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disguised. He actually was the butler- cum -bodyguard. He’d been a bare-knuckle fighter in his time, so I was not entirely mistaken.
    “Islington, my dear fellow! Good to see you. How are the pigeons?” Abigail dropped my arm and clasped the hand held out to her; her slender fingers disappeared as if a bear had grabbed them, and I waited to hear her yell in agony.
    A broad grin split his face in two, and now I was closer I could see his nose had been broken more than once.
    “Fancy you remembering my birds, m’lady!” He gave her hand a gingerly shake and then dropped it quickly before he broke anything. “They be right as rain, they do. Two blue ribbons in the last market fair, and I’m bringing in some new bloodlines.”
    “New blood can make all the difference, in birds and in people as well,” Abigail said. She turned to me. “Islington, this is my dear friend and collaborator, Simon Thorne.”
    Islington nodded politely but did not offer his hand, for which mercy I was grateful. “Sir Eli wants to see you straightaway, if you please, m’lady,” he said to Abigail. “I’ll have all your things put away, and yours too, Mr. Simon. Here, you, Sarah! To the library, if you please.”
    A pretty maid with blue eyes and red cheeks stood right behind him and did not so much as wince when he shouted her name. She bobbed a curtsey and said, “This way, m’lady and sir.”
    We wound our way through the manor, past closed and open doors, down hallways, through room after room and then, to my surprise, outside—where I saw the manor was built in a rectangle with a broad central courtyard entirely enclosed by the wings of the house. Down a gravel pathway we followed the maid through a door, another door, and then a third.
    “I am impressed,” I murmured.
    “You’re meant to be. It’s precisely what the Hopkins want,” Abigail said as quietly.
    Finally the maid opened a door twice my own not-inconsiderable height and stood aside to let us in. I followed Abigail and barely moved in time before the maid closed the door behind me.
    The room was massive; it must have taken up quite half of one of the short wings of the manor and was tall enough to have an upper gallery around three sides. Books and paintings lined all the walls, and the gallery above was nothing but books. A huge fireplace filled almost all of one wall, with a painting of a dyspeptic-looking gentleman in Puritan clothing above the mantle. Though the day was warm, a fire had been lit, and the room was filled with an odd sort of light, brilliant white and harsh on the eyes and completely silent, without the comforting hissing a gaslight makes.
    “I see your Herr Tesla has succeeded in enlightening you, Eli,” Abigail said as she looked up at a sconce just inside the door. “Most impressive.”
    Electricity. It will never catch on, I’m sure—it’s merely a fad. Gas light is so much more flattering.
    “Abigail. Good of you to come so promptly,” said a quiet voice with a bit of a slur.
    I looked around the room and, for a moment, wondered who had spoken. Then a noise came from above, and I raised my eyes to the gallery.
    A tall thin man stood, blending into the shadows above the hooded electric lights. He had something in his hand I could not at first make out, not at least until he began his unsteady way down a set of iron spiral stairs. As he came into the halo of white light, I could see what he carried. A decanter, half full of a dark amber liquid.
    At the bottom of the stairs he upturned the decanter and took a mouthful, swallowed and took another, then stumbled forward and collapsed into a leather armchair. Sir Eli, it appeared, had been celebrating our arrival before we, ah, arrived.
    The electrical light showed me, in the harshest detail, a tall blond man so cadaverous and pale he could have been mistaken for a corpse.
    Abigail gasped in horror and concern. “Eli, good lord, what has happened to you?” She hurried across the room and