warehouse doors that he knew opened on the maintenance yard ... had been closed! By now Jordan would be stranded on the other side of them, and that meant that Harry was on his own. And he knew that even if he took the Mobius route into the yard, still the telepath wasn't going to let himself be transported that way. But in any case what good would it do to get Jordan inside? None: it would only place him in greater danger.
Of course, Harry could simply wash his hands of the whole mess and take himself out of here. But that wasn't his way.
And the trouble was that here in the dark and the danger, he was starting to feel more nearly himself; he was more surely aware of the jeopardy in which he had placed himself, the Harry Keogh mind if not the original body. But what the hel, it was al the same - wasn't it? It had now been brought forcefuly home to him that this was him! And he realy was on his own ...
Not necessarily, Necroscope, said the near-distant voice of George Jakes, causing him to start a little. Harry, use the - what, Mobius Continuum? Jakes was excited, uncertain of what he'd 'heard' Harry thinking. By all means use it, but not just to cut and run! You need real back-up, Harry, and it just might be that I've got the answer. Then, quickly (indeed, as quickly as that), he outlined his plan. And because George Jakes was a dead man, whom only the Necroscope could hear and speak to, no other prying, intruding mind was privy to it.
Harry listened, liked what he heard, acted upon it. The idea of placing an aly like Jordan in jeopardy had been sufficient to give him pause, true, but Harry was no fool; he knew he could use George Jakes without worrying about the consequences. And this way he would be keeping his promise both to R. L. Stevenson and to the teeming dead in general. He made a Mobius jump to the police mortuary in Fulham, and in a mater of seconds returned to the East End garage.
But coming back, he wasn't alone ...
I got him! R.L. was triumphant, his incorporeal voice greeting the
Necroscope even as he stepped from his door. You was right, Harry. My obeah has come back to me, drawn back through you. It gives me strength and depletes A.C. He'll have a hard time finding you now. The balance is maintained; you is equals. At least as long as 1 can hold him.
'My thanks, R.L.,' Harry whispered; but in the empty, echoing garage his words were plainly audible! Almost immediately, there were furtive movements both left and right... and overhead?
Harry wasn't much disturbed by the movement on the right, which wasn't so much furtive as deliberate, purposeful.
He knew the sounds he heard were the shuffling scrape of George Jakes's feet where he headed off alone on his mission of vengeance. But Jakes's shape and shadow were grotesque things, made even more grotesque by the glowing nucleus of the single dim light bulb, which silhouetted his lumpish figure in a pale aura, and cast his long freakish shadow on the angular machinery and dangling festoons of chains like that of some nightmarish spider on its web.
But the movement to the left? The door to the maintenance yard was that way. Had Trevor Jordan somehow managed to force an entry, or was someone waiting for him to do so there in the darkness? Harry conjured a Mobius door and jumped to the warehouse doors. Standing in the near-absolute darkness, scarcely breathing, he could hear nothing inside.
But outside:
Harry? It was Jordan's telepathic whisper, the result of a gigantic effort on the part of the telepath. Can you ... let me in?
No, Harry thought his denial. Just stay in touch with me. Then, if anything happens, get the hell away from here and call the police!
You've got it, and he sensed the relief in Jordan's mind. But they had also given themselves, and their situation, away!
Hey, you. Fuckscope! (In his mind, Harry saw a hulking, menacing outline moving in the mechanical labyrinth of the garage). / know where you are, shithead. You're locked in and one other mother's locked out. And I'm coming for you, Fuckscope! The maniac bayed like a hound, but al in silence.
Trevor, did you get that?' Harry spoke out loud through a knothole in a wicket gate set in the main