Burton stood, turned away from his visitors, and stepped to one of the two windows. He gazed out at Montagu Place. The rooftops of the buildings on the other side of the road, the windowsills, the inner edge of the pavements, the gutters—every surface that hadn’t been trodden down or driven over—every inch was densely crowded with flowers, all now the size of crocuses.
“But,” he said, “the theory might be valid if we add to it a mind other than Oxford’s, one that ordered the suit to escape our time the moment Babbage activated the Field Preserver.”
“You suggest that someone took control of it?” Bhatti asked.
“And plucked it from right beneath our noses. It leaves us with three questions: who, from when, and why?”
They fell silent as Bram entered and quietly served them coffee. After he’d departed, Bhatti said, “It may be that Babbage holds the key to this mystery. Apparently the electrical pattern held within the damaged suit was imprinted into his Field Preserver at the instant the suit vanished. He’s working on a means to analyse it. If there was some kind of communication from the future—an order—it might have been recorded.”
“The power station is our next stop,” Krishnamurthy said. He gulped his coffee and clattered the cup back onto its saucer. “We’d better push on. Will you accompany us?”
“No. I’m sick of the sight of the place. Besides, I have another line of inquiry to pursue.”
“There’s another?”
“The flora.”
“The flowers? Because they and our hopping maniac arrived in unison?”
“Yes,” Burton replied, “and Swinburne responded oddly to them. You know how I’ve come to trust his instincts.”
“Phew!” Krishnamurthy exclaimed. “What extraordinary times we inhabit!”
Burton saw them out of the house then rang for Stoker. “Will you tell Mrs. Angell I’m ready for breakfast? Then I want you to get a message to Mr. Swinburne. Ask him to get here by noon.”
“Right you are, sir.”
The boy headed down to the kitchen while Burton entered the dining room. After a short wait, his housekeeper entered bearing a tray and served him bacon, sausages, eggs, grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, and buttered toast. He ate with uncharacteristic gusto, yelled his thanks from the hallway, and climbed the stairs to his bedroom, there to dress.
He was frustrated by his aches and pains and had to remind himself that only thirty-six hours or so had passed since he’d been thrown through a plate glass window. Sadhvi’s lotions did nothing to soothe his impatience. Tiredness, weakness—there was no place for them in Burton’s philosophy.
With his lip curled in self-disdain, he tugged open a bedside drawer and pulled from it a bottle of Saltzmann’s Tincture.
“Blast you, Algy,” he muttered. “I’ll not spend the day hobbling about like a confounded invalid.”
He twisted out the cork and drank.
“And to hell with all objections!”
He sat on the bed, leaned forward with his head hanging, and waited for the tincture to enter his circulation.
It hit him like an exploding sun.
He gave a quavering cry and toppled to the floor, holding himself up with his hands and knees.
He felt a cold gun barrel press into the back of his neck.
He heard Isabel Arundell’s voice.
“If you move, I swear to God I’ll put a bullet through your brain.”
Dick Burton, spy, traitor to his native country, and Otto von Bismarck’s strongest piece in the deadly chess game currently being played across Europe, was defeated.
He’d come so close. He’d discovered the existence of Spring Heeled Jack. He’d learned the truth about the apparition’s identity and origin. He’d found where the British government’s secretive Society of Science was keeping the time suit. And he’d almost snatched it from them.
The accursed king’s agent! She’d been on his heels ever since he’d killed Krishnamurthy and Bhatti, and now, just as his victory seemed assured, she’d caught up with him.
Still dazed from the knock to his head, on his hands and knees, with pain searing through his skull, he tried desperately to gather his thoughts.
“Stay down,” she advised. “Try anything and I’ll not hesitate.”
“Miss Arundell,” he rasped. “Your sense of timing is immaculate—and exasperating.”
He tried to push himself up, but her weapon jabbed into his neck again.
“Last chance. Believe me, I’m itching to pull this trigger.”
Perhaps his attempt to move so soon after being clouted was a mistake anyway; it sent his senses spinning, and, for a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. In his bedroom, surely? No, else there’d be a carpet beneath his hands and knees. There was only one place he knew that possessed this harsh, unnatural illumination. Battersea Power Station.
As if to confirm it, he heard Babbage’s characteristic rasp. “Have you quite finished, Madam? Am I to suffer these interruptions every time I’m on the verge of an important experiment?”
“Had I not interrupted, Charles,” Isabel responded, “you’d have nothing to experiment with. He was about to steal the time suit.”
Isabel. Alive. She’s alive.
“Please,” Burton croaked. “Let me stand. Let me look at you.”
“Keep him in your sights, Algernon,” she said.
“Rightie ho.”
Swinburne. So he was here, too.
Burton put a hand to his face. It was clean-shaven.
He had thoughts overlaying thoughts, memories upon memories.
One stratum clarified, the rest blurred.
He recognised himself.
Another side step.
“All right,” Isabel said. “Get to your feet. Slowly. Any sudden movement and I’ll shoot you dead.”
Another voice, male: “Be careful. I know to my cost how dangerous the swine can be.”
Burton raised his head and saw John Hanning Speke. The man had been killed in Berbera four years ago, but here he was, in nearly every respect as Burton remembered him, tall, thin, with a long, mousy brown beard and a weak, indecisive sort of face. The sole difference was that this Speke’s left eye was missing, along with much of the skull above it, and had been replaced with a mechanism of glass and brass. Burton very slowly climbed to his feet, and the man’s artificial eye whirred as the metal rings surrounding the black lens adjusted its focus.
“Run to earth, at last,” Speke said. “You’ll not escape this time, Dick. It’s the noose for you.”
Burton didn’t respond. Very gradually, he turned. He saw Babbage, standing by a workbench with the damaged suit on it. He saw a hulking contraption of jointed legs and tool-bearing limbs, which he guessed was Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He saw Algernon Swinburne, short-haired, scar-faced, and despite his diminutive and somewhat effeminate form, looking surprisingly brutal. And he saw Isabel Arundell.
She was slender, elegant, beautiful, and aiming her pistol straight between his eyes.
“Isabel,” he whispered, hardly able to resist rushing forward to take her into his arms.
“Shut up,” she snapped. “Charles, please proceed. We’ll allow our uninvited guest to witness the activation of the suit. I want him to go to the gallows knowing we have it, knowing it works, and knowing we’ll use it to defeat his master’s filthy empire.” She flicked the end of the gun slightly and said to Burton, “Watch. This marks the end of all Bismarck’s schemes.”
Burton looked back at Babbage. The elderly scientist clapped his hands together. “Have you all quite finished? Interruption after interruption! Unacceptable! This is a place for science and the advancement of understanding, not for your ridiculous games of politics and one-upmanship. Now, be quiet and observe.” He tapped the suit’s helmet. “This, as I have already told you, has the ability to repair itself but currently lacks sufficient energy to do so. By reestablishing its connection to this,” he pointed at the Nimtz generator, “I believe power enough will be transferred.” He took a pocket watch from his waistcoat. “Isambard, please record that the experiment commences at nine o’clock on the evening of the fifteenth of February, 1860.”