"You ..."
"Help me out of these clothes," said the man he'd known as Professor Armond Sacker.
Doyle gaped at him. The sounds of heavy blows and splintering wood ran down the corridor.
"Don't be a silly pudding, Doyle, they just discovered you're not in your room."
Doyle assisted as the man stripped off the padded sari, revealing the same black outfit he'd worn the night they'd met, and quickly toweled off the brown makeup on his face.
"You've been following me," was all Doyle could manage.
"They've found you much faster than I anticipated, my fault entirely," the man said, tossing the towel aside. "Is your pistol loaded?"
Doyle checked the chambers. "No, I'd completely forgotten."
The sound of banging on doors, and the startled cries of the floor's other occupants, was moving toward them down the hall.
"I suggest you hurry, old man," the man said coolly, kicking the sandals off his feet and pulling on a pair of soft leather boots. "We'll have to take the roof."
Rummaging through his bag for the box of ammunition, Doyle heard a creak and looked up to see one of the gray hoods opening the window above the bed. Grabbing the first solid object he could find, he reared back and hurled it at the
creature, hitting it dead square in the center of the hood, knocking it away from the window. They heard a clatter of roof shingle, then a heavy impact below.
The man picked up the projectile from beneath the window.
"Good old Blavatsky," he said, with a brief admiring glance, handing the edition of Psychic Self-Defense back to Doyle. "Off we go then."
Pocketing the veil he'd worn earlier, the false Sacker climbed through the window. Doyle finished loading the pistol, hoisted out his bag, accepted the man's offered hand, and joined him on the roof.
"You have a great deal of explaining to do," Doyle said to him.
"Right with you, Doyle," he said. "What say we first put some distance between ourselves and these bloodless fiends, fair enough?"
Doyle nodded. The man started away, straddling the roof's spine, Doyle following closely, each step on the rain-soaked shingles perilously slick. The storm howled around them.
"What do I call you?" Doyle asked.
"Sorry? Frightfully hard to hear out here."
"I said, what's your name?"
"Call me Jack."
They made their way to the rear edge of the roof. The street twenty feet below was empty. Jack put two fingers into his mouth and whistled loudly enough to pierce the wind.
"I say, Jack ..."
"Yes, Doyle."
"Your whistling like that, is that such a good idea?"
"Yes."
"But I mean, their hearing seems awfully acute by my reckoning."
"Acute doesn't quite cover it."
They waited. Jack unfolded the veil from his pocket, which Doyle noticed was nearly ten feet long and heavily weighted at either end. Doyle heard movement behind them; another gray hood appeared, loping down toward them over the crown of the roof.
"Shoot that one, will you?" Jack asked.
"I'll wait till it's a bit closer, if you don't mind," Doyle said, raising the pistol and drawing a bead on the figure.
"I wouldn't wait too long."
"I'd be happy to let you try—"
"No, no—"
"Because if you think you can do better-—"
"I'm brimming with confidence in you, old boy—"
The hood was no more than ten feet away. Doyle fired. The creature, incredibly, dodged the bullet and continued to slowly advance.
"Not trying to be critical, you understand. It's just," Jack said, beginning to twirl the scarf above his head in a tight circle, "they're a good deal quicker than they first appear. Better to lay down a dense field of fire and hope they dodge into it."
Doyle fired again; the creature slipped left, the bullet ripped through its shoulder, it staggered, righted itself, and still came on. Wiping the rain from his eyes, Doyle aimed down the sight of the gun.
"These things," Doyle said, "they're not quite alive, are they? In the traditional sense."
"Something like that," Jack said, and let fly the scarf. It whistled through the air and caught the creature at the throat. Both weighted ends whirled out and stemmed around the neck, gaining speed until the weights thwacked its skull with the sound of a melon being crushed by a wagon wheel.
"Now, Doyle!"
Doyle fired point-blank into the face of the hood. The thing toppled over, skidded down the slates, and fell from sight.
"Damn," Jack said.
"Thought it went rather well."
"I was going to use that scarf to get us off the roof."
"Handy little item."
"South American, actually, although they've been using a variation in the Punjab for centuries."
"If you don't mind my asking, how will we get down, Jack?"
Doyle thought he heard a carriage approaching below.
"We'll have to jump, won't we?"
Jack was looking intently down at the street and a now-visible approaching carriage.
"Really? We won't get far on a pair of broken legs—"
Before Doyle could further organize his objections, Jack grabbed him by the belt and jumped off the building. They hit the roof of the moving carriage and ripped right through the fabric, landing in a heap on the cushions of the cab.
"Good Christ!"
"Are you in one piece?"
Doyle quickly took inventory; save some discomfort in the ribs and a slightly turned ankle finding himself surprisingly intact.
"I think I'm all right."
"Well done."
As they rushed past the coach outside the inn, Doyle dimly made out dark figures scrambling after them in the downpour. Jack rapped on what was left of the roof and the driver, the same small scar-faced man who'd driven them before, appeared in the gap above.
"Evasive tactics, Barry," Jack said. Barry nodded and turned back to his work. Doyle heard the crack of the whip, and the cab quickly accelerated.
Jack settled back into the seat across from Doyle, holding up a hand to the water cascading down onto them through the roof.
"Sorry about the rain."
"Quite all right. We'll have another chat then, as we go?"
"Not just yet. We'll be getting out in a moment."
"Getting out?"
The carriage clattered across a short bridge and came to a sudden halt. Jack leapt from the cab and held open the door.
"Come on, Doyle, we haven't got all night," he said.
Doyle followed him back into the deluge. Jack waved to Barry, and the cab sped off again into the darkness.
"This way," Jack said, leading them down a steep embankment under the bridge they'd just traversed. "In here."
Jack pulled Doyle in under the relative dryness of the span of the bridge. Gripping his bag with one hand, Doyle used the other to haul himself onto a support strut, a precarious perch a scant few feet above the rising torrent of the stream below.
"Are you secure?" Jack had to yell to make himself heard.
"I believe so," Doyle replied, but the remark was obliterated by the deafening thunder of a carriage and four hurtling
across the bridge a foot above their heads. The sound moved away, quickly swallowed up by the storm.
"Was that them?" Doyle finally asked.
"Barry'11 have them running circles around Trafalgar Square before they realize we're not on board."
Doyle nodded, reluctantly admiring the man's resourcefulness. Some time went by. Doyle stared at Jack, who smiled amiably.
"What do you suggest we do?"
"I suggest that we sit here until the rain lets up," Jack said.
More time passed. Jack seemed quite content to wait it out in silence. The same could not be said for Doyle.
"Look here, Jack, or whatever your name is, before we go any farther, I'd very much like to know exactly who you are," said Doyle, realizing his patience was at an end.