The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1)

I stopped so suddenly Mandias almost bumped into me.

“Ever hear of a man named Hades?”

Mandias went visibly pale and looked around nervously.

“Don’t worry; he’s long gone.”

“They say he died in Venezuela.”

“They say he can walk through walls,” I countered. “They also say he gives off colors when he moves. Hades is alive and well and I have to find him before he starts to make use of the manuscript.”

Mandias seemed to have undergone a humbling change as soon as he realized who was behind it all.

“Anything I can do?”

I paused for a moment.

“Pray you never meet him.”

The drive back to Swindon was uneventful, the area on the M1 where all the trouble had been now back to normal. Victor was waiting for us in the office; he seemed slightly agitated.

“I’ve had Braxton on the phone all morning bleating on about insurance cover being inoperative if his officers act outside their jurisdiction.”

“Same old shit.”

“That’s what I told him. I’ve got most of the office reading Jane Eyre at the moment in case anything unusual happens—all quiet so far.”

“It’s only a matter of time.”

“Hmm.”

“Müller mentioned Hades being at Penderyn somewhere,” I said to Victor. “Anything come of that?”

“Nothing that I know of. Schitt said he had looked into it and drawn a blank—there are over three hundred possible Penderyns that Müller might have meant. More worrying, have you seen this morning’s paper?”

I hadn’t. He showed me the inside front page of The Mole. It read:

TROOP MOVEMENTS NEAR WELSH BORDER

I read on with some alarm. Apparently there had been troop movements near Hereford, Chepstow and the disputed border town of Oswestry. A military spokesman had dismissed the maneuvers as simple “exercises,” but it didn’t sound good at all. Not at all. I turned to Victor.

“Jack Schitt? Do you think he wants the Prose Portal badly enough to go to war with Wales?”

“Who knows what power the Goliath Corporation wields. He might not be behind this at all. It could be coincidence or just saber-rattling; but in any event I don’t thin

k we can ignore it.”

“Then we need to steal a march. Any ideas?”

“What did Müller say again?” asked Finisterre.

I sat down.

“He screamed: ‘He’s at Penderyn’; nothing else.”

“Nothing else?” asked Bowden.

“No; when Schitt asked him which Penderyn he meant, as there must be hundreds, Müller told him to guess.”