Текст книги "The Return of the Discontinued Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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“They might be right,” Bendyshe observed. He took a couple of minutes to scan through the missive. “So everywhere you’ve been, there the freakish creatures are. A veritable infestation. Poor old Bartolini has been forced to close his restaurant. You aren’t his favourite customer, not by a long shot. I reckon he’d kick you in the seat of the pants if he dared.”

Burton offered a regretful grimace. “I’ve been banished from the Royal Geographical Society, as well. Four times, the Spring Heeled Jacks have crashed into its lobby demanding to see me. I have a permanent police guard outside my home. Ten battles have been fought in Montagu Place. Though perhaps ‘battle’ is too strong a word.”

“Eh? Why so?”

“They don’t put up much of a fight. Grub, the vendor who plies his trade on the corner, saved me last week by clouting one of them over the head with his coal shovel.”

“Ha! Good man!” Bendyshe frowned, applied a fingernail to his teeth, dug out the strand of meat, looked at it, put it back into his mouth, and said, “I read those crazy tales left by Abdu El Yezdi. So you really think these stilt-walkers are some aspect of Edward Oxford?”

“Yes, though they don’t appear to realise it.”

“Peculiar, hey?”

“It is.”

A waiter stopped at their table and refilled their glasses. Burton turned down the offer of another bottle. When the man had gone, he said, “Are you comfortable with your new role, Tom? The Cannibal Club will soon become a very different prospect. There’ll be no more horseplay.”

“Apart from the hunt for a suitable spouse, hey?”

“Well, yes, I suppose.”

“I’m ready, willing and able. Incidentally, your brother intends to combine my anthropological knowledge with his own financial nous in order to play the markets.”

Burton rubbed the scar on his chin with his forefinger. “Anthropological stockbroking?”

“If I can accurately forecast the ebb and flow of human affairs, and the minister, based on those predictions, invests wisely, then we should be able to establish assets enough to fund the Cannibal Club for many generations to come.”

“On what will you base your prognostications?”

“I shall consult with the Department of Guided Science to learn what varieties of machinery they think will develop in future years and how it might be employed by industry and society. I’ll work with old Monkey Milnes to examine up-and-coming politicians, their philosophies and inclinations, and where they might take our world. I’ll learn from the patterns of history, and will scrutinise current trends and project them forward. And I’ll confer with the Empire’s most talented mediums.”

“A major project, Tom.”

“I relish it. I hope that my—” He stopped and gaped as, somewhere behind Burton, a loud pop sounded, followed immediately by a crash and cries of alarm.

The king’s agent jumped out of his seat and whirled, yanking a Beaumont-Adams revolver from his waistband.

A Spring Heeled Jack had materialised in the dining room and landed on a table. It was flailing about amid broken glasses and crockery, yelling, “Where is Burton? My neck! Don’t break my neck! Prime Minister? Where are you?”

Burton raised his gun.

“Everybody stand clear!”

Patrons scattered. He aimed at the figure and, as it clambered to its feet, pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, hitting it in the chest. The stilt man collapsed to its knees, a bubble peeled outward from its skin, and it vanished.

Tom Bendyshe, temporarily neglecting his atheism, cried out, “Mary mother of God! Won’t they ever stop?”

Thirty minutes later, Burton’s membership was rescinded and he was banished from the Athenaeum.

“Soon, I shan’t be allowed anywhere,” he complained, as he bid his friend farewell.

“Tomorrow, you won’t be anywhere,” Bendyshe observed. “At least, nowhere in this age.”

The following day, the minister of chronological affairs said, “Whatever else you do during your visit to the future, will you please prevent the Spring Heeled Jacks from making further visits to us? I’m thoroughly irritated by the infernal pests.”

Miraculously, Edward Burton had left the Royal Venetia Hotel and was sitting in a growler at the foot of the Orpheus’s boarding ramp. Battersea Power Station towered in the background.

It was raining.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, standing beside the carriage and holding an umbrella against which the water drummed, replied, “Must I remind you, Edward, that while you’ve been hiding away in your hotel suite, it is I who’ve borne the brunt of the intrusions?”

“A reminder isn’t necessary,” his brother said. “I’m exhausted by the constant worry.”

“About the disruption?”

“About you, you dolt.”

Burton was silent for nearly a minute. Then he said, “It appears that eugenics, or a similar science, will make a resurgence in the future.”

“You base that assertion on what?”

“Joseph Lister has finally identified the flesh inside the Spring Heeled Jack mechanisms.”

“And?”

“It appears to be a variation of pork.”

“Pork? You’re telling me they’re pigs?”

“A pig machine hybrid.”

“God in heaven! What nightmarish world does Oxford inhabit?”

“I’ll soon find out.” Burton hesitated, then added, “If I don’t come back—”

“Do,” Edward snapped.

The king’s agent looked around at the rain-swept airfield and up at the station’s four copper towers. “Just how much will it all change, I wonder?”

The minister grunted. “Babbage and Brunel have been the driving force behind the immense progress we’ve witnessed in our lifetime, but Babbage is old and increasingly eccentric, and as for Brunel, he’s little more than a statue now.” Raising his fat fingers to his face, Edward Burton stroked his stubbled jowls. “Your initial jump will be a mere fifty-four years; a tiny step by comparison with your ultimate destination. Surely the world will be recognisable?”

“If we went backward the same number of years, we’d be in 1806. Imagine what an inhabitant of that time would make of this.”

His brother nodded. “You’re right. Well, needless to say, I’ll do all I can to ensure that members of the Cannibal Club meet you at your scheduled stops. I regret that I’m unlikely to be among them. Mortality—I find it such a terrible disappointment.”

“Don’t treat this as a good-bye, Edward. You know I can’t bear such sentiment.”

The minister looked away, cleared his throat, lifted his cane, and banged it on the growler’s ceiling. “The Venetia, Mr. Penniforth.”

Montagu Penniforth looked down from the driver’s box and touched two fingers to the peak of his cap. “Good luck to yer, Sir Richard. Me little ’un’s name is Clive. Three years of age now. He’ll be there to meet yer, I ’ope. A mite older, though.”

“Thank you, Monty.”

A tremor shook the carriage. It coughed a plume of steam, rattled, and moved off. Burton watched it go, took a final look around, then spun on his heel and strode up into the Orpheus.

Daniel Gooch and Charles Babbage met him as he entered. He furled his umbrella and handed it to the elderly scientist.

“We’re ready,” Gooch said. The engineer had abandoned his auxiliary arms and appeared a little ill at ease with just his own natural pair.

Babbage cast his eyes over the dripping umbrella in his hand as if uncertain what it was, then glowered disapprovingly at Burton. “Can I trust you with my devices, sir? They are my masterpieces.”

“I shan’t go near them,” Burton replied. “They are in Daniel’s charge.”

“Excellent.” Babbage tapped the engineer’s shoulder with the brolly’s handle. “I want them returned to me undamaged, young man.”

Gooch nodded. “Of course. I’ll look after them. I give you my word.”

Babbage made a sound that suggested he didn’t believe the guarantee. He turned his attention back to Burton. “Remember, the equipment will move the ship through time but not instantaneously. She can’t match Edward Oxford’s suit for efficiency. For him, the transference from one date to another was like the blink of an eye. For you, there will be intervals between. They may be disorientating. You might even lose consciousness. Don’t worry. The Mark Three calculator will function independently and will see you to your destination.”

“Thank you.”

The old man said to Gooch, “I’m relying on you to analyse the machinery of the future and bring me detailed reports.”

“I’ll do so.”

Babbage gave a nod of satisfaction, peered again at Burton’s brolly, then opened it, held it over his head, muttered, “Ah ha!” and descended the ramp to the ground.

Gooch said to the king’s agent, “Will you help me to close her up?”

They pulled in the ramp, slid the double doors shut, and twisted the bolts into place.

“I have to go to the engine room, Sir Richard. Mr. Trounce is assisting me. Mr. Krishnamurthy and Miss Raghavendra are in what used to be the smoking lounge, overlooking the Nimtz generator. I’ve trained them both in its operation, which isn’t nearly as complicated as Mr. Babbage would have you believe. You’ll join Mr. Swinburne and Captain Lawless on the bridge?”

“I will. For heaven’s sake, Daniel, drop all the ‘misters’ and ‘misses’ and just call me Richard. We’ve known each other long enough to dispense with formalities. First name basis, if you please. Has everyone taken their dose of Saltzmann’s?”

“Yes.”

“Good show.”

Burton and Gooch set off in opposite directions.

As he traversed the passageway and ascended the stairs to the command deck, Burton marvelled at the brilliance and craftsmanship of the scientists and engineers. As predicted, Babbage had been unable to reproduce the microscopic workings of Oxford’s suit, but that he’d created their functional equivalents, albeit on a much larger scale, in such little time, was astonishing. Of course, he’d been studying the suits for many years, so was well versed in the operations of its many components, but he’d lacked the mathematical principle at the heart of them. When Burton supplied it, Babbage for the first time saw with absolute clarity how Oxford’s invention defied the strictures of time, and he was able with breathtaking rapidity to design a device that employed contemporaneous machinery to do the same. Where Oxford’s genius had fitted it all into a helmet and small flat disk, Babbage required a double-sized Mark III probability calculator and a twenty-four-foot-long, twelve-foot-wide, and ten-foot-high contraption of cogs, levers, pistons, looms, barrels, sliding links, moveable arms, teeth, pegs, holes, warp beams, cranks, ratchets, gears, wheels, pipes, valves, cross heads, cylinders, regulators, inlets, outlets, flywheels, boilers, pumps, condensers, ducts, transmitter disks, field amplifiers, chronostatic coils and a loudly rumbling furnace.

All the remaining fragments of the Nāga diamonds had been fitted into it, each in a lead housing to prevent their slightly deleterious emanations from affecting the travellers. The resonation between the gems was known to give rise to mediumistic faculties. Far from being useful, these abilities tended to cause confusion, indecisiveness and headaches.

Work had not stopped at the manufacture and assembly of the generator’s many parts. The weight of the machine was such that the Orpheus herself required an extensive overhaul, and it was here that the haste showed, for where her original trimmings were luxurious, the new additions were stark and basic. No influence of the Department of Arts and Culture here. Just bare, unpainted metal. Thus it was that when Burton entered the bridge he found himself in a room that, at eye level, possessed sumptuous fixtures and fittings but that, when one looked up, gave way to a new domed ceiling in the middle of which an unadorned—and, frankly, quite ugly—framework held the spherical Mark III; the ship’s “brain.”

“My poor Orpheus,” Captain Lawless said, following Burton’s gaze. “They’ve made of her a monster.”

Swinburne, at his side, exclaimed, “Oh no, Captain! She’s beautiful. Not in form anymore, perhaps, but without a doubt in purpose.”

From above, a voice said, “At least someone appreciates me.”

Burton groaned and looked at Lawless. “I take it you’ve become familiar with Babbage’s so-called personality enhancements?”

“That’s what I was referring to, Sir Richard. A monster.”

“You should be grateful,” Orpheus protested. “What other captain has ever had such a close working relationship with his ship?”

“What other captain would endure it?” Lawless countered. He said to Burton, “Ready?”

“The ramp is in and the hatch is locked.”

“Good-oh. If you would, Mr. Swinburne?”

The poet nodded and crossed to a speaking tube. He blew into it and shrilled, “Trounce! I say, Pouncer, are you there?”

Putting the tube to his ear, he received an answer, then responded, “Fire up the engines, dear fellow! And three cheers for our jolly old escapade!”

Lawless arched an eyebrow at Burton and murmured, “Not the standard of discipline I’m used to.”

“Whatever you do,” Burton advised in a whisper, “don’t get Algy going on discipline. You’ll hear things you’d wish you could forget.”

A deep grumble vibrated through the floor.

“I must admit, I’ve been thoroughly impressed by Trounce though,” Lawless continued. “He rolled up his sleeves and took to the training like a fish takes to water.”

“He’s a practical sort,” Burton confirmed. “Whereas Swinburne’s head has always been where we are just about to go; that is to say, up in the clouds.”

“Engines at optimum,” Orpheus announced. “Are you going to stand around chin-wagging or shall we get on with it?”

“Take us to latitude north fifty-one, east one degree, altitude eight thousand feet,” Lawless commanded. He explained to Burton, “As planned—opposite the mouth of the Thames and a little north of Margate. Far enough out to sea to avoid detection, I hope.”

“Ascending,” Orpheus said.

Swinburne whooped.

The floor lurched slightly as the ship left the ground, its engines thundering.

“I feel somewhat redundant,” Lawless commented.

“Some judgements require more than cold calculations,” Burton murmured. He stepped to the rain-spattered window and took a last look at the sprawling city before the ship was swallowed by the weather front.

“En route,” Orpheus noted. “We’ll reach the coordinates in twenty minutes. The Nimtz generator requires a pressure of one thousand and five hundred psi in order to achieve the necessary power by the time we get there. It is currently at one thousand and ten psi. I suggest you adjust valves twenty-two to twenty-eight to setting six so we might accelerate through time without any delay.”

“On the other hand,” Lawless said, “sometimes cold calculations are just the ticket. Mr. Swinburne, relay the Orpheus’s advice to Mr. Krishnamurthy, please.”

“Aye aye, Captain Lawless, sir. Straightaway.” Swinburne gave a snappy salute and clicked his heels.

“Just ‘aye aye’ will do.”

Bright yellow light streamed through the windows as the airship emerged from the cloud and soared into the clear sky above it. With rotors thrumming, she sped eastward, leaving a trail of glaring white steam behind her.

Burton sat at a console and stared into space.

Initial destination: 1914. By that year, in every other variant of history, a world war was raging. In Abdu El Yezdi’s native reality, the conflict was many years old and the Prussians had overrun the world. In others, hostilities were just commencing. However, here, uniquely, the Germanic nations were placated, had joined in an economic and political alliance with the British Empire, and were sharing the spoils of Anglo-Saxon hegemony.

Nineteen fourteen might be a small step, but Burton wanted to see how the Empire would develop without the devastating events that so slowed progress in its counterparts. Besides which, it would be wise to contact the immediate descendants of the Cannibal Club, just to be sure the purpose of their mission remained clear.

While the king’s agent gave himself over to quiet meditation, the Mark III made intermittent observations pertaining to flight speed, course and altitude, Lawless gazed out at the blanket of cloud below, and Swinburne communicated the captain’s occasional commands to the engine room.

An air of expectation and trepidation hung over all.

They waited.

“We are at north fifty-one, east one degree,” Orpheus finally declared as the engines altered their tone. “Holding position. Flight duration twenty minutes, as anticipated. Rather good, if you ask me. I got it exactly right.”

Burton blinked, took a deep breath, stood, entwined his fingers, and cracked his knuckles. “Has the Nimtz made the initial set of calculations?”

“It doesn’t make the calculations,” the ship replied. “I do. And I have. As always, at your service.”

Swinburne placed a speaking tube back in its bracket and added, “Maneesh and Sadhvi are standing by.”

Burton crossed to him and indicated another tube, this one marked Shipwide. He tapped it and said to Lawless, “Do you mind, Captain?”

“Go ahead.”

Burton took up the tube and spoke into it. He could hear, beyond the bridge door, his voice echoing through the vessel.

“Sadhvi, William, Maneesh, Daniel, we’re all set. In a moment, I’ll command the Orpheus to move ahead through time. I have no idea how we’ll be affected, but, whatever you experience, please remain at your posts.” He hesitated, then added, “Thank you all, and—and may fortune favour us.”

Replacing the tube, he glanced at Swinburne—who grinned broadly—then looked up at the ceiling and said, “Orpheus, take us to nine in the evening of December the first, 1914.”

“Are you quite sure about this?” Orpheus responded. “I’m liable to become instantly outmoded. I don’t relish the thought.”

“Just do it, please.”

“On your own head be it. You’ll become antiquated too, you know. I’m engaging the generator. Hang on tight.”

Outside, everything suddenly turned completely white.

Utter silence closed around Burton. He saw Swinburne look at him and move his mouth as if speaking, but there was no sound at all, not from anywhere.

The poet slowly became transparent. So did the walls. Suddenly Burton was floating in limbo.

He fragmented. All the decisions he’d ever made were undone and became choices. His every success and every failure reverted to opportunities and challenges. The characteristics that had grown and now defined him disengaged and withdrew to become influences. He lost cohesion until nothing remained except a potential, existing as coordinates, waiting to take form.

He was a nebulous, unarticulated question.

The possible answers were innumerable.

A decision.

A path chosen.

Manifestation.

A recognition of whiteness, of shapes emerging from it and darkening it, of Swinburne’s face.

Burton swayed, stumbled backward, regained his balance, and looked around the bridge.

“Phew!” Swinburne exclaimed. “That felt like an instant and an eternity all rolled into one.”

“It was fifty-four years,” Orpheus said. “We have arrived.”

Burton said, “Call down to the others, Algy. See how they are.”

This was done, and the poet reported, “All’s well.”

Lawless said, “Orpheus, a systems check, please.”

The ship responded, “Done. I’m perfectly fine, thank you for asking.”

The captain crossed to a console and examined its dials. “It’s a clear night, and windless according to the readings. Cold, though. I suggest we switch off all lights and descend to five hundred feet.”

“Agreed.”

“Orpheus, you heard that?”

“I’m not deaf.”

“Then proceed.”

The bridge’s electrical lights clicked off, and the engines moaned.

Burton’s stomach moved as he felt the drop in altitude. He strode to the window. Swinburne and Lawless joined him. They looked out. A full moon was riding low in a starry sky. In half a century, the heavens hadn’t changed one jot.

The king’s agent muttered, “I’m a fool. I should have taken the phases of the moon into account. We’ll be visible.”

“Why did you choose December?” Lawless asked.

“Because Abdu El Yezdi caused the Russian dictator, Rasputin, to die this year. That, however, was in a different history. I’m interested to know what happened to him in this one. I’m hoping that the three great wartime mediums were so prone to resonance that their death in one history caused their deaths in all the others.”

“There’s a yacht,” Swinburne said, pointing downward. “I can just about make it out. See?”

Burton searched the silvered surface of the sea. Before he spotted the vessel, it drew his attention with a sequence of flashes.

“That’s them,” Lawless said.

“How do you know?” Burton asked.

“It’s Morse code. A system created back in the forties. The Navy is in the process of adopting it. Um, that is to say, the Navy of 1860. That ship is sending the word ‘Cannibal.’” Raising his voice, he ordered, “Steer twenty degrees to the southwest, forward half a mile, and descend to thirty feet above sea level.”

“That’s rather low,” the ship noted.

“Weather’s calm,” the captain countered.

The floor shifted as the airship followed the command.

“Go get yourself ready, gents,” Lawless said. “I’ll call down to Trounce and Gooch. They’ll meet you in the bay.”

Burton made a sound of acknowledgement and, accompanied by Swinburne, exited the bridge. They traversed a stairwell down past the main deck to Orpheus’s cargo bay, where they found their friends waiting.

“Hell’s bells!” the detective inspector grumbled. “That was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I felt like I dissolved.”

“Better get used to it,” Burton advised. “Help me with the hatch.”

The four of them unlatched the bay doors in the floor and pulled the portal open. Frigid night air swept in, bearing with it the salty tang of the sea. They looked out. The glittering water appeared dangerously close. As they watched, the small vessel that had signalled them glided into view. They saw figures standing on its deck, their pale moonlit faces gazing up at them. A voice shouted, “Hail fellows well met!”

“Who’s there?” Burton called.

“The Cannibal Club circa 1914! Come on down. It’s quite safe.”

Gooch moved to a winch and rotated a handle. A small platform with handrails on three of its sides swung out from a corner of the hold until it was positioned over the hatch. He used another handle to lower it a little.

“All aboard,” he instructed.

Burton, Swinburne and Trounce stepped carefully onto the swaying square of metal. They gripped the rail.

“Say hello from me to the denizens of the future,” Gooch said, and started to wind the handle.

As the platform sank, Swinburne proclaimed, “Into the unknown, ta-rah, ta-rah!”

They emerged from the bay and dropped smoothly down to the boat. A cold breeze dug its fingers into their inadequate clothing. The platform clunked onto the wooden deck, and the cable looped around it as Gooch gave plenty of slack.

A slim white-haired and round-faced man with a pencil-thin moustache stepped forward from the gathering that awaited them. He shook them each by the hand and said, “Sir Richard, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Trounce, I am James Arthur Honesty. Your colleague, Detective Inspector Thomas Honesty, was my father.”

“By Jove!” Trounce exclaimed. “So he made detective inspector! Good man!”

James Honesty smiled. “He did, sir, and he always spoke very highly of you—said you were the best man on the entire force.”

Trounce harrumphed and stuck out his chest a little. He suddenly deflated and said, “Spoke? You mean he’s—he’s—”

“Father passed away fourteen years ago, sir.”

Burton touched Trounce’s arm. “Remember, old chap, he’s still alive where we’ve come from.”

Honesty said, “Come belowdecks. I’ll introduce you to the current Cannibals and tell you how things stand with the world. The Orpheus will be fine. Such ships, though old, are still in use and a common sight. She won’t be disturbed.”

He led them to a door, down a flight of steps, a short way along a narrow corridor, and into an undecorated room furnished with a table, sideboard and chairs. They sat and waited while Honesty’s colleagues appeared and filed in. The chamber was soon crowded.

“You made it, then,” Honesty said. “The chrononauts! Perfectly marvellous!”

“Chrononauts?” Burton queried. “Is that what you call us?”

“It is. So here we all are, thrilled beyond measure to meet you. I’ll confess, not a few of us have secretly suspected the whole affair to be some sort of wild hoax, but there’s one among us who’s maintained the faith, so to speak, and whom you must thank for keeping us organised and committed. A friend of yours.”

He gestured to a very elderly individual sitting two seats to his right. The old man was gazing at Burton with an amused twinkle in his eye. Burton looked at him. Slowly, recognition dawned.

“Bismillah!” he said huskily. “Brabrooke! Edward Brabrooke!”

“Great heavens!” Swinburne cried out.

Brabrooke laughed, his parchment-thin liver-spotted skin creasing into a myriad of wrinkles. He leaned across the table and extended a gnarled hand to the king’s agent, who gripped it enthusiastically, and to the poet, who did likewise.

“I feel that I’m dreaming,” Brabrooke said. His voice rustled like dry leaves. “Here am I, seventy-five years old, and there’s you two, exactly as you were when we last got sloshed together, half a century ago. How are you, Richard? Algy? How the very devil are you?”

Burton responded, “As you say, my friend, I’m exactly as I was when we last met, which for me was just a couple of weeks ago. And the others?”

“All gone, I’m sad to say. We lost old—”

Burton interrupted. “Stop! Forgive me, but I shouldn’t have asked. I think it best if you—if all of you—refrain from speaking of those who’ve passed. For me, they’re still alive, though they currently occupy a different portion of time to this. Do you understand?”

The Cannibals nodded, and Brabrooke said, “Yes, I can see how that might be for the best.” He paused. “But I expect you’ll want to know what became of you—whether you returned from this voyage or not?”

“Can you tell me?” Burton asked cautiously.

“No. It’s the most peculiar thing. I have vivid memories of you prior to your departure, but after that there’s a thoroughly curious indecision. I feel, at one and the same time, that you returned but also that you didn’t. If you did, whatever we got up to after 1860 is lost in a frustrating amnesia.”

“Babbage warned us of such a phenomenon.”

“His theories are in our records. Knowing the ‘why’ of it doesn’t make it any the less odd.” Brabrooke reached out and took a broad-shouldered man by the elbow, pulling him to his side. “Anyway, let’s look forward, not back. This is my son, Edward John.”

“I’ve heard so much about the three of you,” the younger Brabrooke said. “It’s an honour to meet you.”

“I also have a grandson,” Edward Brabrooke said. “Eddie. When he’s older, he’ll join our ranks. Perhaps he’ll get to meet you, too.”

James Honesty put in, “Suffice to say, Sir Richard, that all your friends dedicated themselves to the continuation of our little organisation, and many are here represented.” He gestured to another, stockily built youngster. “This, for example, is Lieutenant Henry Bendyshe.”

With an oddly familiar voice, the lieutenant bellowed, “By crikey! I’m very happy to be here, sirs. My grandfather always told tall tales of you, Sir Richard, and of you, Mr. Swinburne. He considered you the finest of friends.”

“Gosh!” Swinburne muttered. “Tom found a wife. The poor girl.”

“And this,” Honesty continued, nodding toward a strikingly beautiful blonde-haired woman, “is Miss Eliza Murray, granddaughter of Admiral Henry Murray.”

“Admiral!” Burton and Swinburne exclaimed.

Brabrooke cackled. “Who’d have thought such an utter rapscallion would rise so high, hey?”

Swinburne smiled at Miss Murray and exclaimed, “My hat! But you’re the spitting image of him, except female, of course, and considerably better looking. In fact, you completely outshine him. There’s barely any resemblance at all.”

She laughed. “My mother says I have his face.”

“Well,” Swinburne said, “he was tremendously handsome, then. Apparently.”

Burton turned his attention to a dark-complexioned middle-aged woman. “And you, madam, bear a distinct likeness to Shyamji Bhatti.”

She bobbed. “His daughter. I am Patmanjari Richardson, née Bhatti.”

“Your father’s cousin, Maneesh Krishnamurthy, is up in the Orpheus. Perhaps you’d like to meet him?”

Honesty turned to her. “Go say hello, by all means.”

“I should like that very much.” She smiled and left the room.

Another woman, in her midfifties, was introduced as Catherine Jones, daughter of Detective Inspector Sidney Slaughter.

“We also have with us Clive Penniforth,” James Honesty said, jerking a thumb toward a muscular fellow, “whose father was a cab driver of your acquaintance.”

“Gents,” Penniforth said. His voice was so deep it sounded like an avalanche. He touched his fingers to his temple. “Pops is still with us, but he don’t get around much no more. Has a spot o’ bother with his hips. He sends his best.”

“Good old Monty!” Swinburne exclaimed.

“And finally, from the old crowd, we have Robert Crewe-Milnes, the first Marquess of Crewe.”

The marquess, a handsome man with a wide moustache and a military bearing, said, “My father was Richard Monckton Milnes.”

Unexpectedly, Burton felt overcome by emotion. The muscles to either side of his jaw worked spasmodically. He blinked at Crewe-Milnes, who gave a sad smile of understanding and said nothing more.

Swinburne sniffed, pulled out a handkerchief, and blew his nose.

After a moment’s silence, Honesty said, “So that is nine of us, all descended from the original Cannibals, with the exception of Mr. Brabrooke, who is an original. However, as you can see, we are twelve in total. We have three new recruits, who we felt could contribute much to our cause, they being inclined toward considerations of the future, as well as possessing admirable insight into the present. The first is Mademoiselle Amélie Blanchet.”

A rather coarse-featured, overweight and ostentatiously dressed woman of about fifty years murmured, “Welcome aboard, gentlemen. Bonjour. Bonjour.”

“She wields considerable influence in high society. Few people better comprehend how an undercurrent of idle gossip influences cultural and political movements, and no one hears more of it than she.”