Chinese burns. They had already butchered several hundred men, felling them like skittles. As it gradually dawned upon the assembled troops that the Prefects meant to destroy whatever was closest to them without discrimination, several strange alliances were joined. Mr. Speight, for example, was seen to fight side by side with an ersatz Chinaman. Dedlock took up arms with Mina, the bearded whore.
Detective Inspector Merryweather had withdrawn from the fray and was trying to marshall his men into a concerted attack when he saw Moon appear at the foot of the Monument. “Edward!” he shouted above the din and chaos. “Over here!”
Moon ran across to join them. “What’s happening?” he gasped. “What are those things?”
“No one seems sure. I’ve heard… rumors.”
A voice called out: “
They turned to see a squat, wizened figure walking toward them. His flesh was tugged tight about his face, his eyes hollows of pain, his skin covered with a multitude of fierce sores and lesions. Mr. Skimpole was very close to death, his life seeping almost visibly away. “They’re the Prefects,” he rasped. “And they’re my fault.” Without acknowledging either man further, the albino stumbled on toward the center of the melee, for the eye of the storm, for Hawker and for Boon.
“Where’s my sister?” Moon snapped. “Where’s the Somnambulist?”
“She’s in the thick of it,” Merryweather said bemusedly. “But I’ve not seen the giant. Shouldn’t worry, though. Practically indestructible, isn’t he?”
“Have you seen the Chairman?”
“Who?”
“Never mind.” Moon set off toward the fighting, following the green trail of the poet.
I was only a few minutes ahead of him at the time, trying to manhandle the old man back underground. It was tough and unforgiving work as parts kept dropping from his body without warning. We reached the mouth of King William Street Station and I led him inside, down past the ticket booths, along the platform, onto the track and toward the headquarters of Love. I tried not to think about how badly things had gone wrong, how my schemes and dreams had been undone, but simply did my best to concentrate on saving the Chairman, on preserving the cornerstone of my vision. I didn’t know it at the time, but as I grappled with the old man, the Somnambulist, with a look of intense concentration on his face, was pulling the final swords from his body, almost free at last.
Like most schoolboys, the Prefects were easily bored. Half an hour was all it took to rout the combined forces of the Directorate, the Metropolitan Police Force and Love, Love, Love and Love. The streets around them were upholstered with corpses; the gutters ran red with the blood of the fallen. Hawker and Boon were in the midst of removing a man’s eye with the horseshoe attachment on their penknife when they caught sight of Mr. Skimpole tottering uncertainly toward them.
“Skimpers!’ shouted Boon. “What the devil are you doing here? Hawker, look. It’s Mr. S.”
Stepping over a dozen or so dead bodies with fastidious care, the albino finally reached their side. “What have you done?” he hissed.
“Pretty much what you asked, haven’t we, Boon?”
The other man nodded in fervent agreement. “The Mongoose is down, Maurice Trotman’s snuffed it and we’ve tidied this lot up as a bonus. Practically done your job for you, I’d say.”
“Please go,” Skimpole gasped. “You’ve done enough.”
“Well, I like that.”
“Dashed ungrateful’s what I call it.”
“What…” Skimpole stopped, his face screwed up in pain, until he managed at last a feeble: “What do I owe you?”
“Owe us, sir? Jolly decent of you to ask about a payment at a time like this.”
“You don’t owe us a bean, sir.”
“Not any more.”
“What?” Skimpole wheezed.
“Point of fact, we’ve taken what you owe already.”
“Shouldn’t worry, sir. It’s quite within your means.”
“Rather a bargain, I’d have said.”
Boon ruffled his hair affectionately. “I’d get home, though, sir, if I was you. He doesn’t look at all well, does he, Hawker?”
“Positively peaky.”
“If you’re going to die, sir I’d do it at home, Keeling over round here’s just going to look like you’re following the crowd. No, no, place to do it’s back in Wimbledon. Mortality’s unusual there. Out of the ordinary. People might take a spot of notice.”
A voice floated across to them. “Stop!”
Amused, the Prefects craned their heads to look. “Oh, I say, who’s that?”
“Isn't’ he the fat johnny from the club?”
“Could be.”
Dedlock stepped forward, a revolver clasped tightly in his hand. “Let him go.”
“You don’t understand,” the albino murmured.
Hawker moved toward Dedlock.
“Don’t move. I know what you are.”
Boon grinned. “I doubt that.”
“It’s all right,” Skimpole muttered. “They’re working for me.”
“For you?”
Stifling a yawn, Hawker sauntered across to the scarred man and knocked the gun from his hand. “Name’s Hawker. Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” And he gripped the older man’s hand in a parody of a handshake.
At once, Dedlock felt a terrific burning sensation which began at his fingertips and rushed over his entire body, a broiling, intense, pulsating heat. He fainted almost immediately.
Hawker shrugged and let him fall to the ground. “Just a little gift,” he explained. “No extra charge.”
“What’s happened to that funny green fellow?” asked Boon.
“Did a bunk down the tube, I think,” Hawker replied.
“Shall we have a look-see?”
“Why not?”
“I’m too tired to walk.”
“Agreed.”
They turned back to Skimpole.
“Ta-at, then, sir.”
“Tinkety-tonk.”
The Prefects linked hands, looking for an instant oddly innocent, like real children. Boon crumpled his brow, apparently deep in concentration.
I expect by now your disbelief is not so much suspended as dangling from the highest plateau of credulity. Even so, I regret that this next incident requires a further extension of that capacity.
The two men seemed to shimmer slightly, flickering like a reflection in rippling water. This effect lasted for no longer than a few seconds before they disappeared. Oh yes, disappeared. I can’t put it any more plainly than that. One moment they were there, the next they had been erased from existence. The sole sign that they had ever stood in that spot, their only residue, was a pungent smell of fireworks and the lingering aftertaste of sherbet dip.
They left maybe three dozen people alive. The living were outnumbered by the dead.
This, then, was the final horrible coincidence of the day, as all the strands knitted together to ensure the
