Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [83]
A few yards away, Lord Roxton lowered the rifle from his shoulder. One of Maupertuis's soldiers was sprawled unconscious at his feet.
'One good turn, an' all that rot!' he yelled.
'Well,' Bernice said, 'if you ever hear me say that the aristocracy was a useless vestigal appendix on the body of society, you have my permission to spank me soundly on the bottom.'
I turned my head, and found myself gazing into her eyes from a distance of less than six inches.
'Can I have that in writing?' I asked.
'Ask me again when this is all over.'
There was a long moment of silence between us. Somewhere in the background a lone voice was raised in song. By the time I realized that it was one of Maupertuis's fakirs, still chanting his incomprehensible chant, the voice had stopped and the cavern was suddenly a lot darker.
The dimensional portal had closed.
As we gazed around, the extent of our meagre victory became apparent.
We had won the battle, but the war was far from over. There were more dead bodies than live ones down on the cavern floor. Maupertuis had gone.
His troops had gone. His fakirs had gone. Warburton, his wife, his secretary and Tir Ram had gone.
And so had the Doctor.
Chapter 12
In which Surd undergoes a hair-raising experience and a jolly travelling song is sung.
Bernice and I descended the steps into the cavern, feeling remarkably like actors who watch the curtain rise only to discover that the audience has already left. Holmes and Lord Roxton were examining the ground where the gateway to Ry'leh had been. Professor Moriarty was some distance away, bent over the corpse of one of the rakshassi.
'Good work, Watson,' Holmes said as we approached. The fires cast a flickering orange light upon his features, rendering them even more gaunt than usual. 'I knew I could count on you.'
'That was damn good shootin', both of you,' Lord Roxton agreed. 'Remind me never to invite you up to my estate. The grouse'd never recover!'
I knew that he was jesting, but the compliment brought a blush to my cheek. Bernice also was pleased.
We gazed around in silence for a moment at the remnants of Maupertuis's army. Wherever we looked we could see abandoned mess kits, churned ground and blankets. There was nobody left, though. Nobody at all.
'So we've lost the Doctor again,' I murmured. 'This is getting beyond a joke.'
'He's always getting lost,' Bernice replied. 'It's what he's best at. Like a bad penny, he'll turn up again.'
'The little fellah?' Roxton asked. 'Seemed like a plucky sort of chap. Didn't see him go through that . . . that thing . . . though, whatever it was.'
'It was a gateway,' I confided.
'To another world,' said Bernice, smiling at Lord Roxton and daring him to disbelieve us.
'Another world, eh? I dare say the huntin' there would be an experience an'
a half.'
'I take it from what you said earlier that you are one of Mycroft's agents,' I said to him. 'What brought you here?'
He rubbed a hand across his beard.
'I work for the Diogenes on and off. Nothin' formal, but I occasionally pick up the odd snippet of information here an' there. Feel it's me duty to let someone know. Mycroft knew I was comin' to India on a tiger shoot an'
asked me to have a sniff around, see what I could come up with. Cabled me last week, told me you were comin' out as well, an' asked me to keep an eye on you.'
'What made you come to Jabalhabad?' Bernice asked. 'We only came across a clue that led us here by accident.'
'I've been tryin' to track the members of Maupertuis's ragtag army,' Roxton admitted. 'They've been comin' ashore all around the place - Calcutta, Bombay, Lahore - an' some even slipped across from Afghanistan. I picked up a hint of some Englishmen headin' for here when I was in Sind, so I popped across to have a look-see.'
He frowned.
'Knew Tir Ram from