“Would you like to suspect- inspect-the vehicles before you depart?”

“No time. We have a murder investigation under way. I have to go.”

“Before you do, may I peek- speak-with you privately for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

Burton followed Brunel and stood with him a short distance away. They conversed for a few minutes, then the Steam Man clanked off and rejoined the group of Technologists.

Burton returned.

“What was all that about?” Swinburne asked.

“He was telling me a few things about the babbage device that John Speke has fitted to his head. Let's go.”

“Should I join you, Boss?” Spencer asked.

“No, Herbert. I'd like you to stay and check the inventory against the supplies loaded.”

“Rightio.”

Leaving the clockwork man, Burton and Swinburne walked out through the doors, crossed the courtyard, and joined Detective Inspectors Trounce and Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, Constable Bhatti, Isabella Mayson, Mrs. Angell and Fidget, and various other passengers at the foot of the rotorship's boarding ramp. Crewmembers D'Aubigny, Bingham, and Butler were also there, having been granted a few hours' shore leave.

The pea-souper swirled around them all, dusting their clothes and skin with pollutants, clogging their nostrils with soot.

“Are we all ready?” Burton asked his friends. “Then let us go and bid civilisation farewell, except for you, Mother Angell. I fully expect you to maintain its standards while we're gone.”

The group walked out through the station gates and passed alongside the outer wall beside a patch of wasteland that stretched down to nearby railway lines-a location which held bad memories for the king's agent and his assistant, for two years ago they'd been pursued across it by wolf-men and had narrowly avoided being hit by a locomotive.

They followed a path down to Kirtling Street, which took them the short distance to Battersea Park Road. Here they waved down conveyances. Monckton Milnes's guests gradually disappeared, as they each caught cabs home. Mrs. Angell and Fidget climbed into a hansom, bound for 14 Montagu Place; Isabella Mayson took another, for Orange Street; and a growler stopped for Detective Inspector Honesty, Commander Krishnamurthy, and Constable Bhatti, ready to take them each in turn to their respective homes.

A fourth vehicle-a steam-horse-drawn growler-was hailed by Burton for himself, Swinburne, and Trounce.

“Scotland Yard, driver!” the latter ordered.

“Not to Otto Steinruck's house?” Burton asked, as he climbed into the carriage and settled himself on the seat.

“It's out in Ilford,” came the reply. “Too far by cab, so I thought we'd each borrow one of the Yard's rotorchairs.”

The growler swung out onto Nine Elms Lane and chugged along next to the Thames. Its passengers took out their handkerchiefs and held them over their noses, the stench from the river so intense it made their eyes water.

Burton looked out of the window. Somewhere along this road there was a courtyard in which a young girl named Sarah Lovitt had been assaulted by Spring Heeled Jack back in 1839-just one of many attacks Edward Oxford had committed while searching for his ancestor. That was twenty-four years ago, and in that short time Oxford's influence had totally transformed the British Empire. That one man could effect such a change so quickly seemed utterly incredible to Burton but it wasn't without precedent; after all, history was replete with individuals who'd done the same-the Caesars, Genghis Khans, and Napoleons. Oxford had caused the death of Queen Victoria. After that, his influence had been subtler; he'd simply made unguarded comments about the future to Henry Beresford. The marquess had passed that information on to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose remarkable creative talents had been set alight by the hints and suggestions, leading to the creation of the political and cultural juggernaut that was the Technologist caste.

While Brunel's Engineers and Eugenicists succumbed to their inventive zeal, Oxford's presence in the form of Spring Heeled Jack had also inspired an opposing force: the Libertines, who sought to change social policies and create a new species of liberated man.

All of these elements had given rise to a condition of rapidly growing chaos, as scientific developments and social experimentation accelerated without check. For Charles Darwin, the man they called “God's Executioner,” who'd fallen under the sway of his cousin, the Eugenicist Francis Galton, the possibilities had been so overwhelming they'd pushed him beyond the bounds of sanity.

How many others?Burton thought. How many have become something they should never have been?

The growler turned left onto Vauxhall Bridge and joined the queue of vehicles waiting to pay the toll to cross.

“The devil take it!” Trounce grumbled. “For how long are we to sit here breathing in this funk?”

“I can barely see a thing,” Swinburne said, leaning out and peering ahead. “There's no telling how far from the toll booths we are. Surely, Pouncer, you don't expect us to fly rotorchairs in this?”

“Oy!” the police officer objected. “Don't call me Pouncer! But you're right, of course. After all that fresh Yorkshire air, I forgot how damned impenetrable these London particulars can be.”

Burton made a suggestion: “It's only a couple of miles to the Yard. Why don't we leg it there and borrow penny-farthings instead?”

Trounce agreed, and moments later they were crossing the bridge on foot, cursing the stink, cursing the traffic, and cursing the fog.

“I tell you, Captain, I'll be delighted to leave this bloody cesspool of a city behind for a few months,” Trounce declared.

It was six o'clock by the time they reached Ilford, and, though the fog was thinner there, the daylight was fading and the ill-lit town was wreathed in gloom.

They steered their velocipedes along the Cranbrook Road, then turned left into Grenfell Place.

“We're looking for number sixteen,” Trounce said.

A minute later, they found it: an isolated house set back from the road and concealed by a gnarled and unnaturally twisted oak tree.

“By Jove!” Trounce exclaimed. “Why would anyone want this monstrosity in their front garden?”

They opened the gate, passed through, ducked under the branches, and walked along the path to the front door. No lights were showing in the house.

Trounce exercised the door knocker with his usual vigour but was met with nothing but silence.

“This is a murder investigation,” he said, taking two steps back, “so I have no qualms about breaking in. Stand aside, would you, while I put my shoulder to it.”

Burton held up a hand. “No need for that, old chap.” He produced a picklock from his coat pocket and went to work on the keyhole. Moments later, there was a click.

“Open sesame!” Swinburne commanded, with an effusive wave of his arms.

“Go back to the gate and stand guard, would you, Algy?” Burton asked. “We'll need to light lamps, and if our strangler returns while we're here and sees the windows blazing, he'll do a runner before we've a chance to nab him. Yell if you see anyone acting in a suspicious manner.”

The poet nodded and moved away while Burton and Trounce entered the house. The Scotland Yard man took out a box of lucifers, struck one, and put it to a wall lamp in the hallway. It illuminated three doors and a flight of stairs.

The first door opened onto a small lounge. Trounce got another lamp going and the two men saw five chairs positioned around a coffee table on which ashtrays and empty glasses stood.

“It looks like there was a meeting of some sort,” Burton observed. He checked a bureau and found it empty, then the cupboards of an armoire and found the same.

The second door led to a dining room in which they found nothing of interest, and the third door into a kitchen. Its pantry was empty.