Samuel Beeton was next to be introduced. Burton already knew a little about this dark-haired and good-looking man; he was a publisher and had made a fortune from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His wife, Isabella—heavily pregnant—was one of his authors, very beautiful, with hair thick, black, and long, and dark, soulful eyes. When Burton took her hand, he felt an immediate affinity with her, and remembered that Isabel—who’d met her at a social function five years ago, before she’d become Mrs. Beeton—had reported a similar sensation: I was presented to a fine lady by the name of Isabella Mayson who I took to my heart in an instant, feeling, after our initial exchange of pleasantries, as if I’d known her my entire life.

Sadhvi Raghavendra came forward and met Swinburne and Levi, then Richard Monckton Milnes greeted his friends.

After half an hour of polite chatter with the ladies, the men repaired to the smoking room. For a brief moment, as the gents departed, Isabel was distracted when her uncle’s gout caused him to give a cry of distress, and Sadhvi Raghavendra took the opportunity to lean close to Burton. “What have you been up to, Richard?” she said softly. “I see fresh scars.”

“It’s a long story,” he replied.

“We must talk later. I’m concerned about Isabel.”

His eyes held hers for a moment. “Is there a problem, Sadhvi?”

“Only that she’s running herself into the ground.”

He gave an acknowledging touch to her arm, then joined the men as they passed through the door, walked along the hallway, and entered the smoking room, where the usual ritual of drinks and cigars commenced.

“What is it like to be back in England’s green and pleasant land, Sir Richard?” Sam Beeton asked.

“Stranger every day.”

“Was Africa as savage as the stories have it?”

“Oh, absolutely so.”

Monckton Milnes put in, “Richard already knew what he was letting himself in for when he went after the Nile, Mr. Beeton. He’d taken a spear through the face in a pitched battle at Berbera not four years previously.”

“Ah! Now then, Burton,” Bird interrupted, “tell me how you feel when you have killed a man.”

Burton looked at him slyly and drawled, “Quite jolly, Doctor. How do you?”

Bird threw his head back and gave a great bellow of laughter. “Touché!” he hollered. “Touché!”

“Incidentally,” Monckton Milnes said, “Steinhaueser arrives tomorrow. I daresay he’ll want to give you the once-over, Richard.”

“Are you referring to Doctor John Steinhaueser?” Bird asked.

“Yes—you know him?” Monckton Milnes responded.

“By repute. A very skilled practitioner, I believe.” Bird regarded Burton. “Your personal physician?”

“And friend,” Burton replied. “He has twice put me back together; first, after the spear wound—” he touched the scar on his cheek, “and, more recently, after I was injured when a steam sphere collided with my rotorchair.” He inwardly winced, remembering that Isabel didn’t know about his most recent brush with death.

Loose tongue! Dolt!

“Hah!” Uncle Renfric shouted, as—leaning heavily on his walking stick—he cautiously lowered himself into a chair by the fireplace and rested his gouty foot upon a leather pouffe. “Just as I’ve always said! These damnable machines are a threat to life and limb. Hah, I say! Humbug and hah! Why must everything change? Old England was in perfectly good shape before that hound Disraeli inflicted the Department of Guided Science upon us. Perfectly good! Hah!”

Swinburne, who was loitering near the drinks cabinet, screeched, “My hat, sir! Quite obviously you have never resided in London.”

Uncle Renfric raised a monocle to his eye and squinted through it at the little poet. “I’ve not even visited it, young lady. Den of sin. And I fail to see how my geographical position has any bearing on the matter. Nor do I understand why you are present in a gentlemen’s smoking parlour.”

“I may be young, but I’m no lady,” Swinburne replied. “And if I was, I certainly wouldn’t be.”

“Prattle! Prattle! What are you talking about?”

Swinburne hopped and gesticulated. “Bazalgette, of course!”

“There!” Uncle Renfric announced. “Again! Prattle! Nothing but noise! Take note of the Good Book, little missy, for it sayeth: Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. Hah! Yes! Hah!”

“Bazalgette!” Swinburne squealed. “His sewers!”

“A fit of feminine hysteria, is it? Must be the tobacco smoke. I told you, this is no place for a girl. Begone, at once!”

“Gah!” Swinburne cried out. “Don’t you see? Without the DOGS we’d not have him, and without him we’d not have the new sewer system. Old England may have been perfectly good, sir, but its capital stinks something rotten!”

“Ho hah! Sense out of her, at last! Of course it stinks, missy! Of fire and brimstone, no doubt! Fire and brimstone, I say!” The old man turned his monocle, surveying the room until he fixed upon Eliphas Levi. “You, sir! You have the look of a priest about you, and I see the crucifix upon your chest.”

“Oui, monsieur. I have train as a Catholic priest,” Levi said.

“Hah! Good show! Come here. I’ll have your opinion on this ungodly business of so-called scientific advancement. You are cursed with being a Frenchie, I discern, but I’ll not hold that against you. Come! Come!” The old man lifted his walking stick and prodded it in Swinburne’s direction. “And you, young lady, out! Out! Wrong room, wrong gender! Lord have mercy! In trousers, too! Whatever is the world coming to?”

The poet stood with mouth agape, then spun on his heel and demanded a large brandy from one of the clockwork footmen.

While Levi attended to the unenviable task of keeping Uncle Renfric occupied—and cousins Rudolph and Jack took to the billiard table with Smythe Piggott—Burton, Swinburne, Monckton Milnes, Doctor Bird, Sam Beeton, and Henry Arundell seated themselves upon three leather sofas positioned around a low coffee table.

“Speaking of Bazalgette—” Beeton started.

“I fervently wish I hadn’t been,” Swinburne interrupted.

“—have you heard about the adventures of the Norwood builders?”

Burton recalled reading something about it in the newspapers. “In relation to the southern part of the sewer system, I believe?”

“Yes. Bazalgette is appropriating the subterranean River Effra, as he did with the Tyburn, turning it into an outlet tunnel from Herne Hill all the way northward to Vauxhall, but his workers are in revolt due to the ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Henry Arundell asked.

Beeton nodded. “The river has its origins about a mile south of the construction site and runs past the Norwood Cemetery catacombs. The workers are convinced the upper reaches of the waterway are haunted. The poor blighters are so terrified, old Bazalgette can hardly get a day’s work out of ’em!”

Burton grunted dismissively. “The average Englishman possesses the very same superstitious fears as an African tribesman, yet we claim ourselves a superior race.”

“What a contrast,” Monckton Milnes mused. “The irrational at one end of the river and the rational at the other.”

“Rational? How so?” Doctor Bird asked.

“The river joins the Thames at Vauxhall, very close to the DOGS’ headquarters. It flows from the funereal to the functional.”

Bird shuddered. “Thank goodness for that. Were it reversed, we should have to rename it the Styx. Brrr! I don’t like the idea of an underground river.”

Nor did Burton. He had a strong aversion to enclosed spaces.

He struggled to clarify a lurking thought. Something had just occurred to him but, like the Effra, it bubbled far beneath the surface. Having failed to drag it into his conscious mind, he was left with the irritating sense that he knew something important but couldn’t identify what.