And along the corridor and up the stairs the prisoner stumbled. He seemed in a state of near collapse and he was buffeted from one wall to another. Will kept prodding and urging and in more than a “mo”, but less than a “bit”, they reached the miserable front desk.

And then Will saw them, through the melancholic front windows of the police station. Two hansom cabs were drawn up outside and folk were climbing down from them: official-looking fellows in high top hats and long dark-jacketed morning suits, and a number of women. Well-dressed women, lavishly-dressed women, but with preposterously slender bodies and tiny pinched faces, these women, four in number they were, looked curiously alike, as if sisters. But—

“Evil,” whispered Will.

“Chief, I can feel them,” Barry said. “Evil is right. Let’s get out the back way and let’s make it snappy.”

“Back.” Will prodded the prisoner once more. “Back through that door there.”

“Leave me alone,” the prisoner howled.

“I’m sorry,” said Will, and he poked him even harder. “But we are in big trouble here. Just go, if you know what’s good for us.”

Into a rear office they went and Will slammed the door shut upon them. The key was in the lock and he turned it.

The office room was gas-lit. Filing cabinets of a doleful disposition lined the cheerless walls and at a disconsolate table sat a young policewoman.

Will stared at the young policewoman.

She was not a young policewoman.

She was a young man dressed as a young policewoman.

This young man looked up at Will.

“I know,” he said. “Don’t tell me. What gave it away? The wig, wasn’t it? If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a thousand times. If you want someone to play the role of token woman, give them the tools for the job. But do they listen? No. These high heels are crippling my feet, and as to the corset—”

“What is your name?” Will asked. He asked the question in a slow and deliberate voice. He had a feeling that he already knew the answer.

“Policewoman John Higgins,” Policewoman John Higgins replied. “Who are you and—” He/she glanced from the face of Will to the face of the prisoner and back again.

“No time at all to explain,” said Will, “even if I could. Undo the prisoner’s straitjacket, if you will.”

“I certainly will not.” The cross-dressing officer of the law rose from his/her seat and reached for his/her truncheon.

“I don’t have time for this,” said Will.

“Stick your hand in your pocket, chief.”

“What?”

“What?” said Policewoman Higgins.

“Just do it, chief, tell he/she that you have a gun in your pocket. Make him or her, or whatever it is, unstrap the other you and open the back door.”

“Good idea.” Will did as he was bid.

“I’ve a gun in my pocket,” said Will. “Do what I say, or I’ll shoot you.”

And now there came sounds of a handle being turned and then fists being banged on the door that Will had locked, just two “trices” and three “half-a-mo’s”[18] before.

The token policewoman raised his/her truncheon and peered at the bulge in Will’s pocket. And, as it was impossible at such a moment to resist uttering the now legendary line, uttered it.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just—”

And Will’s finger squeezed upon a trigger and shot the end off the token policewoman’s truncheon.

“Gun, then.” Higgins dropped the truncheon and set about releasing the straps which held the other Will’s straitjacket.

Fists now rained upon the locked office door and there was a great deal of angry shouting.

“The back door,” Will said, when his other self was unbuckled. “Unlock it quickly, now.”

“It’s not locked,” said token Policewoman Higgins.

“Then come over here.”

“What is it?” The token policewoman teetered in Will’s direction.

“Only this, and I’m sorry.” And Will brought him/her down with a Dimac moved called The Lunge of the Lion’s Lingum, which this time involved Will’s elbow, as his fist was growing sore.

Will’s other self stood unsteadily rubbing at his wrists and shaking fearfully.

“Out of the door,” Will told him. “Don’t make me hit you too.”

The other Will staggered forward and opened the door. Will pushed him forward with the cane, forward and into an alleyway.

It was an alleyway of heart-breaking dejection.

“Along the alley. To the front of the building,” Will said.

“The front of the building, chief?”

“I’m running this, Barry.”

“And most violently too. Lots of pent up aggression coming out. I hope you’re not having a psychotic episode.”

“Go on,” Will told his other self. “Along the alleyway. Quickly.”

The street truly bustled with people now.

Many tradesmen hustled as they bustled and called out the Cries of Old London.

“Bluebottles, bluebottles. Get yer luverly bluebottles.”

And so on.

The two hansom cabs still stood before the police station. Will opened the door of the first one and ushered his other self into it. The cabbie looked down through his hatchway at the back.

“Sorry gents,” he said. “These cabs is taken. Hired by Very Important Folk. Hail another, if you please.”

Will closed the hansom cab’s door. His other self sat within, hunched up and cowering. Will stepped around to the rear of the cab. “Cabbie,” he called up. “Could you step down here for a moment.”

“How long a moment would that be, sir? More than a ‘tick’, would it be, or less than a ‘twinkling’ or a ‘flash’?”

“Do I spy a duff running gag?” Will asked. “Just step down here for a ‘jiffy’, if you will.”

“Oh, I can certainly spare a ‘jiffy’.”

The cabbie climbed down and a Dimac move called The Wave of the Wombat’s Winkie laid the cabbie low.

“Chief,” said Barry. “You’re not going to—”

“Yes I am.” Will leapt up onto the cabbie’s mount and took up the horse’s reins.

And then folk issued from the police station: important-looking men in high top hats, and curious pinch-faced women. These wore the most ferocious expressions.

And Will, with a surprising degree of dexterity, which involved holding the horse’s reins in one hand, taking up the cabbie’s whip in the other, and somehow still managing to keep a hold upon Rune’s silver-topped cane, slapped the reins and cracked the whip and shouted, “Giddy up.”

And the cabbie’s horse just stood there, refusing to be moved.

And now the important-looking men and the ferocious-faced females were at the hansom cab and climbing onto it.

“Giddy up!” shouted Will, cracking the whip once more and employing Rune’s cane to strike the top hat from the head of an important-looker. “Get a move on. Hutt! Hutt!”

“Hutt, chief?”

“It’s what you say to camels,” Will kicked away the important-looker who was clawing at his leg.

“Try ‘Hi Ho Silver’, chief.”

“And why?” The Poke of the Porcupine’s Pecker, a shin-move deeply applied, sent another important-looker toppling.

“No harm in trying, chief.”

“Hi Ho Silver!” shouted Will and he cracked the whip once more.

And the cabbie’s horse took off in a manner that was not unlike the wind.

“You can’t beat a farting horse,” said Barry.

“So not funny.” Will clung to the reins and Hi-Ho-Silvered some more.

And important-lookers and ferocious-faced-females fell away as the horse leapt forward, scattering bluebottle-sellers and costermongers and rag men and rabbit-skin hawkers.

The horse traffic was, of course, heavy. There were many carts and carriers and trucks and cabs too.

A prediction was made in the year eighteen ninety, which seemed a most logical prediction at the time, and this prediction was, that with the ever-growing volume of horse drawn traffic in London, by the year nineteen twenty, every street, road and lane in England would be nose to tail in horse-drawn vehicles, and London would be thirty-five feet deep in horse manure. And it was a prediction based upon logic.