The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [30]
‘No, no… It’s the… It’s the Doctor. That…’ He ran out of puff yet again.
‘Look, he’s started doing his stuff in there. I can’t stop him. Lord knows what would happen.’
Jeremy took a couple of deep breaths. ‘That – that Max Vilmio chap. The one who’s nobbling poor old Mario.
He’s…’ Again he had to stop.
105
‘Well? He’s what? What about him?’
‘He’s sending somebody to kill the Doctor. I heard them talking. A sort of monk chap. We’ve got to warn him!’
Sarah looked at him as if he’d gone totally bonkers.
‘Okay, okay, I’ll tell him. But it’s not as if he’s going to be in much danger where we’re going, now is he? Not that sort, anyway.’
An irate voice came from inside. ‘Sarah! Are you coming or aren’t you?’
‘Coming!’ And with a sort of ‘tut’ and a shake of the head, she disappeared inside. The doors started to shut.
Suddenly Jeremy couldn’t bear it. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘I’ve changed my mind! I’ll come too!’
But his only answer was the elephantine song of the TARDIS as she vanished from sight.
He turned away; but his eye was caught by a movement in the shadows. ‘Who’s that?’ he called.
There was no answer; and as he moved over to have a closer look, he saw that there was nobody there.
Yet, as he wandered disconsolately back through the long corridors, he couldn’t shake the idea from his mind that he had in fact caught a glimpse of Max Vilmio’s unlikely hit-man.
106
Huh! What a load of tommyrot, thought Jeremy. After all, he could hardly have just vanished through the wall, could he?
107
Nine
‘Yes, yes. Thank you,’ said the Doctor in an abstracted way when Sarah told him what Jeremy had said. He was intently studying some dials on the console of the TARDIS
and making unrecognizably small adjustments to the controls beneath them.
‘Jeremy, Yes,’ he continued in the same tone. ‘Nice enough boy, in his way, but he really ought to…’ He suddenly stopped and looked up, startled.
‘What did you say?’
‘Me? Nothing.’
‘Just now. What did you say just now? About the Brigadier’s American?’
‘I said that Jeremy said that this man Vilmio had sent somebody to kill you.’
He returned to his knobs. ‘Well, well, well. So it looks as if Lethbridge-Stewart is right about him. But why me, I wonder? I shouldn’t have thought I constituted a threat to him.’
He stood up, obviously dismissing the question from his mind. ‘Now come on,’ he said, ‘you haven’t got much time to get changed. You’ll find a suitable outfit in the twenty-third room on the right down the fourth passage on the left –
or is it the twenty-fourth down the third? Don’t get lost.’
108
Now what was he on about? thought Sarah. ‘We’re going to a fancy-dress ball, right? What do you suggest? A bunny-rabbit? I’d quite fancy a circus clown, myself.’
You surprise me, Sarah. I should have thought it obvious that you can’t pass yourself off as a young lady of the period dressed in jeans.’
Ah. Yes. She’d slipped a small cog, there.
‘Yes, of course. Only joking,’ she said lamely. ‘Early fifteen-hundreds, that’s what you said, isn’t it? Snoods and wimples and stuff.’
He looked at her as if she needed a complete refit, a ten-thousand‐mile service. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion,’ he said (and his tone implied, ‘and why haven’t you?’), ‘that the events we witnessed were quite enough to have registered as a discontinuity on the scope. It’s surely far more likely that the barrier was breached in 1818. The poltergeist must have been the beginning, as I’m sure you’ll agree.’
Oh, yes. No doubt at all.
‘And don’t forget to leave your wrist-watch behind. It’s the biggest giveaway of the lot.’
Trying to look as if she’d known what he meant all along, she made her way out of the control room and counted her way to the right door. But was it? The room was full of crinolines and stuff. She made her way to the 109
alternative, counting carefully, and sure enough it was higgledy-piggledy with piles of Jane Austeny sorts of clothes.
By the time she’d turned herself into a refugee from Pride and Prejudice