She raised her watery eyes to his.

“This commission you’ve been given—is there any danger associated with it?”

“Not as far as I can see,” he answered. “It’s a complex matter and I don’t currently know how I should proceed with it, but one way or the other I’ll get the thing done, and will do so as quickly as possible.” He leaned forward and pecked her cheek. “We are nearly there, darling.”

She smiled, though the tears were still welling. “I have waited, Dick, and I shall continue to wait. I have faith in God that He will make things right.”

“Have faith in God, by all means, but have faith in me, too.”

“I do.”

With that, the Arundell sisters took their leave of him, carefully steered their wide skirts past the tables, and disappeared into the hotel. He watched them go and his heart sank. It dawned on him that everything he’d intended had skewed off-course and plunged into an impenetrable fog.

“O, that a man might know,” he muttered, “the end of this day’s business ere it come!”

It took until Monday to get the authorization for entry into Bedlam. Saturday and Sunday paralysed him with interminable emptiness. He found himself unable to work, research, or do anything else useful.

“Rest!” Mrs. Angell insisted. “Eat! Get some colour back into your cheeks. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re driving yourself too hard, that much is plain to see.”

He didn’t rest. He paced. One thousand, nine hundred, ten, and eight were etched into the front of his mind. He couldn’t stop fretting over them. He scribbled them down again and again.

One thousand. Nine hundred. Ten. Eight.

One thousand, nine hundred, and eighteen.

They connected Stroyan’s murder with The Assassination. They cut a swathe through time and unfathomable events to tie Queen Victoria’s death, the recognition of the Great Amnesia, the advent of Abdu El Yezdi, and the beginning of the New Renaissance to what he himself had witnessed on the Orpheus; him, Burton, who two people claimed—impossibly!—to have seen on that terrible day in 1840.

But how were the numbers connected—if they were at all—to the abductions? Was Burton looking at a jumble of disparate events or was there a pattern in there somewhere?

He didn’t know—and if there was one thing he despised, it was not knowing.

The governmental papers arrived in the week’s first post. Sir Richard Francis Burton was now, officially, a medical inspector named Gilbert Cribbins, with a specialism in institutions for the insane.

He disguised himself with a brown wig, false beard, and cosmetic paint to conceal his facial scar, and by means of two omnibuses and a hansom cab travelled southeastward through the city, crossing Waterloo Bridge into Southwark. The district was crowded with tanneries, and in the hot weather the reek was so intense that it was all he could do to keep his breakfast down. By the time he arrived at Bethlem Royal Hospital, his eyes were stinging and his nose felt clogged.

He knocked on the front gate—an imposing edifice of solid wood into which a smaller door was set—and jumped slightly when a letterbox-sized hatch slid open with a bang and a voice snapped, “What?”

“Inspection.” He held his papers up to the small slot. “Government Medical Board. Let me in.”

“Pass that to me.”

Burton folded the papers in half and pushed them through to the guard. He waited, heard a muted expletive, then bolts scraped and clunked and the door swung a little way open.

“Step in. Be quick about it.”

Burton passed into the grounds of the asylum. He faced the guard. “My good man, as one of His Majesty’s medical inspectors, I require a little more respect, if you please.”

The guard touched the peak of his cap. “Sorry, sir. Just bein’ thorough. The escape has us all on edge.”

“Escape?”

“That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?”

Burton lied. “Of course it is.”

“If you’ll follow me, there’s a horse and trap by the guardhouse. I’ll take you to the warden.”

The man guided Burton to a nearby outbuilding, gave him a hand up into a small carriage, then took the driver’s seat and set the vehicle moving. The hospital grounds were extensive and well tended, and as they passed along a winding gravel path toward the imposing asylum, Burton mused that, under normal circumstances, the wide lawns would probably be dotted with patients. Now, they were empty, the inmates confined to their cells.

The trap ground to a halt in front of the entrance steps and Burton alighted. Without a word, the guard put his switch to the horse and set off back the way he’d come.

The explorer checked that his beard was properly affixed, then climbed the steps, entered through the doors, and stopped a male attendant who was hurrying through the vestibule. The man stared at him in surprise and said, “I’m sorry, sir, you should have been turned away at the gate. We aren’t allowing visitors today.”

“I’m not a visitor. I’m a medical inspector. Cribbins. And you?”

“Nurse Bracegirdle. How can I help you, Mr. Cribbins?”

“By fetching the warden. At once, please.”

The attendant dithered. “Um. Um. Um. Er. Yes, of course. Would you, um, wait here?”

He raced away, and, as he went, whispered to himself a little too loudly, “Oh no! Today of all days!”

Burton was left alone. He looked around at the walls and saw stained paintwork, cracked plaster, and cobwebby corners. Rat droppings dotted the edges of the floor. The pervasive odour of unwashed bodies hung in the air.

Three minutes passed, then a door burst open and a pale-faced, anxious-looking man hurried in. He had closely cropped grey hair, a small clipped moustache, and very widely set brown eyes. He strode over and shook Burton’s hand. “I’m Doctor Henry Monroe, the director of this establishment.”

“Cribbins,” Burton responded.

A nervous tic suddenly distorted Monroe’s mouth and pulled his head down to the right. He grunted, “Ugh!” then said, “I’m surprised to see you here, sir. My report into Mr. Galton’s escape was posted less than four hours ago.”

“Galton, you say?” Burton exclaimed. “Francis Galton? The scientist?”

Monroe stammered, “Y-you’re not here about the—the—ugh!—escape?”

“I’m here to interview one of your patients, Laurence Oliphant.”

“Con—concerning his part in the affair?”

Burton held up a hand. “One moment. What? You’re telling me that Oliphant helped Galton to break out?”

Monroe licked his lips nervously. A nurse entered the foyer. As she passed, the doctor glanced at her and, in a low voice, said, “Mr.—Mr.—ugh!—Cribbins, we should talk in my—my office.”

“Very well.”

Monroe ushered Burton out of the lobby, along a corridor, and into a somewhat shabby and disorganised room. He strode to a desk and, as if taking refuge, flung himself into the chair behind it. Immediately, he gained a little composure, and indicating the seat opposite said, “Please, sit. I’ll explain to you the events of last night.”

Burton sat.

“Oliphant!” the doctor said with mock cheerfulness. “An interesting patient. Morbidly excitable with periods of gloom. He has moments of such lucidity that one might consider him as sane as you or—ugh!—I. Certainly, his mind is organised. He keeps a little notebook, the pages of which he fills with masses of figures—numbers—added up in batches, then the totals added again, as though he were focusing some account, as an auditor would say. Then, without any obvious trigger, he’s suddenly completely delusional. Rats, Mr. Cribbins.”

“Rats?” Burton repeated.

“Rats. Periodically, in the week and a half that he’s been here, Oliphant has been overcome by an obsessive desire to hunt and capture them. I have indulged him to see what would come of it. Unfortunately, the vermin infest every floor of this building, so he’s not been starved of opportunity. You must understand that in the treatment of a lunatic one must first seek to understand the nature of the—ugh!—deep problem—ugh!—in the mind. Whatever preoccupation dominates gives a clue to it, and more often than not, it is some—ugh!—trauma experienced in the past. Discover what, and one might perhaps help the patient to overcome the damage done to them.”