The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi by Mark Hodder Page B

explorer snorted scornfully and moved on. His friend, Richard Monckton Milnes, had once told him he had the face of a demon. Sometimes, it was useful.
    Burton continued through the labyrinth. A sense of déjà vu troubled him. Was it because the depths of London felt remarkably similar to the depths of Africa—tangled, perilous, toxic?
    He came to a junction, turned left, and stumbled over a discarded crate. An exposed nail gouged into his trouser leg and ripped it. Burton spat an oath and kicked the crate away. A rat leaped from it and scuttled into a shadow.
    Leaning against a lamppost, the explorer rubbed his eyes. Last night he’d been in the grip of a fever after a month-long illness and now he was walking home. Dolt!
    He noticed a flier pasted to the post:
    The Department of Guided Science.
    A Force for Change. A Force for Good.
    Developing the British Empire.
    Bringing Civilisation to All.
    â€œWhether you want it or not,” he added.
    Pushing himself away, he continued along the alley and turned yet another corner—he wasn’t sure exactly where he was but he knew he was heading in the right general direction—and found himself at the end of a long, straight street bordered by high and featureless red-brick walls: the sides of warehouses. The far end opened onto what looked to be a main thoroughfare—Weymouth Street, he guessed. He could see the front of a shop, a butcher’s, but before he could read its sign, steam from a passing velocipede obscured the letters.
    Burton walked on, carefully stepping over pools and rivulets of urine and filth.
    A litter-crab came clanking into view near the shop, its eight thick mechanical legs thudding against the road surface, the twenty-four thin arms on its belly darting this way and that, skittering back and forth over the cobbles, snatching up rubbish and throwing it through the machine’s maw into the furnace within.
    The machine creaked and rattled past the end of the alley and, as it did so, its siren wailed a warning. A few seconds later, it let out a deafening hiss as it ejected hot cleansing steam from the two downward-pointing funnels at its rear.
    The automated cleaner vanished from sight as a tumultuous wall of white vapour boiled toward Burton. He stopped and took a few steps backward, leaned on his cane, and waited patiently for the cloud to disperse. It billowed toward him, extending hot coils which slowed and became still, hanging in the air as they cooled.
    Movement.
    Someone was entering the alley.
    Burton watched as the person’s weirdly elongated shadow angled through the mist, writ dark, skeletal, and horrific by the distortion.
    He suddenly felt uneasy and waited nervously for the shadow to shrink, to be sucked into the person to whom it belonged when he—for surely it must be a man—emerged from the cloud.
    It did shrink.
    It was a man.
    He was aiming a pistol at the explorer.
    â€œCaptain Richard Francis bloody Burton,” the individual snarled. “Drop your stick or I’ll shoot you in the arm.”
    Burton dropped the stick.
    â€œGet back against the wall. Take your hat off, put it down, and stand with your hands on your head.”
    Burton did as ordered, watching the man through narrowed eyes. He recognised him. It was the individual who’d been staring at him outside Scotland Yard—a short, big-boned, and heavily muscled fellow with wide shoulders and a deep chest. He had thick fingers, a blunt nose, and, under a large outward-sweeping brown moustache, an aggressively square chin.
    â€œI’ve been waiting to meet you,” the man said, in a slightly husky voice. His pistol didn’t waver. It was aimed steadily at a point between the explorer’s eyes. “The moment I saw your likeness in the newspaper, I knew I’d seen you before.”
    â€œWho are you?” Burton demanded. “What do you want?”
    â€œMy name is—is Macallister Fogg. How old