Which somehow increased the sudden silence, made it more intense.

Jack uncovered his head and glanced all around and about himself. Stern faces stared and glared at him, eyebrows and mouth-corners well drawn down. Fingers were a-forming fists, shoulders were a-broadening. Jack now glanced down at the two prone figures on the dance-floor. A little voice in Jack’s head said, “This isn’t good.”

“Right,” said Jack, now squaring his narrow shoulders. “We’re leaving now. No one try to stop us.”

The sounds of growlings came to Jack’s ears, and not the growlings of dogs. The crowd was forming a tight ring now, a very tight ring with no exit.

Jack stuck his right hand into his trenchcoat pocket. “I’ve a gun here,” he cried, “and I’m not afraid to use it. In fact I’ll be happy to use it, because I’m quite mad, me. Who’ll be the first then? Who?”

The ring now widened and many exits appeared. Jack’s non-pocketed hand reached out to Amelie, who took it in the one that wasn’t wielding her handbag. “Come on,” said Jack. “Let’s go.”

And so, with Jack’s pocket-hand doing all-around gun-poking motions, he and Amelie headed to the door. And well might they have made it, too, had not something altogether untoward occurred. It occurred upon the stage and it began with a scream. As screams went this was a loud one and coming as it did from the mouth of Dolly Dumpling it was a magnificent scream. Exactly what key this scream was in was anyone’s guess, but those who understand acoustics and know exactly which pitch, note, key or whatever is necessary to shatter glass would have recognised it immediately. For it was that very one.

Behind the bar counter, bottles, optics, glasses, vases, cocktail stirrers and the left eye of the barman shattered. Champagne flutes on tables blew to shards and next came the windows.

Jack turned and Jack saw and what Jack saw Jack didn’t like at all.

The stage was engulfed in a blinding light. Dolly Dumpling was lost in this light, as were the clockwork musicians.

Dolly’s scream went on and on, if anything rising in pitch. A terrible vibration of the gut-rumbling persuasion hit the now-cowering crowd and signalled that mad rush that comes at such moments. That mad rush that’s made for the door.

Screams and panic, horror and bright white light.

Jack should have run, too, for such was the obvious thing to do. He should have taken to his heels and fled the scene, dragging Amelie with him. But Jack found, much to his horror, that his feet wouldn’t budge. The expression “rooted to the spot” had now some definite meaning to him, so instead he gathered Amelie to himself and as the crowd rushed past did his bestest to remain upright and in a single piece.

The crowd burst through the doors of Old King Cole’s, tumbling over one another. Unshattered glass erupted from these doors. It was a cacophony of chaos, a madness of mayhem, a veritable discord of disorder. A pandemic of pandemonium.

And worse was yet to come.

“And worse was yet to come,” said Tinto to Eddie Bear, in Tinto’s Bar, some way away from the pandemic of pandemonium and even indeed the tuneless tornadic timpani of turbulence.

“Worse than what?” asked Eddie, who hadn’t been listening, but had been getting drunk.

“The mother-in-law’s pancake-cleaning facility burned to the ground,” said Tinto, “so we had to release all the penguins and Keith couldn’t ride his bike for a week.”

“You what?” Eddie asked.

“I knew you weren’t listening,” said Tinto. “Nobody ever listens to me.”

“They listen when you call time,” said Eddie. “Though mostly they ignore it. But they do listen, and that is what matters.”

“That’s some consolation,” said Tinto. “But not much.”

“Take what you can get,” said Eddie. “That’s what I always say.”

“I’ve never heard you say it before.” Tinto took up a glass to clean and cleaned it.

“Perhaps you weren’t listening,” Eddie suggested. “It happens sometimes.”

“Well,” said Tinto, “if I see one of those spacemen, I’ll tell them that’s what I think of them.”

“You do that,” said Eddie. “And you can tell them what I think of them, too. Whatever that might be.”

“Should I wait until you think something up?”

“That would probably be for the best.” Eddie took his beer glass carefully between his paws and poured its contents without care into his mouth. “And by the by,” he said, once he had done with this, replaced his glass upon the counter top and wiped a paw across his mouth, “which spacemen would these be?”

“I knew you weren’t listening,” said Tinto.

“You know so much,” said Eddie, “which is why I admire you so much.”

“You do?” Tinto asked.

Eddie smiled upon the clockwork barman. “What do you think?” he asked in return.

“I think you’re winding me up,” said Tinto. “But not in the nice way. I hope they get you next, that will serve you right.”

“Right,” said Eddie. “What are you talking about?”

“The spacemen with the death rays,” Tinto said.

“Ah,” said Eddie, indicating that he would like further beers. “Those spacemen. I was thinking about the other spacemen, which is why I got confused.”

“Are you drunk?” asked Tinto.

“My feet are,” said Eddie. “You might well have to carry me to the toilet.”

“Now that,” said Tinto, “is not going to happen.”

“I rather thought not, but do tell me about the spacemen.”

“You’re not just trying to engage me in conversation in order that I might forget to charge you for all of those beers?”

Eddie made the kind of face that said, “As if I would,” without actually putting it into words.

“Good face,” said Tinto. “What does it mean?”

“It means what spacemen?” said Eddie.

“The spacemen,” said Tinto, “who blasted the clockwork monkeys with their death rays.”

“Now this is new,” said Eddie.

“Not to those spacemen.” Tinto took up another glass to polish, without replacing the first. Eddie looked on with envy at those dextrous fingers. “I’ll bet those spacemen blast clockwork monkeys all the time.”

Eddie Bear did shakings of his head, which made him slightly giddy, which meant at least that the beer was creeping up.

“Tinto,” said Eddie, “please explain to me, in a simple and easy-to-understand fashion, exactly what you are talking about.”

“The clockwork monkeys,” said Tinto, “the ones that got blasted. They got blasted by spacemen.”

Eddie sighed. “And who told you that?” he asked.

“A spaceman,” said Tinto.

“A spaceman,” said Eddie. “What spaceman?”

“That spaceman.” Tinto pointed, glasses still in his hand and everything. “That spaceman over there.”

Eddie turned his head to view this spaceman.

And Eddie Bear fell off his stool.

“Drunk!” cried Tinto. “Out of my bar.”

“I’m not drunk.” Eddie did further strugglings and managed at least to get to his knee regions. “It’s your responsibility. Where is this spaceman?”

“You are drunk,” said Tinto. “You drunkard. Over there,” and Tinto pointed once again.

“Ah,” said Eddie, rising with considerable difficulty and swaying with no apparent difficulty whatsoever.

Across the bar floor at a dim corner table sat a spaceman. He was a rather splendid-looking spaceman, as it happened. Very shiny was he, very silvery and well polished. He was all-over tin plate but for a tinted see-through plastic weather dome, which was presently half-raised to permit the passage of alcohol.

Eddie tottered and swayed in the spaceman’s direction. The spaceman looked up from his drink and wondered at Eddie’s approach.

Before the spaceman’s table Eddie paused, but still swayed somewhat. “Ahoy there, shipmate,” said Eddie Bear.