The Doorkeepers (33 page)

Petty followed him, and together they began to retreat along the street toward the smoke that still poured out of the burning offices. The Hooded Men remained where they were, but the drummer started up a single, threatening beat, like the beat that used to accompany condemned men to the scaffold.

“You can never escape us,” said the Hooded Man. “We can follow you to the ends of the earth. We can follow you to the ends of
every
earth.”

“Just shut up,” Josh told him, and pulled at his collar even harder.

They walked into the whirling smoke, and the other Hooded Men were gradually blotted out of sight, although they could still hear the persistent drumbeat. The smoke was hot and filled with flying sparks. It smelled strongly of burning varnish and their eyes filled up with tears.

Petty started to cough, and even the Hooded Man began to wheeze for breath.

“As soon as we're clear, I want you to run,” Josh told Petty.

She coughed and nodded and waved her hand.

“You will suffer for this,” the Hooded Man grated. “You will beg to be put out of your misery, I swear it.”

Josh ignored him. He dragged him as far as the end of the
office block, where the smoke began to thin out, and then he released the grip on his collar, pushing him away.

The Hooded Man took two or three steps back, apparently staggering, and for a moment Josh thought that he was going to fall over. But then, without warning, he pulled a long dagger out of his tunic and lunged at Josh from the right-hand side, trying to catch him underneath his sword. He was so quick that it was almost unnatural, like a special effect in a movie.

His dagger sliced at Josh's side, but Josh dipped to the left and swung the sword over his head. The Hooded Man tilted back, and feinted, and tried to stab Josh's wrist. There was a clash of steel on steel – one cutting edge against another. The Hooded Man spun around and kicked at Josh with his buckled shoe. Josh swung at him, again and again, and the sword-blade whistled through the smoke.

The Hooded Man dodged to the right, and then to the left, and then he suddenly rolled over on the ground and stabbed at Josh's knees. Josh jumped back and whirled his sword in a great circular sweep. He was only trying to protect himself, but at that instant the Hooded Man tried to stand up. The sword hit him in the side of the neck –
knock!
– cutting right through his hessian hood and almost taking his head off.

He dropped backward on to the road, with blood squirting out of his neck like a crimson geyser. He tried to reach up to his neck, to stop himself from hemorrhaging, but the wound gaped open so wide that there was nothing he could do. He let out a horrible gargling, his hands shaking and his feet kicking, and then he lay still.

“Oh my God,” said Petty. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

Josh stood back, the smoke still swirling all around him. Christ almighty, he had killed a man, and killed him with a sword. He didn't know whether he felt like a medieval hero or a homicidal maniac. The feeling was completely primitive.

“We should run,” Petty told him, glancing back anxiously in the direction of the single drumbeat. “Don't tell me they won't be looking for us.”

“Yes,” said Josh. “You're absolutely right. We should run.”

“Then
run,
for fuck's sake!”

Josh nodded. But for some reason he couldn't bring himself to leave the still-shuddering body on the ground. He approached the Hooded Man, and stood over him. His hessian mask was almost completely soaked in blood, and his head was tilted sideways at an impossible angle. One more swipe from his sword would have beheaded the Hooded Man completely.

“Please,” begged Petty. “Let's get out of here!”

Josh prodded the Hooded Man's chest with the point of his sword. Then, carefully, he started to cut at the side of his hessian hood.

“What are you
doing?”
Petty fretted.

“I want to see,” said Josh. “I want to see what these bastards really look like, underneath their hoods.”

He carried on cutting. The hessian was old and fragile, so he cut through it quite easily. Then, still using the point of his sword, he pulled it off the Hooded Man's head, and flung it aside.

“Oh, my God,” said Petty; and even Josh could only look for an instant before he turned away.

Nancy walked into the echoing lobby of Wheatstone Electrics and briskly approached the reception desk.

“Can I help yew?” asked the girl behind the marble-topped desk. She wore a tight beige cardigan and brown plastic combs in her hair.

“I don't have an appointment. But I wonder if Mr Mordant could spare me a minute.”

“Mr Mor
-dant?
I don't know about thayt. Mr Mordant only sees people by appoint-munt.”

“All the same, maybe you could tell him I'd like to see him.”

The girl looked Nancy up and down, and then sniffed. “I suppose I could try. You're wasting your time, though. Mr Mordant's always up to his eyes.”

“He's up to his eyes?”

“Oh, yace. If he's not here he's somewhere else.”

“You know,” said Nancy. “That's been happening to me lately, too.”

The girl plugged in the telephone line, and rang it, and after a few moments she said, “Mr Mor-
dant?
Yace. Brenda here in reception. I've got a young lady here to see yew.”

“Nancy Andersen.”

“Her name's Nancy Andersen. That's right. No, I haven't asked her. No.”

The receptionist covered up the mouthpiece with her hand and said, “What's it about?”

“Tell him I'm a friend of Julia Winward.”

The receptionist rolled her eyes up into her head. “She says she's a friend of Julia's.”

She listened again, and then she said, “He'll be right down. If you wouldn't mind taking a seat.”

Nancy sat in a large brown art-deco couch, next to a glass-topped table on which there was a fanned-out display of
Advanced Electrics
and
Grid & Generators Monthly.

She didn't have to wait long, though. Frank Mordant came down almost immediately. The elevator chimed and he stepped out into the lobby, wearing white shirtsleeves and pinstripe pants and very shiny black Oxford shoes.
So this is the terrible Frank Mordant,
thought Nancy. This ratty little gent with his clipped moustache and his Brylcreemed hair. Mind you – who would have thought, looking at pictures of Ted Bundy, or Son of Sam …?

“Miss—?” he said, crossing the lobby with a grin, and holding out his hand.

“Andersen. Nancy Andersen.”

“Well, well,” he said, sitting on the couch beside her and resting his arm along the back of it, so that she couldn't miss the whiff of body odor. “So you knew Julia. What a smashing girl she was. I was very sorry when she went.”

“You don't know what happened to her, do you? I expected to hear from her weeks ago, but – you know, nothing.”

“I don't know. One day she was here, happy as a skylark. The next day, nothing. She didn't turn up for work, and that was that. I tried to ring her at home but her landlady said that she had moved away. Perhaps she had personal problems. I simply don't know.”

“You didn't report her missing?”

“What for? She was a grown-up girl, after all.”

“You didn't think that anything might have happened to her?”

“Such as what?”

“Well, anything. Julia was one of my best friends. She would never disappear without telling me where she was going.”

Frank Mordant examined his well-buffed fingernails. “You're American, aren't you?”

“Hey, full marks.”

“What could we see by the dawn's early light?”

“Old Glory, of course.”

Frank Mordant looked up at her with a chilling smile. “You don't come from here, do you?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Oh, you've tried hard. The tweed suit. The shoes. But I can always tell. The hair's not right. You haven't tweezered your eyebrows. You smell too good and you're too damned self-assured. This is like Britain in the 1930s. Women aren't
confident.
There hasn't been a war, remember. They haven't been driving ambulances and making munitions and looking after their families on their own.”

He looked at her for a while, still smiling, and then he said, “In this world, my dear, Old Glory doesn't exist, and never has. The United States of America is nothing but a rather prosperous part of the British Commonwealth. You'd recognize it, if you took the Zeppelin over and had a look around. Similar accent, similar culture. They make cars in Detroit and films in Hollywood. Perhaps they're rather more class-conscious. You know, they have dukes and earls, just like we do. And nobody's invented the hamburger, thank God.”

Nancy said, “Look, I'm really worried about Julia. I was hoping you could help me.”

“Of course.” Frank Mordant had such a sinister aura about him that Nancy felt her skin prickling. It was the kind of personal darkness that her grandfather used to call “crow-feathers.” It was the aura of carrion-pickers, those huge black birds that tear at the corpses of rabbits and gophers on the highway, and only lazily flap away when you're almost about to run them over. Greedy and cheap and contemptuous, with a kind of throwaway evil about them.

“I met Julia two or three times in London,” Nancy lied. “She told me all about Wheatstone Electrics, and you, and how much she liked her job.”

“Really? You met her? She didn't tell me that she'd ever been back.”

“Oh, sure. She told me all about the doors, and the candles. Of course I didn't believe it at first, but the second time we met, she showed me.”

“She showed you.”

“That's right. She lit the candles and recited the rhyme, and she was gone.”

“Well, she never told me that, I must admit. She never told me that she'd been back. But then, I was only her employer, wasn't I? So long as she was happy and she did her job.”

“Oh, she was happy, all right. She really enjoyed working here. She said that it helped her get over all kinds of traumas. It was like starting all over, you know? That's why I'm so worried about her.”

“I'm not sure that I can help you. She seemed perfectly cheerful to me. But one morning she didn't turn up, so what could I do? I couldn't tell the police, could I, because she didn't actually exist, not as far as this world's concerned. I just assumed that she'd sorted herself out, packed her bags, and gone back home to the bosom of the family.”

Nancy said, “She hasn't been home, and nobody's heard from her.”

Frank Mordant tugged at each of his fingers in turn, popping the knuckles. He didn't take his eyes away from Nancy for a moment. “This looking for Julia … it's just an excuse, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're running away, too, aren't you? Julia was running away from some rotten relationship, and she wanted some peace and quiet and gainful employment. What are you running away from, darling?”

“I'm not your darling.”

Frank Mordant reached over and patted her thigh. “Oh, you are in this world. Especially if you want to get ahead. They haven't heard of women's liberation, and they probably won't, not for another forty years. A woman's place is in the home, cooking the meals and changing the nappies and clearing out the hearth. Either that, or typing.”

Nancy tried to smile, even though she felt that her lips were anesthetized. “You're right, I guess. I'm just looking for a kind of retreat. Someplace to heal my wounds and get my head back together again.”

“Well, you've come to the right place for that. And if you want a job … I think I can find you a vacancy in a day or so. I gather you can type? And use a rotary-dial telephone? And what do you know about circuit-breakers?”

“You'll really give me a job?”

“That's what you came for, isn't it? All this sob story about Julia. I'm sure that Julia's all right, wherever she is. And you'll be the same, once you've worked here for three or four months. It's a different life, believe me. Slow, sedate. And the money's not bad. I can help you to find a flat, if you want me to.”

“I don't have any money. Well, I do. I have an Amex gold card. But nothing that anybody will accept over here.”

“Yes. Very jolly.”

Frank Mordant took hold of her left hand, lifted it up, and examined her watch. “That's a Maurice Guerdat. What do you think that's worth?”

“I don't know. Two or three thousand dollars.”

He reached into his trouser pocket and produced a brown snakeskin wallet. “Here you are … I'll give you thirty quid for it.” He took out two ten-pound notes, a five-pound note, and five ones.

“You're going to give me thirty pounds for a three thousand dollar watch?”

“Barter, we call it. I had to do the same, when I first came here. I flogged off everything I owned, practically. Watches, clocks, rings, you name it. And don't turn your nose up at thirty quid. Don't forget that you can buy a nice little semi-detached house for three hundred and fifty.”

Nancy wasn't sure. Josh had bought her this watch when she first agreed to live with him. But she guessed that he would understand, especially if she managed to bring Frank Mordant back with her. Reluctantly, she took it off, and handed it over.

“Right, then,” said Frank Mordant. “All you have to do now is find yourself somewhere to live. I've got a little place of my own, on top of a pub in Chiswick. My current secretary, Sandra, is living there at the moment, but she's leaving us the day after tomorrow. So, if you're interested …”

“It sounds perfect. Do you know where I can stay in the meantime?”

“Here.” Frank Mordant took out a pen and wrote “The Sheffield” on a corner of
Electronics News.
“It's a small hotel halfway along Drogheda Street in Fulham. I know the owner, Mrs Watson. She'll take care of you.”