by Paul Finch
“It has a stout central bough,” Colonel Thorpe added. “It’s horizontal, like a yard-arm. By my reckoning, it’s a good fifteen feet from the ground?”
Again Charles nodded, impressed. The colonel had only returned five minutes ago, and at his own insistence had been conducted around the exterior of the house, but they’d done it quickly and the fog had thickened since earlier on, concealing much detail. Colonel Thorpe, it seemed, was an unusually perceptive man.
“We loop the two ropes over the central bough before taking our positions,” the colonel said. “That way, as soon as the blaggard’s snagged, we pull and he tumbles out through the window. As his sister so rightly asserts, and despite his best efforts, he will fall. But if we take up the slack quickly enough, he’ll swing from that bough rather than strike the ground. And we’ll have him.”
Charles liked the plan. The use of the willow bough as a pulley-system was particularly clever. It wouldn’t just save Sebastian’s neck, if he put up an exceptional fight it would allow them to use their combined weight to reel him in.
“And just suppose, gentlemen,” Annabelle said, her voice querulous. “Just suppose Nigel and Joseph bring him back? How do you propose to trap him then?”
Colonel Thorpe mused on this. “If Nigel and Joseph bring him back, which you yourself, Miss Annabelle, have admitted is not guaranteed, we must think of something else. Possibly we wait until tomorrow, and bind him just before he’s due to change. We can have transport waiting and will take him forthwith to whichever destination we’ve decided is most appropriate.”
The woman nodded, but seemed unable to speak. Her eyes glistened as she walked quickly away.
“Just out of interest,” the colonel wondered, turning back to Charles, “what tools do the Ethiopians normally use to catch him?”
“Only their cunning as far as I’m aware,” Charles said. “I understand they’ve discovered several of his local hide-outs. They lie in wait and overpower him.”
“Must be handy fellows?”
“They’re both of them six feet, nine inches tall, at least.”
“Good grief! More fearsome than the Zulus?”
“Physically more imposing,” Charles said. “Perhaps not quite the warriors.”
“Putty in our hands either way, what? Native brutishness versus British ingenuity – there’s only ever one outcome.”
Charles supposed there was something in that. Six months after the massacre of a thousand British soldiers at Isandlwana, the Zulu horde had again met Queen Victoria’s army, this time on a battlefield close to their royal kraal, a place called Ulundi. He hadn’t been present himself; he was still convalescing at the time. But he’d heard familiar stories from those who’d returned: how the rolling, tawny hills had turned black with chanting warriors; how the impis had poured in from every direction; how the dry earth had shaken and cracked to their charge; how their dust had blotted out the sun; how the sky had darkened to their flights of spears. Of course, on this occasion the British had been ready. They’d held their positions behind stout barricades, and had blasted out volley after volley of deadly-accurate fire. And if that wasn’t enough, they’d employed several small-artillery pieces as well, and two Gatling guns. Within three short hours, the multitude of courageous Zulus had become a multitude of corpses. British losses had totalled twelve.
Five minutes later the two officers were down in the garden, under the willow tree. Each man had looped his rope over the branch above, as the colonel had described, and was now waiting quietly. It wasn’t yet eleven, but the blanketing fog was deep and still. The house, though less than twenty yards in front of them, was only vaguely visible, its gas-lit casements little more than smeared blots in the gloom. The air was frigid: at their feet, the mown grass had feathered with frost; to their right a film of ice had formed on the pond. Time passed laboriously. Every so often a sound would cause the men to glance overhead, but they never spotted anything untoward. Charles then had a discomforting thought. From the branch above, the two ropes curved up like rat-lines towards the black aperture of the attic window. Thanks to the fog, they weren’t obviously visible, but he could see them and his eyes, he fancied, were not as good as the multi-faceted orbs that the locust-thing now possessed.
“The ropes,” he whispered. “Won’t he be suspicious?”
Colonel Thorpe chuckled. “He’s an animal, Brabinger. Don’t credit him with more intelligence than he’s due.”
“Animals have instincts, don’t they?”
“Well … that’s true.” The colonel gave it some thought. “Almost fell foul of it myself, once. On the Komoe. I was hunting ivory with a party of Dutch. We’d singled out a small herd, but it was mating season so we had to devise a ploy to draw the bull away. Finally, I had some of the boys attack in feint. The bull followed them into the bush for about a hundred yards, but then seemed to sense something was wrong. He turned around and came back. Appeared behind me, right as I was taking aim at the matriarch.” The colonel tapped his ear. “Luckily I heard him coming, but even so it was close. I just had time to shoot him through the brain.”
“Surely that’s the point?” Charles replied.
“No, the point is I still bagged him. And the rest, one after another. Animals have good instincts, but so do we. And we have intelligence and superior planning as well. However, to be on the safe side … are you armed, as I asked?”
“Yes.” Charles slapped his overcoat pocket. There was a six-chambered Smith & Wesson revolver inside it, fully loaded.
The colonel nodded. “Good. So am I.”
He reached into his capacious kit-bag again, and this time produced a brown case, which at first looked as though it should contain a cello. The colonel opened it, however, and took out two parts of a very impressive weapon. When the parts were snapped together, it was four feet in length and looked something like the combination of a high-powered hunting rifle and a heavy-bore shotgun. It had a huge wooden stock, which had been so lovingly polished that even in the dimness of night it glinted, and gorgeous iron scrollwork all down its body and the full length of its twin barrels.
“Good Lord,” Charles breathed.
“The same weapon I used to bring down that angry bull,” the colonel said. He broke it open and inserted two bullets, each of which was at least the length and girth of a large man’s thumb. “Nothing that lives on Earth can resist the stopping-power of a cannon like this.”
“Please don’t let Annabelle see it.”
The colonel closed the gun, and stood it against the tree. He picked up his rope again. “You’re obviously smitten by this young lady.”
“I was.”
The colonel glanced around. “You were?”
Charles wasn’t sure why he was giving such private information to a man he barely knew. Possibly because they’d both served in the Colours, and were now comrades-in-arms on another dangerous enterprise. Generally, he felt he judged men well, and Colonel Thorpe, now he’d come on board, seemed a solid, reliable sort.
“Our opinions differ on the subject of Sebastian, as you’ve seen for yourself,” Charles said. “But there’s more to it than that. I think the Zulu war put something between us. For a brief time Annabelle thought I was dead. She’d even got used to the idea. I suspect my first letter to her afterwards came as quite a shock.”
“Understandable.”
“Yes, but there’s something else. Annabelle is a very gentle and understanding girl. She has what I might call a broader vision of humanity than the rest of us.”
The colonel raised a querying eyebrow.
“She’s grown up in the company of Nigel and Joseph,” Charles explained. “Two men from a far-off land, from a completely different culture. Yet despite that, they’ve always been wonderful with her. Kind, attentive. They’ve performed their difficult duty in the most careful and sensitive way. It’s been as though Sebastian – well, first it was Annabelle’s father, but now it’s Sebastian – it’s been as thou
gh he’s a patient rather than a prisoner. And Annabelle has always felt absurdly grateful for this. She’s come to view these men as family friends, almost as uncles rather than servants.”
The colonel nodded, as though he’d heard this kind of nonsense before. “And you’re now going to tell me she thinks it wrong of you to have helped put the Zulus in their place?”
“Something along those lines, yes.”
“It’s never occurred to her that the Zulus and the Ethiopes live at opposite ends of a continent into which Great Britain could be sunken and lost a hundred times over?”
“I’ve mentioned that.”
“Or that there’s no actual relationship between those races at all? The Zulus are Bantu, the Ethiopes are Berber.”
Charles shook his head. “To Annabelle, all Africans are the same. A primitive but fine people.”
“Well unfortunately, so long as the Queen remains dedicated to her Empire, these primitive but fine people must be subjugated.”
A faint sound interrupted them. Both men froze.
For a moment they weren’t sure what they were listening to, but then realised it was a murmur of voices, apparently from several streets away.
“Our friend has attracted attention tonight,” the colonel mumbled. “Get ready.”
And in that same instant, something leapt clean over their heads – not only over their heads, but over the willow tree as well. It happened in a flash; a dark shape hurtled through the fog maybe thirty feet above, so fast they didn’t even see where it had come from, nor at first where it landed.
The colonel grabbed Charles’s arm and pointed. Charles glanced up, and instantly his skin began to crawl. Wreathed in fog but just about visible, a figure was clamped to the side of the house’s rearmost chimney stack. As the two men watched, it turned sharply about so that its head was upside-down, and then, with a faint scraping noise, it crept down the brickwork, easing itself over the parapet of the gutter and onto the side of the house proper. Charles had seen this before, but he could never contain the revulsion he always felt. Though the figure clearly wore clothing, or at least a piece of clothing – possibly a large coat – it was too misshapen to be mistaken for a real man: its body was unnaturally stiff and elongated. Its back legs had extended to at least three or four times those of a normal human being.
“Great scot,” Colonel Thorpe breathed.
Charles glanced sidelong at him. The older man was looking up with fascination, his mouth agape. Charles looked back to the house. The figure was now edging sideways, still upside-down, having no trouble finding hand or footholds. The voices in the near distance sounded closer.
“He’s been chased home early tonight,” the colonel said. “We couldn’t have asked for more. Are you ready?”
Charles nodded, tightening his grip on the rope.
The figure had now reached the attic window. This of course would be a test. If there was any vestige of mammalian brain still at work inside that hybrid thing, it would notice that the grille had been removed.
And indeed, it suddenly appeared to. It worked its way down onto the sill of the window, where it inexplicably halted. It was now hunched on all floors, almost frog-like. It leaned forward to gaze into the darkened room, but it made no effort to enter.
Perhaps sensing the imminent escape of their prey, the colonel barked: “Now! Now, Charles, now!”
Both men lugged down on their ropes, giving it everything they had, using their strength, their full body weight. But for all their speed, their target was quicker. With a reaction so swift it surely verged on precognition, the locust-thing bounded away from the window just in time for the black shape of the net to flower outwards, then rapidly close on itself and fall half way down the exterior wall, where it snagged on something. Even so, the trap had been partially successful. The creature had been taken by surprise. It had only leapt ten or twelve feet and was still on the side of the house, albeit on the edge of the gable-wall.
“Damn and blast!” The colonel grabbed his elephant-gun and dashed out from under the tree.
“Colonel!” Charles shouted.
But the colonel wasn’t listening. He halted in the middle of the lawn and put the weapon to his shoulder. There was a thunderous boom and a blinding flash. The locust-thing leaped high and wide, just as the portion of wall where it had been perched exploded in plaster and brick-dust. Again, the thing arched high over their heads, but it was disoriented, flying blind. The colonel tracked it with his gun, pivoting slowly around. There was at least forty feet between them, and though it was a moving target, Colonel Thorpe was a marksman who’d once potted a running cheetah at eighty paces. He’d certainly have potted this animal, had Charles not rushed up and knocked the weapon down. It discharged into the grass, blowing out a great divot of smoking turf.
The colonel rounded on him. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Charles retorted.
“You still think you can catch this creature alive?”
“That’s what we’re here for. Nothing else.”
The colonel smiled, showing once again the feline face of a ruthless predator. “That’s what you may be here for, Captain. I, however, have taken a liking to this chap. I’ve got just the space on my trophy room wall for his monstrous head.”
And he set off across the garden. On the far side, he unbolted a gate and slipped out into the tradesman’s alley running behind the row of houses. When Charles caught up with him, the colonel had broken his elephant-gun again, and was thumbing two more bullets into its breach. The hubbub of voices, which now included angry shouts and the shrill screech of a police whistle, sounded nearby.
“Blasted idiots,” the colonel muttered. “They’ll frighten him off for sure ...”
“You’ve been planning this all along, haven’t you!” Charles said. “You’re not trying to help Sebastian, you want to murder him!”
The colonel snorted. “He’s a freak, an aberration of nature. There’s no court in the land that would convict me of murder. There – see him!”
And sure enough, the hunter had spotted his prey again. Charles turned as the colonel took aim. Sebastian was maybe forty yards down the alleyway. Even as they watched, he sprang up from among a stand of dustbins and alighted on the roof of a coal-bunker. A moment later he had jumped again, back across the alley in the opposite direction.
The colonel fired, and struck the flying figure in mid-air.
It continued on its way, but now out of control. It slammed into the wall of a house, and slithered heavily down it.
The colonel laughed as he raced in pursuit. “I knew those fools who’d shot him before hadn’t used the right ammunition. Bullet-proof, my eye!” He slapped his elephant-gun. “To get through a shell like that you need heavy calibre.”
However, they’d no sooner reached the gate to the garden into which the creature had fallen, than it appeared overhead and leaped again. The colonel was taken by surprise. He spun around and put his gun back to his shoulder, but this time he was too late. The locust-thing reached a roof opposite, even though one of its hind-legs was now hanging limp, twisting in the breeze, then scrambled out of sight around a corner. A split-second after that, it leaped again, reaching the next roof, and then the next one, vanishing into the vapour and now making an eerie, insect-like chittering sound, which for all the world was like manic laughter.
The colonel cursed. Charles’s response was to draw the pistol from his pocket, aim it at the sky and pump the trigger three times. He also shouted at the top of his voice: “Help! It’s Spring-Heeled Jack! He’s over here!”
“You wretch,” the colonel said, as a hullabaloo of voices sounded in the next passage. He cradled his firearm and stood back.
Charles fired another two shots. “I misjudged you, Colonel,” he said accusingly. “I knew you were an enthusiast for the hunt, but I thought you a spiritual man too. I thought you trod the great solitudes
of the world because you were an admirer of God’s creations, not because you cold-bloodedly sought to slaughter every one of them.”
“And I misjudged you,” the colonel replied. “I thought you a soldier of the Empire. Not some effete dreamer still wet-lipped from his mother’s tit.”
“Everything you told me was a lie.”
“Nothing I told you was a lie. If you chose to interpret it incorrectly, that’s your affair. You’re a fool and a coward, Captain Brabinger. Only a handful of men survived Isandlwana. Now I know why you were one of them.”
A short while later, people thronged into the alley, mostly men: some were in work-clothes, but many were in their shirt-sleeves clearly having been disturbed at their supper. Quite a few carried clubs or burning torches, the firelight of which writhed on the icy cobblestones. A tall, heavily moustached constable was with them.
“Which way, gentlemen?” the constable asked. “The bugger’s just attacked a girl near the Chelsea Hospital.”
Charles pointed north. It was the exact direction the creature had taken, but he knew they wouldn’t have a chance of catching it. The main thing was to keep it on the move and well away from Colonel Thorpe. “He was headed towards Hyde Park. Go now, and you’ll be right behind him.”
The mob needed no second telling. With wild shouts, they stampeded away, the policeman at their head, constantly warning them to “stay back”, not to “get excited”.
“Attacked a young girl at Chelsea Hospital,” the colonel said when he and Charles were alone again. “And this is the abhorrence you’re seeking to protect.”
“Sebastian isn’t responsible. He needs to be cured.”
“He does indeed,” the colonel agreed. “Like the plague that he is.”
And he strode away – but not in pursuit of the mob, in the opposite direction.
Charles watched him, puzzled. Surely the old fellow wasn’t giving up the chase already? Even with fifty riotous hooligans competing for the prize, Colonel Thorpe held all the aces. As Charles watched, the colonel vanished into the fog. It looked for all the world like he’d had enough, but Charles wouldn’t believe that. What could Thorpe know that ordinary men didn’t? And then the truth struck: often in South Africa, Charles had accompanied hunting-parties searching for antelope or buffalo. More than once, he’d seen the animals wounded rather than killed. The next step had been to stalk them, and invariably it had led to water. Wounded animals almost always went to water.
