It was teeming with thousands of Rakes and wraiths. The latter, Doyle was used to. He himself had ventured out in spirit form on countless occasions in recent months. The corporeal bodies, though, unnerved him. Their milky eyes, bluish-grey skin, and dragging walk spoke of the grave. Indeed, the air was heavy with the cloying odour of putrefying flesh.
He kept his eyes downcast and shoved his way past them until he reached a grand old edifice, undamaged by the rioting. Only vaguely aware of what he was doing, he stumbled into the opulent structure and ascended five flights of stairs. He banged on a door and entered.
Fairies darted between and around his ankles.
He sat at a table.
His hands were gripped.
Someone said, in a dry, husky voice, something about the greater good of mankind.
“The greater good of mankind,” he chanted, like an automaton. Then: “Freedom! Liberation! Anarchy! No God!”
“Thy shackles are unbreakable, soft skin,” a fairy whispered.
“Leave me alone,” he hissed, then aloud: “Rules must be broken! Propriety must be challenged! The status quo must be unbalanced! True liberty!”
“Slave to oppositions!” the fairy mocked. “There are but two eyes in thy head! Will the third not open for thee?”
The Russian woman materialised, just as she'd done many times before.
“Go forth, apostles,” she said. “Liberate the downtrodden and the oppressed.”
She reached out to touch him.
He knew what would happen, and he knew it had happened too many times before. This time would be the last. After so many separations, he was too exhausted for the rejoining.
He tried to say no.
He failed.
Her nebulous finger brushed his forehead.
Time distorted and space warped out of shape.
Somehow, impossibly, he was in two places at once.
He shuffled along the Strand, feeling heavy and sodden and empty and lonely and mindless and lost.
He also drifted, amorphously, elsewhere on the thoroughfare, and the Russian woman's force of will resonated like a church bell through what little substance this aspect of him possessed.
A fairy floated before his two sets of eyes-the corporeal ones and the formless ones.
“Thou hast fulfilled the role assigned to thee. Recurrence, not transcendence, shall come,” it tinkled.
“Leave me alone, you bloody lizard!” he snarled.
He wondered at his own words.
Lizard?
At the Trafalgar Square end of the Strand, Commander Krishnamurthy, his entire face mottled with bruises after his ordeal at Tichborne House, squinted through the dense atmosphere and addressed a gathering of constables.
“Now then, lads,” he said, “who's got a headache?”
More than half the men raised their hands.
“Me too. And let me tell you, I've had quite enough of it. So tonight we're going to sort it out. However, I'm afraid that, for some of you, the headache is going to get worse before it gets better. We're close to the source of the public disorder that's been disrupting the city these days past, and, whatever it is, it's going to wheedle its way into your brains to try to make a defector of you. You all know fellow constables who've gone absent without leave to join the rioters-”
The men muttered an acknowledgment, and one of them growled: “Bloody deserters!”
“No,” Krishnamurthy objected. “Their minds are being controlled-and, as I say, over the next few hours, it's likely that the same thing will happen to some of us.”
“No, sir!” the men protested.
“We have to be prepared for it. We don't want to be adding ourselves to the enemy forces, hey? So here are my orders, lads, and I pray I never have to tell you to do anything like this ever again: in the event that you notice one of your fellows supporting, or beginning to support, the opposition, take out your truncheon and clock him over the head with it!”
The constables looked at each other, perplexed.
“I mean it!” Krishnamurthy said. “If needs must, render your colleague unconscious. Knock him out! Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” came the hesitant responses.
Krishnamurthy knew that not far away, at the top of Kingsway, Detective Inspector Honesty was giving the same speech to another gathering of constables, though probably in a rather more concise fashion, while in Fleet Street, Detective Inspector Trounce was doing the same.
The three groups of policemen were each about a hundred and fifty men strong. Much smaller teams were guarding the various minor routes into the Strand.
Krishnamurthy estimated that a force of a little over six hundred constables had congregated around the area. From what he'd seen so far, he suspected that at least four times that number of Rakes lurked inside the police cordon.
“Is this really all we can muster?” he muttered to himself. “I knew the force was haemorrhaging men but I'd no idea it was this bad!”
He peered into the rolling ground-level cloud. There was a full moon somewhere above, and its light gave the mist a weird and deceptively bright silvery glow. However, the shadows were dense, and, with most of the street's gas lamps destroyed, visibility was far worse than it seemed.
Sergeant Slaughter approached, stood beside him, and noted: “If it's not one thing, it's another, Commander.”
“What do you mean?”
“This murk, sir. There's been a lot fewer vehicles on the streets what with the rioting, so where's the bally steam coming from?”
“Hmm, that's a very good question!”
“Then, of course, the steam got mixed up with the smoke from the fires, so we got this dirty grey soup. But most of the fires in this area burned themselves out a good while ago. So, again, Commander: where's it coming from?”
Krishnamurthy suddenly became aware that his breath was clouding in front of his face.
“By jingo!” he exclaimed. “I hadn't realised! The weather's on the turn!”
“Crept up on us, didn't it!” Slaughter said. “The end of the heatwave, and about time, too. Except, it looks like the change has brought on a London particular.”
“Fog!” Krishnamurthy spat. “Curse it! That's exactly what we don't need!”
He heard the chopping of an approaching rotorchair.
“One of your squad, Commander?” Slaughter asked. “He's taking a risk, isn't he?”
“He'll be all right as long as he stays this side of the cordon. We're at the edge of the danger zone. If he flies past us and over the Strand-” He made a gesture with his hand, indicating something plunging downward.
“Hallo! He's landing!” Slaughter cried.
The miasma parted and men ran out of the way as the rotorchair descended, dropping like a stone and only slowing at the very last moment before lightly touching the cobbles and coming to rest. A man, wearing the Flying Squad uniform and with goggles covering his eyes, clambered out of the contraption and ran over to Krishnamurthy.
“Hello, sir!” he said, with a salute.
“Hallo, Milligan. What's the news?”
“Not good, I'm afraid. The rioting is most intense to the east of here, especially around the Bank of England, which is up in flames. As if that's not bad enough, the circle of disorder is fast approaching the East End.”
“Blast it!” Krishnamurthy whispered. He removed his peaked cap and massaged his temples. Once the madness touched the overcrowded Cauldron, all hell would break loose. If the East Enders began rioting, London would be lost.
“Milligan, gather together the patrols in the north and west and have them join you in the east. If it becomes necessary, fly low and use your pistols to fire warning shots at the rioters. Shoot a few men in the leg if you have to! Anything that might hold them at bay for a while.”
“Yes, sir!”
Milligan ran back to his machine, strapped himself in, and, with a roar of the engine, rose on a cone of steam and vanished into the fog. Seconds later, the chopping of the rotorchair's wings suddenly stopped, there was an instant of absolute silence, then the machine dropped straight back down out of the cloud and smashed into the road.