense of relief,he hauled himself onto its flat surface.
Moments later, the clockwork man joined him.
Burton saw that three of the four grapples had caught fast amidbrickwork. The fourth had crashed through a skylight and jammedagainst its frame.
“That's our means of entry,” he said, pacing over and lookingdown through the broken glass into an unlit room. “It's some sortof presentation hall. Slightly too long a drop for me, but you'llmake it. Get down there and drag over a table for me to landon.”
This was done, and from the large room, Burton and his clockworkcompanion passed through a door into a hallway.
The Venetia Royal Hotel was dark and silent, and the top floor,which consisted entirely of offices, meeting rooms, and storerooms,was entirely abandoned.
They came to a wide staircase and descended to the next floor.Burton looked up at the ceiling. There was something clinging toit. It reminded him of the thick jungle vines he'd seen in Africa,except that it was pulsing and writhing and, somehow, no matter howhard he peered at it, it evaded proper focus, as if it wasn'tentirely a substance of this world.