«So that's the story?» J stroked his chin thoughtfully.

«That's the story. I know Copra House retired him into private practice after that, but I have no idea where he went. Do you?»

«No, but from what you've told me I can make a good guess.»

«Wherever it is, I'm sure he has continued his quest for a gateway to the other world. He was a strongly motivated man, sir. A very strongly motivated man.»

J agreed. «Yes. Guilt plus love equals compulsion.»

«Well said!» MacMurdo pushed back his chair and stood up. «If you've no more questions, I must say good night. I have to be up early tomorrow, as usual. We're somewhat understaffed.»

«I understand.»

«The night man in the hall will show you to your room.» The psychiatrist turned to leave.

«Wait.» J raised his hand. «I do have one more question. I doubt if it will do any good, but could you let me see Dexter tomorrow morning?»

MacMurdo halted in the doorway, surprised. «Of course not.»

«Why not?»

«I thought you knew. Dexter is dead.»

It was J's turn to be surprised. «You don't say! When did he die?»

«Last Friday. After years of sitting around like a stuffed animal, he suddenly started screaming again and smashing things. Caught the night staff completely off guard. Before they could do anything either for him or to him, the poor chap died of convulsions. We did an autopsy, but except for the fact that he was dead, your Mr. Dexter appeared to be in excellent health. Now if you'll excuse me… «

«Did you say Friday, doctor? What time Friday?»

«As I recall, the time of death was exactly one-forty A.M. Friday morning. I can check the records.»

«Never mind. I'm sure you have it right.»

«Good night then, and as pleasant dreams as could be expected under the circumstances.»

«Good night, Dr. MacMurdo.»

Dexter had died within minutes after Blade's return from Dimension X.

J stared numbly at his half-empty plate. The only sound was the steady drumming of the rain on the windowpane.

Chapter 3

London that morning was gray under the diffuse light from the featureless overcast sky. The pavements were wet and hissed as the motorcars and lorries passed. Colors were muted; even the normally bright red of the double-decker buses. A cold unfriendly wind sent skirts whipping and hats flying.

J stood at the second floor window of Lord Leighton's ancestral home at 391/2 Prince's Gate, Kensington, puffing morosely on one of his beloved pipes-in defiance of his doctor's orders-and staring down at the leafless trees in Prince's Gate Crescent. From where he stood he could see hardly anything that had not been there when he was young, yet he knew Kensington had changed. Little by little its quiet residential streets had been invaded by a ragtag army of tradesmen; their antique markets and garish mod «boutiques» were everywhere, particularly along the once-respectable High Street and Kensington Church Street.

The antiques, in J's opinion, were mostly trash, but it was the human trash attracted by the boutiques that depressed him. Boys who dressed like girls, girls who looked like boys, shadowy vague androgynous young people who cowered in doorways, sucking on marijuana cigarettes like babies sucking pacifiers. They'd been called different things at different times. Teddy Boys. Mods and Rockers. Even, borrowing a term from the Yanks, Hippies. Their names changed, yes, but always there were more of them, and with numbers they grew steadily bolder until now armed children in packs hunted through the streets day and night, hunted women, hunted the old, the handicapped, the helpless. The crimes of Jack the Ripper had horrified Victorian England; now they would probably pass unnoticed, too commonplace even for journals like The Sun.

On Tower Hill, across from the Tower of London, J had sometimes paused of late to listen to ranting apocalyptic evangelists call London a new Gomorrah, and in certain moods he'd slowly nodded agreement, thinking, Yes, we're ripe for destruction, the whole bloody gang of us.

At such times Armageddon had seemed, if not inevitable, at least dreadfully desirable. The only question remaining to be debated was, «What form will the avenging angels of destruction take?»

Standing at the window, J thought, Will they be the ghosts of little girls who killed themselves? Or will they be invisible giants who throw the furniture around?

Behind him, in the dim interior of the old house, Lord Leighton was on the phone to Number Ten Downing Street.

«No more experiments? But sir, don't be a damned idiot!» The hunchback's voice was outraged, irascible.

In spite of his depression, J smiled. Few indeed were men with the gall to call the Prime Minister of England a damned idiot as openly as that. Lord Leighton had never been the sort to vent his spleen in anonymous letters to the Times, and the older he got the less he seemed to care about etiquette and «The Proper Forms.»

Leighton managed somehow to calm himself, though his mottled face turned dull red with the effort. «Yes, sir. I understand perfectly. It is you who hold the purse strings.» He paused, then, «Be good enough to save your platitudinous political slogans for the electorate, sir. It is they who hold your purse strings.» Another pause. «As always, your merest whim is my most imperious command, sir.» The sarcasm was harsh and unconcealed. «And good day to you, too, sir.»

Leighton hung up, banging down the receiver.

J, who had turned away from the window, said mildly, «I gather the PM is unhappy.»

Leighton flung himself into a tall-backed Chippendale chair. «We should never have told him what happened to Blade.»

«He would have found out sooner or later, and he would have been even more miffed if we'd kept it from him.»

Leighton glared up through his heavy glasses. «Things were different when Harry was PM.»

J sighed. «Quite.» The man they called Harry had held the reins of power when the project had begun, and had been behind it wholeheartedly, laying out the seed money with a marvelously open hand. His successors had been harder to please, each one more «economy-minded» than the last, particularly since the project, after years of work, seemed no nearer than at the beginning to reaching any firm conclusions about the nature of the X dimensions.

Leighton regarded his own blurred reflection in the polished surface of his desk, grimacing with distaste. «We don't look very attractive to these young chaps that try to fill the Prime Minister's shoes these days. Tell me, J, are they getting younger or are we getting older?»

«A bit of both, I expect.»

A brooding silence fell, during which the only sounds were the distant rumble and beep of the traffic and the faint pop and crackle of the low-burning coals in the grate. Leighton's gaze turned moodily toward the tall narrow window that looked out on Prince's Gate Crescent.

Finally Leighton said quietly, «He gave us an ultimatum.»

J answered lightly, «Either we shape up or he trims our budget. I know that story by heart by now.»

«This time he's not talking about trimming. This time he's talking about shutting up shop altogether.»

«Good Lord,» J whispered.

«Yes, he's talking about putting an end to Project Dimension X, once and for all. If we can't bring Richard Blade back to normal within two weeks, he'll lock us out of the Tower of London complex and throw away the key.»

J felt a curious numbness. A thousand times he'd hoped, he'd almost prayed-and he was not a praying man-that something would happen to terminate the project that put Richard, the nearest thing to a friend J had ever had, repeatedly into danger. Now it seemed J would get his wish. Why wasn't he happy? He shuffled over to the grate, picked up a poker and began aimlessly rooting around in the fire. He muttered tonelessly, «All that time, energy and money wasted. All Richard's risks gone for nothing.» He looked up suddenly. «But we still have two weeks, you say. We can bring in one of those boys we've been training and send him through the machine. Maybe he'll make it through. Whatever happened to Richard, it happened over there, in that other world. That's where the secret lies, so…»