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-"