Текст книги "The curious case of the Clockwork Man"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

The beady black eyes bored into his. He struggled and failed to look away.

He tried to distract her: For all your hokum, you're nothing but a murderer and thief. You killed Jean Pelletier, didn't you?

“ Pah! I simply appeared before him and he dropped dead from fright, the weak fool. ”

You took his diamonds. And then the Francois Garnier Choir Stones.

“ Yes, yes. I lifted them through the solid metal of a safe just as I could pull your brain from your skull without breaking the skin of your scalp. ”

And replaced them with onyx crystals. Why? Did you think to delay investigations into the matter?

“Yes. I see that it didn't work. How did you discover my little deception? Let us find out.”

He felt her burrowing deeper and deeper, and he allowed the intrusion, for as she penetrated his mind, he found that he was able to stealthily enter hers.

“Bozhe moi! Brunel and Babbage! So, the detestable Technologists have an interest in the diamonds, too!”

Babbage had plans for the stones. Your intentions, though, seem rather more nefarious, and to achieve those ends, you've made unwitting pawns of the Rakes, have you not?

“Unwitting? More like witless. The vacant-headed fools! Becoming the leader of their pathetic clique was child's play to one such as

I.”

The woman's weakness was obvious: she possessed overweening vanity. She was supremely confident in her abilities and, having no knowledge of his Sufi training, vastly underestimated him. However, in order to inveigle information from her, he had to keep her occupied, and the only way to do that was to sacrifice the deeper reaches of his own mind-to give her access to his insecurities, sorrows, and regrets.

It was agony.

Burton felt his heart tighten as she infiltrated the grief he associated with the Berbera expedition-but he pushed through the pain and surprised her with a question: Who is Arthur Orton?

His unexpected probe was so forceful that the answer flared in her mind before she could stop it. Burton saw confirmation that the Tichborne creature and Orton the butcher were one and the same. The man had been chosen for her scheme because he possessed a peculiarly well-developed ability to project coercive mental energy, though he was oblivious to this talent. He'd been using it unknowingly in Wagga Wagga to attract customers to his shop, and they had come, despite fearing and loathing him due to his disgusting appetite for raw meat. Implanting the Choir Stones beneath his scalp had greatly enhanced the ability.

The woman's invasive presence assaulted Burton with greater intensity.

“Very clever, Gaspadin Burton! But I shall get far more from you than you can get from me! Already I am deep inside your memories. I see poor Lieutenant Stroyan there. You killed him. How careless of you!”

Still she misjudged him, and while she dug her claws into his painful memories, she also exposed much more of herself than she realised. He felt a sense of triumph blazing through the woman. She gloried in the fact that Britain's labourers were falling under the spell of her great deception, eagerly swallowing the story of a lost aristocrat who'd returned home to find himself snubbed by the society that produced him simply because he'd worked as a commoner. It was the perfect means to rouse their sleeping passions.

How valuable the Tichbornes had been! Her faux prodigal not only gave her the means to disseminate her evil influence among the working classes, but had also secured for her the South American diamond.

Burton, gathering information, struggled to resist her taunts. He remembered his friend's courage, and told her: Stroyan died as he would have wished-a brave man performing his duty.

“Nonsense! You killed him! The guilt eats away at you!”

Again, he tried to surprise her into revealing more: Tell me, madam, where did you find out about the Eyes of Naga?

He felt her reel at the question.

“Dorogoi!” she exclaimed. “You know too much!”

This time, however, an answer did not inadvertently enter her thoughts. Instead, Burton detected the presence of an impassable barrier, as if part of the woman was-was-

He couldn't define what he sensed.

“How I learned of the Eyes is of no consequence. All that matters is that I employ them to open the minds of the poor and the downtrodden. You see how I clear the blinkers from their eyes? ”

You speak as if you are performing some manner of social service, but that is not your intention, is it? Tell me the truth. What do you hope to achieve?

“Revolution.”

You want to overthrow the British Empire?

“I want to demolish it.”

Why?

“Because I am a seer, malchik moi. I have cast my mind into the future and I know the destiny of my beloved country. I have watched Mother Russia brought to her knees. I have watched her wither and die! ”

What the hell has this to do with Britain?

“Everything! See what I have seen!”

White-hot pain seared into Burton's head. He screamed his anguish as the woman's clairvoyant vision flooded into his brain-too much information, too fast, blasting down the channel that joined their minds, overwhelming his senses, telling him far more even than she'd intended, and driving him into a near stupor.

Paralysed in thought as well as body, he watched helplessly as her prophecy slowly unfolded in his mind's eye.

Blood.

Light.

A first taste of air.

A child is born in Russia, the son of peasants.

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.

He is blessed-or perhaps cursed-with clairvoyant powers.

His childhood is unhappy. Everyone knows there is something different-strange-about him. He is shunned. Only his siblings give him the attention he craves. He adores them. Then his sister drowns in a river, and his brother, saved from the same fate, is taken by pneumonia.

Rasputin knows that one day he will also die in water. The knowledge terrifies him-unhinges him. He becomes erratic and violent. His parents banish him to a monastery deep in the Ural Mountains, unaware that the establishment has been overrun by the banned Khlysty sect; flagellants, whose orgiastic rituals end in physical exhaustion, and, for Rasputin, in ecstatic mediumistic hallucinations.

Two years later, now a lanky, straggle-haired youth, he emerges from the mountains, intoxicated with a sense of his own importance and in no doubt that he will gain control of his country and make of it a great power. He has seen it. It has been prophesied. It is the future.

Before his twentieth birthday, he marries and comes to hate his wife, has children and is repelled by them, and indulges in affairs-many affairs-before walking out of his home, never to return. He travels back and forth across Russia, and, after three years, makes his way to Saint Petersburg.

Soon the whole city knows him. They call him the “Mad Monk.” He is the holy man who heals the sick, who sees the future, and who gets drunk and seduces married women and their daughters.

The tsaritsa comes to him, drawn by his reputation as a miracle worker. Her son is dying. Rasputin eases the boy's suffering. He gains the royal family's trust. By now he is an alcoholic and a sexual deviant, but he has the tsar's ear.

A new century dawns.

For years, Britain and Prussia-now United Germany-have been engaging in skirmishes in Central Africa. The tensions deepen, and Britain's Technologists begin an arms race with Germany's Eugenicists. The British government is nervous. It has come to regard eugenics as an insidious evil, a menace to civilisation, an antithesis to freedom and the rights of man.

The prime minister seeks to publicly downplay the growing threat from the foreign power. After all, the British Empire is massive. It counts North America, India, the Caribbean, Australia, and huge chunks of Africa among its many territories. What can a comparatively small nation like Germany do against such a global power?

Then Britain's reclusive monarch, King Albert, dies, aged ninety. Lord Palmerston's masterful manipulation of the constitution had given Albert the throne after the assassination of Queen Victoria, but has now left it with no obvious successor.

The republican movement gains popular support. The country is thrown into crisis. The government is distracted.

Germany invades France.

Germany invades Belgium.

Germany invades Denmark.

Germany invades Austria-Hungary.

Germany invades Serbia.

They all fall.

The Greater German Empire is born.

Britain declares war.

Emperor Herbert von Bismarck sends his chancellor, Friedrich Nietzsche, to Russia to win the backing of the tsar.

Secretly, Nietzsche also meets with Grigori Rasputin. It's the first time they've encountered each other in the flesh, but for many months they've been in mediumistic contact, for Nietzsche, like Rasputin, is profoundly clairvoyant. He is also a profligate, drug-addict, and sadomasochist.

They have a plan.

Rasputin will manipulate the tsar into allying Russia with Germany. When the British are defeated and their Empire is carved up, assassinations will be arranged. The Bismarck and Romanov dynasties will be destroyed. Together, Nietzsche and Rasputin will become the supreme rulers of the entire Western world. They convince themselves that they will be strict but benign.

It begins.

Tsar Nicholas has no resistance to Rasputin's mesmeric influence. Russia declares war against Britain.

For three appalling years, the conflict rages, spreading across the whole world, with the British Technologists’ steam machines on one side and the German Eugenicists’ adapted flora and fauna on the other.

An entire generation of men is slaughtered.

Europe is battered until it is little more than one gigantic, muddy, blood-soaked field.

Britain falters, but fights on, and when the British American States join the conflict, Germany is bruised and, for the first time, retreats.

Russian troops arrive in the nick of time. There is another great push forward. For two more years, the battles seethe back and forth over Europe's devastated territories, until finally, the biggest empire the world has ever seen topples and falls.

The war ends. The spoils are divided. The treachery follows.

Tsar Nicholas and his entire family are rounded up and shot in the head. Bismarck is garrotted. His family and supporters are executed.

Friedrich Nietzsche rises to power, receives life-prolongation treatments, and begins a near-century-long reign of terror that will earn him the sobriquet The Devil's Dictator.

Britain, from its deathbed, makes one final gesture of defiance. Two days before Rasputin is to be named president of Russia, three members of the palace staff surround him. They are British spies. They produce pistols and, at point-blank range, pull the triggers. All three guns jam. Rasputin has long feared assassination, and projects around himself a permanent mediumistic energy field that alters the structure of springs, robbing them of their power. No trigger mechanism will function anywhere near him.

He laughs in the faces of the would-be killers, and, with a careless gesture, causes their brains to boil in their skulls.

The following day, he is poisoned with cyanide. Realising that he's the subject of a second assassination attempt, he slows down his metabolism and begins to consciously secrete the poison out through his pores. Four men corner him and hack at him with an axe. They bludgeon him into submission, bind him hand and foot, and wrap him in a carpet. Rasputin is carried to the ice-bound Neva River and thrown in.

Despite his terrible wounds, it is-as he's known it would be all his life-the water that kills him.

He dies believing the British have had their revenge.

He is wrong.

The assassins are German.

The year is 1916, and Nietzsche, now the most powerful man in the world, considers himself well rid of the Mad Monk. Russia, without a visionary in control, will never pose a threat. It is left isolated, friendless, ungoverned, and poverty-stricken.

With millions of its sons killed in the war, the sprawling country's agricultural infrastructure collapses. Famine decimates the population. A harsh winter does the rest.

Russia's death is lonely, lingering, and catastrophic.

“There!”

The woman's voice hissed through Burton's skull.

He gulped in air and a tremor shook his body as consciousness returned.

“There!” she repeated. “That is why I do what I do! I have seen Mother Russia die, and I will not allow it! No! I shall change history! I shall ensure that Britain is in no condition to oppose Germany! I shall see to it that the World War is over in months rather than years! I shall cause your workers to bring this country to its knees! And when the terrible war comes-for there is no stopping it-Germany will wipe your weakened, filthy Empire from the Earth without need of Russia's aid. And while it is doing so, Rasputin will be making the homeland strong, and when the war is done and Germany is weakened, he will strike! There will be a new Empire-not Britain's, not Germany's, but Russia's! ”

You're insane.

“No. I am a prophet. I am the saviour of my country. I am the protector of Rasputin, the death of Britain, and the destroyer of Germany. I am Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Destiny is mine to manipulate!”

She pushed deeper into his mind. Burton opened his mouth to scream but could make no sound. It felt as if his cranium was filling with maggots.

“Dorogoi!” she exclaimed. “You killed Babbage! How gratifying! But what is this? Even more guilt? My, my, Gaspadin Burton, what a brilliant mind you have, but so filled with fears and insecurities-and so many regrets! I see now that killing you is not enough, for there is something you fear more, and that shall be your punishment: I will cause your own weaknesses to deprive you of your reason!”

Her mesmeric power intensified. It overwhelmed his crumbling resistance. His capacity for independent thought was summarily crushed and immobilised.

A fracture opened. Burton's subtle and corporeal bodies lost cohesion. His mind began to splinter. His viewpoint suddenly changed and he found himself hovering outside his own body. He watched the intelligence fade from his own eyes.

The odd disassociation gave him his one slender chance.

A lgernon Swinburne was in no fit state to conduct an interrogation. He'd been drinking with Charles Doyle, first in the Frog and Squirrel, then in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, and, in Herbert Spencer's opinion, he'd taken another step closer to becoming a chronic alcoholic. The philosopher hoped the pitiful state of Doyle would teach the young poet a lesson.

The Rake had not put up much resistance when they and Burton had shanghaied him. As a matter of fact, when informed that the seance had been postponed-which was a lie, of course-and invited for drinks at Montagu Place, he'd expressed relief, hooked his arms in theirs, and cried: “Lead on, Macduff!”

They had led on, after first indulging in a comedic charade of jacket and hat swapping which baffled the already befuddled Doyle and had Swinburne in fits of giggles.

Burton headed off toward Gallows Tree Lane, while Swinburne and Spencer ushered Doyle north along Gray's Inn Road, then west along the Euston and Marylebone Roads. Rioters were still on the rampage but they paid scant attention to the trio, who weaved through and around the wreckage and fights and fires, appearing to be nothing but an urchin, a vagabond, and a hopeless drunk.

They were twice stopped and questioned by the police. Fortunately, Swinburne was familiar with both the constables and, after he surreptitiously lifted his wig to reveal the carroty red hair beneath and whispered words of explanation, they allowed him and his companions to pass.

The next hurdle was rather more intimidating. Mrs. Iris Angell responded to their hammering on the front door by opening it and placing herself on the threshold, with hands on hips and a scowl on her face.

“If you think you're setting foot in this house while three sheets to the wind you must be even more intoxicated than you smell. How many times must I put up with it, Master Swinburne?”

Unable to reveal his mission while Doyle was beside him, Swinburne charmed, flattered, wheedled, demanded, apologised, and almost begged, all to no avail.

In the distance, Big Ben chimed ten. In his mind's eye, the poet pictured Richard Burton joining the seance, and he jumped up and down in frustration.

Then he remembered that the agent and his housekeeper had shared with him a password to use when on king's business.

“My hat, Mother Angell, it completely slipped my mind! Abdullah.”

“Now then, you'll not be using that word carelessly, I hope. Sir Richard will not stand for that, you know!”

“I promise you, dear lady, that I employ it fully cognisant of the consequences should your suspicions, which I insist are entirely unfounded, prove to be true. Abdullah, Mrs. A. Abdullah, Abdullah, and, once more, Abdullah! By George, I'll even throw in an extra one for a spot of blessed luck! Abdull-”

“Oh, stop your yammering and come in. But I'm warning you, gentlemen: any monkey business and I'll have Admiral Lord Nelson ejecting you from the premises with a metal boot to your posteriors!”

She allowed them to pass through.

“Master Swinburne, a message arrived by runner for Sir Richard. I left it on his mantelpiece.”

They climbed the stairs and entered the study.

“Buttock face! Strumpet breeders!”

POX JR5 fluttered across the room and landed on Herbert Spencer's shoulder.

“Gorgeous lover boy!” the parakeet cackled.

Doyle collapsed into an armchair.

Swinburne read the message mentioned by the housekeeper: Miss Nightingale communicated with me the moment you left Bedlam. Situation understood. Thank you, Sir Richard. I am in your debt. If you require assistance, my not inconsiderable resources are at your disposal. I can be contacted at Battersea Power Station.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

The poet raised his brows and muttered: “An old enemy may have just become a new friend.”

He took a decanter of brandy from Burton's bureau and joined Doyle. They set about emptying it.

Spencer abstained from drinking. He felt obliged to remain sober enough to record any useful information Swinburne might extract from Doyle. By contrast, Burton's assistant felt it incumbent upon himself to make their guest-who was too far gone to realise that he was actually their prisoner-feel that he was among friends; that he could talk freely. He therefore matched the Rake drink for drink.

The subsequent conversation, if it could qualify as such, was, to Spencer's ears, verging on gibberish.

Doyle, who didn't seem to care that he was drinking with a child-for that's what Swinburne, in his disguise, appeared to be-was regaling the “boy” with “facts” about fairies. His voice was thick and slurred and his eyes rolled around in a disconcerting manner.

“Sh-see, they-they fiss-fick-fixate on a person, like they've fig-fixated on me, then they play merry miz-mischief. It's peek-a-boo when ye least essexpect it; diz-distraction when ye least– urp! -need it; wizz-whisperings when ye least want ’em. Aye, aye, aye, they're not the joyful little sprites I dep-depict for the pish-picture books, ye know. Och no. I have to paint ’em that w-w-way, y'zee-shee-see, just so I can sell ma work.” He groaned, swigged from his glass, and muttered: “Damn and– urp! -blast ’em!”

“But where do they come from, Mr. Doyle? What do they want? Why are they tormenting you? What do they look like? Do they speak? Have they intelligence?”

“Och! One q-question at a time, laddie! They are eff-etheric beings, and they latched onto ma ash-ash-ass-astral body while I was shhh-sharing the eman-eman-emanations.”

Swinburne started to say something but Spencer jumped in with: “Sharin’ the emanations? What's that mean?”

Doyle belched, drained his glass, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and held the tumbler out for a refill. His hand trembled.

Swinburne took aim and poured the brandy. Half of it hit the tabletop.

“The Ray-Rakes want a better sh-sss-society but no one listens to us, do they? They do-don't take us sh-say-seriously. Ye've sheen our dec-declarations?”

“Posted on walls and lampposts.” Swinburne nodded, and quoted: “’We will not define ourselves by the ideals you enforce. We scorn the social attitudes that you perpetuate. We neither respect nor– hic! -conform with the views of our elders. We think and act against the tides of popular opinion. We sneer at your dogma. We laugh at your rules. We are anarchy. We are chaos. We are individuals. We are the Rakes.’”

“Codswallop!” Pox squawked from Spencer's shoulder.

“Aye, w-well, it was a waysh-waste of good ink and paper. Sh-so our new leader-”

His voice trailed off and his eyes lost focus. The glass slipped from his hand, spilling brandy into his lap. He slumped forward.

“Damn, blast, and botheration!” Swinburne shrilled. “The bally fool has passed out on us just as he was getting to the good bit!”

“Yus, and he's out for the count by the look of it, lad,” Spencer observed. “He won't be openin’ his eyes again until tomorrow, mark my words. What shall we do with him?”

“We'll carry the bounder upstairs and lay him out on the sofa in the spare bedroom. I'll sleep on the bed in there. You can kip here, if an armchair's not too uncomfortable for you.”

“I've slept in so many blinkin’ doorways that an armchair is the lap o’ bloomin’ luxury!”

“My sweetie pie,” Pox whispered.

Swinburne stood and swayed unsteadily. He stamped his foot.

“What the dickens is all this fairy nonsense about, Herbert?”

“It beats me.”

By midnight, Algernon Swinburne was staring at the spare bedroom's ceiling, wishing he could be rid of the sharp tang of brandy that burned at the back of his throat.

He couldn't sleep and the room seemed to be slowly revolving.

He felt strange-and it was something more than mere drunkenness.

He'd been feeling strange ever since Burton had mesmerised him.

Tonight, though, the strangeness felt… stranger.

He shifted restlessly.

Doyle, draped over the sofa, was breathing deeply and rhythmically, a sound not too far removed from that made by waves lapping at a pebble beach.

The house whispered as the day's heat dissipated, emitting soft creaks and knocks from the floorboards, a gentle tap at the window as its frame contracted, a low groan from the ceiling rafters.

“Bloody racket,” Swinburne murmured.

From afar came the paradiddle of rotors and the muffled blare of the police warning.

“And you can shut up, too!”

He wondered how much damage the riot had caused. There had been a great many acts of arson and vandalism, and beatings and murders, too.

“London,” he hissed. “The bastion of civilisation!”

He could hardly believe that the supposed return of a lost heir had developed into such mayhem.

He looked at the curtained window.

“What was that?”

Had he heard something?

It came again, a barely audible tap.

“Not a parakeet, surely! Not unless its beak is swathed in cotton wool! Good lord, what's the matter with me? I feel positively spooked!”

Tap tap tap.

“Go away!”

He experienced the horrible sensation that someone other than Doyle and himself was present in the room. It didn't frighten him-Swinburne was entirely unfamiliar with that emotion-but it certainly made him uneasy, and he knew he'd never sleep until he confronted it head-on.

“Who's there?” he called. “Are you standing behind the curtains? If so, I should warn you that I'm none too keen on cheap melodrama!”

Tap tap.

He sighed and threw the bed sheets back, sat up, and pushed his feet into the too-big Arabian slippers that he'd borrowed from Burton's room. He stood and lifted a dressing gown from the bedside chair, wrapped it around himself, and shuffled to the window. He yanked open the curtains.

Smoke and steam, illuminated by a streetlamp, were seething against the glass.

“Hasn't it cleared up yet?” the poet muttered. “What this city needs is a good blast of wind. I say! What's that?”

The fumes were thickening, forming a shape.

“A wraith? Here? What on earth is it up to?”

He pulled up the sash and leaned out of the window.

“What's the meaning of this? Bugger off, will you! I'm thoroughly fed up with phantoms! Go and haunt somebody else! I'm trying to sleep! Wait! Wait! What? My hat! Is that-is that you, Richard?”

The ghostly features forming just inches from his own were, undoubtedly, those of Sir Richard Francis Burton.

“No!” the poet cried. “You can't be dead, surely!”

His friend's faintly visible lips moved. There was no sound, but it seemed to Swinburne that the defensive walls Burton had implanted in his mind suddenly crumbled, and the noise of their destruction was like a whispered voice: Help me, Algy!

“Help you? Help you? What? I– My God!”

He stumbled backward away from the window and fell onto the bed.

The ghostly form of Burton had melted away.

He sat for a moment with his mouth hanging open, then sprang up, grabbed his clothes, and raced from the room. He thundered down the stairs and into the study.

“Herbert! Herbert! Wake up, man!”

“Eh?”

“Richard's in trouble! We have to find him!”

“Trouble? What trouble? How do you know?”

“I had a vision!”

The vagrant philosopher eyed the younger man. “Now then, lad, that brandy-”

“No, I'm suddenly sober as a judge, I swear! Get dressed! Move, man! We have to get going! I'll meet you in the backyard!

Spencer threw up his hands. “All right, all right!”

Swinburne somehow combined putting on his clothes with descending the stairs. In the main hallway, he snatched a leash from the hatstand, and continued on to the basement and out of the back door.

The poet crossed the yard and squatted down in front of Fidget's kennel.

“Wake up, old thing,” he urged, in a low voice. “I know you and I have our differences but there's work to be done. Your master needs us!”

There came the sound of a wheezy yawn followed by a rustling movement. The basset hound's head emerged. The dog stared mournfully at the poet.

“Your nose is required, Fidget. Here, let me get the lead onto you, there's a good dog.”

Swinburne clipped the leather strap onto the hound's collar then stood and said, “Come on, exercise time!”

Fidget dived at his ankle and nipped it.

“Ow! You rotter! Stop it! We don't have time for games!”

Spencer stepped out of the house, wearing his baggy coat and cap.

“Take this little monster!” Swinburne screeched.

“So where are we off to, lad?” the philosopher asked, grabbing Fidget's lead.

“Gallows Tree Lane.”

“It's past midnight the night of a riot! How do you expect us to get to bloomin’ Clerkenwell? Weren't it difficult enough gettin’ here from Fleet Street?”

“Follow me-and keep that mongrel away from my ankles!”

Swinburne walked to the back of the yard, opened the door to the garage, and passed through. “We'll take these,” he said, as Herbert stepped in behind him.

“Rotorchairs? I can't drive a blinkin’ rotorchair!”

“Yes you can. It's easy! Don't worry, I'll show you how. It's just a matter of coordination, which means if I can do it, anyone can.”

“An’ what about the dog?”

“Fidget will sit on your lap.”

“Oh, heck!”

Swinburne opened the main doors and they dragged the machines out into the mews. Despite his protestations, Spencer absorbed the poet's instructions without difficulty and was soon familiar with the principles of flying. It was only experience he lacked.

“Swans I'm happy with,” he grumbled. “They was born to it. But takin’ to the air in a lump o’ metal and wood? That's plain preposterous. How the blazes do these things fly?”

Swinburne nodded and grinned. “I felt the same the first time. It's the Formby coal, you see. It produces so much energy that even these ungainly contraptions can take to the air. I should warn you, though, Herbert, that there's a chance our enemy will cause them to cease working. We could plummet from the sky. All set, then?”

Spencer stared at his companion. “Was that a joke?”

“There's no time for larking about, man! Richard may be in dire peril!”

“Um. Yus, well, er-the basset hound won't jump off, will he?”

“No. Fidget has flown with Richard before. He positively delights in the experience.”

Swinburne went to the back of Spencer's machine and started the engine, then crossed to his own and did the same. He clambered into the leather armchair and buckled himself in. After fitting a pair of goggles over his eyes, he gripped the steering rods and pushed forward on the footplate.

Above his head, six wings unfolded as the flight shaft began to revolve. They snapped out horizontally, turned slowly, picked up speed, and vanished into a blurry circle. The engine coughed and roared and steam surged out from the exhaust funnel, flattening against the ground as the rotors blew it down and away.

The machine's runners scraped forward a couple of feet then lifted. Swinburne yanked back the middle lever and shot vertically into the air.

He rose until he was high above the smoke-swathed city. Above him, the stars twinkled. Below him, fires flickered.

The riot seemed to have confined itself to the centre of London, and had been concentrated, in particular, around Soho and the West End.

Far off to the east, the Cauldron-the terrible East End-showed no signs of disturbances.

“But, then, why should it?” Swinburne said to himself. “You'll not find a single representative of High Society for them to rail against in that part of town. By crikey, though, imagine if that sleeping dragon awoke!”

Spencer shot up past him, slowed his vehicle, and sank back down until he was hovering level with the poet.

Swinburne gave him a thumbs-up, and guided his craft toward the Clerkenwell district.

Their flight was short and uneventful, though they saw many police fliers skimming low over the rooftops.

When they reached Coram's Fields, they reduced altitude and steered their machines through the drifting tatters of smoke from street to street until, below, they spotted a constable on his beat.

Swinburne landed near the policeman and stopped his rotorchair's engine.

“I say! Constable!”

“I shouldn't park here, sir, if I-Hallo! Here comes another one!”

Spencer's vehicle angled down onto the road, hit it with a thump, and skidded to a halt with sparks showering from its runners.