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“He’s utterly Italian,” Swinburne corrected.
“The same bloody difference, if you ask me.”
“Has something occurred?” Burton asked.
Trounce, thickset and blunt in features, with a wide snow-speckled brown moustache and bright-blue eyes, threw out his hands. “I’ve not been here ten minutes. My mind is still befuddled by this freakish red stuff. Now it appears I have to deal with a costumed intruder playing silly beggars, too.”
Bartolini shook a fist at Burton and cried out, “Ha
Burton glanced beyond Bartolini and waved for Monckton Milnes to come over. He then held up his palms at the dark and slightly built Italian and said, “Per favore, signore, fidati di me—trust me—whatever has happened, I had nothing to do with it. Tell me. An intruder?”
“Un fantasma! It crash into my ristorante. It call for you! Smash! Smash! Throwing the tables and the chairs, and it shouting all the time, Where is Burton? Where is Burton? Through the sala da pranzo it run, and up the stairs to your friends. Where is Burton? Where is Burton? Then back down again and—meno male!—out and away!”
“Fantasma?”
Monckton Milnes arrived, took Burton by the arm, and said to the others, “Pardon me, gentlemen.” He pulled the king’s agent aside and murmured, “It was Spring Heeled Jack, Richard. No doubt about it. The hellish thing burst in on us and demanded to know where you were, then bounced away on its stilts. It frightened us all witless.”
For a moment, Burton’s mind froze. It wasn’t possible! He coughed to clear his throat. “Just now?”
“About forty minutes ago. We called a constable, and he gathered some of his fellows. They’re scouring the area in search of the monster.”
Burton frowned, took off his top hat, banged snow from its brim, and put it back on. “Spring Heeled Jack? Are you certain? Describe it.”
“It resembled a naked man, tall and rangy in build, but it was entirely white and featureless. No hair, eyes, nose, ears, or mouth. No fingernails. No genitals.”
“Helmet and cloak?”
“Not at all.”
“A disk on its chest?”
“No adornments or clothes to speak of.”
“But it was raised on spring-loaded stilts? So it was wearing boots?”
“No. The stilts appeared to grow straight out its heels, an extension of them.”
Burton raised his fingers to his chin, feeling the tuft of hair that grew in its cleft. “Yet, despite the lack of a mouth, it spoke?”
“Shouted like a madman. Bradlaugh practically fainted with the shock of it.”
“Why did Bartolini think it was me?”
“Tom Bendyshe’s fault. You know how he enjoys a good jape. His first assumption was that you’d decided to put the wind up us, and Bartolini cottoned onto it. He can’t decide whether it was you dressed up or a ghost.”
Burton gazed into the gradually thi
He briefly gripped Monckton Milnes by the elbow before striding back to Bartolini. “Signor, please accept that this was none of my doing nor, I am sure, that of anyone with whom I’m acquainted.”
The Italian gave a wide, exaggerated shrug. “If you say it, I believe it. But what was it? Why have the neve rossa bring it here?”
“The red snow?”
“Sì! It start to fall and, immediatamente, il fantasma come crash crash crash into my ristorante!”
“Wait. What? The snow and the intruder arrived simultaneously?”
“Sì! Sì!”
“I’m at a loss, but I shall endeavour to get to the bottom of it.” Burton touched two fingers to his hat and returned to where Monckton Milnes had joined Swinburne and Trounce. “Both at nine o’clock! Scarlet snow and Spring Heeled Jack.”
The detective inspector cupped his hands and blew into them to warm his fingers. “Lord help me, are we faced with another of your damnable affairs?”
“My affairs, Trounce?”
“More king’s agent ballyhoo.”
“Ah, I see. I don’t know, but if Bartolini’s was really invaded by Spring Heeled Jack, then I fear we might be.”
They joined the other Ca
“The devil himself was among us!” Bendyshe trumpeted. His voice was never less than stentorian. “Gad, what a horror!”
“You should have seen it, Richard,” Henry Murray said. “A ghost? A mechanism? I’m utterly flummoxed.”
“I thought it was a man in a costume,” Sir Charles Bradlaugh added. He put a finger to his right cheek, which was darkly bruised. “But when the thing shoved me aside—the feel of it!”
“What do you mean?” Burton asked.
“Like fish skin but solid and waxy.” Bradlaugh shuddered. “Hard. Not clothing at all.”
And calling for me. Why?
As if reading his thoughts, Bendyshe cried out, “I say, old horse, we all know you’ve been up to your devilish eyebrows in some bizarre business recently, but this takes the biscuit! Care to explain?”
“I can’t, Tom,” Burton responded. “I have no notion what the apparition was or why it was searching for me. Would you excuse me for a moment?” He addressed Trounce. “I need to know where it went.”
Trounce pointed to a constable who was moving among the gathered crowd. “There’s Honesty. He was with the men who chased after it.”
Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce strode over to P. C. Thomas Honesty, a wiry and dapper man with immaculately trimmed eyebrows and an extravagantly curled moustache. Only a few months previously, he’d been the groundsman at New Wardour Castle, the seat of Isabel Arundell’s family. After the events that led to her death, he’d joined the Police Force and, on government orders, had been rushed through training.
Burton hailed him. “Hallo, Tom!”
Honesty saluted. “Sir! Strange night. Snow. Stilt man.”
“Strange is the word. It’s been a while since I saw you, old fellow. Has your wife joined you in London? Are you settled?”
“We are. Nice little place in Hammersmith. Baby on the way.”
“My good man! Congratulations!”
Honesty accepted a handshake then pointed to the side of the square opposite Bartolini’s. “Consensus is, the phantom jumped down from the rooftops over there.”
“Phantom?” Swinburne queried.
“Or whatever it was.”
Burton said, “Judging by the mark on Bradlaugh’s cheek, it was rather too substantial to qualify as a spook.”
As if it had been adjusted via a control, the snowfall suddenly slowed and thi
The men surveyed the square.
“Looks like an iced cake,” Trounce murmured.
Honesty nodded his helmeted head in the direction of Charing Cross Road. “Made off in that direction. We chased. Too fast. Lost it.” His eyes widened. He gave out a strangled yelp and pointed. “There! It’s back!”
Burton whirled in time to see a figure apparently falling from the sky. Its stilts hit the ground and slipped from beneath it. The apparition crashed down onto its side, scrabbling wildly in the snow, limbs flailing. It howled—its voice filled with despair.
Someone shouted, “Bloody hell! What is it?”
The creature gained its feet, shrieked wordlessly, then cried out, “Prime Minister, where are you? Please! Where are you? Guide me! Guide me!”
The crowd outside Bartolini’s screamed and scattered.
Shaking its head as if to clear it, the stilted man raised its featureless face to the sky and yelled, “Burton! Burton!”
“Here!” the king’s agent called, striding forward. He drew the rapier from his silver-handled swordstick.
Spring Heeled Jack—Burton couldn’t think of it as anything else—crouched and turned toward him. “Sir Richard Francis bloody Burton.”