Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [71]
The Doctor peered through the window. No one. No light, no fire in the grate, no sign that anyone was home at all. He pulled on the front door. Locked. Rummaging in his pocket, the Doctor brought out a safety pin. A few minutes fumbling with the lock, and the door was open.
He stepped into the gloom of the hall and listened. Still nothing. He was about to reach for the light switch, when he realised that there was an air raid on. The last thing that he wanted at the moment was to have to deal with two hundred pounds of German bomb.
He delved into the pockets of his jacket again, pulling out a box of his everlasting matches. He struck one, and the hallway was lit by a soft white light. Slowly, the Doctor began to pad through the house.
The cellar was empty, as he had expected, all traces of the Cyberleader's body removed. That at least was some small consolation. He moved through into the lounge.
Everything was as you would expect of a elderly man living alone in Belsize Park. Magazines stacked in a rack, books arranged neatly and alphabetically on shelves. The Doctor crossed to the small bureau tucked against the wall.
He leafed through a stack of papers. Nothing. Nothing but old newspapers, gas bills that had been paid, and library tickets.
A backwardfolded map of London lay on top of the pile. A series of inkblue crosses traced a broad arc across its streets. The trail of the Lurker. Despondently, the Doctor stuffed the map into his pocket.
Where had the man kept all the important documentation?
The sound of ackack fire made the Doctor look up. Of course. The spare room. If the Cyberleader had been kept up there then perhaps Limb had used it to store things of equal importance.
He scurried round to the foot of the stairs and began to make his way up. There had been no sign of life in the house, but it didn't pay to get too confident. He peered up on to the landing. The upper floors of the house were as empty as the rest.
He crossed to the flowerpatterned spare room. The light from his match made the shadows dance and flicker. The room seemed empty but he had to be sure. He pulled the blackout curtains across and switched on the light. It was just as he had seen it before. Empty. No indication of anything unusual.
The distant crump of falling bombs made the Doctor start. He was wasting his time here. Limb had covered his tracks too well. He snapped the light off angrily and tried to slam the door.
He couldn't.
The door was jammed on something. The Doctor reached for the light switch again. There. Under the door.
Something small and plastic.
The Doctor rose to his feet clutching the audio cassette.
No doubt about where that came from.
'Ace.'
Potter stumbled for what felt like the millionth time. His hands were slick with grease and dirt, and his shins were bleeding from his repeated clashes with the rails of the pitchblack tunnel. He had no idea of how far he had gone. It could have been a mile or a hundred miles; in this blackness there was no way to tell.
He slipped again and crashed to the floor, his glasses tumbling from his nose.
'Damn and blast it.' He scraped around on the floor, desperate to find them. His fingers raked through the accumulated grime of years of commuters. He was beginning to despair. He had hoped that his eyes would become accustomed to the dark, but the total blackness had refused to give way, the sign of light that he had expected at the end of the tunnel had refused to come.
His hand brushed against something that whipped away from under his touch. Rats? He could hear things scuttling in the darkness. He scrabbled desperately for his glasses.
There.
Thank God. He slipped them on to his nose, peering into the velvet dark. Is anybody there?' he hissed.
More scuttling.
Potter strained his eyes. He realised that he could see something a glow. Faint. Red. Two glowing embers, almost like eyes. Exactly like eyes. Potter stared