a/n - This adventure borrows rather heavily from the plot of Traitor's Purse; you will be spoilered, proceed accordingly. Apologies and gratitude to the marvellous Margery Allingham.

Mr. Campion's War

Tuesday, 13 February 1940

There were perhaps five or six of them in the gang, he'd counted as they'd pressed their way through the restless crowd, expressions cold and dangerous, intent. Mostly familiar faces, all wielding coshes, which was fortuitous. He'd half expected razors, which would've made an already ugly situation even bloodier than it promised to become. It meant they were being cautious, mindful of the attention additional corpses might bring.

It meant that his plan had worked.

As the quayside meeting erupted into chaos around him, Albert Campion grinned in spite of himself. At long last, they'd caught hold of the thread that had been eluding them for so long. This was the break in the case they so desperately needed.

At his side, his friend and co-conspirator Deputy Commissioner Oates' reaction was decidedly less enthusiastic. Scowling, the Scotland Yard man promptly laid out the first over-confident thug to approach him with a practised boxing manoeuvrer and the fighting began in earnest.

Both men were experienced brawlers, by necessity of their chosen professions, but Mr. Campion had the advantage of being both younger and substantially more powerful. Though he scarcely looked it, the lanky investigator was capable of remarkable physical feats thanks to a particularly unlucky encounter with a unpleasant old woman early in his career which had irrevocably altered his fundamental constitution. The curse had been intended as punishment for the dubious crime of youthful impertinence - upon reflection perhaps well deserved - but the overall effect, though alarming and inconvenient, had not been entirely deleterious. Years of subsequent practice had since honed both his natural and unnatural gifts, making him a formidable foe in a fight.

Unfortunately, even aided by Campion's remarkable talents, the pair were still far outnumbered on the quay and they were losing ground. Battling resolutely in the crowded passages between warehouses along the filthy waterfront, the crush of bodies eventually forced them into a corner, where an impenetrable wall of shipping crates prevented their escape. There, the mob descended upon them en mass, a spiteful glee for violence guiding their fists in the twilight gloom.

The shrill sound of distant police whistles pierced the air. Mid-grapple, Mr. Campion's irrepressible grin returned. Their noisy little gathering hadn't gone unnoticed after all. Help, if one could properly define it as such, was on the way.

There was only one small problem.

Dressed as they were, their mission undertaken with the utmost wartime secrecy, the police would have no way of guessing his or Oates' true identities, nor indeed much hope of distinguishing them as allies in the midst of the fray even if they had known. They'd simply have to keep their wits about them and pray the old boys felt up to listening to explanations if they were caught. Headquarters would vouch for them, of course, but things were bound to be a bit awkward with the local constabulary since they'd not been let in on the game from the start.

The fight continued at its sensational pace uninterrupted by this signal however. The gangsters were far too focused on their pugilistic agenda to heed its warning and disperse.

In their crowded corner, Campion and Oates were still holding their own against the gang in spite of the disadvantage of their numbers.

Standing back to back as they were made it all but impossible for their enemies to land an unanticipated blow against either man and Campion's indefatigable nature and lightning quick reflexes had easily kept the worst of their opponents' onslaughts at arm's length. Realising this, their foes set about attempting to isolate the younger man from his partner.

Distracted by a sudden simultaneous assault on both his left and right sides, Campion deflected one strike and turned swiftly to face the next, only to be caught unaware by a tremendous blow to the base of his skull from behind. It made a sickening crunch which sent an electric jolt down his spine and his whole world went incandescent in an instant. Knees buckling, he fell to the ground with dreadful finality.

The owner of the cudgel was a professional, swift and practised at his craft. Had Campion been an ordinary man, that might have been the end of him then. Thankfully, he was not.

Laying stunned on the damp paving-stones, the shock of the blow dulled his senses for the few vital seconds it took him to remember how to breathe again, but soon the steadily increasing agony in his head became overwhelming. Time seemed to stretch endlessly for him in that moment. He was already healing, but not quickly enough.

Denied the merciful release of unconsciousness by his supernatural abilities, his shuttered mind instinctively sought the only refuge still available to him.

The fighting had already brought his other half to the fore, as violence usually did. It burned within his breast like a candle flame, glowing brighter the nearer he came to setting it free, every heartbeat calling to him to release it.

This close to the edge, he could feel it as a low frequency thrum in his bones; colours were more vibrant, scents sharper, his reflexes swifter. Mentally, it was a bit like living with another voice in his head, not quite his own, shadowing his every thought. With time, he'd learned to use its constant presence to his advantage, to borrow strength from the wolf while suppressing the urge to lose himself to it entirely, but it could still be a delicate balancing act.

In this instance, the severity of his injury tipped the scales against him. To the wolf, pain meant danger, and danger was best faced with four legs, not two. Animal instincts overrode human rationality and something primal surged within Campion, triggering a transformation that in his condition he was powerless to resist.

The Change came upon him more swiftly than usual, his agitated state hastening the process. Skin stretched as bones shifted, teeth becoming longer and sharper and more canine as his jaw elongated. Hands grew claws, then became heavy paws. Thick tawny grey and cream coloured fur swept over his body like a rippling wave, covering him from nose to newly-formed tail in mere seconds.

He endured this ordeal silently, knowing that it would hurt more if he fought it. When it was finished, there was a momentary struggle, as the now wolf-shaped creature ripped free of his tattered human clothes, but soon he emerged, snarling at his startled attackers.

During his incapacitation the mob had advanced upon Oates, hardly expecting Campion to revive any time soon, and had been in danger of overpowering the old policeman before his unexpected transformation seized their attentions. Now they stared at the resulting creature in open amazement. No one moved. Only the gentle lapping of muddy water against the aged stone embankment nearby could be heard in the sudden silence that fell over the scene.

The enormous canine eyed the men coldly from his corner; a low, steady growl emanating from deep within his throat. Hackles raised, he assessed each one in turn, using his keen nose to identify which had dealt the skull-shattering blow to his head. There, on the left. The man in the torn green waistcoat, carrying what looked to be a lead pipe wrapped with cloth tape, he smelt of Campion's own blood.

A sudden, intense fury rose up within the wolf at the sight of him, a reaction more human in origin than he'd later care to admit. He bared his teeth and charged at the man.

His target shrieked in terror, throwing up his hands to protect his face and stumbled over backwards as the wolf quickly closed the distance between them. The men standing beside him scattered, tripping over themselves to get away.

When Campion changed, his thoughts became more wolf than human. This had its benefits but also unfortunately had the effect of making him brutally indifferent to certain moral dilemmas. The wolf felt no more compunctions about taking a human life than it might a rabbit or a badger, should the human being in question pose a sufficient danger to himself. Right and wrong were simply superfluous considerations.

This inherent lupine pragmatism didn't excuse him from the responsibility to control himself though. If anything, he felt the ease with which he could inflict harm on others created an additional duty to refrain from doing so.

As a gentleman of the principled type, Albert Campion held himself to a very definite, albeit unconventional, code of ethics. While his views on morality might not always align precisely with what the law deemed permissible, the two were in perfect accord on the matter of killing - avoid if at all possible. Adhering to this prohibition was of paramount importance to him given his dual nature. He refused to allow himself to become the ravening beast that the legends always named his kind. He was a man, not a monster.

That human inhibition was the only thing that kept him from tearing out his assailant's throat as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Instead, he targeted his enemy's right arm, biting down hard enough to snap the bones in his wrist. After what this man had done to him, the wolf was in no mood to show much mercy. He was simply a threat to be eliminated.

The man howled in agony, thrashing and fighting to get away. Campion sunk his teeth in deeper and gave the man a violent shake to quiet him. He yelped and went suddenly limp beneath him. The powerful odour of fresh urine rose up from the man's trousers. The wolf released his arm with a disgusted snort.

Still looming menacingly over his captive, the wolf's piercing golden eyes sized the man up carefully.

Reduced to a whimpering wretch cradling his shattered arm against his chest, his erstwhile assailant made a pretty pathetic picture. The man's co-conspirators had fled without a single backward glance, leaving him to face the beast alone. It spoke to the elemental terror that the figure of the wolf still inspired in humanity's primitive hindbrain that men so used to violence should succumb to cowardice so easily when faced with one in the flesh. Something like pity for this sorry creature trickled up from his buried human consciousness, dissipating much of his anger.

The wolf held his position for a moment longer, then stepped back gingerly to adopt a watchful pose at a slightly less intimidating distance.

The man on the ground took this retreat as his invitation to leave, hastily pushing himself upright with his one good arm and shifting his shaking legs to stand, prompting the wolf to snarl and snap his jaws at him, communicating his desire that he should lie still. He immediately abandoned his feeble escape attempt and began rocking gently in place, eyes wide and fearful.

Campion likely would have remained there until the police arrived to take the man into custody, had a muffled gasp to his left not caught his attention.

He turned his head to spy a lean, shabby figure standing alone amidst the scattered rubbish and debris, wearing what could only be described as an expression of pure horror on his lined grey face. After a tense moment of uncertainty, he recognised the familiar scent of his friend Stanislaus and was at once very glad to see him. His friend's obvious distress puzzled the wolf until he recalled distantly that Oates had never seen him in this form and thus might not know him now. This realisation sent a tremor of apprehension down his spine for some reason, but the feeling was too inchoate to cause more than a nagging sense of unease, so he dismissed it.

Wary of making any sudden gesture with the wolf watching him, Oates held perfectly still, his eyes alone moving from the impressive creature before him to the pile of shredded garments on the ground where Albert Campion had just been lying and back again. He swallowed heavily, his well-trained policeman's mind kicking at the inescapable conclusion the evidence provided him with.

He'd just witnessed a man he'd known for more than fifteen years turn into an animal before his very eyes. Over a long and storied career, Stanislaus Oates had seen a great many fantastic things, but never anything which he'd have described as genuinely impossible before. Surely the deepening shadows and staggering importance of this case had begun playing tricks with his mind. But if that were the case, where had the beast come from?

"Good lord," he murmured, more to himself than any particular deity, "Campion?" His trembling voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

Recognising the name, the wolf bowed his head politely in reply and took a tentative step towards the older man, ears flat and posture as non-threatening as he could make it. Nevertheless, his friend looked alarmed and flinched back, his shoulders coming up sharply against the rough brick wall behind him. Whining softly, the wolf retreated, giving Oates more space, but not taking his eyes off of him.

Taking advantage of this momentary diversion, the man whose arm the wolf had broken scrambled to his feet clumsily and fled into the darkness unpursued. Campion watched him go impassively, resisting the instinctive urge to run after him, his concern for his old friend keeping him rooted in place.

While Campion's attention was divided, Oates allowed himself a hurried step forward to retrieve the cudgel that the thug had left behind. He held it out defensively in front of himself, as though it were a talisman for warding off evil spirits, his hands shaking. This experience had rattled him badly.

Disappointed, the wolf responded with a brief warning growl, which conveyed more clearly than words what would happen should Oates attempt to use the weapon and then sat primly, pointedly staring past him as though he had breached some unwritten rule of etiquette and embarrassed them both. His manner was so eerily like Campion the man as to be unmistakable to anyone who knew him well.

"Lumme," the old policeman breathed, which for him was a monumental expression of feeling, and he lowered his arm.

Their unconventional conversation was not given the chance to progress beyond that singularly apt epithet, however.

Presently, they were interrupted by the clatter of feet on sticky paving stones and furious shouting which together heralded the return of the other participants of the now-disbanded quayside meeting. This motley group came bursting into the passage where Oates and Campion's wolf were holding their stand-off, pursued by four policemen wielding heavy batons. The wolf's nose told him that these were the same men he'd scared away earlier, forced to retrace their steps to avoid arrest.

Campion growled, rising to block their path forward. The men stopped short when confronted with the large wolf once again, allowing the chasing constables time enough to catch up to them. Their stern official voices cut through the thick air, spurring the frozen men back to action.

"Halt, police!"

Faced with certain danger ahead and the authorities close behind, most of the men turned to meet the policemen. The rest stood paralysed with indecision, unwilling to risk taking their eyes off of the wolf.

In the ensuing scrum Oates was spotted and immediately set upon by two constables, who had mistaken him for one of the fleeing criminals as they rounded the corner. Campion, partially hidden from their view by several bodies and long shadows, went largely ignored at first.

The embattled deputy commissioner defended himself admirably, but it was apparent that he'd been exhausted by his previous encounters that evening. He was simply not a match for the two younger men on his own. Realising this, the wolf hurried toward him, forcing a path through the confusion only to hesitate just shy of his destination.

He stood poised to intervene just a few feet away, wanting to be certain of his next move before acting, his instinctive desire to protect his old friend at war with his reticence to inflict permanent injury. Some remnant of his human self urged extra caution here. These new uniformed men were different somehow and that distinction was important, if only he could remember why. Well intentioned though it may have been, this dilemma made Campion indecisive at precisely the wrong moment.

While he dithered, one of the uniformed men caught Oates' sleeve and managed to swing him round, preparing to force him to his knees. The older man struggled and stumbled against the constable and Campion made his decision then, leaping forward to collide bodily with the bobby holding him.

This had the opposite effect intended. His sudden reappearance in his field of view inadvertently caused the wary Oates to flinch back and into the descending path of the second constable's baton. There was a ghastly muffled crack as the swing connected with his temple and with a strangled cry of surprise and pain, the older man crumpled to the ground. The scent of fresh blood blossomed anew in the damp evening air, harsh and metallic over the reek of rotting fish, brackish water, and stale petrol exhaust.

"Wot the 'ell..?!" The standing constable gaped at the wolf in confusion and then looked back down at the unconscious man now lying at his feet.

Campion stared at him in dismay. Leaving the man he'd knocked down to go check his friend's motionless form, he prodded his shoulder gently with his nose, hoping for a response. When there wasn't one, he whined and licked his face, tasting salt and blood, watching and listening intently for any sign that he hadn't just witnessed Stanislaus' death.

A few terrifying seconds later, he was able to spot the subtle rise and fall of his chest. If he strained his ears, he could just make out the faint thumping of his heart through the din. Oates was still alive.

For now.

Relief rapidly gave way to anger, clouding his judgement. Snarling, he advanced on the man who'd struck Oates. Because he'd held himself back, a human member of his pack had been badly injured. The wolf would not be making that mistake twice.

The constable recoiled, shouting to his companions for help. None of them came in time. He fell when the wolf struck him, all twelve stone of the creature's weight hurtling into his chest. His helmet thunked against the paving stones with a hollow sound and rolled away as he fought to keep the snapping great jaws away from his vulnerable belly and throat.

It was his collar that saved him in the end. The thick wool with brass buttons protected his throat from the wolf's teeth until rescue arrived in an unexpected form.

The unmistakable flat crack of a rifle penetrated through to Campion's rational sensibilities in a way that the constable's terrified screams had not. He jerked back from the man abruptly and fled, disappearing into the darkness.

The source of this timely disruption was a stern plainclothes man in a pale trench coat. He stood in the entrance to the passage accompanied by several additional uniformed policemen, the picture of civil authority incarnate come to restore order.

Those remaining on the quay who hadn't escaped while the constable was under attack surrendered quietly. A small team was then dispatched with the rifle to hunt down the "bloody great dog" that had savaged their colleague, but most of the remaining business was focused on seeing the wounded safely to hospital.

No one noticed the loping grey shadow following the ambulance.

Albert Campion's first thought upon waking was that he was very cold. Opening his eyes, he saw a patch of ink-black sky scattershot with pale pinpricks of starlight. He blinked, puzzled. The realisation that this wasn't where he ought to be came upon him gradually.

When the fog in his mind cleared sufficiently for bemusement to become alarm, he sat up to discover that he was lying naked within a thicket of prickly shrubbery. Sharp thorns scraped at his skin as he moved and the twisted branches around him did little to cut the icy wind. He shivered and pulled his knees to his chest for warmth.

It was very dark. The full moon was still ten days off, he remembered.

He'd Changed, that much was obvious, but his head ached and he couldn't remember what had happened exactly. Something had gone wrong. The heavy, metallic taste of blood in his mouth was hardly unusual after a run in his other shape, but it worried him.

Marshalling his scattered thoughts, he began to piece together what he could recall of the previous seventy-two hours in the hope that retracing his steps might jog his more recent memories.

He'd been investigating something... following the money. Someone had been spreading counterfeit bank notes throughout southern England. That was worrying enough in itself, with the war on. Cracking good forgeries, they'd nearly gone undetected until a sharp-eyed banker had spotted the miniscule discrepancy in their watermark and raised the alarm. The trouble was, the work was far too clean for amateur crooks. Notes that good could only have come from the official printing houses of a foreign power.

Thousands of the bogus bills had cropped up in various industrial towns along the coast, but in each case the story was the same. No one knew where the money was coming from, or if they did, they weren't talking.

Hoping for new leads, however minuscule, Scotland Yard had placed officers undercover in vagrant camps where some of the money had been seen, but the trail had all but gone cold until their man at Coachingford had been fished out of the estuary. The poor fellow's neck had been broken with a single blow. Tidy work, likely professional. That was when Stanislaus Oates had contacted Headquarters for permission to bring him in on the matter.

Oates had given it to him pretty hot then and if he was right, the situation was rather perilous - he suspected that they'd stumbled upon a major Enemy operation, aimed at undermining and destabilising the whole of the British economy. Serious stuff, it made his blood run cold to even imagine it.

The only real spot of hope in the theory was the problem of distribution. It's remarkably difficult to simply give away cash in any significant sums. Especially during wartime, your average law-abiding citizen is apt to treat any such spontaneous gift with suspicion rather than enthusiasm. Somehow convincing the public at large to take and then spend this fiscal poison would be absolutely necessary to cause the sort of inflationary crisis they feared. It would take a frightening bit of organisation and diabolical cleverness to pull off. More than the Enemy had, he hoped.

Still, even the suggestion of financial volatility at a crucial time like this could easily lead to a panic, which was why only he and Oates had been fully apprised of the facts and the investigation was being kept so hush hush. Damned dangerous decision, he'd thought, but he wasn't the man in charge.

Anyway, he'd agreed to go have a snoop around at least, so he'd sent Lugg on ahead to act as a scout and taken the train down to Coachingford on Sunday. Brilliant as always, Amanda had secured them both an invitation to stay with Lee Aubrey nearby at Bridge. Aubrey's superior manner had irked him when they'd met, Campion had never had much patience for self-styled genius types, but he was a useful acquaintance to have. As Principal of the Institute in Bridge, he knew everyone of influence in the area well and could effect any necessary introductions. He'd ended up spending half a day at Bridge making arrangements and then slipped off to Coachingford to get the lie of the land.

An unsatisfying couple days mucking about in search of further information later, and there'd still been no concrete sign of the mysterious organisers of this scheme. They'd certainly been about though, if the buzz in the town's disreputable circles was anything to go on. Tales of blokes passing out handfuls of cash in back alleys and trading overstuffed envelopes over pints in public houses had whipped the local delinquent class into a frenzy of greed and anticipation.

Word on the street was that the sixteenth was to be the day when every citizen would be called upon to spend for his or her country and be provided generously with the means to do so. That date had certainly caught Campion's attention, since it coincided rather ominously with the planned public announcement of the Minute Fifteen Defence Loan. The plan wasn't widely known about yet, but he had it on uncomfortably good authority that if that measure failed, they'd all be in the soup. Suddenly Oates' predictions of doom and gloom didn't seem that far fetched.

With this new deadline looming, Campion had devised a more direct gambit. By advertising himself as an agent of their unknown distributor of spurious currency, he'd hoped to draw out the genuine servants of the same. Too anxious to wait by the telephone for news, Oates had come down from London to join him in this subterfuge. Dressed in their Sunday worst, they'd gone down to the quayside together round tea time to make their play.

It had worked, too. Well, they'd succeeded in drawing a crowd, at least. The money had seen to that. He and Stanislaus held court at the Coachingford wharf until the visiting criminal element they'd hoped to lure out had finally made themselves known. Quite an eclectic bunch they'd made. He'd recognised the Lily, Weaver B. the mechanic, Nervy Williams, and the Glasshouse Johns among them. All imported talent, with little history between them to suggest such an alliance was likely. That too was disquieting.

Then there'd been the fight and that's where things got a little hazy. Oates had been with him and... and... oh.

Oh no.

Oates. He'd seen. Campion had lost control and Oates had seen him Change.