"By Jove!" the policeman had exclaimed. "I can't believe they missed this; though I suppose it's understandable under the circumstances. The Yard didn't have a detective branch until the early forties, and I guess the fact that the Alsop attack happened near Epping tripped them up. There was no reason to look for a connection between the girls' fathers. I'll look into this, Captain Burton. In fact, I'll go down to Battersea myself today."
An hour later, back at 14 Montagu Place, Burton found a message waiting for him from Oscar Wilde. Through the "boys' network," the youngster had arranged a meeting for him with the Beetle. The appointment was for three o'clock, and the venue was strange, to say the least.
Burton was almost there.
Along the sides of Limehouse Cut-a commercial waterway that linked the lower reaches of the River Lea with the Thames-some of the city's most active factories belched black smoke into the air and gave a meagre wage to the thousands of workers who toiled within. Many of these men, women, and children had yellow, red, green, or blue skin, permanently coloured by the industrial dyes they worked with; others were disfigured by scorch marks and blisters from hours spent next to furnaces or kilns; and all had callused hands, hard bony bodies, and the haunted look of starvation in their eyes.
Burton walked past the huge, towering premises until he came to one particular building that, unlike its neighbours, had been abandoned. Standing seven storeys high, and with nearly every window either missing, broken, or cracked, it silently loomed over the busy canal-a shell, its chimneys impotent, its entrances bricked up.
He circled it by passing through an arched passageway that gave access to Broomfield Street, crossing its barren frontage with the blocked loading bays and empty stables, then returning back along a second covered alley to the narrow docks at the side of the canal.
People saw and ignored him. That was the way of things in Limehouse.
Beside the dock, on the factory's wall, in a niche down which rusting gutter pipes ran, he found what he was looking for: iron rungs set into the brickwork.
He shifted the bag that was slung across his shoulders, moving it so that it hung against the small of his back, then began to climb, testing each foothold before putting his weight on it.
There had been a second message waiting for him at home that morning when he returned from Scotland Yard. It was from Isabel, and read: You will change your mind. We are destined for one another; I knew that the moment I saw you ten years ago. I will wait. For as long as it takes, I will wait.
He'd sat considering it for some time, absently running a forefinger along the scar on his cheek. Then he'd composed and sent a terse reply:
Do not wait. Live your life.
It was brutal, he knew, but as with an amputation, a fast and clean cut is the quickest to heal.
He continued upward until he eventually reached the top of the ladder, then heaved himself over the parapet and sat for a moment to catch his breath, looking across the flat roof at the two long skylights, the cracked panes of which had been made opaque by soot. In the centre of the roof, between the two rows of glass, eight chimneys soared high into the air. It was the third from the eastern side that interested him.
He gingerly picked his way across the debris-covered roof, avoiding the areas that sagged, until he reached the nearest skylight. He skirted around its edge then moved over to the chimney.
It had rungs affixed to it, running from the base all the way to the top. Once again, he climbed, marvelling at the view of London that unfurled beneath him. A cold breeze was blowing, making his loose attire flap, though he was kept warm by a thermal vest.
He stopped, hooked an arm around a rung, and rested. He was halfway up and could see, far away, through the dirty haze and angled columns of smoke that rose like a forest from the city, the magnificent dome of St. Paul's. A few specks flew between him and the cathedral; rotorchairs and swans, the divergent forms of air transport developed by those two powerful factions within the Technologist caste, the Engineers and the Eugenicists.
He sighed. It had come just too late for him, this new technology. If he'd had the advantage of the swans, as John Speke had during his second expedition, recent history would have been very different indeed.
He continued his ascent, giving silent thanks that he didn't suffer from a fear of heights.
Minutes later he reached the top and swung himself over to sit with one leg to either side of the chimney's lip. The breeze tugged at him but with a foot hooked through one of the rungs and his knees clamped tightly against the brickwork, he felt reasonably secure.
He noticed that another set of metal rungs descended into the darkness of the flue.
Burton pulled his shoulder bag around, opened it, took out a bound notebook, and started to read.
For ten minutes he sat there, outlined against broken clouds and patches of blue sky, perched a precarious three hundred and fifty feet above the ground, the book in his hand, his noble brow furrowed with concentration, his savage jaw clenched, his clothes fluttering wildly.
Eventually, there came a furtive rustle and scrape from within the chimney.
Burton listened but didn't react.
The hiss of falling soot.
The scuffing of a boot against metal.
Moments of silence.
Then a quiet, sibilant voice: "What are you reading?"
Without shifting his eyes from his notebook, Burton replied: "It's my own translation of the Behdristan, which is an imitation of the Gulistan of Sa'di, the celebrated Persian poet. It is written in prose and verse, and treats of ethics and education, though it abounds in moral anecdotes, aphorisms, and amusing stories, too."
"And the original author?" hissed the voice.
"Niir-ed-Di'n Abd-er-Rahman; the Light of Religion, Servant of the Merciful. He was born, it's believed, in 1414 in a small town called Ja'm, near Herat, the capital of Khurasin, and adopted Jami as his takhallus, or poetical name. He is considered the last of the great Persian writers."
"I want it," whispered the voice from the darkness.
"It is yours," responded the king's agent. "And I have other volumes here." He patted his shoulder bag.
"What are they?"
"My own works: Goa and the Blue Mountains, Scinde or the Unhappy Valley, and A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah."
"You are an author?"
"Among other things, yes."
"Indian?"
"No, this is a disguise I adopted in order to travel unmolested."
"Limehouse is dangerous."
"Yes."
There was a pause, then the sepulchral tones came again: "What do you ask in return for the books?"
"I ask to be permitted to help."
"To help? To help with what?"
"Not long ago, I saw wolflike creatures snatch a boy from the street. I know he isn't the first to have been taken, and I know that all the missing boys are chimney sweeps."
A long silence followed.
Burton closed his notebook, placed it in his bag, then removed the bag from his shoulders and lowered it by the strap into the darkness.
A small mottled hand, so pale it was almost blue, reached out of the shadows within the flue and took the bag. A satisfied sigh echoed up from below.