“I don’t want it,” Robert said. “I haven’t earned it yet.”

“But you’ve given me something that I can tell Sir James. Does this Mister Im Thurn have anything to say about the state of mind of a man who sees monsters?”

“Oh, yes. That’s half the fun of a lost world. The Indians say that every inaccessible place in their jungle is inhabited by monstrous animals. They say there are huge white jaguars and eagles on the plain of Roraima, high above the Amazon. And down by the rivers there are monkey men and water beasts. It’s like Challenger’s world in the serial I’m collecting. That has dinosaurs.”

“Have you not yet reached the episode with the nest of monsters? Or the sea serpent that pursues the rescue boat?”

“No,” Robert said. “But don’t spoil it for me.”

THERE’S ONE OF THEM.”

She was just making the turn into Paddington Street. Lights burned in some of the upper windows, but the pavements were empty. It was now almost half an hour after nine o’clock. She looked back and saw a group of three men. They were crossing Baker Street toward her.

“Oi,” one said. “Miss. You. Come here. I want to talk to you.”

As they passed under a streetlamp, their foreheads and faces lighted up like bone and their eyes were plunged into deep shadow. They wore cheap suits, and cheap boots. The one who’d spoken had a lock of hair in his buttonhole, worn like a trophy.

“Not tonight,” she said.

She turned away and put on speed.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” she heard. “I’ll bloody teach yer.”

She could hear their boots on the pavement. She glanced back and saw the three of them striding after her. The foremost of them, the one with the lock of hair on his lapel, was balding and had a wide, dense mustache over a weak chin. His two friends were giggling behind, and one was checking behind them to see if anyone was watching.

She looked ahead and saw that the short length of Paddington Street was empty of people.

She broke into a run, to reach the next corner before they could reach her. If she could get around the corner they’d be seen, and she’d be safe.

But the next street was empty as well. There was a dray pulling along at its far end, but it was heading the wrong way. Right behind her and even closer now, she could hear the delighted snorting of her pursuers at their own outrageousness as they flouted all that was holy. For she was only one of those suffrage hoydens, come from the place where they were known to gather, alone and fair game for any sport.

She saw the etched glass and dim yellow lights of a public house, and in that she saw sanctuary. Without any hesitation she slammed open the doors and fell inside.

She looked around. She was in a small snug with aged woodwork and gleaming brass, and room for about a dozen men. She saw old men, bearded men, men squat as toby jugs, some with caps, some with pipes, all with stolid, phlegmatic expressions as if their lives had run out early and they wished nothing more than to sit out the rest of their days in silence, right here, with little to say.

“Hey, Captain,” one of them called out. “Woman on the bridge.”

And another one added, “She’s out on her own.”

Any hope of sanctuary was dashed by the appearance of the landlord, all brawn and shirtsleeves and red-faced perspiration. His eyes were hard and his face was set.

“Come on, you,” he called from behind the bar. “Out.”

“I’m being followed,” she said.

“I don’t care what you are,” he said, speaking over her and shouting her down. “No women in the snug.”

“Nor gentlemen either,” she retorted, whereupon with a “Why you—” he threw back the counter flap with such violence that she felt a sudden and genuine fear for her safety, even more immediate than the threat she’d felt on the street. She dashed through into the adjoining public bar rather than face him down.

It was as if the world had tipped and turned over in the space of a minute, and she’d fallen into London’s shocking through-the-mirror counterpart. From the public bar she came out into the street and almost collided with a night-patrolling constable.

She stopped. Relief flooded through her like a laudanum rush.

The policeman looked at her and then at the public house behind her and said, “What’s this?”

“Ask the roughs who decided to chase me,” she said.

He didn’t look around. “Where?”

She was gathering her breath now. “Back on the street,” she said. “They were waiting around outside the Portman Rooms. I was at a meeting there. I made the mistake of coming out alone.”

Now he looked around. But pointedly. Suddenly she didn’t like the way that this was going. He was a big man, as all of London’s policemen tended to be. And he had a country accent, as so many of them seemed to have. There were very few sharp-witted cockneys walking the streets for the Metropolitan Police, but there were a great number of these slow-moving, blue-caped and helmeted oxen.

He said, “Where are they, then?”

A glance, and then she said, “Gone.”

“Gone, are they?”

“They chased me from Baker Street.”

“If they ever existed.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no man safe from your kind,” he said. “Is there?”

She was shocked.

She said, “Is this how you respond to every woman who asks for your help?”

“There’s women and there’s women,” he said, glancing down at her coat. “I know where you’ve come from. And I know what you are. So move on. Go home to your husband. If a woman like you can get one.” He leaned forward slightly. “Whore.”

He said this last word low, and between his teeth, so that even if anyone had been standing close, they’d be likely to miss it.

As fast as the relief had run through her, she was now flushed through with ice.

“What did you call me?”

“I called you nothing,” the policeman said, straightening up again. “You must be hearing things.”

She glanced down and realized what he’d been looking at. Her suffragette pin with its green, white, and violet colors. Some wore amethyst and pearls. Hers were paste.

She walked, unsteadily, the rest of the way to the Underground station, knowing that the constable was following and watching her from a distance, but taking little comfort from the fact. His presence might deter anyone from approaching her with ill intent; but were they to do so, he’d probably turn away.

Her train carriage on the return journey smelled of sweat and leather, like cooking bones. She caught herself shaking, and made herself stop. The short walk home was a new trial.

Safe in her rooms, she did not burst into tears as she was thinking she might, but was violently sick into the basin from under the washstand. Her landlady was partially deaf and unlikely to hear. Evangeline sank to the floor by her bed, hugging the basin, teary and miserable with the vomit searing her sinuses, and sat there without any sense of the passage of time. It might have been for minutes, it might have been an hour.

Eventually she rose, and cleaned everything up, and washed her face in cold water.

With her self-control regained, Evangeline looked to her future. Fear would turn to anger. Perhaps not tonight, but in time. She would take care not to be caught so again. She would continue to wear the badge of her belief, though not, out of prudence, at her place of work; if its significance were to be understood, her dismissal would probably follow.

She undressed and put on her nightgown, and then quickly climbed into her cold bed and shivered under the layers of heavy blankets until her own body heat warmed the space she lay in and made it into a nest. She told herself she was safe. She’d felt threatened, but she had not been hurt. She tried to compel herself to appreciate the difference.