For If It Prosper

© 1997 Stephen Hunt (UK)

Sample Chapters: Part 2

Print this one out? Approx 8 pages of A4 text

Sleet spurted up from the wheels of the two-horse landau, Kai handling the mares as if his father had been born a coachman rather than a Tibetan mystic, the country lanes of Wimbledon village barren of traffic.

 Kai straightened his short white beard in the face of the fierce wind, then addressed his brooding companion. "She will not recognise you."

 "Terrillion's daughter? How can you be so certain?" D'Corsair asked. "I cut off her father's arm while she was made to watch; her mother died trying to escape from me. It is only by chance the girl survived at all. If the mountain tribes hadn't found her by her mother's body and returned her to the Jesuit mission in Islamabad, I would have had the girl thrown to my soldiers for a whore and she'd be just another corpse inhabiting my memory."

 "Evil changes a man's face more than you can know," said Kai. "Some mornings I don't even recognise you myself. You have been reborn inside your own life."

 "Yet, I remember the things I did."

 "That is the way it should be. It is the hard way, the way of awareness. If you ever forget who you are, you will quickly find yourself living inside a dream of darkness again, trapped within the easy illusions of madness and satiation. There are no easy paths in this life, Peter D'Corsair, none that lead anywhere worth going."

 "You once told me, Kai, that conscience is the fire which needs constant kindling."

 "I remember."

 "If that fire ever goes out and I become the thing I was before "

 "No man is beyond salvation," Kai spat.

 "If I should ever revert to what I used to be, I want you to kill me, Kai."

 "You are not an easy man to kill."

 "Please, Kai!"

 "I will not kill you, Peter D'Corsair. What I have made I cannot unmake. But there are others in my order who will seek to stop you if I should fail in what I have set out to achieve, and their methods are not my own."

 "I would thank God for that mercy," D'Corsair said. "If I had the right to speak to him."

 "You have earned the right a dozen times over," Kai told him. "Now, we have arrived. Self-pity make a poor companion ­ I trust I can look forward to more stimulating company on the return journey to London."

 D'Corsair stared at the Terrillion residence, a half-timbered former rectory well-walled by bare winter hedges and a handful of dark evergreens. He stepped off the carriage.

 "You are still my teacher, Kai."

 "And you are still a poor pupil. Go now and achieve something worthwhile." He stopped for a second, as if he had heard something speaking to him on the wind. "Peter, there are observers in the cottage two doors down the lane."

 "Don't worry, they're Office flashmen. After what happened to the professor and his bodyguard I asked for a full team to be assigned to the daughter. Better she doesn't know. Just in case."

 "Yes. Just in case."

 As D'Corsair neared the house's porch, the door opened to reveal a pretty young woman in a pelerine-mantlet edged with white lace. So this was Delphine Terrillion. There was hardly any trace about her features of the frightened young girl he dimly recalled from the Hindu Kush, though her eyes were rimmed red and he guessed she had been crying recently. Her father had only been buried two days before.

 "Inspector D'Corsair? One of your constables said you would be calling. You must forgive me having to receive you myself, but both our maids put in their notice the other day; the business with father upset them so terribly and ­ "

 "That's quite alright, Ms Terrillion. I am very grateful for you taking the time to see me so promptly."

 She led him past an oak staircase and into a drawing room, brushing down a set of bergére chairs and stoking the fire. "Anything that allows you to catch the villains who carried out this crime, Inspector, is no burden to me. I assure you I would walk through the fires of hades itself if it meant bringing the killers to book."

 There was real fire behind the gentle French accent and D'Corsair nodded. "The murderers'll dance from the gallows, Ms Terrillion. You have my word on that."

 "It's strange," she said, pushing back her honey-coloured ringlets. "We had a detective visit before the funeral and he said the same thing. But when he said the words it sounded like he was reading from a script of things he should say to the victim's family. But you, with you it almost sounds as if you mean that personally."

 "Perhaps I do. What can you tell me of the possible motivations of those who murdered your father?"

 "Very little, I fear. My papa was rather protective towards me. At one time he used to take me with him on all his expeditions and in those days he talked about his work constantly, but when my mother died on one of our journies, father blamed himself. He changed considerably after that. He never really shared his thoughts with me again. I spent the last few years studying at convent school while he travelled all over the world. What I know of his more recent exploits are mostly gleenings from professional journals kindly leant to me by one of our family friends."

 "You are speaking of Mr Charles Darwin?"

 "Quite, you are very well informed, Inspector. In the holidays I would often help look after Charles' sons, George, Leonard and Horace, although I think that was just Mrs Darwin's subtle way of ensuring I had a better time of it at Down House than staying alone with our poe-faced house servants here."

 "So your father had no enemies?"

 "On the contrary," Delphine insisted, "papa had more than I care to think of. He was vocal in his opinions and not often sensitive to the feelings in others. Also, like Mr Darwin, his theories outraged many in the church, and he had an equal number of professional enmities with various members of the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences. It was a wonder I was not tossed out of convent school for my poor luck in filial associations when the Pope savaged the theory of natural selection."

 "Ms Terrillion, did you ever hear your father talk about the Greek myth of Atlantis, or mention an extremist plot by anarchists to destabilise the crown? An organisation called the Fraternity?"

 "I am sorry?" Delphine sounded shocked. "Are you serious, Inspector? If that is an attempt at humour it is in very poor taste."

 "I am deadly serious, Ms Terrillion. Both of those statements are allegations your father made before he died."

 "Nonsense. My father was a respected scientist, one who had dined with the Queen at her own invitation, a genius in his field, Inspector, not some Egyptian grave robber suffering from sunstroke and given to delusions or whimsy. We may not have been close to each other in the last few years, but I assure you I would have been aware if my father had lost the facility of his wits. I trust you will credit a woman with that much intelligence at least."

 Standing up, D'Corsair gave the lady a short bow. "Far more than that, I hope. If you will show me to your father's study ?"

 Delphine gave him a key and pointed the way up the stairs. "His room was thoroughly ransacked by the murderers. Forgive me if I do not accompany you, I haven't been in there since I am afraid I even had to send the maids to clear the mess up."

 The royal agent showed no surprise at finding Kai standing inside the locked study.

 "She was lying," said the old man.

 "You were listening though my ears?"

 "I have many bad habits."

 "Yes, you do. But I picked up on that too. She knows about her father's so-called mad claims, and she knows a lot more about Terrillion's talk of treason than she was willing to tell me. She may be scared of me, she may even believe I am linked to the plotters."

 Kai opened a drawer in the professor's desk, selecting a fossilised seashell from a pile of bones in a case. "She shows a wisdom uncommon to her years."

 Lifting up a polished walnut box, D'Corsair discovered a collection of brass pipes and lenses stored inside the felt-lined case. Assembling the device, he looked through a cylinder and nodded. "Interesting."

 "A microscope," Kai said.

 "I know that, Kai. But no ordinary one. It's an achromatic microscope, look at the quality of focus. I haven't seen one this advanced for a long time, not outside of the Special Office's laboratories."

 Pressing an eye to the device, Kai jumped back as he saw a tree-like thing crawling across the slide. "It is an evil eye."

 "An evilly expensive one, certainly. But this technology shouldn't even exist in the public domain for another five years. Our Belgian professor had some uncommon sources of supply."

 "It is from the Office, perhaps?"

 D'Corsair shook his head. "I don't think so. We'll take it with us for examination. Perhaps one of Babbage's people can shed some light on its origin of manufacture."

 Mounds of yellowed paperwork lay about the professor's desk, obviously scooped hurriedly off the floor and stacked by the servants. D'Corsair leafed through some of the notes, zoology sketches from the Galapagos islands, corals and giant tortoises brought to life in brown ink.

 "He was a skillful artist."

 "You think," Kai said, "because your court wizards can bestow a latin label on an orchid you understand more of its beauty?"

"It certainly keeps the Royal Society happy. The killers were looking for something on paper. Records perhaps, some evidence of Terrillion's mysterious Fraternity. Names."

 Kai gazed down the hollow bone of a giant llama, as if it was a telescope, turning the fossil to stare at D'Corsair. "There is, how do you say, more to this than meets the eye?"

 "The Professor wasn't murdered by an angry gang of creationist vicars, of that much I am sure." D'Corsair stopped to look around the office. "There is something out of place here, but ah!"

 Striding over to the sloping ceiling, D'Corsair examined a painting hanging on the flat of the study's eaves. He slid it off its hanging and tapped the frame.

 "You have something?"

 D'Corsair pointed to the face on the portrait. "Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, the main theologian debating against Darwin and his other advocates in the natural selection controversy. Bishop Wilberforce'd receive great pleasure in seeing Terrillion and the other supporters of evolutionary development burnt at the stake as heretics; the Bishop takes the book of Genesis very seriously, Kai. Now why do you think the Professor kept a picture of his opponent on his wall?"

 "Know your enemy?"

 Lifting the portrait, D'Corsair smashed the glass against the wall. "Or a private sign to one of his friends in the scientific community; Terrillion was a frightened man and seemed to be expecting to be killed. Who in the Royal Society, I wonder, is down in Terrillion's will to inherit the contents of the study?"

 Picking away broken glass, D'Corsair tore back the fabric of oiled canvas. He pulled out a folded sheet of paper concealed at the rear of the painting and read it. But all it was, was a shipping manifest. For a quantity of American corn to be imported into England ­ a shipment that had taken place a month before. D'Corsair passed it over to Kai after he had finished studying it.

 "A curious thing to be hidden with such care, Peter?"

 "Curious indeed."

 D'Corsair took the manifest back and slipped it into his pocket, about to close the drawers of the professor's desk when he heard the shout from downstairs. Flinging open the door he hurtled the stairs to find Delphine clutching a newspaper, her neighbour ­ an old woman in widow's reeds ­ standing in the hall by her side.

 "Ms Terrillion?"

 "It's terrible," protested the neighbour. "I've just come down from the railway station. It's in all the afternoon editions. They've blown up the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich! There's hundreds of people dead and fires raging right across London to the Albert docks."

 D'Corsair lifted the copy of the London Illustrated News from Delphine's hand. "Blown up the Arsenal? Who's blown it up?"

 "Those revolutionaries you were talking to me about earlier, Inspector," whispered Delphine. "The Fraternity. According to the paper, the group who attacked the Royal Arsenal are claiming responsibility in the name of the oppressed workers of the isle, and the title they are using is the Fraternity of Redressors."

 D'Corsair put the paper down. "The Fraternity appear more than a whimsy now, Ms Terrillion. Far more substantial."

 Her face flushed slightly. "But what interest could such men have had with my father?"

 "Who was to inherit your father's professional instruments and research materials?"

 "Why, that would have been Charles, Mr Darwin that is. I will be taking the items over to him myself on Saturday, I am afraid Mr Darwin is bed-ridden again with the fever, the sickness he caught in Valdivia you see."

 "If it is no discomfort to you, I would thank you for an introduction and the opportunity to ask Darwin a few questions about your father and his more recent projects."

 "Of course, Inspector. Mr Darwin understood the details of father's work better than almost anyone in England. I shall expect you in the morning. And I hope you will not think me too forward if I say that I find your involvement in my predicament surprisingly reassuring. You seem so much more confident than the other officers I met. For the first time since the hideous event, I feel secure now that you are dealing with this investigation."

 D'Corsair dipped his head. "Tomorrow morning, then."

*

"Stop 'ere," shouted Brooke, the thuggish flashman banging the roof of the hansom cab. D'Corsair waited for Brooke to get out first.

 It was beginning to get dark outside and the inferno had thrown up a dark pall of smoke over the docks, streets dotted with soldiers called out from the artillery barracks, helping the Peelers discourage looting by the good people of Limehouse and Millwall, citizens, who if they had never heard of the Fraternity of Redressors until that afternoon, needed little prompting in the small matter of recognising the opportunity a riverfront of collapsed warehouses presented to the East-end poor.

 Dodging the jostling ranks of firemen's horses, an old police sergeant wearing a pillbox cap approached the pair, a younger policeman following behind. The sergeant appeared to know agent Brooke.

 "Right mess you're walking into here, Brooksy." He indicated the firemen furiously working their hand pumps. "The way these tin-hats are draining out the Thames, the only washing anyone'll be doing in Woolwich tomorrow is in the Railway Tavern's pisswater."

 "Where did the fires start?" D'Corsair asked the Peeler.

 "Main one was in the powder sheds back over there, blew the sides out of the Arsenal good and proper too. But the fires spread too fast for that to have been the only place explosives were set. Your revolutionary friends must have gone blasting down East India dock, Silvertown right through to Custom House."

 "You are sure?"

 "This ain't exactly an original idea, old chum," said Brooke. "When the yankee clippers come sailing in, some flash fellow usually gets the idea of cornering the tea and coffee market by applying a match to the back of a rival's wharf. Our blue-bottle here is an authority on the subject."

 "True enough, Brooksy. Believe me, sir, it's a lot more difficult than most people credit to get a blaze going, even in a tinderhouse like the docks but the people who did this, they were experts, artists of the matchlight you might even say. This bonfire was done in some style with no little amount of organisation going into the job."

 "Organised anarchism," said D'Corsair grim-faced, striding over the blackened ruins of a storehouse, sloshing through melted snow mingled with soot. "Now there's a concept to change the world."

 "It's natural enough, eh?" Brooke commented. "Poor men see all the rich Jakes lording it up and they wants some of the finery for themselves. Or with these buggers, they'll just blow it up so no one gets it, which is a bloody shame given how many local dockers and warehousemen must have had their hand in the kitty down here. It's a crying shame we got no witnesses to the dirty deed."

 At this, D'Corsair noticed the younger policeman's lips tighten. They continued walking.

 "How many people, sergeant, to carry out an arson on this scale?" D'Corsair asked.

 "Reckon there must have been a good thirty or so, sir. Half to keep watch, the others to lay powder down and put the matches to it."

 D'Corsair nodded. Thirty blasters and not one witness. "This kind of work is normally done at night?"

"As a rule, sir, as a rule. You can see the flames better in the dark, and there's a breed of man that has a taste for the sight. We call them burners ­ a bugger to catch because there's never enough thought behind their crimes for us to track them down. Not that it was any gang of burners writing into the Times demanding free bread and beer for the common folk."

 "Very good, sergeant. Show Mr Brooke to the Arsenal, I'll stay here and search for any evidence that may have survived the blast."

 Agent Brooke shrugged but left with the sergeant anyway, obviously unhappy at being ordered about by a fellow flashman ­ especially one so recently reinstated to the post.

 D'Corsair knelt down and sifted the ash. This had been an area stacked with bales of cotton, probably for export to one of the colonies, India or the Cape. He looked up and addressed the younger policeman.

"What have you been ordered not to say?"

 "Sir?"

 "I know how Brooke works, lad." D'Corsair uncrumpled a mottled Bank of England note. "Evidence can be made to appear, or it can be made to disappear, depending on the nature of the circumstances."

 The young Peeler was hesitating.

 "And I can be discreet, constable."

 The note vanished into the boy's pocket, it must have been more than he earned in a week. "I saw somebody down at the docks, sir, before the explosions, bloke we know, name of Howard Pearman. Madman he is, touched in the head after living out in the colonies."

 "Who told you to keep quiet about this Pearman?"

 "That order came down from the top, sir. But I saw Mr Brooke talking to our brass first, when the silver buttons were down here earlier, looking around."

 "Who?" D'Corsair demanded. "Which officers was Brooke talking to?"

 "The old man himself, old Dicky."

 "Sir Richard Mayne?" D'Corsair was silently shocked. What was London's Commissioner of Police doing personally inspecting operations at the scene of a dock fire, interfering in an investigation.

 "The sergeant said we wasn't to mention Mad Pearman because he's a burner, known for it he is, sir. They said him being named would just confuse matters, what with this Fraternity bunch already copping for all the fire and the damage. It didn't seem important; like the sergeant already said, this wasn't the work of a single burner, not in a thousand years was it. Pearman was probably down here for mischief, but this time he was beaten to it was what happened."

 "And where does our friend Howard Pearman choose to make his residence?"

 "Oh, but he's in a right bad end of town, he is," said the officer, mopping his brown from the heat of the fire. "New Hall Place, right in the heart of Whitechapel. You can look for a pub called the Virgin Queen, not that you'll find too many virgins in there, he lives above it. But you trust me on this, you don't want to go searching for him down there, not a man of quality like yourself. You'd have a choker slipped around your neck before you took your seventh step across the rookeries."

 "But a man who knows the alleys could guide me through. To talk to Pearman about what he saw down here."

 Seeing what D'Corsair intended, the young Peeler stepped back. "Not me, sir. Not me. When the police go down New Hall, we make sure we do it with half the bloody Yard along and a copy of the Riot Act ready to read out. It's a foul place and I got my young sprog to think of now."

 Folding out more notes, D'Corsair watched the Peeler lick his lips. "Children can be an expensive business, I understand."

 "Right enough, sir, right enough."

 "There's forty pounds here. What do the police pay a year? Seventy is it these days?"

 The policeman was no longer sweating from the fires encircling them. "I'm an honest man."

 "To my mind, bringing in a notorious burner could be considered an honest night's work." D'Corsair revealed his badge. "And if any unfortunate questions were asked after the event "

 " It might be orders and official?"

 "That it might. But none that Brooke or any of his bruisers need to hear of."

 "An honest bargain struck, then," said the young Peeler, nervously. "We'll meet by the Monument to the Great Fire, go in at midnight and ware only those that don't have a lick of gin on their breath."

 "Midnight it is," D'Corsair agreed. "The witching hour is as good any for a little filthy business."

Brooke seemed in good humour as their hansom left the burning wharflands behind them.

 "You appear damnably happy," D'Corsair noted, "for a man who found nothing at the docks."

 "Past days for me, old chum. Don't you know what it was Mock saved me from the gallows for? I was due to dangle for some of this ­ torched a tenement in Spitzrose Street for its owner, I did. Six stinking guineas was all I got for that job, and it would have cost me my bleeding neck too if Sir C. hadn't saved it for the Office."

 "How many people did you kill?"

 "For the Special Office, Peter, or in the fire?"

 "You have no idea," D'Corsair said, "what it means for me to be able to work with someone of your calibre."

 "You think we're so different, old chum? You forget, my lads got the full story on you when we received orders to badger you that first time. I don't recall there being too much about you spending years in Asia doing good works with the Methodists, spreading gospel and educating all them savages. Not unless you include educating them in how dangerous it can be to throw arrows and stones at men with Snider rifles."

 "I was another sort of man then."

 Brooke laughed. "Now ain't that the exact same thing I told the judge who sentenced me to dangle. Ha. Totally different person I was in those days! Know what he replied? Damn fine matter it was too, because it was always better to send a repentant man to God than one with devilment in his heart. Miserable old bugger."

 The horses slowed down their pace outside the cab. "I'm for Granby Street, chummy boy. One of the lads said they've got some new ladybirds in from Paris, girls with legs as white as porcelain and longer than a Duke's list of titles to boot. Just to show you there's no hard feelings, you can come along rogering with us, sample some of the goods."

 D'Corsair snorted. "I have prior arrangements tonight."

 "I'll wager you have at that," Brooke slipped his companion a knowing glance. "Not so much fun when they're not married to some Lord, eh?"

 "Hardly any fun at all, Brooke."

 Watching while D'Corsair stepped into the street, Brooke leaned out of the door. "I'll tell you something, Mr Peter bloody D'Corsair. If I had gotten me a heathen kingdom with furs and jewels and every bloody virgin in the land thinking I was God just because my boys carried thunder sticks, I'll tell you one thing I wouldn't be doing right now, and that's running about spading dog shit for the British crown. Good evening to you, chummy."

 Checking his pocket watch, D'Corsair saw he had five hours before his midnight rendezvous at the Monument. Time enough for what he had come to do. Across the road a stalky pieboy stood selling his wares from a two-wheeled stall, many of the purchasers patrons from the British Library, servants and staff briefly mingling with the stylishly dressed Bloomsbury crowd as they made their way home.

 The researchers were already thinning out inside the large circular hall of the British Library's reading room, returning to offices or lodgings while green waistcoated attendants collected books that had been brought down from the shelves.

 D'Corsair approached the Principal Librarian's desk. "I am looking for the Despatches of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, the first edition published in 1837."

 "A rare book," said the librarian, pushing a pair of octagonal glasses back along the bridge of his nose.

 "Yes, but then I believe the Duke was a rare man."

 "If you'll follow me," the hamster-faced librarian opened a swing door in the desk. "We keep the book in a cabinet behind the Manuscripts Saloon."

 Knowing from past experience that the librarian was not the most talkative of fellows, D'Corsair did as he was instructed without further conversation. Walking through the maze of archives, the two men's passage raised a choking skein of dust from the shelves, leather-bound books lined up as neat as hussars on parade, the faint must of old paper heavy in the air. At times, the librarian would suddenly halt and mutter, pushing back a spine so the tome stood flush with all the other books

 Although he was hale enough, the librarian walked like a stooped bird, long striding steps which made him hard to follow at a normal walking pace. D'Corsair only caught up as the voiceless devil reached the end of the corridor, opening the glass face of a grandfather clock which stood waiting for them with solemn gravitas. Turning its hour hand like the tumbler of a safe, the librarian rotated the clock dial through a number of positions, stepping back as the walnut panelling of the wall withdrew on concealed rollers.

 D'Corsair stepped through without preamble and allowed the wall to close behind him, the librarian left behind on the other side.

 "This way, Mr D'Corsair."

 In front of D'Corsair, a guardsman beckoned the flashman towards a small room lit by the rare yellow light of electricity.

 D'Corsair walked in. "I am glad to see the Principal's memory remains uncommonly accurate."

 The guard laughed. Every agent had their own unique book to ask for and a series of counterwords. Their only record was listed in the Principal Librarian's remarkable memory. Those that got their personal code wrong while trying to gain access to the secret level left the British Museum's wide marble halls by the tradesman's entrance, usually inside three boxes marked Curiosities of the Punjab.

 Inside the claustrophobic confines of the room D'Corsair discovered a plain-tailored engineer's suit and apron hanging from a brass hook. There were no pockets or folds in the clothes capable of concealing any objects ­ either on the way in or out ­ and the suit also served more obscure scientific purposes, as if the work done here was somehow so pure a decision had been made it must never be sullied by the dirt of smog-ridden London.

After changing clothes, D'Corsair let the guard lead him through a run of metal corridors. They might have been inside an ironclad for all the natural light allowed to enter, the rivetted anonymity of the passages reminding D'Corsair of his first and last voyage aboard the HMS Warrior, accompanying Prince Albert on the warship's inaugural passage down the Thames. But underneath the library, the remarkable electric lights made the walls glitter like beetle armour, the vaults of steel ogres from some children's tale, guarding prizes so wondrous even Jules Verne's imagination might have failed in their description.

 "Is the old devil expecting me?" D'Corsair asked the guardsman.

 "I believe so, sir. You'll find him in the Chamber of Calculations."

 Ahead of them lay a circular steel door with two sets of combination tumblers protruding from the metal. Both needed to be opened in timed sequence. Sentries posted there heaved the weighty door open for them, revealing an artificial cavern sweeping out from the corridor. Inside, air vents sucked up fuming discharges from pits filled with acid lead batteries, high efficiency steam engines adding to the racket of sparking accumulators. Dotted across the space stood dozens of men wearing the same white engineer's suit as D'Corsair, fiddling with complex arrangements of levers and cables or bent over cast-iron work benches as they laboured.

 A distinguished-looking man well-advanced into his seventies approached, pushed toward them in a squeaking bath chair, the subject of his locomotion a woman a few years younger than D'Corsair.

 "Babbage," D'Corsair greeted the old man.

 "Good evening, young fellow my buck. I didn't think we would be seeing you down here again. Not after that damned awful Italian business."

 "Life is a stream that often moves beyond a man's control."

 "So it is," said Babbage. "As long as you must insist on listening to that Tibetan prattle. A sane fellow would prefer to rely on the forces of science to dam, slice and drain such a contrary stream."

 "You received my package?" D'Corsair enquired diplomatically, ignoring the elderly scientist's barbs.

 Shaking his arm irately in the direction he wanted to be pushed, Babbage's fingers drummed on the side of his chair. "Of course I did. What did you think I was planning to do? Mislay it? Of course not. Is that little yellow demon with you. Your little conjurer who thinks he's so clever with his damnable sneaking tricks and floating tricks. I don't want him tricking his way down here again."

 "In the name of the Lord Harry," called another old scientist, emerging from behind a bank of coiling wires and steam pipes, scratching at his Saint Nicholas beard. "Do you really have to carry on so, Babbage? It's insufferable, I can't work with your continuous racket disrupting my concentration like this. I need silence, silence!"

"Racket is it now, Faraday?" Babbage wagged his finger at his fellow septuagenarian. "You can scuttle back to your cottage at Hampton Court just as soon as you restore power to old Bess. My analytical engine was working famously before your adjustments were taken on board. Now look at her! I warned you all about the Invisible Hall's predictive models becoming over-dependent on Bess, but oh no, you and the others needed to tempt providence. Now with have a logjam of projects reaching to the Americas and back and little means to clear them."

 "This isn't providence at fault, man, but shoddy implementation. Your men should have waited for Sergeant Anderson to have arrived first, he would have made the improvements to your bloody mechanical philosopher without any snags."

 Babbage threw up his hands and wheeled off. "That's what they're calling scientists in the Royal Society these days, laddy buck. And they wonder why I set up the British Association! The fool should have stuck to writing books about candles ­ if Faraday wasn't a genius I'd have him barred from the Hall and damn what they'd say on the council."

 "The package, Babbage?" D'Corsair probed.

 "Of course, of course." Babbage indicated they were to proceed across to one of the annexe rooms. "I should have thought time would be more precious for someone of my years, but no, it's always you young pups pushing and shoving outside the theatre. You're not even over forty yet, are you, D'Corsair?"

 "Not yet," D'Corsair confirmed.

 "No? Appearances can be deceptive. That they can. Don't think I don't know about your little yellow clown and his friends up in the mountain, them and their damned lines of mischief. Your clown's got a few decades on you, I think, and me for that matter."

 D'Corsair shrugged. He already knew what Kai thought of the Invisible Hall and its initiates. Court wizards was what he called them in his more charitable moods.

 The woman unlocked the door using a chain around her neck, then trundled Babbage through the opening. Across an iron-work surface a nest of curled plans and manuscripts lay pinned down by spanners, iron wheels and collapsed machines, the heavy steel gears of Babbage's philosophical engines. In the corner of the room lay one object he recognised all too well ­ a bubble of high pressure glass. One of D'Corsair and Babbage's few mementos from their encounter with the charmingly ruthless Captain Nemo ­ a porthole from the Nautilus, released when they had escaped from the submariner's clutches as the half-indian prince had passed close to the island of Bermuda.

 Opening a drawer, Babbage pulled out the microscope D'Corsair had stolen from the dead Belgian's study. The device had been taken to pieces and laid out across the crimson velvet of its carry case.

 "Oh, this is a good one, laddy buck. You were right to bring the microscope to us ­ most uncommon, very advanced. Prisms and relay focusing. Not the sort of toy one is able to buy over the counter at Parr's Medical Items. The Lord knows what animalcules our learned Belgian friend has been examining on this device's slides."

 "Could it have been manufactured by a member of the Invisible Hall?" D'Corsair asked.

 Babbage rolled back his bath-chair. "What! Not unless one of us has gone rogue, D'Corsair. God forbid that should happen again."

 D'Corsair stared at the scientist. "Is the Special Office to take that on faith?"

 "Of course not! I have made discreet enquiries with those of our number who dabble in this line of science. Of all people, D'Corsair, You should know how long the Hall's chain of trust stretches back through history. Initiates aren't admitted lightly to the ranks, nor are their duties treated as such." Babbage pointed to an oil painting hung at the far end of the room, privately commissioned during the Renaissance; fires licking around the library at Alexandria, the Hall's founders fleeing to Araby with their secret knowledge, denying it to the tyrant Julius Caesar and concealing it for as long as the empires of mankind proved unequal to the task of its stewardship.

 "No. This time you must look elsewhere for the device's origin." He banged waspishly on the side of his chair and his female guardian handed him a jute-paper folder. "This is a list of the people and organisations with the wit and resources to construct such a device. Those that the Hall are aware of, at least. You will note it is not what I would consider a weighty tome."

 Releasing the ribbon, D'Corsair flicked through the list. As brief as he had expected. Elements of the Prussian Secret Service, a handful of Illuminati, even fewer individuals with private means, madmen and geniuses of dubious morality.

 "We'll follow up on all of these," D'Corsair said.

 "Of course you will," Babbage said. "But we both know that the microscope was made by none of them, don't we? You're going to have to earn your keep on this assignment, D'Corsair. Whoever is behind this little game, I don't think it's any agency of humanity we have come across before."

 "The Fraternity of Redressors," D'Corsair said, as much to himself as anyone in the room.

 "Oh, and laddy," Babbage tidied the disassembled microscope away. "The ore that went into making this. As best as we can tell, it's Welsh."

 "British steel then?" D'Corsair pointed to the school-master's board behind them, chalked with arcane symbols and formula, mathematical theory far beyond the agent's comprehension. "Babbage, what would you say if I told you there was going to be a revolution in the summer, guillotines set up outside Westminster and the blade for the Empire's noble necks?"

 Babbage snorted loudly. "I would say you were talking unmitigated poppycock of the highest order, D'Corsair. Even if my analytical engine hadn't succumbed to Faraday's duced tinkering, there's nothing in the computations we have been doing on paper to indicate that kind of pressure on society, not in any of the Hall's projections."

 "You are certain?"

 "Society's evolution follows its own Darwinian ideal, D'Corsair. In forty years, Anarchism will become sophisticated enough as a philosophy that it may combine with changes in the means and ownership of production to produce such a pressure for revolution ­ but today? Never. Quite the opposite, in fact. With the steady trickle of the Hall's innovations, the middle classes will grow and the political franchise will widen with the size of their voice far more stability, not less. If we can maintain course, even women and non-property owners will have the right of ballot by the turn of the century."

 "Non-property owners? Sometimes," said D'Corsair, "I wonder whose side your people are really on. The Fraternity, I am told, are merely willing to settle for free bread and beer for the people."

 "Then they are setting their sights too low. But by God we'll help you rein them in all the same, laddy buck. The last pack of undisciplined idealists the Hall pinned its hopes on were Danton and his friends, and as I recall, the French Terror and Napoleon's rule was what we received out of that arrangement for our troubles. Now off with you, laddy buck. Thanks to Faraday's efforts, we're back to jotters, ink and tables of logs for the next couple of weeks, and I've little time to spare for the Special Office's tomfoolery."

 Unlocking the door to Babbage's private laboratory, D'Corsair nearly walked into a balding man dressed in the Hall's ubiquitous white, his shortness disguising an ample paunch.

 "Trantor," Babbage acknowledged.

 "D'Corsair. Heard you were back. After me, man, I have a few things for you."

 They walked to an iron door so heavy it had to be lifted by a neumatic press, the man, William Trantor, sealing them into another corridor, a heavy clang ringing behind them.

 "You should have stayed in retirement, D'Corsair. The Hall needs you running around like the Hapsburgs needs the helpful suggestions of the Iron Chancellor to manage the Austrian border."

 "I accepted my commission with much the same grace as the Austrian Emperor accepts those suggestions of Bismarck," D'Corsair growled. "I never wanted this job again."

 "Ha," Trantor laughed unkindly. "Aye, you forget, I get to meet all of the Special Office's flashmen. There's not one man-jack of you that doesn't enjoy the killing and perfidy of your business ­ your so-called Great Game. And you, you're the darkest of them all, because you can't even recognise your own nature. You don't love what you fight for, and you're too terrified to hate what you fight against in case you ever see your reflection in one of your victim's eyes."

 D'Corsair shrugged. "If you feel like that ?"

 "The wider picture, D'Corsair. Your kind might be running fast and loose, but as long as you're running for us, then I'll sharpen your claws when I'm asked, you and all your murderous friends."

 Trantor's pacifist Quaker sensibilities would have nettled D'Corsair less if he hadn't known the man had been Newgate prison's hangman until redirecting his talents into the Invisible Hall's services. They entered a low-ceilinged room, a range of paper targets at the far end. To their right was a table with D'Corsair's clothes laying on it, brought down from the cloakroom.

 Trantor walked over to the table and pulled a pistol out of the concealed pocket in D'Corsair's winter greatcoat. "Patterson Colt, percussion-cap revolver, five-shot. Where did you get this, D'Corsair? Crimean navy issue, or was it when Colt was showing his wares at the Great Exhibition?"

 "It's a steady piece."

 "Steady?" Trantor tossed it back onto the table in disgust, his bare head reddening. "Twelve years out of date! I wouldn't allow my daughter to shoot that on the tables at Blackheath fair."

 D'Corsair examined the weapon Trantor had pulled out of a rack for him, a silver pistol with a weighty apple-sized globe screwed down in front of the trigger.

 "One of your air pistols?"

 "Gas," Trantor said, a trace of pride slipping into his voice. "We switched over to it a couple of years ago. Highly compressed. Same principle as the air guns you used during your time with the Office. Sixty shots before you need to recharge the gas ­ shorter range than your powder gun, but far more accurate within that. It won't be pulling your arm all over the shop when you fire it. And unlike your Patterson Colt, it whispers, it doesn't shout."

 "You try fighting in the Afghan highlands, Trantor; you might find you come to like the noise of a percussion rifle."

  Scrutinising its ammunition, D'Corsair saw the projectiles weren't balls, but needle-sharp conical bullets rolled in greased brown paper, ten to a strip, the pistol's barrel capacity.

 "If all you end up fighting are Tajik nomads, man, then I'll return your revolver and you can frighten the thundering wits out of them. Something else for you " Trantor handed D'Corsair a metal-tipped walnut cane with an intricate silver handle, the stick topped by the finely-moulded head of a wolf.

 Pulling back on the handle, a stretch of steel hissed out into D'Corsair's hand. "I already own a sword cane, Trantor."

 "Not like that you don't, man. That's an alloy you're not going to find in any of Manchester's mills for a few years yet ­ an entirely new treatment for steel. Dr Casgrain swears by it. From what I understand, he's been giving Bismarck's network of agents some proud duelling scars for them to wear out in Berlin."

 "Then I'm sure I can find a use for it."

 "I have no doubt of that," Trantor sighed. "No doubt at all. The cane has an extra utility inside its tip. There's a sliding pin concealed in the wolf's head. Pull it back and a gas charge sprays a vial of Rowland's most pernicious medical acid from the walking end ­ with an extra vial of acid concealed in the sheath hollow if you find you have time to reload."

 "Ingenious." D'Corsair felt the balance of the cane in his hand. "You've even weighted it for use as a club."

 "Aye, for my sins I have. Maybe you'll want to try taking a few of the Queen's enemies alive this time. You might find yourself enjoying the novelty of the sensation."

 D'Corsair picked up his jacket and flipped his old Colt at Trantor. "In case you meet any Tajik nomads, old boy."

*

Gaslight made the Monument appear a golden bulb riding a stem of alabaster marble, a strangely inapposite memorial to the fire that had killed so many Londoners in 1666.

 D'Corsair bided his time in the shadows of King William Street. Brooke might appear a surly ruffian, but the flashman had the instincts of a fox-hunting terrier, and D'Corsair trusted Brooke as little as he did their mutual paymaster, Sir Mock. For the moment the only people on the streets were a few late-night clerks from the Bank of England across the corner, their cloaks drawn in tight against the cold as they headed back to their lodgings on the south side of the Thames.

 Coming across London Bridge was the young policeman whose services he had temporarily purchased. Wisely, the constable, young Thomas Hackwell, had eschewed the blue-bottle cap and Peeler's uniform for an inconspicuous thick chesterfield overcoat and patched brown trousers.

 "Inspector," Hackwell said as he saw D'Corsair emerge from concealment.

 "Mr Hackwell. I feel like a drink. Shall we sample the gin at the Virgin Queen?"

 "If you've still got the nerve for it, sir, then I'll see you to New Hall Place as best I can."

 "Nerve enough for a stroll, constable. Let us see what the good Mr Howard Pearman knows about matters incendiary."

 It did not take long for the baronial pillars and white-washed atriums of the City's banking houses to give way to the tenement squalor of Whitechapel. Streets narrowed and frontages grew darker, the streets littered with sewage and rubbish tossed out of rookery windows. The snow had turned yellow and brown, reeking of eggs and spilled rum. Above them, the buildings seemed every bit as rickerty as the inhabitants scuttling through the darkness, tenements tall bent things, dangling over cobbled passages as if the constructions clutched onto gas lamps in drunken stupor, deciding wether they might slide onto the street or stumble back.

 Tightening to a run scarcely wider than two men could walk abreast, the slum's pavements divided into a myriad jumble of passages and alleys, raucous cackling laughter sounding from some of them, silhouettes spilling out of doorways, swigging from bottles and screaming cheerful abuse at each other. Three dogs fought over the rags of a comatose drinker, mongrels with mad eyes and coats like oiled leather. Hackwell booted one hound away as it sprung at their ankles, yapping maniacally.

 Passing under the darkness of a tenement arch, D'Corsair and his guide emerged to find three figures blocking the passage, bruisers wrapped so thick with blankets to hold back the cold that they might have been mistaken for bales of Indian cotton in the poor light.

 There was little doubt of their intentions, the malignant hostility an odour even stronger than the bitterness of their alcohol-soaked sweat. Rampsmen, then ­ after the violent street robberies the Londoners called ramps. One of the men slowly moved forward, a broken bottle in his ruddy mitten-covered hand, but then the tough stopped. Above them the clouds had momentarily peeled back from the sky, a splinter of moonlight flashing off D'Corsair's dark green eyes.

 The thief hesitated. He had seen something there. Something unnatural, something that might have been a force of nature. Then he recalled an adage which had been long ancient in Whitechapel's runs and rookeries: only the greatest of fools tries to set fire to hell. Wordlessly, the rampsman stepped aside, his colleagues smoothly following their leader's decision, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to do. Just three human wolves prowling the night without any appetite for violence.

"My life, I've never seen anything like that!" whispered young Thomas Hackwell after they had left the trio behind them. "Why didn't they attack us? They were right bad hats."

 "Bad hats," said D'Corsair. "But good instincts."

 "Bloody hell, sometimes I have doubts about who's protecting who in this little arrangement of ours."

 "I said I need guiding, not bodyguarding."

 "So you did, sir, so you did."

 They continued to weave through the labyrinth of run down lanes, the constable bypassing the runs that were known to be haunts of the bad and mad.  

 Coming across more lively streets lit by gas lamps and the crimson spill from houses of ill-repute, D'Corsair and the young constable merged with the macabre carnival hustling about the centre of Whitechapel. Entertainment did not stop for snow or night here, if anything it intensified. During daylight the artisans laboured painfully long and hard as rat catchers, dockers, chimney-sweeps, street-sellers and factory hands; only the darkness hours belonging free to the people ­ and they drunk and roistered every minute into rowdy insensibility, men, children and women alike.

 One of the whore-house's ladybirds approached them, still young enough to be attractive, although the chill wind had lent an unhealthy blue cast to her skin. She fingered her shawl as she spoke. "Evening to you, gents. I can be warming two of you as cheaply as one."

 D'Corsair passed her a shilling. "I doubt that. Unless you're planning to burn down your bawdy house behind you."

 "And what do you two want for this then, lovey?"

 "Get yourself inside, girl. It's no night to be out here."

 She laughed. "Why, I was fond enough of the cut of your strut, that I just might have done you for free anyway."

 The constable shook his head at D'Corsair as they walked away. "You're an unlikely fellow, Inspector. An evil eye for the mob and a merciful one for the ladies."

 "Better they think us Methodists come to spread charity, Mr Hackwell, than policemen to spread justice."

 "Of course, sir. I thought that was the reason."

 At the end of the street a cluster of figures scuttled to and fro, excited shouts rising from around the corner. D'Corsair saw Thomas Hackwell fingering the broad pocket of his Chesterfield and realised the Peeler had brought along a station house revolver in case events took a turn for the worse. Hanging crooked, a street marker proclaimed they had reached their destination, New Hall Place.

 "Bloody hell," the constable swore.

 Before them an angry crowd had gathered in front of a four-story gin palace, good queen Bess adorning the sign swinging in the icy breeze.

 D'Corsair stopped a boy running past them. "What is it, lad?"

 "He's done Fat Lady Blanche, he has, cut a smile across her throat and bled her like a pig, it was that bastard Pearman who did it, Burny Pearman."

 The boy slid out of D'Corsair's grip and flew down the street. D'Corsair looked at the constable. "And who in the name of God is Fat Lady Blanche?"

 "Blanche Wallace, Whitechapel's Queen of Madams," said the Peeler. "Shite, she was a sight more popular down here than the real queen too. If she's dead the crowd'll rip Pearman to pieces."

 "So, it would seem our Mr Pearman is branching out from arson to murder."

 "Not Pearman," said the constable. "Not with blades, not ever. He was with the Company in India during the Great Mutiny, got taken at Lucknow and had to watch the heathens skin his family alive. It was that what drove him mad."

 "Are you sure?"

 "I heard it in court last year, sir, it was the only reason the judge gave him clemency ­ said he'd already suffered for queen and country. Pearman would go to pieces at the sight of a knife, how could he cut up the Fat Lady?"

 D'Corsair started to sprint toward the tavern. "It's a put-up job, man. They're trying to have him killed for whatever he saw at the docks."

 As the last word left his lips, there was a crash above, a figure quitting the building's highest window in a shower of glass. With a wet thud the body spiralled down to be impaled on an empty cart. The mob gave a merry cheer and some of the crowd ran forward to jostle for the privilege of kicking the man's obviously broken back.

 Thomas Hackwell shook his head. "Whitechapel law might not be as reliable as the rest of London's, but it's a damn sight faster."

 "Get those idiots away from him," D'Corsair ordered angrily.

 With his pistol out, the constable shouted the crowd back, bystanders jeering but unwilling to risk a bullet for their pleasure.

 Pearman was beaten and bloody, nearly as black as one of the made-downs he had torched in his career. Checking his spine, D'Corsair found the break. He would be dead in less than two minutes.

"What did you see at the docks, Pearman?"

 "Not me," coughed the burner.

 "I know you didn't kill the madam, or torch the Arsenal for that matter. But you saw the people who did, didn't you? You were at the docks and you knew enough about the business of burning to realise what the people down there were up to, didn't you, Pearman? Who were they?"

 "Dying," said Pearman. "It's ­ cholera, I brought them to ­ this. They'll attack ­ again."

 "You're not in India, Pearman. This is London, London, look into my eyes, focus on me. The people you saw at the docks murdered you. They killed the whore and put the blame on you."

 "The sepoys ­ all deserted."

 "You're home, Pearman, look at me, the mutiny ended seven years ago. Who was at the docks? Who did you see?"

 "Sepoys," screamed the arsonist, his face contorting as his spine gave a final twist. The burner lay dead in the snow.

 "Damn."

 D'Corsair got up and advanced on the crowd, grabbing the coat of a local. "Who told you that Pearman killed the Fat Lady?"

 "Leave off mate, everyone knows he did it, it was all over the town."

 Releasing the man, D'Corsair grabbed another artisan. "Who told you?"

 "Everyone was talking about it here, everyone" protested the local, then he stopped to think. "But it was 'im that first came into the tap-room to tell us about it."

 He pointed at a figure in a derby cap at the other end of the street.

 "That's the one, Mr Hackwell," D'Corsair shouted to the constable, pushing his way through the crowd. More people were filling the street, voyeurs for the grisly sight spilling out of gin houses and tenements as word spread. Both men weaved their way through the mob then trotted over to the wall, but the fellow had vanished into the night.

 "By Jesus, but our Jack the Hat left fast enough," Hackwell said, peering into the warrens surrounding them. Dozens of interconnecting passages and runs spread out from the crossroad.

 "So would you, if you were the real killer. And these fools just tossed our best lead out into the street for him. Did the bastard see us following his trail?"

 "No. But I seen him from somewhere, seen his face, I'm sure of it."

 D'Corsair placed his hand on the young constable's shoulder. "Think, man,where? Apart from a few square miles of smouldering wharfs, that Jack's our only link with the Fraternity."

 "I'm not sure, sir, but I think we might have picked him up at one of the match workers' troubles last year, when they were campaigning for an official recognition of their labour. We didn't take down his particulars because he was only a suspected agitator, but he was Irish, a bunch of them were, working on the tunnel at Woolwich at the time and coming in to start fights over any colleen that even smiled in their direction."

 "That memory's going to serve you well on the force, Mr Hackwell. But the saints save us from the fighting Irish," D'Corsair tapped his cane on the ground with irritation. "Well, if there's anyone with a natural tendency for anarchism, it's that accursed race. If the Fraternity are recruiting over the water, it'll be a bloody big army we're facing when the revolution comes."

 "If the fellows we cracked truncheons over were anything to go by, sir, I doubt their army could stay in the field longer than a week without scrapping among each other."

 D'Corsair passed a wedge of Bank of England notes across to the constable. "Go home, lad, assuage Mrs Hackwell about your night spent prowling the dens of Whitechapel."

 The Peeler quickly tucked the bankroll away into his jacket. "Any assistance you or your friends might need in the future, Inspector, you feel free to ask for Thomas. I'm at the station at Stepney."

 D'Corsair glanced back down the street at the corpse, the last breath of Pearman's body already misting the air. In the cold mountains of the east, villagers said such sights were the soul returning to heaven. D'Corsair walked away. In the squalor of the rookeries, perhaps even arsonists had souls.


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These two novels are still unpublished. Interested publishers can contact my agent, Maggie Noagh, to bid for these (same agent who represents Stephen Baxter etc).

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