The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

  Swinburne came bobbing across the street with that peculiar dancing gait of his. He jangled the front doorbell.

  Everyone uses the bell, thought Burton, except policemen. They knock.

  Moments later, Burton heard Mrs. Angell’s voice and the piping tones of Algernon, footsteps on the stairs, and the staccato rap of a cane on his study door.

  He turned from the window and called, “Come in, Algy!”

  Swinburne bounced in and enthusiastically announced, “Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things.”

  “And what’s prompted that declaration?” enquired Burton.

  “I just saw one of the new rotorships! It was huge! How godlike we have become that we can send tons of metal gliding through the air! My hat! You’ve acquired new bruises! Was it Jack again? I saw in the evening edition that he pounced on a girl in the early hours.”

  “A rotorship? What did it look like? I haven’t seen one yet.”

  Swinburne threw himself into an armchair, hooking a leg over one arm. He placed his top hat onto the end of his cane, held up the stick, and made the hat spin.

  “A vast platform, Richard, flat and oval shaped, with a great many pylons extending horizontally from its edge, and, at their ends, vertical shafts at the tip of which great wings were spinning so fast that only a circular blur was visible. It was leaving an enormous trail of steam. Did he beat you up again?”

  “On its way to India, perhaps,” mused Burton.

  “Yes, I should think so. But listen to this: it had propaganda painted on its keel. Enormous words!”

  “Saying what?”

  “Saying: ‘Citizen! The Society of Friends of the Air Force summons you to its ranks! Help to build more ships like this!”’

  Burton raised an eyebrow. “The Technologists are certainly on the up as far as public opinion is concerned. It seems they intend to make the most of it!”

  “What a sight it was,” enthused Swinburne. “I expect it could circle the globe without landing once! So tell me about the pummelling.”

  “I’m surprised at your enthusiasm,” commented Burton, ignoring the question. “I thought you Libertines were dead set against such machines. You know they’ll be used to conquer the so-called uncivilised.”

  “Well, yes, of course,” responded Swinburne, airily. “But one can’t help but be impressed by such impossibilities as flying ships of metal! Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron shall a nation be moulded to last! Anyway, old chap, answer my confounded question! How come the new bruises?”

  “Oh,” said Burton. “Just a tumble or two. I was clobbered by a werewolf, then, a few hours later, Spring Heeled Jack dragged my rotorchair out of the sky and sent me crashing through some treetops.”

  Swinburne grinned. “Yes, but really, what happened?”

  “Exactly that.”

  The young poet threw his topper at the explorer in exasperation. Burton caught it and tossed it back.

  Swinburne sighed, and said, “If you don’t want to explain, jolly good, but at least tell me what’s on the menu for tonight. Alcoholic excesses? Or maybe something different for a change? I’ve been thinking it might be fun to try opium.”

  Blake slipped out of his jubbah and reached for his jacket, which he’d thrown carelessly over the back of a chair.

  “You’ll stay well away from that stuff, Algernon. Your self-destructive streak is dangerous enough as it is. Alcohol is going to kill you slowly, I have no doubt. Opium will do the job with far greater efficiency!” He buttoned up his jacket. “Why you want to do away with yourself, I cannot fathom,” he continued.

  “Pshaw!” objected Swinburne, jumping up and pressing his topper down over his wild carroty hair. “I have no intention of killing myself. I’m just bored, Richard. Terribly, terribly bored. The ennui of this pointless existence gnaws at my bones.”

  He began to dance crazily around the room.

  “I’m a poet! I need stimulation! I need danger! I need to tread that thin line ‘twixt life and death, else I have no experience worth writing about!”

  Burton gazed at the capering little slope-shouldered man. “You are serious?”

  “Of course! You yourself write poetry. You know that the form is but a container. What have I, a twenty-four year old, to pour into that container but the pathetic dribblings of an immature dilettante? Do you know what they wrote about me in the Spectator? They said: ‘He has some literary talent but it is decidedly not of a poetical kind. We do not believe any criticism will help to improve Mr. Swinburne.”

  “I want to improve! I want to be a great poet or I am nothing, Richard! To do that I must truly live. And a man can only truly live when Death is his permanent companion. Did I ever tell you about the time I climbed Culver Cliff on the Isle of Wight?”

  Burton shook his head. Swinburne stopped his bizarre hopping and they crossed to the door, went out, and started down the stairs.

  “It was Christmas, 1854,” said his friend. “I was seventeen and my father had refused to buy me a commission as a cavalry officer. Denied a role in the war, how could I tell whether I possessed courage or not? It was all very well to dream of forlorn hopes and cavalry charges but for all I knew, when faced with the reality of war, I might be a coward! I had to test myself, Richard; so that Christmas I walked to the eastern headland of the island.”

  They exited the house and turned up their collars. It was getting colder.

  “Where are we going?” asked Swinburne.

  “Battersea.”

  “Battersea? Why, what’s there?”

  “The Tremors.”

  “Is that an affliction?”

  “It’s a public house. This way. I want to find my local paperboy first.”

  “Why all the way to Battersea just for a drink?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there! Continue your story.”

  “You know Culver Cliff? It’s a great face of chalk cut through with bands of flint. Very sheer. So I decided to climb it as a test of my mettle. On the first attempt, I came to an impassable overhang and had to make my way down again to choose a different route. I started back up, setting my teeth and swearing to myself that I would not come down alive again—if I did return to the foot of that blessed cliff, it would be in a fragmentary condition! So I edged my way up and the wind blew into the crevasses and hollows and made a sound like an anthem from the Eton Chapel organ. Then, as I edged ever higher, a cloud of seagulls burst from a cave and wheeled around me and for a moment I feared they would peck my eyes out. But still I ascended, though every muscle complained. I had almost reached the top when the chalk beneath my footholds crumbled away and I was left dangling by my hands from a ledge which just gave my fingers room enough to cling and hold on while I swung my feet sideways until I found purchase. I was able to pull myself up and over the lip of the cliff and there I lay so exhausted that I began to lose consciousness. It was only the thought that I might roll back over the edge that roused me.”

  “And thus you proved your courage to your satisfaction?” asked Burton.

  “Yes, but I learned more than that. I learned that I can only truly live when Death threatens, and I can only write great poems when I feel Life coursing through my veins. My enemy is ennui, Richard. It will kill me more surely and more foully than either alcohol or opium, of that I am certain.”

  Burton pondered this until, a few minutes later, they caught up with young Oscar in Portman Square.

  “I say, Quips!”

  “What ho, Captain! You’ll be taking an evening edition?” The youngster smiled.

  “No, lad—I need information that I won’t find in the newspaper. It’s worth a bob or two.”

  “A couple of years ago, Captain, I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I’m older, I know that it is! You have yourself a deal. What is it that you’re after knowing?”

  “I need to meet with the Beetle, the president of the League of Chimney Sweeps.”

/>   Algernon Swinburne looked up at Burton in astonishment.

  “Oof!” exclaimed Oscar. “That’s a tall order! He’s a secretive sort!”

  Burton’s reply was lost as a diligence thundered past, pulled by four horses. He waited until it had disappeared into Wigmore Street then repeated, “But you can find him? Is it possible?”

  “I’ll knock on your door tomorrow morning, sir. One thing: if you want to talk with the Beetle, you’ll have to take him some books. He’s mad for reading, so he is.”

  “Reading what?”

  “Anything at all, Captain, though he prefers poetry and factual to fiction.”

  “Very well. Thank you, Quips. Here’s a shilling to be going on with.”

  Oscar touched his cap, winked, moved away, and yelled, “Evenin’ paper! Confederate forces enter state of Kentucky! Read all about it!”

  “What an extraordinary child!” exclaimed Swinburne.

  “Yes, indeed. He’s destined for great things, is young Oscar Wilde,” answered Burton.

  “But see here, my friend,” shrilled the poet, “I’ll be left in the dark no longer! Spring Heeled Jack, a werewolf, and the Beetle. What extraordinary affair have you got yourself involved in? It’s time to tell all, Richard. I’ll not move another step until you do.”

  Burton considered his friend for a moment, then said, “I’ll tell you, but can I trust you to keep it under your hat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your word?”

  “My word.”

  “In that case, once we’re in a hansom and on our way to Battersea, I’ll explain.”

  He swung around and strode out of the square, with Swinburne bouncing at his side.

  “Wait!” demanded the poet. “We aren’t catching a hansom now?”

  “Not yet. There’s a place I want to visit first.”

  “What place?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Why must you be so insufferably mysterious?”

  They made their way through the early evening crowd of perambulators, hawkers, labourers, buskers, beggars, vagabonds, dollymops, and thieves until they reached Vere Street. There Burton stopped outside a narrow premises which stood hunched between a hardware shop and the Museum of Anatomy. Beside its bright yellow door, a tall blue-curtained window had stuck upon its inside a sheet of paper upon which was written in a swirling hand the legend:

  The astonishing COUNTESS SABINA, seventh daughter, CHEIROMANTIST, PROGNOSTICATOR, tells your past, present, and future, gives full names, tells exact thought or question on your mind without one word spoken; reunites the separated; removes evil influences; truthful predictions and satisfaction guaranteed. Consultations from 11 A.M. until 2 P.M. and from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. Please enter and wait until called.

  “You’re joking!” said Swinburne.

  “Not at all.”

  Burton had heard about this place from Richard Monckton Milnes. He and the older man had long shared an interest in the occult and Monckton Milnes had once told Burton there was no better palmist in all London than this one.

  They entered.

  Beyond the front door the adventurer and his companion found a short and none-too-clean passageway of naked floorboards and cracked plaster walls lit by an oil lamp that hung from the stained ceiling. They walked its length and pushed through a thick purple velvet curtain, entering a small rectangular room that smelled of stale sandalwood incense. Wooden chairs lined the undecorated walls. Only one was occupied. It was sat upon by a tall, skinny, and prematurely balding young man with watery eyes and bad teeth, which he bared at them in what passed for a smile.

  “The wife’s in there!” he said in a reedy voice, nodding toward a door beside the curtained entrance. “If you wait with me until she finishes, you can then go in.”

  Burton and Swinburne sat. The room’s two gas lamps sent shadows snaking across their faces. Swinburne’s hair took on the appearance of fire.

  The man stared at Burton. “My goodness, you’ve been in the wars! Did you fall?”

  “Yes he did. Down the stairs in a brothel,” interposed Swinburne, crossing his legs.

  “Great heavens!”

  “They were throwing him out. Said his tastes were too exotic.”

  “Er-erotic?” spluttered the man.

  “No. Exotic. You know what I mean, I’m sure.” He made the sound of a swishing cane.

  “Why, y-yes, of-of course.”

  Burton grinned savagely, looking like the very devil himself. “You fool, Algy!” he whispered.

  The man cleared his throat once, twice, three times, before managing: “Eroti—I mean exotic, hey? What? I say! And—er—well—tallyho!”

  “Are you familiar with the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana?” asked Swinburne.

  “The, um, the-the K-Kama—?”

  “It offers guidance in the art of lovemaking. This gentleman has just begun translating it from the original Sanskrit.”

  “The-the-ar-ar-art of—?” The man swallowed with an audible gulp.

  The door opened and a woman swept into the room. She was tall, enor mously fat, and wore the most voluminous dress Burton had ever seen. She reminded him of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s megalithic transatlantic liner, the SS Titan.

  “Thank God!” exclaimed the thin man. “I mean, I say, you’ve finished, my little lamb!”

  “Yes,” she said, in a booming voice, her double chins wobbling. “We must go home at once, Reginald. There are things we must discuss!”

  He stood, and Burton was sure he could see the man’s knees knocking together.

  “Th-things, Lammykins?”

  “Things, Reginald!”

  She pushed aside the curtain and squeezed her bulk into the corridor. Her husband followed, casting a last glance at Swinburne, who winked and said in a stage whisper: “The Kama Sutra!”

  He chuckled as the man dived after his wife.

  Another woman stepped from the doorway. She was of indeterminate age—either elderly but very well preserved or young and terribly worn, Burton couldn’t decide which. Her hair was chestnut brown, shot through with grey, and hung freely to the small of her back, defying the conservative styles of the day; her face was angular and might once have been beautiful; certainly, her large, dark, slightly slanted eyes still were. The lips, though, were thin and framed by deep lines. She wore a black dress with a creamcoloured shawl. Her hands were bare, the nails bitten and unpainted.

  “You wish an insight into the future?” she asked, in a musical, slightly accented voice, looking from one man to the other.

  Burton stood. “I do. My friend will wait.”

  She nodded and stepped aside so that he might pass through to the room beyond. It was small, sparsely furnished, and dominated by a tall blue curtain, the same one he’d seen from the outside. A dim lamp hung low over a round table. Shelves lined the walls and were packed with trinkets and baubles of an esoteric nature.

  The Countess Sabina closed the door and moved to a chair. She and Burton sat, facing each other across the table.

  She considered him.

  In the ill-lit chamber, with the flickering light shining from directly above, Burton’s eyes were shadowy sockets and the deep scar on his left cheek stood out vividly.

  “Your face will be known for long,” the countess blurted.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t know why I say what I say. It is an aspect of my gift—of my powers. It is for you to decide the meaning. Give me your hand. The right.”

  He held out his hand, palm upward. She took hold of it and bent close, tracing its lines with a finger.

  “Small hands,” she muttered, almost inaudibly. “This—hmm—such restlessness. No roots. You have seen much. Truly seen.” She looked up at him. “You are of the People, sir. I am certain of that.”

  “You mean the gypsy race? It’s true that I bear the name Burton.”

  “Ah! One of the great families. Your other hand please, Mr.
Burton.”

  He held out his left hand. She took it, without releasing the right, and examined it closely.

  “What! So strange!” she whispered, almost as if addressing herself. “This cannot be. Separate roads to tread; separate destinations at which to settle; one of small glories that will become great long after he has passed; another of great victories won in secrecy and never revealed. This cannot be, for both paths are trodden! Both paths! How is this possible?”

  Burton felt his flesh crawling.

  The woman’s hands gripped his own tightly. She started swaying back and forth slightly and a low moan escaped her.

  He’d seen this sort of thing before, in India and Arabia, and watched fascinated as she slipped into a trance.

  “I will speak, Captain,” she muttered.

  He started. How did she know his rank?

  “I will speak. I will speak. I will speak of-of-of a time that is not a time. Of a time that could be. No! Wait. I do not understand. Of a time that should be? Should? Should? What is this I see? What?”

  She fell silent and rocked backward, forward, backward, forward.

  “For you, the wrong path is the right path!” she suddenly announced loudly. “Captain Burton: the wrong path is the right path! The way ahead offers choices that should never be offered and challenges that should never be faced. It is false, this path, yet you walk it and it is best that you do so. But what of the other? What of the other? What of that which was spoken but doesn’t manifest? The truth is broken and the lie is lived! Kill him, Captain!” She suddenly threw her head back and screamed: “Kill him!”

  The room fell silent and she slumped forward. He withdrew his hands. The door clicked behind him.

  “I say, is everything all right?” came Swinburne’s voice.

  “Leave us a moment, Algy. I’ll be out shortly.”