The strange affair of Spring-heeled Jack

THE MATTER

By two o'clock that afternoon, Burton was back at work. He'd slept for a couple of hours, washed, dressed, and eaten lunch, and had then sent two messages: one by runner to the prime minister requesting an audience; the other by parakeet to Swinburne asking him to call early that evening.

An hour later, a reply from 10 Downing Street landed on his windowsill.

"Message from that degenerate idle-headed lout Lord Palmerston. Come at once. Message ends."

"No reply," said Burton.

"Up your spout!" screeched the parakeet as it flew off.

Forty minutes later, having walked briskly through the thinning fog that was still clinging to central London, Burton was once again sitting opposite Lord Palmerston, who, while hurriedly scribbling notes in the margins of a document, spoke without looking up.

"What is it, Burton? I'm busy and I don't require progress reports. Just write up the case when it's done and send it to me."

"A man died."

"Who? How?"

"A cab driver named Montague Penniforth. He accompanied me to the East End and was there killed by a werewolf."

Palmerston looked up for the first time. "A werewolf? You saw it?"

"I saw four. Penniforth was torn apart. I had no way to take care of his body without placing myself in jeopardy. He was a good man and didn't deserve an East End funeral."

"The Thames, you mean?"

"Yes." Burton clenched his fists. "I was a damned fool. I shouldn't have got him involved."

The prime minister laid his pen to one side and rested his hands in front of him with fingers entwined. He spoke in a slow and level tone.

"The commission you have received from the king is a unique one. You must regard yourself as a commander in the field of battle and, on occasion, His Majesty's servants will be required to serve. It's highly likely, given the nature of your missions, that some of those servants will be killed or injured. They fall for the Empire."

"Penniforth was a cabbie, not a soldier!" objected Burton.

"He was the king's servant, as are we all."

"And are all who fall while in his service to be dumped unceremoniously into the river like discarded slops?"

Palmerston pulled a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and wrote upon it. He slid it across to Burton.

"Wherever possible in such circumstances, get a message to this address. My team will come and clean up the mess. The fallen will be treated with respect. Funerals will be arranged and paid for. Widows will be granted a state pension."

The king's agent looked at the names written above the address.

"Burke and Hare!" he exclaimed. "Code names?"

"Actually, no-coincidence! The resurrectionist Burke was hanged in '29 and his partner, Hare, died a blind beggar ten years ago. My two agents, Damien Burke and Gregory Hare, are cut from entirely different cloth. Good men, if a little gloomy in outlook."

"Montague Penniforth had a wife named Daisy and lived in Cheapside. That's all I know about him."

"I'll put Burke and Hare onto it. They'll soon find the woman and I'll see to it that she's provided for. I have a lot to do, Captain Burton. Are we finished?"

Burton stood. "Yes, sir."

"Then let us both get back to work."

Palmerston returned to his scribbling and Burton turned to leave. As he reached the door, the prime minister spoke again.

"You might consider taking an assistant."

Burton looked back but Lord Palmerston was bent over his document, writing furiously.

Propriety demands that young women do not visit the homes of bachelors without a chaperone but Isabel Arundell didn't give two hoots for propriety. She was well aware that Society was already looking down its ever-so-haughty nose at her because she'd accompanied her fiance to Bath and stayed in the same hotel as him, though, heaven forbid, not in the same room. Now she was willfully breaking another taboo by visiting him at his home independently-and not for the first time.

Her willful destruction of her own reputation bothered her not a bit, for she knew that when she and Richard were married they'd leave the country to live abroad. He would work as a government consul and she would gather around herself a new group of friends, preferably non-English, among whom she'd be considered an exotic bloom; a delicate rose among the darker and, she imagined, rather less sophisticated blossoms of Damascus or, perhaps, South America.

She had it all worked out, and, generally, what Isabel Arundell wanted, Isabel Arundell got.

When she arrived at 14 Montagu Place that afternoon, she was reluctantly allowed into the house by Mrs. Angell, who had the brazen effrontery, in Isabel's opinion, to ask whether the "young miss" was sure this visit was entirely wise. The kindly old dame then suggested that if Isabel was determined to go through with it, then perhaps she-Mrs. Angell-should remain at her side throughout, to satisfy social mores.

Isabel impatiently dismissed the well-meant offer and, without further ado, she marched up the stairs and entered the study.

Burton was slumped in his saddlebag armchair by the fire, wrapped in his jubbah, smoking one of his disreputable cheroots and staring into the room's thick blue haze of tobacco smoke. He'd been there since his return from Downing Street an hour ago and had barely moved a muscle. His mind was far away and he was completely unaware that Isabel had entered.

"For goodness' sake, Dick," she chided, "I've stepped out of one fog and into another! If you must be-"

She stopped, gasped, and raised her gloved hands to her mouth, for she'd noticed that a yellowing bruise curved around one of his eyes, a livid and much darker one marked his left temple, there were scratches and grazes all over his face, and he looked somewhat as if the Charge of the Light Brigade had galloped over him.

"What-what-what-?" she stuttered.

His eyes turned slowly toward her and she saw his pupils shrink into focus.

"Ah," he said, and stood. "Isabel, my apologies-I forgot you were coming."

"Your face, Dick!" she exclaimed, and she suddenly flung herself into his arms. "Your face! What on earth has happened!"

He kissed her forehead and stepped back, holding her at arm's length.

"Everything, Isabel. Everything has happened. My life seems to have changed in an instant! I have been commissioned by the king himselfl"

"The king? Commissioned? Dick, I don't understand. And why are you bruised and cut so?"

"Sit down. I'll endeavour to explain. But, Isabel, you must prepare yourself. Remember the Arabic proverb I taught you: In lam yakhun ma tureed, fa'ariid ma yakhoon. "

She translated: "`When what you want doesn't happen, learn to want what does."'

She sat and frowned and waited while he went to the bureau and poured her a tonic. He returned and handed her the glass but remained standing. His expression was unreadable.

"The Foreign Office was going to offer me a consulship in Fernando Po-" he began.

She interrupted, "Yes, I have sent many a letter to Lord Russell recommending you for just such a post. Though I requested Damascus."

"You did what?" he muttered in surprise. "You thought it acceptable to write to Lord Russell on my behalf without first consulting with me?"

"Don't be bullish, Dick. We've spoken about a consulship often. But, pray, tell me what happened to you!"

"In due course. And I should say there is a great difference between a conversation shared between us and a begging letter sent to a government minister."

"It was hardly that!" she cried.

"Be that as it may, you should neither speak nor write on my behalf unless expressly asked by me to do so."

"I was trying to help you!"

"And in doing so made it appear that I lacked the wherewithal to forward my own career. By myself perhaps I could have secured Damascus. As it is, your intervention earned me an invitation to Fernando Po. They offered me a governmental crumb when I wanted a governmental loaf. Do you know where Fernando Po is?"

"No," she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek. This visit wasn't going at all as she had planned.

"It's a Spanish island off the west coast of Africa; an insignificant, diseaseridden fleapit, widely regarded as `the white man's graveyard.' A man who is made consul of Fernando Po is a man the Foreign Office wants out of the way. The fact that Lord Russell suggested it for me means only one thing: I have irritated him. Except, of course, I haven't. In fact, I've had no contact with him at all."

"It was me! It's my fault! Oh, I'm so sorry, Dick-I wanted only the best for you!"

"And achieved the worst," he noted, ruthlessly.

Isabel hid her face in her hands and wept.

"Isabel," said Burton softly, "when the king honoured me with a knighthood, I thought my future was secured-our future. Then came John's betrayal. Why he did it, I know not. He'd been a younger brother to me, but he was weak and allowed himself to be manipulated by a malignant force. I'd striven like no man to make a name for myself: in India, I had to overcome disappointments and the jealous opposition of officers; in Arabia, I risked execution by taking the pilgrimage to Mecca; in Berbera, I was nearly killed by natives; and in central Africa, I almost died from illness and exhaustion. It all became worthless when he turned against me and tarnished my reputation. The things he suggested! By God! I should have horsewhipped him! But sentiment caused me to stay my hand and in that pause, the harm was done. When he shot himself, it might have been my head he levelled the gun at for all the damage it did me; for now, on top of all the malicious lies he'd told, I am blamed for his attempted suicide. On Monday, when I learned what he'd done, the Richard Burton you met in Boulogne ten years ago-the Burton you fell in love with-that man ceased to exist."

"No, Richard! Don't say that!" she wailed.

"It's true. You would have married a broken man-but for one thing."

"What?" she whimpered.

"That evening, I was physically assaulted."

Isabel blinked rapidly. "You were attacked? By whom?"

"By a thing out of myth and folklore; by a seemingly supernatural being; by Spring Heeled Jack."

She stared at him wordlessly.

"It's true, Isabel. Then, on Tuesday morning, I was summoned by Palmerston and he offered me a post on behalf of the king. I have become a-well, there's no real name for it; Palmerston calls me the `king's agent,' though 'investigator' or `researcher' or even `detective' might do just as well. One of my first commissions is to discover more about the very creature that assaulted me."

Isabel Arundell suddenly rose to her feet and crossed the room to one of the windows. She looked out of it as she spoke.

"This is poppycock, Dick," she snapped, decisively. "Has your malaria returned?"

He moved back to the bureau, beside her, and poured himself a glass of port.

"Do you mean to suggest that I might be delusional?"

There was a deep sadness in his voice. She swung around at the sound of it.

"Spring Heeled Jack is a children's story!"

"And if I were also to tell you that I've seen werewolves in London?"

"Werewolves! Richard! Listen to what you are saying!"

"I know how it sounds, Isabel, but I also know what I saw. Furthermore, a man died and it was my fault. It taught me a painful lesson: that this post I now hold brings with it immense danger, not just for me, but for those close to me, too."

"I can't-I can't-" she stammered. "Dear God! You mean to give me up?" She clutched at her chest as if her heart were failing.

"You know what manner of man am I," he replied. "Discovery is my mania. Africa is closed to me now and, anyway, I have little desire for the ill health that expeditions bring with them. The last almost killed me, and I would rather die on my feet than on my back. Besides, geographical exploration is but one form of discovery; there are others, and the king has given me the opportunity to use my mania in a fashion I had hitherto never imagined. I can-"

"Stop!" commanded Isabel. Her chin went up and her eyes flashed dangerously. "And what of me, Richard? Answer me that! What of me?"

Ignoring the great ache that suddenly gripped his heart, Sir Richard Francis Burton answered.

Despite her flaws, Burton loved Isabel, and despite his, she returned that love. She was meant to be his wife, that he could not dispute, yet he had defied Destiny and willfully forced his life down a different path.

He was left empty and emotionless; yet he suddenly acquired a heightened self-awareness, too, and experienced an intensification of the feverish sensation that his personality was split.

As the afternoon gave way to early evening, he fell once again into a deep contemplation-almost a self-induced trance-under the spell of which he explored the presence of the invisible doppelganger that seemed to occupy the same armchair as himself. Oddly, he found that he now associated this second Richard Burton not with the delirium of malaria but with Spring Heeled Jack.

He and his double, he intuitively recognised, existed at a point of divergence. To one of them, a path was open that led to Fernando Po, Brazil, Dam ascus, and "wherever the fuck else they send you. " For the other, the path was that of the king's agent, its destination shrouded.

The stilt-walker, Burton was certain, had somehow foreseen this choice. Jack, whatever he was, was not a spy, as he and Palmerston had initially suspected. Oh no, nothing so pedestrian as that! It wasn't just what the strangely costumed man had said but also the way he'd said it that forced upon Burton the conception that Jack possessed an uncanny knowledge of hisBurton's-future, knowledge that could never be gained from spying, no matter how efficient.

In India, he'd seen much that defied rational thought. Human beings, he was convinced, possessed a "force of will" that could extend their senses beyond the limits of sight, hearing, taste, or touch. Could it, he wondered, even transcend the restrictions of time? Was Spring Heeled Jack a true clairvoyant? If he was, then he obviously spent far too much time dwelling upon the future, for his grasp of the present seemed tenuous at best; he had expressed astonishment when Burton revealed that the Nile debate-and Speke's accident-had already occurred.

"I'm a historian!" he'd claimed. "I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861."

Happened. Past tense, though he spoke of 1864, which was three years in the future.

Curious.

There was an obvious-though hard to accept-explanation for the discrepancies in Jack's perception of time: he simply wasn't of this world. The creature had, after all, twice vanished before Burton's very eyes and, back in 1840, had done the same in full view of Detective Inspector Trounce. Plainly, this was a feat no mere mortal could achieve.

What's more, everything could be explained Jack's inconsistent character and appearance, his confusion about time, his seeming to be in two places at once, his apparent agelessness-if it were accepted that he was a supernatural being whose habitat lay beyond the realms of normal time and space. Perhaps Burton's first impression had been correct: could he be an uncorked djinni? A demon? A malevolent spirit? Moko, the Congo's god of divination?

The king's agent emerged from his contemplation having come to two conclusions. The first was that, for the time being, the bizarre apparition should be treated as one being rather than as two or more. The second was that Time was a key element in understanding Spring Heeled Jack.

He stood and rubbed a crick out of his neck. As always, focusing his mind on one thing had helped him to forget another, and, though his meeting with Isabel had been painful, he wasn't immobilised by depression, as he'd sometimes been in the past. In fact, he was feeling surprisingly positive.

It was eight o'clock.

Burton crossed to the window and looked down at Montagu Place. The fog had reduced to a watery mist, liberally punctuated with coronas of light from gas lamps and windows. The usual hustle and bustle had returned to the streets of London: the rattling velocipedes, gasping steam-horses, oldfashioned horse-drawn vehicles, pantechnicons, and, above all, the seething mass of humanity.

Usually, when he looked upon such a scene, Burton, ever the outsider, felt a fierce longing for the wide-open spaces of Arabia. This evening, though, there was an unfamiliar cosiness about London, almost a familiarity. He'd never felt this before. England had always felt strange to him, stifling and repressive.

I am changing, he thought. I hardly know myself.

A flash of red caught his attention: Swinburne stepping out of a hansom. The poet's arrival was signalled by shrill screams and cries as he squabbled with the driver over the fare. Swinburne had the fixed idea that the fare from one place in London to any other was a shilling, and would argue hysterically with any cabbie who said otherwise-which they all did. On this occasion, as so often happened, the driver, embarrassed by the histrionics, gave up and accepted the coin.

Swinburne came bobbing across the street with that peculiar dancing gait of his. He jangled the front doorbell.

Everyone uses the bell, thought Burton, except policemen. They knock.

Moments later, Burton heard Mrs. Angell's voice and the piping tones of Algernon, footsteps on the stairs, and the staccato rap of a cane on his study door.

He turned from the window and called, "Come in, Algy!"

Swinburne bounced in and enthusiastically announced, "Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things."

"And what's prompted that declaration?" enquired Burton.

"I just saw one of the new rotorships! It was huge! How godlike we have become that we can send tons of metal gliding through the air! My hat! You've acquired new bruises! Was it Jack again? I saw in the evening edition that he pounced on a girl in the early hours."

"A rotorship? What did it look like? I haven't seen one yet."

Swinburne threw himself into an armchair, hooking a leg over one arm. He placed his top hat onto the end of his cane, held up the stick, and made the hat spin.

"A vast platform, Richard, flat and oval shaped, with a great many pylons extending horizontally from its edge, and, at their ends, vertical shafts at the tip of which great wings were spinning so fast that only a circular blur was visible. It was leaving an enormous trail of steam. Did he beat you up again?"

"On its way to India, perhaps," mused Burton.

"Yes, I should think so. But listen to this: it had propaganda painted on its keel. Enormous words!"

"Saying what?"

"Saying: `Citizen! The Society of Friends of the Air Force summons you to its ranks! Help to build more ships like this!"'

Burton raised an eyebrow. "The Technologists are certainly on the up as far as public opinion is concerned. It seems they intend to make the most of it!"

"What a sight it was," enthused Swinburne. "I expect it could circle the globe without landing once! So tell me about the pummelling."

"I'm surprised at your enthusiasm," commented Burton, ignoring the question. "I thought you Libertines were dead set against such machines. You know they'll be used to conquer the so-called uncivilised."

"Well, yes, of course," responded Swinburne, airily. "But one can't help but be impressed by such impossibilities as flying ships of metal! Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron shall a nation be moulded to last! Anyway, old chap, answer my confounded question! How come the new bruises?"

"Oh," said Burton. "Just a tumble or two. I was clobbered by a werewolf, then, a few hours later, Spring Heeled Jack dragged my rotorchair out of the sky and sent me crashing through some treetops."

Swinburne grinned. "Yes, but really, what happened?"

"Exactly that."

The young poet threw his topper at the explorer in exasperation. Burton caught it and tossed it back.

Swinburne sighed, and said, "If you don't want to explain, jolly good, but at least tell me what's on the menu for tonight. Alcoholic excesses? Or maybe something different for a change? I've been thinking it might be fun to try opium."

Blake slipped out of his jubbah and reached for his jacket, which he'd thrown carelessly over the back of a chair.

"You'll stay well away from that stuff, Algernon. Your self-destructive streak is dangerous enough as it is. Alcohol is going to kill you slowly, I have no doubt. Opium will do the job with far greater efficiency!" He buttoned up his jacket. "Why you want to do away with yourself, I cannot fathom," he continued.

"Pshaw!" objected Swinburne, jumping up and pressing his topper down over his wild carroty hair. "I have no intention of killing myself. I'm just bored, Richard. Terribly, terribly bored. The ennui of this pointless existence gnaws at my bones."

He began to dance crazily around the room.

"I'm a poet! I need stimulation! I need danger! I need to tread that thin line 'twixt life and death, else I have no experience worth writing about!"

Burton gazed at the capering little slope-shouldered man. "You are serious?"

"Of course! You yourself write poetry. You know that the form is but a container. What have I, a twenty-four year old, to pour into that container but the pathetic dribblings of an immature dilettante? Do you know what they wrote about me in the Spectator? They said: `He has some literary talent but it is decidedly not of a poetical kind. We do not believe any criticism will help to improve Mr. Swinburne.'

"I want to improve! I want to be a great poet or I am nothing, Richard! To do that I must truly live. And a man can only truly live when Death is his permanent companion. Did I ever tell you about the time I climbed Culver Cliff on the Isle of Wight?"

Burton shook his head. Swinburne stopped his bizarre hopping and they crossed to the door, went out, and started down the stairs.

"It was Christmas, 1854," said his friend. "I was seventeen and my father had refused to buy me a commission as a cavalry officer. Denied a role in the war, how could I tell whether I possessed courage or not? It was all very well to dream of forlorn hopes and cavalry charges but for all I knew, when faced with the reality of war, I might be a coward! I had to test myself, Richard; so that Christmas I walked to the eastern headland of the island."

They exited the house and turned up their collars. It was getting colder.

"Where are we going?" asked Swinburne.

"Battersea."

"Battersea? Why, what's there?"

"The Tremors."

"Is that an affliction?"

"It's a public house. This way. I want to find my local paperboy first."

"Why all the way to Battersea just for a drink?"

"I'll tell you when we get there! Continue your story."

"You know Culver Cliff? It's a great face of chalk cut through with bands of flint. Very sheer. So I decided to climb it as a test of my mettle. On the first attempt, I came to an impassable overhang and had to make my way down again to choose a different route. I started back up, setting my teeth and swearing to myself that I would not come down alive again-if I did return to the foot of that blessed cliff, it would be in a fragmentary condition! So I edged my way up and the wind blew into the crevasses and hollows and made a sound like an anthem from the Eton Chapel organ. Then, as I edged ever higher, a cloud of seagulls burst from a cave and wheeled around me and for a moment I feared they would peck my eyes out. But still I ascended, though every muscle complained. I had almost reached the top when the chalk beneath my footholds crumbled away and I was left dangling by my hands from a ledge which just gave my fingers room enough to cling and hold on while I swung my feet sideways until I found purchase. I was able to pull myself up and over the lip of the cliff and there I lay so exhausted that I began to lose consciousness. It was only the thought that I might roll back over the edge that roused me."

"And thus you proved your courage to your satisfaction?" asked Burton.

"Yes, but I learned more than that. I learned that I can only truly live when Death threatens, and I can only write great poems when I feel Life coursing through my veins. My enemy is ennui, Richard. It will kill me more surely and more foully than either alcohol or opium, of that I am certain."

Burton pondered this until, a few minutes later, they caught up with young Oscar in Portman Square.

"I say, Quips!"

"What ho, Captain! You'll be taking an evening edition?" The youngster smiled.

"No, lad-I need information that I won't find in the newspaper. It's worth a bob or two."

"A couple of years ago, Captain, I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I'm older, I know that it is! You have yourself a deal. What is it that you're after knowing?"

"I need to meet with the Beetle, the president of the League of Chimney Sweeps."

Algernon Swinburne looked up at Burton in astonishment.

"Oofl" exclaimed Oscar. "That's a tall order! He's a secretive sort!"

Burton's reply was lost as a diligence thundered past, pulled by four horses. He waited until it had disappeared into Wigmore Street then repeated, "But you can find him? Is it possible?"

"I'll knock on your door tomorrow morning, sir. One thing: if you want to talk with the Beetle, you'll have to take him some books. He's mad for reading, so he is."

"Reading what?"

"Anything at all, Captain, though he prefers poetry and factual to fiction."

"Very well. Thank you, Quips. Here's a shilling to be going on with."

Oscar touched his cap, winked, moved away, and yelled, "Evenin' paper! Confederate forces enter state of Kentucky! Read all about it!"

"What an extraordinary child!" exclaimed Swinburne.

"Yes, indeed. He's destined for great things, is young Oscar Wilde," answered Burton.

"But see here, my friend," shrilled the poet, "I'll be left in the dark no longer! Spring Heeled Jack, a werewolf, and the Beetle. What extraordinary affair have you got yourself involved in? It's time to tell all, Richard. I'll not move another step until you do."

Burton considered his friend for a moment, then said, "I'll tell you, but can I trust you to keep it under your hat?"

"Yes."

"Your word?"

"My word."

"In that case, once we're in a hansom and on our way to Battersea, I'll explain."

He swung around and strode out of the square, with Swinburne bouncing at his side.

"Wait!" demanded the poet. "We aren't catching a hansom now?"

"Not yet. There's a place I want to visit first."

"What place?"

"You'll see."

"Why must you be so insufferably mysterious?"

They made their way through the early evening crowd of perambulators, hawkers, labourers, buskers, beggars, vagabonds, dollymops, and thieves until they reached Vere Street. There Burton stopped outside a narrow premises which stood hunched between a hardware shop and the Museum of Anatomy. Beside its bright yellow door, a tall blue-curtained window had stuck upon its inside a sheet of paper upon which was written in a swirling hand the legend:

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 f 11 AM until 2 PM and f 6 PM to 9 PM

Please enter and wait until called.

"You're joking!" said Swinburne.

"Not at all."

Burton had heard about this place from Richard Monckton Milnes. He and the older man had long shared an interest in the occult and Monckton Milnes had once told Burton there was no better palmist in all London than this one.

They entered.

Beyond the front door the adventurer and his companion found a short and none-too-clean passageway of naked floorboards and cracked plaster walls lit by an oil lamp that hung from the stained ceiling. They walked its length and pushed through a thick purple velvet curtain, entering a small rectangular room that smelled of stale sandalwood incense. Wooden chairs lined the undecorated walls. Only one was occupied. It was sat upon by a tall, skinny, and prematurely balding young man with watery eyes and bad teeth, which he bared at them in what passed for a smile.

"The wife's in there!" he said in a reedy voice, nodding toward a door beside the curtained entrance. "If you wait with me until she finishes, you can then go in."

Burton and Swinburne sat. The room's two gas lamps sent shadows snaking across their faces. Swinburne's hair took on the appearance of fire.

The man stared at Burton. "My goodness, you've been in the wars! Did you fall?"

"Yes he did. Down the stairs in a brothel," interposed Swinburne, crossing his legs.

"Great heavens!"

"They were throwing him out. Said his tastes were too exotic."

"Er-erotic?" spluttered the man.

"No. Exotic. You know what I mean, I'm sure." He made the sound of a swishing cane.

"Why, y-yes, of-of course."

Burton grinned savagely, looking like the very devil himself. "You fool, Algy!" he whispered.

The man cleared his throat once, twice, three times, before managing: "Eroti-I mean exotic, hey? What? I say! And-er-well-tallyho!"

"Are you familiar with the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana?" asked Swinburne.

"The, um, the-the K-Kama-?"

"It offers guidance in the art of lovemaking. This gentleman has just begun translating it from the original Sanskrit."

"The-the-ar-ar-art of-?" The man swallowed with an audible gulp.

The door opened and a woman swept into the room. She was tall, enor mously fat, and wore the most voluminous dress Burton had ever seen. She reminded him of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's megalithic transatlantic liner, the SS Titan.

"Thank God!" exclaimed the thin man. "I mean, I say, you've finished, my little lamb!"

"Yes," she said, in a booming voice, her double chins wobbling. "We must go home at once, Reginald. There are things we must discuss!"

He stood, and Burton was sure he could see the man's knees knocking together.

"Th-things, Lammykins?"

"Things, Reginald!"

She pushed aside the curtain and squeezed her bulk into the corridor. Her husband followed, casting a last glance at Swinburne, who winked and said in a stage whisper: "The Kama Sutra!"

He chuckled as the man dived after his wife.

Another woman stepped from the doorway. She was of indeterminate age-either elderly but very well preserved or young and terribly worn, Burton couldn't decide which. Her hair was chestnut brown, shot through with grey, and hung freely to the small of her back, defying the conservative styles of the day; her face was angular and might once have been beautiful; certainly, her large, dark, slightly slanted eyes still were. The lips, though, were thin and framed by deep lines. She wore a black dress with a creamcoloured shawl. Her hands were bare, the nails bitten and unpainted.

"You wish an insight into the future?" she asked, in a musical, slightly accented voice, looking from one man to the other.

Burton stood. "I do. My friend will wait."

She nodded and stepped aside so that he might pass through to the room beyond. It was small, sparsely furnished, and dominated by a tall blue curtain, the same one he'd seen from the outside. A dim lamp hung low over a round table. Shelves lined the walls and were packed with trinkets and baubles of an esoteric nature.

The Countess Sabina closed the door and moved to a chair. She and Burton sat, facing each other across the table.

She considered him.

In the ill-lit chamber, with the flickering light shining from directly above, Burton's eyes were shadowy sockets and the deep scar on his left cheek stood out vividly.

"Your face will be known for long," the countess blurted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm sorry. Sometimes I don't know why I say what I say. It is an aspect of my gift-of my powers. It is for you to decide the meaning. Give me your hand. The right."

He held out his hand, palm upward. She took hold of it and bent close, tracing its lines with a finger.

"Small hands," she muttered, almost inaudibly. "This-hmm-such restlessness. No roots. You have seen much. Truly seen." She looked up at him. "You are of the People, sir. I am certain of that."

"You mean the gypsy race? It's true that I bear the name Burton."

"Ah! One of the great families. Your other hand please, Mr. Burton."

He held out his left hand. She took it, without releasing the right, and examined it closely.

"What! So strange!" she whispered, almost as if addressing herself. "This cannot be. Separate roads to tread; separate destinations at which to settle; one of small glories that will become great long after he has passed; another of great victories won in secrecy and never revealed. This cannot be, for both paths are trodden! Both paths! How is this possible?"

Burton felt his flesh crawling.

The woman's hands gripped his own tightly. She started swaying back and forth slightly and a low moan escaped her.

He'd seen this sort of thing before, in India and Arabia, and watched fascinated as she slipped into a trance.

"I will speak, Captain," she muttered.

He started. How did she know his rank?

"I will speak. I will speak. I will speak of-of-of a time that is not a time. Of a time that could be. No! Wait. I do not understand. Of a time that should be? Should? Should? What is this I see? What?"

She fell silent and rocked backward, forward, backward, forward.

"For you, the wrong path is the right path!" she suddenly announced loudly. "Captain Burton: the wrong path is the right path! The way ahead offers choices that should never be offered and challenges that should never be faced. It is false, this path, yet you walk it and it is best that you do so. But what of the other? What of the other? What of that which was spoken but doesn't manifest? The truth is broken and the lie is lived! Kill him, Captain!" She suddenly threw her head back and screamed: "Kill him!"

The room fell silent and she slumped forward. He withdrew his hands. The door clicked behind him.

"I say, is everything all right?" came Swinburne's voice.

"Leave us a moment, Algy. I'll be out shortly."

The poet grunted and closed the door.

Burton moved around the table and, taking the countess by the shoul ders, pulled her upright. Her head fell back, revealing eyes that showed only the whites; the pupils had rolled up into the sockets.

The king's agent crooned a low chant in an ancient language and made a couple of strange passes across her face with his left hand. His words throbbed rhythmically and, gradually, she began to rock again, in time with the chant. Then he stopped and said: "Awake!"

Her pupils snapped down and into focus. She gasped and clutched at his forearm, holding it tightly.

"I cannot help you!" she mumbled, and a tear fell from her long eyelashes. "Your very existence is not as it should be and yet, at the same time, it is exactly as it should be! Listen to the echoes, Captain, the points of time's rhythm, for each is a crossroads. Time is like music. The same refrain emerges again and again, though different in form. What does this mean? What am I saying?"

"Countess," said Burton, "you have told me what I myself have half suspected. Something, somehow, is not as it should be. I know who holds the secret to this mystery and I mean to get it from him."

"The stilt-walker," she hissed.

"Yes. You see much!"

"Beware the stilt-walker. And the panther and the ape, too."

"What are they?"

"I can tell you no more. Please, leave me now. I must retire. I am exhausted."

Burton straightened. He pulled two guineas from his pocket and laid them on the table.

"Thank you, Countess Sabina."

"That is too much, Captain Burton."

"It is what your reading has been worth to me. There is no greater cheiromantist in all London, of that I am certain."

"Thank you, sir."

Burton left and, with Swinburne, departed the premises.

It sounded like you were strangling her," noted the poet.

"I can assure you that I wasn't," replied the king's agent. "Keep your eyes peeled for a hansom. Let's get to Battersea and the Tremors. I need a drink."

They picked up a cab a few minutes later and, as it chugged southward, skirted around Hyde Park, and headed down Sloane Street toward Chelsea Bridge, Burton told Swinburne about his new post, about Spring Heeled Jack, and about his theory that the stilt-walker was a supernatural beingpossibly Moko of Africa's Congo region. He also told the poet about the East End werewolves.

Swinburne spent the entire journey with his wide eyes fixed on his friend.

Finally, as they crossed the Thames and rattled past the prodigious and brightly lit power station, with its four massive copper rods towering against the night sky, the poet said quietly, "You have always been an inveterate storyteller, Richard; this, though, beats any of your Arabian Nights tales!"

"It's certainly as strange as anything recounted by Scheherazade," agreed Burton.

"So we're going to the Tremors to speak to its landlord?"

"Yes. Joseph Robinson, the man who employed Queen Victoria's assassin."

"I'll tell you what I like about your new job, shall I?" said Swinburne.

"What's that?"

"It seems to involve a lot of public houses!"

"Too many. Listen, Algy-I want us both to cut back on the drinking. We've been going at it hammer and tongs these weeks past, letting our frustrations get the better of us. It's time we took ourselves in hand."

"That's easy for you to say, old thing," responded Swinburne. "You have this new job to keep you occupied. Me, though-all I have is my writing, and it's not been well received!"

The hansom steamed past Battersea Fields and stopped on Dock Leaf Lane, where its two passengers disembarked. They paid the driver, crossed the road, and entered the Tremors, a small half-timbered pub with smokeblackened oak beams pitted with the fissures and cracks of age, tilting floors, and crazily askew walls.

There were two rooms, both cosily lit and warmed by log fires, and both containing a few tables and a smattering of customers. Burton and Swinburne passed through them and sat on stools at the counter. An ancient, bald, stooped, grey-bearded man with a merry gnomelike face rounded the corner of the bar, wiping his hands on a cloth. A high collar encased his thick neck and he wore an unfashionably long jacket.

"Evening, gents," he said, in a creaky but jovial voice. "Deerstalker? Finest ale south of the river!"

Burton nodded, and asked, "Are you Joseph Robinson?"

"Aye, sir, that's me," responded the landlord. He held a tankard to a barrel and twisted the tap. "Has someone been talking, then?"

"I was at the Hog in the Pound yesterday. The manager mentioned you."

"Oh ho! That old boozer! My my, what times I had there, I can tell you!" He placed the frothing tankard in front of Burton and looked at Swinburne. "Same for you, lad?"

The poet nodded.

"I was told to ask you about the name of this place," said Burton. "The Tremors. Apparently there's a story behind it?"

Start with a straightforward question, he thought; get him talking first then move on to the subject of Edward Oxford.

"Oh aye, yes, sir, that there is!" exclaimed Robinson. "Let me serve them what's waiting then I'll come tell you all about it."

He placed Swinburne's beer in front of the poet, glanced curiously at the little red-headed man, and left them, walking to the other end of the bar where a corpulent customer stood rattling coins in his hand.

"Will you be embarking on any more expeditions, Richard, or has this new role taken over?" asked Swinburne.

"It's very much taken over, Algy. It feels right, somehow. It's given me a purpose. Although I must admit, I'm none too keen on the confinements and hustle and bustle of London."

"Perhaps if it offers you action enough, you'll feel less like a caged tiger. What's Isabel's opinion?"

The answer came in a flat, cold tone: "There is no longer an Isabel."

The little poet lowered his glass, leaving white froth on his upper lip, and looked at his friend in astonishment.

"No Isabel? You mean you've parted ways?"

"This role I've taken on is not compatible with marriage."

"Good Lord! I would never have believed it! How did she take it?"

"Not well. I don't want to discuss it, Algernon. It's a mite painful. A fresh wound, so to speak."

"I'm sorry, Richard. Truly, I am."

"You're a good chap, Algy. Here comes old Robinson-let's listen to his tale."

The landlord came lumbering back and treated them to a gap-toothed smile through his bushy beard.

"It was the power station, you see," he announced, leaning his elbows upon the counter. "When Isambard Kingdom Brunel proposed it back in '37, the local community wasn't too happy. Oh no no no, we weren't happy at all. Who'd want that blooming eyesore on their doorstep? And, on top of that, we was afraid. When they started drilling the four holes, no one knew what would happen. Right down into the crust of the Earth they was pushing them blooming great copper rods, so's they could-um-confound the German fleet-no-um-what is it?"

"Conduct the geothermal heat," put in Burton, helpfully.

"That's the one! I remember them saying they'd be able to light the whole blooming city with electricity! What a load of cobblers that turned out to be! The only thing they've ever managed to light is the blooming power station itselfl Anyways, back in the day, folks around here was mighty afraid that the crust of the Earth would split wide open and swallow up the whole area, so me, being the young firebrand I was back then, I went and organised the Battersea Brigade."

"A protest group?" asked Swinburne.

"Yes, laddie. I wasn't much older than you but I was doing all right for myself. I'd taken over my old pa's public house-the Hog in the Pound, where you were yesterday, sir-and, being placed slap bang in Oxford Street, it was doing fine business."

"But you lived in Battersea?" asked Burton.

"Aye. My folks, bless 'em, had lived here all their blooming lives. Old dad used to walk-walk, mind you!-to the Hog and back every day. Three miles there; three miles back! So when he got tired of that, he made me manager, and I did the blooming foot-slog instead!

"Anyways, like I was atelling you, I recruited a bunch of locals and formed the Brigade-and I don't mind admitting that it turned into a nice little earner for me!"

"How so?" asked Burton, pushing his empty tankard forward.

The old man started refilling it.

"It struck me that if we were to stand against those Technologist devils then we'd need a spot of 'Dutch courage,' so to speak. So every Saturday, I used to ship the Brigade up to the Hog in three or four broughams, and give 'em all a drink for free. Heh! Once they got that down their necks they soon wanted more; only, of course, that weren't for free. Ha ha! Those Battersea Brigade meetings always turned into right old knees-ups, I can tell you! I made a tidy profit, thank you very much, and even more a few years later when I had the Brigade in the taproom and those Libertine rapscallions in the parlour!"

"The Libertines?" asked Burton, innocently.

"Why yes, sir, the-" He took Swinburne's empty tankard and started to refill it.

"I'll have a large brandy, too, if you please," said the poet. "And have something for yourself on me."

"Much obliged, sir. Most decent of you. I'll take a whisky. The Libertines-why, the whole thing started at the Hog in the Pound, ain't that right, Ted?"

This last was addressed to an ancient fellow who'd just arrived at the bar. He stood beside Swinburne, and Burton marvelled at his weather-beaten skin and bald pate, huge beaklike nose, and long pointed chin. He looked like Punchinello, and, when he spoke, he sounded like him, too, his tone sharp, snappy, and aggressive, seemingly the voice of a much younger man.

"What's that, Bob? The Libertines? Bah! Bounders and cads! 'Specially that blackguard Beresford!"

"May I buy you a drink, Mr.-?" asked Burton.

"Toppletree. Ted Toppletree. Very good of you, sir. Very good indeed. Most generous. Deerstalker. Best ale south of the river. Never mind the dog, sir."

This last was directed at Swinburne, whose trouser leg was being pulled at by a small basset hound. The poet jerked his ankle away only to have the dog lunge forward and bite his shoe.

"I say!" he shrilled.

"He's only playing with you, sir. Do you want to buy 'im? 'E's the best tracker you'll ever find; can sniff out anything. Fidget's his name."

"No!" squealed Swinburne. "Confound the beast! Why won't he leave me alone?"

"He's taken a right shine to you! Here, Fidget! Sit! Sit!"

The old man pulled the hound away from the poet. It sat, gazing longingly at Swinburne's ankles.

"You sure you wouldn't like to buy 'im, sir?"

"I've never been surer of anything!" Swinburne took a long gulp of ale. "I do believe you may be right about this beer! Very tasty!" he enthused, keeping a suspicious eye directed toward the dog. His upper lip was now entirely concealed behind a frothy white moustache. "Perhaps little Fidget will calm down if we offer him a bowl?"

Joseph Robinson placed a pint before Toppletree who took a swig, then announced: "Scum!"

Burton and Swinburne looked confused.

"Edward Oxford, I mean," explained the old man. "It was him. That's why Beresford and his mob came to the Hog."

Swinburne swallowed his brandy in a single gulp and pushed the glass toward Robinson, glancing ruefully at Burton and shrugging.

The king's agent, who was sipping his drink with more restraint, said, "Edward Oxford? The assassin?"

"Of course!" barked Toppletree. "Bob 'ere employed the bugger!"

Robinson handed the old man his beer and poured more brandy into Swinburne's glass. "It's true," he said. "Oxford used to work for me at the Hog before he went potty and shot the queen dead, may she rest in peace and he rot in hell."

"My Aunt Bessie's sacred hat!" exclaimed Swinburne. "You knew him? You actually knew the man who killed Queen Victoria?"

"Knew him!" exploded Toppletree. "This silly arse paid him!"

"I didn't pay him to blooming well assassinate the queen!" objected Robinson.

"Might as well have done. 'Twas your money he used to buy the pistols."

Robinson bridled, sticking his chest out over his not inconsiderable paunch and raising his clenched fists. "Watch your mouth, Ted. The bastard earned his money fair and square. What he did with it weren't my responsibility."

Toppletree, or Punchinello, as Burton couldn't help but think of him, grinned and his eyes twinkled mischievously.

"Ruffled feathers!" he exclaimed. "Guilty conscience, Bob?"

"Shut your trap!"

"Heh heh!"

Robinson suddenly relaxed. "You old git!" He chuckled.

"Easy target!"

"Stow it, old man!"

"So what was Oxford like?" interposed Swinburne, eyeing the basset hound, which gazed back with a forlorn expression.

Well done, Algy! thought Burton, pleased that his friend was steering the conversation back in the right direction. He remembered Monty doing the same, under very similar circumstances, not much less than twenty-four hours ago. Repetitive themes, just as Countess Sabina had suggested, as if time were music, presenting the same refrain.

Listen to the echoes, Captain; the points of time's rhythm, for each is a crossroads.

"Blooming heck, you can knock 'em back!" observed Robinson, noting that Swinburne's brandy glass and tankard were both empty again.

"Another round, if you please!" requested the little poet. "Include your good self."

"Ta very much. Edward Oxford? He was barmy. Talked to himself all the time. The customers treated him like the village idiot. Laughed at him. Teased him. Mighty popular with the Brigade, though, he was; always asking after their families, befriending their kids; and he was a blooming good barman, too. Fast on his feet with a good head for figures. Never once gave the wrong change. Kept the taps clean and the ale flowing. I ask you, gentshow was I to know he was a killer?"

Burton said solemnly, "You can never tell what's at the back of a man's mind."

"True!" snapped Punchinello. "If I'd known, I'd have killed the sod."

They all grunted in agreement.

Burton surreptitiously checked his pocket watch. It was twenty minutes past midnight.

"So the Libertines frequented the Hog in the Pound just because Oxford had worked there?" he asked.

"Exactly so," said Robinson, serving the fresh drinks. "And I can tell you, at first it was only the fact that they dressed like gentlemen that stopped me booting them out!"

"That and the money they spent," snorted Punchinello.

Swinburne looked at the oldster at his side. "So you were one of the Battersea Brigade?"

"I was. And I nearly came to blows with that Beresford bastard."

"How come?"

"You've read the evening paper? About the attack? This morning? The girl? Spring Heeled Jack?"

Sir Richard Francis Burton tensed and placed his tankard back on the bar in case they noticed his shaking hand.

"Yes," said Swinburne. "It was fairly vague. The girl hallucinated, surely. Spring Heeled Jack is just a bogeyman."

"Nope. That devil's real, right enough. Ain't that so, Bob?"

The old barman nodded. "Aye. Attacked a couple of our girls, he did."

"Your girls?" asked Burton.

"The Brigade's. Bartholomew Stevens's lass and Dave Alsop's."

Burton's eyebrows rose. Stevens! Alsop!

"The attacks happened around the time Dave moved up to a little place north of the city, on account of getting work as a blacksmith," explained Robinson. "But though he was well away from the power station, he still used to ride down to the Hog occasionally for a drink with the old mob."

"Nice chap, he was," muttered Punchinello.

"Aye, it's true. Then that devil had a go at his daughter right on the doorstep of his blooming house. That was in '38, just a few months after Jumping Jack had attacked Bart Stevens's girl."

"What happened there?" asked Burton.

"Mary, her name was; she was set upon not far from here but screamed loudly enough to attract help and the devil hopped it. Well, a few years passed, then we had the assassination and old Beresford, the Mad Marquess, started bringing his chaps to the Hog. After a while, a rumour went round that he was Spring Heeled Jack. Dave and Bart got wind of it and they, and Ted here, were all set to beat the living daylights out of him, ain't that right, Ted?"

"Yup. We was going to pulverise the bastard."

"But I stopped the blooming hotheads!" said Robinson. "I was all for giving Spring Heeled Jack a good hammering but I didn't want no trouble in my pub unless it was for good reason, so I told old Bart to bring along young Mary to have a look at Beresford, see if she recognised him."

"And she didn't?"

"Nope," confirmed Robinson. "She'd never seen him before. Said he was nothing like the devil who attacked her. Jack had a thin face; Beresford was a moonfaced git."

"So no duffing up of the Mad Marquess," said Punchinello, regretfully.

"What happened to the Battersea Brigade?" asked the king's agent.

"Hah!" snorted Punchinello. "Turned into a drinking club. Never did a single thing. No opposition to the power station!"

"By the midforties, most had drifted away," put in Robinson.

"To where?" asked Swinburne.

"Well now, let me see. Alsop, Fraser, Ed Chorley, Carl Goodkind, Sid Skinner, and Mark Waite have all kicked the bucket; Bart Stevens moved out to Essex; Old Shepherd took his family to South Africa; Fred Adams moved out of London, Chislehurst way-"

"Chislehurst?" asked Burton.

"Or thereabouts, yes. Edmund Cottle is one of my regulars, like Ted, here; Arnie Lovitt is still in the neighbourhood; his girl and her husband drink here every Friday night, though I doubt I'll see them for a while, the poor sods-their daughter, Lucy, went loopy a couple of weeks back; I hear they're putting her in Bedlam-and Eric Saydso is hanging on but probably won't be around for much longer-he's a consumptive. That's the lot; there was fourteen of us in all, plus the various wives and kids."

"So the Brigade disbanded," noted Burton, "and then you gave up the Hog in the Pound?"

"That's right. I got tired of the blooming place and all those Libertine idiots, so I sold up and bought this little boozer and-to answer your original question, sir-I named it the Tremors on account of the fact that people around here was so certain that the Technologists' power station would cause earthquakes and the like."

"You've certainly had a high old time of it!" observed Burton. "What with the Technologists, the Libertines, Edward Oxford, and Spring Heeled Jack!"

Punchinello blew out a breath and said, "He attracts crackpots!"

Robinson laughed. "You've been my customer for nigh on thirty years, Edward Toppletree, so you may well be right! Anyway, gents, I have customers to serve. Give me a shout when you're ready for a top-up."

He gave them a nod and shuffled away.

"Nice talking to you," said Punchinello. "I'm going to sit by the fire and smoke me pipe. You positive you don't want to buy Fidget, here? His nose might be the Eighth blinkin' Wonder of the World!"

"Positive!" replied Swinburne.

They bade him farewell and watched as he shuffled away with the dog at his heels.

"What do you think, Richard?" asked Swinburne quietly.

"I think," responded Burton, "that we just picked up some very useful information and I'd better speak to Detective Inspector Trounce first thing in the morning!"