What the h.e.l.l? A-a stilt-walker?

Tall, loose-limbed, bouncing on what seemed to be spring-loaded stilts, it stopped just ahead of the constable, who stumbled and fell to his knees.

"Stop, Edward!" the weird apparition bellowed.

A bolt of lightning shot from its side into the ground and the lean figure staggered, groaning and clutching at itself.

Below, the two struggling men turned and looked up.

A puff of smoke from the pistol.

Blood spraying from Queen Victoria's head.

"Merciful heaven!" gasped Trounce.

A detonation echoing away over the park; rippling into the distance, taking with it the consequences of the heinous act; history, quite literally, in the making; expanding outward to envelop the Empire.

"No," groaned the stilt-walker. "No!"

It turned and Trounce saw the face: crazy eyes, a thin blade of a nose, a mouth stretched into a rictus grin, drawn and lined features, pale beneath a sheen of sweat, twisted in agony.

The thing was wearing a big round black helmet and a black cloak beneath which there was a white, tight-fitting bodysuit. Some sort of flat lantern hung on the chest, spitting fire. There were scorch marks on the material around it.

The odd figure bobbed on the short stilts then bounded forward and leaped right over the police constable's head.

Trounce toppled onto the gra.s.s, rolled over, and looked behind him. The costumed figure was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished.

Christ Almighty. Christ Almighty.

Screams.

Trounce looked down the slope.

Victoria had flopped backward out of the carriage onto the ground. Her husband was scrambling after her.

The a.s.sa.s.sin was still struggling with the other man but, as Trounce watched, the gunman was suddenly thrown off his feet by his a.s.sailant. His head hit the low wrought-iron fence that bordered the path. He went limp and lay still.

The crowd surged around the royal carriage. The outriders plunged through the throng and attempted to hold the panicked people back, away from the stricken monarch. A police whistle blew frantically.

That's me, thought Trounce. That's me blowing the whistle.

A figure detached itself from the mob and started running across the park, northwestward, heading for Piccadilly.

It was the man who'd grappled with the a.s.sa.s.sin.

Trounce took off in pursuit. It seemed the right thing to do.

The thought occurred to him that police-issue boots were ill designed for running.

"For goodness' sake!" he gasped to himself. "Concentrate!"

He raced past the outriders.

A dazed young man, squinting through a monocle, wandered into his path and Trounce barrelled into him, shoving him aside with a curse.

His quarry angled up a slope and disappeared into the heavily wooded upper corner of the park. Trounce grunted with satisfaction; he knew there was a high wall behind those trees.

He was breathing heavily and had a st.i.tch in his side by the time he got to the edge of the woods. He stopped there, gulping air, eyeing the gloomy s.p.a.ces beneath the boughs, listening for movement.

Distant screams and shouts were sounding from behind him. Police whistles were blasting from different points around the park as constables converged on the scene.

A rustle came from the trees. A movement.

Trounce took hold of his truncheon.

"Step out into the open, sir!" he commanded. "I saw what happened; there's nothing to worry about. Come on, let's be having you!"

No reply.

"Sir! I saw you trying to protect the queen. I just need you to-"

There was a flurry of leaves, and suddenly Trounce found himself confronted by the stilt-walking man again, leaping out of the thicket.

Taken by surprise, Trounce stepped back, lost his footing, and fell onto his bottom.

"How-how-?" he stuttered.

The thing phantom, devil, illusion, whatever it was-crouched as if to spring.

Reflexively, Trounce whipped his arm back and hurled his truncheon at it. The club struck the creature in the chest, hitting the lamplike object affixed there. Fiery sparks erupted and rained onto the gra.s.s. The apparition stumbled.

"d.a.m.n!" it cursed in a clear human voice, then turned and sprang to the constable's right, leaping away in huge bounds.

Trounce got to his feet and watched the thing heading eastward. It took a ma.s.sive leap into the air and, twenty feet above the ground, winked out of existence. The air seemed to fold around it.

Trounce stood, his arms dangling at his sides, his mouth open and his eyes wide.

A minute pa.s.sed before, as if waking from a dream, he roused himself and looked down the sloping gra.s.s to the royal carriage. Then he looked back at the thicket. His quarry-the man who had tackled the a.s.sa.s.sin-must still be in there somewhere.

He entered the trees and began to search, calling, "There's no point hiding, sir. Please show yourselfl"

Ten minutes later he admitted defeat. He'd found a top hat lying on the ground, but that was all. The man had escaped.

He trudged down the slope toward the chaotic scene below, his mind blank.

Other constables had arrived and were pushing the growing crowd back, helped by the queen's outriders.

Trounce pushed past the onlookers-some silent, some sobbing, some talking in hushed tones, some shouting or screaming-and crossed to where the a.s.sa.s.sin lay. The man's head was pinned to the top of the low railings, held at an awkward angle, the spike of an upright projecting from his left eye, blood pooling beneath. It was a grisly sight.

Two flintlocks lay on the ground nearby.

Odd, thought Trounce, the way the a.s.sa.s.sin and the man who tried to stop him looked so alike.

He found himself standing helpless, unable to do anything, his mind numbed.

Off to his left, a moustachioed man was calmly watching the scene with a smile on his face. A smile!

A memory stirred. A case he'd read about from two or three years ago; something concerning a girl being attacked by-by a ghost which escaped by taking prodigious leaps-by a thing that breathed fire-by a creature known as-Spring Heeled Jack!

THE BIf~TH OF THE LI13EI~TINES We will not define ourselves by the ideals you enforce.

We scorn the social att.i.tudes that you perpetuate.

We neither respect nor conform with the views of our elders.

We think and act against the tides of popular opinion.

We sneer at your dogma. We laugh at your rules.

We are anarchy. We are chaos. We are individuals.

We are the Rakes.

-PROM THE RAKE MANIFESTO.

-he candle guttered and died, sending a coil of smoke toward the high ceiling.

The two men allowed a silence to stretch between them.

Detective Inspector Trounce broke it: "They said I panicked and ran away from the scene," he murmured. "Said that my claim to have seen Spring Heeled Jack was merely an attempt to justify my 'moment of cowardice.' Had it not been for the fact that I was wet behind the ears-I'd only been on active duty for a fortnight-they would've drummed me out of the force. As it was, I was laughed at, taunted, and pa.s.sed over for promotion for more than a decade. I had to prove myself again and again; earn respect the hard way. They have long memories here in the Yard, Captain Burton. They still call me 'Pouncer Trounce,' and there are whisperings from certain quarters even all these years later."

"You mentioned someone named Honesty?" asked Burton.

"Detective Inspector Honesty. Not a bad man by any stretch, but unimaginative-a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. He has the ear of the chief commissioner and neither of them has time for what they regard as my hysterical fantasy."

"No one understands your situation better than I," said Burton, sympa thetically. "I am 'Blackguard Burton' or 'Ruffian d.i.c.k'-or far worse-to many, all because of a report I wrote in Karachi, just five years after the death of Victoria. A report written, I should add, in response to a direct order."

Trounce grunted. "When a man gets a stain on his character-justified or not-it doesn't wash off." He drained his coffee cup and took a couple of cigars from a box on his desk, offering one to his visitor, which the explorer accepted, cut, and lit. Trounce put a match to his own and threw the lucifer into the fireplace without bothering to relight the candle. The Yard man sat back, and his eyes glittered through the smoke.

Burton knew he was being weighed up, and he was well aware that, generally, men-but definitely not women-tended to react negatively to his heavy jaw and hard chin, smouldering eyes and permanent glower. Maybe the detective was comparing his battered features to those of a desperado, or a prizefighter, or maybe even an arch-criminal.

Yet as their gazes locked, the king's agent saw an appreciative twinkle appear in the eyes of the man opposite, and he realised that Trounce had penetrated his gruff exterior, that he was seeing something of Burton's "inner man."

He seemed to approve.

"Anyway," the detective continued, "after the events of that day, I was suspended from duty for a month and played no part in the subsequent investigation. As you know, of course, the man-"

"Just a moment, Detective Inspector," interrupted Burton, holding up his hand. "The a.s.sa.s.sination was some twenty years ago and, like you, I was eighteen years old at the time; just enrolling into Oxford University, as a matter of fact. Unlike you, I wasn't at the scene or even in the country and received the news of Victoria's death 'over the grapevine,' as it were. The facts of the investigation, as they emerged and were reported in the newspapers, were spread out over a period of weeks. I cannot claim to have read them all and, besides, my memory needs refreshing. So please make no a.s.sumptions about my knowledge, unless it is to a.s.sume that I know nothing at all."

Trounce gave a curt and appreciative nod of his head.

"Understood, Captain. The man who wrestled with the a.s.sa.s.sin after he fired the first shot, which missed the queen, was never found. The newspapers christened him the 'Mystery Hero.' I have always been convinced that he was somehow related to the shootist-their physical resemblance was remarkable-but, unfortunately, my superiors didn't place much stock in my impressions from that day; few other witnesses noted the likeness; and, besides, all the gunman's relatives were traced and questioned and the man was not among them.

"As for the a.s.sa.s.sin himself: Edward Oxford was born in Birmingham in 1822, one of seven children. His father was a brutal alcoholic who beat his wife and children on an almost daily basis. He was eventually certified insane and committed to an asylum where he died after choking on his own tongue during a fit of some sort. The grandfather, incidentally, had also been a lunatic.

"His mother, Hannah, separated from her husband when Edward was seven years old. She moved with the boy and one of his sisters to Lambeth where, after the lad completed his schooling, he began working as a barman in various public houses, including the Hat and Feathers, which is on the corner of Green Dragon Alley."

"Ah-ha! So you have a connection between Oxford and Spring Heeled Jack, aside from the a.s.sa.s.sination, I mean!" exclaimed Burton, his eyes gleaming.

"Yes. At the time of the Lucy Scales incident, Oxford was working in the pub; he was actually behind the bar when the encounter was taking place around the corner. Apparently, when he heard about the attack he began to laugh hysterically and had to be restrained and sedated by a doctor."

"Interesting. Pray continue, Inspector."

"Oxford was still living with his mother and sister in lodgings at West Place, West Square, Lambeth. By 1840, he was the potboy at the Hog in the Pound on Oxford Street but in May of that year he quit the job. On the fourth, he bought a pair of pistols from an old school friend for the sum of two pounds, and for the next four weeks he practised with them at various shooting galleries around London. These were the weapons with which, the following month, he killed Queen Victoria."

"His motive?" asked Burton.

"In his room there were found papers he'd written in order to suggest that he was a member of a secret society ent.i.tled 'Young England' but these were proven to be nothing but the rantings of a sick mind. No such group existed. Edward Oxford was insane, there's no doubt of it. He was known to occasionally cry for no apparent reason and to talk incoherent nonsense. The Lucy Scales incident definitely triggered a deterioration in his mental state.

"He often stated, according to his a.s.sociates, that he wanted to be remembered throughout history. It was his pet obsession. The Yard detectives concluded that his motive was simply to achieve that fame-or, rather, infamy.

"The police investigation ended there. My colleagues were satisfied that a madman shot the queen and was then himself killed by an unknown person. With the subsequent onset of the const.i.tutional crisis and widespread social unrest, the police had more to worry about than tracing the Mystery Hero, who, as far as most were concerned, had done the country a favour by saving it the cost of a hanging."

"But you weren't satisfied," suggested Burton, shrewdly.

"Not a bit. I kept digging. The coincidence of Edward Oxford being around the corner when Lucy Scales was attacked was too much for me to swallow. So I started searching for more connections between him and Spring Heeled Jack."

"And found them?"

"Yes. After the death of Victoria, the Hog in the Pound gained a measure of notoriety thanks to Oxford having worked there. It immediately became the regular drinking hole for a group of young aristocrats who reckoned themselves philosophers; their philosophy being that mankind is shackled in chains of its own making."

"The Libertine philosophy."

"Exactly. The Hog in the Pound is where the Libertine movement began."

"So the Mad Marquess was among the young aristocrats?"

"Yes. What do you know about him?"

"Just the reputation. And that he was the man who founded the Libertine movement."

"The bad reputation!"

"Even worse than mine, apparently." Burton smiled.