Lost in a good book (43 page)

I looked at the short man with the elegant tweed herringbone suit and touched him gently on the chest with a finger. He was as real to me as anyone I had ever met, either within books or without. He breathed, smiled, scowled—how was I meant to tell?

“I don’t know. Are you from a 1920s detective novel?”

“Wrong,” replied Harris. “I’m as real as you are. I work three days a week for Skyrail as a signals operator. But how could I
prove
that? I could just as easily be a minor character in an obscure novel somewhere. The only sure way to tell would be to place me under observation for two months—that’s about the limit any bookperson can stay outside their book. But enough of this. Our first priority is to get the manuscript back. After that, we can start figuring out who is who.”

“There’s no quicker way?”

“Only one other that I know of. No bookperson is going to take a bullet; if you try and shoot one, chances are they’ll jump.”

“It sounds a bit like testing for witches. If they sink and drown, they’re innocent—”

“It’s not ideal,” said Harris gruffly. “I’m the first to admit that.”

Within half an hour Raffles had worked out the combination and now turned his attention to the secondary locking mechanism. He was slowly drilling a hole above the combination knob, and the quiet squeaking of the drill bit seemed inordinately loud to our heightened nerves. We were staring at him and silently urging him to go faster when a noise from the library’s heavy door made us turn. Harris and I leaped to either side as the unlocking wheel spun to draw the steel tabs from the slots in the iron frame, and the door swung slowly open. Raffles and Bunny, well used to being disturbed, silently gathered up their tools and hid beneath a table.

“The manuscript will be released to the publishers first thing tomorrow morning,” said Kaine as he and Volescamper strolled in. Tweed pointed his automatic at them, and they jumped visibly. I pushed the door shut behind them and spun the locking mechanism.

“What is the meaning of this?” said Volescamper in an outraged voice. “Miss Next? Is that you?”

“As large as life, Volescamper. I’m sorry, I have to search you.”

The two of them meekly acquiesced to a searching; they were unarmed, but Yorrick Kaine had turned a deep shade of crimson during the process.

“Thieves!” he spat. “How dare you!”

“No,” replied Harris, beckoning them further into the room and signaling for Raffles to continue with his work, “we have only come to retrieve
Cardenio
—something that does not belong to either of you.”

“Now look here, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” began Volescamper, who was visibly outraged. “This house is surrounded by SO-14 agents—there is no escape. And as for you, Miss Next, look here, I am deeply disappointed by your perfidy!”

“What do you reckon?” I said to Harris. “His indignation
seems
real.”

“It does—but he has less to gain from this than Kaine.”

“You’re right—my money’s on Kaine.”

“What are you
talking
about?!” demanded Kaine angrily. “The manuscript belongs to literature—how do you think you can sell something like this on the open market? You may think you can get away with it, but I will die before I allow you to remove the literary heritage that belongs to all of us!”

“Well, I don’t know,” I added. “Kaine is pretty convincing too.”

“Remember, he’s a politician.”

“Of course,” I returned, snapping my fingers. “I’d forgotten. What if it’s neither?”

I didn’t have time to answer as there was a crash from somewhere near the front of the house and the sound of an explosion. A low guttural moan reached our ears, followed by the terrified scream of a man in mortal terror. A shiver ran up my spine and I could see that everyone else in the room had felt it too. Even the implacable Raffles paused for a moment before returning to work with just a little bit more urgency.

“Cat!” exclaimed Harris. “What’s going on?”
³

“The Questing Beast?” exclaimed Tweed. “The
Glatisant
? Summon King Pellinore
immediately.
”
⁴

“The Questing Beast?” I asked. “Is that bad?”

“Bad?” replied Harris. “It’s the
worst.
Think loathsome, think repulsive, think evil, think of escape. The Questing Beast was born in the oral tradition
before
books; an amalgam of every dark and fetid horror that ever sprang from the most depraved recesses of the human imagination—all rolled into one foul-smelling package. It has many names, but its goal is always the same: death and destruction. As soon as it comes through the door anyone still in here will be stone cold dead.”

“
Through
the vault door?”

“There is no barrier yet created that can withstand the Questing Beast, except a Pellinore—they have hunted it for years!”

Harris turned to Kaine and Volescamper.

“But there’s one thing it does tell us. One of you
is
fictional. One of you has invoked the Questing Beast. I want to know who it is!”

Kaine and Volescamper looked at Tweed, then at me, at each other and finally at the steel door as we heard another low moan. The light machine gun at the front door fell silent and a splintering of wood met our ears as the Questing Beast forced its way through the main entrance and moved its odious form closer to the library.

“Cat!” yelled Tweed again. “Where’s that King Pellinore I asked for?”
⁵

“Keep trying,” muttered Tweed. “We’ve still got a few minutes. Next—have
you
any ideas?”

For once, I didn’t. With loathsome creatures from the id
outside,
a fictional person pretending to be real
inside
and me in the middle wondering quite what I was doing here in the first place, creative thought wasn’t exactly high on my agenda. I mumbled an apology and shook my head.

There was a crunching sound as the Questing Beast made its way down the corridor amidst screams of terror and sporadic rifle fire.

“Raffles?” yelled Tweed. “How long?”

“Two minutes, old chum,” replied the safecracker without pausing or looking up. He had finished drilling the hole, made a small cup out of clay and stuck it against the side of the safe and was now pouring in what looked like liquid nitrogen.

The battle outside seemed to increase in ferocity. There were shouts, concussions from grenades, screams and the rattle of automatic weaponry until, after an almighty crash that shook the ceiling lights and toppled books from their shelves, all was quiet.

We looked at one another. Then a gentle tap rang out, like the tip of a spear struck against the other side of the steel door. There was a pause, then another.

“Thank goodness!” said Tweed in relief. “King Pellinore must have arrived and seen it off. Next, open the door.”

But I didn’t. Suspicious of loathsome beasts from the deepest recesses of the human imagination, I stayed my hand. It was as well that I did. The next blow was harder. The blow following
that
was harder still; the vault door shook.

“Blast!” exclaimed Tweed. “Why is there
never
a Pellinore around when you need one? Raffles, we don’t have much time—!”

“Just a few minutes more . . .” replied Raffles quietly, tapping the safe door with a hammer while Bunny pulled on the brass handle.

Tweed looked at me as the library door buckled under another heavy blow; a split opened up in the steel, and the locking wheel sheared off and dropped to the ground. It wasn’t a question of
if
the Glatisant got in, it was a question of
when.

“Okay,” said Tweed reluctantly, grabbing my elbow in anticipation of a jump, “that’s it. Raffles, Bunny, out of here!”

“Just a few moments longer . . .” replied the safecracker with his usual calm. Raffles was used to fine deadlines and didn’t like to give up on a safe, no matter what the possible consequences.

The steel door buckled once more and the rent in the steel grew wider as the Questing Beast charged it with a deafening crash. Books fell off the shelves in a cloud of dust and a foul odor began to fill the air. Then, as the Questing Beast readied itself for another blow, I had the one thing that had eluded me for the past half hour.
An idea.
I pulled Tweed close to me and whispered in his ear.

“No!” he said. “What if—?”

I explained again, he smiled and I began:

“So one of you is fictional,” I announced, looking at them both.

“And we have to find out who it is,” remarked Tweed, leveling his pistol in their direction.

“Might it be Yorrick Kaine—” I added, staring at Kaine, who glared back at me, wondering what we were up to,

“—failed right-wing politician—”

“—with a cheery enthusiasm for war—”

“—and putting a lid on civil liberties?”

Tweed and I bantered lines back and forth for as long as we dared, faster and faster, the blows from the beast outside matching the blows from Raffles’s hammer within.

“Or perhaps it is Volescamper—”

“—lord of the
old
realm, who wants—”

“—to try and get—”

“—back into power with the help—”

“—of his friends at the Whig party?”

“
But
the important thing is, in all this dialogue—”

“—that has pitched back and forward between—”

“—the two of us, a
fictional
person—”

“—might have lost track of which one of us is talking.”

“And do you know, in all the excitement,
I kind of forgot myself!
”

There was another crash against the door. A splinter of steel flew off and zipped past my ear. The doors were almost breached; with the next blow the abomination would be upon us.

“So you’re going to have to ask yourselves one simple question:
Which one of us is speaking now?
”

“You are!” yelled Volescamper, pointing—correctly—at me. Kaine, revealing his fictional roots by his inability to follow undedicated dialogue, pointed his finger—at
Tweed.

He corrected himself quickly, but it was too late for the politician, and he knew it. He scowled at the two of us, trembling with rage. His charming manner seemed to desert him as we sprang the trap; suaveness gave way to snarling, smooth politeness to clumsy threats.

“Now listen,” growled Kaine, trying to regain control of the situation, “you two are in way over your heads. Try to arrest me and I can make things
very
difficult for you—one footnoterphone call from me and the pair of you will spend the next eternity on grammasite watch inside the
OED
.”

But Tweed was made of stern stuff, too.

“I’ve closed bloopholes in
Dracula
and
Biggles Flies East,
” he replied evenly. “I don’t frighten easily. Call off the Glatisant and put your hands on your head.”

“Leave
Cardenio
here with me—if only until tomorrow,” added Kaine, changing tack abruptly and forcing a smile. “In return I can give you
anything
you want. Power, cash—an earldom, Cornwall, character exchange into Hemingway—you name it, Kaine will provide!”

“You have nothing of any value to bargain with, Mr. Kaine,” Tweed told him, his hand tightening on his pistol. “For the last time—”

But Kaine had no intention of being taken, alive or otherwise. He cursed us both to a painful excursion in the twelfth circle of hell and melted from view as Tweed fired. The slug buried itself harmlessly in a complete set of bound
Punch
magazines. At the same time the steel doors burst open. But instead of a pestilential hell-beast conjured from the depths of mankind’s most degenerate thoughts, only an icy rush of air entered, bringing with it the lingering smell of death. The Questing Beast had vanished as quickly as its master, back to the oral tradition and any books unfortunate enough to feature it.

“Cat!” yelled Tweed as he reholstered his gun. “We’ve got a PageRunner. I need a bookhound ASAP!”
⁶

Volescamper sat down on a handy chair and looked bewildered.

“You mean,” he stammered incredulously, “look here, Kaine was—?”

“—entirely fictional—yes,” I replied, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“You mean
Cardenio
didn’t belong to my grandfather’s library after all?” he asked, his confusion giving way to sadness.

“I’m sorry, Volescamper,” I told him. “Kaine stole the manuscript. He used your library as a front.”

“And if I were you,” added Tweed in a less kindly aside, “I should just go upstairs and pretend you slept all through this. You never saw us, never heard us, you know
nothing
of what happened here.”

“Bingo!” cried Raffles as the handle on the safe turned, shattering the frozen lock inside and creaking open. Raffles handed me the manuscript before he and Bunny vanished back to their own book with only the thanks of Jurisfiction to show for the night’s efforts—a valuable commodity on their side of the law.

I passed
Cardenio
to Tweed. He rested a reverential hand on the play and smiled a rare smile.

“An undedicated dialogue trap, Next—quick thinking. Who knows, we might make a Jurisfiction agent of you yet.”

“Well, thank—”

“Cat!” bellowed Tweed again. “Where’s that blasted bookhound?”
⁷

A large and sad-looking bloodhound appeared from nowhere, looked at us both lugubriously, made a sort of hopeless doggy-sigh and then started to sniff the books scattered on the floor in a professional manner. Tweed snapped a lead on the dog’s collar.

“If I was the sort of person to apologize,” he conceded, straining at the leash of the bookhound, who had locked onto the scent of one of Kaine’s expletives, “I would. Join me in the hunt for Kaine?”