He slipped... only a couple of inches, but he couldn't get it back. Now even more weight over the edge. Vertigo. The dim flagstone terrace so far below. No strength. Wrists winced with pain.

Leonard's head appeared just below him. The Mute snatched at the dangling sheet, then peered down. Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated with all his force: Don't look up! Don't look up! The cold of the wet tiles against his nude body was numbing. Again he slipped two inches! But at that second Leonard banged his fist against the casement in fury, covering the sound. Darling said something from within.

They ran out of the room.

A strangled, whimpering groan escaped Jonathan. Getting down would be as dangerous as getting up had been. The pitch of the roof was sharp, and there was a thin coat of greasy dirt on the tiles lubricated by the moisture of the fog. Once he pulled in his legs and let the slip start, there would be no stopping it. With those limp and throbbing wrists, he would have to catch the underedge of the eaves as he slid past and swing back in through the window. If he was off by six inches to either side, he would crash against the building and fall to the flagstones below.

No use thinking about it. No time. No strength left.

He let go.

He was an inch or two off, and as he swung into the room backward, he clipped his head on the center post of the window casement. Dizziness and pain made him reel as he got to his feet, but he drove on, head down, running for the open door.

As Darling started back down the hall with the big revolvers, he heard the crash in Jonathan's room and ran toward it. They collided in the doorway and went down in a jumble in the hall. Jonathan fought blindly and desperately, grappling for Darling's throat and getting it, both thumbs against the larynx. He could feel that there was little strength left in his grip, so he closed his eyes and bared his teeth, pressing desperately as Darling struggled to bring either revolver to bear on Jonathan's naked side. He wriggled like a beached fish as Jonathan squeezed for all he was worth, expecting at any moment to hear the roar of a gun and to have his guts blown out by a flattening dumdum. From nowhere, the thought came to Jonathan of Vanessa struggling on her kitchen table. Darling had probably held her down as Leonard had prodded at her. With a final surge of desperate fury, Jonathan drove his thumbs through, and the larynx crumpled like a papier-mache pin box. Darling gargled and died.

For a second Jonathan lay there gasping, his forehead on Darling's silent chest. He got to his knees and picked up the revolvers. Keep moving, he ordered himself. He blinked away the large spots of blindness in the center of his eyes and stumbled on, down the wide curving staircase and across the sterile Art Deco salon. He burst into the exercise room, dropping to the floor with both guns up before him. It was empty. But he could hear them now, shouting outside the house. He cocked back both hammers with his thumbs and struggled to his feet. Dizzy. Nausea.

He reeled toward the door to the small paneled dining room and kicked it open with the ball of his foot.

The dope swam in his head, and the scene played out like a dream-a slow-motion ballet. Strange and Grace were dining. She turned toward the opening door, her naked breasts wobbling viscously with the motion. Strange floated to his feet and put out one hand, palm forward as though in a Hindu gesture of blessing. Jonathan raised one gun and fired. The roar reverberated in his head, and even the recoil kick seemed to lift his hand slowly. Like magic, the left side of Strange's face disappeared and in its place was a splash of red gelatin. Grace clutched the air, her face contorted into a scream of horror, but no sound came. Strange sank away under the table, and she fainted.

From too slow, things began to go too fast. Jonathan stumbled back into the exercise room, panting and unsteady. He needed to vomit. The sound of running men was closer. He turned on the bank of sun lamps and directed them toward the outer door. "I'm sick!" he whimpered aloud as he fumbled on the round green glasses haphazardly, one eye squeezed closed by the elastic band.

They burst into the room. Three of them. The broken-toothed one in the lead tried to shield his eyes from the blinding glare, holding his automatic before his face. Jonathan's first shot blew his arm off at the shoulder, and he spun and fell, spraying the other two with his blood. The next dumdum took the one closest to the door in the small of the back as he scrambled to retreat. His body was lifted into the air and slammed against the wall of exercise bars. He did not fall because his arm got tangled in the bars, but his body jerked convulsively.

The third man got off a wild shot in the direction of the lights, and one of them imploded above Jonathan's head, showering him with hot glass. Jonathan's return shot blew away the man's leg at the knee. He stood for a second, surprised. Then he fell to the unsupported side.

The silence rang with the absence of gun roars. The man tangled in the exercise rings slid to the floor, his forehead rattling on each rung. Then it was still.

"I'm sick!" Jonathan told them again, the words thick and muffled.

The tide of vertigo rose within him. The back of his throat was bitter with vomit. Mustn't pass out! Leonard is still out there somewhere! Hold on!

He tugged the green glasses off and staggered over to the door to the dressing room. Mirrors. An infinity of naked men with guns. Blood caked on their faces; their knees and chests scuffed and bleeding. He opened the center mirror and went into the Aquarium.

And there was Leonard. He had a Mauser machine pistol and was fitting on the wooden holster/stock, slowly and deliberately, his hooded eyes expressionless. He was on the other side of the one-way glass, standing alone in the empty Art Deco salon, pressed close to the mirrored wall, waiting for Jonathan to emerge through the exercise room door.

Jonathan's heart pulsed in his temples. He was so tired, so sick. He only wanted to sleep. The mist of dope in his brain cleared for a moment. Vanessa. Leonard and Vanessa-and kitchen utensils. He set his teeth and crept soundlessly to the mirrored panel before him. He raised both guns, their barrels almost touching the glass, and he waited as Leonard on his side inched forward, waited until Leonard's huge body had moved directly in front of the barrels. One gun was pointed at Leonard's neck, the other at his ear.

The mirror exploded and Leonard's headless body surfed over the parqueted floor on a hissing tide of shattered glass. It twitched violently, tinkling and grinding in the glass. Then it stopped.

And Jonathan threw up.

The driver of taxi #68204 threaded through the tangle of narrow lanes above Hampstead High Street in search of a fare. He accepted philosophically the improbability of making a pickup in that quiet district at that time of night, and he decided to return to center city. As he stopped at a deserted intersection, he began to sing "On the Road to Mandalay" under his breath, shifting keys with liberal insouciance. The back door of his cab opened, and a passenger entered.

"Where to, mate?" the driver asked over his shoulder without turning around.

"Covent Garden."

"Right you are." The driver pulled away, humming his inadvertent variations on the theme of "Roses of Picardy." He vaguely wondered what a man with an American accent wanted in Covent Garden at that time of night. "The market?" he asked over his shoulder.

"What? Oh. Yes. The market will do."

The passenger's voice was faint and confused, and the driver feared that he might have picked up a drunk who would soil the back of his cab. He pulled over to the curb and turned around. "Now, listen, mate. If you're drunk... I'll be buggered!" The passenger was nude. "Ere! Wot's all this!"