The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure)

by Mark Hodder

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Burton replied.

  The carriage departed. Swinburne, throwing out his arms, twirled on the spot and laughed, “A red garden! London has become a red garden! Ouch! I say! Keep that blasted dog away from my feet, will you?”

  “Sorry,” Burton said.

  They picked their way along the street, stepping through tangled growth, rounded a corner, and passed the fire-damaged skeleton of a tenement building.

  They stopped. They stared.

  The ruined Cauldron lay ahead.

  Burton had expected to see a great plain of ash from which the stumps of burned buildings jutted. Instead, he saw a thick jungle of the brightest reds.

  “My hat!” Swinburne whispered. “How has it grown so fast? We’ll never find Spruce among that lot!”

  Burton cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Spruce! I say! Spruce! Are you there?”

  After a moment, a faint voice sounded. “Hallo! Who’s that?”

  “I’m Burton! Where are you, old chap?”

  “Over here!”

  “Where?”

  “Here!”

  “Keep calling, we’ll join you!”

  They moved forward with Fidget squeezing through the undergrowth beside them. After a few steps, the plants closed overhead and progress became difficult.

  “We?” came a faint cry. “We who?”

  “I’m with the poet Algernon Swinburne!” Burton pushed into a tangle of leaves and twisting branches, exotic blooms and weird gourd-like fruits. Swinburne reached out and touched one of the latter. “Fruiting after just a few hours? I feel like I’m dreaming.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the king’s agent agreed. “Not even in Africa.”

  “Poet?” Spruce cried out. He sounded closer.

  “Seeking inspiration!” Swinburne called. “I’m writing a verse entitled ‘O Pruning Shears, Wherefore Art Thou When I Need Thee?’”

  The chuckled response was plainly audible, and the next moment they broke through into a clearing and saw Spruce standing in its centre. “Hallo, Sir Richard, Mr. Swinburne.”

  Spruce was a long-limbed fellow with curly but receding hair and a beard peppered with grey. His manner, as he shook their hands, was friendly but reserved, his eyes evading theirs in a fashion that struck Burton as diffident rather than shifty.

  “What do you make of it, old chap?” the king’s agent asked. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

  “Not at all. It’s utterly fantastic. The rate of growth is simply staggering, yet the species—whatever it is—appears more suited to the humidity and heat of central Africa than to a cold British winter.”

  “Is that where the seeds have come from?”

  “I would say so.”

  Spruce squatted and gestured for Burton and Swinburne to follow him down. The latter manoeuvred carefully to ensure that his buttocks were facing away from Fidget.

  Spruce said, “Look at this.” He used his right hand to scrape away snow until a layer of ash was revealed, then dug a little more, exposing a tangle of thin white roots.

  “It has a fibrous and propagative root system with a plenitude of rhizomes, so that while one plant may sprout from the seed, a great many more will then sprout from the expanding roots. But here’s the peculiar thing—” Spruce dug at the ash until he’d made a shallow trench between the trunks of two tall, thick bushes. “Do you see what I mean?”

  Burton examined the exposed roots. “As you said, both plants have grown from a single artery.”

  “Ah,” Spruce responded. “That’s the thing. These particular ones haven’t. I can see from their stage of development that they were both seedlings.”

  Burton used his forefinger to trace the path of one particular root. “But this joins them.”

  “Exactly. Every seed-born plant has extended roots to its fellows, and those roots have merged with one another. It’s almost as if all of this—” He stood and held his arms out to encompass all the verdure, “is a single organism.”

  Swinburne asked, “And its growth? Have you an explanation? A theory?”

  “None. Were I not witnessing it with my own eyes, I should say it’s impossible. All this—in two days!”

  Burton turned and gazed at the leaves, flowers and fruits.

  Spruce asked, “Did you encounter anything like it during your expedition to the Central Lakes?”

  “Nothing close,” Burton answered. “Nothing even with this hue.”

  “Then, if you’ll pardon the question, why are you here, Sir Richard? I wasn’t aware that you counted botany among your interests.”

  “I’m a hobbyist, nothing more, but this phenomenon is so thoroughly outré that it’s piqued my curiosity.”

  “I can certainly understand that.”

  “If you find out anything more, would you let me know? I live at fourteen Montagu Place.”

  “For sure.”

  “Thank you. We’ll not interrupt your research any further.”

  After bidding the botanist farewell, Burton, Swinburne and Fidget headed back the way they’d come.

  “We didn’t learn much,” Swinburne ruminated. “What now?”

  “We’ll drop in on my pharmacist, Mr. Shudders.”

  “Why?”

  “He supplies me with Saltzmann’s Tincture.”

  Swinburne screeched, “What? What? What? The drug Sadhvi Raghavendra has repeatedly warned you against is sold by a man named Shudders—and still you gulp it down? I think you might be the most ridiculous fellow I’ve ever met!”

  “That, Algernon, is because, unlike me, you’ve never had the advantage of encountering yourself.”

  “But—for crying out loud!—you’re buying more of the foul poison? Your addiction is beyond the bounds! Must I gather the Cannibals and have them help me lock you away until the dependency has passed?”

  “I simply want to know where he gets the tincture from.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think it’s the cause of my visits to variant histories.”

  Burton and Swinburne emerged from the jungle-swathed Cauldron and strode westward along Leadenhall Street toward Cheapside. Fidget jogged along beside them, panting, his tongue flapping and his nose twitching as he detected a myriad of enthralling odours.

  Swinburne asked, “Why do you think Saltzmann’s the source of your hallucinations?”

  “I’ve told you, Algy, they’re not hallucinations. Initially, I thought the first incident was caused by my run-in with Spring Heeled Jack, but I took the tincture right afterward, and the next time I drank it, the second incident occurred. On that occasion, Jack wasn’t involved.”

  At the Bank of England they flagged down a landau.

  “Oxford Street,” Burton directed.

  They boarded, and the carriage got moving.

  In contrast to their journey to the Cauldron, their ride away from it was conducted in silence. Burton was pondering the disparate mysteries, while Swinburne was fuming about his friend’s dangerous addiction.

  By the time they disembarked, it was snowing again, albeit lightly.

  Swinburne jammed his floppy hat onto his springy hair, wound his long scarf around his neck, and dodged away from Fidget’s eager teeth.

  “That’s the place,” Burton said, pointing a little way ahead.

  Despite the weather, the famous thoroughfare was crowded, and they had to push through the milling pedestrians, hawkers and ne’er-do-wells to reach the pharmacy. They entered. A bell clanked over the door. In response to it, an individual emerged from a back room and stood behind the counter. He was a lanky, grey haired, gaunt-faced and terribly stooped old man, wrapped in a thick coat and with fingerless woollen gloves on his hands.

  “Good afternoon, Sir Richard,” he said in a voice that sounded like creaking wood.

  “Hello, Mr. Shudders,” Burton said. “How’s business?”

  “Mustn’t grumble. Mustn’t grumble. Can I be o
f service? Saltzmann’s, is it? My stock is low, but I think I have two or three bottles remaining.”

  “No,” Burton replied, “I have sufficient, but could you tell me where it comes from?”

  “The supplier? Locks Limited, sir.”

  “And where is that located?”

  Shudders pushed out his lips, tugged at his right ear, and squinted his eyes. “I don’t rightly know. I started selling the tincture some five years ago after being approached by a company representative. Other than that youth—”

  “Youth?” Burton interrupted.

  “Why, yes, a very young man. He convinced me of the efficaciousness of the potion and left with me a case of bottles, promising to deliver more if I sold them.”

  “Which you did?”

  “The very next day. As a matter of fact, it was you who purchased them, and where they are concerned, you’ve been my principal customer.”

  “Have I indeed?” Burton tried to remember how he’d become acquainted with Saltzmann’s. His normally excellent memory failed him. That, in itself, filled him with suspicion.

  “By what method are the bottles delivered?” he asked.

  “Whenever my stock is low, a wagon brings a new box and I pay for it on the spot.”

  Swinburne interjected, “But how do you inform them when you’re running out?”

  “I never have to. They always turn up at just the right time.”

  “And you only have two or three bottles left,” Burton noted. “Which means you’re expecting another delivery soon?”

  “Yes. Later today or tomorrow, I should think.”

  The king’s agent pondered this for a moment. “Do they stop in the street?”

  “No. There’s a delivery yard out back.”

  “Mr. Shudders, for reasons I cannot go into, I have to investigate Locks Limited. Can I count on your cooperation?”

  The pharmacist looked worried and wrung his hands. “Has there been some problem with the tincture, sir? Should I stop selling it?”

  “No problem other than the mystery of its ingredients. Concerns have been raised that it might be extremely addictive.”

  “So is laudanum, but there’s no law against selling that. I don’t think I’m in the wrong.”

  “Nor am I accusing you. I’m intrigued, that is all.”

  “Ah, well then. What can I do?”

  “Do you happen to stock extract of anise?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I’d like to purchase a bottle. Will you then show us the back yard?”

  The decoction was handed over, and a minute later, after Burton had secured Fidget’s lead to a chair in the shop, Shudders ushered the two men out of the back door and into a small cobbled area that opened onto an alleyway leading into Poland Street. It had been swept clean of snow, though a very thin layer had formed upon it since. Red flowers crowded around its edges.

  “The wagon comes right into the yard?” Burton asked.

  He received an affirmation.

  “Are you expecting any other deliveries beside the one from Locks?”

  Shudders shook his head. “Not until next Tuesday.”

  Burton gave a grunt of satisfaction. He stepped across the yard, uncorked the bottle, and started to spill the gooey liquid onto the ground, dribbling it in a wide arc just inside the gate.

  Shudders, blowing on his fingertips to warm them, looked on curiously.

  When the bottle was empty, Burton returned to the pharmacist. “The moment the delivery is made, will you get word to me? You know my address.”

  “Very well, Sir Richard. But what—?”

  “I have my methods,” Burton responded.

  Shudders swallowed nervously and looked perplexed.

  Swinburne grinned.

  They bid the pharmacist farewell and left the shop.

  Burton turned up his collar and looked at the darkening sky. “These short winter days make me long for Africa, Algy. Do you think this horrible climate is responsible for the British imperative for expansion? Is our empire built upon drizzle and chill?”

  “It’s a credible proposition,” the poet replied. “At least, when held against that which suggests a tonic could send a man to witness a specific event in other histories. Great heavens, Richard! Saltzmann’s is a sauce, not a sorcerer!”

  “Where that mystery is concerned, I hope we’ve just placed a key in the Lock.”

  “Ouch! Balderdash for mains and the worst kind of quippery for afters!” Swinburne complained.

  “On which note, I intend to work up an appetite by walking home, where I shall await word from Krishnamurthy and Bhatti. Let us see whether old Babbage has cast any light on our various mysteries.”

  “If you ask me, he’s just as likely to conjure up new confusions as he is to provide answers. The man is as mad as a March hare and becoming madder by the moment.” Swinburne jerked the end of his scarf from between Fidget’s teeth and wrapped an extra loop around his neck. “I shall call upon you tomorrow morning.” He took his leave and was quickly lost from view among the milling pedestrians, though Burton could hear him screeching for a cab.

  The king’s agent set off toward the end of Baker Street. The freshly lit street lamps were each forming a nimbus in the falling snow, and the hunched metal backs of street-crabs glimmered in the illumination as they clanked along the busy thoroughfare. The gutters, filled with a mulch of trodden and crushed snow and flowers, looked to be running with blood, which, together with the rapidly blackening sky and the uncannily rubicund quality of the light, gave everything a thoroughly infernal appearance.

  Through it, Burton strode, his demonic features attracting disapproving and rather fearful glances from the more well-heeled passersby. To them, his gentleman’s clothes were an incongruous affectation, as if a tiger had adorned itself with lace. He glowered back, silently railing against the judgements of so-called civilised society.

  His mania for exploration had been steadily increasing these past few days. Restlessness boiled within. London was a confinement, its social rituals a bore. He yearned for the fresh stimuli of exotic lands.

  However, he also sensed that events were accumulating around him and fast reaching a tipping point. This unnerved him, yet he also welcomed it. If there was an enemy, he wanted it out in the open. He wanted battle to commence.

  “Come on,” he whispered. “Show yourself.”

  Unfamiliar horizons or an implacable foe, either would suffice to fill the absence that gnawed at his heart, anything to distract him from the fact of Isabel’s death.

  He tipped his hat to Mr. Grub at the corner of Montagu Place and Gloucester Place, and a few paces later arrived home. Bram Stoker greeted him in the hallway. Burton said to him, “I have a job for you, young ’un.”

  As member of the Whispering Web—a remarkable communications system comprised of the empire’s millions of orphans, ragamuffins and street Arabs—Stoker was able to send a message that, by word of mouth, would reach its destination with greater rapidity than the post office could offer. He also had access to a repository of practical knowledge that, in its field, was the equivalent to anything held in the British Library or British Museum.

  “Sir?”

  Burton divested himself of hat and coat.

  “I need the location of a company called Locks Limited.”

  “Shouldn’t take long,” the youngster said. “I’ll get the boys onto it at once.”

  “Good lad.”

  While Stoker slipped into his outdoor clothing, Burton went up to his study, lit its lamps, threw himself into his chair in front of the fireplace, rested his feet on the fender, lit a cheroot, and smoked.

  He thought about Saltzmann’s Tincture. He’d first used it five years ago during his initial foray into Africa. More recently, it had sustained him throughout his search for the source of the Nile, keeping malaria at bay until the final days of the expedition, when he’d finally succumbed. It was only since last November that his reliance on t
he potion had spun out of control, with him requiring larger and larger doses to smooth his jagged emotions and blunt the sharp edge of grief. Usage had become a dependency. The dependency had become an addiction.

  He sighed and massaged his forehead with his fingertips.

  Idiot, Burton. Idiot.

  He considered the enhanced awareness the tincture instilled—the almost overwhelming cognisance that countless possible consequences extended outward from every circumstance—and realised the liquid had endowed him with this enriched perception even before he’d been made the king’s agent, before he’d learned of the innumerable contemporaneous histories.

  The correlation between the medicine’s effects and his current knowledge couldn’t be ignored.

  “Mr. Shudders,” he muttered. “Are you really a straightforward pharmacist, or maybe something more?”

  An hour and a half later, there came a light tap at the door and, in response to Burton’s hail, Stoker entered. Fidget padded in beside him, crossed the floor, collapsed onto the hearthrug, and started snoring.

  “Hallo, young ’un,” Burton said. “Did you find any answers?”

  “To be sure, sir. There’s four companies what is called Locks Limited, an’ it ain’t no surprise that two of ’ em make locks. Of t’other two, one supplies materials to the building trade, an’ one sells pianos.”

  “None providing pharmaceuticals as a sideline, then?”

  “It’s unlikely, so it is.”

  “Thank you, lad.”

  Stoker gave a nod and left the room.

  Burton spent the next hour meditating. He allowed his thoughts to roam freely, dwelling for a time on this, for a while on that, following paths that trailed into nowhere, and others that led to the peripheries of an idea until, from the meanderings, the vaguest glimmer of a form emerged; the ghost of an incomplete conception.

  Multiple Babbages. Multiple time suits. A single moment. A synchronous act.

  On this he dwelled, neither judging nor accepting, but simply observing as one notion clicked into place beside another.

  The grandfather clock in the hallway below, as if encouraging his nascent revelation, chimed nine.

  A detonation rattled the windows.