The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi

  “Bloody impossible! It makes no damned sense at all!”

  His vehicle angled into the ground, hit it hard, slithered over grass, slammed into the horizontal slab of a grave, and toppled onto its side. The wings broke off with a loud report and went bouncing away. Burton was catapulted out, thudded onto the grass, rolled, and came to rest on his back.

  He lay still and looked up at the sky.

  “How?” he whispered. “How?”

  Staccato chopping cut through the air and Trounce’s rotorchair came into view. The detective must have looked back and seen him go down.

  Trounce landed, threw himself out of his vehicle, and raced over to Burton.

  “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  Burton looked up at him. “The numbers, Trounce! The bloody numbers!”

  “Numbers?”

  “On the rifle. One thousand, nine hundred and eighteen.”

  “So?”

  “One thousand. Nine hundred. Ten. Eight.”

  Trounce threw his hands into the air. “Did you bang your head? Get up, man! What are you jabbering about?”

  Burton didn’t reply.

  Oliphant. He had to see Oliphant.

  “To secure Damascus for us, I have to first undertake a task for the government. It is a highly confidential matter—I cannot tell even you what it involves, Isabel—and I’m afraid I must ask you to refrain from visiting. I may not be able to see you again until the first of November.”

  Burton, Isabel, and Blanche were in the St. James Hotel tea room for Saturday afternoon refreshments. They’d secured an isolated corner table, but, even so, Isabel’s reaction—a quavering cry of, “Seven weeks, Dick?”—drew disapproving stares and a tut or two from the other patrons. Heedlessly, she continued, “After being parted for so long, we must be separated again? This is unendurable!”

  He placed his hand over hers. “Lower your voice. The king himself has promised the consulship on this one condition. I’m confident I can complete the assignment by November, if not before. We’ve waited for so long, we can manage another few weeks, can’t we?”

  “But what is the nature of this business? Why must it prevent me from visiting?”

  Burton hesitated. He wasn’t certain why he was warning his fiancée away. Perhaps the suspicion that Montague Penniforth was keeping an eye on him? Or the feeling that, somehow, inexplicably, he was at the centre of the curious events that had occurred since his return?

  He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

  “I once told you how I was employed by Sir Charles Napier in India—”

  Blanche interrupted with a gasp and exclaimed, “How exciting! You’re a secret agent again, Richard!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say—”

  “No!” Isabel snapped. “I’ll not have that! Last time, it ruined your reputation. You’ll not risk everything you’ve achieved since.”

  Burton shook his head placatingly. “This is not at all the same sort of thing.”

  “Then what?”

  Blanche gave a huff of disapproval. “Really, sister! If Richard has been ordered to keep his lips sealed by the king himself then you have no right to subject him to an inquisition.”

  “I have every right! I’m to be his wife!”

  Burton’s eyes hardened. “In all truthfulness,” he said, “if I tell you more, I will be committing treason. Where then my reputation?”

  A tear trickled down Isabel’s cheek. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, covered her eyes, and emitted a quiet sob.

  “Please,” Burton said. “Don’t take on so. Consider that, with this one thing, Damascus is assured, and once we have that, we shall never be parted again.”

  Blanche added, “Remember how much we have to organise, Isabel. Why, we’ll be so occupied, the days will fly by.”

  Burton gave her a small nod of gratitude.

  Isabel dried her face. With downcast eyes, she said, in a hoarse whisper, “We should go up to our room now, Blanche. We have to pack our things.”

  “You’re leaving in the morning?” Burton asked.

  “Yes.”

  He stood and moved her chair out of the way as she rose and arranged her crinolines.

  She raised her watery eyes to his.

  “This commission you’ve been given—is there any danger associated with it?”

  “Not as far as I can see,” he answered. “It’s a complex matter and I don’t currently know how I should proceed with it, but one way or the other I’ll get the thing done, and will do so as quickly as possible.” He leaned forward and pecked her cheek. “We are nearly there, darling.”

  She smiled, though the tears were still welling. “I have waited, Dick, and I shall continue to wait. I have faith in God that He will make things right.”

  “Have faith in God, by all means, but have faith in me, too.”

  “I do.”

  With that, the Arundell sisters took their leave of him, carefully steered their wide skirts past the tables, and disappeared into the hotel. He watched them go and his heart sank. It dawned on him that everything he’d intended had skewed off-course and plunged into an impenetrable fog.

  “O, that a man might know,” he muttered, “the end of this day’s business ere it come!”

  It took until Monday to get the authorization for entry into Bedlam. Saturday and Sunday paralysed him with interminable emptiness. He found himself unable to work, research, or do anything else useful.

  “Rest!” Mrs. Angell insisted. “Eat! Get some colour back into your cheeks. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re driving yourself too hard, that much is plain to see.”

  He didn’t rest. He paced. One thousand, nine hundred, ten, and eight were etched into the front of his mind. He couldn’t stop fretting over them. He scribbled them down again and again.

  One thousand. Nine hundred. Ten. Eight.

  One thousand, nine hundred, and eighteen.

  They connected Stroyan’s murder with The Assassination. They cut a swathe through time and unfathomable events to tie Queen Victoria’s death, the recognition of the Great Amnesia, the advent of Abdu El Yezdi, and the beginning of the New Renaissance to what he himself had witnessed on the Orpheus; him, Burton, who two people claimed—impossibly!—to have seen on that terrible day in 1840.

  But how were the numbers connected—if they were at all—to the abductions? Was Burton looking at a jumble of disparate events or was there a pattern in there somewhere?

  He didn’t know—and if there was one thing he despised, it was not knowing.

  The governmental papers arrived in the week’s first post. Sir Richard Francis Burton was now, officially, a medical inspector named Gilbert Cribbins, with a specialism in institutions for the insane.

  He disguised himself with a brown wig, false beard, and cosmetic paint to conceal his facial scar, and by means of two omnibuses and a hansom cab travelled southeastward through the city, crossing Waterloo Bridge into Southwark. The district was crowded with tanneries, and in the hot weather the reek was so intense that it was all he could do to keep his breakfast down. By the time he arrived at Bethlem Royal Hospital, his eyes were stinging and his nose felt clogged.

  He knocked on the front gate—an imposing edifice of solid wood into which a smaller door was set—and jumped slightly when a letterbox-sized hatch slid open with a bang and a voice snapped, “What?”

  “Inspection.” He held his papers up to the small slot. “Government Medical Board. Let me in.”

  “Pass that to me.”

  Burton folded the papers in half and pushed them through to the guard. He waited, heard a muted expletive, then bolts scraped and clunked and the door swung a little way open.

  “Step in. Be quick about it.”

  Burton passed into the grounds of the asylum. He faced the guard. “My good man, as one of His Majesty’s medical inspectors, I require a little more respect, if you please.”

  The guard touched the peak of his
cap. “Sorry, sir. Just bein’ thorough. The escape has us all on edge.”

  “Escape?”

  “That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?”

  Burton lied. “Of course it is.”

  “If you’ll follow me, there’s a horse and trap by the guardhouse. I’ll take you to the warden.”

  The man guided Burton to a nearby outbuilding, gave him a hand up into a small carriage, then took the driver’s seat and set the vehicle moving. The hospital grounds were extensive and well tended, and as they passed along a winding gravel path toward the imposing asylum, Burton mused that, under normal circumstances, the wide lawns would probably be dotted with patients. Now, they were empty, the inmates confined to their cells.

  The trap ground to a halt in front of the entrance steps and Burton alighted. Without a word, the guard put his switch to the horse and set off back the way he’d come.

  The explorer checked that his beard was properly affixed, then climbed the steps, entered through the doors, and stopped a male attendant who was hurrying through the vestibule. The man stared at him in surprise and said, “I’m sorry, sir, you should have been turned away at the gate. We aren’t allowing visitors today.”

  “I’m not a visitor. I’m a medical inspector. Cribbins. And you?”

  “Nurse Bracegirdle. How can I help you, Mr. Cribbins?”

  “By fetching the warden. At once, please.”

  The attendant dithered. “Um. Um. Um. Er. Yes, of course. Would you, um, wait here?”

  He raced away, and, as he went, whispered to himself a little too loudly, “Oh no! Today of all days!”

  Burton was left alone. He looked around at the walls and saw stained paintwork, cracked plaster, and cobwebby corners. Rat droppings dotted the edges of the floor. The pervasive odour of unwashed bodies hung in the air.

  Three minutes passed, then a door burst open and a pale-faced, anxious-looking man hurried in. He had closely cropped grey hair, a small clipped moustache, and very widely set brown eyes. He strode over and shook Burton’s hand. “I’m Doctor Henry Monroe, the director of this establishment.”

  “Cribbins,” Burton responded.

  A nervous tic suddenly distorted Monroe’s mouth and pulled his head down to the right. He grunted, “Ugh!” then said, “I’m surprised to see you here, sir. My report into Mr. Galton’s escape was posted less than four hours ago.”

  “Galton, you say?” Burton exclaimed. “Francis Galton? The scientist?”

  Monroe stammered, “Y-you’re not here about the—the—ugh!—escape?”

  “I’m here to interview one of your patients, Laurence Oliphant.”

  “Con—concerning his part in the affair?”

  Burton held up a hand. “One moment. What? You’re telling me that Oliphant helped Galton to break out?”

  Monroe licked his lips nervously. A nurse entered the foyer. As she passed, the doctor glanced at her and, in a low voice, said, “Mr.—Mr.—ugh!—Cribbins, we should talk in my—my office.”

  “Very well.”

  Monroe ushered Burton out of the lobby, along a corridor, and into a somewhat shabby and disorganised room. He strode to a desk and, as if taking refuge, flung himself into the chair behind it. Immediately, he gained a little composure, and indicating the seat opposite said, “Please, sit. I’ll explain to you the events of last night.”

  Burton sat.

  “Oliphant!” the doctor said with mock cheerfulness. “An interesting patient. Morbidly excitable with periods of gloom. He has moments of such lucidity that one might consider him as sane as you or—ugh!—I. Certainly, his mind is organised. He keeps a little notebook, the pages of which he fills with masses of figures—numbers—added up in batches, then the totals added again, as though he were focusing some account, as an auditor would say. Then, without any obvious trigger, he’s suddenly completely delusional. Rats, Mr. Cribbins.”

  “Rats?” Burton repeated.

  “Rats. Periodically, in the week and a half that he’s been here, Oliphant has been overcome by an obsessive desire to hunt and capture them. I have indulged him to see what would come of it. Unfortunately, the vermin infest every floor of this building, so he’s not been starved of opportunity. You must understand that in the treatment of a lunatic one must first seek to understand the nature of the—ugh!—deep problem—ugh!—in the mind. Whatever preoccupation dominates gives a clue to it, and more often than not, it is some—ugh!—trauma experienced in the past. Discover what, and one might perhaps help the patient to overcome the damage done to them.”

  Burton considered this for a moment. “You propose that madness springs from an inability to cope with a mental shock?”

  “In cases of monomania, yes. There are, of course, a great many instances where the cause can be traced to a physical imbalance, but with Mr. Oliphant—he was an opium addict, you know?”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

  “Well then, I suspect he was so petrified by a nightmarish vision induced by the drug that he lost his—ugh!—mind in order to escape it. It is my supposition that the hallucination involved rats, and he is now trying to recreate it. You see, there is method in his madness.”

  “To what end, Doctor?”

  “If he manages, independently, to reproduce his hallucination, he will achieve mastery over it. Or, to put it another way, if he can knowingly reconstruct what he experienced, he can also knowingly destroy it, thus breaking the shackles of terror that—ugh!—bind him.”

  Burton brushed dust from his trouser leg, nodded slowly, and said, “Very well, your theory sounds eminently plausible, but how does this relate to Galton’s escape?”

  Monroe’s face spasmed again and his right arm jerked outward. He pulled the errant limb back to his side and held it there with his left hand.

  “About fifteen years ago, Galton suffered a severe nervous breakdown and was brought here to recover. He never did. Instead, he developed an idée fixe concerning the transmutability of the flesh.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning he believes animals can be artificially raised to a human standard of intelligence, and that humans can, through scientific means, be made into something akin to—ugh!—gods.”

  “Again—this concerns Oliphant how?”

  “I’m coming to that, Mr. Cribbins. You see, Oliphant’s delusion involves the conviction that a god of some sort is seeking incarnation in the flesh.”

  Burton recalled what Monckton Milnes had told him about the magic squares.

  Monroe continued, “Since Galton’s misconception concerning artificially constructed gods is—ugh!—thematically similar, I thought it might be enlightening to put the two men together. I hoped they would either cancel out each other’s delusions or hasten each other toward a conclusion to their—ugh!—ugh!—demented fantasies.”

  “And what happened?”

  “During their fourth encounter, last night, Oliphant flew into a rage and attacked his attendants. While they were distracted, Galton broke into a storage room and climbed out through its window.”

  Burton opened his mouth to speak but was stopped by a gesture from Monroe. “No, Mr. Cribbins, the window was not left open by accident. We are—ugh!—meticulous about security here. The fact is—it was forced from the outside.”

  Burton leaned forward in his seat. “By whom, Doctor?”

  Monroe shrugged. “I don’t know, but a ladder was left behind on this side of the perimeter wall, which means not only that Galton had help to get away, but also that whoever assisted him knew Oliphant would provide a diversion at that—ugh!—particular moment. I can’t for the life of me think how such a thing could be arranged.” He hesitated then added, “Although suspicion must naturally fall on Mr. Darwin.”

  “Darwin?”

  “Charles Darwin. The Beagle fellow.”

  “What has he to do with it?”

  “He and Galton are half-cousins. As one of our long-term and most docile patients, Galton was allowed to se
nd and receive letters. Darwin is the only person he has ever corresponded with, and he did so on a regular basis. It’s our policy here to monitor all incoming and outgoing post. The communication between the two men appeared purely—ugh!—scientific in nature. Darwin is apparently on the brink of publishing a theory that might alter the way we think about—ugh!—creation itself. It bears some relation to Galton’s preoccupation, and I was hoping that I might gain a better understanding of my patient’s fixations by reading their missives. Unfortunately, all I could glean from them is that both men are engrossed in disturbingly godless matters which make little—ugh!—sense to me. If any escape plans were discussed between them, then it was done in code and I didn’t detect it.”

  “I should like to see those letters.”

  “I’m afraid Galton took them with him.”

  Pushing his chair back, Burton stood. “Then take me outside. Show me the window.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “It is.”

  Reluctantly, Monroe got to his feet and led Burton from the office, down the corridor, through the vestibule, and out of the building. They turned left and followed the edge of a long flower bed that skirted the foot of the hospital’s front wall.

  “Here.” Monroe pointed to a small window set five feet from the ground.

  Burton turned away from it and examined the terrain. He saw six trees huddled together nearby, providing shadows and cover; a long, squarely trimmed hedge beyond them, bordering a large vegetable garden; and more trees between that and the high wall, which they partially concealed.

  “A good escape route,” he muttered. “Lots of concealment.”

  Returning his attention to the window, he saw gouges in its frame, suggesting the application of a crowbar. He squatted and scrutinised the flower bed.

  “Look at these indentations in the soil, Doctor.”

  “Footprints, Mr. Cribbins?”

  “Yes. Peculiar ones, at that. See how square the toes are, and how small and high the heels?”

  “High?”

  “Revealed by the indentation. This style has been out of fashion for half a century. It’s the variety of footwear that usually has a large buckle on top. I haven’t seen anyone shod in such a manner since my grandfather.”