Richard Blade forced his way on through the hedge, came out on the narrow muddy lane and began to run as best he could. He hurt all over.
Thomas Chatters, of the Salisbury Fire Department, never forgot that night. He was to tell the tale a thousand times in the pubs, while his friends stood him pints, and as an old man he told it to his children's children.
He would say: "Got this call to Nine Yews Manor, we did. Lord Hale's place, only the Lord wasn't living there since his divorce. Empty, it were, or supposed to be.
"Engines from St. Giles got there first, you see, and we come along after. Right when we're turning into the lane there comes this great bloke walking out of the woods. Naked as the day he was born, I swear. All cut and bleeding, too. I swear, and don't mind saying he give us all a bit of fright. Great huge lad, he was, and as cool as ice. Walks right up to Ned, as was Captain then, and asks for a slicker to cover him. When he gets that he takes Ned aside and whispers to him. We was all watching, like, and could see poor Ned was puzzled and maybe a little afraid. We see Ned shake his head. Then this big bloke - dark man he was with a stubble, dark, too, and a mean look - this bloke reaches out and shakes Ned like he was a baby and yells something at him and Ned he sudden agrees to whatever it was and the next thing we know Ned puts me in charge. Just like that. And Ned is driving away with the stranger in his own car, turning back to Salisbury. Strangest thing is - Ned never would tell what the stranger said to him."
Blade was dropped off in Salisbury at a police station near Poultry Cross. He whispered a code word to the Sergeant and was given a private room and a phone. The Sergeant left him to rustle up some hot tea and a drop of something to stiffen it.
J was not at Copra House. The night duty man said that he could be reached in Prince's Gate.
Lord Leighton answered the phone himself. His Lordship wasted no time. He congratulated Blade on being alive and, he hoped, well, and turned him over to J.
J sounded ravished. Like a man in shock and drawn so fine that he might go over the edge any moment. After listening to Blade's brief explanation J said: "Stay there. I'll start a man down immediately for you. Any emergency needs?"
Blade said that he could do with some clothes. All of the local coppers were small men. Or so it seemed.
J would see to it. He sounded so apathetic that Blade said, "I get the feeling that something has gone badly wrong, sir. Aside from the whole plan, I mean. They made fools of us. But there will be another time. And there are a few of them that will never bother us again."
J was silent. Blade said, "I know something is wrong, sir. You haven't asked me for positive identification yet. How do you know I am the real Richard Blade?" He laughed.
J did not laugh. He said, "I don't have to, dear boy. I know who you are. I should, damn it all! We just sent the fake Blade through the computer."
Blade could think of nothing to say. He was not sure that he had heard correctly. The connection was not too good.
"And you," J continued, "are going after him. Get up here as fast as you bloody well can."
Chapter Five
So far it had been total disaster. Defeat. J was wan and haggard, close to a nervous breakdown, and even Lord Leighton was subdued. J insisted that there was not a minute to lose and briefed Richard Blade on the run, as it were, preparing him for his trip through his computer into some new Dimension X.
They were far below the Tower, in the computer complex. Blade was naked again but for the usual loincloth. Lord L smeared some tar smelling ointment on him against computer burns.
Blade, immediately after meeting the two other men, pointed out the obvious.
"So he got through, this phony me. My alter ego. So what? You sent him out, Lord Leighton, right? So forget him. Don't bring him back. Takes care of everything."
Lord L was inclined to agree with Blade. Not so J. J was feeling guilty and inadequate. He had let them all down. The blame was his, and his alone, and he could not rest until he knew the fake Blade was dead.
"Go after him, Dick, lad. Find him. Kill him. That's the one sure way of knowing that he won't somehow manage to get back with the secret."
Lord L poo-pooed this. "You aren't thinking clearly, man. How could he get back - unless I bring him back through the computer?"
"Because," snapped J, pacing the lino-floored preparation room, "because we don't know where he has gone. We have no idea how many hundreds, or thousands, even millions of X Dimensions there are. Suppose you sent the phony Blade into an XD so far advanced in electronic science that our stuff looks like kindergarten? If he survives, and he is smart enough to, all he has to do is explain to the right people and they will send him back. Build their own machine and pop him right back into our dimension. Right into the Kremlin more than likely. Then where are we?"
They headed through the rooms housing lesser computers, walking in single file through the buzzing, scanning, light flashing machines. Men in white coats, all cleared for highest security and representing some of England's best brains, paid them little attention. Blade thought that Project DX had come a long way since that first afternoon when Lord Leighton had sent him to Alb by mistake.
As they approached the master computer, where even J must leave them, Lord L said: "Blade is scheduled for this trip anyway, J, so I am not objecting to that. But you realize that there is no guarantee, absolutely none, that he will land in the same Dimension X as his counterpart! The Russian may be in another dimension entirely."
"I know that," snapped J. "How well I know it! But we must try, take the chance. You haven't changed the computer settings? We agreed, you know - "
"The computer settings are exactly the same," His Lordship said tersely. "That is still no guarantee. There are many factors to be considered and I cannot possibly calculate them all in the short time we have. But we can try."
They reached the final security station. Blade and Lord L were photographed and fingerprinted by automation. J lingered in the back with a burly guard. As Blade vanished through the last door J flipped a hand at him and called out, "Find him, boy. Kill him."
Blade smiled and waved. If he could he would. If he could -
Lord Leighton led him into the entrails of the giant master computer. To the small glass booth sitting on the square of rubberoid, to the chair that so resembled an electric chair. Lord L, his parchment skin stretched drum tight over his fine old bones, was busily applying the shiny electrodes to Blade's body. A web of red and blue wires began to enmesh the big man.
His Lordship said. "J blames himself too much for all this. It worries me, how hard he is taking it. Could have happened to anybody, you know. Just bad luck and, give the devils their due, a lot of bloody guts on their part. Who would have thought the man to be so bold?"
The fake Richard had gone to J's home at three in the morning. He had been wearing a long heavy coat. Beneath the coat he wore a harness containing enough high explosive to level six city blocks. A single wire connected the HE to a simple push button in the man's hand. One squeeze, even in dying reflex, and how many innocents would die?
J had obeyed orders. Carefully and exactly. They picked up Lord Leighton and went to the Tower, and with the threat of total devastation hanging over them, passed through all security and into the innermost sanctum. No wonder, Blade thought now as Lord L taped the last electrode into place, no wonder J was a wrecked man.