The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(62)

There was a vibration in my rucksack. ‘I hear noises,’ the skull said.

‘Noises? Where?’

‘Somewhere deep. But coming upwards through the house.’

‘Lockwood – we’ve got to go.’

‘Yes, of course …’ Lockwood’s voice trailed away. He stared at the pamphlet in his hand.

‘Lockwood?’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’

He didn’t answer; he didn’t hear me. It was like a switch had been thrown. His eyes were round and haunted. Something had altered in his face. His mouth hung open.

Kipps was listening at the door. ‘Got no time for this! We’ve got trouble.’

Now I could hear it too: strange thuds and clattering approaching up the stairs.

‘Torches off!’ I ran over to Lockwood and pulled at his arm. ‘Lockwood,’ I snapped. ‘Come on.’

‘It’s their final lecture,’ he said. ‘The one they were about to give when they died.’

‘Well, that’s great,’ I said. ‘You wanted this, didn’t you? So take it and let’s go!’

‘But the date—’

We were out of time. A great bang sounded in the corridor outside, making us all flinch back. There was an unholy screech, a scream of metal. The door blew open, and a hideous, deformed figure thrust itself inside.





16




It was a nightmarish vision: grey, shiny and impossibly large. So tall was the creature, it had to duck to get through the door. The eyes were bulbous, the legs insect-like, long and oddly jointed. The arms ended in enormous claws. It was silhouetted in the light of the corridor beyond. As it entered, it slashed at Kipps with its right hand, shearing through his jacket as he threw himself aside. Its left hand sought Holly, but she had dropped to the carpet, and only a few strands of her hair, trailing from the back of her balaclava, were sliced away as the claws swiped past.

Lockwood and I stood directly in front of the shape as it stretched to its full height. Pistons hissed, metal squealed. Torchlight wheeled behind it, but the thing itself was dark. Our brains were trying to process what we were seeing. Not a ghost – too solid, too much iron for that. Monstrous, yes – but not a monster. At the heart of it, surely, was a man.

‘What is it, Terence?’ a shrill voice called. ‘What’s in there?’

‘Thieves!’ the thing shouted. ‘Burglars!’

I knew the voice; and my guess was at once confirmed, for at that moment Lockwood stabbed his torch on and shone it directly at the shape. The blaze revealed the secretary of the Orpheus Society, long white hair pluming out around a giant pair of goggles, a loose-fitting chain-mail suit hanging over his dark coat. His feet and shins were encased in the top of a pair of pneumatic iron stilt legs that adjusted, hissing, as he moved. His hands wore metal gauntlets, their fingers ending in foot-long stiletto claws. He cried out as the torch beam blinded him, raising one arm before his face.

‘Thieves!’ he cried again. ‘Thieves in the research library!’

‘Then get out of the way, you old fool!’ another voice cried. ‘Let us at them!’

A hiss and a spring; with surprising agility the secretary bounded aside. Clustering at the door behind him came four other misshapen forms, each one a grey-haired man or woman in old-fashioned evening dress, goggles strapped to faces, silver armour clinking. The two women carried peculiar firearms – black, snub-nosed, with coils of rubber hosing connecting them to chrome bottles fixed to the top of the devices. One of the men had a weapon that looked like a harpoon gun. His companion carried a box-like device strapped to his back. A long piece of brass tubing protruded from it, looped over his shoulder and ended in a gaping funnel. All these items looked roughly made, with patches of soldering holding them together. Roughly made – but clearly functioning.

The four lined up inside the door, with the secretary towering beside them. Holly had scuttled into the far corner of the library, beyond the globe; Kipps, one side of his jacket around his knees, had retreated to the other. I drew my rapier. I glanced at Lockwood, but his face was hidden, his emotions inscrutable. He tucked the pamphlet inside his coat and let his hands drop by his side.

For a moment nobody moved. One of the weapons gave a barking hum, like a vacuum cleaner revving. Otherwise the room was silent.

‘Who are you?’ one of the women said. She was very short and squarish, and the cut of her green tweed dress and jacket under her silver chain mail made her squarer still. She was one of those academic-looking ladies whose long grey hair would have been a lot more flattering if it had been cut and properly styled. But you wouldn’t have pointed this out to her, since her gun was bigger than her head. ‘Speak up!’ she snapped. ‘Tell us your names.’

There was no way we were going to answer that.

‘Agents!’ the man with the harpoon gun spat. ‘Children! Look at their swords.’

The secretary shifted position on his stilts; pistons hissed, steel claws clashed. ‘Give yourselves up!’ he said. ‘Throw down your swords! If you do, we’ll let you live.’ There was something in the way he phrased the words that made it instantly clear he intended us to die. But we could have guessed that anyhow. The Orpheus Society had its secrets to protect. They wouldn’t casually let us go.