'Mr. David Alsop, now deceased. Married Jemma Bucklestone. Daughter: Jane Alsop. Attacked aged eighteen in 1838. Married Benton Pipkiss in 1843. Their daughter, Alicia Pipkiss, was born three years later. Like Connie Fairweather, she's in the age group that Spring Heeled Jack attacks but has not been assaulted.'
'Yet,' observed Burton.
'Yet,' agreed Trounce. 'Those are our two next possible targets. The seventh member of the Brigade we can count out. Mr. Arnold Lovitt married June Dibble and they had a daughter, Sarah. It wasn't reported at the time but Sarah admitted to me that she was sexually molested in 1839 and in describing her assailant, she gave a pretty good portrayal of our stilt-walker. A couple of years later, she married Donald Harkness and they had three children, including a girl, Lucy Harkness. Three weeks ago, Lucy fell into a coma from which she hasn't emerged. The family's doctor has labelled it an `hysterical fit caused by severe mental trauma.' A trauma which, I'll wager, was caused by you-know-who.'
Burton grunted and said, 'So in every case where a member of the Battersea Brigade had a daughter, that daughter was attacked by Spring Heeled Jack. And of the granddaughters, all have been attacked recently, it seems, accept Connie Fairweather and Alicia Pipkiss.'
'Yes. Which begs the question: what the hell is he playing at?'
Burton stood and paced up and down. 'You've posted constables at the girls' homes?'
'They are being watched every minute of the day,' confirmed Trounce. 'The Fairweather family won't be around for much longer, though-they're preparing to emigrate to Australia. That, at least, might put the girl out of harm's way.'
'There seem to be two main elements to this mystery,' Burton declared. 'The man who assassinated Queen Victoria, and the female descendants of one particular group of regulars who drank at the pub where he worked. Perhaps we should count the late Marquess of Waterford as a third.'
'There's another,' said Trounce.
'There is? What?'
'You.'
That night, he dreamed again of Isabel.
She was bent low over a blazing fire, and its orange light made her face diabolical.
In her hand, she held a bound notebook; one of his journals; a detailed chapter of his extraordinary life.
With her features contorted by a hellish fury, she threw the volume into the flames, and Burton felt a chunk of his existence melting away.
She picked up another volume, fed it to the fire, and hissed in satisfaction as another part of him was turned to ashes.
One by one, she burned his journals.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was consumed, reduced to an empty shell of deeds done, the man himself removed.
He cried out desperately: 'Stop!'
Isabel raised her eyes, glared at him, and lifted a thick, heavy tome.
'No!' he shouted. 'Please!' For this, he knew, was his magnum opus.
'Everything you are,' she said, with an air of finality, 'must be rewritten.'
She dropped the book into the flames.
Burton jerked awake, a sheen of sweat upon his brow.
'The deuce take it!' he cursed, pushing back the blankets and wrapping himself in his jubbah. He stood, parted the curtains-it was still dark outside-then leaned over his water basin and splashed his face.
He left his bedroom and walked down the stairs to the study, opened the door, and entered.
The coal in the hearth was glowing softly. Above, on the mantelpiece, a candle glimmered.
It was six o'clock in the morning, too early for Mrs. Angell to have lit candles, besides which, she wouldn't have done it. She'd have stoked the fire, opened the curtains, and returned to the basement to await his awakening and request for coffee.
He closed the door behind him and stood listening. Then he calmly crossed to the fireplace and took a rapier down from a bracket on the chimney breast.
He shrugged off the jubbah, threw it on a chair, and faced the room, standing in his pyjamas, holding the sword point downward.
'Show yourself,' he said, softly.
A figure stepped out from the shadows to the left, from between a bookcase and the curtained windows.
The man was an albino, his skin and shoulder-length hair startlingly white, his eyes pink, with vertical pupils- the eyes of a cat. Of average height and build, he was dressed entirely in black, and held a top hat in his left hand and a silver-topped cane in his right. His pointed fingernails were also black.
By far the most remarkable thing about him, though, was his face, the jaws of which seemed to protrude unnaturally, giving the impression of a carnivorous muzzle.
Undoubtedly, this was the man who'd abducted John Speke and mesmerised Sister Raghavendra.
'I've been waiting, Sir Richard.' The voice was a seductive purr, oily and repellent.
'For how long?'
'An hour or so. Don't worry; I kept myself occupied. I've been reading your notes.'
'Is privacy a notion you find difficult to comprehend?'
'What possible advantage would I gain from respecting your privacy?'
'Perhaps the reputation of a gentleman?' said Burton, cuttingly.
The albino made a noise that might have been a laugh, though it sounded like a growl.
Burton raised the point of his rapier. 'Is Lieutenant Speke alive?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Why did you take him?'
'Things might go a lot better for you if you abandon such questions. You've been asking too many of late, though your investigation has amounted to little more than an extended crawl from one public house to another.'
'People gather in public houses. They're a natural source of information. You've been watching me?'
'Of course. From the moment you broke my mesmeric hold over the nurse.'
'I saw your eyes in hers.'
'And I saw you through them.'
'I've heard such things are possible, though I've never seen it done before, not even in India. And, incidentally, you can stop staring at me like that. I'm a mean mesmerist myself and I won't succumb to your magnetic influence.'
The intruder shrugged and stepped into the middle of the room. His eyes burned redly in the candlelight. He placed his top hat onto a desk.
'You don't recognise me,' he said. 'I'm not surprised. I am somewhat altered.'
'So tell me who you are and what you want before you get the hell out of my house,' answered the king's agent.
In one lightning-swift movement, the albino drew a sword from his cane, touched its tip to Burton's rapier, laid the sheath on a desk, and said: 'Laurence Oliphant, most definitely not at your service.'
Burton stepped back in surprise and his shoulder blades bumped the mantelpiece.
'Good Lord! What have you done to yourself?' he exclaimed.
Oliphant, who'd stepped forward to keep his blade against Burton's, applied a slight pressure to it.
'The True Libertines may rail against Technology,' he said, 'but the Rakes view the work of the Eugenicists as an opportunity. What better way to transcend human limitations than by quite literally becoming something a little more than human?'
'You've been hanging around with the wrong people,' observed Burton.
Oliphant ignored the gibe and tapped his sword against the rapier, once, twice, before purring: 'And to answer your earlier question, what I want is for you to stop poking your nose into matters that don't concern you. I am quite serious, Sir Richard. I will force the issue if I must. Do you care to test me?'
Burton held his blade firmly and responded: 'I'm counted one of the finest swordsmen in Europe,
