The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [37]
Distant screams and shouts were sounding from behind him. Police whistles were blasting from different points around the park as constables converged on the scene.
A rustle came from the trees. A movement.
Trounce took hold of his truncheon.
"Step out into the open, sir!" he commanded. "I saw what happened; there's nothing to worry about. Come on, let's be having you!"
No reply.
"Sir! I saw you trying to protect the queen. I just need you to-"
There was a flurry of leaves, and suddenly Trounce found himself confronted by the stilt-walking man again, leaping out of the thicket.
Taken by surprise, Trounce stepped back, lost his footing, and fell onto his bottom.
"How-how-?" he stuttered.
The thing phantom, devil, illusion, whatever it was-crouched as if to spring.
Reflexively, Trounce whipped his arm back and hurled his truncheon at it. The club struck the creature in the chest, hitting the lamplike object affixed there. Fiery sparks erupted and rained onto the grass. The apparition stumbled.
"Damn!" it cursed in a clear human voice, then turned and sprang to the constable's right, leaping away in huge bounds.
Trounce got to his feet and watched the thing heading eastward. It took a massive leap into the air and, twenty feet above the ground, winked out of existence. The air seemed to fold around it.
Trounce stood, his arms dangling at his sides, his mouth open and his eyes wide.
A minute passed before, as if waking from a dream, he roused himself and looked down the sloping grass to the royal carriage. Then he looked back at the thicket. His quarry-the man who had tackled the assassin-must still be in there somewhere.
He entered the trees and began to search, calling, "There's no point hiding, sir. Please show yourselfl"
Ten minutes later he admitted defeat. He'd found a top hat lying on the ground, but that was all. The man had escaped.
He trudged down the slope toward the chaotic scene below, his mind blank.
Other constables had arrived and were pushing the growing crowd back, helped by the queen's outriders.
Trounce pushed past the onlookers-some silent, some sobbing, some talking in hushed tones, some shouting or screaming-and crossed to where the assassin lay. The man's head was pinned to the top of the low railings, held at an awkward angle, the spike of an upright projecting from his left eye, blood pooling beneath. It was a grisly sight.
Two flintlocks lay on the ground nearby.
Odd, thought Trounce, the way the assassin and the man who tried to stop him looked so alike.
He found himself standing helpless, unable to do anything, his mind numbed.
Off to his left, a moustachioed man was calmly watching the scene with a smile on his face. A smile!
A memory stirred. A case he'd read about from two or three years ago; something concerning a girl being attacked by-by a ghost which escaped by taking prodigious leaps-by a thing that breathed fire-by a creature known as-Spring Heeled Jack!
THE BIf~TH OF THE LI13EI~TINES
We will not define ourselves by the ideals you enforce.
We scorn the social attitudes that you perpetuate.
We neither respect nor conform with the views of our elders.
We think and act against the tides of popular opinion.
We sneer at your dogma. We laugh at your rules.
We are anarchy. We are chaos. We are individuals.
We are the Rakes.
-PROM THE RAKE MANIFESTO
he candle guttered and died, sending a coil of smoke toward the high ceiling.
The two men allowed a silence to stretch between them.
Detective Inspector Trounce broke it: "They said I panicked and ran away from the scene," he murmured. "Said that my claim to have seen Spring Heeled Jack was merely an attempt to justify my `moment of cowardice.' Had it not been for the fact that I was wet behind the ears-I'd only been on active duty for a fortnight-they would've drummed me out of the force. As it was, I was laughed at, taunted, and passed over for promotion for more than a decade. I had to prove myself again and again; earn respect the hard way. They have long memories here