“Good. Good. Go about your duties. I’ll accompany Mr. Cribbins.”

She gave another bob and stood to one side to let them pass. The party moved a little farther on until it came to a cell door marked with the number 466.

Monroe addressed the two attendants. “Stay here. Come at once if I call for you.” To Burton, he said, “I’ll allow you as much time as you require providing he doesn’t become—ugh!—agitated. If he does, I’ll have to terminate the interview immediately.”

“I understand.”

Monroe held out his hand and one of the attendants placed his keys into it. After selecting the appropriate one, the warden put his mouth to the slot in the door and said, “Mr. Oliphant. I am Doctor Monroe. I have with me a visitor named Mr. Cribbins. We would like to come in and speak with you. Have you any objection?”

Burton heard Oliphant’s familiar voice answer, “None at all, sir. Please enter freely—and of your own free will.”

Monroe looked at Burton, raised an eyebrow, and whispered, “You note the inappropriate and oddly worded formality? No matter how normal a patient’s behaviour may appear, such incongruous language is always a sure sign of—ugh!—defective thinking.”

He turned the key in the lock and pulled the door open, revealing Laurence Oliphant, sitting on a bunk, smiling broadly, his fringe of hair and bushy beard dishevelled, his arms bound by a strait waistcoat.

“Come in, Doctor! Come in, Mr. Cribbins! I am delighted to have guests! Forgive me if I do not shake your hands. I am somewhat inconvenienced, as you’ll bear witness.”

They entered the cell and Monroe closed the door behind them. “I’m pleased to see that you’ve calmed down, Mr. Oliphant. Continue in this manner and the jacket will be removed, I assure you.”

“Excellent! I’m eager to get back to work.” Oliphant looked toward the window, and Burton, following his gaze, saw that what from the corner of his eye he’d presumed to be a hanging gown wasn’t a gown at all, but a great mass of dead rats, woven together by their tails—as garlic is platted by its stalks—and strung from the window bars. Unable to stop himself, he cried out, “Good God!”

Oliphant cackled. “He he he! Flesh, you see, Mr. Cribbins. Dead flesh, all ready to be re-formed and given new life. It doesn’t matter that it’s rat flesh. Any will do. Flesh is flesh. Merely a vehicle.”

“A vehicle for what?” Burton asked.

“For my master!” Oliphant suddenly checked himself. His eyes slid slyly from side to side then fixed on Burton, and he hissed, “He has the royal charter now. Drum, drum, drum! Come, come! Drum, drum, drum! They will answer the call, and then nothing will stop him. Out of Africa! Out of Africa! He’ll repair this broken world of ours, and I shall be rewarded with an entire history of my very own! Ha! What shall I make of you, Mr. Cribbins, Doctor Monroe?—Paupers? Kings? Criminals? Or perhaps madmen? Ha ha ha!”

“Calm yourself, please,” Monroe said. “You don’t want to get—ugh!—overexcited again, do you?”

His patient’s giggling stopped abruptly. Oliphant shook his head, grinned, and shrugged. “No need. Now I can wait. Now I can wait. Drum, drum, drum! Drum, drum, drum!”

The doctor turned to Burton. “Mr. Cribbins, have you any particular questions you’d like to ask the patient?”

“Just one,” Burton replied. “Mr. Oliphant, the numbers one thousand, nine hundred, ten, and eight—what do they signify?”

Oliphant gave a cry of surprise, then threw back his head and let loose a peal of laughter that rapidly transformed into a scream of fury.

“What do you know?” he yelled. “Are you a spy? Yes! Yes! A spy! I’ll kill you! I’ll bloody kill you, you bastard spy!”

He sprang from the bed and lunged at Burton, his mouth wide and teeth exposed. The explorer dodged, was knocked back against the wall, and felt the maniac’s jaws clench down on his collar.

“Attendants! Attendants!” Monroe bellowed.

Burton struggled but Oliphant seemed ten times stronger than a sane man.

“Get him away from me! He’s trying to bite my throat!”

The attendants crashed in and dragged Oliphant off.

“The end!” he screamed. “The numbers add up to the end of the British Empire! Ha ha ha! The end! The end! The end!”

NOTICE

Norwood Road, Herne Hill, and Denmark Hill will be closed to through traffic until further notice. This is to facilitate the construction of Mr. Bazalgette’s sewer tunnel along the course of the subterranean River Effra.

The Department of Guided Science apologises for any inconvenience caused.

The Department of Guided Science 

Making a Healthier, Cleaner, Better London.

The interview with Oliphant had been short but unsettling, and throughout the following night Burton was repeatedly shocked awake by nightmares in which he saw the lunatic’s face looming out of the darkness, feline eyes blazing and muzzle-like jaws extended, displaying elongated, blood-dripping canines.

By seven in the morning he’d given up on further sleep, so washed, dressed, and went downstairs. He stepped out into the street and located the newspaper boy a little way down Montagu Place. Passing him a few coins, he said, “I need the address of a man named Charles Darwin. He’s a member of the Royal Geographical Society, so you’ll find it in the register there.”

“Straight away, sir,” the lad said, and immediately scampered off. Burton watched him approach another urchin at the corner of Seymour Place and whisper in his ear. The second youngster raced away and the Irish boy turned, grinned, and gave Burton the thumbs-up.

The explorer returned to his study. Oliphant lingered in his thoughts and made him sullen and uncommunicative during breakfast—Mrs. Angell had witnessed such moods before and served him silently and efficiently before making a rapid withdrawal—and afterward he spent the morning with a foil in his hand, practising his fencing technique against an imaginary opponent.

He forced his mind into silence, finally driving Lord Elgin’s secretary out of it, and focused instead on the physical exertion, gauging carefully his own strength and weakness, and discovering, to his satisfaction, that no remnant of fever remained; he was close to his normal level of health and fitness.

At half-past eleven, he was flannelling the sweat from his face and neck when the doorbell jangled. He heard his housekeeper answer it then thump up the stairs.

“Yes?” he called in response to her knock.

She looked in. “There’s an unwashed guttersnipe on our doorstep. He says he has a message for you.”

“Send him up, please.”

“Up the stairs?”

“I don’t expect him to scale the outer wall, Mrs. Angell.”

“But his boots are filthy.”

Burton gave his housekeeper what she referred to as the look. She heaved a sigh and disappeared from sight. Moments later, a quiet tapping sounded on the door.

“Come in.”

The Whisperer entered, and his eyes widened as he saw the various weapons on the wall and the foil in Burton’s hand.

“You have it?” the explorer asked.

“That I do, sir. Mr. Darwin lives at Down House, on the Luxted Road, quarter of a mile south of Downe Village in Kent.”

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Abraham, sir. Abraham Stoker. Most folks call me Bram.”

“Have you a place to call home?”

“I calls the streets me home, sir.”

“Where do you sleep?”

“Wherever I can.”

“Hmm! Well, here’s another sixpence for you, Master Bram.”

Burton took a coin from a pot on one of his workbenches and flipped it to the boy, who caught it smartly and gave a salute.

“Thank you, sir. Much obliged! Is there anything else I can be a-doin’ for ye?”

“Not for the moment, thank you.”