"There are no such things as angels" "And I suppose there are no rat-speakers" "No shepherds in Shepherd's Bush" "There are no shepherds in Shepherd's Bush" "The only way I know to get to Islington is very long and very dangerous." "Earl's Court has all the shortcuts in the underside." "I'm afraid I'm not exactly favoured at the moment at Earl's Court." "Still we can burn that bridge when we came to it." "Let me get this straight." "We've got to get to Islington to see an angel and the quickest way is through Earl's Court" "What a refreshing mind you have, Richard Mayhew." "There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?" "It's Lear, isn't it?" "We're off to Earl's Court." "Wouldn't you happen to have a timetable about your person?"" "What'd be in it for me, if I did?" "They say, that Merlin's master Blaise once wrote a reel so beguiling that it would charm the coins from the pockets of anyone who heard it." "That'd be worth more than just a train schedule." "If you actually had it." "Well, then, you'll owe me, wouldn't you?" "Let me hear the reel first, you old trickster." "I owe you, then, you old rascal." "Yes." "You do." "Don't overuse it." "A little goes a very long way." "Mind the Gap." "What?" "Just... the gap." "The Earl's Court train would be here in ten minutes." "Earl's Court isn't on the Central Line." "Just stand over there." "Good evening." "I am the Marquis de Carabas." "I've agreed to help a young lady called Door find out who killed her family." "I've obtained a bodyguard for her and I'm looking after her as if she were the most important thing under the world." "What she may, in fact, be." "Unfortunate, she has insisted in bringing alone a stray from London Above." "Over my protests." "There's going to be trouble... trouble... trouble." "We should butcher the bitch." "Annul, cancel, inhume, and amortize her." "Mister Croup here." "Oh." "It's you." "At present, as you requested, she is walking around, as free as a daisy." "What about the Upworlder then." "Why can we kill him?" "Scare him?" "We're cutthroats, assassins, not scarecrows." "I remind you that Mr Vandemar and I burned down Troy." "Who was that?" "Who the hell do you think it was?" "A scarecrow?" "Our employer." "Scarecrows." "Best way to scare crows, you just creep up behind them and put your hand round their little crow necks and squeeze until they don't move anymore." "That scares the stuffing out of them." "Who knocks?" "The Lady Door and her companions." "Halt." "State your business." "We seek an audience with His Grace the Earl." "What does the young girl say, Halvard?" "They seek an audience, Your Grace." "They do?" "Splendid." "Who are they?" "I am the Lady Door." "Lord Portico was my father." "Portico's oldest girl?" "Oh, come down here." "Come-come." "Let me look at you." "We were all devastated to hear of your father's..." "Well, all your family, it was a..." "He tried to bring us all together, you know." "I had warmest regards for him, full of ideas..." "Who else is with you?" "Who are you?" "Me?" "My name is Richard Mayhew." "Me?" "La, nuncle." "Tis not a man, but a mooncalf." "And this is my bodyguard." "Her name is Hunter." "The Hunter?" "The same," "Your Grace." "I heard you went away." "I came back." "Go on!" "Say something funny." "My hound hath no nose." "What is he doing here?" "The Marquis has agreed to help me, Your Grace." "He's my..." "I will not stand for it," "I will not." "Make him come forward." "I know you, de Carabas." "I haven't forgotten." "I may be old, but I haven't forgotten." "Might I respectfully remind His Grace that we had a deal?" "I negotiated the peace treaty between you and Raven's Court." "And in return you agreed to provide a little favor." "A little favor?" "Is that what you call it?" "I lost a dozen men to your foolishness." "I lost an eye at the retreat from White City." "And if I may say, Your Grace, that is a very fetching patch." "It sets off your face perfectly." "Your Grace, de Carabas is here with me as my companion." "He's abused my trust." "I swore that... if he ever again entered my domain again" "I'll have him gutted and dried..." "like, like something that's gutted and dried..." "Perchance-a kipper, my lord?" "No matter." "Guards, seize him." "I will take an act of violence against my companion as an act of aggression against myself and my house." "But, I won't have him here." "My lady, I obviously would be of more use to you off this train than on." "And I do have other avenues to explore." "Just get out." "Next time kipper." "I'll see myself out." "Where are my manners?" "You must be hungry after your journey." "Halvard." "Right." "What brings you here to me?" "Indirectly, Your Grace, my father's death." "You seek vengeance." "I seek the Angel Islington." "Get back!" "Hold!" "Get away!" "Move back!" "Move away from me." "I told you not to overuse it." "Naughty." "Help me!" "There is a counter-charm." "Play it, please." "What favor is in this time?" "Theft?" "Arson?" "Murder!" "Theft, I'm afraid." "I find myself in rather urgent need of a piece of T'ang dynasty sculpture." "A toast to our guests." "A child, a bravo and a fool." "May they each get what they deserve." "In the old days, we drank wine." "I prefer wine, who is much less sticky." "He's agreed to help us." "Come on." "He's meeting us in the library." "Anybody home." "Who is it?" "Oh, it's you..." "What do you want?" "Knowledge?" "Or birds?" "I need some information." "There is a turn up for the books" "Ah." "There you are." "Now, there's a reason why I asked you to come here." "It'll come to me..." "The Angel Islington, Your Grace?" "I sent old Portico to Islington first time he come to me." "An how do we get there?" "Only once by the quick way." "After that you must take the long way down." "Dangerous." "And the quick way is...?" "No, no." "Need to be an opener to use it." "Only good for Portico's family." "Your Grace, I am Portico's eldest daughter." "Of course you are..." "How is your father?" "Keeping well, I hope?" "Fine man." "How do we get to the Angel Islington?" "Use the Angelus, of course." "There y'go." "It's all in there." "And I suppose I'd better drop you off where you need to go." "You'll drop us off?" "In a train?" "Oh, think nothing of it." "Anything for Portico's daughter." "Information?" "What do you take me for it?" "What do you need?" "Maybe I should do what you do." "Ask for a favor in return as an investment." "Much too expensive, in the long run." "Well, shoes, then." "And a balaclava." "And some new gloveses." "It's going to be a bastard winter." "Very well." "I'll bring them to you." "Now." "What can you tell me about this?" "That's the..." "That's the Great Beast of London." "They say that way back before the plague and the fire, there was a butcher lived down by the Fleet Ditch." "He had this creature, poor creature that was fattening up for Christmas." "But it runned away, ran into the Fleet Ditch, vanished into the sewers." "And it fed on the sewage, and it grew, and it grew." "And it got meaner, and nastier." "They'd send in hunting parties after it." "They never came back." "It must have died three hundred years ago." "Things like that, they're too vicious to die." "Too old and big and nasty." "I thought it was just a legend." "Like the alligators in the sewers of New York." "What, the big white buggers?" "They're down there." "I had a friend lost a head to one of them." "It's all right." "He had another one." "How about this then?" "Are you ready to take it back?" "It fair gives me the creepy shivers, having it around." "I'll take it back, when all this is over." "Let us hope we don't have to use it." "How will I know if I do?" "You'll know." "And the rats will tell you what to do with it." "Hope I never finds out, that's all I can say." "Hoy." "Don't forget the shoeses and the gloveses!" "What station is that?" "British Museum." "But there isn't a British Museum Station." "There isn't?" "Then you must be very careful getting off." "Hear that, Tooley?" "I am as funny as you are." "My mirth is positively uncontainable, Your Grace" "Off, off." "Goodbye, goodbye." "This is all wrong." "It was closed down in about 1933, and sealed off." "Are there many places like this?" "This is bizarre." "About fifty." "Up there, through that door." "It's seal off." "We'll need special tools." "Richard." "My family." "We're openers." "It's, our Talent." "You are going to London Above." "Yeah." "British Museum." "I am your bodyguard in London Below," "I cannot go with you to London Above." "Hunter." "You're my bodyguard." "I must stay in London Below." "But you have to." "My lady." "I cannot." "Right." "Come on, Richard." "Look." "Why don't we all stay down here together?" "And then we can find the marquis, and we can all go together." "Door." "It's all in there." "We get in, find the Angelus, we get out." "Easy." "Nothing to it." "Close your eyes." "Nothing to it." "Every time someone say that on films, it always means that something awful is going to happen." "You can open your eyes now." "I wish I'd stayed down still with the bodyguard." "Shit!" "What?" "No Mister 'I'm So Clever and Know Everything' Marquis?" "No 'Oh, didn't I tell you?" "Whoops!" "I can't go upstairs?" "' Hunter?" "Well, paint me gray and call me a dire wolf if it isn't two little lost lambs, out on their own, after dark." "Leave us alone." "If you want to hurt her, you'll have to kill me first." "All right." "Thanks." "That's not why we are here right now." "No." "We're here to make things more interesting." "You visited Earl's Court today." "So." "How did we know that?" "How did we know where to find you now?" "Can get to you any time at all." "You've been sold out, little ladybird." "There's a traitor in your nest." "A cuckoo." "Come on." "Bid them farewell, Mister Vandemar." "Bye, bye." "No, no, no, no." "Au revoir." "A traitor?" "They are just winding us up." "Trying to scare us." "Doing a good job of it, too." "According to this the Angelus is just through there." "The Angelus is... what?" "This just says it's got a picture of an angel on it." "Can't be that hard to find." "I mean, how many things with angels on them are there here?"" "I saw that." "Jessica, it's 7:30." "They're going to riot." "The invitation said 7." "Don't exaggerate, Clarence." "Mister Stockton's on his way." "He must have his private view first." "Right." "Executive decision," "I'm letting them in." "No!" "If you" "Baroness." "All right?" "I've already had to stop a couple of idiots in suits from carving their initials on the Rosetta stone." "I hate these functions." "I told you. it's The Masque of the Red Death all over again." "A decadent elite party, while civilization crumbles about their ears." "Thank you, Gerald." "Last one of these events we found someone had puked in a sarcophagus." "If you're part of London Below, they normally don't even notice you exist unless you stop and talk to them." "And even then, they forget you." "But I saw you." "I know, isn't that odd?" "Everything's odd." "The Angelus is in there." "How do you know that?" "I just know." "ANGELS OVER ENGLAND AN EXHIBITION AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM Sponsored by Stocktons PLC" "Scare her, scare her." "That we should be brought to this." "Should have followed my idea." "Would have scared her lots more if I'd pulled his head off while she wasn't looking, then put my hand up through his throat and wiggled my fingers about." "They always scream when the eyeballs fall out." "Why get so squeamish at this stage in the game?" "I'm not squeamish, Mister Croup." "I like it when the eyeballs fall out." "Peepers and tarriwags." "Not you." "The governer." "Kill them, kidnap them, scare them." "Why doesn't he make up his mind?" "Well caught, Mister Vandemar." "Still." "We've put the cat amongst the pigeons." "Would you think I was being picky if I pointed out that trying to find something in here with an angel on it is like trying to find a needle in an..." "Oh my God it's Jessica." "Well, as long as you don't do anything stupid, like talk to her, she won't notice you." "Food!" "See anything?" "It's like playing 'Spot the Pigeon' in Trafalgar Square." "There's nothing that feels like the Angelus." "The paper said I'd know when I saw it." "How are you, Jessica?" "Are you with the media?" "You have the advantage." "You're Jessica Bartram." "You're a marketing executive at Stocktons." "You're twenty-six." "Your birthday is April the twenty-third, and in the throes of extreme passion you have a disconcerting tendency to humming the Monkees song 'I'm a Believer'..." "Is this some kind of a joke?" "Oh, and we've been engaged for the last eighteen months." "I rather think I'd know if I'd been engaged to someone for the last eighteen months, Mister um." "Mayhew" "Richard" "You chuck me, and I don't exist anymore." "Be right with you." "I'm a believer" "I couldn't leave her if I tried..." "I think you'd better call security." "Okay." "Why?" "Just..." "just get me security" "Welcome to the British Museum." "And to the Stockton-sponsored exhibition 'Angels over England,' and to the man behind it all, our chief executive and chairman of the board," "Mister Arnold Stockton." "Right." "Well." "This won't take long." "When I was a young boy, I used to come to the British Museum every Saturday, because it was free, and we didn't have much money." "But I'd come up the big steps to the museum, and I'd come round the back here down to this room and look up at this angel." "It was like it knew what I was thinking." "But, like anything that's set to go" "The angel decayed." "fell apart..." "Went rotten." "It's taken a shitfull of money, and a dozen craftsmen that've spent some considerable time restoring it, fixing it up." "From here the exhibition'll be going to America, and then around the world, so maybe it will inspire some other poor little penniless bugger to get his own media empire." "What next?" "The Angelus!" "Richard, come on!" "Excuse me, sir." "May I have a word with you?" "Get out of the way!" "Sorry." "Wrong London." "What's that security guard doing in here?" "I..." "I'll deal with it, Jessica." "Hello, boys!" "I thought it high time I came down here in person to talk to you." "What do you want?" "What does anybody want?" "Dead things." "Extra teeth." "I thought perhaps we could make a deal." "Oh-ho-ho." "My dear Marquis." "I think I can confidently state, with no risk of contradiction from any parties here present, that you have taken leave of whatever senses you are reputed to have had." "You are, if you will permit the vulgarism, completely off your head." "Say the word, Mr Croup, and it'll be off his neck before you can say Jack Ketch." "I have always thought that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final refuge of the terminally inept." "What are you doing here?" "The Lady Door." "Yes." "It is a great honor finally to meet you and your companion." "I am the Angel Islington."