Major Story Arcs

Dr. Paine is a utopian with governmental ideals still held by some a century later (and less topical when he was written in the mid-1980s): he wants to live without government interference in his life and work.

Paine lives in a giant secret hideout in the Victorian London sewers, which he has managed to transform in to a mise-en-scene similar to a Georgian villa, populated by his many similarly-utopian followers wearing Roman togas and acting like hippies a la the Summer of Love.

He builds a "self-locomoting, steam-driven, temporal transfer machine" or "time shooter": basically a tank with a time gun. He hopes to use it to send Parliament to the future so his time will no longer have to deal with government. Whatever the gun hits is sent to the future, and something similar from the future comes back in its place. However the machine doesn't fully work yet and keeps killing the people being sent to Paine's time, so he dumps their bodies (and their various anachronistic objects like digital watches and velcro) in the river.

This eventually catches the attention of Scotland Yard, and Inspector Fitzroy enlists Amanda Flynn, Bozz, and Salem Hawkshaw in the case, knowing their interest in unusual phenomena.

Bozz ends up being brought to Paine's hideout by a group of orphans to heal his temporary blindness. Paine hopes to gain Bozz as an ally, but Bozz rejects him and when the other detectives arrive they defeat Paine and his machine. It gets plugged up and explodes, killing Paine.