Whilst Hawker howled in surprise and frustration, Boon merely simmered with rage.
“By the living jingo!” Hawker cried. “He’s done a bunk. Rotter’s gone and scarpered. What’ll we do now?”
Boon set his face in an expression of grim determination. “We follow. And when we catch him, we clobber the brute to death with that blasted umbrella.”
The Prefects turned in pursuit and loped silently after their prey, determined as bloodhounds on a scent, implacable as fate.
I suppose I had better tell you what happened to Moon. For all I know you’ve ignored my warnings and gone and got attached to the man, so it’s just possible you might care.
No doubt he was feeling mightily pleased with himself as he left the headquarters of Love and sauntered back to the surface by way of King William Street Station. Oh, he must have thought he had me fooled with that play-acting of his, that fraudulent Damascene conversion. But as we have already seen, he had not counted upon the perspicacity of his sister.
Above-ground again, he hailed the first cab he saw and instructed the driver to deliver him directly to the Yard, promising a sovereign if the fellow could get him there in a quarter of an hour. In the event it took almost double that time, the detective drumming his fingers impatiently all the while. Once he arrived he dashed straight to the office of an old friend, flung open the door without knocking and cried: “Merryweather!”
The inspector looked up from his desk, surprised. “Edward. What is it?”
Desperate to get out his story but uncertain where to begin, Moon sounded like a human telegram, his message fragmented and nonsensicaclass="underline" “Conspiracy… underground… Love assembled… the dreamer… Somnambulist…”
“Calm down. Tell me slowly what happened.”
Moon took a deep breath. “Underground, a man calling himself the Reverend Doctor Tan has assembled an army. He has some crackpot scheme to destroy the city, to reduce it to ashes and begin again.”
I suppose I should feel some slight at the ‘crackpot’ description. But I’m a bigger man than that. Prophets, after all, are never recognized in their own country.
As Moon finished speaking, a bulky shadow stepped from the corner of the room. “So it’s begun,” he stated flatly.
Merryweather rose to his feet. Moon was later to say that this was one of the very few occasions that he had spent any length of time with the inspector when he had not seen him laugh or smile or crack some faintly inappropriate joke. In the face of brutal crimes and fearful murders, assassinations, bloody riots and deliriously horrible killing sprees, Detective Inspector Merryweather had never once lost his sense of humor. That today he was unable to manage even the ghost of a smile was perhaps some measure of the situation’s gravity.
He introduced the stranger. “This is Mr. Dedlock.”
The scarred man made a nominal inclination of his head. “I work with Skimpole.”
Moon stared and seemed to sniff the air, like a fox sensing the approach of the hunt. “You’re Directorate,” he spat. “What are you doing here?”
“Ex-Directorate,” Merryweather murmured.
“The agency has been closed down,” Dedlock admitted. “This morning an attempt was made upon my life. Skimpole’s gone missing. I’ve had to come to the police for assistance.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste.”
“Love has outwitted you,” Moon said (and I confess to feeling some pride at the casual certainty with which he made the claim). “They’re ready to make their move. Two weeks from now they’ll burst from underground to destroy everything in their path. The city’s in terrible danger.”
“Sounds incredible,” Merryweather said. He was interrupted by a brisk tap at the door. A police constable, flushed and out of breath, peered nervously into the room. “Sorry to bother you, sir.”
“What is it?”
“We’ve had reports of a… disturbance in the financial district. Fighting in the streets. Fires and rioting. It sounds like-” The boy swallowed hard. “It sounds like an invasion.”
Rather unfairly, Dedlock rounded on Moon. “You’ve been tricked. Two weeks! You bloody fool. It starts today.”
Merryweather shouted orders. “Get every man we have down there at once. Everyone.”
Moon was appalled. “You don’t understand the scale of it. These people are armed to the teeth. You’re sending truncheons and whistles against an army.”
The inspector swore. “We should have been prepared.” He turned to Dedlock. “How many men can you raise?”
“Twenty. Thirty, maybe, who might still be loyal.”
“Twenty or thirty!” Moon exclaimed. “My God, they’ll be slaughtered.”
Dedlock looked afraid. “I’m sorry…” he whispered. “I’ve no power any more.”
The detective turned toward the door. “Do what you can. I’m going back.”
Merryweather stepped in his way. “Edward, you can’t stop this on your own.”
“The Somnambulist is with them. My sister, too. I owe it to them both to try.” He clasped the inspector’s hand, then pushed past him. “Good luck.”
He left the Yard at a run, heading back toward the heart of the city.
No cab would take him anywhere near the scene. He was forced to hire the temporary use of a hansom and drive there himself, careering lunatically through the streets, little caring what damage he caused as he drove. As he drew closer, his path became blocked by fleeing and panicked crowds and he could go no further. Abandoning the cab he ran on, racing ever closer to disaster.
When I emerged from King William Street Station, the Chairman by my side, I saw a sight very few of us are ever privileged enough to witness — my dearest dreams given form, my hopes made real before me.
Fires had been lit and the sky was illuminated by bursts of scarlet, iridescent even against the watery light of the morning, an anarchist’s Guy Fawkes display. The foot soldiers of Love, the faithful of the Church of the Summer Kingdom, poured through the streets, dispensing justice wherever they could, reveling in their freedom, in the epochal change they were to induce upon the city.
The morning was frosty, our breath fogged up the air like smoke, and to my astonishment I saw that my companion’s exhalations appeared to be tinted a vivid green — a phenomenon I unwisely dismissed at the time as a trick of the light or mild hallucination, brought on by excitement and overwork. The old man looked blearily about him, bewildered by all the sound and fury. “Ned?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes,” I lied. “I’m here.”
“What’s happening?”
“Come with me. We need a better view.”
I took him by the hand and led him to the Monument, up its corkscrew staircase to the top. Lithe and gazelle-like, I scampered up the stairs, but I was often forced to a halt in order to let the old man recover himself. I all but carried him the final leg of the journey. Eventually we emerged into the open air, to witness a Monday morning unlike any other, unique amongst all the centuries of the city’s long life.
“Behold,” I cried (surely you can forgive me some grandiloquence under the circumstances), “the dawn of the Summer Kingdom.”
And from our eyrie, our Wren’s nest, we saw it all. Smoke rose up in mighty plumes. The sounds of war clashed about us and the air was filled with the screams of the dying. Dying? I’m afraid so. When opposing ideologies meet upon the battlefield, some bloodshed is inevitable. No doubt you think such a view harsh but there are people devoid of any potential for redemption. If the city were to be reclaimed I had no choice but to put them to the sword.
The working day had barely begun before it was abruptly and bloodily curtailed. The bankers, the brokers and the clerks, the businessmen, the dealers, the accountants and the moneylenders — all were dragged screaming from their rooms and offices. A few were spared, most were executed. I would like to assure you that their deaths were swift and painless, that they were treated with some measure of dignity at the end, but in truth I doubt that this was so. An orgy of cruelty unfolded below us, a frenzy of murder and bloody reprisal for generations of injustice as the destitute shareholders in Love, my cockney bacchants, reclaimed the streets at last.