The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi (61 page)

Crowley stopped and looked back. His skin was a pale purple in the lamplight. His black eyes were pitiless.

“I thought not,” he said. “Just an explorer.”

He continued down the tunnel.

“No!” Burton barked. He slid his cane back into his harness. “I haven't been an explorer since you murdered Isabel Arundell.”

Crowley halted and swung around. “Then what?”

Burton straightened. “I am Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king's agent.” He lifted the police whistle hanging from the cord around his neck, put it to his lips, and blew it as hard as he could. Its high-pitched shriek reverberated deafeningly in the confined space. He dropped it, slammed shut his helmet's faceplate, and quickly turned the butterfly screws that locked it tight.

From far behind him, a loud clank sounded, followed by a deep, reverberating boom.

Crowley frowned. His mouth moved but Burton couldn't hear what he said.

The sewage flowing around Burton's legs suddenly rose to his waist, causing him to stagger. A rumbling turned into a roar. Unable to resist, Burton turned and looked back. A wall of brown sludge, moving at breathtaking speed, shot down the tunnel and slammed into him. It knocked him off his feet, enveloped him, and whirled him up into the middle of the channel. The harness pushed into his ribs harder and harder as the great weight of accumulated water, urine, excrement, animal waste, and filth of every imaginable description pressed against him and thundered over and around him. The noise was deafening, the pressure agonizing, the terror unendurable. He was battered up and down and from side to side, physically anchored by the chain but mentally swept away, feeling himself drowning in the depths of madness.

Hold on.

I can't.

If I can, you can. Death has come for me, but it isn't your time. I'll stay with you until the crisis has passed.

Abdu El Yezdi?

I am you.

Help me.

Endure this. It is but a few minutes in eternity. Your role in the narrative is not done.

What?

The future beckons. It depends on you.

I don't understand.

Soon you will embark on a new expedition.

Burton screamed as the harness cut into him. His ribs creaked. He couldn't breathe. The surging liquid banged him against the ceiling. He was petrified that the helmet might break like an eggshell.

Listen to Swinburne. I have left you many resources, but none is more valuable than the poet. Trust his instincts above even your own. He has a vital role to play.

Please. Make it stop.

Know this: Edward Oxford is waking from his slumber.

Oxford is dead.

No. Spring Heeled Jack will return. But our brother is in a position of influence. You must become his Abdu El Yezdi. Through him, you can keep this world safe from the stilt-man. Play the card well.

No. No. No.

There is so much more I want to tell you. I'm sorry.

Sorry?

For so much. I pray you don't suffer as I have. But peace will come to me now.

I'm dying. Bismillah! I'm dying.

No, you are not. But I am. Blessed release! I can see it. I can see it.

What? Tell me!

The roof of the tent. The dawn light upon the canvas. It's beautiful. So beautiful. I'm going to step out.

No! Don't leave me!

I have to. I want to look across the desert. I want to see the horizon again.

Please.

I hear the camel bells…

Burton's back bumped into something solid. He felt himself drawn sideways. He realised that his left hand was pressed so hard against his swordstick—still secured by the harness—that it had cramped and he couldn't move his fingers. The heels of his boots scraped across a corner. He was rising.

Foul gunk drained from his faceplate. Light shone through. Gravity tugged at him. Brickwork slid past, sinking downward.

He saw the round edge of a manhole, felt hands slide under his armpits, was hauled up, and was suddenly lying on his back looking up at a grey sky.

Fingers moved over him. The helmet turned. It was pulled away. He gulped in a huge breath of air.

“Wotcha!” Montague Penniforth said. “Cripes, I think me arms are goin' to fall off! I 'ad the very devil of a time windin' you in.”

“You stink worse than the Thames!” Swinburne exclaimed.

Burton didn't respond. His eyes were fixed straight ahead. He was paralysed.

“Richard? Richard? My hat! What's wrong with him?”

“Oof!” Penniforth grunted. “Sorry about this, guv'nor.” He leaned down and slapped Burton's face, hard. He did it again.

The world crashed back into place.

“Stop,” Burton croaked. “Help me up.”

Careless of the muck that covered the king's agent, Penniforth heaved him to his feet and set about undoing the undersea suit's fastenings.

“Are you all right?” Swinburne asked.

“Yes.”

“I opened the sluice gate as soon as I heard the whistle. Did I flush him away?”

“You did. And the—” Burton was interrupted by a deep detonation that resounded across the city, shaking windows and causing screams and shouts of consternation. A colossal ball of flame and black smoke rolled into the eastern sky. “Bomb,” he finished. “Damnation. I hoped the sewage would disable it.” He shrugged out of the evil-smelling suit.

“That's the Cauldron,” Swinburne said, watching the distant smoke mushrooming over the city. “The flood must have pushed the bomb down to the intercepting sewer and all the way there.”

“The eleventh hour,” Burton murmured. “The end of Crowley. The signing of the Alliance.”

Swinburne jumped into the air and yelled, “Hurrah!”

Burton looked up at the
Orpheus
, drifting nearby high over Green Park. “Perhaps I should have Lawless take me back to Africa,” he muttered. “For a rest.”

They returned to Battersea Power Station and were met by Nurse Nightingale. “He has passed,” she said. “Do you want to see him, Sir Richard?”

“Look upon my own corpse? No, Nurse, I could not bear to do that.”

Sadhvi Raghavendra, Thomas Honesty, and Daniel Gooch arrived with the DOGS trailing behind. One of Gooch's mechanical arms was swinging loosely, having been damaged by a bullet. Many of his men were clutching wounds.

“They surrendered,” he said. “Detective Inspector Trounce is rounding them up. Krishnamurthy and Bhatti are helping. Galton was among the Enochians. No doubt he'll go back to Bedlam. Crowley?”

“Drowned and blown to pieces,” Burton replied. “I'm sorry about Brunel.”

“Oh, he'll be fine. We'll dredge him up and put him back together again. His consciousness will be intact, preserved in the diamonds.”

The king's agent nodded and turned to Nightingale. “Will you see to Algy? He's putting a brave face on it, but he's been pretty badly knocked about.”

“There's nothing wrong with me,” the poet protested, “that a swig of brandy won't put to rights.”

Nightingale regarded his tattered form and said, “You need alcohol rubbed into your wounds, not poured down your throat.”

“Will it sting?”

“Yes, a lot.”

“Then I insist on both.”

While the nurse got to work, assisted by Raghavendra, Burton washed, borrowed clean clothes, and departed the station in a rotorchair. He flew across the river and followed it eastward. Ahead, the Cauldron was ablaze and thick plumes of smoke were curling into the air. Just when it was needed most, the rain had stopped, and with nothing to oppose the conflagration, it was spreading with alarming rapidity.

He set down in the yard at the back of the Royal Venetia Hotel and was a few minutes later knocking on the door of Suite Five. Grumbles answered and chimed, “Good morning, sir.”

Burton ignored him, pushed past, and entered his brother's sitting room. Edward, as ever, was in his red dressing gown and creaking armchair. He looked up from a piece of paper and said, “Ah, it's you. I'm supposed to be at the ceremony but I'll be damned if I—Great heavens! What on earth has happened? You look positively ghastly. Grumbles, give my brother some ale.”

Burton suddenly felt so fragile that he barely made it to a chair. He collapsed into it and weakly accepted the glass from the clockwork man. He mumbled, “Unlike Swinburne, I regard it as a little early in the day for alcohol,” before downing the pint in a single, long swig.

“That was my last bottle and I don't know when I'll lay my hands on more,” Edward said, somewhat ruefully. He looked his sibling up and down and shook his head despairingly. “Gad! Every time you set foot in this room you look worse than the last. Has your current state anything to do with this?” He held up the note he'd been reading when Burton had entered. “It arrived a couple of minutes before you. Apparently the detonation that shook the city a little while ago was an explosion. A very large one. In the East End.”

Burton rubbed his side and winced as his ribs complained. “Yes, I know,” he said hoarsely. “It marked the end of the case. Abdu El Yezdi is dead, and I was right—you are a secret weapon, Edward, but not for the purpose I envisioned.”

The minister's face paled. He laced his fingers together, rested his hands on his stomach, and regarded his sibling, waiting silently for further explanation.

Burton told the whole story.

For three days, the conflagration raged through the Cauldron. The bomb had exploded beneath the Alton Ale warehouse and its flames rapidly jumped from dwelling to dwelling, consuming the wooden shacks and slumping tenements, destroying everything between Whitechapel and the Limehouse Cut Canal, Stepney, and Wapping. It was the worst blaze the city had experienced since the Great Fire of 1666, and just as that disaster had rid the city of the plague, so this one cured it of the infestation of
strigoi morti
. The un-dead burned to ash in their hidden lairs, unable to escape in the daylight. Many innocents also perished, but the death toll was far less than it might have been due to the mass exodus of the previous days.

“I suppose it will work out for the good,” William Trounce mused. He was sharing morning coffee with Burton, Swinburne, Levi, Sister Raghavendra, and Slaughter in the study at 14 Montagu Place. Five days had passed since the death of Crowley. “The district can be rebuilt. Better housing, what!”

“Brunel has an idea for a new class of accommodation,” Burton said. “Something he calls a
high-rise
.”

“What is it?” Swinburne asked.

“I don't know, but the name suggests a variation of the old rookeries.”

“Lord help us,” Trounce put in. “Are we going to pile the poor on top of one another again?” He shook his head. “Never let the DOGS run free. They have no self-control.”

“Monsieur Trounce,” Levi said, “have the police discover
le cadavre
of Perdurabo?”

“No, and we probably won't. The crater where the Alton Ale warehouse stood is still smouldering—too hot to get anywhere near—and anyway there'll be nothing left of him, I'm certain.” The detective frowned and sipped his drink. “By Jove, a strange coincidence, though. Do you know who owns the Alton breweries?”

“
Non.
Who?”

“The Crowley family. Three of them were killed by the blast.”

Burton raised his eyebrows. “Are you suggesting one of them might have been Perdurabo's ancestor?”

“It's possible. The surname isn't particularly common.”

“So Aleister Crowley chose to invade our history because he didn't exist in its future, and in doing so he became the reason
why
he didn't exist.”

“That makes my head hurt,” Trounce groaned.

“A paradox,” Swinburne announced gleefully. “I like it. There's poetry in it.”