drove his thumbs through, and the larynx crumpled like a papier-mache pin box. Darling gargled and died.
For a second Jonathan lay there gasping, his forehead on Darling's silent chest. He got to his knees and picked up the revolvers. Keep moving, he ordered himself. He blinked away the large spots of blindness in the center of his eyes and stumbled on, down the wide curving staircase and across the sterile Art Deco salon. He burst into the exercise room, dropping to the floor with both guns up before him. It was empty. But he could hear them now, shouting outside the house. He cocked back both hammers with his thumbs and struggled to his feet. Dizzy. Nausea.
He reeled toward the door to the small paneled dining room and kicked it open with the ball of his foot.
The dope swam in his head, and the scene played out like a dream—a slow-motion ballet. Strange and Grace were dining. She turned toward the opening door, her naked breasts wobbling viscously with the motion. Strange floated to his feet and put out one hand, palm forward as though in a Hindu gesture of blessing. Jonathan raised one gun and fired. The roar reverberated in his head, and even the recoil kick seemed to lift his hand slowly. Like magic, the left side of Strange's face disappeared and in its place was a splash of red gelatin. Grace clutched the air, her face contorted into a scream of horror, but no sound came. Strange sank away under the table, and she fainted.
From too slow, things began to go too fast. Jonathan stumbled back into the exercise room, panting and unsteady. He needed to vomit. The sound of running men was closer. He turned on the bank of sun lamps and directed them toward the outer door. 'I'm sick!' he whimpered aloud as he fumbled on the round green glasses haphazardly, one eye squeezed closed by the elastic band.
They burst into the room. Three of them. The broken-toothed one in the lead tried to shield his eyes from the blinding glare, holding his automatic before his face. Jonathan's first shot blew his arm off at the shoulder, and he spun and fell, spraying the other two with his blood. The next dumdum took the one closest to the door in the small of the back as he scrambled to retreat. His body was lifted into the air and slammed against the wall of exercise bars. He did not fall because his arm got tangled in the bars, but his body jerked convulsively.
The third man got off a wild shot in the direction of the lights, and one of them imploded above Jonathan's head, showering him with hot glass. Jonathan's return shot blew away the man's leg at the knee. He stood for a second, surprised. Then he fell to the unsupported side.
The silence rang with the absence of gun roars. The man tangled in the exercise rings slid to the floor, his forehead rattling on each rung. Then it was still.
'I'm sick!' Jonathan told them again, the words thick and muffled.
The tide of vertigo rose within him. The back of his throat was bitter with vomit. Mustn't pass out! Leonard is still out there somewhere! Hold on!
He tugged the green glasses off and staggered over to the door to the dressing room. Mirrors. An infinity of naked men with guns. Blood caked on their faces; their knees and chests scuffed and bleeding. He opened the center mirror and went into the Aquarium.
And there was Leonard. He had a Mauser machine pistol and was fitting on the wooden holster/stock, slowly and deliberately, his hooded eyes expressionless. He was on the other side of the one-way glass, standing alone in the empty Art Deco salon, pressed close to the mirrored wall, waiting for Jonathan to emerge through the exercise room door.
Jonathan's heart pulsed in his temples. He was so tired, so sick. He only wanted to sleep. The mist of dope in his brain cleared for a moment. Vanessa. Leonard and Vanessa—and kitchen utensils. He set his teeth and crept soundlessly to the mirrored panel before him. He raised both guns, their barrels almost touching the glass, and he waited as Leonard on his side inched forward, waited until Leonard's huge body had moved directly in front of the barrels. One gun was pointed at Leonard's neck, the other at his ear.
The mirror exploded and Leonard's headless body surfed over the parqueted floor on a hissing tide of shattered glass. It twitched violently, tinkling and grinding in the glass. Then it stopped.
And Jonathan threw up.
Covent Garden
The driver of taxi #68204 threaded through the tangle of narrow lanes above Hampstead High Street in search of a fare. He accepted philosophically the improbability of making a pickup in that quiet district at that time of night, and he decided to return to center city. As he stopped at a deserted intersection, he began to sing 'On the Road to Mandalay' under his breath, shifting keys with liberal insouciance. The back door of his cab opened, and a passenger entered.
'Where to, mate?' the driver asked over his shoulder without turning around.
'Covent Garden.'
'Right you are.' The driver pulled away, humming his inadvertent variations on the theme of 'Roses of Picardy.' He vaguely wondered what a man with an American accent wanted in Covent Garden at that time of night. 'The market?' he asked over his shoulder.
'What? Oh. Yes. The market will do.'
The passenger's voice was faint and confused, and the driver feared that he might have picked up a drunk who would soil the back of his cab. He pulled over to the curb and turned around. 'Now, listen, mate. If you're drunk... I'll be buggered!' The passenger was nude. 'Ere! Wot's all this!'
'Go to the market. I'll give you directions from there.'
The driver was prepared to put a stop to all this rubbish, when he noticed two very large revolvers on the seat beside the passenger. 'The market, is it?' He released the hand brake and drove on. Not singing.
They stopped at the entrance to a narrow, unlit alley in the heart of the Garden district. 'This it, mate?'
'Yes.' The passenger sounded as though he had dropped off during the ride. 'Listen, driver, I don't seem to have any money on me...'
'Oh, that's all right, mate.'
'If you'll just come in with me, I'll—'
'No! No, that's all right. Forget it.'
The passenger rubbed the back of his neck and his eyes, as though trying to clear his mind. 'I... ah... I know this must seem irregular to you, driver.'
'No, sir. Not at all.'
'You're sure you don't want to come in for your money?'
'Oh yes, sir. I'm quite sure. Now, if this is the place you want...'
'Right.' Jonathan climbed painfully out of the cab, taking his revolvers with him, and the taxi sped off.
The outer workshop of MacTaint's place was empty, save for the gaunt, wild-eyed painter who looked up crossly as Jonathan's entrance brought a gust of cold air with it. He muttered angrily under his breath and returned to the magnum opus he had been working on for eleven years: a huge pointillist rendering of the London docks done with a three-hair brush.
Jonathan strode stiff-legged past him, still unsteady on his feet, and made for the entrance to the back apartment.
The painter returned to his work. Then, after a minute, he raised his emaciated, Christlike face and stared into the distance. There had been something odd about that intruder. Something about his dress.
He steeped sleepily in the deep hot water of the bath, a half-empty tumbler of whiskey dangling loosely from his hand over the edge of the tub. Although the water still stung and located all his abrasions—knees, chest, shoulder, the back of his head where he had cracked it swinging back in through the window—his mind was quite clear. The worst of it was over. All he had to do now was to get the films from within the Marini Horse.
MacTaint entered the bathroom, carrying towels, shuffling along in his shaggy greatcoat, despite the steamy atmosphere of the room. 'You didn't half give Lilla a start, coming in like that with blood all over you and your shiny arse hanging out. I thought I was going to have to mop up the floor after her. Got her settled down with a bottle of gin now, though.'
'Give her my apologies, as one theatre personage to another.'
'I'll do that. Gor, look at you! They gave you a fair bit of stick, didn't they?'
'They got a little stick themselves.'
'I'll bet they did.' He ogled the bath water with mistrust. 'That ain't good for you, Jon. Bathing saps the
