expect he'll stay on the straight and narrow for a while. It's his second warning. He'll not get another. I'll have the bracelets on him. What say you we drop in at Brundleweed's? It's just around the corner."
"Good idea."
They set off.
"Has there been no clue to the Choir Stones' whereabouts?" Burton asked.
"Not a whisper, unless Brundleweed's heard something through the grapevine since I last spoke to him. He maintains that he locked the genuine articles in the safe that evening. Yet we know that Isambard Kingdom Brunel removed fakes. So either Brundleweed is lying - which I find hard to believe; his reputation is absolutely spotless - or an extremely accomplished cracksman got there first and left no trace."
They passed back into Trafalgar Square, weaving through the crowds, and on into Charing Cross Road, heading toward Saint Martin's.
"Do you have a suspect?"
Trounce removed his bowler, slapped it, and placed it back on his head.
"The obvious man would be - " he began, then interrupted himself: "By Jove! Look at that!"
A bizarre vehicle had snaked into view from around the next corner and was thundering toward them at high speed. It was a millipede - an actual insect - grown to stupendous proportions by the Eugenicists. When it had reached the required size, they'd killed it and handed the carcass over to their Engineering colleagues, who'd sliced off the top half of its long, segmented, tubular body. They'd removed the innards until only the tough outer carapace remained, and into this they'd fitted steam-driven machinery via which the many legs could be operated. Platforms had been bolted across the top of each segment and upon them seats were affixed, over which canopies arched, echoing the shape of the missing top half of the body. A driver sat at the front of the vehicle in a chair carved from the shell of the head. He skillfully manipulated a set of long levers to control the astonishing machine.
It was a new type of omnibus, and it was packed solid with passengers, with three people to every seat and a fair number standing and hanging on for dear life as it hurtled along. They cheered and hooted with delight as hansoms and growlers, carts and velocipedes, horses and pedestrians hurriedly moved to the side of the road, out of the oncoming vehicle's path. Dense clouds of steam boiled from pipes along its sides and, as it came alongside Burton and Trounce and careened into the narrow gap that opened up through the centre of the traffic, hot vapour rolled over the two men, obscuring the scene. Impassioned curses and profanities came from within the cloud; there was a crash, a scream, and the shuddery whinny of a panicked horse.
"Damned freakish monstrosity!" Trounce yelled. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the moisture from his face.
"That's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen!" Burton exclaimed. "I'd read that the Technologists were experimenting with insect shells but I had no idea they'd progressed so far!"
"You regard that as progress?" Trounce objected. He waved his hat at the milieu that was slowly emerging from the thinning haze. "Look! It's utter bloody chaos! We can't have horses and steam-horses and penny-farthings and now steam-bloody-insects as well, all on the streets at the same time! People are going to get hurt!"
"Humph!" Burton agreed. "We certainly seem to be entangled in a profusion of mismatched machineries."
"A profusion? Call it whatever you will, Captain Burton, but the fact of the matter is that if the dashed scientists don't slow down and plan ahead with something at least resembling foresight and responsibility, London is going to grind to a complete standstill, mark my words!"
"I don't disagree. Come on. Let's move along. What was it you were saying? About the suspect?"
"Suspect? Oh, Brundleweed. Yes. Well, the obvious safecracker to look at would be Marcus Dexter - there's no strongbox he can't open and he's as cunning as a fox - but he's operating in Cape Town at the moment, that's for certain. Cyril 'the Fly' Brady is locked up in Pentonville, and Tobias Fletcher is consumptive and out of action. There's no one else I know of who could have opened Brundleweed's safe without dynamite."
A one-legged beggar swung himself on crutches directly into Trounce's path. He pleaded in a throaty voice for a ha'penny: "Jest fr'a cuppa tea, me ol' china."
The detective glowered at him, told him to move along, but pressed a penny into his palm as he