"Trounce has posted policemen in the vicinity of the Alsop cottage, so when Oxford appears and we strike, we must expect opposition."

Oliphant clenched his fists and hissed, "If Burton turns up, leave him to me. I insist upon it!"

The ape nodded. "One final thing. Isambard and I made a pact that, in return for the information I have given you tonight, I will be presented with a time suit if you manage to replicate the device. Failing that, if you can only repair Oxford's suit, then I will have access to it. Agreed?"

"Yes," came the answers.

The marquess bared his teeth, then stood and stretched his long shaggy arms.

"Then let us organise our resources," he rasped. "I already have Libertines keeping watch on the cottage. Many more will arrive tomorrow. If a single one of them spots Oxford, he will alert me immediately. We will also need as many Technologists and wolf-men as you can muster!"

Sir Richard Francis Burton, lying flat on the gallery above the banqueting table, had heard enough. It was time to get out of Darkening Towers while he still could.

Gingerly, he eased himself backward until he crossed the threshold of the door at the top of the stairs; then, crouching low and treading softly, he descended and entered the cloakroom.

He rubbed dust from the front of his jacket and turned toward the door.

"Hello, Dick," said a soft voice.

John Harming Speke stepped out from the shadows.

,

By heavens! What have they done to you!" gasped Burton, for though Swinburne had told him about Speke's surgery, seeing for himself the brass mechanism that had replaced the upper-left side of his former friend's head and face was quite another thing.

"Saved me," replied Speke, quietly.

"Saved you? No, John. They've manipulated you! From the very start, they've manipulated you, made you their puppet! When you sailed from Zanzibar after our expedition, you fell in with Laurence Oliphant aboard ship, didn't you? It wasn't by chance! He was there specifically to cast a spell over you! He's a master mesmerist, John! It was he who turned you against me, he who polarised our associates at the Royal Geographical Society, and he who caused you to turn a gun upon yourself. That wound was purposely inflicted! They wanted to replace half your damned brain!"

"Why?"

"I don't know-but one way or the other, I'm going to find out!"

"If you live."

"Will your betrayal run that deep? We were friends. We went through hell together. I nursed you through illnesses and injuries and you did the same for me. Are you really going to throw all that away? Think, man! Think about the way things were; the way things can be again. Help me to fight these people, John!"

Suddenly Speke's face, which thus far had been entirely emotionless, was filled with perplexity, sorrow, and yearning.

"Dick," he gasped. "I shouldn't-I can't-I didn't-didn't-"

He reached up to the key that projected from the machinery above his left ear and started to wind it.

"I have to-to-to decide," he stuttered.

"Don't do that!" hissed Burton, but Speke continued to twist the key which, when he removed his hand, began to turn, emitting a low ticking. Through the round glass panel above his eye, a mass of tiny cogs could be glimpsed. They started to revolve.

It appeared to Burton as if reality suddenly took on a sharper edge. The spinning wheels in Speke's head seemed to reel in divergent destinies until they touched right here, now, in this room, making of it a crossroads. One route led from India, Arabia, and Africa to Fernando Po, Brazil, and Damascus; the other stretched from the seeds Edward Oxford had accidentally planted in the past to an unknown future in which he, Burton, as the king's agent, would have to deal with the resultant crazy, unbalanced world.

He sensed his doppelganger standing ready; they would plunge down the same road together, as one.

He backed away toward the door.

Speke turned his head to follow the movement. His human right eye was unfocused, but the rings around the glass lens of the left eye moved slightly, some clockwise, some in the opposite direction.

The key stopped revolving.

Speke made a decision.

Burton made a decision.

The king's agent dived through the door and fled down the hallway.

Speke threw is head back and bellowed: "Oliphant! Burton is here!"

As Burton raced past the junction with the short corridor leading to the ballroom, the glass doors at the end opened and the albino stepped through. Burton kept running and was swallowed by the darkness. Behind him he heard the panther-man shout: "Brunel! Get to the ship and loose the wolves!"

Guided by nothing more than memory, stumbling over debris and banging into walls, Burton retraced his steps in the direction of the room with the open window.

From not far behind him came a mocking voice: "I can see in the dark, Sir Richard!"

Down one pitch black passageway and into another, Burton veered right, then left, then right again.

"I'm coming!" sang his pursuer.

Burton yanked his pistol from his jacket, stopped, twisted, raised it, and fired. The flash illuminated long walls with peeling paper and, at their far end, a white figure dressed in black, its pink eyes wide. The darkness snapped back and with it came a loud feline scream.

Got you, you bastard! thought Burton.

He ran on.

A light glimmered ahead.

He raised the pistol again.

"This way, Richard!" screeched a high-pitched voice.

Swinburne!

"Damnation! I told you to get back to Trounce!"

The little poet held up a guttering Lucifer and grinned.

"I half obeyed your order! Come on, in here!"

He quickly led Burton into a room and across to an open window. As they climbed out into the grounds, a shout reached them from inside the mansion: "You'll pay your debts, Burton!"

"Run as fast as you can!" snapped the famous explorer to his friend. "They're releasing loups-garous!"

"I've had enough of them!" piped Swinburne and sped away.

The king's agent followed, surprised by the smaller man's turn of speed.

A howl rose from the far side of Darkening Towers. It was joined by a second, a third, a fourth, and more.

"Faster, Algy," Burton panted.

They tore across the uneven ground, past the knotted trees and pools of squirming mist, toward the distant wall.

Burton glanced back and saw the albino standing by the window, his right arm cradled in his left. A pack of wolf-men were flooding around the right-hand corner of the building, running on all fours.

The two men raced on, their thigh muscles burning, their breath coming in short, rapid gasps.

A few moments later they reached the wall and Burton thrust the poet up onto it.

"Trounce, start the blasted engines!" screamed Swinburne.

Burton turned. The loups-garous were almost upon him. He fired two shots and one went down. The others swerved and leaped upon it, their jaws crunching into its bones, ripping the flesh. They'd obviously been half starved to increase their ferocity, and the slight pause gave Burton the opportunity to haul himself onto the wall, lower Swinburne down to the other side, and follow. They ran across the road that bordered Beresford's estate and into a clump of trees. Engines were chugging.