Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [94]
“I had to leave Mr. Powys behind, I’m afraid.” Dimitri leaned on a wall. “This house certainly is full of colourful surprises, Mr. Cornelius.”
“He’ll be dead by now,” said Jerry.
“What could your brother be planning?” Miss Brunner asked.
“Something funny. He’s got a rich sense of humour. He may have cooked up a new ploy, but it’s not like Frank to be subtle at a time like this. It’s just possible that he’s run away.”
“And all our efforts have been wasted,” she said sourly. “I hope not.”
“Oh, so do I, Miss Brunner.”
He walked along the landing, with them following him. Jerry led them through the quiet house until they reached a point where they looked down, through what was evidently a two-way mirror, into the partitioned hall where the nerve bomb had exploded. Stairs led down alongside the far wall.
“These stairs normally lead to the basement,” Jerry told them. “We might as well go back the way we came now. There’s no obvious danger as far as I can see.”
They began to descend.
“There are steel gates farther down,” he said. “They can shut off any part of the stairs. Remember what I told you: use your guns to wedge them, stop them fully closing.”
“No rifle’s going to stop steel,” Mr. Crookshank said doubtfully.
“True—but the door mechanism’s delicate. It’ll work.”
They passed openings in the walls where the steel gates were housed, but none of them closed.
They reached the ground floor and entered a curiously narrow passage, obviously created by the widening of the hall walls earlier. At the far end Mr. Powys suddenly appeared and came staggering towards them.
“He should be dead!” exclaimed Mr. Smiles, offended.
“It’s haunted! It’s haunted!” moaned Mr. Powys.
Jerry couldn’t work out how he’d got there. Neither could he guess how Mr. Powys had survived the LSD, not to mention everything else.
“It’s haunted! It’s haunted!” Mr. Powys repeated.
Jerry grabbed him. “Mr. Powys! Pull yourself together.”
Mr. Powys gave Jerry an intelligent look that was suddenly sardonic. He raised his thick eyebrows. “Too late for that, I’m afraid, Mr. Cornelius. This house—it’s like a giant head. Do you know what I mean? Or is it my skull? If it is, what am I?”
“I know whose bloody head this house is,” Jerry said, shaking him. “I know, you bastard.”
“Mine!”
“No!”
“What’s the matter, Mr. Powys?” Dimitri slid up. “Can I help?”
“It’s haunted. It’s my mind haunted by me, I think. That can’t really be right, Dimitri. You are Dimitri. I’d always thought…It must be my mind haunting me. That must be it. Oh, dear!” He rocked his poor head in his hands.
Dimitri looked at Jerry Cornelius. “What do we do with him?”
“He needs a converter.” Jerry Cornelius smiled at Mr. Powys, raised his gun, and shot him in the eye.
The party stopped.
CHAPTER FIVE
“It was for the best,” Jerry said. “His brain was already badly damaged, and we couldn’t have him running around.”
“Aren’t you being exceptionally ruthless, Mr. Cornelius?” Mr. Smiles took a very deep breath.
“Oh, now, now, Mr. Smiles.”
They pressed on until they reached a big metal door in the basement. “This is where he should be,” said Jerry. “But I can’t help thinking he’s cooked up a big surprise.” He signaled to the surviving Briton and a couple of Belgians. They saluted smartly.
“Have a go at that door, will you?”
“Any particular method, sir?” asked the Briton.
“No. Just get it down. We’ll be round the comer.”
They retreated while the soldiers got to work affixing things to the door.
There came a loud and unexpectedly violent explosion (obviously far bigger than the soldiers had planned). When the smoke cleared, Jerry saw blood all over the walls, but very little recognizable of the soldiers.
“Great lads,” he laughed. “What a good thing, their thing about orders.” And then they were all stumbling backward as a sub-machine-gun began to bang rapidly from within the room.
Peering through the smoke from behind the cover of a South African, Jerry saw that Frank was in there, apparently alone, with the machine-gun