Vale had a good instinct for knowing when to act now and ask questions later. It must be part of being a Great Detective, Irene decided giddily, wondering if the strychnine / curare cocktail was making her delirious. One of the werewolves tried to break away from the attacking mob of otters and crocodiles to get at them, but a persistent baby alligator (Observe the Young of the Species, Only Two Feet Long) chomped on its ankle and dragged it back into the melee.
Vale navigated confidently though more stairs and corridors, and then they were on the roof. The air outside was smoggy and cold. It hit Irene’s throat and made her cough. Two small airships bobbed on the end of moorings in a darkly ominous sky, hovering perhaps twenty feet above the roof of the museum.
A guard came hurrying towards them. ‘Mr Vale!’ he said, moustache quivering. ‘Now excuse me, sir, I’m sure that you have very urgent business up here, but this is off limits.’
‘There is no time for that, man!’ Vale declared. ‘Barricade the doors. There are werewolves at large in the museum. Inspector Singh is bringing a force from Scotland Yard to sweep the place. In the meantime, I require one of your zeppelins to stop the perpetrator before he can escape.’
The guard’s eyes widened. He stroked his moustache nervously. ‘Is it that urgent, sir?’
‘It’s a matter of life and death,’ Vale snapped. ‘Inspector Singh will explain everything when he gets here. Are you with me, man?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the guard declared, nearly snapping his heels together in his enthusiasm. Werewolves and assisting great detectives must be somewhat unusual. He turned to look up at the floating airships, waving an arm. ‘Jenkins! Throw down a ladder, girl, you’ve a run to do!’
With a certain amount of pushing from below and pulling from above, Irene was assisted up the swaying rope ladder. She decided to be grateful that firstly, she hadn’t just been left behind, and secondly, that she was wearing traditional underpants rather than anything scantier. The rest of her mind was preoccupied with clutching the rope ladder with sweating hands, trying not to fall off and die.
The pilot was a woman, in canvas and leather clothing – the first that Irene had seen in trousers so far in this alternate. Her goggles were shoved back over a coiled heavy braid of hair and she looked more suspicious than the guard had been. ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ she said, ‘but I’ll have to see some authorization.’
‘My name is Vale,’ Vale announced. ‘I require your assistance to reach the British Library as fast as possible.’
‘That and a shilling’ll buy you a pound of onions,’ the woman said. Unimpressed, she leaned back in her seat, a hammock-like sling of leather straps and creaking rubber. ‘Go find some other poor sod to risk their job if you want to chase criminals.’
Irene considered the possible mental damage of what she was about to do. Librarians were generally supposed to avoid it, because of the risks of imposing on people’s minds, not to mention the universe occasionally backlashing in interesting ways. But they were running out of time. ‘Miss Jenkins—’
‘That’s Mrs Jenkins to you,’ the woman snapped. ‘I’m a respectable married woman, I am.’
‘Mrs Jenkins,’ Irene continued, switching fluidly into the Language, ‘you perceive that the detective here is showing you reliable and acceptable authorization.’
Mrs Jenkins frowned, staring at Vale. ‘. . . well, I can’t say as I like it,’ she finally said, ‘but that seems to all be in order. British Library, you said?’
‘At once,’ Vale said, with only a quick frown at Irene. ‘There is no time to lose.’
‘Very good, sir,’ the woman said. ‘Kindly have you and your friends hang on to the straps further back in the cabin. This is going to be a bumpy ride. The wind’s against us.’
Irene heard shouting in the background and looked down. Silver was standing on the roof, his cape billowing behind him as he pointed at the zeppelin.
Kai saw him too and took rapid action, casting off the mooring cable. The whole zeppelin rocked, and Irene had to grab for the straps, but they were moving, jerking away from the museum at the sudden loss of their tether.
‘Damn dilettante amateurs,’ Mrs Jenkins muttered, and ran her hands over the controls, flipping two switches and spinning a dial before hauling on a joystick. The zeppelin tilted and jolted into forward motion. ‘Passengers, we are now in the open air and heading for the British Library. Please talk among yourselves while I pilot this damn thing because I don’t like being distracted.’
‘Yes,’ Vale said, turning to Irene. ‘We need to talk, Miss Winters.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Irene could think of so many things that Vale might want to discuss that it wasn’t even funny. But she was going to sit down first.