“This is my colleague, Mr. Swinburne,” Burton explained.
“I have no idea, sir,” Spearing said. “They’ve been making repairs in the clock tower, but I can’t credit them with using anything capable of causing such a blast. What are you going to do with Mr. Harris?”
“We’re taking him back to the Regency Hotel.”
“You’ll need a ride. Here, let me lend a hand. We’ll take him through to the back of the Yard. You can commandeer a police vehicle.” Spearing paused, then said, “You won’t crash it, will you?”
“I appear to have gained a reputation,” Burton noted ruefully.
They lifted Harris and carried him across the road, treading carefully to avoid the scattered rubble.
“Through here,” Spearing said, leading them into a narrow alleyway.
At the back of the police headquarters, in a large courtyard lined with stable-like buildings, Spearing left them, entered one of the structures, and a few moments later steered out a steam-horse-drawn brougham. He jumped down from the driver’s seat. “I’d take you myself, sir, but I think it’s a case of all hands on deck at the Yard.”
“I quite understand. Help me get him into the cabin, would you?”
They lifted Harris into the vehicle. The detective pointed to an open gate and said, “That opens onto Northumberland Street.”
“Thank you, Spearing.”
The policeman saluted and hastened away.
Swinburne climbed in beside the American. Burton took the driver’s seat, gripped the tiller, and guided the machine out through the gate and to the left, in the direction of Trafalgar Square. It was slow going—there were lumps of masonry in the road and rapidly expanding crowds of people, all gathering to gaze at the destruction.
When they reached the square, Burton made to steer into the Mall, intending to follow it westward, but Swinburne thumped on the roof and screeched, “Stop! Hey, Richard, stop, I say!”
The explorer pulled over and the poet jumped out and scrambled up beside him.
“I’ve been looking at his face,” Swinburne said breathlessly, “and it’s given me an idea. Let’s take him to your place.”
“Why?” Burton asked, puzzled.
“Because his bone structure is similar to yours. With whitened skin, a false beard, and a few other cosmetic adjustments, you could pass yourself off as him.”
“You intend to hold Harris prisoner, Algy, while I go off to meet this Count Sobieski fellow?”
“Yes! Why not become the twelfth messenger of God?”
Burton considered the poet’s enthusiastic countenance.
“Just how drunk are you?”
“Hah! Considerably!” Swinburne smiled. “How else could I have come up with such a ridiculous scheme?”
“It is ridiculous,” Burton agreed. “And I rather like it.”
The sewer tunnels are constructed from brick and stone and range from six to twenty feet in diameter. The smaller of them are round in section, the larger egg-shaped, with the narrow end downward, which serves to increase the flow and prevent silt from building up. The main interceptor tunnels run from west to east. North-and-south-flowing sewers run into them, the waste being diverted away toward the mouth of the Thames, rather than flowing straight into it. Each tunnel is fitted with many iron sluice gates, some of massive proportions, which can be manually raised or lowered by means of geared mechanisms, and which are used to regulate the flow and, on occasion, to block it, so that sections of the tunnels can be inspected and, if necessary, repaired.
—FROM MR. BAZALGETTE’S UNDERGROUND MARVEL,
THE DAILY BUGLE
Burton leaned on his cane and snapped open his new pocket watch. His eyes lingered on the lock of Isabel’s hair before registering the time. Ten-past eight. Count Sobieski was late.
Earlier that afternoon—it was now Wednesday the 9th of November—Trounce had called again at Montagu Place, finding Swinburne already there with Burton and Levi. The detective inspector was dishevelled and tired, and grateful for a brandy and water. “Seven killed last night and more than a hundred injured. It was a bomb. A big one, too. Three hours after it went off, a chap walked into the offices of the Daily Bugle, introduced himself to the night editor as Vincent Sneed—thirty-two years old, a chimney sweep—and made a full confession. He recently cleaned the flues at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, where Big Ben was cast, and stole a spare set of tower keys from there.”
“But his motive?” Burton asked. “Why commit such an atrocity?”
Trounce had pulled a notebook from his pocket, extracted a sheet of paper from it, and passed it to the explorer. “The statement he made to the newspaper man.”
Burton read it, handed it to Swinburne, and said, “They don’t strike me as the words of a sweep.”
“I thought the same,” Trounce muttered.
“My hat!” Swinburne exclaimed. “What could possibly warrant such an outpouring of hatred? Smash the German Alliance? Hang Prince Albert as a traitor? Assassinate Bismarck?”
“That last is an oddity in itself,” Burton observed. “Bismarck is out of the picture. Why include him?”
“Why any of it at all?” Trounce asked. “According to Sneed’s apprentice—a lad named William Cornish—the man has never once before expressed a political opinion.”
“Has he said anything more?”
Trounce took up his bowler from beside the chair and punched it in frustration. “That’s the problem. He can’t. He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Inexplicably. We put him in a cell, intending to question him this morning, but at dawn he simply stopped breathing. The coroner was unable to identify the cause.”
Eliphas Levi exclaimed, “Mon Dieu! Où est le cadavre maintenant?”
“Eh?”
“The corpse,” Burton translated. “Where is it?”
“In the mortuary.”
The explorer and occultist exchanged a glance.
“Trounce,” Burton said, after a momentary pause, “I have to use my authority to issue you with a direct order.”
“On the basis of that statement, should I expect an unusual one?”
“Yes. Take Monsieur Levi to the mortuary and do exactly as he tells you. It’s probable that Sneed is strigoi morti. He may have been acting under the spell of Perdurabo.”
“I find it hard to believe any of this.”
Levi murmured, “I show you. You will believe.”
“Think of it as a disease,” Burton advised. “John Judge carried it aboard the ship from Fernando Po. If Sneed has been infected, as I suspect he has, he’ll appear to die in daylight but will rise at night. While active, he’ll be highly infectious.”
Trounce scratched his chin. “Then Perdurabo, in the body of Thomas Honesty, is hiding out among the anti-German activists in the Cauldron? Infecting them? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“It is. Or, at very least, he’s made of the district a hunting ground. Tonight, Levi will accompany you to the East End. Take young Bram, too, but keep him away from any trouble. The Whisperers have a strong presence in the Cauldron—there are more street Arabs there than anywhere else in the city. Use Bram to collect information from the district. Look for signs of the un-dead.” He turned to the Frenchman. “You will advise, monsieur?”
“Oui. We find them and do what must be done.”
Burton said to Trounce, “Come with me.”
They went upstairs to the room where Burton’s half-unpacked African crates were stored. Thomas Lake Harris was bound to a chair in the middle of it with his head bandaged and a gag in his mouth.
“What the blazes?” Trounce cried out. “Who’s this? What are you playing at?”
“It’s Mr. Harris, the American spiritualist Detective Inspector Spearing has been following. He’s due to give a lecture at the Enochians’ Club tonight. I intend to masquerade as him and go in his stead.”