Philomena pressed a finger down upon the crown of the captive’s head. Icarus gasped as a sensation of absolute joy overwhelmed him. A feeling of pure happiness.

“Nice, isn’t it?” said Philomena. “My mother used to get really big tips from her clients when she pressed their heads like that. And yet …” Icarus felt a pressure over his right temple.

“Aaaaaagh!” Knives of pain tore through his body. Knives of burning pain.

“That one really hurts, now doesn’t it?”

Icarus groaned and tears ran down his cheeks.

“You do have to be very precise, though,” said Philomena, stroking the head of Icarus Smith. “Just a little bit off and the effects can be devastating. Blindness, paralysis, permanent incontinence, or a total vegetative state. It takes a lot of practice to get it just right. I have a lot of ex-boyfriends who can’t do much nowadays but dribble. Shame, but there you go.”

Icarus was shaking now. His eyes rolled and his lips were turning blue.

“So let’s see,” said Philomena. “Let’s just see what you have to tell us.”

Icarus awoke in a sweat from a terrible terrible dream. He clutched at his head and blinked his eyes and let out an awful scream.

“Calm down, please, calm down.”

The eyes of Icarus focused on the face of Johnny Boy.

“Can you move?” asked the midget. “Are all your body parts still working?”

Icarus twitched; his hands were numb. He tried to rise, but his legs offered little support.

“What happened?” he managed to ask. “Where are we?”

“That evil bitch played havoc with your brain. You told her everything. Where you’d hidden the briefcase. How you mailed the key to yourself. Your address.”

“Oh God, no.”

“I’m sorry,” said Johnny Boy. “There was nothing I could do to stop her. They flushed all the tablets down the sink and burned the professor’s notes. They’d have smashed up the spectremeter too, if you hadn’t told them what it did.”

“I don’t remember anything.” Icarus rubbed at his knees.

“No, she said that you wouldn’t. They made me drag you here and they locked us in. You’ve been unconscious for hours.”

“Oh God, I’m shaking all over. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Please don’t,” said Johnny Boy. “This is only a very small cell.”

“A cell.” Icarus looked up and around and about.

“Death cell, I should think,” said Johnny Boy. “I’m really sorry, Icarus. It’s all my fault that you got into this.”

“Don’t blame yourself. We’re in it now and we have to get out of it and quick.”

Johnny Boy sighed a little sigh, “We’ve lost,” said he. “They’ve destroyed the tablets and the formula. They win, we lose.”

“Oh no we don’t,” said Icarus and he opened his right hand. On his palm lay a dozen tablets, all very sweaty and rather crunched up, but a dozen tablets, none the less. “I relocated these while we were in the car. We can get some chemist to analyse them. We’re not done for yet.”

“Smart lad,” said Johnny Boy. “But how do we get out of here?”

“Getting out of this cell is no problem,” said Icarus. “It’s what we do when we’re out that worries me.”

Johnny Boy had not counted doors, or busts in little niches. And when Icarus (using certain instruments which he kept in the heels of his shoes) had opened the cell door and glanced up and down a strange corridor, and asked Johnny Boy which way it was to the barber’s shop, the small man could only shrug his shoulders and say it was perhaps this way or perhaps the other.

“Best leave it to fate, then,” said Icarus. “Follow me.”

This corridor had a stone-flagged floor and walls of echoing stone. This was your standard prison corridor, the one along which the cries of tortured souls are wont to echo.

“Your heels really click, don’t they?” said Icarus.

“Tap-shoes,” said Johnny Boy. “I used to do a bit of the old Fred and Ginger.”

“Perhaps you’d like to take them off, or walk on tiptoe or something.”

Johnny Boy stopped and took off his shoes and tucked them into his trouser pockets.

“What happened to your socks?” asked Icarus. “They look all singed.”

“I suffer from spontaneous human combustion. If I eat too much coleslaw.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Icarus. “My mad brother says that he suffers from that. But I never believed him. I thought he was making it up.”

“It’s a common complaint,” said Johnny Boy. “I’d like to meet your brother.”

“No, you wouldn’t. He’s a nutter. Lives in a world of fantasy.”

“Unlike us,” said Johnny Boy.

“Exactly,” said Icarus Smith. “But he’s one of the reasons that we have to get out of here fast. Cormerant has my address; he’ll go there to get the luggage locker key. I don’t want any harm to come to my family.”

“Shame,” said a voice.

“Oh dear,” said Johnny Boy.

“Just put your hands up,” said the voice. It was the voice of the chauffeur.

Icarus raised his hands and turned around. Johnny Boy did likewise.

“You’re very nifty with locks, aren’t you?” said the chauffeur. “I just missed you. Happily I heard your little mate’s heels clicking down the corridor.”

“Sorry,” said Johnny Boy.

“Never mind,” said Icarus.

“Yeah well, never mind,” said the chauffeur. “I wasn’t coming to bring you your breakfast, or anything. I was coming to put a bullet through each of your heads. And I can do it as easily here as back in the cell.” The chauffeur raised his gun and pointed it at the head of Icarus Smith.

“No,” said Icarus, “don’t. You don’t understand what’s going on here. You don’t understand who you’re working for. What you’re working for. Cormerant isn’t a human, he’s a—”

“Forget it,” said the chauffeur. “You’re dead, the two of you.”

And he cocked his pistol and squeezed the trigger.

“No, please …” Icarus covered his face. “No, please don’t …”

But.

There was a flash and a bang.

Icarus gasped and clutched at his head.

And then he heard the screaming.

His eyes, which had been tightly closed, flashed open.

To see before him a terrifying sight.

The chauffeur was squirming, his arms flailing and his head twisting backwards on his neck. From his chest projected a golden crescent. His feet were some twelve inches from the flagstoned floor and kicking violently. The chauffeur contorted in a paroxysm of pain and then went limp and sagged like a broken doll.

The golden crescent swished away. The chauffeur fell to the floor and lay there dead.

And then Icarus saw him. The man who now stood over the chauffeur’s body. The man who had driven the blade through his body and lifted him off his feet. The man just stood there, calmly sheathing his golden blade. He was a man, but he was more than a man. A golden aura glowed about him. Bright white light was haloed all around his head.

Icarus stared at the glowing man, then down at the lifeless carcass of the chauffeur and then Icarus did what any reasonable man would do.

He was violently sick.

“How are you feeling now?” asked the saviour of Icarus Smith when the lad had recovered what senses he had.

“Not good,” said Icarus, “but you. I know you, don’t I?”

“You saw me today and I saw you. We were both after the same thing. The briefcase. I’ve been following you ever since. I hid in the boot of the long dark automobile.”

“In the barber’s shop,” said Icarus. “I saw you in Stravino’s barber’s shop.”

“Captain Ian Drayton, at your service.” The captain saluted.

“But you’re …”

“Don’t say the word,” said Captain Ian.

“Angel,” said Johnny Boy. “He’s an angel. Only the third one I’ve ever seen.”

“So both of you know. You’ve both taken the professor’s drug.”

“You know all about that, do you?” said Johnny Boy.

“We’ve had this place under surveillance for a very long time. We know most of what goes on in here.”