Monckton Milnes’s shoulders slumped. “Gad! You’re a confounded sorcerer. And my rejection?”
“Simple. Had you not been spurned, you would not be here.”
Bendyshe, Hunt, and Murray let loose peals of laughter, which woke Brabrooke and Bradlaugh, who, being three sheets to the wind and not knowing what was going on, laughed along with them so as to not be unsociable.
Henry Murray said, “But—I say!—this business about the young lady’s calling?”
“That,” Burton said, “is public knowledge. In a small column in yesterday’s Daily Bugle, one of our lesser hacks took great delight in reporting that Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes, the well-known socialite, has been courting Miss Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse. She—as was also reported—is currently raising funds for her nurses’ training school at Saint Thomas’s Hospital. Knowing of her notoriously single-minded disposition, I consider it highly unlikely that she would allow the distractions of a romance to interfere with her vocation.”
Monckton Milnes slapped his hand to his forehead and groaned. “You are quite right. Florence stepped out to powder her nose during the interval and never returned. I sat through the second half of that bloody performance with her elderly chaperone huffing and puffing indignantly in my ear. I feel thoroughly humiliated.”
With renewed boisterousness, the gentlemen of the Cannibal Club toasted failed romance, then Richard Monckton Milnes, then Nurse Nightingale, then Burton, and finally each other.
“By Gad!” Bendyshe bellowed. “My bloody astrologist warned me off port—said it’d be the death of me! If it’s all chicanery, I’ve been denying myself for nothing! Open a bottle at once!”
The lull had passed. Thomas Bendyshe resumed his relentless foghorn-volume raillery; Henry Murray left the room to order a pot of coffee from Bartolini’s but returned with a fresh bottle of brandy; Charles Bradlaugh, apropos of nothing, proclaimed that the word “gorilla” was derived from the Greek “gorillai,” which meant “tribe of hairy women,” and proceeded along a course of speculation which, had the authorities been present, would doubtless have landed him in prison; Doctor James Hunt employed his medical knowledge to mix cocktails of foul taste and terrifying potency; and Sir Edward Brabrooke propped himself in a corner with a fixed grin on his face and, over the course of thirty minutes, very, very slowly slid to the floor.
Amid the uproar, Burton quietly told Monckton Milnes, “My point wasn’t to embarrass you but to demonstrate that, with a practised eye, any individual can discern a great deal about any other and pass it off as information received from the Afterlife. I suspect a little mesmerism is involved, too, just to make the victim more gullible.”
“And I suppose you, being an accomplished mesmerist yourself, cannot fall under another’s spell?”
“Correct.”
“But surely you don’t consider all spiritualists fraudulent? Why, there’s practically one on every street corner. The business has been flourishing for twenty years. If they were all duplicitous, it would be the swindle of the century.”
Burton was silent for a moment. Twenty years. Spiritualists had first claimed they could speak with the dead just weeks after The Assassination. Interesting.
“Certainly,” he said, “I accept that a few—and I emphasise, a few—practitioners might actually glimpse the future or gain unusually penetrating insight into a matter, but I attribute such occurrences to an as yet undiscovered natural function of the human organism; a ‘force of will,’ if you like, that enables a person to sense what they cannot feel, see, hear, touch, or taste. There is nothing supernatural involved. I do not hold with the soul or spirit—a self within a self; an I within an I—that continues to exist after the body has ceased to function yet still concerns itself with corporeal matters. The very notion is utter rot. The dead, my friend, are well and truly dead.”
“I cannot agree,” Monckton Milnes protested. “My prognosticator’s positive influence has been far more significant and widespread than I can possibly tell you. You should consult with her.”
“Perhaps. Let us first see what this Frenchman of yours has to say. Refill my glass, old fellow; I’m lagging behind.”
At four o’clock in the morning, having dedicated himself to catching up with the others, Burton stepped out into Leicester Square with his top hat set at such a jaunty angle that he’d taken just three paces before it fell off and rolled into the gutter. He bent to retrieve it, overbalanced, and followed it down. His panther-headed cane clattered onto the cobbles beside him.
“Now then, sir,” came a stern voice. “It’s not my place to lecture a fine gentleman like yourself, but I suspect you may be filled to the knocker, so to speak.”
The explorer looked up and saw a police constable looking down. The man had a swollen nose. It was purple and bloodied around the nostrils.
“I topped my dropper,” Burton explained.
“Dropped your topper, sir? Here it is.” The policeman retrieved Burton’s headgear and cast his eyes over it. “A very nice hat, that. A mite dusty now, but it’ll clean up with a little brushing. Here, let me help you.”
Burton gripped the outstretched hand and allowed himself to be hauled back to his feet. He bent down for his cane, stumbled, but managed to regain his footing before meeting the ground again.
“Tripped,” he said. “What happened to your nose?”
“It encountered a bunch of fives, sir. There are criminals about. And you? Your eye?”
“The same. Thwacked.”
“Are you a pugilist? I have it in mind that I’ve seen your likeness in the newspapers. Sports pages, I’ll wager. You look quite the fighter.”
Burton took his proffered top hat, pressed it firmly onto his head, and slurred, “There’ve been sketches of me in a few of the rags recently. The Nile. Africa. Orpheus.”
“The Nile? Ah, yes! You’re the explorer! Livingstone!”
Burton groaned. He squinted at the policeman’s badge. “Constable Bhatti, I would be very grateful indeed if you never, ever refer to me that way again. My name is Burton.”
“Right you are, sir. My apologies. No offence intended. Which way are you going?”
With a wave in a vaguely northwesterly direction, Burton said, “Thataway.”
“Home?”
“Yeth. I mean, yeth. That is to say—yeth.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“Good. Very wise. I’ll call you a cab.”
“No, thank you. I’ll walk. Clear my head.”
The constable raised his arm and whistled at a nearby hansom. “You’ll take a ride, sir. I insist upon it. The streets are dangerous at this time of night. Look at my nose.”
“I’d rather not. It’s an unpleasant sight.”
The carriage, drawn by a steam-horse, chugged across the square and drew to a halt beside them.
“What ho, Constable Bhatti!” its driver called.
“Hallo, Mr. Penniforth. I have a passenger for you. Take him to Montagu Place, please.”
“Rightio! In you get, guv’nor!”
Before he could protest, Burton was bundled into the carriage by the policeman.
“Wait!” he mumbled. “I don’t want—”
“You’ll be fine, Doctor Livingstone,” Bhatti said. “Straight home and into bed. That’s an order.”
“I’m not bloody Livingstone, you confounded—”
Burton toppled backward into his seat as the carriage jolted forward. His hat fell onto the floor.
“Damnation!”
He heard Constable Bhatti’s laughter receding as the hansom picked up speed.
“Penniforth!” Burton yelled, knocking on the roof with his cane. “Aren’t you the man who met the Orpheus?”
“Aye, guv’nor!” the driver called. “Small world, ain’t it?”