Текст книги "The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Isabel’s petite younger sister, Blanche, rose from the chair.

He strode to her, grabbed her hand, and gave it a peck.

“Hello, Little Bird. I’m sorry I missed your wedding. How is old Smythe Piggott?”

“Hello, Richard. The sky has lit up to celebrate your return. I’m fine, but do emphasise the pig when you say my husband’s name. He already has two mistresses. But he’s a rich pig, so I can’t complain. There are women with worse husbands; the variety of man that remains at home in the evenings and insists on conversation, for instance. The fifth of November, Richard, the fifth of November.”

“What about it? Do you intend to throw him onto a bonfire? I didn’t think you Catholics celebrated Guy Fawkes Night.”

“We Catholics don’t. It’s the date my parents have set for your engagement party. They’d prefer that my sister’s marriage be founded on financial security, as mine is—I think they’re rather intimidated by such concepts as love and passion—but they’ve bowed to the inevitable. Great-Uncle Gerard has agreed to host the party at New Wardour Castle, and if you wish to bring guests, you have his leave to do so.”

Burton looked at Isabel and arched an eyebrow. “Have you been doping your parents?”

She laughed. “No, just driving them to the brink of madness by singing your praises at every opportunity. But I think it was the knighthood that finally swayed them.”

“Oh. You know about that? Good grief! Was I the last to be told?”

“I heard it from Monckton Milnes. You know what a great depository of knowledge, gossip, and secrets he is.”

“Not so much secrets, it would appear.”

Burton indicated that Blanche should resume her seat and Isabel take the other armchair. He dragged over a padded chair from beside one of the desks and sat facing them.

Isabel reached for his hand and held it. She said, “You won’t object to the party, will you?”

“I’ll concede to it,” he replied, “but we’ll keep the wedding itself a small affair, as we agreed—yes?—for a grand marriage ceremony is a barbarous and an indelicate exhibition.”

Isabel first laughed then frowned. “Your face. What was this mishap you mentioned?”

“Yes, brother-in-law-to-be,” Blanche added. “You look a hideous mess.”

He dismissed the question with a wave. “Thank you, Blanche. It’s really nothing to worry about. I tripped.”

Blanche giggled. “Months and months in dangerous Africa and as soon as you’re home, you fall flat on your face.”

“Exactly.”

“Was the safari very difficult?” Isabel asked. “Why did it take so much longer than predicted?”

“The Orpheus’s engines failed,” he replied. “Some five hundred miles north of the lakes, they simply packed up. The engineers couldn’t find a thing to explain it. What little wind there was came from the west—the dirigible couldn’t even float southward—so Sadhvi, Bill, George, and I left it and continued on foot. We followed the upper Nile through a chain of swamps and lakes until we arrived at its source—waterfalls descending from the Nyanza, which is practically an inland sea. We then skirted around its western shore, past the Mountains of the Moon, until we came to the water’s southernmost point. While we were doing all that, the breeze altered direction, allowing Captain Lawless to drift the Orpheus over the eastern shores of the Nyanza then southward to an Arabic outpost called Kazeh. He set up camp there and paid natives to spread the news of the ship’s location. The information eventually reached us and we rejoined our colleagues. A few days later, we discovered that the engines had miraculously come back to life and immediately set course for Zanzibar.”

The door opened and Mrs. Angell entered with a tea tray. She gave Blanche an approving glance, pleased to see that propriety was being observed and Isabel was correctly chaperoned, then set the tray down on a table.

“Shall I pour?” she asked.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Angell,” Isabel said. “Leave it to me.”

“I’ll lay clean clothes out in your bedchamber, Captain Burton,” the housekeeper said. “Oh, I’m so happy to have you home safe and sound. You’ll not be returning to Africa, I hope.”

“No, Mother,” Burton responded. “I have no plans to go back.”

The old woman wrung her hands in satisfaction. “You’ll have some beef broth before you go to bed. I insist upon it. You need building up. Ring when you’re ready for it. Don’t forget!” With that admonition, she left the room.

Isabel said, “Have you satisfied your craving for danger and unexplored lands, Dick? Are you ready to settle? I have petitioned Lord Stanley. I think he’s willing to hand us Damascus.”

Burton sighed. “I wish you hadn’t. The Orpheus gave him passage home from Vienna. He made it quite clear to me that your unsolicited recommendations were unwelcome and irritating. You may have done more damage than good.”

“There!” Blanche interjected. “I told you not to be so bullheaded. Really, Isabel, mother is right. You are far too brazen.”

“I was trying to help!” Isabel protested.

Burton gave her hand a squeeze. “I appreciate that, darling, but in doing so you might have given the impression that I lack the wherewithal to advance my own career.”

“It’s just that—that—Oh, Dick, I just want to be able to do something for our future together. I so regret that I’m bringing you no money, but Papa simply won’t allow it.”

“That’s no disadvantage as far as I’m concerned, for heiresses always expect to lord it over their lords. A man must be a man, Isabel. He must be in charge of his own destiny, and more importantly, he must be seen to be in charge.”

She swallowed and nodded.

“Don’t fret,” he added. “You may have riled old Stanley, but I’m confident we’ll get what we want anyway.”

“You forgive me?”

“I forgive you.”

Isabel smiled, stood, and crossed to the table. While she attended to the teapot, Burton asked Blanche, “Your parents really want me to bring guests?”

“Oh, yes!” she answered. “You should invite them for the first of the month, so we have a few days to become acquainted before the party itself. Will Styggins be among them? I so want to meet him. I hear he’s absolutely utterly!”

“Steinhaueser? Absolutely utterly what?”

“Just utterly! Isabel tells me you’ve known him forever.”

“Since India,” Burton corrected. “Utterly, hey?”

“You must admit,” Isabel said, returning with a filled cup and saucer in each hand, “that he is rather handsome and charming.”

“I can’t say I’ve noticed,” Burton said. “But, yes, I’ll invite Styggins, if only to make my Little Bird’s pet pig jealous.”

Blanche giggled and reddened.

“I’ll ask Monckton Milnes, too,” he added.

Isabel fetched the third cup and sat down. “But none of your wretched Cannibal Club, if you please. They are far too louche.”

“Agreed.”

A short silence fell over them as they sipped their tea. Blanche stared at her sister and wrinkled her forehead meaningfully. Isabel put her cup down and frowned at her sibling.

“What is it?” Burton asked. “Why are you two looking daggers at each other?”

“My sister has something to tell you,” Blanche said.

“Blanche!” Isabel hissed.

“Well?” Burton asked.

Isabel fiddled with the edge of her shawl, examined her fingernails, brushed her hands over her skirts, and said, “I met Hagar Burton again.”

“Hagar Burton?”

“You remember? The Gypsy who used to camp on the family estate when I was a girl.”

“Ah, yes.”

Burton recalled that his fiancée, when fifteen years old, had befriended the Gypsy woman, who’d predicted that she’d one day fall in love with a man who bore the Burton surname.

Isabel continued, “Last June, Blanche and I went to Ascot. She was there.”

“And?”

“And she read my palm.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked if I’d married a Burton yet. I said no, not yet. She said, Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“She predicted that, if I put on a wedding dress for a Burton, he would—would—”

“He would what?”

“He would kill me while I was still wearing it.”

THE BAKER STREET DETECTIVE

Macallister Fogg’s Own Paper!

Issue 245. Every Thursday. Consolidated Press.

One Penny.

This Week: Macallister Fogg and his

lady assistant, Mrs. Boswell, investigate:

THE HORRIBLE HAUNTING OF HOWLING HOUSE!

Plus the latest installments of:

DOCTOR TZU VERSUS THE BRAIN REMOVERS

by Cecil Barry

FATTY CAKEHOLE AND THE PHANTOM PIE-MAKER

by Norman Pounder

Friday didn’t dawn but merely replaced the shifting colours of the aurora with the pale yellow of a late-summer’s day. Unaccustomed to his own bed, Burton awoke early and lay staring at the rectangle of his curtained window. His room was at the back of the house, overlooking the yard and mews, but the rumble of early-morning traffic—mostly delivery wagons—was noisy enough to reach him. It sounded alien and strange. No more waking to coughing lions and rumbling elephants. No quiet thrum of the Orpheus’s engines.

He was in London now.

But not for long, he hoped.

The Empire’s capital made him uneasy. Few of the people who dwelt in its club rooms and debating chambers approved of him. He’d spent his childhood being hauled around Europe by a restless father and long-suffering mother and had, in consequence, acquired “foreign ways.” He’d little patience with the complex and subtle rituals of English society, and was, in consequence, looked upon as too blunt, too challenging, too aggressive, and far too interested in matters that were better left unacknowledged.

Blackguard Burton. Ruffian Dick.

So, Damascus.

He would endure London until he was married, then he and Isabel would flee to the wide-open spaces and rather more transparent etiquettes of Arabia.

Burton pushed himself upright, let loose a deep, shuddering sigh, and reached up to touch his right eye. It was swollen and sore. What in God’s name had that business in the alley been about? The Assassination of Victoria? It was two decades ago!

Giving up on further sleep, he left his bed, shaved, washed, dressed, and went down to his study. For two hours, he made inroads into his backlog of newspapers, then—when he heard Mrs. Angell moving about downstairs—rang for breakfast. By nine o’clock, he’d caught up on much of the past year’s news and had consumed two kippers, two boiled eggs, four rashers of bacon, a chunk of cold ham, three slices of toast with marmalade, and two cups of coffee.

He left the house, hailed a cab, and went to Scotland Yard.

Pushing through the crowded and noisy lobby, Burton stepped up to a desk upon which a small plaque bore the name J. D. Pepperwick. The individual sitting behind it was the same he’d chatted with last night.

“Is Mr. Macallister Fogg available?”

“Hello there!” Pepperwick enthused. “Good morning! I hardly recognised you. What happened to the beard?”

Burton touched his drooping moustache and the small tuft of hair he’d left in the cleft of his chin. “It had to go. There were things living in it.”

The clerk chuckled. “It looks like they fought to stay. That’s quite a shiner you’ve got, Mr. Living—er—”

“Captain.”

“Pardon me. Captain. Who?”

“Burton.”

“No, Captain Burton, I meant, who was it you said you wanted to see?”

“Macallister Fogg.”

Pepperwick removed his spectacles and blew dust from the lenses. “Hmm! Macallister Fogg. Macallister Fogg. Macallister Fogg. No, sir, I’m quite certain there’s no one here by that name.”

“He was standing among your people last night, watching the aurora. A shortish and bulky fellow with a large moustache.”

Pepperwick replaced his eyewear and scratched his right ear. “There are plenty working here who match such a description, Captain, but no Foggs. Perhaps he was just passing by and got mixed up with us.”

“Yes,” Burton replied. “I suppose so. Well, it was worth a try.”

“Would you like to speak with a detective?”

“About what?”

“About whatever it is you wanted to discuss with this Fogg chap.”

“I didn’t want to discuss anything with him. I wanted to punch him in the eye.”

Pepperwick blinked rapidly. “Oh. Ha ha! Tit for tat, is it? Not quite the thing to do in Scotland Yard, sir.”

“No,” Burton agreed. “I expect not. Much obliged, Mr. Pepperwick. Good day to you.”

The explorer recrossed the lobby and stepped out into the morning haze. The pall was much less dense today and the streets were seething with people, animals, and traffic. He hailed another cab and headed home, stopping briefly at Brundleweed’s, which he again found closed.

As the carriage bumped and swayed along, Burton dozed. His bones felt cold and his flesh too warm. The crisis might have passed but he was by no means fully recovered.

A knock on the roof jerked him back to alertness. A small hatch hinged upward and the cabbie looked down at him.

“Montagu Place, boss.”

“Already?”

“Yup. You’ve been catching forty winks. I could hear yer snoring.”

Burton pushed the door open and stepped down onto the road. He passed the fare up to the man and said, “There’s a little extra, for the damage to your ears.”

The cabbie grinned. “Much obliged!”

He drove off.

Burton took a couple of steps then stopped. A street Arab was hawking newspapers outside his door.

“Read all about it! Sky lit up around the world! Read all about it!”

The explorer had an idea. He approached the youngster.

“I say, nipper, are you a Whisperer?”

The boy—he was no more than twelve years old, dressed in rags with a battered stovepipe hat on his tousle-haired head—pushed his chest out, stood proudly, and in a soft Irish accent declared, “Aye, sir, that I am. Any message you want to send or information you want to find, I can do it—for a small fee.”

Burton fished a shilling from his pocket. “Then I have a job for you. I need to trace the whereabouts of a man named Macallister Fogg. I want to know who he is and what he does.”

The boy received the coin with a broad grin and said, “Go on with ye! Macallister Fogg, is it? Are ye certain about that? You’ll not be pullin’ me leg?”

“I’m certain.”

The boy slapped his thigh, rocked back on his heels, and roared with laughter.

“’Tis the easiest shillin’ I’ve ever earned, so it is!”

“How so?” Burton asked.

“Would ye be willin’ to invest a further penny? If ye do, I’ll place Macallister Fogg in your hands in less than a minute.”

The penny was brought forth, and the boy said, “Wait here a moment, will ye now?”

He left his bundle of newspapers at the explorer’s feet, scampered off, and disappeared into Gloucester Place.

Burton knew how it worked. The many orphans and dispossessed youngsters who roamed the streets of the Empire had formed what amounted to a secret “communications web” through which information could pass from mouth to mouth at an astonishing speed. These “Whisperers” functioned mainly as an alternative to the post office, delivering spoken messages rather than letters—confidentiality assured—but were also what Richard Monckton Milnes called “an organic encyclopaedia” in that, where information was available, they could almost always find it. The only drawback to the system was the phenomenon of cumulative errors, or “Chinese whispers,” which meant the information passed or requested needed to be as simple as possible or it would become corrupted as it travelled from child to child.

The urchin returned.

He handed Burton a periodical of cheap paper, about twenty pages in thickness, which bore the title The Baker Street Detective.

“What’s this?” the explorer asked.

“A story paper, sir. From the newsagent’s.”

“A penny blood?”

“Aye, an’ me very favourite one, too. I’m fair hooked on it! Fair hooked! Most o’ the boys are.”

Burton examined the lurid cover illustration, which showed a muscular and mustachioed man being chased through a cavern by demonic creatures. He read: The Kingdom Beneath the Basement! Macallister Fogg at the Centre of the World!

“I don’t understand.”

“Macallister Fogg is a consulting detective, sir. He works out of Baker Street, not five minutes’ walk from here, though which house I don’t know.”

“Consulting detective?”

“Aye. Private, like. Unofficial. Not one of ’em what works at Scotland Yard.”

“But . . . this?” Burton held up the penny dreadful.

The newsboy giggled. “Well, he ain’t real, is he? Ha ha! He’s just in story books!”

Burton clacked his teeth together in irritation. “The man I want said his name was Macallister Fogg.”

“I think he was havin’ ye on, sir, though there’s ’em what hold that Fogg is real. If that be true and ye find ’im, can I ask ye to introduce me? I’ll offer to be his assistant, so I will. Perhaps he’ll take me on one of his grand adventures!”

The explorer thanked the boy, entered number 14, settled in his study, and read the periodical. It was ill-written nonsense. Plainly, whoever his assailant was, he’d called himself Fogg just to throw Burton off the scent.

He shook his head in bemusement. Laurence Oliphant, the aurora borealis, Macallister Fogg, and Hagar Burton’s warning; could he really be certain he’d recovered from the hallucinatory fevers?

He went to one of his desks, picked up his notepad, and opened it. Yes, Oliphant’s diagrams were real enough—those strange number-filled squares. They, at least, were something he could investigate, and of all the people he knew, Richard Monckton Milnes was the most likely to understand what they signified.

He sat, opened a bottle of ink, took up a pen, and wrote six letters. He then descended the stairs, stepped outside, and whistled at the newsboy, who came running over.

“Somethin’ else, sir?”

“Thruppence for you,” Burton said, “if you’ll post these letters for me.”

“Ah. A thruppenny bit, is it? Well now, old Stride has his sweet shop right next to the post office, so he does, and I’ll not pass up the opportunity to pay him a visit. Hand over the letters, sir, an’ I’ll have ’em posted in a jiffy.”

The money and missives exchanged hands and the boy dashed off.

Burton gave a satisfied clap of his hands, went back up to his study, and eased himself into his saddlebag armchair. He lit a cheroot.

The members of the Cannibal Club would soon convene.

He spent the rest of the day reading. By ten o’clock, his bed beckoned. He looked at his study windows and uttered a small exclamation. It was still light. Moving over to them, he pulled up a sash, leaned out, and looked up.

For the third night in a row, a coruscating radiance filled the sky.

Thomas Bendyshe raised his glass and declared, “A toast to Sir Richard Francis Burton, the man who cracked the Nile!”

“Hear hear!” Henry Murray enthused.

Burton flicked his fingers dismissively. “I’m not knighted yet.”

“Pah!” Bendyshe objected. “An insignificant detail. Your good health, sir!”

“Was it worth the hardship, Burton old boy?” Charles Bradlaugh asked. “Was your expedition a mystical and enlightening experience? I mean to say, many regard the Nile as the source of life itself, don’t they?”

Bendyshe added, “Personally, I regard cognac as the source, but that doesn’t mean I want to visit France. Why did you do it?”

“There was no spiritual revelation involved,” Burton responded. “Nor did I expect there to be. My motives were purely materialistic. I calculated that the discovery would make Disraeli and his cronies sit up and take notice of me—thus I would stand a better chance of securing a government post in one of the Arabian countries.”

The members of the Cannibal Club—Burton, Bendyshe, Murray, Bradlaugh, and Richard Monckton Milnes, Doctor James Hunt, and Sir Edward Brabrooke—had gathered in the function rooms above Bartolini’s Italian restaurant in Leicester Square. The chamber was furnished with leather armchairs and sofas, heavy oak tables and cabinets.

It was Sunday evening.

Yesterday morning, Burton’s luggage had been delivered from the Orpheus to Montagu Place. As it was piled in the hallway, Mrs. Angell had thrown up her arms and exclaimed, “There’s ten times as much as you took! I hope you don’t have tigers in those trunks!”

“There are no tigers in Africa, Mrs. Angell.”

“I’m not surprised. You’ve brought them all back here!”

It had taken him until midday to move all the cases upstairs and begin sorting through them. He’d then spent the afternoon relaxing, smoking cigars, catching up with his correspondence, reading voraciously, and dozing frequently. At eight in the evening, he met Isabel, Blanche, and Sadhvi Raghavendra at Jaquet’s on Drury Lane, where they’d dined on the restaurant’s famous à-la-mode beef.

What they’d agreed on Thursday night was agreed again: Hagar Burton’s prediction must be rejected out of hand. It was patently absurd. Even Isabel, who was extremely superstitious, accepted that it would be the height of foolishness to allow such tosh to influence their wedding plans.

She and her sister were currently staying at the St. James Hotel, off Piccadilly. In a few days, they’d be returning to the family home—New Wardour Castle in Wiltshire—taking Sadhvi with them as their guest, there to engage in two months of frenzied organising and planning. November’s engagement party was to be a full-blown ball such as only the country’s richest Catholic family could afford.

The wedding itself was scheduled for January. Cardinal Wiseman, a friend of the Arundells’, had promised that if Burton signed the Catholic pledge, a dispensation would be obtained from Rome to allow the union. As far as Burton was concerned, if ink on paper could pacify the Papists—and, more importantly, Isabel’s parents—then he was happy to provide it. His atheism would be in no way sullied.

They’d left Jaquet’s at eleven. The sky was clear and dark. No aurora borealis—the mysterious lights had vanished.

“Thank goodness!” Isabel had exclaimed. “Perhaps the city will quiet down now. How could anyone possibly survive a London that’s active twenty-four hours a day?”

Today, Sunday, had been another of rest and recuperation. By the time Burton joined his fellow Cannibals, he was feeling considerably stronger and his skin had lost its jaundiced hue.

Now—having learned nothing from Thursday night’s lesson—he was rapidly getting drunk again, only dimly aware that he was using alcohol to numb the transition from Africa to London.

“I say, old horse!” Thomas Bendyshe shouted. “This engagement party of yours—are we all invited?”

Burton refilled his brandy glass, removed the cheroot from his mouth, blew smoke into the vessel, and drank from it.

“If a horde of atheists caroused around New Wardour Castle, Isabel’s mother would probably suffer an embolism,” he said. “So, no, Tom, I’m afraid that, with the exception of Monckton Milnes, who knows how to conduct himself in polite society, the Cannibal Club is most definitely not invited.”

“But surely her God will protect her from us?” Bendyshe protested.

“I’d rather not put it to the test.”

The explorer and his friends had been quaffing, smoking, and joking for three hours. Interspersed between the ribaldry, they’d exchanged news, enjoyed Burton’s yarns about the more explicit aspects of his time in Africa, and had supplemented his reading of the newspapers with their own opinions of the various developments in the world—the resolution of the Austro-Sardinian War; the commencement of the construction of the Suez Canal; the American gold rush; and, most of all, the forthcoming formation of the Central German Confederation and its official Alliance with Britain.

Finally, as “Big Ben”—the bell recently installed in Westminster Palace’s St. Stephen’s Tower—chimed midnight, the resolute imbibing told. Bendyshe, Hunt, Murray, Brabrooke, and Bradlaugh took to armchairs, sprawled as loose as rag dolls, and produced only sporadic drunken murmurings, which ceased as Burton started to discuss Oliphant with Monckton Milnes, who—like the explorer—possessed greater immunity to the effects of alcohol than the other men. The rest listened, barely able to comprehend the account of Stroyan’s murder.

Monckton Milnes was a tall and lanky individual, rather saturnine in appearance, with the brow of an intellectual, long hair, and a preference for high collars and bright cravats. He was a wielder of influence in High Society; a writer; a poet; and a dabbler in politics. He also happened to be a keen collector of erotica and occult literature. His country manor, Fryston, in Yorkshire, contained the largest library of banned material anywhere in Europe.

Burton pulled his notebook from his pocket.

“What do you make of these? As I say, the grids and numbers were scrawled on the walls of the Orpheus’s observation room. There was a pentagram on the floor. Oliphant was standing in the middle of it when he slit Stroyan’s throat.”

Monckton Milnes took the book and examined the sketches.

“The pentagram has many associations,” he muttered, “but these are magic squares, so I suspect that, in this instance, the five-pointed star represents the coalescence of spirit into flesh. The squares are employed to map the path of manifestation, the idea being that something abstract is given such a strong conceptual route into the actual that it will have the means to become as real as you or I. Hum! I must confess, they have me flummoxed. Each diagram certainly offers a sequential passage from the notional to the material, but I cannot fathom how they relate to one another. Plainly, they do, and these central numbers—ten, eight, nine hundred, and one thousand—are the key. The question is, the key to what? I have no idea, Richard.”

“Are you acquainted with anyone who might know more?”

Monckton Milnes tapped his forefinger against his lips for a moment then answered, “Um. Yes. Possibly. Do you mind if I copy these pages? I’d like to send them to a Frenchman I’ve shared some correspondence with.”

“Be my guest.”

“Also, my prognosticator still sits for me, despite having retired a few years ago, but I could probably persuade her to make an exception for you. Will you see her? She might throw light on recent events.”

Burton emptied his glass and shook his head.

“She’s very good,” Monckton Milnes said.

“I don’t care for the species,” Burton protested.

“Still the prejudice? What if she can actually contact Stroyan? Surely you’d listen to his account of Oliphant’s ritual?”

“If I was certain it was Stroyan addressing me. But how could I be?”

“Because he’d tell you something only a spirit could know.”

Burton levelled his intense eyes at Monckton Milnes. “The dead communicate directly with me, you know.”

The older man looked surprised. “They do?”

“Yes, and they are telling me that you accompanied a young lady to the opening of the Theatre Royal earlier tonight, that you and she sat in the upper tier, and that you possess a romantic interest in her but did not make as much progress as you would have liked. She told you she was too preoccupied with her calling and could not at present give consideration to anything that might distract her from it.”

Monckton Milnes had raised a glass of wine to his lips as Burton started to speak. He now coughed, spluttered, and gasped, “Great heavens above! You don’t mean to say the spirits were watching over me during tonight’s performance?”

Burton gave a savage grin. “Do you mean the actors’ performance or your own?”

Snapping out of his drunken stupor, Bendyshe guffawed. “Ha ha! Poor old Monkey Milnes! It looks to me like he was the main act tonight!”

Monckton Milnes put aside his glass and squared his shoulders. “This is quite unacceptable! I demand to know who’s been spying on me from the Afterlife. Reveal your source, Burton.”

“And that,” the explorer said, “is how easy it is.”

“What the devil are you jabbering about?”

“Bazalgette is currently digging one of his sewers along the Strand, and I’ve read complaints in the newspapers about yellow dust spreading from the excavation.” Burton pointed at his friend’s feet. “You have such a deposit staining the edges of your boot soles, therefore you were in the area, and it must have been within the past few hours, else the dust would have been dislodged.”

Hunt and Murray roused themselves and leaned forward to hear more. Brabrooke and Bradlaugh, both flirting with the point of no return, emitted crooning rumbles and gentle whistles.

“For what reason were you in the Strand?” Burton continued. “It is Sunday, so only hotels and theatres are open. One or the other, then. Of the theatres, the Royal makes a great deal about being the only one illuminated by Stroud’s Patent Sun Lamp, an ingenious array of gas mantles that shine through a chandelier of cut glass. The arrangement has been much lauded by the press, though some reporters noted that it produces a waxy residue that drifts down onto the audience, especially those seated in the upper tiers. You have just such a residue on your jacket shoulders. Furthermore, when you arrived here, there were very slight indentations beneath your eyes, which suggested to me the prolonged use of opera glasses aimed downward at a stage.”

“Bravo, Richard!” James Hunt cheered.

Bendyshe clapped enthusiastically and cried out, “But what of the mysterious goddess?”

Burton took Monckton Milnes by the right wrist and raised his hand into the air. “Observe! A slight green stain between our friend’s forefinger and thumb signifies her presence. One can see by the hue that it is vegetable in origin, and two very slight nicks in the skin of his principal digit suggest the presence of thorns.”

“I was gardening,” Monckton Milnes objected.

“Is that so? Where, sir? Your gardens are a part of Fryston. Your town house has none. So no, you were not gardening, you were holding thorny stalks, the most obvious candidate being roses, which are the flowers of romance.”

Monckton Milnes’s shoulders slumped. “Gad! You’re a confounded sorcerer. And my rejection?”

“Simple. Had you not been spurned, you would not be here.”

Bendyshe, Hunt, and Murray let loose peals of laughter, which woke Brabrooke and Bradlaugh, who, being three sheets to the wind and not knowing what was going on, laughed along with them so as to not be unsociable.

Henry Murray said, “But—I say!—this business about the young lady’s calling?”

“That,” Burton said, “is public knowledge. In a small column in yesterday’s Daily Bugle, one of our lesser hacks took great delight in reporting that Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes, the well-known socialite, has been courting Miss Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse. She—as was also reported—is currently raising funds for her nurses’ training school at Saint Thomas’s Hospital. Knowing of her notoriously single-minded disposition, I consider it highly unlikely that she would allow the distractions of a romance to interfere with her vocation.”