The explorer moved on, ruminating that the boy and man were probably in cahoots, the one distracting while the other dipped. He thought about the African natives who’d employed similar tactics to steal from his safari. What was considered crime in London was practically a sport in Africa. On that continent, hunger and want justified any action, and successful pilfering was more likely to be celebrated than punished. Here, the rich tried very hard to pretend that poverty didn’t exist. To acknowledge it would be to admit that the greatest Empire on Earth was deeply faulted. Better to turn a blind eye, and make illegal the only solutions the poor could find to their dilemma.

He arrived at the Royal Venetia Hotel, located just a few doors along from the Theatre Royal, entered, and allowed a concierge to brush the dust from his clothes. Then he climbed the ornate staircase to the fifth floor and passed along a corridor to Suite Five.

Burton eyed the door for a moment before reluctantly raising his cane and rapping on it. Almost immediately, the portal swung open to reveal a clockwork man.

“I’m here to see the minister.”

The mechanism bowed, moved aside, and rang, “He is expecting you, Sir Richard. This way, please. I am Grumbles, his new valet.”

Burton followed the contraption through a parlour and into a large library. The room was all books; they lined every wall from floor to ceiling, teetered in tall stacks on the deep red carpet, and were strewn haphazardly over the various tables, chairs, and sideboards. In the midst of them, by the window, a giant of a man, wrapped in a threadbare red dressing gown, occupied an enormous wing-backed armchair of scuffed and cracked leather. His hair was brown and untidy, and from it a deep scar emerged, running jaggedly down the broad forehead to bisect the left eyebrow. His eyes, which followed Burton as he entered, were intensely black. The nose, obviously once broken, had reset crookedly, and the mouth—the upper lip cleft by another scar—was permanently twisted into a superior sneer. It was a face every bit as brutal in appearance as Burton’s own, but the heavy jaw was buried beneath bulging jowls, and the neck was lost in rolls of fat which undulated down into a vast belly sagging over tree-trunk-sized legs. The man was so corpulent that, despite the two walking sticks propped against one of the tables, it was impossible to conceive of him in motion.

Grumbles moved to a corner and stood still, quietly ticking.

“So you’ve finally deigned to visit me,” the fat man said. His eyes flicked toward a chair, indicating that Burton should occupy it. “It’s been four years.”

“I’ve been busy and you’d lost your mind,” Burton responded, moving a pile of books aside before sitting.

“I was seriously injured, and my mind was being—shall we say —rearranged.”

“As was your stomach, evidently. How could you possibly have put on so much weight in such a short period? I can hardly see you beneath all that blubber.”

“Movement has been difficult for me, Dick. I never properly recovered from my paralysis, and you weren’t there to help when I needed it.”

“I was wounded, too, if you remember. I’d received a spear through my face. My palate was split. I couldn’t speak properly, and you weren’t speaking at all.”

“I was listening. Do you want a drink, or are you too hung-over after getting sozzled with Monckton Milnes? I have some rather fine Alton Ale.”

“Yes, I’m hung-over; and yes, I’ll have a glass. Have you been spying on me, Edward?”

The minister waggled his fingers at Grumbles and pointed toward a sideboard.

“It’s my job to know what people of significance are up to, though in your case, I could have guessed that it was getting drunk.”

“I’ve become significant?”

“In so far as you haggled with the king.”

“Word travels fast.”

“In my direction, yes, that’s true.”

The clockwork man moved a small table to Burton’s side and placed a glass of ale upon it. He crossed to his master and served him the same before returning to his place in the corner.

The minister raised his glass. “Enjoy it while you can. This will be a rare commodity before too long. Bazalgette will soon be digging through the East End, and the Alton Brewery’s London warehouse is right in his path. The disruption will require it to be emptied of its stock for a month or two.”

“I know it’s one of your favourite subjects, but I didn’t come here to talk about Alton Ale.”

“Of course not. Tell me, then—what bargain did you make with His Majesty?”

Burton took a swig and said, “I agreed to undertake the investigation on the condition that if I find a satisfactory explanation for the ghost’s silence—or can at least locate those who’ve gone missing—I’d be rewarded with the consulship of Damascus. My terms were accepted.”

The fat man grunted. “So you’ve come to visit your brother to find out what his role is in all of this?”

“I knew you’d become obsessed with spiritualism and I knew you were working for the government, but I had no conception that you were so intimately involved until a few hours ago.”

Edward Burton nodded. His eyes remained fixed on those of his older sibling. “Whatever you conceive, my part in it is even greater than that. For fifteen years, every government policy was passed through Countess Sabina for review by Abdu El Yezdi. It exhausted her. She retired. Now it all comes to me. I am the central exchange. The government is filled with specialists, but my specialism is omniscience. There are occasions when it would be fair to claim that I am the British government.”

“As conceited as ever. But is the omniscience yours, Edward, or does it belong to the spook you claim contact with? Or perhaps both are sheer fantasy.”

“The spirit and I are—or were—indivisible!” The minister tapped the side of his own head. “You don’t understand. When I first heard El Yezdi, four years ago, it was as if he immediately became an integral part of my mind. I reported his absence to Disraeli last Thursday not just because, after communicating his final message, he fell silent, but because he was quite suddenly and violently torn out of me.”

Burton put his glass aside and raised his hands. “Stop. Go back to the beginning. Tell me about when he first spoke to you.”

“It was after my accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident, Edward. You were hunting elephants in Ceylon. The Singhalese consider them holy. It’s no wonder they set upon you.”

The minister shrugged. “A misjudgment, I’ll admit. The villagers attacked me with tools, fists, and feet. My gun bearer was strangled to death. I was knocked unconscious. When I regained my wits, I was in a house in Jaffna, being nursed by two young men—Ravindra Johar and Mahakram Singh. They told me they’d stumbled upon the scene quite by chance and had dragged me away from my assailants.”

He lifted his ale and took a gulp, before continuing, “Over the course of four months, they had doctors attend me. My skull had been cracked and my brain injured. I was almost completely paralysed. I couldn’t speak.” Edward lifted a hand and traced the scar on his forehead with a forefinger. “Then I heard him one night, inside my head, as clear as a bell. He said: This time, you were saved. You’ll recover. Pay the boys to take you to England. Have them deliver you to Penfold Sanatorium. After a few days, they’ll disappear. Let them. Don’t look for them.”

“‘This time’?”

Edward nodded, his chins wobbling. “Yes. I have no idea what he meant by that.”

“And his voice—what was it like?”

“It was my voice. When Abdu El Yezdi speaks, it isn’t like someone addressing you. It’s more like having your own thoughts guided.”

“Similar to mesmerism?”

“Yes, very much so. But I wasn’t under the influence of animal magnetism. There was no one else present.”