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paneled door through which Bonseller had entered. The thug didn’t even glance back at him. Instead, his eyes flickered to the open window behind me. He licked his lips, calculated, then lunged toward me.
    I sidestepped, Gordon’s pistol fired, the sound exploding like thunder in the confined space of the room. The man staggered forward and fell against the window sill, then straightened, put his foot on the sill, and jumped.
    Through the window, I saw the thug swinging from a rope ladder a dozen feet from the building, and as I watched, he rose up and away, and the blackness behind my eyes fled with him.
    I stuck my head out farther and looked up—some sort of elongated powered balloon. The chugging engine rose in volume as the balloon gained speed and disappeared up and into the mists. Thoughts returned.
    What the hell was going on?
    The pistol barked again, and a slug slammed into the windowsill above my head, throwing splinters of wood and glass into my scalp. I flinched to the side and then dove for cover behind a heavy leather sofa. Thomson was already there, kicking one of the metal spiders away.
    “Nicely done, laddie,” he said.
    “Tell that to Gordon.”
    The pistol fired again, and a slug blew through the back of the couch, showering us with horse-hair furniture entrails.
    “Captain Gordon!” Thomson shouted. “Cease fire, ya great bloody idiot! I’m back here, and Fargo is on our side, not theirs.”
    “Yes, for God’s sake stop shooting.” That was Bonseller’s voice. He sounded weak, but he wasn’t dead. I helped Thomson to his feet and then hurried over to Bonseller’s prone form. Gordon stood in the doorway uncertainly, pistol drooping. A mechanical spider scrambled toward him, he fired his revolver, knocked wood from the floor six inches to the side, fired again, and then again, finally hitting it.
    “Damn,” he muttered. Several men in suits pushed past him from behind.
    I knelt beside Bonseller. He was trying to sit up but having a hard time. Blood soaked his left sleeve around the hilt of a throwing knife that was buried in his arm above the elbow. I grabbed his upper bicep in my left hand, my thumb on the pressure point to cut off the blood flow.
    “Take it easy, Bonseller. You’re bleeding a lot. The knife must have nicked an artery. I’m going to put a pressure bandage on it.”
    I started to pull open his coat, when a mechanical spider scrabbling across the floor bumped Bonseller’s leg. It stopped and locked steel mandibles on his calf, then made a loud whirring sound, started vibrating, and Bonseller cried out in pain. I felt an electric shock through my thumb and jumped back.
    “Son of a bitch!”
    I kicked the spider away from Bonseller and grabbed his arm again. He trembled from the shock and groaned but didn’t seem much worse otherwise. He still needed a compression bandage, so I unbuckled his belt and pulled it out as gently as I could.
    “Stand away from Sir Edward, Fargo,” Gordon ordered. I hadn’t even noticed him walk up. He raised the shaking revolver, pointed it at my forehead, and cocked the hammer back.
    “You’re dry, Gordon,” I told him, “unless that’s a seven-shooter.”
    Gordon looked at his revolver in confusion.
    “Oh, put the bloody gun down, man,” Thomson ordered. “And where did you get off to, anyway?”
    “I went for help,” he explained.
    “This may hurt a bit, but I need to get this knife out of the way,” I said. I took the handle in my fist, made sure I was lined up squarely, and slid it up and out of the wound, trying not to make things any worse. Bonseller gasped but made no other signs of pain. More blood oozed out of the slit in the coat, but not much. I wrapped the belt three times around Bonseller’s upper arm over the wound and pulled it tight. He drew in air sharply as I did, but he took it pretty well, all things considered.
    “That should hold you until a surgeon can stitch you up. Just make sure you keep the pressure