The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(63)
‘I’m losing patience,’ Harpoon Man said. He was quite bald, his skin leathery and lined. I thought perhaps he’d appeared in one of Kipps’s photos, but I couldn’t be sure. From memory, most of the members looked like him. His male colleague, who by contrast possessed a wild beard that looked like an explosion in a lint factory, hefted his brass shoulder-funnel menacingly, taking especial aim at me.
The secretary raised a gauntleted hand. ‘Not in here, Geoffrey,’ he murmured. ‘The books …’ He glared at us, flexing his metal claws. ‘Last chance!’ he cried. ‘Do you have anything to say?’
There was a pause. ‘Yes,’ Lockwood said. ‘Actually, I do.’
His voice surprised me. First, because I’d assumed we’d all remain silent – the secretary had, after all, met us before, and might recognize us from our words alone; secondly, because of the way he said it: quietly, yet with cold assurance, without fear, without haste, communicating utter unconcern. Whereas Kipps and Holly were as calm as cornered rats; whereas I teetered on toe-tips, desperate to dodge the inevitable attack, with sweat soaking into my balaclava, Lockwood looked as if he was waiting for a bus. He hadn’t drawn his rapier; he’d made no move for any weapon. A few feet away, gun barrels tilted towards him, the harpoon point swivelled, some unseen mechanism fizzed and hummed. Lockwood just stood there.
He said, ‘You have a choice before you. You can either turn round, leave this room and go back downstairs, or not. Which do you want to do?’
The second woman, tiny, dark and wrinkled as a currant, cocked her head in puzzlement. ‘Sorry – is he talking to us?’
‘Giving us an ultimatum?’ Harpoon Man took a firmer grip on the handle of his gun.
‘You’re elderly,’ Lockwood said, ‘and perhaps a little slow. If it isn’t clear enough, I can put it another way for you. Get your shrivelled backsides out of here sharpish while you can, or face the consequences. It’s pretty simple. Up to you.’
The tiny woman’s body shook with emotion inside her silver armour; she gave a hoot of rage. Again the bearded man – Geoffrey – seemed inclined to do something hasty with the shoulder-funnel. Harpoon Man and the tweedy woman both took impulsive steps towards us too, but were blocked by the stooping figure of the secretary.
‘No,’ he said, swinging a leg forward. ‘Let me.’
‘Take his head off, Terence,’ the wrinkled woman said.
Few non-spectral situations are as fearsome as being cornered by a deranged pensioner on stilts, with his ten steak-knife fingers clawing in your direction. Fearsome, yet also faintly ridiculous; and Lockwood’s air of calm defiance had successfully communicated itself to all of us. It had allowed us to take stock, and realize that something the secretary had said had given us an advantage.
While in this room, the Orpheus members were unwilling to use their heavy weaponry for fear of damaging their library.
We had no such qualms.
We all reached for our belts. Lockwood moved the quickest – too quick for the eye to follow. The first the secretary knew about it was when the magnesium flare struck him full in the chest, exploding against his chain mail and sending him toppling backwards behind a waterfall of cascading silver light. With frantic contortions and desperate footwork he contrived to remain standing, but my own flare, arriving instants later, propelled him sideways to tip over the back of an armchair. As his legs thrashed at the ceiling, Kipps’s and Holly’s flares burst against the four figures at the doorway, sandwiching them violently together and causing the man with the harpoon gun to pull his trigger, so that his missile shot between Lockwood and me and straight out through the window behind us. It shattered the glass, letting the night air in.
After that, things got messy.
Really, it was a pity for the members of the society that they were still blocking the way out – otherwise we might have been inclined to leave them. It was a pity too that in their rage they forgot their sensible intention of safeguarding their research library, and began to fire their weapons. It had bad consequences for them.
The grey-haired woman with the tweed jacket raised her gun, and a jag of bright blue electricity suddenly connected its nozzle with the wall beside my head. One moment it wasn’t there, the next it was. It cut across the room like a scribble drawn by a giant child. I felt its force, smelled the burning wallpaper. Sparks fizzed against my jacket and stung my cheeks. She turned the gun, scything the light towards me. I threw myself over the table beside the plaster bust and rolled away behind an armchair. Behind me something exploded; fragments of the bust cascaded to the floor.
I peered round the chair. Both women were now firing their guns; the blue flashes cast everything else into semi-darkness. There was movement everywhere – the shimmer of rapiers, the rush of bodies. Another flare burst; in its light, I saw the secretary getting to his feet. His face was a Venn diagram of black and silver scorch marks. His hair smouldered; one strand was on fire.
At my shoulder, the skull gave a long, low chuckle. ‘These old geezers are completely mad! I’ve got to say I like them.’
A masked figure – Kipps, I guessed – moved past, sword drawn, to be at once confronted by the bearded Geoffrey. His funnelled apparatus was connected to a concertina’d bladder, like a bellows or accordion, strapped under one arm. He jabbed this with his elbow; with a pop! a glass vial shot from the end of the funnel, missed Kipps by inches and shattered on the wall behind. Colourless liquid dripped down; a familiar fragrance filled the air.