“My apologies,” he said, aloud. “Alive and kicking. I thought I'd find you here.”
“ And pray tell me, malchik moi, what led you to me? ”
“I was told, some months ago, that this hotel had been fully booked by a private party. It's a big place, so the party must have been very substantial indeed; and since the Venetia is slap bang in the middle of the Strand, and the Strand is at the centre of the disturbances-well, you can see why I concluded that the Rakes were here with their elusive new leader.”
“ Not all the Rakes, but a great many, yes. Come, stand in my presence. Bring your preposterous toy with you. ”
Burton moved down the stairs. The steps were almost entirely concealed by the thick mediumistic substance, which felt spongy and unstable beneath his boots. He gingerly placed one foot after the other, struggling to maintain his balance. The clockwork man followed.
Blavatsky poked and prodded at his mind.
“ My my! You are so much stronger, lyubimiy moi!”
“Beware of the brains you invade, bitch. Do you not think I learned just as much about you as you did of me the last time?”
“ Then you know that I lack your vulnerability. ”
“You have your own flaws.”
“ Is that so? Then it's to be a duel, is it, Gaspadin Burton? ”
“If you wish.”
“ If I wish? I relish the prospect! Idi ko mne, moi miliy! You will find me in the library on this floor. ”
At the bottom of the stairs, Burton turned to the left, the direction from which Blavatsky's power was emanating, and passed through open double doors into a hallway. The ectoplasm had made the passage almost tubular, and, as he and his mechanical attendant progressed along it, it constricted to such a degree that they had to proceed on their hands and knees.
The temperature plummeted. A weird silence pressed against his ears, as if he'd suddenly become deaf, and an odd sense of timelessness muddled his senses.
The tunnel tapered. It felt fleshy and damp and it glowed a sickly green. Burton squirmed forward on his stomach, cursing under his breath.
“Do you mean to crush me, woman?”
“ No, malchik moi. Let me help you. ”
The ectoplasm started to exude a clear slimy substance.
Burton felt his companion tangling against his legs as the tunnel behind them suddenly contracted. They were both pushed forward, sliding along the clammy pipe, picking up speed, helplessly out of control. Ahead, a sphincter- like opening dilated. Burton shot through it and splatted onto the floor in a high-ceilinged room. The brass man thudded onto his back.
They lay sprawled in a heap, dripping slime.
“Damnation,” Burton grumbled. “That wasn't very dignified.”
“Dabro pazhalavat, Gaspadin Burton. What is this device you have brought with you? ”
“He's my valet,” the king's agent responded, clambering to his feet and surveying the chamber.
A liquid chuckle gurgled in his head. “ It is good that you have him. The staff here has been very unreliable of late. I cannot remember when I last saw a concierge or even a maid! ”
The library was completely buried beneath huge ribs of glowing ectoplasm. They curved down from a big tangle of material in the centre of the ceiling, over the walls, across the floor, and melded together in its middle, where they rose up to form a slender three-foot-high plinth. At its top, delicate fingers of the material held a plum- sized black diamond-the Tichborne stone. The South American Eye of Naga.
It hummed faintly.
“ You realise, of course, that I have allowed your companion to approach merely to satisfy my curiosity. ”
“I was counting on it.”
“ Mechanisms of that sort do not normally function in my presence. ”
“You are far too confident in your abilities.”
“ I am? ”
The king's agent turned to his valet and snapped: “Get the diamond!”
The brass man bounded across to the plinth, reached for the stone, and stopped dead.
A peal of laughter sounded from the ceiling.
Burton looked up.
“Fool!” Madam Blavatsky crowed, her voice deep and resonant. “You think you can defy me with clockwork?”
She was enmeshed in a snarled knot of ectoplasmic tubes, naked; a middle-aged thick-bodied woman, suspended upside down above the plinth, with her arms stretched out horizontally. Her skull had cracked and broken open like an eggshell pushed apart from the inside, and bits of it hung loose. Her swollen brain bulged horribly out of the fissures. Thin ribbons of grey wrinkled tissue dangled down, entwining with her long brown hair and brushing against the diamond below.
Her fathomless black eyes seemed to suck at Burton's very soul, so dreadfully intense were they; they stabbed him like pins transfixing a captured moth.
“You are defeated, Gaspadin Burton. Soon the king will fall, the poor will flood out of your East End, and London will belong to the working classes. The disorder will spread from the capital like a disease. It will infect the entire country! Think of all those downtrodden, exploited, destitute workers in Britain's great manufacturing cities- Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds-where civilised man is lured from his peaceful labours in the countryside and turned back almost into an animal! What barbarous indifference they have suffered! How passionate shall be their revolt!”
Burton snorted in disdain. “Don't try to hide your agenda behind false philanthropy, madam! You care naught for Britain's workers. You regard them as a means to a nefarious end, and nothing more. You've made your intentions quite clear!”
“I do it to save Mother Russia.”
The king's agent took three long strides and reached for the Eye of Naga.
“You do it because you're a demented meddler and you have no control over yourself!” he barked.
“Keep back!”
Blue lightning crackled from Blavatsky's hands, hit Burton in the chest, and knocked him off his feet. He thumped down onto his back. For a second, it felt as if the flesh was boiling off his bones, but the torment passed in an instant, and, with an involuntary groan, he pushed himself up and faced his opponent again.
Her voice echoed in his skull: “ Pah! There is no satisfaction in wounding your body, but your mind, malchik moi- ah!-what great value you place upon it, and how fragile it is! ”
She drove a pitiless spike of shame into that part of his memory where regrets and disappointments dwelt, expecting to cripple him as she had in their previous encounter.
Burton reeled and groaned, but then steadied himself and turned his awareness inward. His Dervish meditation had fortified and strengthened his mind to such a degree that her assault did no damage, but rather gave him a route through which to respond. He thrust mortification along the mediumistic channel that linked them, stabbing it deeply into her preening arrogance.
She recoiled and cried out, shocked at the power of his riposte.
“ Oh bozhe! You bite back! ”
“Stay out of my head!”
“I will do as I please, rebenok. And conceit?” She laughed. “You think that is my weakness? Nyet! Eto vlast! It is strength!”
The king's agent shook his head. “No, madam. The love of one's own excellence serves only to obscure one's own mistakes.”
“I have made no mistakes!”
Burton looked into the woman's eyes and treated her to one of his characteristically savage smiles.
“Haven't you?”
