“Yes. And who accidentally changed the past. He was trying to put it right, and I killed him.”
“He was Spring Heeled Jack. He was insane.”
“My motives were selfish. He revealed to me where my life was going. I broke his neck to prevent any chance that he might succeed in his mission. I didn't want to be the man that his history recorded.”
They trudged on through the sodden rubbish and animal waste. Unusually, this end of Saint Martin's Lane hadn't yet been visited by a litter-crab.
“If he'd lived, Richard,” Swinburne said, “the Technologists and Rakes would have used him to manipulate time for their own ends. We would have lost control of our destinies.”
“Does not Destiny, by its very nature, deny us control?” Burton countered.
Swinburne smiled. “Does it? Then if that's the case, responsibility for Mr. Penniforth's death-and the other misfortunes you mentioned-must rest with Destiny, not with you.”
“Which would make me its tool. Bismillah! That's just what I need!”
Burton stopped and indicated a shopfront. “Here's Pride-Manushi, the velocipede place.”
They examined the doors and windows of the establishment. No lights showed. Everything was secure. They squinted through the gaps in the metal shutter. There was no movement, nothing amiss.
“Brundleweed's next,” Burton murmured.
“Gad! I don't blame you for wishing you were back on the Dark Continent!” Swinburne declared, pulling at his overcoat collar. “At least it's warm there. A thousand curses on this rain!”
They crossed the road again. As they mounted the pavement, a beggar stepped out of a shadowy doorway. He was ill kempt and wore disreputable clothes. A profusion of greying hair framed his face, and it was quite apparent that he was well acquainted with neither a comb nor a bar of soap.
“I lost me job, gents,” he wheezed, raising his flat cap in greeting and revealing a bald scalp. “An’ it serves me bloomin’ well right, too. I ask you, why the heck did I choose to be a bleedin’ philosopher when me mind's nearly always muddled? Can you spare thruppence?”
Swinburne fished a coin out of his pocket and flipped it to the vagrant. “Here you are, old chap. You were a philosopher?”
“Much obliged. Aye, I was, lad. An’ here's a bit of advice in return for your coin: life is all about the survival of the fittest, an’ the wise man must remember that, while he's a descendant of the past, he's also a parent of the bloomin’ future. Anyways-” he bit the thruppence and slipped it into his pocket “-Spencer's the name, an’ I'm right pleased to have made your acquaintance. Evenin’, gents!”
He raised his cap again and retreated to his doorstep, where the rain couldn't reach him.
Burton and Swinburne continued their patrol.
“What an extraordinary fellow!” Swinburne reflected. “Here's Brundleweed's. It looks quiet.”
It did, indeed, look quiet. The grille was down, the window display was intact, and the lights were off.
“I wonder how Trounce and Bhatti are getting on,” Burton said. He tried the door. It didn't budge. “It looks all right. Let's foot it to Scrannington Bank.”
The cold wind battered them and the deluge lanced into their faces. They pulled the brims of their hats down low and the collars of their coats up high, but it was a lost cause.
Burton was shivering uncontrollably. Tomorrow, he knew, he was going to be in a bad way.
The bank loomed ahead. It was a big, dirty, foreboding edifice. The water had cut grey rivulets into its sooty coat.
Swinburne hopped up its steps to check the doors. They were closed and barred. He came back down. All the windows were shuttered.
“This isn't very inspiring at all. I think we're on a wild goose chase,” he complained. “What time is it?”
“Nigh on midnight, I should say.”
“Look around you, Richard. Everyone has disappeared. We haven't even seen an automated animal. Man, woman, and beast are tucked up in their warm, dry beds! So are criminals!”
“You're probably right,” Burton replied grumpily, “but we should press on until we reunite with Trounce.”
“Fine! Fine! If you say so,” Swinburne replied, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “But please remember that-should another occasion like this arise in the future-being wet to the bone and frozen to the marrow is definitely not the sort of pain I enjoy. The sting of a hard cane, yes! The sting of a hard rain, no! What's that?” He pointed across the road to a fenced area beside an intersection. Beyond the low barricade, there was pitch darkness.
“It's Mildew Street,” Burton answered. “Let's take a look. Those are the works where they're shoring up the underground river.”
They crossed Saint Martin's again and leaned over the waist-high wooden barrier. They couldn't see a thing.
Burton pulled a clockwork hand-lantern from his pocket, shook it open, and gave it a twist. The sides of the device spilled light into the rain. He held it up over the fence, illuminating a muddy pit. The saturated ground angled down to the mouth of a well, from which the top of a ladder projected. Streams of water gurgled over the slope and disappeared into the wide shaft.
“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to a patch of mud at the top of the slope, just beneath a collapsed segment of fencing on the Mildew Street side.
“You mean the footprints?” Swinburne shrugged. “So what?”
“Don't be a blessed fool!” Burton growled. “How long are muddy footprints going to last in this weather?”
“My hat! I see what you mean!”
“They're recent. Some of them haven't even filled with water yet.”
The two men moved around the barrier to the broken section. Burton squatted and examined the footprints closely.
“Remind you of anything?” he asked.
“It looks like someone's been pressing flat irons into the mud,” the poet observed. “My goodness, those are deep prints. Whoever made them must have been very heavy. Ovals, not shoe-shaped. I say! The clockwork man!”
“Not the one in Trafalgar Square,” Burton corrected. “It had clean feet and these prints were made while it's been standing beside the column. There were other clockwork men here-three of them-and less than fifteen minutes ago, I should think. Look who was with them!”
Burton moved his lantern. The circle of light swept across the mud and settled on a line of big, widely spaced, very deep oblong prints. Who- or whatever had made them obviously possessed three legs.
Swinburne recognised them at once. “Brunel!” he cried. “Isambard Kingdom Brunel! The Steam Man!”
“Yes. See how deep his prints are by the well? He obviously waited there while the brass men went down. I wonder what they were up to?”
Burton stepped over the fence's fallen planks and turned to his assistant. “I'm going to have a look. You run back to that Spencer fellow. Give him another thruppence and ask him if he saw anything unusual around here, then come back and wait for Trounce and Constable Bhatti. Go! We mustn't waste any more time!”
Swinburne raced off.
Burton crouched, lowering his centre of gravity to improve his balance on the slippery surface. He began to inch downward, bracing himself with his cane, holding the lantern high. The rain hissed around him. He wondered whether he was doing the right thing. Brunel and his clockwork companions were getting away-but from what? What had they been up to?
He'd covered half the short distance to the well when his feet shot out from under him. He slapped down onto his back and went slithering uncontrollably toward the mouth of the shaft, slewing sideways until his hip thudded against the top of the ladder which, thankfully, was bolted to the side of the well. He felt his shoulders swerving over the sodden clay and was propelled headfirst into the opening. Without thinking, he let go of his cane and threw out a hand. It closed over a rung and he gripped hard as his body turned in the air, swung down, and slammed against the ladder. The force of the impact knocked the wind out of him and loosened his hold. He fell before catching another rung. Pain lanced through his shoulder. His cane clacked onto a solid surface somewhere below.
He scrambled for a foothold, secured himself, and hung on, shaking. An involuntary groan issued from his
