Suddenly Speke's face, which thus far had been entirely emotionless, was filled with perplexity, sorrow, and yearning.
"Dick," he gasped. "I shouldn't-I can't-I didn't-didn't-"
He reached up to the key that projected from the machinery above his left ear and started to wind it.
"I have to-to-to decide," he stuttered.
"Don't do that!" hissed Burton, but Speke continued to twist the key which, when he removed his hand, began to turn, emitting a low ticking. Through the round glass panel above his eye, a mass of tiny cogs could be glimpsed. They started to revolve.
It appeared to Burton as if reality suddenly took on a sharper edge. The spinning wheels in Speke's head seemed to reel in divergent destinies until they touched right here, now, in this room, making of it a crossroads. One route led from India, Arabia, and Africa to Fernando Po, Brazil, and Damascus; the other stretched from the seeds Edward Oxford had accidentally planted in the past to an unknown future in which he, Burton, as the king's agent, would have to deal with the resultant crazy, unbalanced world.
He sensed his doppelganger standing ready; they would plunge down the same road together, as one.
He backed away toward the door.
Speke turned his head to follow the movement. His human right eye was unfocused, but the rings around the glass lens of the left eye moved slightly, some clockwise, some in the opposite direction.
The key stopped revolving.
Speke made a decision.
Burton made a decision.
The king's agent dived through the door and fled down the hallway.
Speke threw is head back and bellowed: "Oliphant! Burton is here!"
As Burton raced past the junction with the short corridor leading to the ballroom, the glass doors at the end opened and the albino stepped through. Burton kept running and was swallowed by the darkness. Behind him he heard the panther-man shout: "Brunel! Get to the ship and loose the wolves!"
Guided by nothing more than memory, stumbling over debris and banging into walls, Burton retraced his steps in the direction of the room with the open window.
From not far behind him came a mocking voice: "I can see in the dark, Sir Richard!"
Down one pitch black passageway and into another, Burton veered right, then left, then right again.
"I'm coming!" sang his pursuer.
Burton yanked his pistol from his jacket, stopped, twisted, raised it, and fired. The flash illuminated long walls with peeling paper and, at their far end, a white figure dressed in black, its pink eyes wide. The darkness snapped back and with it came a loud feline scream.
Got you, you bastard! thought Burton.
He ran on.
A light glimmered ahead.
He raised the pistol again.
"This way, Richard!" screeched a high-pitched voice.
Swinburne!
"Damnation! I told you to get back to Trounce!"
The little poet held up a guttering Lucifer and grinned.
"I half obeyed your order! Come on, in here!"
He quickly led Burton into a room and across to an open window. As they climbed out into the grounds, a shout reached them from inside the mansion: "You'll pay your debts, Burton!"
"Run as fast as you can!" snapped the famous explorer to his friend. "They're releasing loups-garous!"
"I've had enough of them!" piped Swinburne and sped away.
The king's agent followed, surprised by the smaller man's turn of speed.
A howl rose from the far side of Darkening Towers. It was joined by a second, a third, a fourth, and more.
"Faster, Algy," Burton panted.
They tore across the uneven ground, past the knotted trees and pools of squirming mist, toward the distant wall.
Burton glanced back and saw the albino standing by the window, his right arm cradled in his left. A pack of wolf-men were flooding around the right-hand corner of the building, running on all fours.
The two men raced on, their thigh muscles burning, their breath coming in short, rapid gasps.
A few moments later they reached the wall and Burton thrust the poet up onto it.
"Trounce, start the blasted engines!" screamed Swinburne.
Burton turned. The loups-garous were almost upon him. He fired two shots and one went down. The others swerved and leaped upon it, their jaws crunching into its bones, ripping the flesh. They'd obviously been half starved to increase their ferocity, and the slight pause gave Burton the opportunity to haul himself onto the wall, lower Swinburne down to the other side, and follow. They ran across the road that bordered Beresford's estate and into a clump of trees. Engines were chugging.
"Hold on!" came Detective Inspector Trounce's voice from the shadows. "One more!"
"Hurry, man!" cried Burton.
The last of the three penny-farthings spluttered into life. The men mounted them, steered out onto the road, and accelerated away in a cloud of steam.
Behind them, a snarling loup-garou hurtled over the wall, followed immediately by the rest of the pack.
"Bloody hell!" cried Trounce, looking back. "Open your valves! They're fast! What the heck are they?"
"Hungry!" shrilled Swinburne.
The penny-farthings clattered over the uneven surface of the road, rattling the teeth of the three riders. Yelping and growling, with spittle trailing from their distended jaws, the ravening animal-men loped along behind, gradually gaining on the machines.
Burton, Trounce, and Swinburne swept past the corner of the Darkening Towers estate and careened onto the Waterford road. Trees flashed by, stretches of fencing, hedgerows, and beyond them rolling fields, pale in the light of the thin crescent moon.
White steam boiled from the vehicles and trailed behind them all the way back to the thicket where Trounce had waited. Beneath the slowly rolling vapour, the loups-garous sprinted after their prey. They were close now. They could smell human flesh.
"Blast these machines!" Burton muttered. "They're not fast enough!"
His jaws snapped together as the big front wheel jerked over a pothole.
"Trounce!" he yelled. "Steer in next to Algy!"
The Yard man obeyed, though controlling the contraption proved difficult as it bounced over a particularly rough patch of road.
A long, drawn-out howl sounded from just behind.
"Algy!" called Burton. "Step off your velocipede onto Trounce's!"
"What?" cried his two friends.
"Just do it, man!"
Swinburne, entirely fearless, stood in his stirrups, swung a leg over the saddle so that he was balanced on one side of the main wheel, tried to keep the wildly vibrating handlebars steady with a single hand, and reached across with the other to grasp Detective Inspector Trounce's shoulder. Then, in one quick motion, he leaned over, put his foot on one of the mounting bars of Trounce's machine, and stepped across.
His own boneshaker rattled on, kept upright by its gyroscope. However, without his fingers holding the velocity valve open, it immediately slowed and started to fall to the rear.
Burton drew his pistol. He had three shots left. He looked back.
The wolf-men were streaming around the riderless velocipede. Burton raised his gun, took aim, breathed gently, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet hit the penny-farthing's furnace. With a startlingly loud detonation, it exploded, blasting red-hot metal into the loups-garous charging along beside it. As the twisted vehicle somersaulted into the air, one of the beasts burst into flames, then a second, and a third. One by one, they erupted and fell writhing to the ground, burning fiercely.