The Difference Engine (28 page)

“More or less,” Tate admitted. “We might think about that, squire, if you gave us that tin on deposit.”

“I might give you some part of the money,” Mallory allowed. “But then you must give me information on deposit.”

Velasco and Tate looked hard at one another. “Give us a moment to confer about it.” The two private detectives wandered away through the jostle of sidewalk traffic and sought shelter in the leeway of an iron-fenced obelisk.

“Those two aren’t worth five guineas in a year,” Fraser said.

“I suppose they are vicious rascals,” Mallory agreed, “but it scarcely matters what they are, Fraser. I’m after what they know.”

Tate returned at length, the kerchief back over his face. “Cove name of Peter Foulke,” he said, his voice muffled. “I wouldn’t have said that — wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me — only the bugger puts on airs and orders us about like a bloody Lordship. Don’t trust our integrity. Don’t trust us to act in his interests. Don’t seem to think we know how to do our own job.”

“To hell with him,” Velasco said. Stuck between kerchief and derby-brim, the spit-curls on his cheeks stuck out like greased wings. “Velasco and Tate don’t cross the Specials for any Peter bloody Foulke.”

Mallory offered Tate a crisp pound-note from his book. Tate looked it over, folded it between his fingers with a card-sharper’s dexterity, and made it vanish. “Another of those for my friend here, to seal the deal?”

“I suspected it was Foulke all along,” Mallory said.

“Then here’s something you don’t know, squire,” Tate said. “We ain’t the only ones dogging you. While you hoof along like an elephant, talking to yourself, there’s this flash cove and his missus on your heels, three days in the last five.”

Fraser spoke up sharply. “But not today, eh?”

Tate chuckled behind his kerchief. “Reckon they saw you and hooked it, Fraser. That vinegar phiz of yours would make ‘em hedge off, sure. Jumpy as cats, those two.”

“Do they know you saw them?” Fraser said.

“They ain’t stupid, Fraser. They’re up and flash. He’s a racing-cove or I miss my guess, and she’s a high-flyer. The dolly tried talking velvet to Velasco here, wanted to know who hired us.” Tate paused. “We didn’t say.”

“What did they say about themselves?” Fraser said sharply.

“She said she was Francis Rudwick’s sister,” Velasco said. “Investigating her brother’s murder. Said that straight out, without my asking.”

“Of course we didn’t believe that cakey talk,” Tate said. “She don’t look a bit like Rudwick. Nice-looking bit o’ muslin, though. Sweet face, red hair, more likely she was Rudwick’s convenient.”

“She’s a murderess!” Mallory said.

“Funny thing, squire, that’s just what she says about you.”

“Do you know where to find them?” Fraser asked.

Tate shook his head.

“We could look,” Velasco offered.

“Why don’t you do that while you follow Foulke,” Mallory said, in a burst of inspiration. “I have a notion they might all be in league somehow.”

“Foulke’s away in Brighton,” Tate said. “Couldn’t abide the Stink — delicate sensibilities. And if we’re to go to Brighton, Velasco and I could do with the railway fare — expenses, you know.”

“Bill me,” Mallory said. He gave Velasco a pound-note.

“Dr. Mallory wants that bill fully itemized,” Fraser said. “With receipts.”

“Right and fly, squire,” Tate said. He touched the brim of his hat with a copper’s salute. “Delighted to serve the interests of the nation.”

“And keep a civil tongue in your head, Tate.”

Tate ignored him, and leered at Mallory. “You’ll be hearing from us, squire.”

Fraser and Mallory watched them go. “I reckon you’re out two pounds,” Fraser said. “You’ll never see those two again.”

“Cheap at the price, perhaps,” Mallory said.

“No it ain’t, sir. There’s far cheaper ways.”

“At least I shan’t be coshed from behind any longer.”

“No, sir, not by them.”

Mallory and Fraser ate gritty sandwiches of turkey and bacon from a glass-sided hot-cart. They were once again unable to hire a cabriolet. None were visible in the street. The underground stations were all closed, with angry sand-hog pickets shouting foul abuse at passers-by.

The day’s second appointment, in Jermyn Street, was a severe disappointment to Mallory. He had come to the Museum to confer about his speech, but Mr. Keats, the Royal Society kinotropist, had sent a telegram declaring himself very ill, and Huxley had been dragooned into some committee of savant Lordships meeting to consider the emergency. Mallory could not even manage to cancel his speech, as Disraeli had suggested, for Mr. Trenham Reeks declared himself unable to make such a decision without Huxley’s authority, and Huxley himself had left no forwarding address or telegram-number.

To add salt to the wound, the Museum of Practical Geology was almost deserted, the cheery crowds of schoolchildren and natural-history enthusiasts depleted to a few poor sullen wretches clearly come in for the sake of cleaner air and some escape from the heat. They slouched and loitered under the towering skeleton of the Leviathan as if they longed to crack its mighty bones and suck the marrow.

There was nothing for it but to tramp back to the Palace of Paleontology and prepare for the night’s dinner with the Young Men’s Agnostic Association. The Y.M.A.A. were a savantry student-group. Mallory, as lion of the evening, would be expected to make a few after-dinner remarks. He’d been quite looking forward to the event, as the Y.M.A.A. were a jolly lot, not at all as pompous as their respectable name might suggest, and the all-male company would allow him to make a few unbuttoned jests suitable for young bachelors. Mallory had heard several such, from “Dizzy” Disraeli, that he thought very good indeed. But now he wondered how many of his erstwhile hosts were left in London, or how the young men might manage to gather together, if they were still so inclined, and worst yet, what the dining might be like in the upstairs room of the Black Friar pub, which was near Blackfriars Bridge and just upwind of the Thames.

The streets were visibly emptying. Shop after shop bore
CLOSED
signs. Mallory had hoped to find a barber to trim his hair and beard, but he’d had no such luck. London’s citizenry had fled, or gone to earth behind tight-closed windows. Smoke had settled to ground-level and mixed with a foetid fog, a yellow pea-soup of it everywhere, and it was difficult to see the length of a half-block. The rare pedestrians emerged from obscurity like well-dressed ghosts. Fraser led the way, uncomplaining and unerring, and Mallory supposed that the veteran copper could have led them through the London streets blindfolded, with near as much ease. They wore their kerchiefs over their faces now. It seemed a sensible precaution, though it rather bothered Mallory that Fraser now seemed gagged as well as reticent.

“The kinotropes are the sticking-point,” Mallory opined, as they tramped up the Brompton Road, the spires of its scientific palaces obscured by foetor. “It wasn’t like this before I left England. Two years ago the damned things were nowhere near so common. Now I’m not allowed to give a public speech without one.” He coughed. “It gave me a turn to see that long panel back in Fleet Street, mounted in front of the Evening Telegraph, clacking away like sixty, over the heads of the crowd! ‘Trains Closed As Sand-Hogs Strike,’ the thing said, ‘Parliament Decries State of Thames.’ ”

“What’s wrong with that?” Fraser asked.

“It doesn’t say anything,” Mallory said. “Who in Parliament? What state of the Thames, specifically? What did Parliament say about it? Wise things or foolish things?”

Fraser grunted.

“There is a wicked pretense that one has been informed. But no such thing has truly occurred! A mere slogan, an empty litany. No arguments are heard, no evidence is weighed. It isn’t news at all, only a source of amusement for idlers.”

“Some might say it’s better for idlers to know a bit than nothing at all.”

“Some might be damned fools, then, Fraser. This kino-sloganry is like printing bank-notes with no gold to back them, or writing checks on an empty account. If that is to be the level of rational discourse for the common folk, then I must say three cheers for the authority of the House of Lords.”

A fire-gurney chugged slowly past them, with weary firemen on its running-boards, their clothing and faces blackened at their work, or perhaps by the London air itself, or perhaps by the streaming stinking soot of the gurney’s own smokestacks. To Mallory, it seemed a strangely ironic thing that a fire-gurney should propel itself through the agency of a heap of blazing coal. But perhaps there was sense in it after all, for in weather like this a team of horses would be hard put to gallop a block.

Mallory was anxious to soothe his raw throat with a huckle-buff, but it seemed smokier inside the Palace of Paleontology than out. There was a harsh stench, like burnt linen.

Perhaps Kelly’s imperial gallons of manganate of soda had eaten through the pipes. In any case, this Stink seemed to have finally defeated the Palace guests, for there was scarcely a soul in the lobby, and not a murmur from the dining-room.

Mallory was looking for service in the saloon, amid the lacquered screens and red silk upholstery, when Kelly himself appeared, his face taut and resolute. “Dr. Mallory?”

“Yes, Kelly?”

“I’ve bad news for you, sir. An unhappy event here. A fire, sir.”

Mallory glanced at Fraser.

“Yes, sir,” the concierge said. “Sir, when you left today, did you perhaps leave clothing near the gas-jet? Or a cigar still smoldering?”

“You don’t mean to say the fire was in my room!”

“I fear so, sir.”

“A serious fire?”

“The guests thought it so, sir. So did the firemen.” Kelly said nothing of the feelings of the Palace staff, but his face made his sentiments clear.

“I always turn out the gas!” Mallory blurted. “I don’t recall exactly — but I always turn out the gas.”

“Your door was locked, sir. Firemen had to break it in.”

“We’ll want a look,” Fraser suggested mildly.

The door of Mallory’s room had been axed in, and the warped floor was awash with sand and water. Mallory’s heaps of magazines and paper correspondence had blazed up very fiercely, thoroughly consuming his desk and a great blackened swatch of the carpet. There was a huge charred hole in the wall behind the desk and the ceiling above it, with naked joists and rafters gone to charcoal, and Mallory’s wardrobe, replete with all his London finery, burnt to cindered rags and smashed mirror-glass. Mallory was beside himself with anger and a deep foreboding shame.

“You locked your door, sir?” Fraser asked.

“I always do. Always!”

“May I see your key?”

Mallory handed Fraser his key-chain. Fraser knelt quietly beside the splintered door-frame. He examined the keyhole closely, then rose to his feet.

“Were there any suspicious characters reported in the hall?” Fraser asked Kelly.

Kelly was offended. “May I ask who you are to inquire, sir?”

“Inspector Fraser, Bow Street.”

“No, Inspector,” Kelly said, sucking his teeth. “No suspicious characters. Not to my personal knowledge!”

“You’ll keep this matter confidential, Mr. Kelly. I assume that like other Royal Society establishments you take only guests who are accredited savants?”

“That is our firm policy. Inspector!”

“But your guests are allowed visitors?”

“Male visitors, sir. Properly escorted ladies — nothing scandalous, sir!”

“A well-dressed hotel cracksman,” Fraser concluded. “And arsonist. Not so good an arsonist as he is a cracksman, for he was rather clumsy in the way he heaped those papers below the desk and the wardrobe. He’d a skeleton bar-key for this tumbler-lock. Had to scrape about a bit, but I doubt it took him five full minutes.”

“This beggars belief,” Mallory said.

Kelly looked near tears. “A savant guest burned out of his room! I don’t know what to say! I have not heard of such a wickedness since the days of Ludd! ‘Tis a shame. Dr. Mallory — a foul shame!”

Mallory shook his head. “I should have warned you of this, Mr. Kelly. I have dire enemies.”

Kelly swallowed. “We know, sir. There’s much talk of it among the staff, sir.”

Fraser was examining the remnants of the desk, poking about in the litter with the warped brass hanger-rod from the wardrobe. “Tallow,” he said.

“We carry insurance. Dr. Mallory,” Kelly said hopefully. “I don’t know if our policy covers exactly this sort of matter, but I do hope we can make good your losses! Please accept my most sincere apologies!”

“It scotches me,” Mallory said, looking about the wreckage. “But not so great a hurt as perhaps they hoped! I keep all my most important papers in the Palace safety-box. And of course I never leave money here.” He paused. “I assume the Palace safe remains unrifled, Mr. Kelly.”

“Yes, sir,” Kelly said. “Or rather — let me see to that at once, sir.” He left hastily, bowing.

“Your friend the Derby stiletto-man,” Fraser said. “He did not dare dog you today, but once we’d left, he crept up here, cracked the door, and lit candles among your heaped-up papers. He was long and safely gone before the alarm was raised.”

“He must know a deal about my schedule,” Mallory said. “Knows all about me, I daresay. He’s plundered my number. He’s taken me for a cake.”

“In a manner of speaking, sir.” Fraser tossed the brass pole aside. “He’s a trumped-up amateur. Your skilled arsonist uses liquid paraffin, which consumes itself and all it touches.”

“I shan’t make that dinner with the Agnostics tonight, Fraser. I’ve nothing to wear!”

Fraser stood quite still. “I can see you face misfortune very bravely — like a scholar and a gentleman. Dr. Mallory.”

“Thank you,” Mallory said. There was a silence. “Fraser, I need a drink.”

Fraser nodded slowly.

“For Heaven’s sake, Fraser, let us go somewhere where we can do some genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken drinking, with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over everything! Let us away from the fashionable Palace, to a house where they don’t mind letting in a man with nothing left but the coat on his back!” Mallory kicked about in the rubble of his wardrobe.