beneath its hammering hooves.
Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom! Ba-da-da-doom!
It was a colossal horse, a mega-dray, and on its back, looking as tiny as a child's doll, sat Algernon Swinburne, a Pre-Raphaelite knight, his fiery red hair streaming behind his head, a tremendously long, thin lance gripped in his right hand.
He was blowing enthusiastic blasts on a police whistle, and, perched on his shoulder, a little blue and yellow parakeet was gaily screeching insults at the top of its voice.
As the enormous steed came charging out of the fog, the base of a pantechnicon, to which it was harnessed, followed. The wagon presented the incredulous spectators with an even more fantastic vision, for mounted vertically upon it was a huge spinning wheel. It was similar to a waterwheel in construction, though built from lightweight materials, and it was revolving at a tremendous speed on well-oiled bearings, driven by the twenty greyhounds that raced flat out on its inner surface. Miss Isabella Mayson stood beside the contraption and encouraged the runners with claps and whoops and morsels of food.
From the wheel, a series of simple but extremely well-designed gears and crankshafts drove a mammoth pair of bellows up and down, and snaking away from the nozzle, a tube ran up to the top of a tower at the rear of the wagon and into the back of a cannon-shaped barrel. This was mounted on a swivel and was being aimed at wraiths by Constable Bhatti.
The whole contrivance was a masterpiece of engineering, for it depended upon neither springs nor complex machinery, and was so simple in design that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had been able to build it in a matter of hours.
As the mega-dray pulled the wagon onto the wide thoroughfare, Bhatti directed the jets of air hither and thither, and, though his range was extremely limited, the wraiths caught by the strong blasts were ripped out of existence.
A great cheer went up from constables as they scattered out of the horse's path.
Detective Inspector Trounce and Commander Krishnamurthy looked on in amazement as Algernon Swinburne lowered his lance and aimed its tip at the back of a Rake's head.
Charles Altamont Doyle pressed his dead fingers into Detective Inspector Honesty's neck.
“Squeeze!” he said. “Squeeze the life out of you and into me!”
A fairy pranced at the periphery of his consciousness.
“Recurrence comes!” it sang.
“No! Life comes!” Doyle whispered. “Start again. Get it right. Mend my mistakes.”
He felt something touch the back of his neck. From the perspective of his astral body, which drifted through the fog nearby, he could see that it was a long lance held by a small man on a big horse.
His head burst into flames.
“Now!” said the fairy.
The fire ate into his face and scalp, clawed hungrily into the bone and tissue beneath.
He rolled off the police officer and collapsed onto the ground, thrashing wildly as the flames gouged deeper and deeper into his dead flesh.
The lance touched him again, on the chest, and his entire body ignited.
He felt himself being consumed, found that he could struggle no more, lay still, and allowed the conflagration to suck him into oblivion.
Nearby, swirling through the fog, he watched and felt himself burn.
“No!” he thought. “What about all the things I still have to do?”
A powerful gust of air tore into him and ripped him apart.
Charles Altamont Doyle dispersed into the atmosphere and ceased to exist.
Trounce and Krishnamurthy saw the Rake erupt into flames and roll off Honesty. Their friend crawled weakly away from the blazing corpse.
They hurried forward and dragged him to safety.
Trounce looked up and noticed that four cylinders were slung over the mega-dray's haunches. From them, tubes ran up into the hilt of the lance.
“Inflammable gas,” he suggested.
“I would venture so,” Krishnamurthy replied. “Some sort of flame-throwing weapon. Detective Inspector, I don't know how to apologise. They got into my head. I couldn't control myself.”
“Accepted, lad. Say no more about it. Detective Inspector Honesty is injured-let's get him onto the back of that wagon.”
They helped their colleague to his feet and guided him toward the pantechnicon.
“Lily of the valley,” Honesty wheezed. “The flower of the poets.”
A Rake approached them, waving his rapier. His eyes had retreated far into their sockets and his skin was horribly loose, as if the flesh were sloughing off the bones beneath.
He attempted to address them, but his tongue and lips were too slack and only a horrible moan emerged.
“I'll get this,” Trounce said.
“Allow me,” came Swinburne's voice from above.
The lance touched the decaying, sword-wielding corpse, which combusted, fell to its knees, and toppled onto its face, burning fiercely.
“What ho, fellows!” Burton's assistant shouted enthusiastically.
“Hallo, Swinburne!” said Trounce. “Honesty is injured!”
“Oafish knuckle-dragger!” Pox squawked.
“Hoist the old fellow onto the wagon. Miss Mayson will keep him comfortable until we can get him to safety.”
Trounce and Krishnamurthy lifted their comrade and carried him to the pantechnicon.
“His throat,” said Trounce to Isabella Mayson, as they laid him on the flatbed.
“I think his fingers are broken, too,” Krishnamurthy noted.
The young woman nodded. “Don't worry, I'll make sure he's comfortable.”
Up on the horse, Swinburne whispered something to Pox and watched as the brightly plumaged bird launched itself from his shoulder and disappeared into the fog. He looked down at his friends and called: “In the absence of litter-crabs, what say you we clean up this street ourselves, hey, chaps?”
The two police officers brandished their truncheons.
“Ready when you are,” Trounce grunted.
H igh above the fog, glinting silver in the moonlight, an ornithopter flapped, circling the Strand at a distance of two miles. A long, irregular ribbon of white steam curved away behind it, marking its course through the sky.
It was controlled by the clockwork man of Trafalgar Square, and, in the saddle at his back, sat Sir Richard Francis Burton.
The flying machine soared northward over the Thames, banked to the left as the Cauldron slipped past beneath it, and headed east until it was over King's Cross.
A parakeet suddenly fluttered out of the cloud below and caught up with the machine. It landed on Burton's shoulder.
“Hello, Pox.”
“Lice-infested chump!” the bird whistled. Then: “Message from Algernon Fuddlewit Swinburne. The game has commenced. Message ends.”
Burton addressed his companion: “It's time. Take us down.”
His valet yanked at a lever, sending the ornithopter skewing through the air as it veered sharply to the south. He switched off the engine and the trail of steam ended abruptly. The machine's wings straightened, and it began to glide down toward the blanket of cloud.
“Here we go,” Burton muttered. He placed a hand on the brass man's shoulder. “Now we shake things up. This time, the police are the decoy and you are the main event!”
They sank through the chilly night air.
“Whatever might happen to me,” Burton said, “you must complete this mission. However, I have to tell you,
