The Londum Omnibus Volume One (The Londum Series Book 4)

by Tony Rattigan

  Why would Quist need all that power? thought Cobb. Then a voice echoed in his head, ‘You would have to break through the energy barrier to expose the Dark Matter. That would take an incredible amount of energy.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that!’ said Cobb, whirling round to face Harlequin. ‘Creeping up behind people like that, it’s not funny!’

  ‘Sorry Cobb, just my sense of drama!’ replied Harlequin with a smirk. ‘What’s the plan now?’ he asked.

  ‘I break into the house, stop Quist, rescue Adele and save the world. Did I leave anything out?’

  ‘Develop a personality?’ sneered Harlequin. ‘How are you going to break in?’

  ‘I figure on going in through the roof,’ said Cobb brandishing the grappling hook. ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful? See if you can locate Adele will you? Without being seen.’

  ‘Righto,’ agreed Harlequin and disappeared.

  Cobb looked up and studied the house. There were sturdy iron drainpipes running up the side of the stables and all the way up to the roof. He could see attic windows, if he could just reach them, he could get in. Less chance of them expecting someone to come from above.

  He shinned up the drainpipe until he stood on the stable roof and swung the hook up until it caught in the guttering running along the roof of the house. He used this as a safety line while he climbed up to the roof. Once there, he pulled up the rope so it wouldn’t be spotted by any passing guard. He made his way carefully across the rooftop to the nearest window. His Schweitz Army penknife made short work of the catch and he slipped quietly inside.

  He felt his way across the attic floor until he found the short flight of steps leading down to the attic door. Cracking it open he looked about carefully for any guards. There were none to be seen.

  ‘Boo!’ whispered Harlequin in his ear. Cobb spun around and swung at him with the cosh but it just went harmlessly through him. ‘Missed!’ said Harlequin. ‘There are no guards in the house.’

  ‘Look,’ said Cobb, ‘I’ll play your stupid games, it’ll probably get me killed, I don’t care about that. But I must know … will Adele be all right? Is she going to make it through this?’

  Harlequin hesitated for a moment before answering. His tone was serious which Cobb found disturbing. ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t give me that, you can see into the future, can’t you?’

  ‘That’s just it, I can see into the future but after tonight it’s just blackness. There is no future!’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘If Quist wins out tonight then it’s all gone. Your Universe, the Multiverse even. It just won’t exist anymore!’

  Cobb stood there stunned by the enormity of what he had just heard. Eventually he roused himself and told Harlequin. ‘Go and find Adele and keep an eye on her, I’ll be down in a moment.’

  Cobb carefully opened the door wide and went out onto the landing. He strained his ears but could hear nothing except the ticking of a hall clock. He found it strange that there were no guards inside the house. He went to the top of the stairs, like most Victorian houses there were four floors and he was on the top one. He crossed the landing and headed down.

  Just as he reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs, Harlequin appeared. ‘Quist and Adele are in the basement. You’d better hurry; she looks in a bad way. I don’t know what Quist is doing to her but it doesn’t look good. You have to hurry!’

  Cobb went down as quickly and as silently as he could until he was on the ground floor. He searched around until he found the door leading to the basement. He was just reaching out his hand to turn the knob when he felt the cold steel of a gun barrel on his neck and heard the SNICK! of it being cocked.

  ‘You turn round, very slow.’ Cobb did as he was told and found himself facing Won Lungh. His heart sank. He needed to get to Adele; he didn’t have the time for a fight with Won Lungh, which frankly, he didn’t think he could win. His gun was in the back of his belt and he would never get to it before Won Lungh could fire.

  ‘You come save Missee Adele?’ Won Lungh asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Cobb, puzzled by the question.

  Won Lungh slowly lowered the gun until it was pointing at the floor. ‘Good. I thought Missa Quist just want Missee Adele back to be his witch, like her mother. I never thought he would harm her. She like a daughter to me, I no let her get hurt. I help you save her!’

  Cobb was astonished. He guessed Adele had been right after all when she had said that Won Lungh would never allow her to come to harm. It seemed that when the chips were down, he had chosen Adele’s side against Quist’s. He told him, ‘If you really want to help, you stay here and don’t let anyone come down. Keep the guards away from us. Okay?’

  Won Lungh nodded and told Cobb, ‘Go down stairs, they in room at end of corridor.’

  Cobb muttered his thanks and went down the stairs. There was a short corridor leading to a single heavy oak door. Cobb strode up to it, pulled the gun from his belt and threw open the door.

  Endgame

  Cobb stepped through the doorway into a large cellar. His eyes were immediately drawn to Adele, strapped to a chair in the centre of the room. On a tripod in front of her was suspended a contraption of metal and glass, of some kind, vaguely like an oil lamp, with two prisms either side spinning slowly.

  A purplish, sparkling, stream of light was emanating from the centre of Adele’s body and flowing towards the glass contraption, where it seemed to be collecting in the device, it was already three quarters full. From a lens on the other side, the purplish light was projected down to the floor where it shone on what looked like a crystal pyramid. From there it shone out either side to other pyramids, then on to others and so on, until the stream of light connected all the pyramids and made a large circle around the room, inside which Quist and Adele sat.

  Adele seemed exhausted; her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat. But she was still conscious, her eyes swung in his direction as he walked into the room and she smiled weakly at him.

  ‘Ah Cobb, good to see you,’ Quist’s cheery voice greeted Cobb. Quist was sitting in a comfortable armchair, one leg casually crossed over the other, a glass in one hand and puffing on a cigar. He pressed a button on the arm of his chair, the door swung shut behind Cobb and there was the THUNK of concealed bolts slamming shut. ‘Electricity, isn’t it wonderful?’ said Quist.

  Cobb went to the door and tried to open it but it was sealed tight. He turned back to Quist, ‘You were expecting me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes of course. I’ve been waiting for you. I wanted you to be here at the finish.’ Quist was sitting, relaxed in a chair, smoking a cigar and sipping a drink.

  ‘How did you know I would get here?’

  ‘You’re an intelligent resourceful man. I knew you would get here in time. In time to see my greatest triumph … and your greatest failure!’

  ‘What are you doing to Adele and what is that?’ said Cobb, pointing at the tripod.

  Quist just smiled and carried on smoking.

  Cobb raised his gun, ‘Let Adele go! Let her go or I shoot!’

  Quist looked about him as if searching for something. He eventually settled on the cork of the bottle that he had filled his glass from. He put down his glass, pulled the cork out of the bottle and threw it in Cobb’s direction. Several feet from Cobb, as it reached the circle of light, the corked just flared up and vanished. ‘Look around you Cobb. On the floor. It’s a pentagram. There is an impenetrable wall of Magick around me. Nothing can get through it. Not you, not your bullets.’

  ‘But you don’t have any Magickal powers!’ exclaimed Cobb.

  ‘Ah, alas no. But we can thank dear Adele for the pentagram.’ Quist got up and walked over to Adele. He swung the device, suspended on the tripod. ‘You see this? It is the invention of a scientist acquaintance of mine. Poor fellow died before he could patent the design, incidentally, so I have the only plans of it. I
acquired it several years ago for just such an occasion as this.

  ‘It has the ability to drain Magick out of witches, enabling an ordinary person like me, to use that Magick as if it were their own. Currently it is drawing the Magick out of Adele. I drew the pentagram on the floor and to activate it I simply spoke the right incantations whilst directing her Magick through the device to those artefacts you see before you on the floor. They in turn generate the Magick field. Adele’s Magick is keeping the wall up. You can thank her for my safety.

  ‘It’s the same for The Heart of Infinity. There are certain archaic rituals that have to be carried out before you can even attempt to break through the stone, to what lies inside. With the help of this invention, I carried out the rituals a few hours ago, empowered by Adele’s Magick. It’s like having your own little Magick battery.’ He bent down and looked at Adele. ‘I think she is good for another hour or two and I should be all finished by then.’

  Cobb didn’t waste any more time or words. He raised his gun and fired at Quist until the gun was empty. Each bullet hit the wall of the pentagram and just flared into nothingness. Cobb threw the gun on the floor in disgust.

  ‘Told you didn’t I?’ gloated Quist.

  ‘If you hurt her, I promise I will kill you,’ said Cobb.

  ‘Why Cobb, I do believe you’ve fallen for Adele! Well, that’s priceless! Too bad she’s going to die. I offered her the chance to work for me, like her mother did but she refused. All she had to do was use her powers to give me information, on people, events that were to happen, to look at places and tell me their weaknesses, that sort of thing. Not much to ask but she wouldn’t do it. So now she is helping me, whether she likes it or not.’

  ‘But you don’t have to let her die!’

  ‘No, I don’t. But I’m going to anyway … chiefly because you want her to live. Well Cobb, what would the playwright Oscar Milde have said? “To lose one love is unfortunate but to lose two is downright carelessness!” ’ he laughed at his own joke.

  ‘So, you’ve failed again, Cobb. You’ve always been a failure. Never succeeded in sending me to prison, did you? But you were always a thorn in my side. A minor aggravation, it’s true, but an aggravation nevertheless. So I kept a watch on you over the years, waiting for the right time. I told you we would meet again. You’ve no idea how much I enjoyed watching you slowly come apart after your wife died.

  ‘And then when the opportunity came along to involve you in this little caper, I just couldn’t resist it. Adele stealing the stone put my schedule back by several weeks I’ll admit but it gave me the chance to involve you in the situation and that was too good an opportunity to miss. Oh the irony, you are not only here to experience your biggest failure and to witness my biggest triumph but you’re actually instrumental in bringing it about!’

  ‘Is that what this is all about? Getting your revenge on me?’ asked Cobb.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself Cobb, it was just an added bonus. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must see how my little science experiment is getting along.’ He donned some dark goggles and went over to a bench at the rear of the room, it was shielded with dark, tinted glass. The electric cables coming into the room ran to a large metal and glass tube on the bench. From what Cobb could make out through the glass, the tube was projecting a very thin beam of light, which was painful to look at directly, onto The Heart of Infinity, which appeared to be giving off steam or smoke. The Heart seemed much smaller than when Cobb had last seen it. It was now barely larger than the black stone at the centre.

  Quist peered through the goggles at what remained of The Heart of Infinity. There was barely anything left of the energy barrier surrounding the Dark Matter. The intense beam of light was slowly eroding the solid energy, which rose off the Heart as a thin wisp of steam.

  Cobb, his mind racing, paced slowly around the pentagram like a caged tiger. Only this tiger was outside the cage, trying to get in! ‘Are you going to tell me what that “thing” is?’ he challenged Quist.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand. It’s to do with science.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Quist took off the goggles and looked at Cobb, ‘All right then. This “thing”, as you call it, is a device for amplifying light. A “Strong Light Generator” it’s called. It was invented a while ago by another scientist in my employ who coined the phrase. Poor fellow died and left it to me in his will. Fancy that.’

  ‘What’s Strong Light?’ asked Cobb.

  ‘Did you ever hold a magnifying glass up to the sun and focus its rays on to a piece of paper? The light from the sun can create enough heat to burn the paper. Now imagine that light increased a thousand times, a million times. You could project a spot of light on the moon or cut through steel at close range.

  ‘The electric generator in the stables powers this electric light which shines into the ruby at this end. The ruby focuses the beam of light into this metal tube, which is filled with gas, where the light is bounced backwards and forwards countless millions of times. I don’t pretend to understand all about it but every time it bounces, the “croutons” or “won-tons” or whatever they’re called, become more agitated. Each time it bounces, the beam of light becomes more powerful until it comes out at the other end, strong enough to cut through a diamond.’

  He held the goggles up to his eyes again, ‘And … it’s almost done its work.’ The wisps of steam had almost died away and as they both watched, they stopped completely. The Dark Matter was completely exposed now, freed from the shell of energy that had kept it imprisoned for eternity. Quist pulled a lever, the Strong Light Generator switched off and the beam of light died.

  ‘Well, I’ll just leave that to cool for a while and then I’ll begin. This plan has been in operation for many years. Just a few more minutes now and then the world will change … forever!’

  Quist went and poured himself another drink. ‘A toast, Cobb. To the future. My future! Which I can shape … in … any … way … I … desire! I’ll be able go backwards and forwards in time, travel to other dimensions and even rule them. Too bad Cobb, if you’d have been a bit more corruptible all those years ago, you could have been a part of it. I could have given you back your wife! How about it Cobb? It’s not too late … join me now and I’ll give you back your wife. Think of that. Work for me and I will bring her back to life for you.’

  Cobb’s heart started pounding and he felt the blood drain from his face. To have Esme back! He took a deep breath and gave Quist the only answer that he could possibly give.

  ‘Get stuffed!’

  ‘Ha! I thought you’d say that. You don’t have the sense to seize an opportunity when it is offered to you. I didn’t mean it anyway; it was just my little joke. Instead, I may just see to it that you never even meet her. Yes, I think that would be more amusing.’

  ‘You’re a bastard, Quist!!’

  Quist raised his glass and replied. ‘Thank you,’ he said amicably.

  ‘But,’ said Cobb, ‘you’re forgetting one thing.’

  ‘Oh really?’ said Quist, sceptically. ‘And what is that?’

  Cobb prayed to the Gods that if he could rely on nothing else about Harlequin, it was his flair for the dramatic. ‘Him!’ he said, pointing across the room. Sure enough, right on cue, right where Cobb was pointing, Harlequin materialised before them.

  May the Gods bless you, thought Cobb. He figured that Harlequin had been in the room all the time but remaining invisible, so he could watch what was going on.

  ‘You!’ gasped Quist and dropped his glass. It was the first time in all the years that Cobb had known Quist that he had seen him rattled. ‘What are you doing here? I thought my men had killed you!’

  Harlequin just bowed and said, ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘What do you mean, you thought your men had killed him?’ asked Cobb, with an awful suspicion mounting inside him.

  ‘For years now this clown, has been interfering in my plans. My men have reported numerous instances of him appea
ring and trying to disrupt my operations or contacting them and trying to get them to sell out to him. I’ve never been able to track him down so I could put a stop to him. When I put this ultimate scheme into operation, I decided I couldn’t take the risk of him ruining my plans. So I took certain steps to try and forestall him. I’ve been having my men eliminating all the clowns in Londum, in the hope that he is one of them.’

  ‘You’ve been killing all the clowns? That’s insane!’ said Cobb incredulously.

  ‘I couldn’t take any chances on him interfering, you see. You have to be meticulous to ensure success you know, Cobb. If you had been more meticulous all those years ago, you’d have caught me and I’d be rotting in prison now. That’s the difference between you and me.’

  ‘The difference between you and me is, you’re barking mad!’ snapped Cobb.

  ‘You think so?’ said Quist. ‘Maybe … maybe, but I’m the one standing inside the pentagram, with the Dark Matter. In a moment I will have ultimate power in the Universe. How mad is that?’

  ‘Well what you don’t know about our friend here, is that you can’t kill him. He’s a agent of the Gods and therefore immortal.’

  Quist had regained his composure, ‘Oh I see, that explains a lot. So how does that affect me?’