“Unhand me, sir!” came his receding protest.
Burke turned to the poet: “I'm sorry, Mr. Swinburne, but Lord Palmerston's safety is my and Mr. Hare's primary duty. I have no choice but to leave you and your companions to defend this house as best you can. Besides which, we are somewhat hampered by our injuries. If our attackers make it past you, hopefully you will have weakened them enough for us to be able to deal with them.”
“You mean to make of us a forlorn hope?” Swinburne asked. “Ruthless bugger, aren't you?”
“You object?”
Swinburne grinned. “Not at all! This is just my cup of tea! Go! Barricade yourselves in. I'll rally the troops.”
“Thank you, sir. Um-” Burke looked at the cactus pistol in his hand “-I should keep hold of this but Mr. Hare and I are armed with revolvers and, under the circumstances-”
He passed the strange weapon to the poet, quickly explained its use, then turned away, entered the storeroom, and closed the door.
Swinburne let loose a breath and whispered: “Tally-ho!” He descended the stairs. As he reached the landing, he saw Mrs. Angell in the hallway below, carrying a coffee pot and cups on a tray.
There was a knock at the front door.
The housekeeper immediately put the tray down on the hall table and reached for the door handle.
“Don't!” Swinburne yelled.
It was too late. Even as she turned to look up at him, Mrs. Angell's fingers had twisted the doorknob.
The portal swung inward, pushed by a big bloated hand.
The old woman staggered backward and screamed.
A bulging mass of clothing blocked the threshold. Swinburne recognised it at once: the Tichborne Claimant!
The hideous head came ducking under the lintel and, as the hulking mass of blubbery flesh pushed through after it, Mrs. Angell dropped in a dead faint.
Swinburne raised the cactus pistol and pressed the trigger nodule. He missed. Spines thudded into the doorframe. The Claimant raised his repulsive face, looked at the poet, and smiled sweetly.
“You must be Algy.”
His voice was female, with a Russian accent.
“Forgive me for not visiting you in person, kotyonok, but I am a little stretched at the moment.” The Claimant glanced down at his corpulent belly. He looked back up at the poet and chuckled. “He he he! Horribly stretched! But as a matter of fact, I was referring to the uprising. It goes well, does it not? Your capital burns! Ha ha! How your poor King Albert must tremble!”
“Who the hell are you?” Swinburne snarled.
The door beside him opened and Detective Inspector Trounce stepped out.
“What's going- Bloody hell!”
“Ah, is that William Trounce? How gratifying. I do hope you have Herbert Spencer with you, too. It would be so convenient if my emissary can kill you all at once before he retrieves Sir Richard. Really, it was very rude of you to take him from me before I'd finished ruining that extraordinary mind of his. I would have come for him sooner but I have so much to do. I am quite dreadfully busy. Ah well, let us proceed. Time for you to die! As we say in Russia: Bare derutsya-u kholopov chuby treschat! Farewell!”
The Claimant's eyes suddenly dulled. He emitted a loud bellow, in his own voice, and started up the stairs. His girth was such that the banister and its balusters cracked, splintered, and fell away from the staircase as he heaved himself up.
Trounce went to draw his police revolver. It snagged in his pocket.
“Confound it!” he cursed.
Swinburne raised the spine-shooter and fired again, hitting the advancing monstrosity in the chest. The spines had no effect other than to elicit another roar.
The poet and policeman retreated into the study.
“What's happenin’?” Herbert Spencer asked.
“Big trouble,” Trounce grunted. “Very big indeed!”
The Claimant blocked the doorway, wedged his vast body into it, and began to shove himself through. The door frame split.
“Cover your ears,” Trounce muttered. Swinburne and Spencer did so. The Scotland Yard man had finally freed his revolver. He fired a shot into one of the unwelcome visitor's beefy thighs.
The Claimant yelled incoherently, grabbed the side and top of the door, and ripped it from its hinges. He threw it at Trounce.
The slab of wood smashed into the detective inspector and sent him stumbling backward. He fell to his knees, dazed.
“Repulsive toad!” Pox squawked, and sought refuge on top of a bookcase.
Herbert Spencer grabbed a brass poker from the hearth and brandished it like a sword.
“What'll we do, lad?” he mumbled, gaping at the slowly advancing mountain of flesh.
Swinburne, standing beside the vagrant philosopher, became conscious that the mantelpiece was at his back. No retreat. He glanced to the left. Both the study windows were closed. No escape there, not that anyone could survive the jump. He grimaced. His head had started aching and his thoughts were becoming turgid and confused. He was feeling the baleful influence of the Choir Stones, which were still embedded in the Claimant's scalp. He felt an urge to welcome Sir Roger Tichborne to the house and to help him fight his enemies.
He gritted his teeth.
He looked to the right and saw Admiral Lord Nelson standing immobile by the door to the dressing room.
The faux aristocrat lumbered closer.
A fat hand reached out.
Swinburne, without thinking, screeched: “Nelson! Throw this obese bastard out of the house the fastest way possible! At once!”
The clockwork man bent his upper torso forward and accelerated away from the wall, a blur of gleaming metal.
The Claimant turned toward the movement.
Nelson collided with the giant's belly, snapped his mechanical arms out straight, and pushed with all his spring-loaded might.
Neither Swinburne nor Herbert Spencer had any inkling that the clockwork man possessed the power that, in a shocking instant, now became evident.
The whalelike mass of the Tichborne Claimant was thrown into the air and right across the study. He hit the window and went out through it, taking the glass, the frame, and a considerable chunk of the wall on either side of it with him.
The shattering crash was tremendous, and was followed by the clatter and bangs of falling masonry as the front part of 14 Montagu Place suffered his unexpected exit.
Detective Inspector Trounce, shaking his head to clear it, staggered to his feet and peered around at the room. It looked as if a bomb had exploded in it. The Claimant's passage had wrecked furniture, brick dust swirled around, and Burton's papers were raining down like autumn leaves.
“Bloody hell!” he gasped.
Admiral Lord Nelson turned to the poet and saluted.
“Yes, thank you, old chap,” Swinburne responded meekly. “Very effective, though not quite as neat as the trick they worked on Sir Alfred. My hat! Mrs. Angell is going to kill me.”
Herbert Spencer gingerly approached the gaping hole in the wall and squinted out at the street below. It was enshrouded by steam, billowing about in a slight breeze. He saw movement in the cloud.
“Gents,” he said quietly. “Do you happen to have a spare pistol I could borrow? That thing ain't dead.”
“You're not serious?” Trounce exclaimed.
“It's layin’ on the pavement but it looks to me like it's just winded.”
The Scotland Yard man retrieved his revolver from the floor.
Swinburne stepped up to one of Burton's desks and pulled a pistol from its drawer. He handed it to Spencer.
Trounce growled: “Let's get out there and finish that abomination off!”
He set his jaw and marched out of the study. Spencer and Swinburne followed. The poet looked back over his shoulder at Nelson.
“Come on, Admiral.”
The three men and the clockwork device descended to the hallway. Trounce quickly checked Mrs. Angell, who was sitting dazed against the wall.
“Go down to your rooms, dear. We'll come and tell you when it's safe.”
Swinburne picked Burton's silver-handled swordstick from the elephant-foot umbrella stand by the front door. He handed it to Nelson.