Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [38]
But how was that to be done? They reached the top of the stairs. Ahead, a short passage led to a door, through which they could hear a murmur of voices. Prominent among them was the hectoring tone of Sir George Hutchinson. The Doctor put a finger to his lips, waited for Jane to catch him up again, and they approached the door together.
In the parlour, watched by a worried Wolsey, Tegan was arguing heatedly with Sir George across the oak table. She felt she had nothing to lose now, and had thrown caution to the winds.
‘History is littered with loons like you,’ she shouted,
‘but fortunately most of them end up safely locked away!’
Sir George merely laughed, and said in the patronising, half-mocking voice which so infuriated her, ‘Insight is often mistaken for madness, my dear.’
Wolsey’s agitation suddenly got the better of him, too.
He rose to his feet and faced Sir George. ‘I didn’t realise the power of the Malus was so evil,’ he said.
Sir George glared. He pointed a finger at Wolsey’s eyes.
The finger shook with emotion and his voice was an uncontrolled shout tinged with hysteria. ‘Don’t worry, Wolsey!’ he shouted. ‘It will serve us!’
‘It will use you,’ Tegan countered.
‘Tegan is right.’
And so saying, the Doctor pushed aside the heavy curtain drapes and entered the parlour through the secret door, with Jane following close behind him.
For a moment the occupants of the room were struck speechless with surprise. The Doctor marched straight to Tegan’s side. His eyes dilated a little at the sight of the dress she was wearing, although his surprise was no greater than Tegan’s at seeing him materialise out of a curtain. She knew she should be used to the Doctor’s habits by now, but she still found them disconcerting.
The Doctor wasted neither time nor words. He turned at once to Sir George Hutchinson. ‘You’re energising a force so irresistibly destructive that nothing on Earth can control it,’ he told him. ‘You must stop the war games.’
Sir George went wild. The signs of obsession and hysreria, and his barely concealed joy at the war games’
cruelty had been indications of the road he was taking.
Now it seemed that the sudden appearance of the Doctor through the curtain had committed him to that path: something seemed to break loose inside his brain, and those eyes, which before had been unnaturally bright, now burned with an uncontrollable fury.
He aimed his pistol between the Doctor’s eyes. ‘Stop it?
Are you mad?’ His voice pitched queerly. ‘You speak treason!’
‘Fluently,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘Stop the games!’
Sir George could take no more of this. With a jerky movement he almost threw the pistol at Ben Wolsey.
‘Eliminate him, Wolsey,’ he screamed. ‘Now!’ Grabbing his Cavalier hat, and forcing his wayward limbs to obey his wishes, he stormed out of the room.
For a moment after he had gone there was an awkward silence among the remaining occupants. The echoes of Hutchinson’s anger hung in the air. Wolsey pointed the pistol uncertainly and without much enthusiasm at the Doctor.
‘Put that down, Ben,’ Jane said, in the gentlest voice.
Ben Wolsey shook his head, as if trying to clear it of all his illusions about Sir George. ‘I don’t understand him any more,’ he admitted. He looked tired, and his voice was sad; the increasing bewilderment and confusion which he had been feeling for some time had drained him. Now it seemed that everything was beyond him; events had veered out of his control. He was speaking nothing less than the truth: he truly did not understand.
The Doctor felt a lot of sympathy for this kindly, confused man. ‘Don’t try,’ he told him. ‘Sir George is under the influence of the Malus.’ Then he paused. ‘Are you with us, Colonel?’
Weary beyond words, Wolsey sat down heavily. He was no longer pointing the gun at anybody. ‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Because I don’t know any longer.’
‘Doctor!’ Tegan interrupted him. She pointed a trembling finger towards a corner of the room, where something only too familiar to her – although new to the others – was happening.