The Big Over Easy

“Mr. Spratt,” he said with an enigmatic smile, “you have a most charming family.”

“Th-thank you, Your Eminence.”

He stood up and approached Jack. He was a large man, but perhaps this impression was due to his overwhelming personality rather than his stature. He spoke plainly and without ambiguity. You could never remember the precise words he spoke, but the meaning of them stayed with you forever.

“I want to thank you on behalf of the nation for saving us from a plague of verrucas.”

“My duty, sir.”

“Even so, you have our thanks. I knew Humpty well, you know—we were at Oxford together. I heard he had slipped into the darker side of existence, but he was a good egg at heart. Was it Randolph Spongg who murdered him?”

“No, Your Eminence, we suspect a mad doctor named Quatt.”

The Jellyman shook his head sadly. “A perverter of the natural order,” he said disdainfully. “I had her banned from research, but I see I should have taken more extreme measures. Why did she murder him?”

“She didn’t—but death was inevitable once she had decided to use Humpty as a living incubation device. As soon as Humpty Dumpty hatched, it was murder.”

“How fascinating! What came out?”

“A chicken. Quatt must have been—”

Jack stopped as nasty thoughts coalesced in his mind. Why had he supposed it was a chicken? Images of Winkie’s tattered body hove into view. A slash so violent it had split his sternum. Winkie must have heard the shot, come out and seen—not the hit man who was already gone, but Dr. Quatt, who had been waiting for several days with her white St. Cerebellum’s van. Winkie returned home, read the newspapers, assumed Quatt had killed Humpty and then—poor fool—tried to blackmail her. She had turned up to pay him off with whatever came out of Humpty’s shell—something so terrifying that, urine-soaked with fear, Winkie couldn’t even defend himself. A haddock with a kitten’s head was child’s play: Dr. Quatt had created something unspeakably nasty and then grown it in Humpty’s denucleated yolk. And for what? To use against the one man who had ruined her!

“Inspector?” asked the Jellyman. “Something perturbs you.”

“You’re in danger. We’re all in danger. Madeleine, Mum, get the children into the cellar right now and lock the door. You with the mustache, get the officers outside to check the white van parked down the street—and get the Jellyman to safety!”

He used the sort of voice where no one argued, and as Madeleine swiftly guided the family downstairs to cries of “yes, but why?” the guard with the mustache spoke into his radio. The front door opened a crack. It was Chymes.

“What the hell’s going on, Spratt?”

“Quatt has bred some sort of weird Humpty-beast to try to kill the Jellyman. It will be immensely strong and have claws capable of splitting a man open.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

As if in answer, there was a burst of gunfire and a cry. Chymes rapidly opened the door and came in, while the officer with the mustache drew his pistol and spoke on his walkie-talkie. There was a garbled message in return and another five shots, then silence. After a moment there was a knock at the door, and Baines came inside, sweating.

“Did you see it?” asked Chymes.

The officer with the mustache went to the kitchen door as the Jellyman and his aide-de-camp waited patiently.

Chymes opened the front door a crack and looked out. At the garden gate, he could see an armed officer at the rear door of the limo. He beckoned urgently. Chymes shut the door and turned to Baines and Jack.

“His limo is only twenty meters away. If we bunch ourselves around him, we can probably make it.”

“It’s your show, Friedland.”

Chymes opened the door again just in time to see something large and scaly run past the limo and dispatch the armed officer with a swiftness that was impressive, deadly—and gruesome.

“New plan,” said Chymes as he closed the door again. “The Jellyman goes in the cellar.”

“I refuse,” said the Jellyman with finality. “They want me. I won’t take danger to the innocents.”

He meant Jack’s children, of course. Since protocol dictated that the Jellyman could never be manhandled, there was little they could do but acquiesce.

There was another shot and a cry from outside.

“Now what?” asked Baines.

“Newer plan,” said Chymes. “You stay here and defend the Jellyman, and I’ll coordinate the backup response from… somewhere else.”

And without another word, he opened the door and was gone. Jack watched him as he ran across the street and jumped inelegantly through the privet hedge of the house opposite.

“Where’s the backup?” asked Jack as he closed and locked the door.

“On its way.”

“Then we wait.”

There were more shots, this time from the garden, and another cry.

“Whoa!” shouted the officer in the kitchen, “I just saw something dark and scaly go past the windows—and I think it got Simpson.”

“Controlled fire at anything that comes in!” yelled Baines.

“Make every shot count!”