The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [276]
For once, I didn’t. With loathsome creatures from the id outside, a fictional person pretending to be real inside and me in the middle wondering quite what I was doing here in the first place, creative thought wasn’t exactly high on my agenda. I mumbled an apology and shook my head.
There was a crunching sound as the Questing Beast made its way down the corridor amidst screams of terror and sporadic rifle fire.
“Raffles?” yelled Tweed. “How long?”
“Two minutes, old chum,” replied the safecracker without pausing or looking up. He had finished drilling the hole, made a small cup out of clay and stuck it against the side of the safe and was now pouring in what looked like liquid nitrogen.
The battle outside seemed to increase in ferocity. There were shouts, concussions from grenades, screams and the rattle of automatic weaponry until, after an almighty crash that shook the ceiling lights and toppled books from their shelves, all was quiet.
We looked at one another. Then a gentle tap rang out, like the tip of a spear struck against the other side of the steel door. There was a pause, then another.
“Thank goodness!” said Tweed in relief. “King Pellinore must have arrived and seen it off. Next, open the door.”
But I didn’t. Suspicious of loathsome beasts from the deepest recesses of the human imagination, I stayed my hand. It was as well that I did. The next blow was harder. The blow following that was harder still; the vault door shook.
“Blast!” exclaimed Tweed. “Why is there never a Pellinore around when you need one? Raffles, we don’t have much time—!”
“Just a few minutes more . . .” replied Raffles quietly, tapping the safe door with a hammer while Bunny pulled on the brass handle.
Tweed looked at me as the library door buckled under another heavy blow; a split opened up in the steel, and the locking wheel sheared off and dropped to the ground. It wasn’t a question of if the Glatisant got in, it was a question of when.
“Okay,” said Tweed reluctantly, grabbing my elbow in anticipation of a jump, “that’s it. Raffles, Bunny, out of here!”
“Just a few moments longer . . .” replied the safecracker with his usual calm. Raffles was used to fine deadlines and didn’t like to give up on a safe, no matter what the possible consequences.
The steel door buckled once more and the rent in the steel grew wider as the Questing Beast charged it with a deafening crash. Books fell off the shelves in a cloud of dust and a foul odor began to fill the air. Then, as the Questing Beast readied itself for another blow, I had the one thing that had eluded me for the past half hour. An idea. I pulled Tweed close to me and whispered in his ear.
“No!” he said. “What if—?”
I explained again, he smiled and I began:
“So one of you is fictional,” I announced, looking at them both.
“And we have to find out who it is,” remarked Tweed, leveling his pistol in their direction.
“Might it be Yorrick Kaine—” I added, staring at Kaine, who glared back at me, wondering what we were up to,
“—failed right-wing politician—”
“—with a cheery enthusiasm for war—”
“—and putting a lid on civil liberties?”
Tweed and I bantered lines back and forth for as long as we dared, faster and faster, the blows from the beast outside matching the blows from Raffles’s hammer within.
“Or perhaps it is Volescamper—”
“—lord of the old realm, who wants—”
“—to try and get—”
“—back into power with the help—”
“—of his friends at the Whig party?”
“But the important thing is, in all this dialogue—”
“—that has pitched back and forward between—”
“—the two of us, a fictional person—”
“—might have lost track of which one of us is talking.”
“And do you know, in all the excitement, I kind of forgot myself!”
There was another crash against the door. A splinter of steel flew off and zipped past my ear. The doors were almost breached; with the next blow the abomination would be upon us.
“So you’re going to have to ask yourselves one simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?”
“You are!” yelled Volescamper, pointing—correctly—at