The two prisoners looked at Tweed in a confused manner. There was another low moan, the light machine-gun at the front door fell silent and a splintering of wood met our ears as the Questing Beast forced its way through the main entrance—and moved its odious form closer to the library.

‘Cat!’ yelled Tweed again ‘Where’s that King Pellinore I asked for?’ [25]

‘Keep trying, cat,’ muttered Tweed. ‘We’ve still got a few minutes. Next—have you any ideas?’

I shook my head. Events were running ahead of me.

There was a crunching sound as the Questing Beast made its way down the corridor amid screams of terror and sporadic rifle fire.

‘Raffles?’ yelled Tweed. ‘How long?’

‘Two minutes, old chum,’ replied the safe-cracker without pausing or looking up. He had finished drilling the hole, made a small cup out of clay, stuck it against the side of the safe and was now pouring in what looked like liquid nitrogen.

The battle outside seemed to increase in ferocity with shouts, concussions from grenades, screams and the sound of automatic weaponry until, after an almighty crash that shook the ceiling lights and rattled books from their shelves, all was quiet.

We looked at one another. Even Volescamper and Kaine were quiet. Then a gentle tap sounded on the other side of the steel door. There was a pause, then another.

‘Thank goodness!’ said Tweed in relief. ‘King Pellinore must have arrived and seen it off. Miss Next, open the door.’

But I didn’t. Suspicious of loathsome beasts from the deepest recesses of the human imagination, I stayed my hand. It was as well that I did. The next blow was harder. The blow following that was even more violent; the vault door buckled slightly.

‘Blast!’ exclaimed Tweed. ‘Why is there never a Pellinore around when you need one? Raffles, we don’t have much time!’

‘Just a few minutes more…’ replied Raffles quietly, tapping the safe door with a hammer while Bunny pulled on the brass handle.

Tweed looked at me as the library door buckled under another heavy blow; a large split opened in the steel and the locking wheel sheared off and dropped to the ground. It wouldn’t be long now.

‘Okay,’ said Tweed reluctantly, grabbing my elbow in anticipation of a jump, ‘that’s it. Raffles, Bunny, out of here!’

‘Just a few moments longer…’ replied the safe-cracker, who was used to tight deadlines and didn’t like to give up on a safe, no matter what the possible consequences.

The steel door buckled as the Questing Beast charged it with a deafening crash; books fell off the shelves in a cloud of dust. Then, as the Questing Beast pulled itself back for another blow, I had the one thing that had eluded me for the past half hour. An idea. I pulled Tweed close to me and whispered in his ear

‘No!’ he said. ‘What if—?’

I explained again, he smiled and gave me a nod and I began:

‘So one of you is fictional,’ I announced, looking at them both.

‘And we have to find out who it is,’ remarked Tweed, levelling his pistol in their direction.

‘Might it be Yorrick Kaine—’ I added, staring at Kaine who glared back at me, wondering what we were up to.

‘—failed right wing politician—’

‘—with a cheery enthusiasm for war—’

‘—and putting a lid on civil liberties.’

Tweed and I bantered lines back and forth for as long as we dared, faster and faster, the blows from the Beast outside matching the blows from Raffles’ hammer within.

‘Or perhaps it is Volescamper—’

‘—Lord of the old realm who wants—’

‘—to try and get—’

‘—back into power with the help—’

‘—of his friends in the Whig party?’

‘But the important thing is, in all this dialogue—’

‘—that has pitched back and forward between—’

‘—the two of us, a fictional person—’

‘—might have lost track of which one of us is talking.’

‘And do you know, in all the excitement, I kind of forgot myself!’

There was another crash against the door. A splinter of steel flew off and zipped past my ear. The doors were almost breached, the next blow would bring the abomination within the room.

‘So you’re going to have to ask yourselves one simple question: Which one of us is speaking now?’

‘You are!’ yelled Volescamper, pointing—correctly—at me. Kaine, revealing his fictional roots by his inability to follow undedicated dialogue, pointed his finger—at Tweed.

He corrected himself quickly but it was too late for the politician and he knew it. He scowled at the two of us, trembling with rage. His charming manner seemed to desert him as we sprang the trap; suaveness gave way to snarling, smooth politeness to clumsy threats.

‘Now listen,’ growled Kaine, trying to regain control of the situation, ‘you two are way in over your heads. Try to arrest me and I can make things very difficult for you—one Footnoterphone call from me and the pair of you will spend the next eternity on grammasite watch inside the OED’

But Tweed was made of stern stuff, too.

‘I’ve closed bloopholes in Dracula and Biggles Flies East,’ he replied evenly, ‘I don’t frighten easily. Call off the Glatisant and put your hands on your head.’

‘Leave Cardenio here with me—if only until tomorrow,’ added Kaine, changing tack abruptly and forcing a smile. ‘In return I can give you anything you want. Power, cash—an earldom, Cornwall, character exchange into Hemingway—you name it, Kaine will provide!’

‘You have nothing of any value to bargain with, Mr Kaine,’ Tweed told him, his hand tightening on his pistol. ‘For the last time—’

But Kaine had no intention of being taken, alive or otherwise. He cursed us both to a painful excursion in the twelfth circle of hell and melted from view as Tweed fired. The slug buried itself harmlessly in a complete set of bound Punch magazines. At the same time the steel doors burst open. But instead of a pestilential hell-beast conjured from the depths of mankind’s most depraved thoughts only an icy rush of air entered, bringing with it the lingering smell of death. The Questing Beast had vanished as quickly as its master, back to the oral tradition and any books unfortunate enough to feature it.

‘Cat!’ yelled Tweed as he reholstered his gun. ‘We’ve got a PageRunner. I need a bookhound ASAP!’ [26]

Volescamper sat down on a handy chair and looked bewildered.

‘You mean…’ he stammered incredulously. ‘Look here, Kaine was—?’

‘Entirely fictional—yes,’ I replied, laying a hand on his shoulder.

‘You mean Cardenio didn’t belong to my grandfather’s library after all?’ he asked, his confusion giving way to sadness.

‘I’m sorry, Volescamper,’ I told him. ‘Kaine stole the manuscript. He used your library as a front.’

‘And if I were you,’ added Tweed in a less kindly aside, ‘I should just go upstairs and pretend you slept all through this. You never saw us, never heard us, you know nothing of what happened here.’

‘Bingo!’ cried Raffles as the handle on the safe turned, shattering the frozen lock inside and creaking open. Raffles handed me the manuscript before he and Bunny vanished back to their own book with only the thanks of Jurisfiction to show for the night’s efforts—a valuable commodity on their side of the law.

I passed Cardenio to Tweed. He rested a reverential hand on the returned play and smiled a rare smile.

‘An undedicated dialogue trap, Next—quick thinking. Who knows, we might make a Jurisfiction agent of you yet!’

‘Well, thank—’

‘—Cat!’ bellowed Tweed again. ‘Where’s that blasted bookhound?’ [27]