"Don't want it, eh? What about all that digging down there in Battersea Park, eh? What about that, then? You started this, Rumble."
"We started it! I know Timbucktoo is a twifle over-enthusiastic at times, always wants to be digging and that, but he's harmless. No, it won't do. This twouble is all your fault, Bowwible."
"Cobblers," said Vulge, moving nearer the bath.
"How many of you here?" asked the Chieftain.
"There's only eight of us, but that's enough of us to wreck the place." Vulge stood between the two electric fires and let them warm the pain in his shoulder. He was getting weaker and stiffer by the minute. He knew he must finish the task quickly; he felt in no state to defend himself if reinforcements arrived on the scene.
Vulgarian suddenly stood up and the water cascaded from his fur. He was the tallest of all the Rumbles, impressive and commanding. He looked down his snout imperiously at the grimy little Borrible.
"Eight of you!" he cried. "Why, you impudent little whippersnappers, you insignificant hobbledehoys. I tell you that Wumbles will go whewever I say, fwom Hampton Wick to Arnos Park, and fwom Ealing Golf Course to Bexley Heath. We won't be stopped by a handful of ignowant stweet urchins, thieves who live in slimy slums and damp cellars, who cannot afford a bar of soap and would eat it if they could, who smell, whose ears are pointed by the effect of cheap peasant cunning and who are fit only to be our slaves. You Battersea bwat, I have only to pwess that alarm bell and my bodyguard will make a pin-cushion of you with their Wumblesticks. Hand me that towel, you scwubby little serf. Hand me that towel I say, Bowwible!"
Vulge smiled and did not move for a moment. Then he pushed the end of his Rumble-stick through the handle of one of the electric fires and he raised the sticker and the fire pivoted on the end of it. He slid his feet up the steps, his eyes remaining steady on Vulgarian's face and he held his spear forward so that the fire was above the water and near to the Chief Rumble's fur. There was a smell of singeing and Vulgarian took a step backwards, horror replacing the expression of disdain on his snout.
Vulge smiled ironically at the Rumble. "Don't worry about the towel," he said pleasantly, "I'll soon have your fur dry," and he allowed the lance to slant down to the water and the fire plopped into the bath and hissed. The electric current sprang from the fire and arced across the water, and from the water it raced through the flesh of the Rumble Chieftain. It burnt through his heart and demolished it like an old fuse-box and Vulgarian Rumble's voice cried out, but he never heard the sound. His body jerked upright, his dead eyes stared in amazement, then, as stiff as a scaffolding plank, he fell forward into the bathwater and a tidal wave washed over the rim of the beautiful bath and gushed down the veined green of the marble steps.
Vulge sniffed and prodded the body with the point of his spear. It bobbed lifelessly in the tinted foam.
"Well, there you are, me ol' Rumble," said Vulge reflectively. "That's 'ow you singe your fur at both ends. Kilowatts will kill a weasel any day. So," he added, "I've got my name. Mind you, the way I feel, I shan't have it long . . . alive."
He descended the steps and pulled the cables from the remaining electric fire and from the hair-drier. Next he trailed the flex across the room to the door, which he shut, and then he wound the bare wires around the metal door handles. He looked at his work and went on talking to himself. "I don't think I could fight my way out of here with this wound, so I might as well have a scrap here; saves time."
He crossed the room once more and pressed the red alarm bell by the bath. "That should bring the bodyguard at a run," he said and he pulled a couple of chairs and cushions across the bottom of the bath steps to form a rough barricade and squatted behind it. The dead Vulgarian floated behind him.
Vulge removed his bandoliers and placed them near to hand. He took out his knife and placed that ready, and he laid his lance on the barricade. He leant back then on a cushion, waiting, favouring his injured shoulder, which was very stiff now though it pained him less. He wagged his head and thought of a few old Borrible proverbs to while away the time.
"It is better to die young than to be caught," he quoted from memory and he smiled and hoped the others were getting on all right.
Knocker and Adolf ran together from the end of the tunnel and into the hallway that led to the Head Rumble's apartments. Alarm bells were ringing and lights were flashing in the ceiling. In the distance a siren howled and a recorded voice called all Rumbles to their battle stations. Knocker and Adolf stretched their catapults but they need not have bothered. The bodies of the two Rumble guards in the doorway did not move. Knocker put his catapult away and picked up a lance. "Look," he said, showing the point to Adolf, "blood."
"Vulge?" said Adolf with a worried expression. "Verdammt, I hope he is still alive."
"Let's see," said Knocker. Inside the doorway they found the body of the major-domo. Blood stained the whiteness of the carpet, blood already turning brown.
"Wait a minute," Knocker whistled through his teeth. "Look!"
In the sitting-room of the Headquarters lay several Rumbles, their bodies contorted, their fur singed. Both Borribles sniffed the air and looked at each other.
"Electrics," said Adolf, "nasty dangerous stuff."
"Don't touch the bodies," said Knocker and he went to the door. Here he and Adolf found more Rumbles, all scorched and twisted and all of them dead.
"This must be the elite guard," said Knocker, "look at their uniforms, their weapons."
"They lead to that door over there," said Adolf, gesturing with his catapult.
"Do you notice how they are all touching each other?" said Knocker, and with the butt end of his lance he bashed the door free from the charred paw of the first in the line of electrocuted bodyguards. Inside the bathroom the wires attached to the handle told their own story. The first warrior to arrive on the scene had tried the door and died. Another had attempted to pull his comrade from the handle and he had died. Many had perished in this manner, their bodies soldered together, their fur crisp. Then the door had been broken down, but there were dozens more bodies in the bathroom, electrocuted on the threshold, knocked down by stones as they crossed the room, or stabbed as they had attempted to storm Vulge's little barricade. The room was a shambles.
"Oh, verdammt, " said Adolf reverently, "what a scrapper, that Vulge. Who would have guessed that such a little Borrible had so much courage in him?"
The trail of bodies led across the room and up to the very edge of the bath. At the bottom of the steps half a dozen of the bodyguard lay in a heap. There had been a terrific battle waged in this bathroom but there was no sign of the Stepney Borrible.
Knocker scrambled over the bodies and the barricade and discovered the half-submerged form of the Rumble Chieftain.
"He got him," he shouted. "Vulge got his name."
"Posthumously, I should think," said the German sadly.
"Wait," said Knocker, "I can see his foot." And it was true. Sticking out from under the pile of Rumble bodies was a Borrible foot. Knocker and Adolf pulled the corpses aside and underneath everything lay a pathetically frail Borrible holding a knife in one hand and the broken barb of a lance in the other. They knelt beside him.
"Has he gone?" asked Knocker.
Adolf put his head to Vulge's chest. "No," he said. "I can hear his heart."
Tenderly they raised the Stepney Borrible into a sitting position and rubbed his hands and his cheeks. Vulge's eyes flickered and then opened weakly. He was covered in blood, though most of it was not his own. He licked his lips. "Trust you to get here when it was all over," he said and he tried to grin. "Get me something to drink."
Adolf returned in an instant with a jade tooth-mug full of cold water and Vulge drank it greedily. "That's better," he said, looking round the room. " Pretty good fight it was," he added, "but you'd better get out of here. With those bells and alarms going the tunnels will be solid with Rumbles."
"Okay," said Knocker, "We're going. I've just got something to do first. Adolf, watch the door."
Vulge grabbed Knocker's arm. "Give me one of your bandoliers," he said, "I feel lonely without a few stones."
Knocker slipped a bandolier over his head, retrieved a catapult from the floor and handed them to Vulge. "There you are," he said. "Leave some Rumbles for us, won't you."
Knocker left the bathroom and passed into a large study. It was an inner sanctum, different from the main office, more private and intimate. Here there was just a bare desk, some books and a watercolour of the Rumbledom countryside on the wall. Knocker flung the picture to the floor and found what he had been hoping to find—a large safe. He looked at it, baffled. The safe was firmly closed and there was a complicated combination lock on the outside. He fiddled with it, listened to it, pulled the large brass handle, but the safe door would not budge. He ran back to the bathroom and shouted desperately to Adolf. "Dammit, I can't get the safe open. We're snookered."
The German bobbed his head round the door he was guarding. "A safe," he cried, "is that all? Did I not tell you how I got my third name, Amadeus? By stealing diamonds from the most renowned burglar in all of Austria. You come and watch. I will persuade your safe to be friendly."