End of the Century (58 page)

“Lord Arthur,” Blank insisted, his tone firm, “try to remember. Is there anything, anything at all, that you haven't told us yet?”

Lord Arthur's chest rose and fell with another ragged sigh, and he turned to look at the cold ashes in the fireplace. “I've had enough of England, enough of London. There isn't a corner I can turn in this city that doesn't remind me of my departed Penelope, or little John, and now poor Priscilla is added to the chorus of ghosts that haunts me.” He raised his tumbler to his lips and paused, looking over the rim. “Perhaps I'll go to America, as Penelope and I always discussed we someday might. Maybe there I can start a new life.” He took a sip of his whiskey, then sucked his teeth as it reached the back of his throat. “Maybe even start a new family.”

Miss Bonaventure exchanged a glance with Blank and then tried a new tactic. “There was someone taking pictures last night, as I recall. Perhaps there might be some clue to be had in those.” She stepped closer to the baron, and in a low voice said, “Lord Arthur, do you recall who was taking the photographs?”

“What?” Baron Carmody raised an eyebrow and looked up into Miss
Bonaventure's eyes as if seeing her for the first time. “Yes, I had my photograph taken,” he answered, sounding somewhat annoyed, as if the question was obvious. “They gave me some sort of claim ticket. It's over there somewhere…” He waved to the pile of costume in the far corner.

Blank stepped over, and shifting through the brightly colored cloth, picked out a printed card from the pile. “It seems that we'll be paying a visit to the firm of J. Lafayette, Number 179, New Bond Street.”

Taylor leapt up from the sofa, his mouth drawn into a tight line, his jaw set. “I'll tag along, if you'll have me. I don't like the notion of sitting here in the dark, waiting for death to mosey along and find us.”

Blank regarded the cowboy poet for a moment, then nodded with a slight smile. “We'd be delighted to have your company, Mr. Taylor.”

The trio said their farewells to Baron Carmody, who hardly seemed to notice. Leaving the Carmody house near Grosvenor Square, it was only a short distance to the offices of J. Lafayette on New Bond Street, a matter of some four or five blocks, just up from the Doré and Grosvenor Galleries.

The photographic firm of J. Lafayette was located in a five-story building surmounted by the queen's royal crest in bas relief above an image of a sunburst. The Lafayette firm, headquartered in Dublin, had only recently opened a branch in London, added to those already in Glasgow and Manchester.

The offices had just opened for the day, and Blank, Miss Bonaventure, and Taylor were asked to wait while someone in authority could be summoned. They were shown into the waiting gallery on the ground floor, where the handiwork of Lafayette and company were on display, in particular a familiar image of Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee, ten years previous, which according to the accompanying placard had earned Lafayette a Royal Warrant as “Her Majesty's Photographer in Dublin.”

After a brief wait, the branch's manager appeared in the waiting gallery. Blank, presenting his featureless calling card, employed a bit of persuasion, and in short order the trio were being escorted into the development labs on the building's second floor. The heavily shuttered room smelled of chemicals,
and the already developed photographs hung drying on lines strung from wall to wall, like photographic garlands.

Most of the photographs were staged against the backdrop which had been arranged in the corner of the Great Ballroom of Devonshire House. There was Miss Arthur Paget as Cleopatra and Daisy Pless as the Queen of Sheba, the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as Duke Robert of Normandy and the Princess of Wales as Marguerite de Valois, Frances Evelyn Warwick as Marie Antoinette and the Honorable Reginald Fitzwilliam as Admiral Lord Nelson. There was even the Baron Carmody as the Roman Briton war duke Arthur, in contrast to the more fanciful King Arthurs portrayed by the seventh Baron Rodney in full plate armor and Grosvenor in surcoat and mail. And here was the Lady Priscilla as Gwenhwyfar in a flowing gown of samite, looking years younger with her hair cascading over her shoulders than she did in modern dress with it lacquered into a bun.

Some of the photographs, though, were not staged, but were more candid snapshots of the Great Ballroom itself, and of the crowds milling there. The Crystal Stair curved up out of view in one shot, while another showed the serried ranks of waltzers moving across the floor. And in one photograph, in the far right side of the image, was plainly visible a man in modern dress, his hair wiry and his beard stringy, carrying in his arms a long slender case. The man's eyes were wide and crazed-looking, and his lip curled in an expression of distaste.

It was, unmistakably, Mervyn Fawkes.

Needless to say, Mervyn Fawkes was not included in the invitation list for the Devonshire House Ball. Doubtless, he had been the interloper in modern dress thrown out in the party's early hours. And it seemed a surety that he'd been the one to murder poor Lady Priscilla, and by extension Brade and Villers and all the rest.

Mervyn Fawkes
was
the Jubilee Killer.

W
ITH THE STEEL DOOR OPENED
, the innumerous klaxons sounding downstairs could be faintly heard, like distant sirens.

“What the hell is
he
doing here?!” Alice shouted. But no one had an answer for her.

“I've heard about you for years, of course,” Temple said to the Huntsman, as the red-sword-wielding figure advanced into the gallery. “Never had a chance to make a proper study. Would you be willing to sit for a few tests with my researchers? You'd be compensated, of course.”

Temple reached out his hand, offering to shake.

The Huntsman, the red sword in a two-handed grip, responded only by swinging the blade in a wide arc.

Temple's arm below the elbow thumped to the floor.

“Now, see here!” Temple waved his stump of an arm, from which strange fluids oozed. “I think I've been most reasonable up to now, but this has gone on far enough. Now, you…”

Whatever Temple was going to say next, it was lost when the Huntsman casually picked him up with one hand, like a sack of potatoes.

“Put me down!” Temple ordered.

In a matter of strides, the Huntsman was at the window. In one fluid movement, he drove the point of his red blade through the glass. Then he yanked the sword back at an angle, and the window shattered into a million pieces. The
pieces fell towards the street far below, and with a shove Temple went after them, only now putting up a spirited resistance, thrashing with his legs and remaining arm. His bare foot caught the side of the Huntsman's face a glancing blow but succeeded only in knocking off his wraparound sunglasses; too little, too late. He dropped over the edge and out into the night, disappearing from sight.

The Huntsman turned, and Alice could see that his eyes were completely red except for the thin point of the pupil and seemed almost to glow.

Now he was coming for them.

Stillman started firing his Hotspur, which slowed the Huntsman, but only marginally.

Alice's thoughts concentrated like a laser. The world had shrunk to her and the gem, and the glass that separated them. She needed something to smash it with. Something to break through, so she could grab the gem and go, and find the answers later. Something like…

She glanced at the sword, just feet from her. It looked like it might break if you tapped it too hard, but Temple had said something about it being unbreakable. And it was the only thing to hand.

Alice wrapped her hands around the handle, picked the sword up, and swung it like a baseball bat.

Halfway through the arc of her swing, the scabbard of the sword slid off, flung away amongst the plinths, revealing the naked blue-white blade beneath.

The arc of her swing continued, and the blade connected with the glass of the display case. The sword sliced through as though the case wasn't even there, but as it passed through, the top half of the display case slid to one side like a car in neutral at the top of a hill without the parking brake engaged and smashed to the floor.

Alice didn't pause to wonder, but dashed forward, snatched up the gem, and held it tight in her hand.

“Come on!” She shouted to Stillman, racing for the elevator. “Let's get out of here!”

Stillman fired a few more fletcher rounds into the Huntsman, who seemed only annoyed. “You can't open that, love! Biometric panel, remember!”

Alice tucked the gem into the pocket of her jeans, and on the run scooped up Temple's severed forearm. “Not a problem!”

She slammed the cold lifeless hand against the biometric pad, and the door slid open immediately, with a chime, like the captain's cabin on the starship
Enterprise.
“Come on…” She started to yell over her shoulder, only to feel herself shoved forward.

She fell to the floor of the elevator, Stillman crouching behind her. He stabbed a finger at the Down button, and then emptied the rest of his Hotspur rounds at the Huntsman, who was now only feet behind them. The door slid shut just before the Huntsman reached the elevator.

The car had only started to descend when the red blade of the sword slid sideways through the door.

“Oh, shit!” Alice shouted. Then, gracelessly, she battered at the red blade with the blue-white sword she held and managed to knock it aside far enough for the car's descent to continue.

“Suddenly,” Stillman said, glancing at the ceiling as the floors chimed off, “descending in a car suspended by cables when pursued by a man with a sword that can cut through
anything
doesn't seem terribly wise.”

When they reached the ground floor at a normal speed, not plummeting to their death at thirty-two feet per second squared, they decided that the Huntsman must have wanted the gem more than he wanted Alice or Stillman dead, and if he cut the cables and let them fall, it would be more difficult to sort the same jewel out from the wreckage.

Which meant, of course, that he'd be descending the stairs, more than likely, hoping to catch them at the bottom.

They got their first hint of the carnage that lay in the Huntsman's wake when they stepped off the elevator on the ground floor. From the looks of things, the Huntsman had come in through the front door, opening up the glass and
steel with his sword like a church key on a can. The security forces of Glasshouse had evidently mobilized to stop him. Unsuccessfully, it seemed, at least if the bodies, parts of bodies, and viscera that covered the lobby floor like scattered garlands were any indication.

According to Stillman's researches, a dozen security personnel were assigned to the Glasshouse on a typical night shift. It was hard to tell, given the size of the pieces into which some of them had been sliced, but if she had to guess Alice would have said that most of that dozen had met their end here at the front gates.

They passed the door to the fire stairs, which had been sliced from its hinges. Alice wasn't sure, but her first instinct was to be more impressed that the Huntsman had climbed thirty-five stories—and so
quickly
—than with the fact that he carried a super-science macromolecular sword capable of cutting through anything, which he was clearly willing to do.

She had the gem back in her hand now, the surprisingly light blue-white sword in the other. She hadn't had time to process yet, but was beginning to realize that, though she held the final puzzle piece in her hand, the puzzle was resolutely failing to resolve into anything like an answer.

However, she had more pressing concerns. Namely, that if the Huntsman was able to
climb
the stairs in the amount of time it had taken them to walk from one side of the gallery to the other, it was more than likely that he could
descend
equally quickly.

She and Stillman could compare notes later.

Stillman was loading additional fletcher rounds from the cigarette-pack-sized clip on his belt into the Hotspur, already racing for the door. “Come on, love. Don't dawdle.”

“Coming, Da-” She bit the word off. She had almost called him
that
, again.

The doors were wide open, naturally, the glass shattered and the steel lying in shredded ribbons on the ground, so the pair were able to get back outside without incident.

Then, of course, they found the Gabriel Hounds waiting for them, their red teeth and claws glinting like rubies in the faint light of the crescent moon.

There was no way past them. There were five of the spectral white dogs, arranged in a perfect semicircle around the front entrance of the Glasshouse. They snapped their red teeth and snarled, lowering their strange, catlike heads.

From behind them came the sound of crashing, and Alice knew that the Huntsman would reach the ground floor in moments, if not sooner.

“What are we going to do?” Alice asked, tightening her grip on the sword, glancing over at Stillman.

Stillman held his Hotspur in a two-handed grip. “My darts may slow them down a bit, love, but won't stop them. Your sword'd probably cut their hides, but I doubt you could get all of them before one of them manages to get its jaws clamped on you.”

He glanced around. Alice followed his glance.

The Glasshouse was part of the Canary Warf district, Docklands, which had been built atop the old West India Docks. It was built right at the edge of the dark waters of the West India Millwall Docks. A short distance from the Glasshouse front entrance was a pedestrian footbridge that connected Canary Wharf with the West India Quay on the waterway's far side.

“If we can get to the other side,” Stillman said, pointing with his chin, “the water might slow them down enough to let us get to ground.”

Alice looked at the five snarling hounds who held their positions, keeping them cornered until their master the Huntsman arrived. “I don't see that happening.”

From above came the sound of flapping wings, first one pair, then several, then dozens. Alice looked up, and the skies overhead were completely filled with black-winged birds, descending on the Glasshouse entry.

“Then again…”