probably would have.
Blotting sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, he stared past the imposing line of policemen who’d been posted to keep the milling spectators at a safe distance. A row of ambulances was lined up at the portal entrance, but the drivers were just lounging about, chatting. No frantic scramble to haul out the injured or-or the dead. He caught sight of a couple of Government-looking types, with bright purple badges fixed to their coat lapels. Officials from the Department of Transport, they were. Deep in solemn conversation but not looking panicked. Looking cheerful, if anything. So did that mean there really weren’t any casualties this time?
Oh please, oh please…
Off to one side of the portal entrance a huddle of regular townsfolk were in animated discussion with more men from the Department of Transport. Portal passengers, then? Witnesses to whatever had happened? He caught sight of Reg, bless her, perched on top of a street sign announcing the portal’s entrance, almost on top of them, flagrantly eavesdropping for all she was worth.
All around him the crowd was muttering and agitating and speculating. “ Heard it was just a breakdown, not like the other times… I don’t know, they tell us all these thaumaturgics are safe, Harry, but I don’t think I’m going to trust them any more… new airships, did you see that advertisement? Yes, they might be slower but they’re safer, you can’t deny they’re safer… are we quite certain no-one got hurt this time?… ”
He nearly turned to see who’d said that. It was disgusting, the speaker had sounded positively disappointed. But his attention was caught by more movement at the portal entrance. Someone was coming out.
Lord, it was Dalby, the senior janitor with the inexplicable fondness for stewed tea. Gerald held his breath and stared at the cobbled street in front of him, willing the rumpled, bruised-looking agent not to see him, not to feel so much of a skerrick of his presence. He didn’t dare switch his shield back on in case Dalby felt the etheretic disturbance and came to investigate what had caused it.
He risked a glance up, just in time to see Dalby nod to one of the Department of Transport officials, get into a small, nondescript car parked a little way past the ambulances and drive off.
Gerald, lungs aching, let out an enormously relieved rush of air.
The Department of Transport officials said something to the idling ambulance drivers. They nodded and touched their caps, then returned to their emergency vehicles. One by one they drove away too. A few moments later an empty bus pulled up in the space left by the ambulances, and the people who’d been eagerly talking to the Department of Transport officials loaded onto it.
Reg bounced up and down on top of the street sign, flipping her wing towards the grand Central Ott Post Office building with its imposing colonnaded entrance and carved sandstone cherubim and gargoyles, half a block down from the portal station.
Gerald stared. What? How was he supposed to get to the Post Office with all these policemen and Department of Transport officials clogging the street?
Reg bounced harder then flew from the street sign down to the Post Office, where she perched on a gargoyle making more impatient come on, hurry up gestures with her wing. Which was all well and good for her, but she was a bird, wasn’t she? Who paid any attention to her?
He looked up and down the crowded street. No sign of any other agents. Well, not agents he could recognise, anyway. No regular wizards he could recognise either. Just lots of ordinary people, starting to drift away now that it seemed the excitement was over.
He took a deep breath and drifted with them.
When he was finally opposite the Post Office he stopped drifting-quite a few people swore and cursed-and looked across the street to where Reg on her gargoyle was bouncing up and down so violently she was in danger, surely, of giving herself a concussion.
One of the crowd-control policemen stepped forward, his expression stern. “Thank you, sir, move it along if you please. We need to clear this area now so folk can get back to minding their own business.”
Gerald looked up into the policeman’s uncompromising face. The brass buttons on his dark green uniform shone brightly in the sunshine. “Yes, Constable. Of course, Constable. Sorry to be a nuisance, Constable.”
The policeman nodded, then turned to chivvy someone else. Gerald shuffled along as slowly as he could, thinking furiously. He wasn’t going to get across the street unnoticed, not with so many policemen still about. What he needed was a diversion…
I am not supposed to do this. If Sir Alec finds out he’ll have my guts for garters. The problem is I don’t have much choice.
He agitated the ether again, a little harder this time. Hard enough to tingle. Sent the ripple running back the way he’d come so the crowd leapt and exclaimed and fussed. And then, as the startled policemen rushed to investigate, he nipped across the closed-off street to the Post Office and dived for shelter in its inky-deep shadows.
Reg flapped down to join him. “Nicely done,” she said, landing on his shoulder. “Gerald Dunwoody, you’ve got a real talent for sneakiness.”
“Let’s just hope Sir Alec doesn’t find out,” he muttered. “I’ve lost count of the rules I’ve broken so far and it doesn’t seem like this case is anywhere near over.”
“I thought sneaky would be an advantage in your game,” said Reg. “As for rules, well, if they’re getting in the way they’re not much use to you, are they?”
He wasn’t too sure about that, but this wasn’t the time or place for a philosophical debate. “What did you overhear, Reg?”
“Well, the good news is nobody got hurt,” she said. “Mainly because someone called in a warning, apparently. There was enough time to get folks to safety and put some kind of dampening field in place so the portal just fizzled out instead of unravelling like the others.”
A wave of giddy relief crashed over him. “Who called in the warning?”
“Don’t know,” said Reg. “But bless his mother’s apron, whoever he is. Or she, of course.”
Of course. “And the bad news?”
Reg ruffled her feathers. “The bad news is that every single witness was bleating how they’d never travel by portal again,” she said. “And you can bet your warmest flannel long johns they won’t be the only ones. So if this is a big conspiracy to put the portal network out of business and usher in the Second Great Age of the Airship, whoever’s behind it is on a winning formula, sunshine.”
Damn. “I need to speak to Sir Alec,” he said, chewing the side of his thumb. “I’ve got more information for him which may or may not mean something.” He glanced through the small window in the Post Office’s grandiloquent front doors, to the bank of recently installed public telephones in the lobby. Glanced back at the street, where his small etheretic sleight-of-hand still kept the crowd and the policemen usefully preoccupied. Then he twitched his shoulder. “Stay out here, would you? And keep both eyes open in case someone looks like coming in.”
With a rattle of tail feathers Reg flapped up to perch precariously on a little bit of jutting stonework. “All right, but make it snappy,” she said. “I’m not being paid to help you out, sunshine. I’ve still got a job to do back at Wycliffe’s. Melissande’s all alone, getting into who-knows-what kind of mischief without me.”
He smiled, briefly. “You’re really enjoying this whole Witches Inc. adventure, aren’t you?”
“It’s something to pass the time,” she said, pretending indifference. In the gloom beneath the Post Office’s porticoed entrance her eyes gleamed.
“Yeah. You love it,” he said. “Okay. Sit tight. I won’t be long.”
The Post Office’s front doors surrendered to a particularly sneaky unlocking hex he’d learned during his training. Feeling a no-doubt reprehensible flicker of satisfaction, he slipped into the lobby and hurried to the nearest public telephone. He could have hexed that too but somehow the notion seemed wrong so he fished out a few coins from his pocket and called Sir Alec’s very private number.
“ What are you playing at, Mister Dunwoody?” Sir Alec demanded. His voice was so cold it was a wonder the telephone receiver didn’t freeze solid. “ Mister Dalby has already told me where you are. You are not supposed to be there, Mister Dunwoody. Your brief is simple: keep a close eye on Errol Haythwaite. ”
Dalby had noticed him? Damn. “ I’m sorry, Sir Alec,” he said. “I just-I had to-when I heard on the wireless about the new accident, I-”
“ Mister Dunwoody,” said Sir Alec, his icy voice warming the smallest fraction. “ You will not last five minutes in this business if you don’t learn how to find a proper distance-and follow explicit instructions imparted to you by
