"So that is what happened to us," I concluded, then attacked the plate of sandwiches before me. Rose, on my right at the long table, poured me another cup of tea and slid the sugar bowl closer. Thaddeus, looking uncomfortable at the august company and smelling rather strongly of machine oil, sat on my left.
Across from us, Babbage and Faraday looked thoughtful, Monsieur Verne was taking notes and murmuring to himself in French, and Mr. Poe, the only American with us, looked sleepy. Opium, I suspected. Down at the end of the table, just near the window, sat Richard Burton, looking worried, his eyes on the mahogany before him, a glass of brandy at his elbow, the decanter beside it.
Faraday gazed around at his fellow members of the board of the Damocles Institute. "We've examined the specimens you brought back. And let me thank you both, once again, on a successful venture."
And well he might, I though as I munched chicken and tomato.
"Successful," continued Faraday smoothly, "in a variety of ways."
"Explain," Rose commanded. And when Rose commands, the others in the Institute obey; she's that kind of girl.
"We have ascertained, as we suspected, that the plague is not under control."
Burton raised his head, looking pained. "Is not plague rather strong?"
Faraday snorted. "Rather strong? I think not," he snapped. "If an explorer brings back a disease from darkest Africa that makes the dead walk, what else would you call it? An ague? A bit of a chill?"
"A bloody disaster," Thaddeus murmured.
"Hear hear!" I agreed.
Burton raised his hands. "Yes, yes, I take your meaning, damn you. I should never have allowed Speke to leave Cairo without me. I should have come with him. I could have done something, perhaps." He dropped his head onto the table.
I winced at the sound.
"Perhaps you should have done something," said Babbage, speaking for the first time.
Mr. Poe snored softly.
"Gentlemen," Rose said. "I think we are dealing with something more than a mere disease. I have examined the arm Thaddeus so bravely brought back from the expedition into the sewers."
So that was what was twitching in the bag! I shuddered and took another sandwich.
"The motive force is something outside my experience," Rose said.
I barely stifled a gasp. If this were indeed outside Rose's experience, what a mystery it was!
"It is not electrical," the dear girl continued, "nor does it seem to be chemical. The gas Thaddeus obtained is a part of the whole, but there is a great deal more to learn."
Thaddeus again! It was time for me to say something.
Not that I could think, for the life of me, what.
Burton looked up, his fierce gaze like some wild animal's. "Not a plague, then?" he asked, and I could hear hope in his voice. "Not some horrible contagious disease?"
"No," said Faraday. "I fear it is something far, far worse."
"But what could be worse than a plague of walking dead?" I asked.
"An army of walking dead," said Rose. "And recall, an army is under the command of a general."
"An angry general, who wishes to punish all those he thinks have wronged him. And John Hanning Speke thinks everyone has wronged him. I most of all." Burton rose and began to pace in front of the windows like a caged lion.
"But, Captain Burton," said Faraday as he shuffled papers before him. "I have read Lieutenant Speke's file. He has no scientific background whatsoever. In fact," he chose a sheet and held it up, "his only interests seem to be hunting and collecting. He does not seem to be particularly intelligent."
"He's not," Burton said, pausing in his journey up and down the room. "But he's stubborn and willful and holds a grudge against all who, he perceives, have wronged him. If a man like that somehow gains the power to create an army of the dead, do you think he would not use it to exact the revenge he craves more than life itself?"
Well, now, I thought as I sipped my tea. We are in even more trouble than I thought.
"Where is Speke?" asked Rose, going straight to the most important question, as is her wont.
"At his cousin's place in Wiltshire, according to latest received information," Faraday said, consulting another sheet, "where he has been for the last month."
"I saw him in London a week ago," Burton said.
"We must find him," Rose said, "and question him."
An explosion shook the building.
An alarm bell went off, seemingly in my right ear. I dropped my tea.
"The cellars," Rose said calmly, gazing at a panel on the wall to her right.
I looked and saw the bell marked 'cellar' shaking up and down on its strip of metal.
"I think we'd best see what's happening, don't you, Jonathan?" she asked.
I knew that glint in her eye. "I think the guards should check it out first and give us a report, my dear girl," I said, but with a sinking feeling.
"Nonsense! What utter balderdash! Captain Burton, shall we?"
Well, naturally, I was having none of that! I rose and took her arm.
"Thaddeus, Captain Burton, shall we?" I said.
Of course, a trip to the cellars of the Damocles Institute—after a morning in the London sewers—was hardly what I wished to do.
But when duty—or Rose, which in my case may well be the same thing—calls, what can an Englishman do?