The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts by David Wake Page B

she did know. “You offer whiskey or brandy, instead of sherry.”
    “You’ve not been with a man! Oh, heavens protect us. You stupid girl, I could have got twenty five pounds for you, more at auction.”
    “What are you talking about?” Charlotte was shouting now, partly in panic, but mostly because nobody here seemed to understand what she was saying.
    “Where do you think you are?”
    “I’m in a bed and breakfast,” she answered.
    There was a sudden terrible splintering of wood, followed by screams.
    “What now!” Madam Waggstaff demanded.
    The commotion outside spilled along the corridor. A girl, dressed only in her undergarments, rushed past the open door.
    “Odette, Odette!” Madam Waggstaff stormed into the corridor and then immediately backed away.
    A figure appeared, silhouetted in the doorway: he was tall, dressed in a black frock coat and wearing a tall top hat. He was gaunt, clean shaven and wearing the most peculiar glasses imaginable. They were white and made him look blind, but he could clearly see through the slits that created a lattice or grid across the blank lenses.
    Charlotte retreated too.
    He stepped into the room, followed by another identically dressed man. They could have been twins.
    Another appeared: triplets?
    “We keep a clean house,” Madam Waggstaff was saying. “We paid the Sergeant at the station his money, always regular.”
    The lead man replied in a deep voice: “We’re not the local constabulary.”
    “Who are you then?”
    “I am Chief Examiner Lombard of the Chronological Division, and this is Checker Rogers.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were Temporal Peelers. Is it readies you’ll be wanting?”
    “No, woman, we’re not interested in your bordello,” said the Chief Examiner. “Leave us to our business.”
    Checker Rogers stooped over the prostrate gentleman and felt for a pulse.
    “Alive?” asked the first, Lombard.
    “Yes,” said the second, Rogers, as he sniffed his own fingers suspiciously.
    “Then arrest him.”
    Checker Rogers dragged the body towards the passageway until the third man helped him. Metal clattered as they did so and Charlotte noticed their cavalry swords hanging from belts fixed around their frock coats.
    “You can’t take him,” Madam Waggstaff complained. “He’s a Member of Parliament.”
    “He’s covered in piss,” the third man complained.
    “Excuse me, Sir,” Charlotte said.
    Chief Examiner Lombard loomed over her; the top of his hat nearly scraping the ceiling.
    “What?”
    “Thank you for coming to my aid.”
    “We didn’t come to help some strumpet.”
    “Well, even so, I’m grateful… strumpet? No, I’m not a strumpet.”
    But the man had gone.
    Charlotte was not entirely convinced she knew what a ‘strumpet’ was, but it didn’t sound good. It might, she realised, refer to one of those unfortunate fallen women, whom the Reverend Long insisted had brought all their misfortunes down upon themselves and that you young ladies will certainly go the same way if you don’t blah–blah–blah. He didn’t explain what a ‘fallen woman’ actually was, unless he did so between the middle of his sermon and the inevitable ‘Charlotte, sit up’ that came before the end.
    And, Charlotte realised, she could not be a fallen woman, because, even after being attacked, she was the one still standing and the man they’d just carted away had been the one on the floor.
    “What are you doing?” thundered another man’s voice.
    There were muffled replies.
    Charlotte sneaked a look.
    “Oh Mister Waggstaff, Mister Waggstaff,” Madam Waggstaff wailed.
    The brightly waist–coated man ignored her and shouted at the top of his voice: “These are my girls! Mine! Get yer own.”
    Chief Examiner Lombard levelled a device, a kind of gun ending in a giant two–pronged fork: it buzzed and sparked with a dazzle far brighter than the gaslight. Mister Waggstaff, if it was him, jerked upright, shook as if he were