He stepped into a scene of chaos.

A huge man had been pushed against his will into a chair that faced the Sergeant’s rough, wooden desk, and two constables were attempting to hold him down on the seat while he bellowed at an Inspector listening to his curses with an expression of distaste. A Sergeant stood at the Inspector’s shoulder.

The constables turned to see who had come through the door, glanced back at their Inspector, and in that instant of distraction loosened their grip on the massive shoulders.

The Inspector glared at Rutledge, demanding, “What do you want?” and then savagely ordered, “Franklin— watch what you’re doing, damn it!”

“Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard—”

The man in the chair surged to his feet like a whale breaching.

Hamish yelled a warning and Rutledge hastily leaped aside.

The enormous man broke away from the constables and lunged toward the door, one shoulder ramming into Rutledge and sending piercing swords of fire through his body. He gasped for breath, the pain nearly doubling him over, but thrust out a foot instinctively, managing to trip up the man and then to dodge his thundering fall.

Everyone was shouting at once: The clamor was deafening.

The constables were on the man like monkeys, and Blevins, breathing hard, swore again. “Don’t stand there, Sergeant, give them a hand!” As his Sergeant, an older man, jumped into the fray without much effect, Blevins added at the top of his lungs, “Hit him if you have to!”

The wildly struggling man went limp as something struck him on the head with a solid thud of flesh against flesh. A fist.

Rutledge, leaning back against the wall, was trying hard to breathe normally again, dizzy with the effort. The Sergeant, calling angrily to the constables to hold on, leaned over his desk to fumble for handcuffs.

Between them the four men managed to haul their dazed captive to his feet and out of the room, toward the rear of the station. As the prisoner regained his senses, Rutledge could hear his rising bellows and the thumps of his heavy boots as he kicked out at his captors or the walls, whatever was in reach.