The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi

“He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him.”

—ISABEL ARUNDELL, FROM THE PERSIAN PROVERB

The next ten days of recovery were interspersed with visits to the British Museum’s reading room, where Burton researched John Dee, the Elizabethan alchemist and occultist who’d sought to identify the purest forms and expressions of existence, primarily by communicating with divine beings. Dee claimed to have achieved this through scrying, which was undertaken by his associate, Edward Kelley. Together they’d learned—or created, Burton suspected—the language of the angels.

The hours of reading didn’t provide him with any further revelations, but it gave him a solid grounding in the theories that apparently motivated Henry Beresford, Thomas Lake Harris, Laurence Oliphant, Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy, and the League of Enochians.

By Monday the 17th of October his bruises had vanished, his ribs healed, and his arm offered only the occasional twinge. With a loaded Beaumont–Adams revolver concealed beneath his light jacket and swinging his swordstick as he walked, he left the house, tipped his hat to Mr. Grub the vendor, who was cooking corn on the cob on his brazier, and made his way to Baker Street. Eschewing the cabs—after so many days of inactivity he preferred to walk—he headed toward Portman Square. It was autumn but unseasonably warm and humid. The air was thick with dust, soot, and steam, and stank to high heaven. The flow of sewage through the new north-to-south tunnels was still being slowed by sluice gates, which would not be fully opened until the big intercepting tunnel was complete. Foul viscous liquid was seeping up through the streets and only flower sellers were happy about it, for it had become a necessary fashion to walk with a fragrant bouquet held to one’s nose.

By the time Burton reached the square, perspiration was running from beneath his topper and he had grit in his eyes, so he stopped, sat on a bench, removed his headgear, put it down, and mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

He sat back and watched a herd of geese being guided along by a farmer and his two boy assistants, obviously on their way to market. A man on a velocipede attempted to steer his vehicle past them. His penny-farthing hit one of the birds, squashed it, wobbled, and toppled sideways, expelling steam with a hiss that matched those produced by the angry flock. The man sprang to his feet and shook his fist at the farmer. An argument ensued. Punches were exchanged. A constable arrived on the scene and separated the combatants. The velocipedist rode back in the direction he’d come, his machine clanking unhealthily. The geese were shooed on. Once the participants were out of sight, the constable picked up the killed bird, examined it, and carried it away with a satisfied grin on his face, undoubtedly anticipating a goose supper.

Burton considered the strangeness of the city. It was filled with mechanical marvels, yet England’s agricultural roots were still plain to see. The place was so madly eclectic it was almost impossible to characterise.

It is off-course. It has become something it was never meant to be. It is broken.

He looked around at the square. He’d never sat here before, but a vertiginous sense of familiarity suddenly flooded through him, causing his heart to flutter.

How can you consider this natural? Velocipedes? The atmospheric railway? Steam spheres? Rotorchairs? Submarine ships? All developed within the space of twenty years? It’s impossible!

He gasped and leaned forward, gripping his cane with both hands, feeling himself dividing.

The Afterlife? Mediums? Magic rituals? Madness! Madness!

“Go away!” he wheezed. “Leave me alone!”

You’re moving too slowly. Piece it together, you fool. Hurry!

He heaved himself to his feet, reeled, and staggered to one side, only avoiding a fall by slamming the point of his cane into the ground. He raised a hand to his head and used his fingers to trace the long scar that parted the roots of his short hair. Just how much had the concussion damaged him?

He struggled to regulate his respiration then picked up his hat, put it on, and quickly walked from the square to Oxford Street, turning left into the busy thoroughfare.

Impatiently, he elbowed through the crowds, hurrying along, his mind awhirl. Traffic and voices roared in his ears. So did his pulse. He angrily knocked a beggar aside—detecting at once that the man’s blindness was a sham—and turned into Charing Cross, following it south to Leicester Square, where he entered Long Acre, which, a few yards on, joined St. Martin’s Lane. A few more paces took him to its junction with Mildew Street, and there, on the corner and opposite a building site, he found the League of Enochians Gentlemen’s Club. It was an unprepossessing three-storey building with a plain portico arching over the three steps that led up to the entrance. He tried the door. It was locked. He knocked and waited. He yanked the bellpull; knocked again. No one came. Muttering an oath, he was turning away when a flier, pasted to the wall beside the door, caught his eye.

THOMAS LAKE HARRIS

America’s Foremost Scryer and Summoner

Author of The Wisdom of Angels

A Lecture Entitled:

EVOCATION AND COMMUNICATION:

ON SUMMONING ADVISORS FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD.

Here: Wednesday 9th November, 9 p.m.

Open to Members and Sanctioned Guests Only.

Note to the General Public:

Mr. Harris will be giving a presentation entitled:

THE TRUTH OF SPIRITUALISM

At Almack’s Assembly Rooms,

King Street, St. James’s,

On Tuesday 8th November, 8 p.m.

Open to all.

Burton copied the details into his notebook, descended the steps, and walked a little farther along St. Martin’s Lane until he came to Brundleweed’s. Once again, the jeweller’s was closed and the grille covered the window. Looking past the metal bars, he noticed changes in the window display. The tools on the benches had been moved. Plainly, Brundleweed was around; the explorer had just been unlucky in catching him.

Tearing a page from his book, he took his pencil and scribbled: Require engagement ring at earliest possible. Please inform when convenient to call. Alternatively, deliver to me at—

He added his address, signed the note, pushed it through the letterbox, and walked back the way he’d come. Halfway along Oxford Street, he turned right into Vere Street. Number 7 was a narrow house squashed between a hardware shop and a Museum of Anatomy. It had a bright yellow door and a tall, narrow, blue-curtained window. He lifted the knocker and banged it down three times. After a short wait, the door opened. He knew instantly that he was facing Countess Sabina.

She was of indeterminate age; either elderly but very well preserved or young and terribly worn. Her hair was pure white and pinned back in a bun; her face was angular with large, dark, slightly slanted eyes, which, like the corners of her mouth, were edged by deep lines. She wore a navy blue dress with a white shawl. Her hands were bare, the nails bitten and unpainted.

She looked at him curiously, then gave a slight start of recognition and said, “You are Richard Burton.” Her voice was musical and slightly accented.

“Yes,” he replied. “I apologise that I wasn’t available when you called on me. I’ve been—” He reached into his pocket and pulled out her card, holding it up with the handwritten side facing her. “I’ve been wondering about this.”

“Come in.”

She led him along a short passageway and into a small rectangular parlour that smelled of sandalwood. At her behest, he put his hat on a sideboard, leaned his cane in a corner, and sat at a round table. She settled opposite him. Her eyes never left his.

“You do not believe,” she said softly.

“In a coming storm?”

“In mediumship.”

“I didn’t. Now I don’t know what to think. Since my return from Africa, I’ve experienced one strange circumstance after another, and now nothing feels as it should, and if I find that mediums are not the charlatans I’ve always taken them for—I mean no affront—then I shan’t be at all surprised.” He paused, and added, “Countess, I know all about your role in government and about Abdu El Yezdi.”

Countess Sabina nodded and smiled sadly. “I am not offended by your skepticism. Perhaps I would feel the same way had my life been different. As it is, the responsibility of communicating Abdu El Yezdi’s instructions fell to me, and—” She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “It weighed heavily. To be at the centre of such very rapid changes in the world, and yet to know—” She stopped again and appeared to focus inward, her lips moving silently.

“To know?” Burton prompted.

“To know, as you say, that nothing is as it should be.”

“Due to El Yezdi’s influence?”

“It goes far deeper than that, sir.”

Burton unconsciously ran the fingers of his right hand across his jawline. The sensation he’d experienced in Portman Square was still with him. He felt disjointed, more so even than during the days of malarial fever.

A shaft of light was slanting through the gap in the curtains. Dust motes waltzed slowly through it. Burton’s and the countess’s shadows stretched across the floor and up onto the flock wallpaper. The room felt suspended in limbo.

“Would you explain from the beginning?” His voice was oddly hollow to his own ears. Distant. “Tell me about when Abdu El Yezdi first contacted you.”

The countess took a long, slow breath, exhaled, and said, “It was when the Great Amnesia was first recognised. According to my diary, I arrived in London in 1838 to search for my cousin, who’d come here from our native Balkans the year before and had not been seen since, but that mission meant nothing to me when I read of it. The accounts of my activities during the three years leading up to The Assassination, although set down in my own hand, felt like the recollections of someone else. I was disoriented and lost. It was as if I’d gone to sleep in my own bed in the old country only to awaken in an unfamiliar room in a strange land. To make matters worse, I began to experience vivid dreams, in which another used my own voice to address me. I thought I was going mad.”

She stopped, looked down at her hands, and the muscles at the sides of her jaw pulsed.

She flexed her fingers and went on, “This invisible presence introduced itself as Abdu El Yezdi. I could not converse with him, for as I say, he appropriated my inner voice in order to address me. At first, he spoke only in my dreams, assuring me that he was real, would not harm me, was my friend, but required my assistance in order to achieve a great purpose. He then started to communicate during my waking hours, though when he did so, I would inevitably slip into a trance. He told me that The Assassination of Queen Victoria was never meant to happen; that it had been caused by a man who stepped out of his own position in history and into ours.”

“What?” Burton interrupted. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“Bear with me, Sir Richard; I shall try to explain.” She ruminated for a few seconds before asking, “Will you consider that in every circumstance there is inherent at least one alternate action? For example, one can respond to an opportunity or challenge with acceptance or refusal; one can react to an event aggressively, passively, evasively, or engagingly; one can choose to walk straight on, or turn back, or go to the left, or to the right.”

Burton gave a curt nod of acknowledgement.

“In a coherent world,” she said, “the option selected obliterates the rest; the alternatives may exist for a little while longer, but as the consequences of the decision taken develop, those alternatives become irrelevant and inapplicable.”

She waited for Burton to again indicate that he comprehended. He said, “Very well. Pray, continue.”

“When the most appropriate decisions are taken—that is to say, the most appropriate within the context of the situation—a chain of consequences develops far into the future, knitting together with other chains to form a strong cohesive whole.” Countess Sabina place her right elbow on the table with her forearm pointing straight upward and her hand fisted. “Like the trunk of a tree,” she said, holding the pose, “from which no deviations sprout, for inappropriate decisions are either corrected by subsequent ones or their consequences lead nowhere, while the alternate decisions—the ones not taken—have no consequences at all.” She lifted her arm slightly then banged her elbow back down to emphasise the verticality of her forearm. “This is what we call history.”

Burton thought of Darwin and murmured, “You propose a sort of natural selection, wherein decisions are a response to context, and consequences evolve, and only the fittest of them survive to contribute to the ongoing narrative?”

“Good!” the countess exclaimed. “You have it, sir! You have it! But make no mistake—there are no moralities or ethics involved. An appropriate decision isn’t necessarily a good or right or nice one. It is merely the decision whose consequences will survive for the longest. Time has no virtue.”

“Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference,” Burton quoted.

“Precisely so.” Again, she raised and thudded down her elbow. “This, as I say, is the mechanism of a coherent world.” She suddenly splayed her fingers wide. “But The Assassination caused history to divide into branches. There is no more coherence.”

“Why?”

“Because there was interference from outside the context; from a presence that bore no relation at all to the chains of causes and effects that were active at just after six o’clock on the tenth of June 1840; from a man whose rightful place was in the far, far future.”

Burton momentarily closed his eyes and tried to digest this. When he opened them, Countess Sabina was still fixed in her pose.

“A man from the future,” she repeated, “who somehow travelled backward through time to observe the failure of The Assassination, only to find that his presence changed the outcome. Existence bifurcated. There were now two histories. In one—the original—Edward Oxford failed to shoot the queen. In the other—in our version—he didn’t.”

“Was Abdu El Yezdi the man?” Burton whispered.

“No. The traveller was a descendent of the assassin, Oxford, and was called by the same name.”

“But how could Oxford have descendants? He was killed at the scene. He had no children.”

“In our history, yes. In the original, no.”

Burton gestured weakly for the countess to stop. She waited patiently, holding her pose, while he struggled to process the revelation. When he indicated that he was ready for more, she went on:

“The traveller was in a bind. He couldn’t return to his own time, for his own ancestor was dead, meaning he no longer existed there. This paradox, along with prolonged exposure to what, for him, was the distant past, drove him insane. He died.”

For a third time, Countess Sabina bumped her elbow, drawing attention back to her raised forearm and widely spread digits.

“It made no difference. The bifurcation he caused had already broken the mechanism of Time. Paths not taken and decisions not made no longer faded into non-existence but instead gave rise to multiple consequences.” She wiggled her fingers. “History splits and splits and splits again, and the farther these multiplicities grow from the path the single original history should have taken, the weaker the barrier between them becomes. Picture it as a tree, if you will, whose branches extend away from the trunk and keep dividing until they blur into a mass of twigs.”

Burton raised a hand in protest. “Wait. Let us suppose I accept all this. Where does Abdu El Yezdi fit into it? Who is he? What is this great purpose he spoke of?”

“I do not know who he is. He’s as much a mystery to me as he is to you. But I know he’s aware of you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he told me many times that I would one day meet you, and that I must tell you to seek out the poet, who will lead you to the truth.”

“You refer to Algernon Swinburne?”

She responded with a small shrug. “As for Abdu El Yezdi’s purpose—his use of me, and now of your brother, as a means to communicate with the government and influence individuals—it is to prevent a war.”

“A war between whom?”

“Everybody. It will engulf the planet and barely a single country will escape it. He has seen it, sir. In some histories it comes sooner, in others later, but in all of them it comes, and entire generations of men are lost. Only in ours, perhaps, will it be avoided, for Abdu El Yezdi has guided us carefully.”

“Maybe so,” Burton responded grimly, “but he doesn’t guide us any more. He’s fallen silent.”

“I am aware of that.” She finally lowered her arm. “It is because the storm comes. The continuing deterioration of Time has made it possible for—” a tremor ran through her and she hugged herself, “—for a man to hop from one twig to another; to break through from his own version of existence into ours. You saw the lights that turned night into day. They marked his arrival. He is in our world, and Abdu El Yezdi must remain hidden from him.”

“This man is the storm? Who is he? What does he want?”

The seer shook her head wordlessly.

“Then where is he? How can I locate him?”

Countess Sabina’s lips stretched against her teeth. She rocked back and forth. When she answered, her voice was hoarse and quavered. “If I reach out my mind to search, he will find me. Others have attempted it. They sensed his arrival and tried to contact him. They died.”

Burton remembered the newspaper headlines—the twelve dead mediums.

“But Abdu El Yezdi has made me stronger than most,” she went on. “And you are you, so I shall try.”

“Wait! ‘You are you’—what do you mean by that? What is my significance in this affair?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes rolled up into her head until only the whites showed. She rocked in silence and two minutes passed.

Burton sat and watched. His thoughts ran over one another. What she’d told him was more incredible even than a tale from A Thousand Nights and a Night, yet, somehow, he found himself totally convinced of its truth.

Countess Sabina jerked in her seat. Her head snapped back then fell forward, revealing that her eyeballs had become utterly black. She smiled wickedly and said in a deep, oily, and unpleasant manner, “Well! This is a surprise! Hallo, Burton. How perfectly splendid to see you again. You look considerably younger. So you’re consulting with a genuine medium? Good chap! She’s a powerful one, too. Most gratifying.”

The explorer gaped. Plainly, whoever was now addressing him, it was not the countess. He couldn’t credit that her throat was even capable of producing such a voice, for it sounded as if hundreds of people were speaking the same words, in exactly the same tone, and in perfect unison.

“Who are—are—” he stammered. “El Yezdi?”

“I don’t know the name,” the other chorused. “You don’t recognise me, then? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. We met in Africa, my friend, under rather taxing circumstances, and I gave you my word it would not be our last encounter. I’ve travelled far to keep that promise. Regretfully, for you, it will not be a happy reunion. I feel obliged to prove myself, you see, so where before you witnessed my failure, this time the reverse must be true.”

“We’ve met?” Burton interrupted. “Where in Africa? When? Who are you? What failure?”

The countess emitted a nasty chuckle. “Do you play chess, Burton?”

“I have done.”

“Are you good?”

“Adequate.”

“Then brush up your game. I’m counted an excellent player, and as such, I’ll not forecast my moves other than to tell you this: I intend to break your spirit and drive you to your knees. For certain, it would be better to kill you outright, but I possess too much respect for you to do that. I don’t want you dead. I admire you too much. You could even call it hero worship. Perhaps that explains my desire to have you, above all others, as one of my pawns. I’m afraid it’s a fault of mine to demean the things I love the most. But we are what we are—and I am the Beast, Perdurabo; he who will endure to the end.”

The countess threw back her head and let loose a peal of laughter.

Flatly, Burton said, “I’m reminded of a pantomime I visited in childhood.”

The laughter stopped. The countess regarded him.

“Oh, bugger it!” she said. “I do it every time. I don’t know when to stop, Burton. Always, I stray into the melodramatic and end up looking like an ass. Let us say au revoir before I embarrass myself any further. I have the royal charter. I’m on my way. We shall meet soon. Say goodbye to the countess.”

Before Burton could respond, Countess Sabina’s eyes snapped back to normal and her head suddenly swivelled around until he was looking at the back of it. With the neck creasing and crunching horribly, the revolution continued through a complete circle, and the countess’s face swung back into view. Dead, she slumped forward onto the table and slid loosely to the floor.

The next day, Burton took the atmospheric railway from London to Yorkshire, and was then driven by horse-drawn carriage to Fryston Hall. Monckton Milnes greeted his friend’s unexpected arrival with surprise and delight, which quickly turned to shock when the explorer conveyed the news of Countess Sabina’s death. Indeed, Monckton Milnes was so deeply affected that, for hours, he could barely speak.

Burton distracted him with an account of the prognosticator’s revelations, which sent both men rummaging through Fryston’s library, piling Monckton Milnes’s collection of esoterica onto tables and leafing through every book and pamphlet in search of information pertaining to the evocation of spirits.

“I’m now of the opinion,” Burton stated, “that what we call magic is, at root, nothing less than a science of communication between multiple realities, but I do not believe it’s been well understood by its practitioners, and I think the truth of it is buried beneath an enormous heap of extraneous claptrap. We need to dig it out. If we can secure the working principles, perhaps we can employ them in such a manner as to discover where this Perdurabo has come from.”

Monckton Milnes, moving toward a table with a stack of books held precariously between his hands and chin, said, “We might begin with the premise that, through ceremonial actions, rhetorical exhortations, and a deep concentration upon the symbolic meaning of magic squares, one can literally will into existence a channel between alternate histories. That, after all, is what Oliphant appears to have done.”

“Quite so. But did he do it independently, or does such a feat require simultaneous rituals in both realities?”

Setting down the books, Monckton Milnes divided the tottering pile into two stable ones, then took up a volume and waved it at Burton. “And how can we account for this? De occulta philosophia by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Published in 1533. If history didn’t bifurcate until 1840, how is it possible that so many treatises about magic date from centuries earlier, before there were any realities other than the original?”

Burton, who was sitting Turkish-style on the floor with open books arranged in a circle around him, dug his knuckles into his lower back and stretched, massaging the muscles to either side of his spine. He groaned, got to his feet, and said, “I wonder—on how many occasions have you experienced what you might call a turning point in your life and felt it was predestined?” He stepped over to the fireplace and leaned with his shoulder blades against the mantle, pulling a cheroot from his pocket and lighting it.

“Many a time,” Monckton Milnes replied. “Back in ’twenty-seven, when I entered Trinity College, my falling in with Tennyson and his cronies propelled me into literary circles in a manner that felt utterly precipitous yet strangely appropriate. In 1840, Abdu El Yezdi’s exhortation, via the countess, that I should finance Disraeli’s opposition to Palmerston, had about it a whiff of the preordained, too.”

Burton blew smoke into the room’s already polluted atmosphere. “I’ve also had such moments. Being posted to India was one. Meeting Isabel. Berbera. As a matter of fact, I feel I’m at such a juncture right now, what with this king’s agent business and all.”

Monckton Milnes plonked himself into an armchair. “Your point?”

“That perhaps Time isn’t the unidirectional phenomenon we take it for. What if there exists, within any given history, certain moments—in the lives of individuals, of nations, of the world as a whole—that possess such potency they send out ripples in all directions? Thus, hints of a significant future event can be sensed long before it occurs, so when it finally happens, it feels as though it was always meant to be.”

“How does that relate to magic?”

“What bigger moment in Time can there be than the breaking of its mechanism? Surely the ripples caused by the bifurcation of history have echoed far into the past, as well as into the future. I don’t consider it inconceivable that Agrippa and John Dee and Edward Kelley and all the others who’ve presented their theories of magic were engaged not with what was then a feasible science, but with the foreshadowing of one that would, long after their deaths, become viable.”

Monckton Milnes grappled with the concept, scratched his head, grunted, and murmured, “Sideways, too.”

“Pardon?”

“Those ripples. If they extend backward and forward through time, then maybe they go sideways, too, into the alternate histories. The war the countess spoke of—you said she claimed it occurs in all versions of reality. I’m wondering whether it originates in one—perhaps the original—and the rest suffer as they are battered by the—the—”

“The resonance,” Burton offered.

“Yes! Resonance! Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge!”

Burton frowned. “What?”

Monckton Milnes slapped the arm of his chair enthusiastically. “When an army marches over a bridge, it breaks step so as not to establish a rhythm that’ll resonate through the structure and cause it to swing—potentially to such a degree that it’ll collapse. Wind blowing at the right speed and angle can have a similarly disastrous effect. Brunel built dampeners into the Clifton Suspension Bridge to prevent such a phenomenon. Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“That Abdu El Yezdi is attempting the same! He’s been manipulating people and events in order to dampen the resonance. He must know the causes of the war in the other histories and, in this one, just as the countess claimed, he’s been trying to change them. He’s making our version of history break step!”

Burton considered for a moment before answering. “In which case, I think we can discard entirely the idea that there exists an Afterlife, for it seems far more likely to me that El Yezdi is a visitor from the future.”

Monckton Milnes emitted a whistle and shook his head. Sotto voce, he quoted Plato: “How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?”

It was a rhetorical question, and one that perfectly summed up the sense of unreality that held both men in its grip.

On Wednesday the 19th, a telegram was delivered to Fryston. It originated from France and stated simply, En route. The sender arrived two days later. He was ushered into the library by the butler to be welcomed with enthusiasm by Monckton Milnes, who cried out, “Monsieur! This is indeed an unexpected pleasure. It was not my intention to wrest you from your studies. May I introduce you to my friend, Sir Richard Francis Burton? Sir Richard, this is Monsieur Eliphas Levi. In matters of the occult, no man has greater knowledge or experience.”

Burton stepped forward and shook the visitor’s hand. Levi was a tall, broad, and wide-faced man, with a spade-shaped beard and clear blue eyes. He wore the robes of a monk. When he addressed Burton, he did so in a deep, booming voice. “Your recent achievement, it cause a sensation even in my own country, Sir Richard, and—mon Dieu!—you know how reluctant we French are to celebrate the deeds of any man not of our own nation! But à tout seigneur tout honneur, eh?”

Burton bowed his thanks.

Monckton Milnes instructed his butler to bring a pot of coffee, then hustled Levi and Burton into armchairs. The men settled, and Levi said, “I have no choice but to come. The information you send—oof!—ça me donne des frissons! So to England I travel aller au fond des choses—to get to the bottom of things. Commençons par un bout. Tell me all about it. All about it, je vous prie!”

Monckton Milnes looked at Burton. “Richard, I assure you, Monsieur Levi can be trusted. I recommend you hold nothing back. I will take responsibility.” He then addressed the Frenchman. “But, monsieur, please understand that much of what you will hear has been classified as secret by the British government. It must not be repeated.”

“I understand. Bouche cousue! Now, you speak and I listen. Cela vous dérange si je fume?”

Monckton Milnes flicked his hand in consent then looked on in amazement as Levi pulled a perfectly enormous calabash pipe from his pocket and began to stuff its exaggerated bowl with tobacco. A minute later, the Frenchman was leaning back in the chair with his eyes closed, giving every indication of being asleep but for the thick plumes of foul-smelling smoke that he puffed into the air.

Burton tried to counteract the pungent odour with one of his Manila cheroots, and while doing so, described Laurence Oliphant’s ritual before going on to detail the course of his investigation, his encounter with Countess Sabina, and his and Monckton Milnes’s theory.

Levi sighed and emitted a breathy whistle.

“Monsieur?” Monckton Milnes murmured.

“Attends, je cherche!” Levi responded. Wait, I’m thinking!

They sat quietly while he ruminated. Five minutes passed.

“Bien,” the Frenchman finally said. “On commence à y voir plus clair! Yes, yes! I see all now!” He reached into his pocket, produced the letter Monckton Milnes had sent him, and held up a page upon which the magic squares had been transcribed. “The four central numbers—mille, neuf cents, dix, et huit—I think you now comprehend, non? They are exactly what they appear when written: une année! They are 1918, fifty-nine years from now.”

Levi rose and paced to a window. He gazed out of it at the clear blue sky.

“As you surmise, messieurs, these calculations they open a passage from une réalité différente from this, our own—but also from that world’s future. Three intruders, we have! Three! But only one, he come through this way, for the lights in the sky, they are caused by the method, and they never are seen before, non? So, who are our visitors?” He turned to face them and raised a finger. “Numéro un! Edward Oxford. He arrive, I think, by means of the white suit.”

“The suit!” Burton exclaimed.

“Oui, for it is seen in 1840 and in 1837, where it vanish in front of Henry Beresford. It is magical—it operate on scientific principles of which we have no conception.”

Burton examined the glowing tip of his cigar, which was by now little more than a stub. He flicked it into the fireplace. “Then, based on his physical resemblance to the queen’s assassin, I’ll wager the future Oxford and the Mystery Hero are one and the same. Which means he’s dead.”

“Oui, probablement he is killed by intruder numéro deux. That person, he hit Detective Inspector Trounce, and he resemble you, Sir Richard. You have the countenance of an Arabian. Abdu El Yezdi is an Arabian name. So, this we add up and—voila!—El Yezdi is our second traveller in time. But by what method? We do not know. But he have the rifle, which tell us he come from Africa in 1918. Also, we know he stay, and is here still.”

Levi sucked at his pipe for a moment. When he spoke again, it was from behind a veil of blue smoke.

“Numéro trois. Perdurabo. It seem he also come from Africa, 1918, but he journey through the passage conceptuel Oliphant create. This is very significant, for it mean he here only as volonté, as willpower.”

“You mean he has no physical presence?” Monckton Milnes exclaimed.

“Exactement. Our Beast is une personne insubstantielle—a phantom—but volonté, it must have un corps physique to survive in the world. It mean he take possession.”

“Of another person?” Burton asked.

“Oui. This I must study. Possibly, it is the key to his defeat, for he has the bad intentions, non?”

Monckton Milnes jumped up and started to pace back and forth, pulling his hair. “It’s too much!” he cried out. “I feel my brain will explode! I don’t know what to think or do!”

“You don’t have to think or do anything,” Burton said. “Your help has been invaluable, but the rest is up to me.”

“Non, monsieur,” Levi said. “Not only. I will assist. I have knowledge. This Perdurabo, his nature I must better understand. I fear what he might be, so I will research, research, research!”

Burton gave a nod of gratitude.

“And you, Richard?” Monckton Milnes asked.

“I have to locate Abdu El Yezdi. I’m certain he’s an ally in all of this. The line of inquiry leads us to Wallington Hall and the poet, Swinburne.”