The curious case of the Clockwork Man

14.

Inside the house, Mrs. Angell, all petticoats and pinafore, tore into the study and shrieked: “The king's here! The king's here!” She jabbed her finger at the window. “Lord Almighty! His Majesty King Albert himself has come to the house!”

Algernon Swinburne, who'd been sitting in quiet conversation with Herbert Spencer and Detective Inspector Trounce, looked up wearily. There were dark circles under his eyes.

“That's very unlikely, Mrs. A,” he said.

“It's impossible,” Trounce put in. “My dear woman, the king, God bless him, is under siege in Buckingham Palace. He can't get out and no one can get in, and it'll stay that way until our riffraff revolutionaries calm down and stop demanding that we become a damned republic! Pardon my language.”

Spencer grunted and murmured: “The republican form of government is the highest blinkin’ form of government, but, because of this, it requires the highest type of human nature-a type nowhere at present existin’ in London, that's for bloomin’ certain!”

“Stop your blessed chinwagging and look out of the window!” the housekeeper cried.

Trounce raised his eyebrows.

Swinburne sighed, stood, and crossed the room. He stepped past Admiral Lord Nelson, who was standing in his customary position, and peered out of the window. The doorbell jangled.

Mrs. Angell lifted her pinafore and slapped it over her mouth to stifle a squeal.

“My hat!” the poet exclaimed, staring out at the mighty armoured carriage.

“What shall I do? What shall I do?” the old woman panicked.

“Bed-wetter,” Pox the parakeet opined, with a cheery whistle.

“Calm yourself, Mother. Stay here. I'll go,” Swinburne answered. He left the room.

Trounce and Spencer stood and brushed down their clothing. Mrs. Angell bustled anxiously around the room, straightening pictures, adjusting ornaments and curios, dusting and fussing at top speed.

“Nelson!” she barked. “Put these gentlemen's glasses away in the bureau and wipe the tabletop, then come here so I can give you a quick polish.”

The clockwork man saluted and moved to obey.

“I'm sure that ain't necess-” Spencer began.

“Quiet!” Trounce whispered. “Never interrupt her when there's housework involved! You'll get your head bitten off!”

Multiple footsteps sounded on the stairs. Swinburne entered, followed by Damien Burke and Gregory Hare, who were both back in their usual outlandish and outdated clothes. Palmerston's men each had their left arm in a sling.

They stood aside.

A tall man stepped into the room between them. He was dressed in a dark blue velvet suit with a long black cape draped over his shoulders. A black veil hung from the brim of his top hat, concealing his face completely.

“Your Highness,” Mrs. Angell said, lowering herself into a deep curtsy.

“Hardly that, madam,” the visitor replied, pulling off his hat and veil. “I am Henry John Temple, the Third Viscount Palmerston.”

“Oh! It's only the prime minister!” the housekeeper exclaimed. She clutched at a chair and hauled herself back upright.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Palmerston muttered ruefully.

“No!” Mrs. Angell gulped. “I mean-that is to say-ooh er!” She turned a deep shade of red.

“Gentlemen, good lady,” Swinburne announced, “some of you have met, some of you haven't, so a quick who's who: this is Mrs. Iris Angell, Sir Richard's esteemed housekeeper; Detective Inspector William Trounce, one of Scotland Yard's finest; Mr. Herbert Spencer, our friendly neighbourhood philosopher; Lord Admiral Nelson, Richard's rather extraordinary valet; and Mr. Damien Burke and Mr. Gregory Hare, agents for the prime minister!”

A loud warble interrupted him: “Cross-eyed nitwits!”

“My apologies-and that is Pox, Sir Richard's newly acquired parakeet.”

Palmerston looked disdainfully at the colourful little bird, gazed in awe at the clockwork man, then turned to Swinburne and said: “You sent me a message. You said Captain Burton is out of action. Explain. Where is he?”

“Ah,” the poet answered. “You'd better come upstairs, Prime Minister. If the rest of you wouldn't mind waiting here, I'm sure Mrs. Angell will see to it that you're supplied with whatever refreshments take your fancy.”

“Of course, sir,” the housekeeper simpered, curtseying again in the prime minister's direction. She winced and held her hip.

Swinburne glanced at her and, despite his fatigue, managed a cheeky wink.

He ushered Lord Palmerston from the room and up two flights of stairs to the library. As they approached the door, Palmerston asked: “Is that music I hear?”

“Yes,” Swinburne said, laying his fingers on the door handle. “We rescued Richard two days ago. He was practically catatonic and repeated just one thing, over and over: Al-Masloub.”

“Which means?”

“We didn't know until we got him home. Mrs. Angell recognised it straightaway as the name of a musician Richard has over from time to time. We summoned the man, who arrived, spent a few minutes looking at our patient, went away again, and returned with two more musicians in tow. Since then, and without a moment's cease, this-”

He pushed open the door.

The library was filled with the swirling melodies and rhythms of an Arabian flute and drums. All the furniture had been shoved against the book-lined walls, and, in the middle of the floor, Sir Richard Francis Burton, dressed in a belted white robe and white pantaloons, his feet bare, and a tall fez upon his head, was spinning deliriously on the spot.

His arms were held out, the forearms poised vertically, the palm of his right hand directed at the ceiling, the palm of his left at the floor. His head was thrown back and his mouth and eyes were shut, as if in peaceful contemplation. There were droplets of sweat on his face-and he whirled and whirled!

Around and around, gyrating at considerable speed, in time with the drumbeat, he appeared entirely oblivious to their presence.

“Do you mean to tell me that His Majesty's agent has been spinning in circles for two days?” Palmerston huffed.

“Yes, Prime Minister, he has. It's the dance of the Dervish, of the Sufi mystic. I believe he's attempting to repair the damage our enemies did to him.”

Palmerston, his face as expressionless as ever, watched Burton for a few moments.

“Well,” he muttered. “He'd better pull himself together soon. He might be the only person in the country who can tell me exactly why our normally industrious labouring classes have decided to go the way of the damned French. In the meantime-”

Footsteps sounded as Burke and Hare pounded up the stairs.

“Prime Minister, please excuse the interruption,” Burke said, speaking rapidly and with his voice raised above the music. He turned to the poet: “Mr. Swinburne, when you recovered Sir Richard, did he have an odd-looking pistol in his possession?”

“The green thing?” the poet asked. “Yes, I found it in his jacket pocket. Is it a pistol? It doesn't look like one!”

“Where is it now?”

“In the top drawer of his main desk, by the windows.”

Burke turned to Hare. “If you would, Mr. Hare?”

With a nod, his colleague turned and headed back to the study.

“What's happening?” Palmerston snapped.

“A minute, if you please, sir,” Burke responded briskly. He leaned across and pulled the library door shut, muffling the melodic noise. He then indicated another door, just along the hall, and addressed Swinburne again: “What's in there?”

“It's Richard's storeroom.”

With a swift nod, Burke pushed past them, opened the door, and looked inside. He saw a room piled high with wooden boxes.

“Excellent. In you go, please, Prime Minister.”

“What the devil-!” Palmerston began.

Gregory Hare reappeared, with Burton's spine-shooter in his hand. He passed it to his colleague.

“Sir!” Burke's voice was filled with urgency. “If you recall, I advised you in the strongest possible terms that coming here was a grievous miscalculation. Sir Richard and his colleagues have made themselves known to the enemy forces. They are targets. You have knowingly placed yourself in the line of fire for no good reason except to satisfy your curiosity-”

“How dare you speak to me like th-”

Burke continued, raising his voice and speaking over the prime minister's objection. “What I feared most is now occurring. The street outside has just filled with wraiths. They caused your guards to shoot your outriders dead then turn their rifles upon themselves. We can only assume that this house is about to be attacked, isn't that so, Mr. Hare?”

“Quite right, Mr. Burke,” Gregory Hare answered.

“We must barricade ourselves inside,” Burke continued. “If it becomes necessary, Mr. Hare and I will act as your last line of defence.”

“I-” Palmerston said, but a thick arm was suddenly wrapped around his waist and Hare hoisted him off his feet, carried him past Burke and Swinburne, and plonked him into the storeroom.

“Unhand me, sir!” came his receding protest.

Burke turned to the poet: “I'm sorry, Mr. Swinburne, but Lord Palmerston's safety is my and Mr. Hare's primary duty. I have no choice but to leave you and your companions to defend this house as best you can. Besides which, we are somewhat hampered by our injuries. If our attackers make it past you, hopefully you will have weakened them enough for us to be able to deal with them.”

“You mean to make of us a forlorn hope?” Swinburne asked. “Ruthless bugger, aren't you?”

“You object?”

Swinburne grinned. “Not at all! This is just my cup of tea! Go! Barricade yourselves in. I'll rally the troops.”

“Thank you, sir. Um-” Burke looked at the cactus pistol in his hand “-I should keep hold of this but Mr. Hare and I are armed with revolvers and, under the circumstances-”

He passed the strange weapon to the poet, quickly explained its use, then turned away, entered the storeroom, and closed the door.

Swinburne let loose a breath and whispered: “Tally-ho!” He descended the stairs. As he reached the landing, he saw Mrs. Angell in the hallway below, carrying a coffee pot and cups on a tray.

There was a knock at the front door.

The housekeeper immediately put the tray down on the hall table and reached for the door handle.

“Don't!” Swinburne yelled.

It was too late. Even as she turned to look up at him, Mrs. Angell's fingers had twisted the doorknob.

The portal swung inward, pushed by a big bloated hand.

The old woman staggered backward and screamed.

A bulging mass of clothing blocked the threshold. Swinburne recognised it at once: the Tichborne Claimant!

The hideous head came ducking under the lintel and, as the hulking mass of blubbery flesh pushed through after it, Mrs. Angell dropped in a dead faint.

Swinburne raised the cactus pistol and pressed the trigger nodule. He missed. Spines thudded into the doorframe. The Claimant raised his repulsive face, looked at the poet, and smiled sweetly.

“You must be Algy.”

His voice was female, with a Russian accent.

“Forgive me for not visiting you in person, kotyonok, but I am a little stretched at the moment.” The Claimant glanced down at his corpulent belly. He looked back up at the poet and chuckled. “He he he! Horribly stretched! But as a matter of fact, I was referring to the uprising. It goes well, does it not? Your capital burns! Ha ha! How your poor King Albert must tremble!”

“Who the hell are you?” Swinburne snarled.

The door beside him opened and Detective Inspector Trounce stepped out.

“What's going- Bloody hell!”

“Ah, is that William Trounce? How gratifying. I do hope you have Herbert Spencer with you, too. It would be so convenient if my emissary can kill you all at once before he retrieves Sir Richard. Really, it was very rude of you to take him from me before I'd finished ruining that extraordinary mind of his. I would have come for him sooner but I have so much to do. I am quite dreadfully busy. Ah well, let us proceed. Time for you to die! As we say in Russia: Bare derutsya-u kholopov chuby treschat! Farewell!”

The Claimant's eyes suddenly dulled. He emitted a loud bellow, in his own voice, and started up the stairs. His girth was such that the banister and its balusters cracked, splintered, and fell away from the staircase as he heaved himself up.

Trounce went to draw his police revolver. It snagged in his pocket.

“Confound it!” he cursed.

Swinburne raised the spine-shooter and fired again, hitting the advancing monstrosity in the chest. The spines had no effect other than to elicit another roar.

The poet and policeman retreated into the study.

“What's happenin’?” Herbert Spencer asked.

“Big trouble,” Trounce grunted. “Very big indeed!”

The Claimant blocked the doorway, wedged his vast body into it, and began to shove himself through. The door frame split.

“Cover your ears,” Trounce muttered. Swinburne and Spencer did so. The Scotland Yard man had finally freed his revolver. He fired a shot into one of the unwelcome visitor's beefy thighs.

The Claimant yelled incoherently, grabbed the side and top of the door, and ripped it from its hinges. He threw it at Trounce.

The slab of wood smashed into the detective inspector and sent him stumbling backward. He fell to his knees, dazed.

“Repulsive toad!” Pox squawked, and sought refuge on top of a bookcase.

Herbert Spencer grabbed a brass poker from the hearth and brandished it like a sword.

“What'll we do, lad?” he mumbled, gaping at the slowly advancing mountain of flesh.

Swinburne, standing beside the vagrant philosopher, became conscious that the mantelpiece was at his back. No retreat. He glanced to the left. Both the study windows were closed. No escape there, not that anyone could survive the jump. He grimaced. His head had started aching and his thoughts were becoming turgid and confused. He was feeling the baleful influence of the Choir Stones, which were still embedded in the Claimant's scalp. He felt an urge to welcome Sir Roger Tichborne to the house and to help him fight his enemies.

He gritted his teeth.

He looked to the right and saw Admiral Lord Nelson standing immobile by the door to the dressing room.

The faux aristocrat lumbered closer.

A fat hand reached out.

Swinburne, without thinking, screeched: “Nelson! Throw this obese bastard out of the house the fastest way possible! At once!”

The clockwork man bent his upper torso forward and accelerated away from the wall, a blur of gleaming metal.

The Claimant turned toward the movement.

Nelson collided with the giant's belly, snapped his mechanical arms out straight, and pushed with all his spring-loaded might.

Neither Swinburne nor Herbert Spencer had any inkling that the clockwork man possessed the power that, in a shocking instant, now became evident.

The whalelike mass of the Tichborne Claimant was thrown into the air and right across the study. He hit the window and went out through it, taking the glass, the frame, and a considerable chunk of the wall on either side of it with him.

The shattering crash was tremendous, and was followed by the clatter and bangs of falling masonry as the front part of 14 Montagu Place suffered his unexpected exit.

Detective Inspector Trounce, shaking his head to clear it, staggered to his feet and peered around at the room. It looked as if a bomb had exploded in it. The Claimant's passage had wrecked furniture, brick dust swirled around, and Burton's papers were raining down like autumn leaves.

“Bloody hell!” he gasped.

Admiral Lord Nelson turned to the poet and saluted.

“Yes, thank you, old chap,” Swinburne responded meekly. “Very effective, though not quite as neat as the trick they worked on Sir Alfred. My hat! Mrs. Angell is going to kill me.”

Herbert Spencer gingerly approached the gaping hole in the wall and squinted out at the street below. It was enshrouded by steam, billowing about in a slight breeze. He saw movement in the cloud.

“Gents,” he said quietly. “Do you happen to have a spare pistol I could borrow? That thing ain't dead.”

“You're not serious?” Trounce exclaimed.

“It's layin’ on the pavement but it looks to me like it's just winded.”

The Scotland Yard man retrieved his revolver from the floor.

Swinburne stepped up to one of Burton's desks and pulled a pistol from its drawer. He handed it to Spencer.

Trounce growled: “Let's get out there and finish that abomination off!”

He set his jaw and marched out of the study. Spencer and Swinburne followed. The poet looked back over his shoulder at Nelson.

“Come on, Admiral.”

The three men and the clockwork device descended to the hallway. Trounce quickly checked Mrs. Angell, who was sitting dazed against the wall.

“Go down to your rooms, dear. We'll come and tell you when it's safe.”

Swinburne picked Burton's silver-handled swordstick from the elephant-foot umbrella stand by the front door. He handed it to Nelson.

“Here, unsheathe it and don't hesitate to use it. If you can manage it, slice the lumps off the fat man's head.”

The mechanical valet saluted.

“What's that?” Trounce exclaimed. “Why play silly beggars? Wouldn't it be better to run the damned beast through the heart?”

“The Francois Garnier diamonds are sewn into those lumps, Detective Inspector.”

“Brundleweed's stones!” Trounce cried. “And you've only just thought to tell me?”

“Richard had his reasons for keeping it quiet. All you need to know for now is that if we can free the fiend from their influence, we might be able to get some information out of him.”

Trounce grunted and shook his head. “Perhaps, but I'll tell you, lad: if that brute looks to be getting the upper hand, I'll not hesitate to put a bullet through his brain!”

They went outside. Palmerston's guards were slumped in the mobile castle's bartizans, their heads shattered by their own bullets. The four cavalrymen lay dead in the road.

Wraiths moved through the haze.

As Swinburne led his companions out onto the pavement, the mist parted, and the Claimant came charging out of it like an enraged hippopotamus. Before any of them could raise a weapon, they were sent flying. Swinburne and Spencer both ended up on their backs in the gutter, while Nelson clanged noisily against one of Palmerston's steam-horses. Trounce was grabbed by the collar, yanked off his feet, and thrown high into the air and clear across the road. He thumped down headfirst onto the opposite pavement, rolled, and lay still.

Nelson ducked under the Claimant's swinging fist and scuttled away to retrieve the rapier, which had been knocked out of his hand. Swinburne rolled under the steam-horse and out the other side. He jumped up then backpedalled rapidly when he found himself looking a wraith full in the face.

“Argh!” he cried, and clutched the sides of his head. He felt a terrible pressure on his brain. “No!” he gasped. “I'll not let you inside! Not ever again!”

A gunshot echoed as Herbert Spencer put a bullet into the Claimant's side. The philosopher scrambled to his feet, turned, and ran to the back of the prime minister's carriage. A ghostly hand clutched at his arm. He struggled in the grip of a wraith.

The Claimant flew into a berserk rage. Stamping his feet and waving his arms, he hollered and howled, screamed and hissed, and threw himself into the side of the foremost of the two steam-horses. It must have weighed well over a ton, but under his onslaught, the machine keeled over, narrowly missed crushing Swinburne, and skidded across the cobbles on its side, showering sparks and emitting a plume of white vapour as one of its pipes tore open.

“Mother!” a muffled voice cried from inside the mobile castle's front cabin. “Help me!”

It was Palmerston's driver, who'd been quaking inside the box ever since the wraiths had appeared and caused the deaths of the guards.

The piggy eyes of the Claimant flicked to the source of the sound. In one stride he was beside it, grabbing the edges of the wedge-shaped compartment. He began to heave it back and forth. The man inside wailed piteously.

Swinburne heard himself mutter: “Tichborne! The bloody toffs are-are-are trying to do away with Tichborne!”

He shook his head.

“No!” he growled. “No! No! No! That is not Sir Roger bloody Tichborne!”

He stepped straight through the drifting wraith, levelled the cactus gun, and fired. As he touched the trigger nodule, his arm jerked aside, and the spines flew wide.

“Bloody conspiracy!” he gasped, fighting the words as they forced themselves out of his mouth. As fierce as the battle in the street was, the fight in the poet's head was even more intense.

Admiral Lord Nelson bounded over to the Claimant and lunged in. His rapier danced. He skipped away. Wraiths swooped around him, grabbing at his arms, but they couldn't hold him.

The corpulent creature screamed as two of the lumps on its scalp disappeared, sliced off by the sword blade. Blood gushed from the wounds. Black gems bounced into the gutter.

Swinburne felt a sudden lessening of the pressure on his brain.

“Herbert!” he cried. “Collect the diamonds! We mustn't lose them!”

The Claimant twisted and lumbered after Nelson, who now stood a short distance away in the en garde pose. He reached the clockwork man and there commenced a flurry of arms and blade as Nelson jabbed and sliced at the fat behemoth, while the latter attempted to deflect or catch the flashing rapier.

Herbert Spencer tore himself away from the tormenting wraith and darted forward. He retrieved the two fallen Choir Stones. As he did so, another one fell.

The Claimant let loose a terrific shriek and clutched his head.

“I remember!” he shouted. “I remember!”

Nelson backed away from his opponent, who once again lurched after him. The sleeves of the Claimant's jacket, and the shirt beneath, hung in tatters. When he raised his hands to grab the rapier, his mismatched forearms were fully exposed. They were terribly lacerated, but the creature appeared to be entirely immune to pain.

The rapier danced away from the clutching fingers.

The Claimant roared with frustration.

Herbert crept up behind him and picked up the third stone, then two more as the fourth and fifth flew from the swollen man's head.

Swinburne started to shoot spines into the creature's back, hoping that the accumulating venom would at least slow the juggernaut down.

“I want meat!” the Claimant raged. His face was covered with blood. Every few moments, his tongue snaked from between his lips and licked at the red liquid.

The sixth diamond dropped.

Admiral Lord Nelson started to duck and dodge more intently. The remaining stone was located at the back of his opponent's head, so he needed to somehow manoeuvre himself into a position from which it could be extracted.

As the two combatants moved back and forth over the cobbles, Spencer followed cautiously, slipping the sixth stone into his pocket.

The clockwork man stepped in close, bent under a lashing fist, sprang forward, whirled, and sent his rapier's tip digging into the remaining fleshy protuberance on the back of his adversary's skull. A small chunk of flesh dropped away. Blood spurted. A black diamond sparkled. It landed at Spencer's feet. He snatched it up. He now had the complete Francois Garnier Collection in his pocket.

“Aaaaargh!” the Claimant cried. “Hurts! It hurts! Give me meat! I want meat!”

He turned to face Nelson and backed away a couple of steps, peering through the blood streaming over his eyes.

His fury seemed to leave him for a moment.

He blinked.

Swinburne felt a profound sense of release, as if he was fully himself again. He lowered the spine-shooter and watched.

“No,” the fat man uttered. “No. I am not-I am not-”

He lifted the larger of his two hands up to his face.

“I am not Roger-”

He dug his blunt fingernails into his forehead and cheeks.

“I am not Roger Tichborne!”

With a stomach-churning tearing noise, he ripped his face from the front of his skull and held it out triumphantly.

“My name is Arthur Orton! And I want meat!”

He pushed the drooping skin and tissue into his mouth and started to chew.

“Ah,” Swinburne whispered. “So there we have it at last.”

Arthur Orton considered Admiral Lord Nelson.

“You,” he rumbled, “are not meat.”

His gory countenance, all raw muscle and throbbing veins, turned until he was looking directly at Herbert Spencer.

“But you-”

With startling agility for one so gargantuan, Orton lunged at the vagrant philosopher.

Spencer turned to run.

Admiral Lord Nelson sprang into action. He took two great strides, raised the rapier, sent it plunging toward the back of Orton's spine, suddenly slowed-and froze.

The clockwork man had wound down.

Corpulent fingers closed around Spencer's neck.

Swinburne started shooting, pressing the trigger nodule again and again.

“Trounce!” he shrilled. “Your pistol! Your pistol!”

There was no response. The detective was either out cold or dead.

Spencer yelled as he was yanked off his feet.

“Meat!” bellowed Orton triumphantly and sank his teeth into the back of the philosopher's neck. His victim's scream of agony was cut short as vertebrae crunched and shattered, and a gobbet of pulsating flesh was wrenched free.

Orton twisted Herbert Spencer's head off and threw it to one side. It bounced away across the cobbles. Blood pumped from the severed neck, and the monstrous butcher laughed as it sprayed over his face.

“No,” Swinburne sobbed. “Oh Jesus, please no.”

Holding Spencer's twitching corpse with the larger of his hands, Orton plunged the other into the neck, pushing it deep into the body.

“Aaah,” he sighed, and when he pulled the dripping red arm back out, the philosopher's still-beating heart was gripped in his fingers. He tore it free of stretching arteries and flesh, raised it to his mouth, and licked it.

“Why won't you fucking die?” Swinburne raged, tears streaming down his cheeks.

The Claimant turned and regarded the poet. He grinned and chewed on the twitching organ.

Swinburne raised the cactus gun and, without aiming, touched the trigger nodule.

Spines sank into Orton's right eye.

The butcher flinched, shook his head, and waddled slowly toward the tiny man.

“More meat! I like meat!”

Swinburne turned to run but suddenly found himself gripped by vaporous hands. Two wraiths had swooped upon him and now, just as they had dragged Sir Alfred Tichborne through Tichborne House to his doom, so they began to pull Swinburne to his.

“Get off me! Get off me!”

Orton gave a bloody smile and said: “Come to me. I eat you up!”

Closer and closer Swinburne was drawn, until the gigantic butcher towered over him, dripping blood onto his flame-red hair.

“Yum yum,” Orton drawled, through a mouthful of Herbert Spencer's heart.

He reached out and caught the poet by the lapels. He lifted him into the air. The wraiths floated beside Swinburne, holding his arms, preventing him from using the cactus pistol.

Orton spat the lump of flesh from his mouth. His lips peeled back from the big green incisor teeth. His jaws opened. He leaned forward, his mouth approaching the poet's skinny neck.

Swinburne suddenly felt completely calm.

“Two things,” he said, looking straight into the little piggy eyes. “Firstly, I concede defeat.”

Orton stopped and regarded the small man.

“You've won. So why not rein yourself in a little? After all, London is on its knees. The Houses of Parliament are half destroyed. Buckingham Palace is under siege. The working classes are in control. My friends have been beaten into submission or killed. I mean to say, there's no need to dine on an insignificant little poet like me just to prove a point, is there?”

Orton gave a bubbling chuckle and licked his lips.

“Meat!” he hissed.

“Yes,” the poet continued. “I thought you might say that, which brings me to my second point, which is this: your manners are truly appalling. Have you not read A Manual of Etiquette for Young Ladies?”

Emitting an animal growl, the Claimant opened his mouth wide and placed his teeth against Swinburne's throat.

There was a sound- thunk! -and the poet suddenly fell to the ground, the wraiths swirling away from him.

He looked up.

Arthur Orton's head was transfixed by a huge African spear, which had pierced his skull above the right ear and exited beneath the left. Blood and grey brain matter oozed from its point.

The man who'd called himself Roger Tichborne toppled backward, hit the road with a tremendous thud, and lay still.

Algernon Swinburne sat bemused. Then he looked to his left at number 14 Montagu Place. In the gaping hole where the study window had once been, Sir Richard Francis Burton stood, his Dervish robes fluttering slightly in the breeze.

“M ay Allah bless thee and grant thee peace,” Al-Masloub murmured.

“And peace and blessings upon thee,” Burton replied. “You are certain you do not require an escort?”

“Allah is our escort.”

“Then I am assured of your safety. Until next time, my friend.”

Al-Masloub smiled and bowed and he and his fellow musicians departed, slipping into the thickening atmosphere of Montagu Place.

“You, on the other hand,” Burton said, turning to Mrs. Angell, “most definitely will be escorted.”

“I should stay, Sir Richard,” his housekeeper protested. “Look at the state of the house! It's a terrible mess!”

“And one that I shall see to. Your carriage awaits, Mother Angell. A constable will drive you to the station and stay with you on the train all the way to Herne Bay. A few days in a bed and breakfast enjoying some fresh sea air will work wonders on your nerves.”

“There's nothing wrong with my nerves.”

“Well, there jolly well ought to be after what you've been through today! Now off with you, and I promise to have this place as good as new by the time you get back.”

Reluctantly, the old lady descended the front steps, accepted a helping hand from a policeman, and climbed into the brougham parked just in front of the prime minister's mobile castle. With a quick blast of its steam-horse's whistle, the carriage chugged away, heading to the Queen Victoria Memorial Railway Station.

Detective Inspector Trounce emerged from the mist.

“Your local postmaster is a stubborn ass!” he complained. “He absolutely refused to open up shop. I had to threaten him with arrest.”

“Can you blame him, after this?” Burton responded, indicating the debris-filled road.

“Humph! I suppose not. Anyway, I sent off a parakeet to Scotland Yard. More men will be here in due course.” He hesitated. “And a mortuary van is on its way.”

Burton gave a curt jerk of his head in acknowledgement and the two men entered the house.

The king's agent said: “Pox found Constable Bhatti, who says he's on his way. The bird has since been racing back and forth between here and Battersea Power Station. Brunel has agreed to assist us.”

Trounce reached up and gingerly felt the big bump on his head. “Ouch! So the Steam Man will fight alongside us rather than against us on this occasion?”

“Yes, although not literally. There are a lot of springs in that lumbering life-maintaining contraption of his. If the mechanism ceased to function, he'd die. Best to keep him out of the enemy's range.”

They passed Admiral Lord Nelson, who, rewound, and with the cactus pistol in one hand and a rapier in the other, was standing guard in the hallway.

“Same applies to him, then,” Trounce said, indicating the valet.

“No,” Burton replied.

“No? But he's chock-a-block full of springs!”

“Yes.”

“So our opponent will stop him with ease.”

“I'm counting on it.”

“What? By Jove, what the blazes are you up to?”

“All in due course, Trounce, old man. All in due course.”

Algernon Swinburne came down the stairs. His eyes were hooded and his jaw set hard. Herbert Spencer's death had affected the poet greatly.

“I've locked the Choir Stones in the safe in your library, Richard. They were giving us headaches.”

“Thank you, Algy.”

The three of them entered the seldom-used dining room. Lord Palmerston, Burke and Hare, and the prime minister's driver were seated around the large table.

“Gentlemen, we have very little time to spare,” Burton announced. He, Swinburne, and Trounce sat down. “Our riposte must be immediate and devastating. Before we put the wheels into motion, though, I feel I should apologise to you all. Our enemy incapacitated me. She exploited a certain flaw in my character, causing it to echo back on itself over and over until it became amplified beyond all endurance. Fortunately, I retained enough of my wits to put myself through the Dervish meditation ritual. It enabled me to transfer my mind's focus from guilt, disappointments, and regrets to something I said to Charles Babbage right at the start of this whole affair, to wit: ‘ The mistakes we make give us the impetus to change, to improve, to evolve. ’ I should have been regarding my own errors of judgement in that light all along, but I wasn't. Now I am. It's a statement, I believe, that can be applied not only to individuals but also to wider society, and is the philosophy that must guide us now, for whatever the rights or wrongs of a workers’ revolution, the crisis currently afflicting London does not have its origin in lessons we, as a nation, have learned. Rather, it has been forced upon us by an external agency, and in relation to a mediumistic divination. We cannot allow it. The woman must be stopped.”

“Our enemy is female?” Palmerston asked.

“Yes. Her name is Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She is a Russian, and she intends nothing less than the wholesale destruction of the British Empire.”

“The devil she does!” the prime minister exclaimed. “What's her motive? What's this about divination?”

“She claims to be clairvoyant. She has seen a future where Britain engages in a great war against a united German Empire allied with Russia.”

He went on to describe the prophecy Blavatsky had shared with him. As he talked, Palmerston's pale, inexpressive face seemed to grow even whiter, his manicured fingers gripped the edge of the table, and his eyes became fixed, as if he'd gone into shock.

“Her intention,” Burton finished, “is to cause such internal strife that Britain is severely weakened in the lead-up to the war. She wants Germany to defeat us without Russia's assistance, so that, once the victory is won, Russia might swoop upon the conquering nation.”

“But why make us the target?” Palmerston protested. “Why doesn't she work her voodoo against the Germans directly?”

“If she does that, she will ensure the continuation of the British Empire. She wants all the Western powers on their knees so that Russia might subjugate them in their entirety.”

“Gad!” Trounce murmured. “Another lunatic interfering with time! Only on this occasion, instead of someone from the future interfering with the present, it's the reverse!”

“Perhaps,” Burton murmured, noncommittally.

Trounce looked at him quizzically. “Is there something you're not telling us?”

Burton ignored the question and lit one of his Manila cheroots. He glanced at Palmerston. The prime minister was sitting stock-still, staring straight ahead.

“We came into this affair, gentlemen,” the king's agent continued, “at the point when Blavatsky gained possession of the Choir Stones, which are fragments of a larger diamond, one of the three legendary Eyes of Naga. She then took advantage of the Tichbornes, both to wrest control of a second, unbroken diamond from them, and to use them as a means to disseminate her call to insurrection.”

Detective Inspector Trounce frowned and scratched his head. “Theft and impersonation I can understand,” he said, “but this black diamond business has me flummoxed. What's the connection between the stones and the public disorder?”

“The Eyes project a subtle electrical field that can influence a person's mind, causing, in certain types, a profound sense of dissatisfaction. They can also magnify a mesmeric directive. Blavatsky used the Choir Stones to control Arthur Orton, to enhance his natural ability to sway opinion, and to entrance people into believing that he was Roger Tichborne. Once the crowds who came to see him were captivated, she used the greater power of the unbroken diamond to incite them to riot.”

“And the wraiths?” asked Trounce.

“A stroke of genius on her part. You know how obsessed the Rakes are with spiritualism and the occult. With her credentials, there was no difficulty in gaining leadership of the faction. She took control and soon had them all walking abroad in their etheric bodies.”

Palmerston took a deep breath, as if coming out of a trance, and said: “Their what?”

“The etheric body, Prime Minister, is that part of you which exactly matches your physical dimensions and characteristics but is comprised of rarefied matter. It connects your corporeal self to the spiritual realm.”

“The soul?”

“No, it is more a component of material existence. It exactly duplicates your bodily self-perception, even down to the clothes you are wearing.”

“Twaddle!”

“Many, especially those of a scientific bent, believe so. Nevertheless, there are wraiths roaming London, and they are doing so because through them Blavatsky can amplify the black diamond's emanations.”

There came a knock at the door and Constable Bhatti stepped in. He gaped when he saw Palmerston, and gave a clumsy salute.

“I-I understand you requested my presence, sir?” he stuttered, looking first at Trounce, then at the famous explorer.

“Yes, come in, Constable,” Burton said.

“Thank you, but-um-there's a rather extraordinary-looking chap outside. A Technologist. He says he's here on behalf of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.”

“Ah, good! That was quick! Would you usher him in, please?”

Bhatti nodded, stepped out of sight, and returned moments later with a short, plump, blond-haired individual who introduced himself as Daniel Gooch.

“Ah ha!” Bhatti cried. “I thought I recognised you! You're the rotorship engineer!”

Gooch bowed his head in acknowledgment. Though dressed conservatively in pale-brown trousers, white shirt, dark waistcoat, and a top hat-which he'd removed and was holding-he was also wearing a bizarre contraption slung around his shoulders and buckled over his chest and around his waist. It was nothing less than an extra pair of arms, mechanical and intricate, multijointed and with a number of different tools arranged at their ends-very similar, in fact, to Brunel's limbs. Two thin cables ran from the harness up to either side of Gooch's neck and were plugged directly into his skull, just behind his ears.

The metal arms moved as naturally as his fleshy ones.

“Mr. Brunel sends his regards, gentlemen,” he said. His voice was deep and gravelly. “He apologises for not attending in person, but his size rather limits his access to dwellings such as this. Besides, he's overseeing the manufacture of the item you requested, so felt it best to send me as his lieutenant.”

“You're very welcome, Mr. Gooch,” the king's agent said. “And thank you for getting here so swiftly. Please, pull up a chair and join us. You too, Constable.”

As the new arrivals settled, Burton gave a brief recap.

Palmerston then said: “So our enemy's motive is to change the course of the future war, and she shared with you a vision of the conflict. Just how clear was the-er-hallucination, Captain Burton?”

“If anything, it was too clear, sir. My brain is still struggling to process all the information. It was as if I saw events from the perspective of a person who'd lived through them.”

“And you say the war will be fought with Technologist weapons on our side and Eugenicist weapons on the other?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. And this Blavatsky woman has the ability to pull one solid object through another?”

“That's correct. She did it with Brundleweed's diamonds and with Sir Alfred Tichborne. What have you in mind, sir?”

Palmerston's hands curled into fists. “The night before last, the traitor Richard Spruce vanished from his prison cell. Its door was still locked. Its one small, barred window-which was too small for him to crawl through anyway-had not been tampered with. There were no escape tunnels or any other means of egress. He simply vanished.”

“You suggest that Blavatsky yanked him out through the wall?”

“It's likely, don't you think? If the Germans are going to employ eugenically altered plants as weapons, then, in light of the current situation in Ireland, Spruce seems the obvious source of their future scientific knowledge.”

Burton ground his cheroot into an ashtray. He nodded.

“Yes, you're probably right. Do you think he's made it out of the country?”

“I fear so,” the prime minister grumbled.

“We have Eugenicists disappearing left, right, and centre, too,” Gooch added. “There seems to be an exodus under way. The Technologists have lost a lot of extremely skilled scientists.”

“Then it's begun,” Palmerston hissed. “Christ almighty, the war against Lincoln's Union we can just about deal with, but a war against the Germans and Russians-!” The prime minister held a hand to his forehead and sighed. “Anyway, one thing at a time. The country is on the brink. Our labourers are running rampant and the dissent is spreading fast. I've called in the army to protect the palace and Whitehall, but a large number of troops are absconding or becoming openly mutinous.”

“It's the same at the Yard,” Trounce murmured. “Lord knows how many men are AWOL at the moment.”

“So what are we going to do about it, Captain Burton?” Palmerston asked. “How do we nip this atrocity in the bud?”

Burton rested his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. He tapped his knuckles against his chin and said nothing for a beat. Then: “As dire as they may be, I think we can take advantage of our current circumstances. Firstly, Trounce, take one of my velocipedes and race it over to Scotland Yard. Speak to the chief commissioner and muster as many men as you're able. They need to be in place by midnight-”

He spoke for a few minutes more. Trounce nodded, gave Palmerston a halfhearted salute, and departed.

After Burton heard the front door slam shut, he turned to Burke and Hare.

“I require something that you two have in your possession. I need you to fetch it now, without delay.”

He told them what it was.

Burke turned to Palmerston and said: “With your permission, sir?”

“Absolutely. Go.”

“And bring back another carriage for the prime minister,” Burton called after the two men as they departed.

He turned to Palmerston's driver, who'd been sitting through the discussion with a bemused expression on his face.

“What's your name, sir?”

“John Phelps.”

“Tell me, Mr. Phelps, can the mobile castle outside be driven with just one steam-horse?”

“Aye, sir. No trouble, she'll just eat up coal twice as fast.”

“Then, if your employer permits it, I'd like you to drive Mr. Swinburne, Constable Bhatti, my valet, and I to Battersea Power Station this evening.”

Phelps looked at Palmerston, who nodded.

“Very well, sir.”

Burton next addressed the Technologist: “Presumably, you have your own vehicle, Mr. Gooch?”

“I drove here in my Folks’ Wagon. I'll return the same way.”

“Very well. Before you depart, can I call upon you to assist Constable Bhatti?”

“Surely. With what?”

Burton gave a lengthy explanation-during which Swinburne started whooping with delight-and finished by turning to Bhatti: “Do you think you can do it, Constable?”

“I'll give it my best,” the young policeman answered. “It's a case of removal and replacement rather than dismantlement, so we should be able to avoid the dangers. As for the rest of it, I'm sure Mr. Gooch will spot any errors I might make.”

“It's not exactly my field of expertise,” Gooch said, “but I'll do what I can, and Isambard can check the work over when you get to the power station.”

“And what of the task I've set Mr. Brunel?” Burton asked. “Do you think he can supply what I need?”

“Your request was certainly unusual, Captain-especially when communicated through a foul-mouthed parakeet-but it's not a difficult thing to design and Mr. Brunel is the best engineer in the world. He'd prefer to power it by steam, of course, but every single valve in a steam engine employs a spring, so that rules it out. Your alternative is-shall we say- eccentric? But it's feasible, and Isambard had already finished a blueprint when I left him. He has all the manufacturing power of the station at his disposal, so I assure you he'll provide what you need in good time.”

“Excellent,” the king's agent responded. He turned to his assistant. “Algy, tonight we're making our peace with the Steam Man.”

The poet, who'd spent the past few minutes with a huge grin on his face, now scowled. “After the way he treated me last time we met I'd rather kick the blighter right up the exhaust funnel!”

“Quite so.” Burton smiled. “But let the past be the past. For now we have to concentrate on saving the present!” He stood and paced up and down restlessly. “We have to hurry. I want to move against Blavatsky in the small hours of the morning.”

“Why then?” Palmerston asked.

“Because the human mind is at its lowest ebb during that period, sir. We know the woman is at full stretch. I want her exhausted. On which point: Algy, run up to my bedroom. You'll find a vial of Saltzmann's Tincture in my bedside drawer. Bring it down. We're all dog-tired, but if you, Bhatti, and I take five drops each, it will keep us alert for another twelve hours or so.”

“Smashing!” the poet exclaimed excitedly and scampered out of the room.

Palmerston drummed his fingers impatiently. “I'll not sit here in the dark! What in the devil's name are you playing at, Burton?” he demanded. “Explain your intentions!”

“There's no time, Prime Minister. As soon as Burke and Hare return, I recommend that you make a swift departure. Mr. Gooch and Constable Bhatti will be fully occupied with their project, while Mr. Swinburne and I have a great deal to arrange.”

“In other words, I'm surplus to requirements and in your way?”

“I wouldn't have put it quite like that, sir. I would point out, however, that you are the prime minister, the country is both at war and in the midst of a crisis, yet you are sitting in my dining room.”

Palmerston shot to his feet with such suddenness that his chair toppled backward to the floor. He glared at Burton and said slowly, in an icy tone: “There are limits to my patience, Captain. You are developing an unfortunate habit of addressing me with a marked lack of respect. I was warned before I employed you that you're an impertinent rogue. I'll not take it!”

Phelps, Bhatti, and Gooch glanced at each other uncomfortably.

“You gave me a job to do,” Burton said. “I intend to do it. If you are displeased with my conduct, you can release me from my duties immediately and I'll get back to writing my books while the country becomes a republic, Germany gathers her strength, and Russia waits in the wings.”

A tense silence filled the room.

No one moved.

Palmerston cleared his throat. “Get on with it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door opened and Swinburne bounded in.

“I say!” he shrilled. “I'm much more resistant to that Russian cow's emanations when I'm drunk. Do you think I should down a few brandies before we proceed?”

C harles Altamont Doyle was extremely confused. Two-or was it three?-days ago, he'd awoken slightly before dawn in a strange house and had stumbled down the stairs and out of the front door.

He'd walked aimlessly, enveloped by chaos. People were overturning vehicles and smashing windows, setting fire to shops and attacking one another, chanting something about the upper classes and a conspiracy of some kind.

His memory failed him. The past few hours were nothing but an alcohol-fueled blur.

He wandered through the mayhem and the rioters left him alone.

The fairies, however, did not.

They danced at the periphery of his vision, whispered in his ear, and followed him wherever he went. He cried and screamed for them to stop hounding him. He reasoned and demanded and begged.

They ignored his pleas.

He staggered into the Bricklayer's Arms on Bedford Street, intent on imbibing his tormentors into oblivion. Drink, when taken in copious quantities, always worked. Fairies, he'd discovered, were particularly allergic to burgundy.

The pub was heaving with all manner of lowly types but that didn't matter because in recent weeks the working classes had looked with great favour upon the Rakes. As one man had said to him: “You hoity-toity types need teachin’ a blimmin’ lesson, mate, but since you be one o’ them Rake geezers, the only fing what I'm gonna teach yer is ‘ow ter git legless!”

Glass after glass was purchased for him. Doyle emptied them assiduously, and the next thing he knew he was waking up in a doorway halfway down a dark, mist-swathed alley.

How much time had passed? He didn't know. He could hear shouts and screams and violence in the near distance.

He went back to sleep.

The fairies came skipping into his dreams.

“It is in thy blood to see us,” they told him. “It was in thy father's and it is in thy sons’.”

He awoke again. Hauled himself upright. Staggered onward.

“God in heaven,” he slurred. “Are they going to plague my boys, too?”

Young Innes already showed signs of levelheadedness. Perhaps he would resist his tormentors, but little Arthur-dear little imaginative Arthur!-how would he cope?

The memory of his children and his wife and his inability to keep them brought the tears to his eyes. He began to weep and couldn't stop.

Time, chopped and jumbled, went by. Streets tumbled past. Smoke. Steam. Turmoil.

Doyle found himself in another grubby backstreet and another filthy tavern. As before, a boisterous crowd willingly financed his raging alcoholism.

Despite the wine, the fairies started to skip around his feet again. Either they were getting stronger or he was getting weaker.

He drank and walked and drank and cried and drank and ranted and, quite suddenly, Big Ben was chiming midnight and he was aware of his surroundings.

Clarity!

There was something he had to do, a place he had to be, an urge he couldn't defy.

Doyle found himself on the outskirts of the Strand. It was closed off and secured by a police cordon. Access and egress were impossible from Trafalgar Square in the west all the way to Fleet Street in the east.

He had no idea why he wanted to get onto the famous thoroughfare but the determination to do so was all-consuming.

Kingsway and Aldwych were blocked, as were the various roads abutting the main street from the north and those leading up to it from the Thames, to the south. Only Bridewell Alley had been overlooked, due, perhaps, to its extreme narrowness and the fact that it was clogged with rubbish.

Doyle slipped into it, tottered along its length, and lurched out into the wide street beyond. The Strand had once been among London's most glamorous playgrounds but now broken glass crunched underfoot and many of its buildings were gutted, blackened, and windowless.

It was teeming with thousands of Rakes and wraiths. The latter, Doyle was used to. He himself had ventured out in spirit form on countless occasions in recent months. The corporeal bodies, though, unnerved him. Their milky eyes, bluish-grey skin, and dragging walk spoke of the grave. Indeed, the air was heavy with the cloying odour of putrefying flesh.

He kept his eyes downcast and shoved his way past them until he reached a grand old edifice, undamaged by the rioting. Only vaguely aware of what he was doing, he stumbled into the opulent structure and ascended five flights of stairs. He banged on a door and entered.

Fairies darted between and around his ankles.

He sat at a table.

His hands were gripped.

Someone said, in a dry, husky voice, something about the greater good of mankind.

“The greater good of mankind,” he chanted, like an automaton. Then: “Freedom! Liberation! Anarchy! No God!”

“Thy shackles are unbreakable, soft skin,” a fairy whispered.

“Leave me alone,” he hissed, then aloud: “Rules must be broken! Propriety must be challenged! The status quo must be unbalanced! True liberty!”

“Slave to oppositions!” the fairy mocked. “There are but two eyes in thy head! Will the third not open for thee?”

The Russian woman materialised, just as she'd done many times before.

“Go forth, apostles,” she said. “Liberate the downtrodden and the oppressed.”

She reached out to touch him.

He knew what would happen, and he knew it had happened too many times before. This time would be the last. After so many separations, he was too exhausted for the rejoining.

He tried to say no.

He failed.

Her nebulous finger brushed his forehead.

Time distorted and space warped out of shape.

Somehow, impossibly, he was in two places at once.

He shuffled along the Strand, feeling heavy and sodden and empty and lonely and mindless and lost.

He also drifted, amorphously, elsewhere on the thoroughfare, and the Russian woman's force of will resonated like a church bell through what little substance this aspect of him possessed.

A fairy floated before his two sets of eyes-the corporeal ones and the formless ones.

“Thou hast fulfilled the role assigned to thee. Recurrence, not transcendence, shall come,” it tinkled.

“Leave me alone, you bloody lizard!” he snarled.

He wondered at his own words.

Lizard?

At the Trafalgar Square end of the Strand, Commander Krishnamurthy, his entire face mottled with bruises after his ordeal at Tichborne House, squinted through the dense atmosphere and addressed a gathering of constables.

“Now then, lads,” he said, “who's got a headache?”

More than half the men raised their hands.

“Me too. And let me tell you, I've had quite enough of it. So tonight we're going to sort it out. However, I'm afraid that, for some of you, the headache is going to get worse before it gets better. We're close to the source of the public disorder that's been disrupting the city these days past, and, whatever it is, it's going to wheedle its way into your brains to try to make a defector of you. You all know fellow constables who've gone absent without leave to join the rioters-”

The men muttered an acknowledgment, and one of them growled: “Bloody deserters!”

“No,” Krishnamurthy objected. “Their minds are being controlled-and, as I say, over the next few hours, it's likely that the same thing will happen to some of us.”

“No, sir!” the men protested.

“We have to be prepared for it. We don't want to be adding ourselves to the enemy forces, hey? So here are my orders, lads, and I pray I never have to tell you to do anything like this ever again: in the event that you notice one of your fellows supporting, or beginning to support, the opposition, take out your truncheon and clock him over the head with it!”

The constables looked at each other, perplexed.

“I mean it!” Krishnamurthy said. “If needs must, render your colleague unconscious. Knock him out! Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!” came the hesitant responses.

Krishnamurthy knew that not far away, at the top of Kingsway, Detective Inspector Honesty was giving the same speech to another gathering of constables, though probably in a rather more concise fashion, while in Fleet Street, Detective Inspector Trounce was doing the same.

The three groups of policemen were each about a hundred and fifty men strong. Much smaller teams were guarding the various minor routes into the Strand.

Krishnamurthy estimated that a force of a little over six hundred constables had congregated around the area. From what he'd seen so far, he suspected that at least four times that number of Rakes lurked inside the police cordon.

“Is this really all we can muster?” he muttered to himself. “I knew the force was haemorrhaging men but I'd no idea it was this bad!”

He peered into the rolling ground-level cloud. There was a full moon somewhere above, and its light gave the mist a weird and deceptively bright silvery glow. However, the shadows were dense, and, with most of the street's gas lamps destroyed, visibility was far worse than it seemed.

Sergeant Slaughter approached, stood beside him, and noted: “If it's not one thing, it's another, Commander.”

“What do you mean?”

“This murk, sir. There's been a lot fewer vehicles on the streets what with the rioting, so where's the bally steam coming from?”

“Hmm, that's a very good question!”

“Then, of course, the steam got mixed up with the smoke from the fires, so we got this dirty grey soup. But most of the fires in this area burned themselves out a good while ago. So, again, Commander: where's it coming from?”

Krishnamurthy suddenly became aware that his breath was clouding in front of his face.

“By jingo!” he exclaimed. “I hadn't realised! The weather's on the turn!”

“Crept up on us, didn't it!” Slaughter said. “The end of the heatwave, and about time, too. Except, it looks like the change has brought on a London particular.”

“Fog!” Krishnamurthy spat. “Curse it! That's exactly what we don't need!”

He heard the chopping of an approaching rotorchair.

“One of your squad, Commander?” Slaughter asked. “He's taking a risk, isn't he?”

“He'll be all right as long as he stays this side of the cordon. We're at the edge of the danger zone. If he flies past us and over the Strand-” He made a gesture with his hand, indicating something plunging downward.

“Hallo! He's landing!” Slaughter cried.

The miasma parted and men ran out of the way as the rotorchair descended, dropping like a stone and only slowing at the very last moment before lightly touching the cobbles and coming to rest. A man, wearing the Flying Squad uniform and with goggles covering his eyes, clambered out of the contraption and ran over to Krishnamurthy.

“Hello, sir!” he said, with a salute.

“Hallo, Milligan. What's the news?”

“Not good, I'm afraid. The rioting is most intense to the east of here, especially around the Bank of England, which is up in flames. As if that's not bad enough, the circle of disorder is fast approaching the East End.”

“Blast it!” Krishnamurthy whispered. He removed his peaked cap and massaged his temples. Once the madness touched the overcrowded Cauldron, all hell would break loose. If the East Enders began rioting, London would be lost.

“Milligan, gather together the patrols in the north and west and have them join you in the east. If it becomes necessary, fly low and use your pistols to fire warning shots at the rioters. Shoot a few men in the leg if you have to! Anything that might hold them at bay for a while.”

“Yes, sir!”

Milligan ran back to his machine, strapped himself in, and, with a roar of the engine, rose on a cone of steam and vanished into the fog. Seconds later, the chopping of the rotorchair's wings suddenly stopped, there was an instant of absolute silence, then the machine dropped straight back down out of the cloud and smashed into the road.

Krishnamurthy clutched Sergeant Slaughter's arm and looked at him with an expression of shock.

They ran to the wreckage. Constables joined them. The flying machine had turned upside down before hitting the ground. Milligan lay beneath it, mangled and dead.

Wordlessly, Krishnamurthy squatted and closed the man's eyes.

“What happened?” Slaughter asked.

“It seems our enemy has expanded the no-flying zone.”

“By the Lord Harry,” the sergeant muttered. “They must realise we're here.”

Krishnamurthy glanced back toward the Strand. “Damnation!” he said under his breath. “Come on, Swinburne! Hurry up!”

Charles Doyle was dead and he knew it.

Only the Russian bitch's force of will was keeping his carcass moving, his spirit self-aware.

Her words vibrated and throbbed in his mind: “Break free! Cast off your chains! Rise up and overthrow!”

They cut into him, were magnified through him as if he were a lens, then radiated outward, receding into the far distance, where they touched other astral bodies and were bounced farther on.

If only he could press his hands over his ears, block out that voice!

A tiny man with moth wings fluttered in front of his face and sang: “Prepare thyself!”

He tried to bat the fairy away but his hands were either without substance or too heavy and slow, it wasn't clear to him which.

A part of him coiled and writhed through the atmosphere near the Fleet Street end of the Strand, while the other part dragged itself along the pavement of Kingsway.

He was overwhelmed by a voracious hunger. It was not for food, nor even for alcohol. No. This rapacious craving was for the fulfillment of life!

For how long had he been tormented by this lack? His entire existence, it seemed. The opportunities he'd missed or wasted! He'd been so cautious, so afraid of making a mistake, that he hadn't done anything-instead, he'd escaped into the bottle, and now it was too late!

“I had life but I didn't live it!” he wept. “I want it back! Please, don't let me die like this!”

Something registered in his consciousness. There was a figure ahead, moving in the thickening fog. He could sense its warmth, its vitality. There were others beyond it, but this one was close.

A beating heart! Pulsating blood! Life!

He must have it! He must have it!

His corpse lurched forward, the arms reached out, the fingers curled into claws.

There came a distant shout: “Constable Tamworth! Come back! Don't wander from the group, man!”

Detective Inspector Honesty looked at his pocket watch. It was ten to three in the morning.

He felt weary.

He loved police work, mainly because he was very good at it, but at times like this his mind tended to drift to what he considered his true vocation: gardening. In his youth, he'd dreamed of becoming a landscape gardener, but his father, one of the original Peelers, had insisted that his boy follow him into the force and wouldn't hear otherwise. Honesty didn't begrudge the old man's stubbornness; policing had, after all, gained him respect, a secure job with prospects, and a loving young wife whom he'd met while on a murder case. He'd been able to buy a house with a large garden, too, and it was the envy of the neighbourhood, with its bright displays of flowers and finely trimmed lawn.

What, though, would his life have been like had he defied his father?

He remembered something Sir Richard Francis Burton had told him: that when Edward Oxford, the man they called Spring Heeled Jack, had altered time, original future history had become disconnected. It still existed-in the same way that, if you find yourself at a junction, taking road A won't cause road B to vanish-but it was inaccessible; there was no way back to the junction without a time-travelling device.

Did that mean that somewhere, some when, there was a Thomas Manfred Honesty, Landscape Gardener?

He hoped so. It was a strangely comforting thought.

It was ten to three.

His watch had stopped.

He shook it and tut-tutted.

Only a couple of minutes had passed, he was sure. The signal wouldn't come for at least another hour.

His men were restless and he was feeling the same way.

In front of the police cordon, Kingsway had faded from sight, obscured by the fog, which was obviously returning to London with a vengeance. The shambling figures, visible earlier, were now hidden, which made them seem even more uncanny and threatening.

“Dead Rakes,” he muttered, for the umpteenth time. “Damned peculiar.”

A constable approached and pointed wordlessly back at the men. Honesty looked and saw three wraiths swirling among them. The policemen were swiping at the ghosts with their truncheons, to no effect.

“Stop that!” he ordered. “Waste of time! Save your strength!”

They desisted, but one of the men looked at him, his face suddenly contorting with fury, and screamed: “Don't bloody well tell me what to do!”

“Constable Tamworth! At ease!”

“At ease yourself, you little jumped-up poseur! Who are you to give me orders?”

“Your commanding officer!”

“No, mate. I'll follow no one but Tichborne!”

Honesty sighed and turned to another man. “Sergeant Piper,” he ordered. “Your truncheon. Back of Tamworth's head. Now!”

Piper nodded and unhooked his truncheon from his belt.

“Not bloody likely!” Tamworth said. He took to his heels and vanished into the fog.

The detective inspector yelled after him: “Constable Tamworth! Don't wander from the group, man!”

A bubbling wail of terror answered him.

Three policemen broke away from the cordon and ran toward the sound.

“No! Menders! Carlyle! Patterson! Come back!”

“He's in trouble, sir!” Carlyle protested before plunging into the pall.

Honesty turned to the main group and bellowed: “Stay here! Move and I'll have your guts for garters! Come with me, Piper.”

He gritted his teeth and, with the sergeant, hurried after his men.

As they came into view, he saw Menders raise his arm, point his pistol at something, pull the trigger, and curse: “Jammed, damn the thing!”

He looked to where the constable had aimed and saw Tamworth sprawled on the ground. The man's jacket and shirt had been ripped aside and his stomach torn open. Squatting over him, hands buried in the policeman's intestines, was a thin, bearded, bespectacled dead man. The corpse looked up, moaned, and stood. Entrails oozed from his hands and fell to the cobbles. “My apologies,” he said. “I need life.”

“Mary, mother of God!” exclaimed Menders. He threw his pistol and it bounced off the bearded man's forehead.

Sergeant Piper whispered, “Useless. You can't kill a bloody stiff!”

“Piper, stay with me,” Honesty commanded. “The rest of you, behind the cordon, now. That's an order.”

Menders swallowed, gave a hesitant nod, and started to back away from the bearded man, who stood swaying, as if uncertain whether or not to collapse to the ground and admit his demise.

“A bloody stiff,” Piper repeated. “But still bleedin’ well movin’.”

A top-hatted, well-dressed cadaver suddenly emerged from the cloud beside them, grabbed Menders by the shoulders, and sank his teeth into the constable's throat before dragging him out of sight.

Constable Carlyle saw his colleague die, let loose a high-pitched scream, panicked, fumbled for his police whistle, raised it to his lips, and started blowing long, loud, repetitive blasts.

“That's the signal!” a constable named Lampwick announced.

“Impossible!” Trounce snapped. “It's too early.”

He and his men were close to the smoldering skeleton of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which had burned to the ground the day before. The rioters enjoyed setting fire to taverns as much as they enjoyed drinking in them. Judging by the stench, on this occasion they'd made the fatal misjudgement of combining the two activities.

“But listen to that whistle, sir! That can't be a mistake!”

“Constable Lampwick, we're expecting Mr. Swinburne to arrive via Waterloo Bridge, so the signal should more or less come from straight ahead. It sounds to me like the whistle-blower is with Detective Inspector Honesty's team on Kingsway.”

Trounce shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. He took off his bowler and gave it a hard slap.

Something wasn't right.

He shoved his hat back onto his head.

A decision had to be made.

What if he got it wrong?

The distant whistling stopped.

“Hell's bells,” he hissed under his breath.

What to do? What to do?

Trounce became very still for a moment.

He blinked.

The Scotland Yard man suddenly wheeled to face his men and bellowed: “Arm yourselves, lads. We're moving forward. Proceed with utmost caution. Do not, under any circumstances, mistake this for the Charge of the blessed Light Brigade, is that understood?”

There came a great many, “Yes, sirs.”

A hundred and fifty uniformed men took out their police-issue Adams revolvers, unhooked their truncheons, and, following Trounce, advanced slowly into the fog.

“Did you hear that, Commander?” Sergeant Slaughter asked.

“Yes, but it was ahead of time, farther away than it should be, and from the wrong direction, to boot!” Krishnamurthy replied, puzzled.

“It's the fog, sir. You know how it distorts things.”

“Humph!”

The commander of the Flying Squad couldn't stop thinking about Milligan. The man was a personal friend and had a wife and child. Witnessing his life terminated so abruptly and so senselessly had been shocking.

He sighed and forced the flier's death to the back of his mind. Duty first!

“Something must have happened,” he muttered. “So do we proceed into the Strand now or do we wait until the planned-for moment?”

“Maybe this is the planned-for moment, sir,” Slaughter suggested. “It's just come earlier than originally intended.”

Krishnamurthy clicked his tongue and considered a moment. He addressed his men: “We're going to wait. Ready yourselves. I want absolute silence. Keep your ears to the ground. Be prepared to move at a moment's notice!”

“Stop blowing that bloody whistle!”

Constable Carlyle stopped.

“You blithering idiot!” Detective Inspector Honesty growled. He stamped over to his subordinate. “You just ruined the whole-” He was brought up short by the sight of a sword blade projecting from the constable's chest. It slid back into the man's uniform and disappeared.

Blood spurted.

The whistle fell from Carlyle's mouth and tinked onto the road. The policeman followed it down.

From behind the body, a man shuffled out of the mist. He was a Rake, plainly, but he was also at least three days dead. His lower limbs were saturated with fluids and bulged horribly against his clothing. The swollen hands holding the sword, and the cane from which it had been unsheathed, possessed the sickening appearance of old uncooked sausages. His skin was the colour of earthworms, his sagging bottom lip dangled against his chin, and his eyes were turned up and sunken into their sockets.

“Awfully thorry,” he lisped. “That mutht be a terrible inconvenienth!”

There and then, Thomas Manfred Honesty decided he wanted to spend a great deal more of his time tending to his garden.

“More pink dahlias,” he muttered to himself, thinking about the state of his little plot's bottom border.

He drew his revolver.

“Yellow marigolds, perhaps.”

He aimed at the dead man's head.

“Blue geraniums.”

He squeezed the trigger. The gun jammed. He sighed, pocketed it, and hefted his truncheon.

“Perhaps marigolds.”

He stepped forward, knocked the sword blade aside, and bludgeoned the corpse's head once, twice, thrice, four times, until it flew apart in a spray of white bone, black clotted blood, and grey brain tissue. The cadaver crumpled and lay twitching.

“Good mulch!” Honesty muttered. “That's the secret.”

“Sir!” cried a voice behind him. He turned and saw Piper and Patterson backing away as more bodies loomed out of the miasma.

“Everyone advance!” he shouted to his team behind the cordon. “Guns don't work. Use your truncheons! On their heads. As hard as you can. Crush their skulls!”

Detective Inspector Honesty and Detective Inspector Trounce cautiously led their men toward the centre of the Strand, one team proceeding from the north, the other from the east.

As they penetrated the thickening fog, the walking dead, with sword-sticks drawn, came staggering out of it to meet them. They were well dressed, debonair, and faultlessly polite.

“I'm mortified,” one of them confessed as he jammed his fingers into a constable's eye sockets. “This really is despicable behaviour and I offer my sincerest apologies.”

“I say!” another exclaimed, plunging his blade into a man's abdomen. “What a terrible to-do!”

“It's all rather unseemly,” noted a third, urbanely, after spitting a chunk of flesh from his mouth. He looked at the throatless uniformed man he held slumped in his arms. “I do hope you won't consider me boorish.”

The constables swiped their truncheons, crunched skulls, and splattered lifeless brains, but they were badly outnumbered and, furthermore, were distracted by swooping wraiths.

The seeming ghosts wafted in and out of sight, sometimes almost solid, other times a mere suggestion, and every time one appeared, policemen nearby slumped and clutched their heads. More than a few suddenly turned, with the word “Tichborne” blurting out of their lips, and attacked their colleagues.

Police truncheons smacked down onto police heads. The Rakes weren't the only ones apologising.

The battle intensified.

“Don't hold back, lads!” Trounce shouted. “Have at ’em!”

He stepped aside as a svelte and fashionable but sagging and bluish corpse minced out of the pall and said: “What ho! Would you mind awfully if I took your life, old thing? I seem to have mislaid my own. Jolly careless of me, what!”

“Oh, bugger off, you ridiculous ass,” the detective snarled. He dodged the Rake's blade and swung his truncheon into the side of the man's head.

The dandy staggered and protested: “Rotten show, old man!”

The detective hit him again, sending him to his knees.

“Really! This isn't at all cricket!”

“Shut the hell up,” Trounce hissed, and bashed his attacker's skull in. The Rake folded onto the cobbles and twitched weakly.

Detective Inspector Honesty emerged from the fog and nodded a greeting. Trounce returned it and warned: “Watch behind you!”

Honesty twisted and ducked under a blade. The Rake holding it was a badly moldering cadaver, perhaps one of the first to die. It stank, and when the Scotland Yard man punched it hard on the chin, its head simply fell off and split on the cobbles like an overripe melon. The body toppled after it.

Honesty turned away, his nose wrinkled in disgust.

“Where's Swinburne?” Trounce asked.

“I don't know.”

“Was the signal given early?”

“Yes. One of my men panicked.”

“Blast!”

“My fault.”

“I doubt it. Don't blame yourself. Can we hold them off until he arrives?”

“No choice. Burton's depending on it.”

Trounce grunted his agreement, stepped away from his fellow officer, gripped the handle of his truncheon with both hands, and swiped it into the ear of an attacking Rake. The corpse stumbled and fell. The detective stepped onto its chest, heaved himself over, and swung his weapon upward into the chin of another dead man. The head snapped back, came forward, and was met by a crushing blow to the forehead. The Rake grabbed at the detective's arm but missed, and the truncheon came arcing back and impacted against the carcass again. Bone shattered.

“Lie-” Trounce grunted, putting his full strength into a fourth blow “-down!”

The Rake tottered, swayed, and fell.

There was a loud smack and fragments of flesh, bone, and hair showered over the Scotland Yard man. He looked back in time to see a headless body fall. Constable Lampwick stood beyond it, bloodied truncheon in his hand.

“Sorry, sir,” he said. “It was about to jump on you.”

“Much obliged. I'll send you the laundry bill in the morning.”

The constable smiled, grimaced, clutched his head, raised his weapon, and yelled: “Not guilty! Tichborne has been cheated, you bastard!”

He swung his club at Trounce's head. The detective yelled, dodged backward, fell over the corpse he'd just downed, rolled, jumped to his feet, and threw his truncheon. It hit Lampwick square between the eyes and the man collapsed, unconscious.

“I'm sorry, son.”

Honesty, meanwhile, had scooped up a second weapon, and, with a truncheon in each hand, was ducking under clutching hands, swiping at kneecaps, and crippling his opponents. Five of his men, staying close to him, were then finishing the job by flattening heads.

It became a routine, almost rhythmic: dodge-duck- Smack! Smack! -pulverise. Dodge-duck- Smack! Smack! -pulverise.

“Winter jasmine,” Honesty declared. “Very cheerful.”

Dodge-duck- Smack! Smack! -pulverise.

“And maybe wisteria. A good climber for the back fence.”

Charles Altamont Doyle's astral body drifted through the fog and mingled with Commander Krishnamurthy's men. Some took a swing at him, which didn't affect him at all, while others seemed to hear the voice that reverberated through what little essence he possessed. “Rebel!” it urged them. “Turn against your oppressors!” They put their hands to their heads, winced, and assaulted their fellows. Fights broke out.

The other part of Doyle was at the junction of the Strand, Aldwych, and Lancaster Place, at the end of Waterloo Bridge. Despite having a dent in his cheek where a truncheon had caught him, he still moved and he still hungered. He could not resist his appetite; others had life, and he wanted it!

A policeman charged at him and slashed at his forehead. Doyle shifted and the weapon thudded down onto his shoulder. He felt nothing, though he heard his collarbone crack. He clutched his attacker's wrist and slammed his other hand into the man's elbow, which snapped with a nasty crunch. The policeman let loose a scream. Doyle released the arm and wrapped his fingers around the man's neck. He started to squeeze. The scream gurgled into silence.

“Give me your life!” Doyle moaned. “Please!”

At the edge of Trafalgar Square, Commander Krishnamurthy listened to the growing sounds of battle and made a decision. He ordered his men to advance.

From the north and south sides of the Strand, smaller police teams also responded to the intensifying conflict and moved into the fog.

Tock!

Krishnamurthy's truncheon bounced from the back of a constable's skull. It was the fifth of his men he'd had to personally render unconscious.

There were wraiths everywhere, and the Flying Squad man could feel them digging into his mind, trying to wheedle their way inside to take control. His headache was almost overpowering.

“Do your duty, old son!” he advised himself. “Don't give in to these bloody spooks.”

Despite the steady loss of men, he still had a reasonably sized force at his command, and he was leading them at a steady pace toward the end of Lancaster Place.

Now Rakes, as well as wraiths, began to appear out of the miasma, and combat became rather more deadly. Five men went down before the Flying Squad commander realized that not a single pistol was functioning. The only way to beat the walking corpses was to obliterate their heads. He yelled the order, and a few moments later gore was spraying everywhere.

Krishnamurthy forgot his headache as he started to exact vengeance for Milligan's death.

Amid the carnage, as his team penetrated deeper into the battle zone, he caught sight of Trounce, who was laying about himself like a wild man, and Honesty, who was industriously crippling the shambling monstrosities.

Krishnamurthy realised that the three main groups of policemen had made it to the rendezvous point as planned. However, unlike Honesty and Trounce, he didn't know that the signal whistle had been sounded by mistake or that the advance had been made some considerable time ahead of schedule. Now, as the police teams merged, it dawned on him that something had gone badly wrong.

Swinburne was supposed to be here. The opposition should be on its back foot by now. The police were meant to be in control of the situation.

They weren't.

“Hold fast,” he breathed. “Just hope the poet shows up.” He lashed out at a Rake and muttered: “A poet, by crikey! A blessed poet!”

Detective Inspector Honesty strode past, brandishing his weapons.

Krishnamurthy clearly heard his superior bark: “Petunias.”

“Did you say Tichborne, sir?” he asked.

“No, Commander. Are you all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give them hell.”

Krishnamurthy nodded and winced. His head was filled with pain.

“Excuse me,” said a refined voice. He turned. A Rake stood beside him. “How does it work, old bean?”

The commander stepped back. “What?”

The Rake, not long deceased by the look of him, said: “The thing of it is, you have life. Unfortunately, I don't. Regrettably, that means I have to take yours. What I can't bally well work out is where to look for it after I've run you through.” He showed Krishnamurthy his rapier. “Can you advise?”

The Flying Squad man eyed the sword point, which was poised about three inches from his face.

“Um-”

The Rake's head flew apart, the rapier dropped, and the body folded.

“This isn't a bloody debating society, Commander!” Trounce growled, standing over the prone corpse. He wheeled and stalked off into the mist, shouting orders and encouragement to his men.

Krishnamurthy watched him go. “Snooty bastard,” he muttered.

Dodge-duck- Smack! Smack! -nothing.

Honesty straightened and looked around. His five-strong team of head-pulverisers had been set upon by a large group of Rakes. The constables were fighting for their lives.

“Not very sporting!” exclaimed the corpse at his feet. “Hitting me in the knees like that. How am I supposed to toddle about?”

Honesty ignored the question and took a step toward his men. The fallen Rake grabbed his ankle and unbalanced him. He hit the ground face-first.

“I demand an apology!” said the Rake.

The detective sat up, twisted around, and thumped a truncheon onto the cadaver's head.

“Ouch! Good grief, man! What sort of an apology is that?”

The weapon descended again, harder.

“You should go,” said the Rake, in a slurred voice. “I'll just lie here for a bit.”

His head caved in under the third blow and he lay still.

“Purple flowering laburnum,” said Honesty. “Very hardy. Grows anywhere.”

He got to his feet.

An arm wrapped around his neck and yanked him backward. One of his truncheons was wrenched from his hand and thrown into the fog. He felt teeth sink into his left shoulder and tried to yell in pain but his throat was too constricted. He struggled, his vision blurring. Bells began to chime insistently in his ears.

He pitched sideways and hit the ground. His assailant's grip broke and Honesty rolled free, lay on his back, and gulped at the dirty air.

A foot slammed down onto his hand. He cried out as his fingers broke around the grip of his remaining truncheon. A body thumped onto his chest, its knees on his shoulders. Hands seized his neck and tightened around it like a band of metal.

The ringing in his ears increased, yet, somewhere behind the cacophony, he heard an approaching rhythmic thunder, too.

The ground started to tremble beneath his back.

Through a red haze of pain, Honesty looked up and saw that his assailant was the bearded man with the dent in his cheek.

Detective Inspector Trounce was covered from head to foot in gore. His truncheon dripped brain tissue. His mouth had frozen into a ferocious snarl and his eyes were blazing. He stood on a pile of motionless Rakes and waited for the next one to come. It was not a long wait. A man lurched into view and ran toward him. He was dressed in evening attire and there was a monocle jammed into his right eye socket. He'd obviously already been in battle, for his jaw was broken and hung loosely with the tongue flapping over it. It didn't matter to him; he was already dead.

The Rake scrambled over his fallen fellows. Trounce sprang to meet him and swept his weapon down, double-handed, onto the bare head. The skull broke with a horrible noise. Trounce hit it again and again and again.

The Rake went limp and still.

There was a moment of respite.

The Scotland Yard man wiped his sleeve over his eyes and peered around. Through the dense murk, he could see shadowy figures locked in combat. A great many constables lay dead or wounded in the road. Rakes milled about.

“How many heads have I smashed in tonight?” he rasped. “And still the bloody stiffs keep coming!”

He turned his head and saw Detective Inspector Honesty sprawled in the road, his face turning blue as a Rake, kneeling on his chest, throttled the life out of him.

Trounce took a step, lost his footing, slipped, and slid across corpses to the cobbles. He scrambled to his feet and made to run to his friend, but he'd taken no more than a single stride before two wraiths suddenly wafted into view and grabbed him by the arms.

“No!” he croaked, as, struggling furiously, he was dragged into the fog, borne away from his dying friend.

The wraiths came to a halt as Krishnamurthy emerged from the haze. The ghostly figure of a top-hatted man loomed behind the commander.

“Watch out!” Trounce cried. “And save Honesty! He's back there being strangled to death!”

“I'm sorry!” the Flying Squad man gasped. “I-I can't-can't-” Lifting his truncheon high, he approached his superior. “Tichborne is-is innocent!”

“Krishnamurthy!” Trounce yelled. “Pull yourself together, man!”

“The op-oppressors must-must die!”

He swung his weapon back, ready to sweep it down onto Trounce's head.

Thunder sounded: Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom!

The ground vibrated.

A police whistle shrieked repeatedly.

A powerful gust of wind suddenly swept over Trounce, and the two wraiths lost hold of him. They were ripped apart and blown away. Behind Krishnamurthy, the top-hatted apparition disintegrated.

The commander looked over Trounce's shoulder, his eyes wide with astonishment, his mouth gaping.

The detective turned.

“Bloody hell!” he gasped. “I'm seeing things!”

It came pounding across Waterloo Bridge, and when it entered the Strand, the cobbles cracked and powdered beneath its hammering hooves.

Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom!

It was a colossal horse, a mega-dray, and on its back, looking as tiny as a child's doll, sat Algernon Swinburne, a Pre-Raphaelite knight, his fiery red hair streaming behind his head, a tremendously long, thin lance gripped in his right hand.

He was blowing enthusiastic blasts on a police whistle, and, perched on his shoulder, a little blue and yellow parakeet was gaily screeching insults at the top of its voice.

As the enormous steed came charging out of the fog, the base of a pantechnicon, to which it was harnessed, followed. The wagon presented the incredulous spectators with an even more fantastic vision, for mounted vertically upon it was a huge spinning wheel. It was similar to a waterwheel in construction, though built from lightweight materials, and it was revolving at a tremendous speed on well-oiled bearings, driven by the twenty greyhounds that raced flat out on its inner surface. Miss Isabella Mayson stood beside the contraption and encouraged the runners with claps and whoops and morsels of food.

From the wheel, a series of simple but extremely well-designed gears and crankshafts drove a mammoth pair of bellows up and down, and snaking away from the nozzle, a tube ran up to the top of a tower at the rear of the wagon and into the back of a cannon-shaped barrel. This was mounted on a swivel and was being aimed at wraiths by Constable Bhatti.

The whole contrivance was a masterpiece of engineering, for it depended upon neither springs nor complex machinery, and was so simple in design that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had been able to build it in a matter of hours.

As the mega-dray pulled the wagon onto the wide thoroughfare, Bhatti directed the jets of air hither and thither, and, though his range was extremely limited, the wraiths caught by the strong blasts were ripped out of existence.

A great cheer went up from constables as they scattered out of the horse's path.

Detective Inspector Trounce and Commander Krishnamurthy looked on in amazement as Algernon Swinburne lowered his lance and aimed its tip at the back of a Rake's head.

Charles Altamont Doyle pressed his dead fingers into Detective Inspector Honesty's neck.

“Squeeze!” he said. “Squeeze the life out of you and into me!”

A fairy pranced at the periphery of his consciousness.

“Recurrence comes!” it sang.

“No! Life comes!” Doyle whispered. “Start again. Get it right. Mend my mistakes.”

He felt something touch the back of his neck. From the perspective of his astral body, which drifted through the fog nearby, he could see that it was a long lance held by a small man on a big horse.

His head burst into flames.

“Now!” said the fairy.

The fire ate into his face and scalp, clawed hungrily into the bone and tissue beneath.

He rolled off the police officer and collapsed onto the ground, thrashing wildly as the flames gouged deeper and deeper into his dead flesh.

The lance touched him again, on the chest, and his entire body ignited.

He felt himself being consumed, found that he could struggle no more, lay still, and allowed the conflagration to suck him into oblivion.

Nearby, swirling through the fog, he watched and felt himself burn.

“No!” he thought. “What about all the things I still have to do?”

A powerful gust of air tore into him and ripped him apart.

Charles Altamont Doyle dispersed into the atmosphere and ceased to exist.

Trounce and Krishnamurthy saw the Rake erupt into flames and roll off Honesty. Their friend crawled weakly away from the blazing corpse.

They hurried forward and dragged him to safety.

Trounce looked up and noticed that four cylinders were slung over the mega-dray's haunches. From them, tubes ran up into the hilt of the lance.

“Inflammable gas,” he suggested.

“I would venture so,” Krishnamurthy replied. “Some sort of flame-throwing weapon. Detective Inspector, I don't know how to apologise. They got into my head. I couldn't control myself.”

“Accepted, lad. Say no more about it. Detective Inspector Honesty is injured-let's get him onto the back of that wagon.”

They helped their colleague to his feet and guided him toward the pantechnicon.

“Lily of the valley,” Honesty wheezed. “The flower of the poets.”

A Rake approached them, waving his rapier. His eyes had retreated far into their sockets and his skin was horribly loose, as if the flesh were sloughing off the bones beneath.

He attempted to address them, but his tongue and lips were too slack and only a horrible moan emerged.

“I'll get this,” Trounce said.

“Allow me,” came Swinburne's voice from above.

The lance touched the decaying, sword-wielding corpse, which combusted, fell to its knees, and toppled onto its face, burning fiercely.

“What ho, fellows!” Burton's assistant shouted enthusiastically.

“Hallo, Swinburne!” said Trounce. “Honesty is injured!”

“Oafish knuckle-dragger!” Pox squawked.

“Hoist the old fellow onto the wagon. Miss Mayson will keep him comfortable until we can get him to safety.”

Trounce and Krishnamurthy lifted their comrade and carried him to the pantechnicon.

“His throat,” said Trounce to Isabella Mayson, as they laid him on the flatbed.

“I think his fingers are broken, too,” Krishnamurthy noted.

The young woman nodded. “Don't worry, I'll make sure he's comfortable.”

Up on the horse, Swinburne whispered something to Pox and watched as the brightly plumaged bird launched itself from his shoulder and disappeared into the fog. He looked down at his friends and called: “In the absence of litter-crabs, what say you we clean up this street ourselves, hey, chaps?”

The two police officers brandished their truncheons.

“Ready when you are,” Trounce grunted.

H igh above the fog, glinting silver in the moonlight, an ornithopter flapped, circling the Strand at a distance of two miles. A long, irregular ribbon of white steam curved away behind it, marking its course through the sky.

It was controlled by the clockwork man of Trafalgar Square, and, in the saddle at his back, sat Sir Richard Francis Burton.

The flying machine soared northward over the Thames, banked to the left as the Cauldron slipped past beneath it, and headed east until it was over King's Cross.

A parakeet suddenly fluttered out of the cloud below and caught up with the machine. It landed on Burton's shoulder.

“Hello, Pox.”

“Lice-infested chump!” the bird whistled. Then: “Message from Algernon Fuddlewit Swinburne. The game has commenced. Message ends.”

Burton addressed his companion: “It's time. Take us down.”

His valet yanked at a lever, sending the ornithopter skewing through the air as it veered sharply to the south. He switched off the engine and the trail of steam ended abruptly. The machine's wings straightened, and it began to glide down toward the blanket of cloud.

“Here we go,” Burton muttered. He placed a hand on the brass man's shoulder. “Now we shake things up. This time, the police are the decoy and you are the main event!”

They sank through the chilly night air.

“Whatever might happen to me,” Burton said, “you must complete this mission. However, I have to tell you, I'm acting more on intuition than intellect. Many would think it madness to place so much faith in a dream and I might be completely wrong in my reading of the situation. Do you at least understand my reasoning?”

The brass man nodded his canister-shaped head.

Cloud enveloped them.

Burton sent Pox back to Swinburne.

He checked his harness. He was tightly strapped in.

“I hope your calculations are accurate,” he said.

Another lever was pulled. All along the back edges of the wings, wide but thin metal feathers emerged. The machine's nose rose and its silent, powerless descent slowed dramatically.

The king's agent was shaken by a thrill of fear. He could see nothing but thick vapour. For all he knew, they were seconds away from smashing into the ground.

He reached down and released four grappling hooks from the fuselage. They were attached to it by means of long, thin chains. He held two hooks in each hand and waited.

In front of him, a mechanical arm rose. At its end, three fingers and a thumb were extended.

The thumb curled in.

Four.

A finger folded.

Three.

Another.

Two.

The last.

One.

The roof of a large edifice rose up out of the miasma. With bone-jarring suddenness, the ornithopter thumped onto it and skidded across its surface, metal squealing, sparks showering outward.

Feeling as if he was being shaken half to death, Burton threw a grapple; then the second; then the third.

The right wing collided with a chimney stack, sending the machine slewing sideways as bricks exploded and bounced around it.

He flung the last grapple overboard, hung on tight, and called upon Allah.

The vehicle grated across the roof, hit the parapet, went straight through it, and plummeted over the edge.

There was a moment of weightless terror, a shriek of stressed metal, and a tremendous jolt that caused Burton's face to slap into the back of his valet's head.

He blacked out.

Disorientation.

Eyes coming back into focus.

The harness was digging into his chest. He sucked in a shuddering breath, shook his head to clear it, and looked to his left and right. The ornithopter was hanging against the side of the building, between the big, flat, white letters “A” and “R” of the sign, VENETIA ROYAL HOTEL. The machine's wings were buckled, and the left one had broken through a window.

Screams and shouts echoed up through the fog. There was obviously a battle occurring in the Strand below.

“Good show!” the king's agent muttered.

He braced his feet against moldings in the fuselage, gripped the lip of the saddle, checked that his cane was still securely thrust through a loop in the waistband of his trousers, and unbuckled his harness.

“Are you all right?” he asked the man of brass.

He received a nodded response.

“I'm going up. Follow.”

Transferring his grasp to one of the taut chains from which the flying machine hung, he swung free and pulled himself up hand-over-hand until he reached the roof. With a sense of relief, he hauled himself onto its flat surface.

Moments later, the clockwork man joined him.

Burton saw that three of the four grapples had caught fast amid brickwork. The fourth had crashed through a skylight and jammed against its frame.

“That's our means of entry,” he said, pacing over and looking down through the broken glass into an unlit room. “It's some sort of presentation hall. Slightly too long a drop for me, but you'll make it. Get down there and drag over a table for me to land on.”

This was done, and from the large room, Burton and his clockwork companion passed through a door into a hallway.

The Venetia Royal Hotel was dark and silent, and the top floor, which consisted entirely of offices, meeting rooms, and storerooms, was entirely abandoned.

They came to a wide staircase and descended to the next floor. Burton looked up at the ceiling. There was something clinging to it. It reminded him of the thick jungle vines he'd seen in Africa, except that it was pulsing and writhing and, somehow, no matter how hard he peered at it, it evaded proper focus, as if it wasn't entirely a substance of this world.

It was ectoplasm. It exuded through the top of the double doors leading to the corridors and rooms, snaked across the ceiling, and disappeared into the stairwell.

“Is it coming up the stairs or going down, I wonder?” he murmured.

He stepped over to the doors and pushed them open. Gas lamps, in brackets on the walls, illuminated the hallway beyond.

There were eight residential rooms on each side of this particular passage. Their doors were open. Ectoplasm twisted out of each one and joined the thick limb of stuff on the ceiling.

Burton clenched his jaw nervously, crept up to the first chamber, and peered in. Its furniture had been pushed aside but for a large table. Seven chairs stood around it. Only one was occupied. The remains of a man sat in it. He was mummified, his skin shrunken and desiccated, his sharp cheekbones poking through. His head was thrown back and ectoplasm was issuing from his mouth and rising up to the ceiling.

“Bismillah!” Burton whispered, entering. “There was a seance, and it doesn't look like this fellow survived it!”

He bent and looked at the man's face, then jerked back with a cry of shock, bumping into his companion, as the mummy's eyes flicked open and rolled sightlessly.

“Alive, by God! How long has the poor devil been here?”

He turned to his valet. “I have a horrible feeling it's going to be the same story in the other rooms.”

It was. On the seventh floor of the Venetia, in every room, there was a table at which a seance had been performed, and at every table there sat one shrunken, dried-out man, with head back and ectoplasm streaming out of him up to the ceiling and out into the corridor.

When they descended to the sixth floor, they found the same, though the ectoplasm was more abundant.

On the fifth, it was even thicker and glowed slightly with a greenish-hued light. It had crawled down the walls, forming strange organic shapes reminiscent of ribs and veins and quivering organs.

The fourth floor was worse: walls, ceilings, fixtures, and fittings were so completely buried beneath the pulsating substance that it seemed to Burton as if he and his valet were making their way through the arteries of a living organism.

Cautiously, the king's agent led the way to the stairwell. The route down to the third floor resembled the gullet of a mythical beast.

“Stepping into the dragon's maw,” Burton muttered.

He took the step.

Something touched his mind.

“ You should be dead! ” a voice hissed inside his skull.

He felt the devastating force of Madam Blavatsky's presence.

“My apologies,” he said, aloud. “Alive and kicking. I thought I'd find you here.”

“ And pray tell me, malchik moi, what led you to me? ”

“I was told, some months ago, that this hotel had been fully booked by a private party. It's a big place, so the party must have been very substantial indeed; and since the Venetia is slap bang in the middle of the Strand, and the Strand is at the centre of the disturbances-well, you can see why I concluded that the Rakes were here with their elusive new leader.”

“ Not all the Rakes, but a great many, yes. Come, stand in my presence. Bring your preposterous toy with you. ”

Burton moved down the stairs. The steps were almost entirely concealed by the thick mediumistic substance, which felt spongy and unstable beneath his boots. He gingerly placed one foot after the other, struggling to maintain his balance. The clockwork man followed.

Blavatsky poked and prodded at his mind.

“ My my! You are so much stronger, lyubimiy moi!”

“Beware of the brains you invade, bitch. Do you not think I learned just as much about you as you did of me the last time?”

“ Then you know that I lack your vulnerability. ”

“You have your own flaws.”

“ Is that so? Then it's to be a duel, is it, Gaspadin Burton? ”

“If you wish.”

“ If I wish? I relish the prospect! Idi ko mne, moi miliy! You will find me in the library on this floor. ”

At the bottom of the stairs, Burton turned to the left, the direction from which Blavatsky's power was emanating, and passed through open double doors into a hallway. The ectoplasm had made the passage almost tubular, and, as he and his mechanical attendant progressed along it, it constricted to such a degree that they had to proceed on their hands and knees.

The temperature plummeted. A weird silence pressed against his ears, as if he'd suddenly become deaf, and an odd sense of timelessness muddled his senses.

The tunnel tapered. It felt fleshy and damp and it glowed a sickly green. Burton squirmed forward on his stomach, cursing under his breath.

“Do you mean to crush me, woman?”

“ No, malchik moi. Let me help you. ”

The ectoplasm started to exude a clear slimy substance.

Burton felt his companion tangling against his legs as the tunnel behind them suddenly contracted. They were both pushed forward, sliding along the clammy pipe, picking up speed, helplessly out of control. Ahead, a sphincter-like opening dilated. Burton shot through it and splatted onto the floor in a high-ceilinged room. The brass man thudded onto his back.

They lay sprawled in a heap, dripping slime.

“Damnation,” Burton grumbled. “That wasn't very dignified.”

“Dabro pazhalavat, Gaspadin Burton. What is this device you have brought with you? ”

“He's my valet,” the king's agent responded, clambering to his feet and surveying the chamber.

A liquid chuckle gurgled in his head. “ It is good that you have him. The staff here has been very unreliable of late. I cannot remember when I last saw a concierge or even a maid! ”

The library was completely buried beneath huge ribs of glowing ectoplasm. They curved down from a big tangle of material in the centre of the ceiling, over the walls, across the floor, and melded together in its middle, where they rose up to form a slender three-foot-high plinth. At its top, delicate fingers of the material held a plum-sized black diamond-the Tichborne stone. The South American Eye of Naga.

It hummed faintly.

“ You realise, of course, that I have allowed your companion to approach merely to satisfy my curiosity. ”

“I was counting on it.”

“ Mechanisms of that sort do not normally function in my presence. ”

“You are far too confident in your abilities.”

“ I am? ”

The king's agent turned to his valet and snapped: “Get the diamond!”

The brass man bounded across to the plinth, reached for the stone, and stopped dead.

A peal of laughter sounded from the ceiling.

Burton looked up.

“Fool!” Madam Blavatsky crowed, her voice deep and resonant. “You think you can defy me with clockwork?”

She was enmeshed in a snarled knot of ectoplasmic tubes, naked; a middle-aged thick-bodied woman, suspended upside down above the plinth, with her arms stretched out horizontally. Her skull had cracked and broken open like an eggshell pushed apart from the inside, and bits of it hung loose. Her swollen brain bulged horribly out of the fissures. Thin ribbons of grey wrinkled tissue dangled down, entwining with her long brown hair and brushing against the diamond below.

Her fathomless black eyes seemed to suck at Burton's very soul, so dreadfully intense were they; they stabbed him like pins transfixing a captured moth.

“You are defeated, Gaspadin Burton. Soon the king will fall, the poor will flood out of your East End, and London will belong to the working classes. The disorder will spread from the capital like a disease. It will infect the entire country! Think of all those downtrodden, exploited, destitute workers in Britain's great manufacturing cities-Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds-where civilised man is lured from his peaceful labours in the countryside and turned back almost into an animal! What barbarous indifference they have suffered! How passionate shall be their revolt!”

Burton snorted in disdain. “Don't try to hide your agenda behind false philanthropy, madam! You care naught for Britain's workers. You regard them as a means to a nefarious end, and nothing more. You've made your intentions quite clear!”

“I do it to save Mother Russia.”

The king's agent took three long strides and reached for the Eye of Naga.

“You do it because you're a demented meddler and you have no control over yourself!” he barked.

“Keep back!”

Blue lightning crackled from Blavatsky's hands, hit Burton in the chest, and knocked him off his feet. He thumped down onto his back. For a second, it felt as if the flesh was boiling off his bones, but the torment passed in an instant, and, with an involuntary groan, he pushed himself up and faced his opponent again.

Her voice echoed in his skull: “ Pah! There is no satisfaction in wounding your body, but your mind, malchik moi- ah!-what great value you place upon it, and how fragile it is! ”

She drove a pitiless spike of shame into that part of his memory where regrets and disappointments dwelt, expecting to cripple him as she had in their previous encounter.

Burton reeled and groaned, but then steadied himself and turned his awareness inward. His Dervish meditation had fortified and strengthened his mind to such a degree that her assault did no damage, but rather gave him a route through which to respond. He thrust mortification along the mediumistic channel that linked them, stabbing it deeply into her preening arrogance.

She recoiled and cried out, shocked at the power of his riposte.

“ Oh bozhe! You bite back! ”

“Stay out of my head!”

“I will do as I please, rebenok. And conceit?” She laughed. “You think that is my weakness? Nyet! Eto vlast! It is strength!”

The king's agent shook his head. “No, madam. The love of one's own excellence serves only to obscure one's own mistakes.”

“I have made no mistakes!”

Burton looked into the woman's eyes and treated her to one of his characteristically savage smiles.

“Haven't you?”

She attacked again, digging fear into his insecurities, but his qualms had been modified by the conception that weaknesses are, in fact, the seeds of future strength. She was easily repelled, and his response-doubt driven into her confidence-was devastatingly effective.

She moaned and twisted in her web of ectoplasm.

“This self-assurance of yours was not there before!” she gasped, and there was a hint of anxiety in her tone.

He felt her poking around his mind, preparing for another thrust. He pounced, locked her into position, and pierced her with a sharp edge of fear.

She screamed.

“That was breaking time followed by a prise de fer,” he said. “I learned it from an expert.”

Blavatsky hung silently and he saw that she was trembling.

“Good,” he said. “Perhaps now we can talk?”

“Speak,” she whispered.

“Your plan, madam, is defective for two reasons. The first is that you regard Russia's future as predestined; something fixed in time; a fate it is sure to suffer unless you interfere.”

“I watched it happen.”

“You watched a possibility, but there are many, many possible futures.”

“You are wrong! I have seen what I have seen.”

“Does your certainty not seem a little peculiar to you? Destiny is far more malleable than you think!”

“You cannot know this!”

“But I do-and I shall show you how!”

He guided the writhing, invasive tendrils of her consciousness to a seemingly insignificant path in his own mind and pushed them along it into his recollections of Spring Heeled Jack.

Blavatsky absorbed the memories, and he felt her astonishment.

“ Oh bozhe! A man who jumped through time! How can this be possible? ”

“The point is this, madam: the time we are living in is not the time that was meant to be. Maybe, before Edward Oxford came back to change his past, Russia's prospects were far less tragic. We shall never know. His actions altered the course of future history for the entire world, and now you are seeking to do the same. If he can do it, and you can do it, then surely it's entirely possible that someone else will do it, too. In fact, I contend not only that anyone can do it, but that we all do! Destiny is not fixed. It is the ever-changing consequence of uncountable actions-actions undertaken by every single person on the face of the planet, each with a unique understanding of reality and of how to deal with it. Even the most obscure, uneducated, unimaginative nobody can, and does, make a difference.”

“Burton,” came a faint hiss from above, “I have to save Mother Russia.”

He looked at the suspended woman and shrugged. “Then you have to use your clairvoyance to predict every single action taken by every single person every minute of every day from now until whatever future date you decide that her fate has been fulfilled to your satisfaction. If you don't, then someone, somewhere, will do something that will modify the results you seek. It is inevitable. No single person can make future history entirely what he or she wishes.”

Blavatsky hung silently. Her black eyes flicked nervously from Burton, to the motionless clockwork man, to the quietly singing diamond, and back to Burton.

“All this for nothing?” she mouthed.

“As I said, your plan is defective for two reasons.”

“What is the second?”

Burton sighed and braced himself. “The second fault, Madam Blavatsky, is that it's not even your plan.”

“What?”

“No one-not even a lunatic like you-could possibly believe themselves exclusively capable of shaping future history. Not unless, that is, the history they're trying to manipulate is actually their own past.”

Bolts of etheric energy started to crackle around the woman's body. The library filled with the tang of ozone.

“I do not understand,” she whispered.

The king's agent paused, severed his mediumistic connection to her, and said: “I mean simply this. You consider yourself the puppeteer. The truth is: you're the puppet.”

Blavatsky suddenly arched her back and shrieked. Etheric energy crackled over her entire body. Blood sprang from her eyes, ears, and nose. It oozed out from her brain tissue and dribbled down onto the Eye of Naga.

She twisted and struggled and her scream rose in pitch then died to a bubbling gasp.

She hung limply, and for a moment, there was complete silence.

Her mouth opened.

A man's voice, deep and gurgling, heavily accented, and saturated with evil, came from it: “Very clever, tovarishch. You are correct. Man from future know history and can change history to make new future. Kukolnyi -you say puppet, da? -very useful!”

The king's agent gave a grim smile. “About time,” he said. “I was beginning to think you'd never stop hiding behind the woman, Grigori. She didn't even know you were there, did she?”

“ Nyet. ”

“All this while, thinking she was acting under her own volition, she's been doing your bidding. Tell me, how does it feel to have foreseen so clearly the manner of your own death?”

“I see assassination. See death. I think it… disappointing.”

“How soon? From your perspective, I mean.”

“Two years from now.”

“Then you are speaking from the year 1914?”

“ Da. But I must tell you: I am to make different-umm-schedule for us both. My death, I vill delay; yours vill be much more soon, nyet? ”

“ Nyet,” Burton replied.

Grigori Rasputin chuckled maliciously.

The rivulets of blood that had been trickling from Madam Blavatsky slowed to irregular drips. Burton could see that the woman was close to death.

“So let me venture a guess,” he said. “Your clairvoyance revealed to you the circumstances of your future betrayal and demise, and the subsequent fate of your country. You could have saved yourself by simply avoiding the assassins, but still there would be Germany, still Nietzsche, and, in all probability, still more assassins. So you traced the history of the war back to its origins, seeking a way to alter its course, intending to prevent your own murder and the disaster that would befall Russia afterward.”

“Entirely correct, tovarishch.”

“It just so happened that while you were looking back through time, Madam Blavatsky was peering forward.”

“ Da. We touch.”

“And you projected your astral body into her mind.”

“ Da. It vas easy for such as Rasputin. In future, I have Eye of Naga. I use it to transfer into woman.”

“And to your good fortune, it just so happened that she existed at exactly the point in history where the seeds of the war were planted, if you'll forgive the unintentional pun.”

“Pun? Vot is that?”

“I refer to Richard Spruce's eugenically altered plant life, the devastation of Ireland, and his and the Eugenicists’ subsequent defection to Germany.”

“Ah. So.”

“And the Naga diamonds, Grigori-you say you have one?”

“Cambodian and African stones are, in war, used to- povyshenia? ”

“Enhance.”

“-minds. I have African. Germany has others. Of South American diamond, nyet, it is not found in my time. I make Blavatsky find it in yours.”

“Leading her to the Tichbornes. So, the African Eye will be found, will it? Interesting.”

“Found by you.”

“What?”

“No matter. I change that. You die today.”

“I think not.”

Rasputin laughed, a nasty sound. “I congratulate you, tovarishch ,” he said. “You are-umm-impressive. Speech you give Blavatsky-very interesting. No person can make future entirely vot they vish. Da. Da. This maybe is true. But I, Grigori Rasputin, am already in future. I speak to you now from future. Votever I change in past, still, future I am in. You die. You do not find African Eye. Yet here I have African Eye. It is-umm-big paradox, nyet? ”

“An intriguing situation,” Burton mused. “Whereas Edward Oxford travelled to his past and accidentally wiped himself out of the future, you are seeking to change the past from the future. You know that whatever your interference here, the consequences will never threaten your existence there, for if it did, how can you be interfering?”

The king's agent stepped closer to the black diamond.

“You must feel indestructible,” he said.

“No man can stop me.”

“Really?”

Burton extended his hand toward the stone and was instantly stricken with paralysis.

“ Nyet, my enemy. Not even you. Now life of Blavatsky woman is finished, you I vill possess. You are close to prime minister, da? This is very good. Through you, I vill assassinate Palmerston.”

A glowing, shapeless wraith oozed out of Blavatsky's shattered skull and began to slide down the strands of brain tissue and hair.

Burton managed to move his mouth: “Maybe I can't stop you, Grigori, but I can warn you. Stay away from the Eye!”

The Russian's voice sounded inside his head: “I think not. The diamond vill be -moct?”

“A bridge.”

“ Da. It allow me to cross into you. ”

The wraith flowed over the diamond and seemed to soak into it. A long feeler of energy coiled out toward the famous explorer. Cold fingers closed around his brain.

Straining, the king's agent managed to turn his head until he was looking at his valet.

“Now would be a good time.”

The clockwork man of Trafalgar Square gave up the charade of immobility, nodded its canister-shaped head, reached out with its mechanical arm, and plucked the Eye of Naga from its ectoplasmic plinth.

“ Vot? The toy moves? ”

Rasputin's reaction was accompanied by a blaze of ectoplasmic energy. It sizzled across the room, and a bolt of it lashed at Burton and writhed over his body. He cried out with pain and dropped to his knees.

The storm lessened but continued to splutter and jump around the library walls.

“ Vhy cannot I stop it? Things such as this, they not vork close to Rasputin unless I allow! ”

Burton pulled himself upright and said: “Yes, that was rather a giveaway, Grigori. When Blavatsky shared with me her vision of your future, it included details of your parlour trick; of how the guns of the British spies failed when they attacked you. I asked myself: why would the woman be afraid of assassins? The answer was that there was no reason for her to be. I therefore concluded that she wasn't responsible for all the stopped clocks, slack springs, and jammed trigger mechanisms.”

“ But this machine clockvork, da? How working now? ”

“Willpower. Allow me to introduce to you the philosopher Herbert Spencer. One of the most remarkable intellects I have ever encountered.”

“ Man? This is not man! ”

“In body, no, but Herbert Spencer died with the seven fragments of the Cambodian Eye in his possession. His intellect was imprinted upon them. Those fragments are now fitted into a babbage device designed specifically to process the kind of information they hold. In other words, what you took to be a machine is sentient. It possesses willpower enough to resist your attempts to interfere with its functioning, and it can do a great deal more. Are you aware of the legend of Kumari Kandam?”

“Nyet! No more talk! Put stone down! ”

“The Eye was shattered by a man who possessed a perfectly ordered brain. When that happened, the intelligences previously bound together through means of the diamond were destroyed.”

“Tovarishch! Vot is this nonsense? ”

“The Choir Stones still have that event imprinted upon them like a memory. If a sufficiently powerful mind-say, for instance, that of a philosopher whose thoughts are ordered by a babbage-could focus that memory upon another Eye, well, I suppose you're aware of the phenomenon of resonance?”

“ Nyet! Nyet! ”

“Where these stones are concerned, I believe only equivalence can lead to destruction. Let us see if that's the case. Proceed, please, Herbert.”

The clockwork philosopher didn't move, but the glow from the room's ectoplasmic walls, floor, and ceiling suddenly dimmed, seeming to concentrate itself around the diamond held in his metal hand, and the bolts of energy that had been playing across the walls now arced inward and danced over the stone's facets. Simultaneously, the diamond's soft humming increased in volume and deepened in tone until it passed below the range of human hearing. To Burton, it felt as if invisible hands were pushing hard against his ears.

Rasputin's voice hammered furiously against the inside of his cranium: “Nyet! Do not do this thing! Let me go! Let me go, tovarishch! I vill return to my time! ”

“Too late. But look on the bright side, Grigori, you've achieved your aim-you've avoided your assassins. It will not be water that kills you.”

Tiny fractures zigzagged across the Eye, and, as each appeared with a faint tink, it seemed to Burton that a small entity was expelled, yet as hard as he might look, he couldn't quite bring the things into focus. At the very periphery of his vision, he could see that the library was rapidly filling with them, but when he turned his head, he saw nothing.

“Vot are these lizards? Get them avay from me! Get them avay! They put their claws into me! Nyet! Nyet!”

Etheric energy banged and clapped around the gem, increasing in intensity, whipping out and sizzling up the walls and across the ceiling and floor.

“Most people see them as fairies,” Burton told the dying Russian. “They're remnants of an ancient race-nothing but preserved memories. Rather too difficult in nature for us humans to comprehend, so we tend to impose a more palatable myth on top of them. But, of course, you don't have any fairy stories in Russia, do you? They aren't a part of your folklore.”

Rasputin screamed. “ They are tearing me apart! ”

“Really? I suggest you fight back. If there's one thing I've learned from you, it's that damaging memories can be overcome. After all, Grigori, it's all in the past, isn't it?”

“ Nyet! Nyet! ”

Rasputin let loose an appalling howl of agony. It pierced Burton's head like a spear. The explorer staggered and gritted his teeth. Blood spurted from his nose.

Spencer turned his brass head.

“No!” Burton managed to gasp. “Don't stop!”

A jagged line of bright blue fire lashed out from a splintering facet of the Eye and enveloped him. It yanked him into the air and held him there. He convulsed helplessly. Capillaries haemorrhaged beneath his skin. The etheric lightning jerked and he was thrown up and slammed into the ceiling then dropped to the floor, where he lay in the grip of a seizure as the fizzling energy snapped away from him.

Pushed beyond the threshold of endurance, his mind seemed to disassociate, and awareness of his physical pain left him. It was no relief. His consciousness was rent by a mortal shriek of anguish-the Mad Monk's death throes as the fracturing diamond tore him to pieces.

It was too much for the king's agent. The world overturned, slid away, grew dark, and was gone.

Sir Richard Francis Burton was dead.

He knew it because he could feel nothing.

There was no world, there were no sensations, there was nothing required, there was nothing desired, there was no past, there was no future.

There was only peace.

A metal finger poked him in the ribs.

He opened his eyes expecting to see, as ever, orange light flickering over a canvas roof.

He saw snow.

He sat up.

No, not snow-flakes of dead ectoplasm falling from the library ceiling, vanishing before they touched the floor.

He pushed himself to his feet, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the blood from his face.

With a loud crack, Madam Blavatsky's corpse dropped. It crashed onto the plinth, which disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Burton turned away from the sight of her crushed skull and horribly folded carcass and found that Herbert Spencer was standing at his side. The brass man held out his cupped hands. The king's agent looked into them and counted.

“Seven fragments. Is that all of them?”

Spencer nodded.

“Good. Hold on to them, will you? The bloody things give me a headache. Let's get out of here. And Herbert-”

The brass head regarded him.

“Thank you.”

Burton recovered a chair from a crumbling and fast-disappearing mound of ectoplasm and used it to smash his way through the calcifying substance blocking the door and corridor beyond. The mediumistic material was fading from existence with increasing rapidity, and by the time he and his mechanical companion had descended to the Venetia's ground floor, nothing of it remained to be seen.

They stepped out into the fogbound Strand. It was strangely silent.

Burton swayed, struck by a wave of dizziness, and clutched at his companion's arm for support.

“Give me a moment,” he muttered.

The next thing he knew, he was looking up at the anxious faces of Algernon Swinburne and Detective Inspector Trounce.

“Did I pass out?”

“Pillock!” screeched Pox from the poet's shoulder.

“Evidently,” Trounce said. “Lord Nelson carried you out of the fog. How's our enemy?”

“Dead. The show is over. And he's not Lord Nelson. Give me a hand, would you?”

Looking perplexed, Trounce reached down and hauled Burton to his feet.

“Not Nelson? Is it a different device?”

Pox hopped from Swinburne to the clockwork man's head and whistled: “Beautiful sweetheart!”

“No,” Burton said. “It's our mutual friend Mr. Herbert Spencer.”

Trounce frowned. “What?”

“There's no time to explain, old man. Suffice it to say that Sir Charles Babbage was a genius.”

“No time? I thought you said Blavatsky is dead?”

“She is, and so is Rasputin. I have to go. There's someone I need to see before I collapse onto my bed to sleep for a week.”

“Shall I come with you, Richard?” Swinburne asked, with a trace of anxiety in his voice.

“No, Algy. I have to do this alone.”

He turned to the brass philosopher. “Hand me a couple of the diamonds, would you?”

Spencer dropped two stones into the explorer's waiting palm.

Burton slipped them into his waistcoat pocket, turned, and staggered off into the fog.

“Hey!” called Trounce after the fading figure. “Who the dickens is Rasputin?”

“Give Herbert a pen and paper,” came the receding reply. “He'll write you an explanation!”

Trounce scratched his head and mumbled: “By Jove! If he's just defeated the Blavatsky woman and brought all this nonsense to an end, you'd think he'd look a mite happier about it!”

The fog thickened.

Burton picked his way through corpses and debris, gave a curt greeting to the constables he encountered, left the Strand, made his way along Haymarket, and passed through Piccadilly Square.

It was maybe five or six in the morning-he was waiting for Big Ben to chime-and there was a faint glow overhead as dawn struggled to penetrate the murk. The city was absolutely silent.

He walked along Regent Street, passing broken windows and gutted shops. He couldn't shake the feeling that the world was crumbling around him.

The riot was over. Blavatsky was dead. Rasputin's mind had been shredded and the present was free of his sinister influence.

Yet something was deeply, deeply wrong.

The vapour swirled around him, muffling his footsteps, as he entered Oxford Circus and turned left.

A weighty despondency was settling over him, exactly like that he'd experienced in Aden after returning from Africa's Lake Regions. It was the notion that, despite his every effort, a job had not been completed.

“What is it?” he muttered. “Why do I feel that I've failed?”

He came to Vere Street and stopped outside a narrow building sandwiched between a hardware shop and the Museum of Anatomy. It had a bright yellow door and a bay window, behind which a deep blue curtain hung.

Taped against the inside of the window there was a notice that read: The astonishing COUNTESS SABINA, seventh daughter, CHEIROMANTIST, PROGNOSTICATOR, tells your past, present, and future, gives full names, tells exact thought or question on your mind without one word spoken; reunites the separated; removes evil influences; truthful predictions and satisfaction guaranteed. Consultations from 11 A.M. until 2 P.M. and from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. Please enter and wait until called.

Burton looked at his reflection in the glass. His fierce countenance was a patchwork of red and purple bruises.

“None of this is your doing,” he said, “but Chance has put you in the thick of it. Now you have to play the game to the finish.”

His eyes moved to the notice.

Prognosticator.

He leaned forward and rested his forehead against the cold glass.

The African Eye will be found.

He was suddenly short of breath and started gulping in mouthfuls of air.

Found by you.

“Bismillah,” he gasped. “Bismillah. It's all gone to hell.”

An early-morning cafe had opened across the street. Burton took a moment to even out his breathing then walked over to it, entered, and asked for a coffee.

“You're the first bloomin’ customer I've had in days,” the proprietor grumbled, glancing curiously at the explorer's battered features. “You fancy a round of buttered toast? It's on the house, mate.”

“That would be very welcome,” Burton answered. “Thank you.”

He sat quietly, sipping coffee and eating toast until a light came on and glowed through the fog from the upper window of the building opposite. He gave it forty minutes or so, then left the cafe, crossed the road, and knocked on the door.

He waited, and, after a few moments, knocked again.

The countess opened the door. She wore a long, shapeless midnight-blue gown.

“Countess Sabina,” he said. “My apologies. I know it's early.”

“Captain Burton. My goodness, what has happened to you? Were you run over by one of those dreadful omnipede things?”

He managed a wry grin. “Something like that, yes. I require your talents. It's a matter of great importance.”

She gazed at him silently for a moment, her eyes unfathomable, then nodded and stepped aside.

He entered and followed her along a short passageway, through a doorway hung with a thick velvet curtain, and into the room beyond. It smelled of sandalwood. Wooden chairs stood against its undecorated walls.

They stepped into a smaller room. It was sparsely furnished, though its shelves and mantelpiece were crowded with esoteric trinkets and baubles. A camphor lamp hung low over a round table in the middle of the chamber. The countess put a match to its wick.

She sat down.

Burton settled opposite.

He moistened his lips and said: “I'm-I'm afraid.”

She nodded silently. Her eyes shifted focus. She seemed to be looking right through him. In a barely audible voice, she whispered: “The cycle is complete. The time of change is upon us. War is coming.”

“And I have a role to play.”

“Yes.”

“I feel… displaced.”

“You are. This is not your intended path.”

“Is it anybody's?”

“No. We live in a strange world, Captain, but soon, it will be even stranger for both of you.”

“Both of us? Are you referring to my assistant?”

“Both of you, Captain Burton.”

“Explain.”

“I-I can't. I don't know how. I'm sorry. I feel-I feel that you are divided.”

“It's odd,” Burton replied. “That's something I have often sensed myself, especially while in a malarial fever. I don't know what it means.”

“Neither do I, but-but, somehow, I know that everything depends on it!”

Burton leaned back in his chair, his eyebrows shooting up.

“ What? ”

The countess shook her head and shrugged. “I can say no more.”

A silence settled over them and they sat gazing questioningly at each other until the prognosticator murmured: “Why did you come to see me, Captain?”

Burton rubbed his gritty eyes. God, he was tired! He rested his scarred hands on the table, looked down at them, and answered: “Countess, the future should be shaped by the past and the present. The past and the present should not be shaped by the future. Yet on two occasions now-or at least two that I'm aware of-men have reached back and interfered with the course of events. Just how much damage have they done? We must answer this question. I want you to look into the future that was meant to be.”

“Original history? That is impossible.”

“Is it? When you take route A over route B, does route B cease to exist?”

“No-but though I can sense the other path, I cannot see along it. We are too far past the junction. It is beyond my ability.”

Burton reached into his pocket. “I have something that will augment your talent.”

He placed two black diamonds onto the table.

They hummed quietly.

“M ediumistic powers do not exist.”

Sir Richard Francis Burton let his statement hang in the air for a moment.

He continued: “In Victorian Britain-by which I mean our time as it would have been had Edward Oxford not interfered-astral bodies, mind reading, etheric energy, and spiritualism are, from a scientific standpoint, proven to be at best highly implausible and, in all probability, utter balderdash.”

The king's agent sat at the head of a long table in a grand hall in Buckingham Palace. There were nine others in attendance: the eugenically enhanced prime minister, Lord Palmerston; the vulture-faced secretary for war, Sir George Cornewall Lewis; the evasive-eyed chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone; the grey-bearded foreign secretary, Lord John Russell; the miserable-looking first lord of the Admiralty, Edward Seymour; the deviant red-headed poet, Algernon Charles Swinburne; the aloof chief commissioner of Scotland Yard, Sir Richard Mayne; the clockwork philosopher, Herbert Spencer; and the steam-powered engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Without any shadow of a doubt, it was the oddest gathering the royal residence had ever seen.

There was one further presence: King Albert's eyes and ears hung above the table like a bizarre chandelier-an apparatus comprised of hearing trumpets and lenses, which swivelled this way and that to follow the men as they spoke. The monarch was notoriously reclusive. Of those present, only Palmerston had met him face-to-face.

Brunel chimed: “You do not make sense, Sir Richard. Changing the course of history cannot alter the laws of physics. Whatever etheric energy might be, it plainly does exist.”

“As you know to your cost,” Swinburne offered, eyeing his friend's yellowing bruises.

“It exists here,” Burton responded. “But in Victorian times, it does not.”

“Your witch saw with such clarity?” Palmerston demanded.

“She's a seer, not a witch, and yes, Prime Minister, with the aid of two of the black diamonds, Countess Sabina's clairvoyance was accentuated to an extraordinary degree.”

“And the reason for the discrepancy?”

“The aforementioned gemstones. The Eyes of Naga.”

“How so?”

“As you know, the South American stone was discovered in Chile by Sir Henry Tichborne in 1796. He secreted it beneath the Crawls at Tichborne House. If time had not been altered, the diamond would have remained there until the building was demolished in the year 2068. About a hundred and thirty years later, Edward Oxford cut shards from it and used them in the mechanism of his time-jumping suit.”

“By George!” Sir Richard Mayne exclaimed. “How far into the future did your countess look?”

“Into the alternative -that is to say original -future, she saw clearly to the end of this century. After that, her vision became increasingly murky. There were certain points of interest that she focused on, the black diamonds being one of them, and she was able to follow those developments much farther through time, to the detriment of other matters. I should point out that she did so at great cost to herself and afterward collapsed with mental exhaustion. I suggest some sort of compensation from the government might be appropriate.”

“Be damned!” Palmerston exclaimed. “I'm going to employ the bloody sorceress! Pray continue, Captain.”

Burton cleared his throat and glanced at the contraption on the ceiling as it rotated to face him. “So Oxford journeyed back to 1840 and from there was thrown farther, to 1837, where he created an immediate paradox, for now the splinters of the South American stone existed twice in the same time. They were in his suit and they were also beneath the Tichborne estate. This caused them to resonate with each other, and because all three Eyes of Naga are chunks of the same aerolite, the Cambodian fragments started to resonate, too, producing the hum that led to their discovery. I'd wager the African diamond, wherever it is, also began to ‘sing.’

“Being underground, Tichborne's treasure couldn't be heard, but the reverberation caused the equivalent string in the family piano-B below middle C-to let loose frequent twangs.”

“Astonishing,” Cornewall Lewis grunted. “A man appears in London and, in Hampshire, Cambodia, and probably Africa, diamonds serenade his arrival!”

Burton nodded. “Yes, Mr. Secretary, astonishing indeed. But it's only half the story. I've spent the past few days in the British Library researching clairvoyance. Do you know when the first clear, incontrovertible evidence of mediumistic energies emerged?”

“When?”

“In 1837. Over the ensuing six years there were many recorded instances. They all coincided with periods when Spring Heeled Jack was active in our world. Then there were no more authenticated occurrences until last year. We now know that he jumped directly from 1843 to 1861. The diamonds in his suit have been here ever since, and genuine clairvoyant powers have been demonstrated with increasing frequency this past twelve months.”

Brunel clanged: “Then your hypothesis is that the diamonds’ resonance has awakened in the human brain some power that would otherwise have remained dormant?”

“That is for your scientists to explore,” Burton replied. “But in my opinion, etheric energy and all that goes with it is a product of the human organism and, yes, the resonance stimulates it.”

Spencer scribbled in a notebook and held it up, displaying a single word: Evolution?

Burton shrugged.

“Damnation!” Palmerston shouted. “If all that you say is true, bloody Rasputin would never have had the wherewithal to stick his confounded nose into our business had Oxford not done so first! Are we now so vulnerable to meddlers and madmen from the future?”

“It would seem so.”

An uneasy silence fell over the meeting. It ended with two words from Edward Seymour: “And Prussia?”

“Yes,” Burton said. “The countess saw.”

Another pause.

“Tell us,” said Palmerston, quietly.

“The World War was originally set to begin some fifty years from now. Oxford's actions have brought it forward by at least a decade.”

“Christ!”

“The countess described the sequence of events. This is what we can expect-”

For the next hour, Sir Richard Francis Burton described future history. He told the king, the politicians, and his companions how the Eugenicist exodus to Prussia would give that kingdom the means to gain dominance over the German Confederation, incorporating it into a greater union of the Germanic people. How Bismarck, to consolidate the southern borders of his new country, would declare war on France and defeat Napoleon III using biological weaponry developed from the plant life currently infesting Ireland.

He outlined the arms race between the Technologists of the British Empire and the Eugenicists of the Germans; the emergence of Friedrich Nietzsche as a visionary politician who would eventually overthrow Bismarck; and Germany's aggressive expansionist policies that would, inevitably, lead to conflict on a massive scale.

When he finished, the room sank into a deep silence and stayed there.

The politicians could not keep the horror from their faces. Even Palmerston's inexpressive facade had somehow become dominated by the shock in his eyes.

A minute ticked by, and then a voice came from the ceiling, amplified through a speaking trumpet in the mechanism above the table.

It said: “Make me a different future.”

The men looked at each other.

“I shall put my people to work at once,” Brunel clanged. “We can strengthen our navy; build an air force; design new weapons.”

“Good idea,” said Cornewall Lewis.

“Excellent,” said Edward Seymour.

“Absolutely not!” shouted Gladstone, who'd been assiduously avoiding Burton and Swinburne's eyes for the entire meeting. “How in blue blazes are we supposed to finance it?”

“Impractical and impossible,” Lord John Russell agreed. “We've only just avoided a revolution by the skin of our teeth. If we raise taxes we won't need Russian lunatics to start another one!”

“Besides which,” Palmerston added, “the whole damned world will say I'm warmongering. Starting an arms race now might precipitate the conflict even earlier!”

Herbert wrote something and held it up: Diplomacy.

Cornewall Lewis snorted: “With Germans?”

“I have an idea,” Swinburne said.

Palmerston jumped to his feet and kicked his chair backward. He clenched his hands together behind his back and paced up and down.

“What about allies, Burton?” he barked. “Did your sorceress suggest whom we might trust?”

“No, she didn't. I think we're on our own. Prime Minister, Algy can be quite insightful. I strongly suggest-”

“No! No! No! This is unacceptable! I will not go down in history as the man who lost the Empire!”

“Assuming you're still prime minister when it happens,” Sir Richard Mayne hissed quietly.

“-that you listen to what he has to say,” Burton finished.

His words were lost, for Palmerston had flown into one of his infamous rages. He kicked his chair across the floor, slapped a glass from the table, and yelled incoherently. His eyes were wild, yet through it all, his masklike face remained weirdly impassive.

The men waited for his tantrum to pass. It took three minutes before the prime minister seemed to suddenly deflate. He stood panting, glancing from man to man, his normally white features flushed.

“Madam Blavatsky used the diamonds to enhance her mediumistic talent,” Swinburne murmured. “And Richard used them to strengthen Countess Sabina's abilities.”

Palmerston gazed blankly at the diminutive poet. “What?”

“I'm merely suggesting that, if we ensure we possess all three Eyes of Naga, then perhaps we can gain the upper hand. We could recruit talented mediums and use the stones to accentuate their powers. We could divine the enemy's strategy. We could interfere with our opponents’ minds. We could wage a war of infiltration and enchantment. We could start now, and our enemies wouldn't even know that war was being waged upon them.”

Palmerston's mouth dropped open.

Burton said: “I told you he's worth listening to.”

The prime minister blinked rapidly, forced a breath out between his teeth, and pulled his snuffbox from his pocket. He went through his usual ritual, which ended, as always, with a prodigious sneeze, and peered at the poet with one straight eye, while the other slid upward disconcertingly.

“Mr. Swinburne,” he said. “You are a god-damned bloody genius.” He addressed Burton: “The African stone?”

“You might have problems securing it,” the explorer warned. “Quite apart from the difficulties Africa itself presents, we know that nothing can fly over the region where the diamond is undoubtedly located. That suggests to me that some force of mind is at work, interfering with machinery in much the same way that Rasputin was able to jam guns.”

“So someone is guarding the Eye?”

“Someone or something, yes. And there's another problem.”

“What?”

“I think it highly probable that Lieutenant John Speke is preparing a Prussian expedition to the region.”

With his top hat set at a jaunty angle and his cane swinging, Sir Richard Francis Burton strode along Gloucester Place.

A Folks’ Wagon beetle scuttled past, belching vapour. A little boy, sitting on its rear bench, looked at Burton as the vehicle went past and poked out his tongue. The king's agent glared at him, snarled, then crossed his eyes, puffed out his cheeks, and blew a raspberry. The youngster laughed delightedly and waved.

A horse shied away from the steam-powered insect and overturned a vegetable stall. Onions and potatoes spilled onto the road and bounced across the cobbles. Shouts and curses followed the giant beetle as it rounded a corner and scurried out of sight.

“Wotcha, ‘andsome,” crooned a streetwalker from a doorway. “Fancy a bit of ‘ow's yer father?”

Burton winked at her, flipped her a tuppenny bit, but kept walking.

Up ahead, a steam-horse emitted a clangourous racket, veered to the right, and crashed into the side of a tavern. An elderly man emerged from the cab behind the engine and shouted: “Great heavens, man! You knocked the stuffing out of me!”

“It's the bleedin’ back axle, guv'nor!” the driver explained. “Third time it's broken this week!”

Burton turned into Montagu Place.

“Hey up, Cap'n! How's it diddlin’?” came a hail.

“It's diddling very well, thank you, Mr. Grub. How's business?”

“Awful!”

“The chestnut season is almost upon us. I'm sure that'll improve matters.”

“P'raps, Cap'n. P'raps. You been to see his nibs again?”

“The prime minister? Yes, I was summoned.”

“Well, I ‘ope you told ‘im that the lot o’ the common man ain't no bed o’ roses.”

“I always mention it, Mr. Grub.”

“An’ he does bugger all about it! Bloody politicians!”

“A breed apart,” Burton noted.

“That's it in a nutshell, Cap'n!”

They paused while a rotorship roared noisily overhead. Mr. Grub shaded his eyes and looked up at the enormous vessel. “What's that what's wrote on the bottom of it?” he shouted.

Burton, who knew the street vendor was illiterate, said: “It is rather hard to make out, isn't it? I think it says: Make a new life in India. Space, spice, sunshine, and all the tea you can drink!”

The mighty ship slid away over the rooftops.

“You've been to India, ain'tcha, Cap'n? Would you recommend it?”

“It has its attractions.”

“But not for the likes o’ me, I suppose. I reckons I'm better off ‘ere on me own little corner of good old Blighty! Got me own patch, ain't I! What more can a man arsk for?”

“Quite so, Mr. Grub. Good day to you!”

“An’ to you, Cap'n!” said Grub, touching the peak of his cap.

Burton strode on.

As he neared his front door, he heard: “Read all about it! Lincoln declares slaves free in Confederate States! Read all about it! Emancipation for slaves in America!”

The king's agent whistled in wonder. He spotted little Oscar Wilde and called him over.

“Big news, eh, Quips?”

“Aye, that it is, sir!” The boy exchanged a newspaper for coins.

Burton read out the headline: “Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Well, well! That'll make things difficult for Pam! It looks to me as if America's president is every bit as cunning as our own prime minister!”

“We have really everything in common with America nowadays,” said Quips. “Except, of course, language.”

The king's agent chuckled. “Emancipation!” he announced triumphantly. “I can't say I'll be one whit sad to see that dreadful trade banished. If America is intent on becoming civilised, then Lincoln's proclamation has just taken it a good deal closer to achieving that goal!”

Three harvesters stalked past on their tall legs, each with crated goods swinging in netting below their bodies. The second of them had somehow developed a limp, and as it thudded past, its damaged leg made a rhythmic complaint: creak-ker-chang, creak-ker-chang, creak-ker-chang.

Burton recalled Sir Charles Babbage's hatred of noise.

“The fact is, Captain,” said Quips, “that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.”

The famous explorer watched the three huge mechanised insects striding away. People scattered from their path. Voices were raised in anger, fists shaken.

“Maybe so, young ‘un. Maybe so.”

He bade the urchin farewell and mounted the steps of his home, glancing up at the boards that covered the hole where his study window used to be. The builders were due tomorrow to effect repairs.

“William Trounce is upstairs,” Mrs. Angell informed him as he entered the hallway.

“You're back!”

“I am, Sir Richard. And a good thing, too. I don't know why, but I've been under the impression that you promised to have the place clean and tidy. I suppose all the sea air must have gone to my head and filled me with funny notions.”

“I'm sorry, Mother. There's been a great deal happening. I haven't stopped!”

“Have you made us safe?”

“Yes. The Tichborne business is over and done with.”

“Good. Get yourself upstairs, then. I'll fetch some cold cuts and pickles for you and your flat-footed friend.”

Burton leaned forward and pecked her on the cheek. “Angell by name, angel by nature. What would I do without you?”

He bounded up the stairs, past the wrecked study, and on to the library.

“Trounce, old man!” he declared as he entered. “It is undoubtedly a splendid day!”

“Gibber-mouth!” Pox squawked from his perch.

The Scotland Yard man rose from a chair, put a book aside, and shook Burton's hand in greeting.

“Thank goodness you're here!” he exclaimed. “I've had to bear the brunt of it all by myself. I don't think I've ever been insulted so assiduously-and that's saying something for a policeman!”

“Sit down. Take a brandy. Smoke a cigar,” said Burton, throwing himself into an armchair.

Trounce sat and squinted at him suspiciously. “By Jove, you almost look happy! I didn't know that infernal face of yours was capable of such an expression!”

“I'm full of good tidings! Brunel has designed a new and more efficient voice-producing instrument-no more of that awful ding-donging-and, at this very moment, he's fitting one to Herbert Spencer. Our clockwork philosopher will be speaking by the end of the day!”

Trounce clapped his hands together. “That's tremendous! What's he going to do with himself? It must be rather awkward, being mechanical!”

Burton produced a cheroot and applied a lucifer to it. “He wants Admiral Nelson's old job-wants to be my valet. Says he doesn't trust anyone else to keep him fully wound. And he wants to write; says he's never had such clarity of thought and already has three volumes completed in his head-he just needs to scribble ’em down. If he uses my autoscribe, he'll be knocking them out at twenty to the dozen!”

“A wind-up author!” exclaimed Trounce. “That really takes the biscuit!”

“It's a publisher's dream,” Burton declared.

“Flap-tongued baboon!” sang Pox.

The king's agent drew in smoke, put his head back, and blew out a perfectly formed ring.

“Good news regarding Sir Roger, too. The Arundell family has taken him in, and Brunel is fitting him with power-driven arms, the same as those worn by Daniel Gooch. That'll certainly compensate for his missing limb. Nothing doing with the face, though; I fear the poor soul will be behind that iron mask for the rest of his life.”

“Will he take up residence at Tichborne House?”

“Yes, and he's adamant that the dole will continue to be paid every year. He still believes in Lady Mabella's curse.”

“I don't blame him. His family has had nothing but trouble since Sir Henry broke his ancestor's vow.”

Burton jumped up and said: “What about that brandy, then?”

He crossed to the chest of drawers by the door and returned with a decanter and a couple of glasses. He poured generous measures and handed one to his friend.

“How's Honesty?” he asked as he returned to his armchair. “Has he recovered from his injuries?”

“More or less. He'll not have use of his hand for a while. He's taking a month's leave. I think the sight of all those animated corpses pushed him to the brink. I've never seen him so unnerved. I daresay time spent with his wife and garden will put him to rights. He's a tough little beggar.” The Scotland Yard man raised his eyebrows. “I'm still waiting,” he said. “It's all good news but none of it explains your-what is it?- ebullience. Is that a word?”

“It is,” Burton smiled. “And the correct one.”

“So let's have it. Tell all.”

The famous explorer took a gulp of brandy, put his glass aside, and said: “Acting on a recommendation from my extraordinarily talented and brilliant assistant-”

“And perverted,” Trounce added.

“And perverted-the government has purchased the seven Francois Garnier Choir Stones from Edwin Brundleweed. They will, I'm happy to report, continue to reside in Herbert Spencer's babbage brain. The government has also bought the seven South American fragments from Sir Roger. Palmerston wants to ensure that all the Eyes of Naga are in British hands. It's a matter of state security.”

“So now they are. What of it?”

“Two of them are, Trounce. Two of them.”

The detective inspector frowned and shook his head. “There are only two. The third has never been discovered. It's somewhere in-Oh.”

Burton's eyes glinted. “Africa!” he said.

“You mean-?”

“Yes, my friend. Tomorrow I shall start putting together an expedition. I'm off to search for the third stone, and, while I'm at it, I mean to locate once and for all the source of the River Nile!”

“You're going to put yourself through all that again?”

“Don't worry, old man. With the government funding the expedition and Brunel supplying vehicles for the initial stages of the safari, I think I can safely predict that this attempt will be a great deal less traumatic than the last!”

Pox let loose a terrific shriek: “Bollocks!”