My dearest sister Susan:

I know I have only just written to you yesterday, and of course you won't have read that letter for some time to come, but life as they say stops for no man and my life in particular has been full to bursting with adventure. When I was in China some months ago I heard tell of an old Chinese curse, which goes: May you live in interesting times. This may at first seem like not much of a curse at all, but I assure you, as one who has lived a most interesting life, I often find myself yearning for a stretch of boredom. But such, it appears, is not to be, especially in London.

You may recall in my last letter a mention of a magical woman of some sort who supposedly tried to cast a spell on the household where Miss Sinclair was until recently a governess. Well, I certainly cannot vouch for this story of magic spells, but Sir Cosmo Cowperthwaite and the others decided that it was imperitive to investigate the shop that this woman medium, a Mdm. Zephyrine, owned. Naturally, this was not to be done with anyone's permission, so I was asked to come along and serve as a lookout while others made their inquiries.

I do not recall precisely if I really believed that this little adventure might be accomplished without incident, but in any case things seemed to go wrong from the beginning. Right off, we were noticed by two people who decided to stop and ask questions rather than keep to their own business. One of them was a young woman named Mrs. Elethea Cuthbert, who claims to converse with spirits herself, and at some point began to claim that someone nearby was in danger. But before that, she was asking questions, and her companion began to discussion with Mr. Caine (an associate of Mr. Wooster's) and myself. Mr. Spencer Cuthbert, it turned out, is an uncle of Mrs. Cuthbert's, and apparently a man very keen on big game hunting -- he has even hunted buffallo in the Western half of the U.S. We held a very lively discussion on the subject of rifles and handguns. Wooster was part of the discussion too, but I tried my best to ignore him.

At some point in the conversation I became aware of a group of men moving along the street in the shadows and taking up positions against us. Perhaps I was a little lax in my duties as a lookout, but as it turned out, it was not the local lawmen who were surrounding us, but a small army of ruffians, many of them thuggees from the East, with a Captain Hartley at their head. He demanded that we hand over Edward to him. Have I told you about Edward yet? He is a strange little child who was rescued from the streets by Sir Cosmo, and works as a sort of cab driver for him, although really he is quite a rascal who climbs walls and runs about and speaks like he was raised by the Navajo, and doesn't obey anyone, but I am sure Miss Sinclair will soon have him straightened out. But he is a very clever and bright child when it comes to machinery, I have noticed. In any case, Edward was the only witness to the murder of Mr. Clive St. John, which I spoke about in my previous letter. In hindsight we now know that Captain Hartley himself was the murderer, using a gun of a truly curious design, which I do not fully understand.

Naturally Mr. Hartley wanted the boy Edward because he was a witness to the murder. He had his strange science gun with him, which was quite deadly looking, but also very large and unwieldy and took two men to hold up. He also claimed to have a sharpshooter with his weapon trained on me, and gave us until the count of three to give up the boy.

As I have told you before, there has never been on God's green earth a man with evil in his heart who can be trusted on any count, and therefore I did not wait until the count of three to make my move. This was a good thing too, for if I had not done so I would very probably be dead now.

As I could clearly see that the man with the large gun was at a grave disadvantage against a moving target, I became just that, with the intent of taking out the man with his gun trained on me. The others were taking cover, but I charged into the street. Some might have considered this action foolish during a gunfight, with bullets flying everywhere, but in my experience there's no use in worrying about the ones that are going to miss you, and the others generally take care of themselves. Or, as they say, you can't win big if you're playing with low stakes. At some point you have to risk it all.

The first shot from my hidden sharpshooter removed my hat, while my first shot removed a good portion of the building corner he was hiding behind. I charged the alley where he was hiding to get a clear shot. As I came around the corner his second shot hit me true, and I was badly injured by his bullet, but my rocket missle was also a direct hit, with results that were spectacularly gruesome and are best left to the imagination. Suffice it to say, I am alive and he is not.

I really don't know much of the details of what took place after that. From what I am given to understand, Mr. Spencer Cuthbert, Mr. Caine and Sir Cosmo proved more than enough for our ambushers. Cosmo used some sort of lightning gun or other that I had not previously seen. Cuthbert and Caine I of course expected to be good shots, but even Wooster, that oddball English tenderfoot, proved to be a half-decent shot with a gun when the chips were down.

Afterwards our group returned to Cosmo's house, where the others spent some time interrogating one or two prisoners. I can assure you, I was in no condition to participate myself. They said the wound was quite serious, but when you've been on the wrong end of as many accidental explosions as I have, you learn to roll with the blast and come up on your feet, so I am sure I will be up and about soon. Sir Cosmo also gave me some advanced medicine of his that has greatly helped in my recovery.
Miss Namaste, who is Sir Cosmo's other young charge, lent me a 'Kid Rocket' dime novel that she had come across, and for want of anything better to do I have been reading it. I must say, if this book is to be believed, my life has been a great deal more interesting than even I can recall. In fact, while I do remember meeting a man named Skidmoore in Denver, I certainly don't recall anything about him harboring a deep grudge against me, nor did he talk about any of these elaborate plans to capture and torture me, which take up a good portion of the dime novel. Of course, it's always possible that one of my rockets did cause the death of his father and two brothers in the war, since as I do recall he was a Southerner and an unrepentant Confederate, but I only recall spending a pleasant evening at cards with the man. If only it hadn't been for that gun shot that killed that poor rancher next to me, and the brawl that ensued, I might have learned more of Mr. Skidmoore's story, but the place became so chaotic that I chose to make a quick exit, rather than stay around and take any blame for the damages. In any case, there is one point at least that the author of the dime novel got exactly right, and that is that this Skidmoore fellow had very poor eyesight.

Naturally the part about the bank robbery two days later is essentially true, although I do not recall quite that much damage from the explosions, and as for the shootout with this Skidmoore fellow, it's clearly all made up. There were a lot of people shooting at me that day, but only because of my attempted robbery, and certainly not because of any duel over some imagined grudge. So as you can see, these writers are quite fanciful and inventive storytellers who do not let the facts get in the way of a good tale. You should remind Mother of that fact the next time she overreacts to one of these 'Kid Rocket' stories.

Mind you, there's been quite a lot of excitement in my life since I arrived here in London. It would make a very good dime novel, I should think, and why not have it written according to my own testimony, and beat them all at their own game? I'm not sure if Sir Cosmo would be keen on that idea, but it's certainly something to think about, don't you agree?

In any case, I remain your loving brother,

Jebediah

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