There was a moment of utter silence, in that dank cellar. Then once more water dripped, and maggots rustled; and the marquis said, “An hour’s head start, remember.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Croup. The marquis de Carabas tossed the figurine to Mr. Croup, who caught it eagerly, like an addict catching a plastic baggie filled with white powder of dubious legality. And then, without a backward glance, the marquis left the cellar.
Mr. Croup examined the figurine minutely, turning it over and over in his hands, a Dickensian curator of the Museum of the Damned contemplating a prize exhibit. His tongue flicked out, from time to time, like a snake’s. A perceptible flush appeared on his pallid cheeks. “Oh, fine, fine’,” he whispered. “T’ang dynasty indeed. Twelve hundred years old, the finest pottery figurines ever made on this earth. This was created by Kai Lung, finest of potters: there is not a twin to it in existence. Examine the color of the glaze; the sense of proportion; the life . . . ” He was smiling now, like a baby; the innocent smile looked lost and confused on the shady terrain of Mr. Croup’s face. “It adds a little wonder and beauty to the world.”
And then he grinned, too widely, and lowered his face to the figurine, and crushed its head in his teeth, chomping and chewing wildly, swallowing in lumps. His teeth ground the china to a fine powder, which dusted the lower part of his face.
He gloried in its destruction, throwing himself into it with the strange madness and uncontrolled blood lust of a fox in a henhouse. And then, when the statue was nothing but dust, he turned to Mr. Vandemar. He seemed strangely mellow, almost languid. “How long did we say we’d give him?”
“An hour.”
“Mmm. And how long has it been?”
“Six minutes.”
Mr. Croup lowered his head. He ran a finger across his chin, licked the powdered clay from his fingertip. “You follow him, Mister Vandemar,” said Mr. Croup. “I need a little more time in which to savor the occasion.”
Hunter could hear them walking down the steps. She was standing in the shadows, with her arms folded, in the same position she had been in when they left her. Richard was humming loudly. Door was giggling helplessly; then she would stop, and tell Richard to be quiet. Then she would start giggling again. They walked past Hunter without noticing her. She stepped out of the shadows, and said, “You have been gone for eight hours.” It was a statement of fact, without reproach or curiosity.
Door blinked at her. “It didn’t seem that long.” Hunter said nothing.
Richard grinned wearily at her. “Don’t you want to know what happened? Well, we got ambushed by Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. Unfortunately we didn’t have a bodyguard around. Still, I gave them a good run for their money.”
Hunter raised a perfect eyebrow. “I am in awe of your pugilistic talents,” she said coolly.
Door giggled. “He’s kidding. Actually—they killed us.”
“As an expert in the termination of bodily functions,” Hunter said, “I must beg to differ. You are neither of you dead. At a guess, you are both very drunk.”
Door stuck her tongue out at her bodyguard. “Nonsense. Touched hardly a drop. That much.” She held out two fingers to show how tiny an amount “that much” was.
“Just went to a party,” said Richard, “and saw Jessica and saw a real angel and got a little black pig and came back here.”
“Just a little drink,” continued Door, intently. “Old, old drink. Tiiiiny little drink. Very small. Almost not there.” She began to hiccup. Then she giggled again. A hiccup interrupted her, and she sat down suddenly on the platform. “I think maybe we are a bit smashed,” she said, soberly. Then she closed her eyes, and began, solemnly, to snore.
The marquis de Carabas was running through the underways as if all the hounds of Hell had his scent and were on his trail. He was splashing through six gray inches of the Tyburn, the hangman’s river, kept safe in the darkness in a brick sewer beneath Park Lane on its way south to Buckingham Palace. He had been running for seventeen minutes.
Thirty feet below Marble Arch, he paused. The sewer divided into two branches. The marquis de Carabas ran down the left-hand branch.
Several minutes later, Mr. Vandemar walked through the sewer. And when he reached the junction he, too, paused for a few moments, sniffing the air. And then he, too, walked down the left-hand branch.
Hunter dropped Richard Mayhew’s unconscious body into a pile of straw, with a grunt. He rolled in the straw, said something that sounded like “Forth-ril bjugly mobble wug,” and went back to sleep. She put Door down in the straw next to him, more gently. Then she stood beside Door, in the dark stables under the ground, on guard still.
The marquis de Carabas was exhausted. He leaned against the tunnel wall and stared at the steps that went up ahead of him. Then he pulled out the golden pocket-watch and looked at the time. Thirty-five minutes had passed since he had fled the hospital cellar.
“Is it an hour yet?” asked Mr. Vandemar. He was sitting on the steps ahead of the marquis, picking his nails with a knife.
“Not even close,” gasped the marquis.
“Felt like an hour,” said Mr. Vandemar, helpfully.
There was a shiver in the world, and Mr. Croup stood behind the marquis de Carabas. He still had powder on his chin. De Carabas stared at Mr. Croup. He turned back to look at Mr. Vandemar. And then, spontaneously, the marquis de Carabas began to laugh. Mr. Croup smiled. “You find us funny, Messire Marquis, do you not? A source of amusement. Is that not so? With our pretty clothes, and our convoluted circumlocutions—“
Mr. Vandemar murmured, “I haven’t got a circumlo . . . “
“—and our little sillinesses of manner and behavior. And perhaps we are funny.”
Mr. Croup raised one finger then, and waggled it at de Carabas. “But you must never imagine,” he continued, “that just because something is funny, Messire Marquis, it is not also dangerous.”
And Mr. Vandemar threw his knife at the marquis, hard and accurately. It hit him, hilt first, on the temple. His eyes rolled up in his head, and his knees buckled. “Circumlocution,” said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. “It’s a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity.”
Mr. Vandemar picked up the marquis de Carabas by his waistband and dragged him up the stairs, his head bump-bump-bumping on each step as they went, and Mr. Vandemar nodded. “I wondered,” he said.