Мэтью Перл - The Dante Chamber

Two young men, their long, flowing coats fluttering in the wind, appeared and kept pace right behind the runaway patron, who turned down another street, out of sight.

“Stop, in the name of the queen!” one of the new pursuers yelled, holding up a glimmering emblem. The other one blew a whistle hanging from his neck.

“Detectives,” Browning cried to Christina.

She considered this as she knelt on the ground and fought to catch her breath. “How could they have known?”

Browning contemplated this, his mind turning back to the similarly rapid appearance of Scotland Yarders at the death of Loring, before his face darkened with anger.

A chime rang out in the detectives’ corridors. “Wire in!” the telegraph operator called. Dolly burst out of his office, and Branagan ran over from his desk. “It’s two of the detective sergeants you assigned the other day to recommence shadowing Miss Rossetti,” Branagan said after a quick glance at the transmission. “They were spotted giving chase to a man who appears unable...”

“Yes? Yes?” asked Dolly.

“Unable to stop,” Branagan finished.

Dolly’s eyes widened. “It’s the fourth.” He ignored questions about the meaning of his comment. “Take me to them, Branagan!”

They hurried into the carriage, and Branagan brought their horses to full speed, heading toward the coordinates contained in the wire. Carriages and omnibuses cluttered their routes, and Dolly, cursing all London, ordered the constable to stop. The detective then unlatched one of the horses and continued on horseback. Branagan rushed to do the same. Soon both were galloping through the streets, steering around obstacles, human and otherwise.

Branagan pulled his horse next to his superior’s. “What did you mean, the fourth?” he called out.

“The next terrace of Purgatory, the fourth of seven — Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth... The Slothful are made to run around without stopping, until rid of every bit of laziness.”

“Another Dante Massacre? Impossible. It can’t be, Inspector. We have Rossetti. We have him. If there is another Dante murder, that means he is not the one...”

“Not now!” Dolly cried.

They careened through the streets until they reached the commotion of a group of plainclothes detectives and uniformed constables — totaling half a dozen by this point — giving chase to the fleeing man. In just a few minutes after they joined the pursuit, the runaway was twice nearly flattened by conveyances in the street and almost tumbled into a sidewalk excavation. His pursuers, meanwhile, were hindered by the array of obstructions. Gibson was not merely moving rapidly. His pace seemed inhuman.

Shouts and screams flew from every direction. Dolly called out orders to the police officers. Onlookers screamed out pleas and insults at the running man. The man himself cried out that he could not stop. The cluster of horses and men reached the entrance of a railway tunnel. The runner hesitated just long enough that he was surrounded by his pursuers.

Finally, Gibson stopped. His heavy breathing turning into a frosty steam in the air, Gibson whispered, “Forgive me.”

A faint smile played on the art patron’s lips. It seemed he was about to say more, when his whole body shuddered, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he collapsed onto the street. Dolly and Branagan rushed to his side, as other policemen kept the crowd of observers away.

Dolly caught his breath, wiping away a layer of perspiration.

“He’s dead,” Dolly said, first to himself, then announcing the same to Branagan and the others. He examined the man up and down his body before his eyes landed on his boots. “Pull those off. Now! Pull them off now! Carefully, Branagan.”

(Around that time, Christina and Browning caught up with the scene, watching from a perimeter of bystanders.)

Branagan followed Dolly’s gaze to the deceased man’s boots, but they would not budge. Dolly ordered the other men away, then nodded at Branagan.

The constable removed a pocketknife from his coat and sliced the cords that fastened the boots to the man’s legs. Slowly removing one of the boots, Dolly peered inside it at a snarl of needles and wires.

The detectives and the scientists they’d brought to Scotland Yard from Oxford and Cambridge huddled around the boots to marvel at the design. They proved to be remarkable and sinister inventions that would be studied by experts for years to come.

An arrangement of razor-sharp needles were positioned in such a way to pierce the flesh deeply as the foot moved down, and provide relief when the foot was raised. They made the wearer run. Inside the hollow parts of the boots was a complex series of wires, charged in advance by some kind of battery, poised to deliver a jolt of electricity if the motion of the mechanism stopped for more than a few seconds, a more powerful jolt the longer it stopped — a jolt that proved fatal when Gibson was finally forced to halt his run by the police.

To stop moving meant death.

Repercussions from Gibson’s death came swiftly. Many of these, unsurprisingly, concerned Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Dolly was not persuaded that the latest events necessarily vindicated his prisoner, but the authorities were used to Dolly standing aside from popular opinion. The fact remained that Gabriel had been inside a cell when this latest Dante death was perpetrated. Dolly was now as alone in Scotland Yard in his belief in Gabriel’s guilt as Christina had been days earlier believing in her brother’s innocence. Or had Dolly ever been as convinced as he’d appeared? Truth was, something had not sat well with Dolly since the elation of an arrest subsided, and was further worn down by his irksome interview with Alfred Tennyson.

Christina established an encampment at the police station where Gabriel was still held. Dolly and Branagan, as well as other police officials, tried to persuade her to stay at home to wait. Dolly claimed Gabriel was refusing to eat and that the excitement was not helping him. “When I do decide to leave,” she said with steel in her voice to Dolly and Branagan, “it will be with my brother on my arm.”

Browning followed Christina to Scotland Yard. He was concerned about her. In addition to the fact that she had hardly been sleeping — a few minutes now and again for the last week — she had seen A. R. Gibson die before her eyes; Browning had looked away at the last moment, but she had not. She appeared emaciated. Perhaps Browning was right that she had been worn down more than ever by the latest turns of events, but Gabriel’s imminent release, certainly, had to lighten her spirits.

The intensity of the situation consumed her, and it also gave her that glow, that energy, that tended to take people by surprise. Browning, trying unsuccessfully to coax her to get rest, found himself holding her by the hand, and locked onto her eyes, so serious and bright. There was something heroic about her, like a figure out of a fairy tale wrapped in fire.

Damn Tennyson. Christina was not Ba. Browning had not tried to make her so. But she was vibrant and brilliant.

“Miss Rossetti, there is something I must say to you,” Browning blurted out.

“Mr. Browning?”

“Look at us — lost adventurers. I wondered, when this all began, if by being by your side, snakelike, stomping around in my ogre fashion, I could be of some use to you, or if anybody could be of use to anybody else.” Browning started to continue twice before he deflated. His eyes filled with tears and he said, “How do you feel about me, Miss Rossetti?”

“Why, I feel I have known you a hundred years, Mr. Browning.”

“My heart, I begin to believe, really is buried in Florence.”