the Metropolitan Police received anonymous advance warning that a device will be planted in Oxford St., set to detonate at 10:25 today. Any chance you can do something, Mr Clarke? Sorry for short notice. No reply required -action will suffice ...
'Your Minister Responsible has a sense of humour!' Harry's tone was dry. Then ... the Necroscope blinked, staggered, and grabbed the edge of the desk to steady himself! Darcy scarcely noticed; made breathless by haste, he was already getting back to the DO:
'Is Trevor Jordan in?'
'He's on it,' came the immediate answer. 'I caught him on his way to the office and diverted him.'
'I'm on it, too,' Darcy snapped. 'But no one else! Get me a car, then get in here and take over.'
There's a car waiting out back.'
As Darcy left his chair and headed for the door, the Necroscope said, 'How about me?'
Darcy skidded to a halt, whirled around. 'No way! There's only one you, Harry, and this is - '
' - Dangerous?' Harry was himself again; he grinned, however coldly. 'I've seen a lot worse places than Oxford Street, Darcy.'
Darcy shook his head. Speaking rapidly but precisely, he said, 'You can be hurt, Harry. You can be killed! But with me, it's not very likely. My talent won't even let me get close to that bomb, which means I can help the police find it.
Where my legs won't take me, that's ground zero! As for Trevor Jordan: he knows the risks - but he also knows the mind of just about every IRA bomber working in England! If this bloke's still out there on the street, Trev can probably find him. But you - '
He might have gone on, but Harry held up a hand. 'You've made your point. Don't let me hold you up.'
In the next moment, Darcy had wheeled and disappeared out into the corridor. In his wake he left an old-fashioned wooden coat-stand
teetering where he'd grabbed his overcoat. It swayed first one way, then the other. It might even have toppled; but coming from nowhere, a sudden swirl of air straightened it up.
The door hadn't yet slammed shut behind Darcy's back; his running footsteps were still echoing in the corridor; his communications screen" still carried the Minister Responsible's cry for help. But already his office was quite empty.
Against Darcy Clarke's orders, against all logic, and definitely against commonsense, the Necroscope had taken a Mobius shortcut to Oxford Street. For to Harry it didn't feel like he was putting himself at risk at all. And he could hardly be putting Alec Kyle at risk, now could he? For Kyle was already dead ... wasn't he?
And his talent, too?
But if so, then what was it Harry had seen, experienced, in the moment after reading the Minister Responsible's message on the viewscreen? How to explain what had come and gone in the briefest possible time, like a crack of lightning illuminating some secret part of his brain and causing him to stagger?
For he'd seen ... a Mobius door, but horizontal! A Mobius door, shimmering, hovering lengthwise in mid-air, superimposed on reality. Then, as quickly as it had come, the extraordinary vision had disappeared. But in its split-second existence, the Necroscope had seen the door shaken, had seen it writhing like a ring of smoke in a sudden draft -
- And he'd seen what it vomited, like some monstrous volcano, high into the suddenly darkening sky!
Harry scarcely knew London at all. Despite that the Necroscope was much, far, and extremely strangely travelled, London hadn't been an extensive part of his itinerary. He had visited Oxford Street, however, and so knew several co-ordinates; enough that he wouldn't emerge in the middle of the road in heavy traffic, anyway. Not that that ever happened; in doubt, he could always look out through his exit door before stepping through it. But as for the Street itself, its junctions, idiosyncrasies - its 'personality' - he really didn't know one end from the other.
He emerged in the entrance of a shoe store perhaps midway along the street. An extremely tall man in spectacles, leaving the shop in a hurry, bumped into him, looked surprised, and at once apologized. But Harry was already looking around, getting the feel of things.
It was mid-week but there were plenty of people about. Up and down the street, he saw policemen; already they were thick on the ground. And somewhere out there would be Trevor Jordan, probably in the company of a couple of plain-clothes officers. As