Jabez Soames was not a bad man. He told himself so every morning when he rose from his bed and slipped the nightcap from a head that was far more balding than he wished. It was simply a fact of existence that unpleasant things needed to be done, at times. Since unpleasant things needed to be done, Jabez Soames was dedicated to doing them as efficiently as possible.

It was irrelevant that Jabez Soames enjoyed his work and had for all forty years of his working life. He especially enjoyed it when it offered him the prospect of riches. It added a certain piquancy to whatever needed doing.

These were profitable days for Soames. The Franco-British Exhibition had brought many foreigners to London and the Olympic Games promised more. Soames loved foreigners of all sorts. So unfamiliar with British ways, so far from home . . .

On the way to his office, he made a mental note to see about outlaying some money on the Marathon race the papers were full of. He was sure he could make arrangements to have the event favour his wager. Perhaps administering something to the favoured runner?

Jabez, Jabez, Jabez, he thought, you are a veritable ferment of ideas!

He smiled to himself.

Even this late at night Soames was warm in his overcoat, as the weather had improved considerably since the rain of the previous few days. Being of a practical mind, however, he still had his umbrella. He glanced at the lift operator. ‘Have you killed anyone lately, Higgs?’

The night operator, one hand on the brass control lever, was dapper in his red and blue uniform. He had the knack of moving his eyes while the rest of his face stayed impassive. ‘Depends on what you mean by “lately”, Mr Soames, sir.’

‘What about in the last week?’

‘No, sir.’ Higgs was a small man who always reminded Soames of one of the mustelidae family. A ferret, or something less domesticated? ‘Definitely no-one in the last seven days. Not much call for it at the moment, what with the grippe and all laying ’em low.’

‘You have my commiserations. What’s the world coming to when a lift operator can’t supplement his income with a little pre-emptive body snatching?’

‘Wouldn’t know, sir, and here’s your floor.’

‘Wonderful.’

The lift operator dragged back the gate. Once again, Soames stepped onto the floor that existed between the fourth and nominal fifth of the unobtrusive office building in Lambeth. Soames was cheered by setting foot on its utilitarian linoleum and he was heartened by the single corridor, dark and windowless, with a dozen or so doors opening onto it, because as soon as he did he was entering the Demimonde.

Striding towards his office, Soames whispered the word to himself, savouring its outlandishness and marvelling how it described, so perfectly, the place in which he spent much of his life.

The Demimonde, the half-world, the realm on the edges of civilised society. The world of the dispossessed and the fugitive, of outlaws, thieves and cutthroats, of the lost and abandoned, of the strange and uncanny. It was the world of forgotten heroes, of neglected villains, of conspiracies, calamities and chimaeras. Lost legends stalked the Demimonde, fortunes were made in the Demimonde and people lost their souls in the Demimonde – sometimes more than once.

The Demimonde was an irresistible source of opportunity, provided one had very few scruples. Soames had a joke – just the one – about how he once had scruples, but he’d sold them a long time ago. He repeated it whenever he could, but those hearing it were rarely in a position to enjoy the humour, more’s the pity.

Soames barely registered the signs on the doors of the other offices. Some were familiar, having been there ever since he’d become a tenant – the ‘Red-Headed League’ and the ‘Eldorado Exploring Expedition’, for instance – but others came and went. As he slipped the key into his door, his gaze lit on the office next to his that had been, until recently, ‘Capt. Benjamin Briggs’ but now read ‘Tunguska Enterprises’. He made another mental note to make some enquiries about the firm.

Soames paused for a moment on the threshold of his office. He was at home here in the Demimonde. Some people confused it with the underworld, the domain of criminals, but this would never do. The underworld intersected with the Demimonde and some rogues were definitely part of it, but the Demimonde was altogether larger, richer, both more wonderful and more sordid, than merely being the haunt of those outside the law.

Of course, the laws of the mundane world did not apply in the Demimonde, which suited Jabez Soames perfectly.

He was almost tempted to whistle as he stepped into his office and closed the door behind him. The floor on which his office was situated was, in reality, the fifth floor but special arrangements had been made decades ago to make it part of the Demimonde, as many other places throughout the city had been: lanes, whole buildings, underground tunnels and byways, those places less frequented by the ordinary folk. Theatres had a special status. Theatre people were almost always welcome in the Demimonde; they respected its nature and understood the way that appearances were not always a true representation of what lay beneath. Two years ago, Soames had enjoyed an extremely lucrative venture with a theatre troupe who had marched into a village in Surrey, claiming to be government health inspectors. Soames had heard hints that some of the actors were still about, in far-off lands, having left the world of the theatre to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

That reminded him. Devant’s new show was opening at the Egyptian Hall soon. He would need to get tickets. The thought of missing the famous magician’s new illusions made him quite ill.

After hanging his hat and coat on the rack by the door – and making sure they were neatly arranged – Soames went to the window. His office had a fine view towards the river and the lights of Westminster. Soames had plans in that direction and he enjoyed taking a moment to contemplate them. Oh, the world would be a different place when Jabez Soames had his way!

Jabez, he thought, there would be no better man for the job!

A rambling bank of pigeonholes took up an entire wall of Soames’s office and it was to this he now addressed himself. Slips of paper poked out of most of them, paper of the most confounding variety of hues and textures. Some appeared have been torn from books, others could have come from the stationery belonging to an earl. Soames kept a network of informants throughout the city, both the mundane world and the Demimonde. His day clerk had taken delivery of all of these snippets and deposited them in the correct slots, ready for Soames to peruse.

One of them alerted him to activity among the Neanderthals. He went to his desk and found the ledger he devoted to his dealings with what he’d once considered sub-humans, but had quickly been convinced were just as intelligent as regular humanity. Their particular aptitude lay with mechanical devices, which led to a need for certain materials that Jabez Soames was only too happy to supply. At a price, of course.

After his first contact with them, so many years ago, he’d been startled to learn that they’d carved out a sanctuary deep beneath the city, a retreat that was difficult to find and impossible to enter, if you weren’t one of them. The sophistication of their building hadn’t jibed with his conception of the creatures at all, so he’d undertaken some research and found that the current thinking was that the brutes were cousins of modern humans, supposedly long extinct, and fine tool-users, to judge from artefacts recently unearthed. Extinct everywhere but the Demimonde, Soames now knew.

How they hated him! He saw it in their eyes every time they dealt with him, shipping in foodstuffs and other necessities. He didn’t take it personally, though. They hated all regular humans. Invaders, they called them, the people who had come and taken their lands, hunted their game, driven them to the margins of the world.

He ran his eye down the columns of figures. The Neanderthals had been excellent customers for years, and if they were becoming even more industrious, it was a marvellous thing. Jabez Soames could forgive them their brutishness and coarseness, because they paid their debts promptly. Not the world’s greatest conversationalists, which was a shame for Jabez Soames enjoyed a chat. They spoke English well enough, that wasn’t the problem, but the Neanderthals preferred actions to words, he gathered. He also had a feeling that they hated using the language of their dominant cousins and regretted adopting it centuries ago. Idly, he’d wondered what had happened to their own language. Gone, as the snows of yesterday?

The thought made him smile. Progress was inevitable. Away with the old, bring on the new.

Soames gathered the notes into an irregular bundle, pursing his lips at some, chuckling at others, drawing his mouth into a tight line at a few. He was about to take his place at his desk when his gaze fell on the envelope on his blotter.

Everything about it was wrong in a horribly familiar way. If pressed, however, Soames would have had difficulty pointing out exactly why it was so unsettling. Was it because it was almost, but not quite, rectangular, with the corners subtly not meeting at right angles? Was it that the paper was a shade that spoke of pallid, slinking creatures that never saw the light of day? He knew, even without touching it, that the paper had a slightly greasy feel. Soames, no stranger to handling distasteful objects, wanted to don gloves before handling it.

He cursed when the only gloves he could find were the ones he’d worn in to the office, a brand new pair that he’d just purchased from Turnbull & Asser. He’d have to discard them once he touched the letter. This irked him decidedly.

Settle, Jabez, he told himself. Bring your renowned sangfroid to the fore! Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity!

He read the letter and it was as he feared: the Immortals were back from India, and they wanted to see him.