Pistol in hand, Nimrod proceeded along the empty passageway and stopped outside the second door. Putting his ear to the unsmoothed wooden planks, he listened.
The sound of sobbing came from beyond. Nimrod had little doubt who it was making them, although as to her current condition, that was another matter altogether.
And there was something else. Mingled with the stale disinfectant and unwashed bodies smell wafting through the corridor, another aroma seemed to ooze from under the door, the ammonia and dung smell of terrified animals.
He tried the handle. The door was unlocked, like the last.
Eschewing stealth for urgency now, he stepped boldly into the room. In was much like the last, except that a matted mess of rotten straw and faeces covered the floor here. It looked like it had been used as a holding pen for animals - before they were subjected to the incomprehensible whims of an over-eager surgeon. Another door in the far corner of the room connected the stinking cell to the room beyond, from which came the unmistakeable rattling whirr and squeal of mechanical cutting blades.
It was as he had expected; Miss Haniver sat sprawled against the wall on the other side of the dimly-lit cell, hands pulled up above her head, bound together with cord at the wrists which had then been tied again to a rusted iron ring hammered into the wall. The young woman's ankles had been bound as well, the cord cutting into the puffy flesh of her sprained right ankle in particular. And she had been gagged, but that didn't stop her sobs and couldn't hold back her tears of terror.
At first she pulled back, seeing Nimrod silhouetted there within the doorway, the brighter light of the passageway behind him, turning him into a shadow whose body language spoke of deadly intent. But then, as he entered the room, terror was replaced by a surge of relief and her sobs of resigned despair became gasping sobs of delight.
Unsheathing a pocketknife, Nimrod cut through the cords binding her wrists and her ankles. He helped her to her feet and then, putting a finger to his lips, he helped her pull the gag free.
The two of them stood there for a moment in the stinking cell, listening to the sound of the powered cutting blade, the young woman attempting to read Nimrod's intentions from his steely expression. Placing the knife into her shaking hands, he guided her back towards the door, from there into the corridor, and then to the cell where he had left his master. Before opening the second cell door, he fixed her with his sapphire stare and put a finger to his lips. Only then did he direct her through it.
Ignoring the involuntary sobbing gasp he heard, Nimrod re-entered the holding pen and approached the door in the far corner. With a dying whine, he heard the mechanical cutter come to a stop.
Pressing himself against the damp brickwork beside the door, he tested the handle. It turned with a click.
He froze. Had whoever was on the other side heard it too?
He waited, his breath shallow, his heart beating a tattoo of adrenalin-heightened anticipation against his ribcage.
He heard voices, and they were coming his way. Pistol at the ready once more, he prepared to meet whoever was approaching. Rubbing his eyes with the back of a sleeve he pulled at the handle and opened the door just a fraction, trying to get a glimpse of who, or what, awaited him on the other side.
From what Nimrod could see, it looked like the room beyond was decorated in the same way as the neon-lit corridor outside - all white tiles and blue paint - but here they were stained with the rust-red traces of dried blood.
The sour smell of disinfectant, the strong iron reek of blood, and something else - something strangely familiar, like aniseed mixed in with the rancid meat smell of the laboratory - permeated the place.
"Take him back to the cell," he heard someone say in a clipped German accent. "The anaesthetic will start to wear off soon." Nimrod didn't recognise the voice.
"Right you are, doc," he heard another man say. This voice he knew; it belonged to Rudge the gamekeeper. He had tracked him down at last.
"And if I were you, I'd make sure I wasn't in the same room as Mr Umbridge when he comes round," the German went on. "It might take him a little time to... adjust."
"Don't worry, I wasn't planning on being," Rudge replied, his voice receding.
Someone walked right past the door - grubby, once-white lab-coat, shock of untidy grey hair, long vulcanised rubber gloves, and strangely-lensed spectacles - their sudden appearance startling Nimrod.
He pressed himself flat against the wall, holding his breath. For a moment he considered simply bursting into the room and taking on the peculiar scientist. But whatever thoughts of vengeance he might now harbour in his heart - and he was not a man to let a trespass go unpunished - acting on them would have to wait. What was of prime importance now was finding a way of putting right the wrong that had been done to Ulysses Quicksilver.
He was going to have to choose his moment carefully. Someone had amputated Master Ulysses' arm with surgical precision and Nimrod planned to make that same someone undo the damage he had caused, ideally reversing the procedure, if he could. If not, then the faithful retainer's wrath would know no bounds.
There was the sound of movement, like something large - something very large - moving sluggishly around inside the room. There was a sudden crash as a tray of metal tools was sent cascading onto the tiled floor.
"Please be careful, Mr Rudge," the German's voice came again.
"I can't 'elp it, like. Its legs are 'alf asleep as well. How much of the knock-out juice did you give it?"
"Do I tell you how to do your job, Mr Rudge?"
Nimrod did not hear the gamekeeper's answer as the sluggish thing he was trying to shift bashed into a cabinet. But he heard the doctor's response.
"Then kindly do not tell me how to do mine. The rest of the subject should be anaesthetised enough that it can be guided but remains docile until Mr Umbridge can exert his will and take control of the body."
There was another crash.
"But I would not take too long about it. Anaesthesia is not an exact science in a case such as this."
"I thought you said you knew what you were doing," Rudge's complaining voice came again.
Nimrod heard the other reply with a harrumph of annoyance.
"Don't worry, doc. I know how to handle this thing."
The doctor sighed. "I know you do, and I do wish you would refrain from tormenting it so. I would prefer not to have to perform another skin graft."
"I thought you weren't going to tell me how to do my job."
"But you have Mr Umbridge in your tender care now. You would do well to remember that, Mr Rudge."
The gamekeeper muttered something in return that was subsumed by more grating scrapes as whatever it was that Rudge was trying to manoeuvre dragged a steel gurney after it.
"I shall just check on our other guest," Nimrod heard the surgeon say as Rudge, and whatever it was he had with him, left the operating theatre, the German's voice getting louder as he approached the door to the holding cell.
The unkempt surgeon opened the door without a second thought and entered the pen. Before he had even clocked that his guest was gone, Nimrod grabbed him, twisting one arm up behind the man's back. With his other hand he seized doctor around the neck, putting pressure on his windpipe, so that the surgeon couldn't cry out and yet, at the same time, could see the gun in his hand.
"And who might you be?" Nimrod hissed into his hostage's ear.
Nimrod continued to squeeze the man's throat, pressing the muzzle of his pistol into the soft flesh under his jaw.
"And, before I let you answer, just remember that I can carry out a little operation of my own in a split second - a craniotomy, if you like. I can transplant your brain from inside your skull to the wall behind us with one simple incision. So, your name."
"Seziermesser," the German croaked as Nimrod eased the pressure on his windpipe slightly. At the same time he increased the pressure on the arm he had forced behind the man's back.
"Well done, Doktor Seziermesser. Very good. Now
I take it that you are the one who removed Mr Quicksilver's arm, are you not?"
The surgeon did not answer immediately, as if weighing up the merits of trying to pass the blame onto someone else, but then obviously thought better of it. He nodded.
"Excellent. Excellent."
The pressure on Seziermesser's arm increased, almost to the point where his wrist was ready to snap. The surgeon's cry of pain was stifled by Nimrod's arm tightening around his neck again.
"Why?" Nimrod hissed sharply in his ear.
"For... For the great work," the doktor replied, as if that was all the explanation that was needed.
"But that was a mistake, wasn't it?"
Nimrod felt the man's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed hard.
"And now you have the opportunity to correct your little mistake, because you're going to put it back."
Nimrod eased the tightness of his hold on the surgeon's arm. After all, he didn't want to break his arm when Seziermesser needed his hands to operate on Master Ulysses again.
The doktor craned his head round, trying to look Nimrod in the eye. "But I can't."
"What?" Nimrod snarled, his anger bubbling to boiling point. "Why not?"
"Because it has become part of the great work. I no longer have it."
"Then you are of no further use to me."
Nimrod pushed the doktor away from him violently, hooking one foot around the man's ankles and pulling his feet out from under him. The surgeon went sprawling in the muck and mouldering straw that covered the cell floor.
Gripping his pistol firmly in two hands, Nimrod took aim and began to squeeze the trigger.
"Wait!" the other screeched, turning desperate lens-magnified eyes on his would-be executioner, holding up his hands as if in surrender. It was then that, for the first time, Nimrod saw that the surgeon's own left hand was missing, a two-pronged metal claw poking out of the sleeve of his filthy coat.
"Why?" Nimrod said coldly. "You no longer have the arm, ergo you cannot make amends for your crime, hence you are of no further use to me. You have seen my face, you know I'm here. I cannot allow you to live."
"No, I-I said I don't have his arm," the doktor stammered, desperate for his plea to be heard before Nimrod shot him. "But I do have another. Please, just don't shoot me!"
Nimrod slowly lowered the gun. The surgeon continued to regard him with wide, anxious eyes.
"Another arm?"
Tentatively, never once taking his eyes off Nimrod, the man struggled to his feet, pushing at the stones of the floor with his crude claw.
"It's this way," he said, indicating the door to the operating theatre. "Come this way."
Chapter Twenty-Two
A Fate Worse Than Death
He woke to the sound of distant roaring. It was a terrible, savage sound, a sound like fury, a sound like bloodlust, a sound like nothing he had ever heard before - the bellow of a bull, the roar of a lion and the scream of a man all rolled into one. It spoke of rage, frustration, horror and madness. Such a sound could surely only be made by a creature from his nightmares, not by any actual living thing.
Perhaps, Ulysses Quicksilver considered, he was delirious or trapped in some waking nightmare.
He blinked his eyes and saw three figures standing there looking down at him, outlined by grimy yellow light. There, to his right, was Jennifer, holding his hand tightly, and that knowledge and her touch were enough to make him want to smile.
He raised his head. Pain rolled around his skull, as if a heavy metal ball was trapped in there, forcing him to lie back and making him close his eyes. But before he did so, he saw that there was someone else standing by the door, beyond the three, someone who looked like his head should be too heavy for his neck to support.
He lay still for a moment before opening his eyes again, and found Jennifer's tear-stained face once more. As he gazed into the young woman's glistening eyes he couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was something he had forgotten, something that he really should try to remember. It was like a memory-shaped hole inside his head, a fading thought like a dream that, on waking, refuses to be forgotten, wanting to be remembered.
But as he struggled to recall what it was that he really should have remembered, a dull ache grew within his mind, as if the effort of recollection was too much, an ache that began to permeate every part of his body, from his arms to his legs.
His arms... It was something about his arms...
Ulysses moved his gaze from his dear, sweet Jenny to the tall, lean figure, standing at the foot of the cot he was lying on. There stood Nimrod, looking like some grim-faced guardian angel, as stern as Ulysses had ever seen him look. He had his arms folded in front of him, his gun in his right hand, cocked and ready.
And then suddenly he was seeing Nimrod in his mind's eye, tears streaming down his face - which was most unlike the old, emotional cold fish that he was - and he heard his manservant's voice in his ear again, as if from far away: "It's alright now. It's going to be alright."
He turned from Nimrod to the figure to his left, the one who was monitoring a drip that had been set up next to his bed.
And then the memories came flooding back, in a torrent of unmitigated horror and excruciating agony.
"No!" Ulysses screamed, suddenly finding his voice, drawing himself up at the head of the bed, anything to get away from the maniac surgeon.
"He is awake," Doktor Seziermesser said with unbelievable calm.
"It's alright, Ulysses," he could hear Jenny saying, but his mind refused to believe that it could be, not with that scalpel-wielding madman there in the room.
"No! Get him out of here!" he bawled. His desperate eyes fixed on Jennifer, his imploring gaze transfixing her own. "You don't know what he did to me!"
"But it's alright now, Ulysses."
This had to be a dream; some sick nightmare. Jennifer didn't know what she was saying! It couldn't be real, because the reality of the situation was too terrible to bear.
Recalling what the unbearable truth was now, remembered pain lancing his body, Ulysses pulled his hand from her desperate grasp and felt for the stump of his left arm. But before his fingers reached the bony nub he felt them come into contact with a covering of coarse hair.
Surprise seizing hold of him again, he looked at what his hand had found.
Black fur covered leathery grey skin, stretched taut over a pronounced and unusual musculature.
The agitated Ulysses traced the shape of the arm from the overly-long fingers and the grey leather palm of the hand to where stitching formed the boundary where his own shoulder ended and the primate's arm began.
"What have you done?" he shrieked at the vivisectionist.
"What had to be done," Nimrod said frankly.
Ulysses' turned back to his most trusted companion.
"Nimrod," he gasped, "he's given me a monkey's arm!"
"It is that of a chimpanzee, actually," Seziermesser corrected him, "not a monkey."
Ulysses' appalled stare returned to the surgeon.
"You did this to me!" he screamed, rising from what he now realised was the operating table, as shock turned to anger and anger swiftly blackened to hatred.
Jenny clutched her hands together in anxiety, as if waiting for someone else to make the move to stop him. Nimrod didn't move a muscle but watched the furious Ulysses advance on the maleficent Seziermesser, a grim smile playing about his lips.
Seziermesser took a shuffling step backwards, looking from Ulysses to Jennifer and Nimrod and back again, as if somehow hoping against all hope that one of them might intervene.
"You did this to me!" Ulysses screamed directly into Seziermesser's face, spittle flying from his lips. He seized the doktor by the lapels of his filthy lab-coat, with both his one human hand and the chimp substitute. The drip-stand rattled as the tube in his arm pulled taut. Releasing the doktor for a moment, Ulysses yanked the tube from his simian arm, a yellowish liquid dribbling onto the floor of the operating theatre.
His nose curled as his nostrils were assailed by the acrid stink of aniseed and spoiled beef.
He grabbed hold of the doktor again and slammed him into a counter, sending a tray of tools flying.
"Where is my arm? Where is my arm?"
And just when everyone in the room thought that Ulysses was going to crack the vivisectionist's skull open, to everyone's surprise, including his own, he released his hold on the surgeon. Seziermesser dropped onto the metal counter with a crash, glass bottles tinkling together in reply.
Ulysses turned away in disgust, his whole body suddenly sagging as if the trauma of what had happened to him was at last starting to sink in.
Despite that fact that he had been either unconscious or delirious for God knows how many hours, his unerring sixth sense still played its part, awareness blooming hotly in his hindbrain. He turned in time to see Seziermesser, scalpel gripped tightly in his right hand, pushing himself off from the counter, using his blunt steel claw to give himself extra leverage.
Acting virtually on instinct alone, Ulysses lashed out. The bunched fingers of the simian hand struck the man, connecting with the side of his head before the surgeon could land his own poorly-judged attack.
The blow lifted Seziermesser off his feet and sent him crashing into the operating table, the drip-stand clattering to the floor beneath him. He lay sprawled where he fell, the scalpel slipping from slack fingers, a dazed groan of pain escaping his lips. His magnifying spectacles skittered across the floor to come to rest several feet away.
And then Ulysses was leaning over him again, pulling the dazed Seziermesser up by the lapels of his coat, until he was practically nose to nose with the surgeon.
"How did you do it, eh, doktor?" Ulysses growled. "How did you do this?" He glanced sharply at the ape arm clutching a handful of the surgeon's lab-coat. "How did you do it?"
Blinking myopically, Seziermesser craned his head backwards. Ulysses followed his gaze as the surgeon tried to see what was on top of the counter behind him. Ulysses peered at the collection of bottles, flasks and other vessels, eyes darting from one container to the next, desperately trying to see what must be right there, staring him in the face.
Pax Britannia: Human Nature Page 22