There were no reported sightings of Spring Heeled Jack.
Algernon Swinburne was somewhere in the depths of the Cauldron.
Sir Richard Francis Burton fretted and worried. He tried to occupy himself with his books but couldn't concentrate; he researched Moko Jumbi but found little besides the superficial resemblance to connect the African god to the stilt-walker.
Early on the morning of the fourth day there came a knock at the front door. It was young Oscar Wilde, the paperboy.
"Top o' the morning to you, Captain," he said. "I'm of the opinion that no good deed goes unpunished, but there are some people who I'm prepared to risk all for. Therefore, please take these, and I'll be bidding you good day."
He held out his hand and released something into Burton's palm, then spun on his heel and walked away, turning once to wave and grin.
Burton was left holding three pebbles. A summons from the Beetle.
He acted immediately, bounding up the stairs, through his study, and into the dressing room, where he donned a roughly woven suit, chopped his beard down to stubble-though keeping his moustaches long and drooping to either side of his chin-ruffled his hair, dirtied his face, neck, and hands, and slipped into a pair of scuffed and cracked boots.
When he left the house, he was not alone.
Burton was tempted to use one of his new vehicles, but where he was going, modern technology was liable to be stolen on sight or vandalised, so he waved down the first cab he saw-a horse-drawn growler-and cried: "Get me to Limehouse Cut as quickly as possible! Hurry, man!"
"Have you the fare?" asked the driver, looking at him suspiciously.
Burton impatiently flashed a handful of coins at the man.
"I'll pay you double if I'm there within thirty minutes!" he cried, pushing his companion into the four-wheeler before clambering in himself.
"Easy money!" muttered the driver, cracking his whip over the two horses' heads.
The growler jerked into motion and went flying down the street. Burton was thrown about and banged his head as the vehicle careened around a corner, but he didn't care-speed was essential now!
The carriage skidded and swerved wildly on the wet cobbles but the driver steered it with an expert hand and delivered his passengers to St. Paul's Road, close to the factory, well within the allotted time.
"Good man!" exclaimed the king's agent, passing coins up to the cabbie. "Money well earned!"
The rain was beating down hard, rinsing the city's muck into the filthy artery that ran through its middle, washing Sir Richard Francis Burton's hopes away. It could ruin his and Swinburne's plan. It could mean the poet's death.
He hurried to the factory and, leaving his companion at the bottom of the ladder, climbed it to the roof, then continued on up to the lip of the chimney.
The rain lashed his face as he dropped the three pebbles into the flue.
Minutes later, the Beetle said, "You look different."
"What's the news?" snapped Burton.
"Your friend has been taken. He was dragged out of the Squirrel Hill graveyard in Wapping by seven cloaked men. It was witnessed by one of my sweeps, a boy named Willy Cornish. He didn't see the men's faces-they wore hoods-but he says they moved in an odd fashion."
"The loups-garous," said Burton.
"Yes, I believe so. You think you can follow their trail?"
"In this rain, I fear not, but I have to try. I must go."
"Good luck, Captain Burton."
The king's agent descended to the roof, then down the side of the building to his friend waiting below.
"I hope old Ted Toppletree wasn't exaggerating about that nose of yours, Fidget!" he said. "Because if he was, we might never see Algernon Swinburne again!"
The basset hound looked up at him mutely.
Swinburne's mind was a kaleidoscope of confused memories. The werewolves had carried him at great speed through the labyrinthine alleys of the city, gripping him so tightly that he could barely breathe, carrying him sometimes upright, sometimes upside-down. Talons had dug into his arms and shoulders, thighs and calves; and there'd been a long, dark tunnel that seemed to descend into the spongy, dripping flesh of the Earth itself.
He recalled that, at one point, he'd recovered his wits enough to start screaming at the top of his voice until his cries were smothered by a muskysmelling paw.
Then, oblivion.
He opened his eyes.
He was in a huge chamber, on an upright but slightly inclined metal rack, his limbs splayed wide, straps tight around his wrists and ankles.
Artificial light flooded the cathedral-sized space; not gas light, but the white incandescence of lightning which had somehow been locked into globes hanging from the high ceiling. Beneath them, bathed in their brilliance, was machinery the like of which Swinburne had never seen nor even imagined before. There was no steam here; it was all electricity, which fizzed and crackled across the surfaces of megalithic devices, whipping from one bizarrely designed tower to another, filling the place with the smell of ozone and with sharp snaps, claps, and buzzes.
In particular, a great many bolts of energy were shooting into a chandelier-like structure suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the room. It resembled a big cast-iron wheel, with vertical stacks of disks arranged around its circumference. To these, wires and cables were affixed.
Swinburne's eyes followed their draping lines down to where they joined a crownlike construction below; a metal frame in which a number of long needles were secured, projecting a few inches outward. To these, the wires were attached. The other ends of the needles were embedded in the skull upon which the crown sat.
It was a hairless and grotesquely swollen dome, which bulged out over the ears of its owner; a head twice normal size; a phenomenal and hideous cranium! It projected forward over the wide face below, pushing bushy brows down low over eyes that glittered coldly from within their shadow. The nose was small, the mouth wide and set sternly, the jaw decorated with a big white beard which flowed down to the man's waist-for yes, the distorted creature was unmistakably a man.
Beneath the bloated head, a grey suit hung from a skeletal frame. The body was extremely withered, every visible inch of skin scored with wrinkles; rubber tubing emerged from the wrists to join devices that pumped and groaned beside the metal throne on which the man sat.
He looked, thought Swinburne, like a fetus cradled in a mechanical womb.
He also looked familiar.
"Charles Darwin!" cried the poet.
The eyes glistened, looking the poet up and down.
"You know us, boy?" Darwin's voice was deep and possessed a weirdly harmonic quality, as if two people were speaking at once.
"Of course! What's going on here? What are you up to? Who's 'us'?"
"We do not explain ourselves to children. Be quiet."
A figure silently stepped into view from behind Swinburne. It was a tall, smartly suited man with long sideburns and a handsome but entirely expressionless face. Just above his eyebrows, his head ended; the top of the skull was missing entirely, and where the brain should have been, there was a baffling device of metal and glass in which a great many tiny lights blinked on and off in a seemingly random manner. From the back of this, a cable descended to the floor and snaked across to Darwin's throne, disappearing into its base.
The machine-brained man stepped over to a trolley and lifted from it a syringe with a fearsomely long needle.
"What are you doing?" squealed Swinburne.
"This one is inquisitive, isn't he?" muttered Darwin to himself. "Yes, he is. Tall, too, which is unfortunate. Shall we test or discard immediately? Test, I think. Child, tell us: you are an orphan? Do you remember your parents? Were they also tall?"
Machine-brain levelled the syringe, its point touching Swinburne just below the centre of his forehead.