“What?” she said breathlessly. “What the hell . . . is going on?”
“Someone is trying to force their way into my establishment,” said the Doormouse. He was staring down the length of the reception area, his gaze fixed on his front door. “Even though I put up the Closed sign! People have no manners these days . . .”
He moved slowly forward, trembling and twitching. I gestured to Molly, and we moved forward on either side of him. The closed front door had a large section of frosted glass, through which I could just make out a single dark shape standing outside. It looked human, and it didn’t seem to be moving. But there was something about the shape . . . like one of those indistinct threatening figures you see in nightmares, full of awful significance. And the iron bell was still tolling mournfully in the background.
“Is this the Door that gives you access to the Nightside?” Molly said quietly to the Doormouse.
“Yes,” he said, staring transfixed at the shape outside his door. “I don’t care who that is. They can’t get in. They can’t! No one could get through all the layers of protection I’ve put in place! It’s just not possible . . .”
There was a loud, harsh sound, like a great pane of glass shattering. Followed by another, and another.
“He’s breaking through my shields!” said the Doormouse, almost hysterically. “Even Walker couldn’t do that!”
“Do you want to run?” said Molly, practical as ever. “Choose a Door and just disappear?”
“I can’t,” whispered the Doormouse. “This is my place. My shop, my home. I won’t be driven out of my own home.”
“You work for the Droods,” I said. “That means you’re protected by the Droods. No one messes with anything that belongs to us. You stand your ground, Mouse. If they want to get to you, they have to get past me first.”
“I find that a perfectly acceptable arrangement,” said the Doormouse.
He reached inside his lab coat, and produced a monocle, a single gleaming lens set in old ivory. He screwed the thing into his left eye, and studied the door before him. And the dark figure standing motionless on the other side. The Doormouse scowled, concentrating, and then he straightened up suddenly, his eyes wide and staring. The monocle fell out, and he caught it absently and tucked it away again.
“Oh hell,” he said miserably. “It’s him.”
“Run?” said Molly.
“No point,” said the Doormouse. “There’s nowhere we could go where he couldn’t find us.”
The front door swung open, quite casually, and in walked a man I’d never met before, and never wanted to. There are people in my line of work, people who operate exclusively in the hidden world, that everyone knows about but no one ever wants to meet in person. Hadleigh Oblivion, the Detective Inspectre, was very definitely one of those people. He stopped just inside the reception area, and smiled politely at the Doormouse and Molly and me. As though he’d just dropped in to see how we were. The front door slowly closed itself behind him. I suddenly realised the iron bell had stopped tolling, as though it had realised there just wasn’t any point any more. The enemy was inside the gates, the wolf in the fold. I looked at Molly.
“I know who that is,” I said.
“So do I,” said Molly.
“This is bad, isn’t it?” I said.
“You have no idea,” said the Doormouse.
“He used to be Walker,” said Molly, staring steadily at Hadleigh. “He used to represent the Authorities, here in the Nightside. All through the Sixties and into the Seventies, Hadleigh Oblivion was The Man. And then something happened . . . that he has never been able to talk about. Something too extreme even for the Nightside. He was never the same afterwards. He went a bit strange, they say, and gave up being Walker to walk his own path. Strange and awful paths, forbidden even in the Nightside.
“And then, they say, Hadleigh went underground. All the way underground. He studied at the Deep School, the Dark Acadamie, the one place you can go to study the true nature of reality. He came back disturbingly powerful, and strangely transfigured. He walks in shadows now, between Life and Death, Light and Dark, Law and Chaos. The Detective Inspectre, who only ever investigates the very worst crimes, where reality itself is under threat.”
“You know a lot about him,” I said.
“Know thy enemy,” said Molly.
“But . . . do you really believe all that?”
“No one knows what to believe when it comes to Hadleigh Oblivion,” said Molly. “Except that he is seriously scary. And if I’m saying that . . .”
“We can stop him,” I said. “I mean, come on, you’re Molly Metcalf and I’m Eddie Drood!”
“Eddie, I don’t think you or I could even slow him down, on the best day we ever had.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s what comes of spending too much time in the Nightside. You start to believe all the weird shit they talk here. Besides, if he only turns up when reality itself is threatened, what the hell is he doing here?”
“I have a horrible suspicion we are about to find out,” said the Doormouse.
“I am still very much in favour of beating a hasty retreat,” said Molly.
“Molly . . .”
“This is Hadleigh Oblivion!” said Molly.
“No point in running,” the Doormouse said glumly. “Wherever we ran to, he’d already be there, waiting for us. No one escapes the Detective Inspectre. I’d wet myself if this wasn’t a new carpet.”
“Why?” I said, honestly baffled by their reaction. “All right, he’s got a bad rep. I’ve heard some of the things he’s supposed to have been involved in. But what’s so special about him? What can he do?”
“Anything he wants,” said the Doormouse.
I glared at the man still standing patiently before us. “Well?” I said loudly. “Is any of that stuff true?”
“Believe it,” said Hadleigh Oblivion. “I am the man who can’t be stopped, or turned aside. The man who will do whatever is necessary, whatever the cost. It says so on my business cards. I am the Detective Inspectre, Eddie Drood, and you should not have come here.”
He smiled calmly at me, not moving at all, wearing a long black leather coat so dark it seemed to have been made from a piece of the night itself. He had a bone white face, a long mane of jet-black hair, deep-set unblinking eyes, and a coldly cheerful, colourless mouth. He looked as though he was contemplating doing awful things in the name of the Good, and enjoying them. He looked starkly black and white, because there was no room left in him for shades of grey. He gave the impression that wherever he was, that was where he was supposed to be. He appeared surprisingly young, barely into his twenties, though if he’d been Walker in the Sixties, he would have to be in his eighties now.
Power burned in him. I didn’t need my mask to see it.
“What did they do to you, Hadleigh?” said Molly. “Down in the Deep School, in the Dark Acadamie?”
“They opened my eyes,” said Hadleigh Oblivion.
“What are you doing here?” I said bluntly. “What do you want?”
He ignored me, turning the full force of his dark eyes on the Doormouse, who shuddered suddenly.
“Hello, Mouse. Been a while, hasn’t it? Made any more Doors you shouldn’t have?”
The Doormouse looked startled. “How did you know about that?”
“I know everything,” said Hadleigh. “It’s in my job description.”
“Everything?” I said, not even trying to hide my scepticism.
“Well,” Hadleigh said easily, “everything I need to know.”
“Whatever Doors the Doormouse may or may not have made,” I said, “that’s Drood business. And we will deal with it.”