Le Pont de Londres

Sosthène's grand promises at the end of the first volume come to very little. Instead of an exotic expedition, he and Ferdinand answer an advertisement placed by Colonel O'Collogham, an inventor experimenting with gas masks.

The colonel's house becomes their temporary refuge. Sosthène throws himself into the experiments, while Ferdinand becomes fascinated with Virginia, the colonel's fourteen-year-old niece. Their relationship becomes sexual, and Virginia becomes pregnant. Meanwhile Ferdinand's past catches up with him.

Figures from the French underworld reappear. The consequences of Claben's death and the Greenwich affair remain unresolved. Ferdinand suspects both the police and former associates of looking for him.

Reality itself becomes unstable. During one of the book's memorable episodes, Centipede / Mille-Pattes, whom Ferdinand had killed in Guignol's Band, appears again as if returned from the dead and joins Ferdinand and Virginia.

Ferdinand and Sosthène arrive at Colonel O'Collogham's house because the colonel is participating in a competition to develop effective gas masks. O'Collogham conducts bizarre experiments with gases and explosives. Sosthène, whose personality combines charlatanism, mystical interests and endless schemes, eagerly joins him.

Ferdinand is far less interested in engineering. He becomes increasingly attached to Virginia, the colonel's young niece. They spend time together both inside the colonel's strange household and on expeditions through London.

The city itself becomes nearly as important as the plot. Ferdinand moves through streets, docks, pubs, clubs and immigrant districts while wartime London is periodically transformed by bombing and air raids. Claire Lozier describes the two Guignol's Band volumes as constructing London like an urban palimpsest, in which memory, geography, languages and different historical Londons overlap.

Ferdinand cannot escape the French underworld he entered in the first volume. Cascade and other figures return; prostitutes and pimps circulate through the narrative; the unresolved death of Claben continues to threaten Ferdinand with police attention or revenge.

Virginia becomes pregnant by Ferdinand, turning what had seemed another temporary attachment into an immediate practical crisis.

At the same time, Ferdinand's damaged wartime consciousness becomes increasingly important. The narrative slides freely among actual danger, memory, paranoia and hallucination. The reappearance of the dead Centipede is the most spectacular example.

Eventually the group must move again. Ferdinand has to decide whether to escape toward America or remain with Virginia and Sosthène as pressure grows around them. The novel's final movement takes the characters toward the bridge that gives the posthumous edition its title.