Burton & Swinburne 1 - The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack Read Online Free PDF Page A

enough to recognise the developing mood.
    “Coffee, my eye!” she muttered as she descended to the kitchen. “He'll be through a bottle of brandy before the evening is old!”
    Burton had, indeed, poured himself a large measure of brandy, and was now slumped in his old saddlebag armchair by the fireplace, his feet resting on the fender. He held the glass in one hand and a letter in the other. It was from 10 Downing Street and read:
    Please contact the prime minister's office immediately upon your return to London.
    He sipped the brandy and savoured the fire that sank into his belly. He was tired but not sleepy, and felt the heavy weight of depression dragging at him.
    Laying his head back, and with eyes half closed, he focused his mind on his sense of hearing. It was a Sufi trick he'd learned en route to Mecca. Sight was the primary sense; when another was given precedence and the mind was allowed to wander, ideas, insights, and hitherto unseen connections often bubbled up from its otherwise inaccessible depths.
    He heard a bookshelf creak slightly as its wood adjusted to the changing temperature of early evening; it was the only sound from within the study, aside from his own breathing and the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. From beyond the two large sash windows, though, came the muffled cacophony of England's capital: voices passing on the pavement below, the clatter and chugging engines of velocipedes, the cry of a street hawker, the choppy paradiddle of a rotorchair passing overhead, a barking dog, a crying child, the rumble and hiss of steam-horses, the clip-clop of real horses, the coarse laughter of prostitutes.
    He heard footsteps on the stairs.
    A question came to him: What am I to do now?
    There was a soft knock at the door.
    “Come.”
    Mrs. Angell entered bearing a tray upon which lay a plate of sliced meats, cheese, and a chunk of bread. There was also a cup and saucer, a bowl of sugar, and a pot of coffee. She crossed the room and laid it on the occasional table beside Burton's chair.
    “It's getting unseasonably cold, sir-shall I light the fire?”
    “It's all right, I'll do it. Would you take a letter for me?”
    “Certainly.”
    The housekeeper, who often performed slight secretarial tasks for him, sat at one of the three desks, slid a sheet of blank paper onto the leather writing pad, and picked up a pen. She dipped the nib into the inkwell and wrote, at Burton's dictation:
    1 ant at hone in London. Awaiting further instructions. Burton.
    “Send it by runner to 10 Downing Street, please.”
    The old lady looked up in surprise. “To where?”
    “10 Downing Street. At once, please.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    She departed with the note. A few moments later, he heard her at the front door blowing three blasts on a whistle. Within half a minute, a dogalmost certainly a greyhound-would arrive on the doorstep and, after she'd fed the animal, the housekeeper would place the letter between its teeth and announce the destination. There'd be an acknowledging wag of the tail, and the runner would race away en route for Downing Street.
    They were part of a fairly new communications system, these remarkable dogs, the first practical application of eugenics adopted by the British public. Each hound came into the world knowing every address within a fifty-mile radius of its birthplace and with the ability to carry mail between those locations, barking and scratching at a recipient's door until the letter was collected. After each task was completed, the runner would wander the streets until it heard another three-whistle summons.
    Messenger parakeets formed the other half of the system. These phenomenal mimics carried spoken communications. A person only had to visit a post office and give one of the birds a message, the name of the recipient, and the address, and the parakeet would fly straight to the appropriate set of ears.
    There was one problem, an issue that had troubled the Eugenicist scientists from the