'Even though I could.'
'That's right. This has crushed Father. Accepting help would destroy him.'
George stood. Then he shook himself, like a dog emerging from a river. 'Let's go and see what Jack wants. If we're lucky, we can head off and do a spot of saving the country. It's just the sort of thing I need.'
Jack Figg was waiting in the drawing room. He'd just finished blowing his nose and when the handkerchief disappeared into his pocket it was plain he was in a state of shock. His hands shook until he clasped them together. His face was pale. 'I have word of Maggie and her Crew,' he said in a trembling voice.
'Did you call the police?' Aubrey asked.
Jack gathered himself. 'Police? What do you think I am? Cooperating with the bully boys of the establishment? Not on your life.'
Aubrey sighed. Jack Figg had a whole hive of bees in his bonnet, police being one of them. At times like this it didn't make things any easier.
'As much as I'd like to discuss the proper role of law enforcement in a civilised society, I gather that time is an issue here.'
'Where is she?' George asked.
'She's at the clinic.'
MAGGIE LAY ON THE HOSPITAL BED, PALE AND SHAKING, eyes closed, moaning with pain. Her hospital gown was soaked with sweat.
'I've never seen anything like it in my life,' Dr Wells said. He pushed his glasses back on his nose and looked for something to do with his hands. He finally stuck them in the pockets of his white coat and frowned at his patient.
'What's caused it?' Aubrey asked.
'Nothing natural.' Dr Wells mopped at the young girl's brow with a flannel, but it caught on the wire protruding from her temple. With extreme delicacy, he detached it. 'It must be magic. The wires are all through her body.'
Aubrey's whole being wanted to crawl away from what he was seeing. He heard a whimper and he hoped it wasn't his.
Maggie had been transformed. Hundreds of bright copper wires stuck out of her skin in horrid profusion.
Many were at her joints – elbows, knees, shoulders – but just as many were in random clumps, bursting out of her neck, her feet, her hands. Wires snaked around from underneath her, and it made her look as if she were lying on a bed of metal straw.
The skin around the wires was red and angry-looking, but it wasn't bleeding. It appeared to have closed up around the wires, giving the appearance of the metal belonging there, a natural – if hideous – growth.
The loose ends of the wires were twisted, some were knotted, and all showed signs of having been broken or snapped off.
'This is ghastly.' George's face was pale. 'Can you do anything, Aubrey?'
'I can't. But I know who might. She must go to St Michael's Hospital. They have some of the new X-ray photography machines and some fine medical magicians on staff.'
George swallowed. 'But how did this happen? Who did it to her?'
Jack Figg hadn't said anything since they'd entered the small, brightly lit ward. He wiped a hand over his face, knocking his glasses askew, but he didn't seem to notice. 'She staggered into the Society for Moral Uplift, delirious. She collapsed and we brought her here.'
'Did she say anything? Anything useful? Where has she been? Where are her Crew?' Aubrey asked.
'She mumbled about the underground, tunnels, the hydraulic railway. And the dark. She's afraid of the dark.'
In a dreadful, jerky movement that set them reeling backward, Maggie sat up. Her eyes flew open. Someone gasped.
Her eyes were glazed and feverish, heavily bloodshot. She stared straight ahead, seeing something that wasn't there, while wires sprang back and forth. They caught on bedclothes and wafted in the air like seaweed on a drowned corpse.
'The dark,' she grated, in a voice that was thick and pained. 'Don't go down where the dark is.'
Aubrey was the first to recover. 'Why not, Maggie? What's down there?'
'The dark is down there. It's down there everywhere. It's alive.'
'What is?'
'Darkness. Power. Darkness.'
Her teeth clicked together and she spasmed, hurled backward by the force of the seizure. Wires clashed and tangled and Aubrey was astonished they didn't tear out. Ignoring any sharp ends, Dr Wells took the young girl's shoulders and held her to the bed. 'Leave,' he snapped over his shoulder. Aubrey and the others hustled for the door with no pretence of hesitating, only to find Caroline Hepworth hurrying into the clinic.
Aubrey was brought up short. 'Caroline! How did you know we were here?'
'Harris told me.'
'We've found Maggie,' Jack said abruptly. 'But don't go in there.'
Aubrey flinched. Jack hadn't had as much to do with Caroline as he had. Telling her what not to do usually wasn't productive.
When Caroline emerged, all the colour had fled from her face. Her blue eyes blazed with fury. 'Who's responsible for this?'
'We don't know,' Aubrey said. 'But I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm going to find the rest of Maggie's Crew.'
Twenty-two
IT WAS A DILEMMA. AUBREY HAD WEIGHTIER MATTERS at hand, more important concerns than a handful of street urchins. The world was lurching toward war, spies and agents were at work, the economy of the nation was under threat.
But he didn't hesitate at all. He liked Maggie's pluck, her independence, the way she'd been making a go of things. Her torment angered him in its callousness.
And this callousness, added to her tortured warning about the darkness, made Aubrey chillingly certain that he could see Dr Tremaine at work.
Ready to rush out of the clinic to find the rest of her Crew, to right the wrong done to her, he pulled himself up short and struck himself on the forehead.
He had no destination.
Planning. He burned to spring into action, to do something to help the poor girl and her friends, but he forced himself to stop, to think.
The reception desk of the clinic was vacant, the nurse having gone home for her midday meal. Aubrey searched the cupboards, the shelves behind the counter, the desk drawers until he found a map of the city, a new one that had been used to note the addresses and neighbourhoods of patients, the sort of thing that a doctor would need when summoned on a house-call. He unrolled it and George and Jack weighed down the corners with a penholder, a blotter, a small jar of boiled sweets and a steel ruler.
'Here's the hydraulic station,' Aubrey said. Caroline reached over and circled it with a pencil. 'And the Bank of Albion is there.' Another circle. 'And here's where Maggie was found, near the Society for Moral Uplift. Count Brandt's headquarters.' Circle.
Aubrey stood back. The patterns of the map swam and moved, starting to fall into place.
'The Southern Line railway tunnel,' Caroline said before he could. She pointed. 'It connects the Bank of Albion with the hydraulic station, near enough.'