now tailing her, Grayson was very good indeed. He had put it all together very neatly, only he had no idea what it meant. When he realized she wasn't going to tell him anything, he had put a tail on her, obviously hoping that she would lead him to Steiger and the others. Well, thought Linda, he was in for a major disappointment.
She had to lose this cop and do it quickly, so she could get back to Steiger and the others and let them know what happened. She was sick over the death of Dick Larson. It had been entirely her fault. He had argued that it was too dangerous to go back to the suite at the Metropole, but she had insisted, shaming him into going along with her, and now he was dead. And Scott Neilson was probably dead, too. Larson had been right. She had allowed personal feelings to get in the way of duty. to get the better of her professional instincts, and it had cost Larson his life. 'Professional instincts.' she thought ruefully. What a joke. She wasn't a professional at all. She had no business being on this mission, which had turned into a complete disaster, a large part of which was her responsibility. She had cried back in Grayson's office and it hadn't been entirely an act. It was all falling apart and she felt utterly helpless to do anything about it.
At least there was one thing she could do right. She could lose the policeman Grayson had set upon her trail and get back to the command post, face Colonel Steiger and tell him what had happened. Own up to her responsibility. At least they got one of them. Perhaps it wasn't much, but it was something. If only the cost hadn't been so high.
She headed towards Charing Cross, at the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street. It was the place where proclamations were once read, criminals were once pilloried in stocks and executions had been carried out. Now, in the late nineteenth century, it was one of the busiest intersections in London. A large cross stood atop an ornate pedestal with eight statues of Queen Eleanor of Castile, wife to
Edward I, who had ordered the first crosses erected there in her memory at the close of the Thirteenth century. Linda quickened her pace, heading towards the Charing Cross Hotel.
She went into the hotel lobby, then quickly mingled with a group of people coming out, using their bodies to shield her from the policeman who was pursuing her. He ran into the hotel just as she was coining out. They passed within several feet of one another and he never saw her. Quickly, she hailed a hansom and jumped inside, directing the driver to take her to Mornington Place, near Regent's Park.
Having shaken the policeman, she leaned hack against the cushion of the scat and shut her eyes, feeling miserable. Her first assignment in Minus Time and she had made a complete mess of it. She had allowed Moreau to escape with Wells; she had been the only one of the entire team who had a shot at Drakov and she had flubbed it and now she had caused Dick Larson's death. She would not be surprised if she was court-martialed, assuming they ever made it back to their own time. It was a nightmare. Scott had told her about the pressure, about how he did not believe that anyone ever really learned to handle it, but she didn't see anyone collapsing under the weight of it, either, as she felt herself about to do. She simply didn't have anything left. She wondered whatever made her think she had what it took to be a temporal agent in the first place. She looked down at her hands and saw they were shaking.
She tortured herself with self-recriminations all the way to Regent's Park. She felt numb by the time the hansom reined up in front of H. G. Wells' house. She paid the driver and started towards the house, then saw the shattered window and the front door standing ajar.
'Oh, God,' she whispered, 'no. please…'
Without thinking of the danger, she ran straight up to the entrance and inside the house, where she was confronted by two uniformed policemen standing in the living room, talking to Amy Robbins and H. G. Wells.
'Wells!' she said, astonished.
'And who might you be, miss?' said one of the policemen.
'Linda!' Neilson said, coining in from the next room with Delaney, whose hand was bandaged.
'Do you know this young lady, sir?' said the policeman.
'Of course,' said Neilson quickly. 'She's my sister. It's all right, Linda. No need to be alarmed. We've just had a minor accident.'
'It is all entirely my fault,' said Wells. He turned to the policemen once again. 'I can see that I have only managed to upset everyone, including my poor neighbors. I shall have a devil of a time explaining it to them. I must ask you to forgive me, Linda.' he continued, looking at her apologetically. 'I invite you all for dinner and instead, it turns into a veritable disaster.'
'Now let me see if I have it all correctly, Mr. Wells.' one of the policemen said. 'You were showing this Colt pistol to Mr. Neilson here, believing that the weapon was unloaded; Mr. Neilson cocked the hammer, squeezed the trigger- thinking the revolver was empty-and it went off, startling you and causing you to knock into that lamp there, which fell and broke the window, is that correct? And Mr. Delaney cut his hand upon a piece of glass, is that it?'
'That is correct, Constable,' said Wells.
'Well, if you ask me, it's very fortunate indeed that no one was seriously injured,' the policeman said. 'You should always examine a firearm first to ensure that it's unloaded, Mr. Wells. It might stand you in good stead to remember an old adage, 'there is no such thing as an unloaded gun.' One can never be too careful.'
'Yes, I have certainly learned my lesson,' Wells said, sounding sincerely contrite.
'Well, at least no one was injured. Things could have turned out much worse. From now on, Mr. Wells, you will be careful around firearms, I trust?'
'To be sure,' said Wells. 'This entire unfortunate episode has given me a frightful turn.'
No sooner had they gone than Delaney had unwrapped his hand and the ghostly figures of three men appeared out of thin air. Linda was astonished to see that one of them was General Forrester. Another was Colonel Steiger and the third, she realized, could only be the mysterious Dr. Darkness, the man who was faster than light. Darkness had an arm around each man's shoulder and as he released them, Steiger and Forrester stepped away from him and became substantial.
Darkness remained standing where he was, unable to move from the spot on which he had materialized, trapped by the immutable laws of the universe which his altered atomic structure violated. The only way Darkness could move from one spot to another was by translating into tachyons. He was incapable of taking even a single step.
'I hate it when you do that.' Steiger said, rubbing himself as if to make certain he was solid once again.
'General Forrester!' said Linda. 'What… what are you doing here? I don't understand, what's happened?'
'We were hit,' said Steiger. He quickly told her what had happened. 'The neighbors summoned the police when they heard all the commotion.'
'I am still amazed that they believed us.' Wells said.
'Police are inherently suspicious,' Steiger said. 'You tell them something that sounds reasonable and they're liable to think you're lying. On the other hand, you tell them an outrageous lie that makes you out to be a fool at the same time and they'll figure you've got to be telling them the truth, because no one would make up something like that.'
'You have a fascinatingly devious mind. Colonel,' Wells said.
'It comes of being a paranoid,' said Darkness wryly.
And you. sir!' Wells said. 'Just when i believed that I could not be astonished any further. you come along, a man who can become invisible! How is it possible?'
' I am afraid the explanation would be beyond you, Mr. Wells.' said
Darkness. 'Besides, you know too much already.'
'We can worry about that later.' Steiger said. 'Right now, we've got a much bigger problem on our hands. Drakov was able to snatch Ransome and Rizzo, transform them into hominoids, then turn them against us. Andre is still out there somewhere, all alone.' He turned and stared pointedly at Linda. 'And you've been unaccounted for several hours. Where were you? And where's Larson?'
'Larson's dead.' she said flatly.
'How? What the hell happened?'
'We went back to the Metropole, looking for Scott. Scott didn't know that we had left the Metropole and I was afraid he might walk into a trap. So instead of Scott, we walked right into it. One of Drakov's creatures killed him. It was all my fault.'
