The urchin returned.

He handed Burton a periodical of cheap paper, about twenty pages in thickness, which bore the title The Baker Street Detective.

“What’s this?” the explorer asked.

“A story paper, sir. From the newsagent’s.”

“A penny blood?”

“Aye, an’ me very favourite one, too. I’m fair hooked on it! Fair hooked! Most o’ the boys are.”

Burton examined the lurid cover illustration, which showed a muscular and mustachioed man being chased through a cavern by demonic creatures. He read: The Kingdom Beneath the Basement! Macallister Fogg at the Centre of the World!

“I don’t understand.”

“Macallister Fogg is a consulting detective, sir. He works out of Baker Street, not five minutes’ walk from here, though which house I don’t know.”

“Consulting detective?”

“Aye. Private, like. Unofficial. Not one of ’em what works at Scotland Yard.”

“But . . . this?” Burton held up the penny dreadful.

The newsboy giggled. “Well, he ain’t real, is he? Ha ha! He’s just in story books!”

Burton clacked his teeth together in irritation. “The man I want said his name was Macallister Fogg.”

“I think he was havin’ ye on, sir, though there’s ’em what hold that Fogg is real. If that be true and ye find ’im, can I ask ye to introduce me? I’ll offer to be his assistant, so I will. Perhaps he’ll take me on one of his grand adventures!”

The explorer thanked the boy, entered number 14, settled in his study, and read the periodical. It was ill-written nonsense. Plainly, whoever his assailant was, he’d called himself Fogg just to throw Burton off the scent.

He shook his head in bemusement. Laurence Oliphant, the aurora borealis, Macallister Fogg, and Hagar Burton’s warning; could he really be certain he’d recovered from the hallucinatory fevers?

He went to one of his desks, picked up his notepad, and opened it. Yes, Oliphant’s diagrams were real enough—those strange number-filled squares. They, at least, were something he could investigate, and of all the people he knew, Richard Monckton Milnes was the most likely to understand what they signified.

He sat, opened a bottle of ink, took up a pen, and wrote six letters. He then descended the stairs, stepped outside, and whistled at the newsboy, who came running over.

“Somethin’ else, sir?”

“Thruppence for you,” Burton said, “if you’ll post these letters for me.”

“Ah. A thruppenny bit, is it? Well now, old Stride has his sweet shop right next to the post office, so he does, and I’ll not pass up the opportunity to pay him a visit. Hand over the letters, sir, an’ I’ll have ’em posted in a jiffy.”

The money and missives exchanged hands and the boy dashed off.

Burton gave a satisfied clap of his hands, went back up to his study, and eased himself into his saddlebag armchair. He lit a cheroot.

The members of the Cannibal Club would soon convene.

He spent the rest of the day reading. By ten o’clock, his bed beckoned. He looked at his study windows and uttered a small exclamation. It was still light. Moving over to them, he pulled up a sash, leaned out, and looked up.

For the third night in a row, a coruscating radiance filled the sky.

Thomas Bendyshe raised his glass and declared, “A toast to Sir Richard Francis Burton, the man who cracked the Nile!”

“Hear hear!” Henry Murray enthused.

Burton flicked his fingers dismissively. “I’m not knighted yet.”

“Pah!” Bendyshe objected. “An insignificant detail. Your good health, sir!”

“Was it worth the hardship, Burton old boy?” Charles Bradlaugh asked. “Was your expedition a mystical and enlightening experience? I mean to say, many regard the Nile as the source of life itself, don’t they?”

Bendyshe added, “Personally, I regard cognac as the source, but that doesn’t mean I want to visit France. Why did you do it?”

“There was no spiritual revelation involved,” Burton responded. “Nor did I expect there to be. My motives were purely materialistic. I calculated that the discovery would make Disraeli and his cronies sit up and take notice of me—thus I would stand a better chance of securing a government post in one of the Arabian countries.”

The members of the Cannibal Club—Burton, Bendyshe, Murray, Bradlaugh, and Richard Monckton Milnes, Doctor James Hunt, and Sir Edward Brabrooke—had gathered in the function rooms above Bartolini’s Italian restaurant in Leicester Square. The chamber was furnished with leather armchairs and sofas, heavy oak tables and cabinets.

It was Sunday evening.

Yesterday morning, Burton’s luggage had been delivered from the Orpheus to Montagu Place. As it was piled in the hallway, Mrs. Angell had thrown up her arms and exclaimed, “There’s ten times as much as you took! I hope you don’t have tigers in those trunks!”

“There are no tigers in Africa, Mrs. Angell.”

“I’m not surprised. You’ve brought them all back here!”

It had taken him until midday to move all the cases upstairs and begin sorting through them. He’d then spent the afternoon relaxing, smoking cigars, catching up with his correspondence, reading voraciously, and dozing frequently. At eight in the evening, he met Isabel, Blanche, and Sadhvi Raghavendra at Jaquet’s on Drury Lane, where they’d dined on the restaurant’s famous à-la-mode beef.

What they’d agreed on Thursday night was agreed again: Hagar Burton’s prediction must be rejected out of hand. It was patently absurd. Even Isabel, who was extremely superstitious, accepted that it would be the height of foolishness to allow such tosh to influence their wedding plans.

She and her sister were currently staying at the St. James Hotel, off Piccadilly. In a few days, they’d be returning to the family home—New Wardour Castle in Wiltshire—taking Sadhvi with them as their guest, there to engage in two months of frenzied organising and planning. November’s engagement party was to be a full-blown ball such as only the country’s richest Catholic family could afford.

The wedding itself was scheduled for January. Cardinal Wiseman, a friend of the Arundells’, had promised that if Burton signed the Catholic pledge, a dispensation would be obtained from Rome to allow the union. As far as Burton was concerned, if ink on paper could pacify the Papists—and, more importantly, Isabel’s parents—then he was happy to provide it. His atheism would be in no way sullied.

They’d left Jaquet’s at eleven. The sky was clear and dark. No aurora borealis—the mysterious lights had vanished.

“Thank goodness!” Isabel had exclaimed. “Perhaps the city will quiet down now. How could anyone possibly survive a London that’s active twenty-four hours a day?”

Today, Sunday, had been another of rest and recuperation. By the time Burton joined his fellow Cannibals, he was feeling considerably stronger and his skin had lost its jaundiced hue.

Now—having learned nothing from Thursday night’s lesson—he was rapidly getting drunk again, only dimly aware that he was using alcohol to numb the transition from Africa to London.

“I say, old horse!” Thomas Bendyshe shouted. “This engagement party of yours—are we all invited?”

Burton refilled his brandy glass, removed the cheroot from his mouth, blew smoke into the vessel, and drank from it.

“If a horde of atheists caroused around New Wardour Castle, Isabel’s mother would probably suffer an embolism,” he said. “So, no, Tom, I’m afraid that, with the exception of Monckton Milnes, who knows how to conduct himself in polite society, the Cannibal Club is most definitely not invited.”

“But surely her God will protect her from us?” Bendyshe protested.

“I’d rather not put it to the test.”

The explorer and his friends had been quaffing, smoking, and joking for three hours. Interspersed between the ribaldry, they’d exchanged news, enjoyed Burton’s yarns about the more explicit aspects of his time in Africa, and had supplemented his reading of the newspapers with their own opinions of the various developments in the world—the resolution of the Austro-Sardinian War; the commencement of the construction of the Suez Canal; the American gold rush; and, most of all, the forthcoming formation of the Central German Confederation and its official Alliance with Britain.