The Difference Engine (24 page)

Mallory sorted through his correspondence with desultory interest, his head aching slightly and his mind already drifting. There was a tedious burden of necessary professional correspondence, and the usual tiresome freight of admiring missives and begging-letters. Perhaps the engagement of a personal secretary might in fact be unavoidable.

Struck by an odd inspiration, Mallory wondered if young Mr. Tobias of the Central Statistics Bureau might not be just the man for this post. Perhaps an offer of alternate employment would increase the fellow’s daring in the office, for there was much at the Bureau that Mallory longed to peruse. The file on Lady Ada, for instance, should such a fabulous item exist. Or the slippery Mr. Oliphant, with his ready smiles and vague assurances. Or Lord Charles Lyell, the medal-heavy savant chief of the Uniformitarian faction.

These three worthies were likely well above his reach, Mallory thought. But he might well ferret out a bit of data on Peter Foulke: a sinister rascal whose web of underhanded intrigue was ever more manifest.

He would have it all out somehow; Mallory felt quite sure of that, as he shuffled through his mail-basket. The whole occulted business would slowly emerge, like bones chipped from their bed of shale. He had glimpsed the closeted skeletons of the Rad elite. Now, given time and a chance to work, he would wrench the mystery whole from its stony matrix.

His attention was caught by a most unusual packet. It was of non-standard dimensions, rather blocky and square, and it bore a colorful set of French express-stamps. The ivory-yellow envelope, astonishingly slick and stiff, was of a most unusual water-proof substance, something like isinglass. Mallory took out his Sheffield knife, selected the smallest of several blades, and worried the thing open.

The interior bore a single French Engine-card, of the Napoleon gauge. Mallory, with growing alarm, shook the card free, onto the table-top. He did this with some difficulty, for the slick interior of the envelope was queerly damp. It was dewy with a chemical moisture, giving off an increasingly virulent stench as it was exposed to air.

The card, a blank without holes, bore a neat block of tiny black print, all in capitals.

TO DR.
EDWARD
MALLORY
,
PALACE
OF
PALEONTOLOGY
, LONDON:
YOU
ARE
IN
GUILTY
POSSESSION
OF A
PROPERTY
STOLEN
AT
EPSOM
.
YOU
WILL
RETURN
THIS
PROPERTY
TO US,
WHOLE
AND
COMPLETE
,
FOLLOWING
THE
ORDERS
GIVEN
YOU
IN
THE
PERSONAL
NOTICES
COLUMNS
OF
THE
LONDON
DAILY
EXPRESS
.
UNTIL
WE
RECEIVE
THIS
PROPERTY
,
YOU
WILL
SUFFER
A
VARIETY
OF
DELIBERATE
PUNISHMENTS
,
CULMINATING
, IF
NECESSARY
, IN
YOUR
ENTIRE
AND
UTTER
DESTRUCTION
.
EDWARD
MALLORY: WE
KNOW
YOUR
NUMBER
,
YOUR
IDENTITY
,
YOUR
HISTORY
,
AND
YOUR
AMBITIONS; WE
ARE
FULLY
COGNIZANT
OF
YOUR
EVERY
WEAKNESS
.
RESISTANCE
IS USELESS;
SWIFT
AND
COMPLETE
SUBMISSION
IS
YOUR
ONLY
HOPE
.
CAPTAIN
SWING

Mallory sat in astonishment, memory rushing vividly upon him. Wyoming again, a morning when he’d risen from his camp-bed to find a rattlesnake dozing in his body-heat. He had felt the serpent squirming below his back in the depths of his sleep, but had drowsily ignored it. Here now was the sudden scaly proof.

He snatched the card up, examining it minutely. Camphorated cellulose, damp with something pungent — and the tiny black letters were beginning to fade. The flexible card had grown hot in his fingers. He dropped it at once, choking back a yelp of surprise. The card lay warping on the table-top, then began flaking into layers thinner than the finest onion-skin, while browning nastily at the edges. A feather of yellowish smoke began to rise, and Mallory realized that the thing was about to burst into flame.

He snatched hastily within the basket, came up with the latest thick grey issue of the Quart. Jrl. Geol. Soc., and swiftly swatted the card. After two sharp blows, it came apart into a thready curling mess, half-mixed with the blistered finish of the table-top.

Mallory slit open a begging-letter, tossed the contents out unread, and swept the ash into the envelope, with the sharp-edged spine of the geological journal. The table did not seem too badly damaged . . .

“Dr. Mallory?”

Mallory looked up, with a guilt-stricken start, into the face of a stranger. The man, a tall and clean-shaven Londoner, very plainly dressed, with a gaunt, unsmiling look, stood across the library table from Mallory, papers and a notebook in one hand.

“A very poor specimen,” Mallory said, in a sudden ecstasy of impromptu deception. “Pickled in camphor! A dreadful technique!” He folded the envelope and slid it in his pocket.

The stranger silently offered a carte-de-visite.

Ebenezer Fraser’s card bore his name, a telegram-number, and a small embossed Seal of State. Nothing else. The other side offered a stippled portrait with the look of stone-faced gravity that seemed the man’s natural expression.

Mallory rose to offer his hand, then realized that his fingers were tainted with acid. He bowed instead, sat at once, and wiped his hand furtively on the back of his trouser-leg. The skin of thumb and forefinger felt dessicated, as if dipped in formaldehyde.

“I hope I find you well, sir,” Fraser murmured, seating himself across the table. “Recovered from yesterday’s attack?”

Mallory glanced down the length of the library. The other patrons were still clumped together at the far side of the room, and seemed very curious indeed about his antics and Fraser’s sudden appearance.

“A trifle,” Mallory hedged. “Might happen to anyone, in London.”

Fraser lifted one dark eyebrow, by a fraction.

“Sorry my mishap should cause you to take trouble, Mr. Fraser.”

“No trouble, sir.” Fraser opened a leather-bound notebook and produced a reservoir-pen from within his plain, Quakerish jacket. “Some questions?”

“Truth to tell. I’m rather pressed for time at the moment —”

Fraser silenced him with an impassive look. “Been here three hours, sir, awaiting your convenience.”

Mallory began a fumbling apology.

Fraser ignored him. “I witnessed something quite curious outside, at six o’clock this morning, sir. A young news-boy, crying to the world that Leviathan Mallory was arrested for murder.”

“Me? Edward Mallory?”

Fraser nodded.

“I don’t understand. Why should any news-boy cry any such damnable lie?”

“Sold a deal of his papers,” Fraser said drily. “Bought one meself.”

“What on earth did this paper have to say about me?”

“Not a word of news about any Mallory,” Fraser said. “You may see for yourself.” He dropped a folded newspaper on the table-top: a London Daily Express.

Mallory set the newspaper carefully atop his basket. “Some wicked prank,” he suggested, his throat dry. “The street-arabs here are nerved for anything . . . ”

“When I stepped out again, the little rascal had hooked it,” Fraser said. “But a deal of your colleagues heard that news-boy crying his tale. Been the talk of the place all morning.”

“I see,” Mallory said. “That accounts for a certain . . . well!” He cleared his throat.

Fraser watched him impassively. “You’d best see this now, sir.” He took a folded document from his notebook, opened it, and slid it across the polished mahogany.

An Engine-printed daguerreotype. A dead man, full length on a slab, a bit of linen tucked about his loins. The picture had been taken in a morgue. The corpse had been knifed open from belly to sternum with a single tremendous ripping thrust. The skin of chest and legs and bulging belly was marble pale, in eerie contrast to the deeply sunburnt hands, the florid face.

It was Francis Rudwick.

There was a caption at the bottom of the picture. ‘A Scientific Autopsy’, it read. ‘The “batrachian” subject is pithed and opened in a catastrophic dissection. First in a Series.’

“God in Heaven!” Mallory said.

“Official police morgue record,” Fraser said. “Seems it fell into the hands of a mischief-maker.”

Mallory stared at it in horror-struck amazement. “What can it mean?”

Fraser readied his pen. “What is ‘batrachian,’ sir?”

“From the Greek,” Mallory blurted. “Batrachos, amphibian. Frogs and toads, mostly.” He struggled for words. “Once — years ago, in a debate — I said that his theories . . . Rudwick’s geological theories, you know . . .”

“I heard the story this morning, sir. It seems well-known among your colleagues.” Fraser flipped pages in his notebook. “You said to Mr. Rudwick: ‘The course of Evolution does not conform to the batrachian sluggishness of your intellect.’ ” He paused. “Fellow did look a bit froggy, didn’t he, sir?”

“It was in public debate at Cambridge,” Mallory said slowly. “Our blood was up . . . ”

“Rudwick claimed you were ‘mad as a hatter,’ ” Fraser mused. “Seems you took that remark very ill.”

Mallory flushed. “He had no right to say that, with his gentry airs —”

“You were enemies.”

“Yes, but —” Mallory wiped his forehead. “You can’t believe I had anything to do with this!”

“Not by your own intention, I am sure,” Fraser said. “But I believe you’re a Sussex man, sir? Town called Lewes?”

“Yes?”

“Seems that some scores of these pictures have been mailed from the Lewes postal office.”

Mallory was stunned. “Scores of them?”

“Mailed far and wide to your Royal Society colleagues, sir. Anonymously.”

“Christ in Heaven,” Mallory said, “they mean to destroy me!”

Fraser said nothing.

Mallory stared at the morgue picture. Suddenly the simple human pity of the sight struck him, with terrible force. “Poor damned Rudwick! Look what they’ve done to him!”

Fraser watched him politely.

“He was one of us!” Mallory blurted, stung into angry sincerity. “He was no theorist, but a damned fine bone-digger. My God, think of his poor family!”

Fraser made a note. “Family — must inquire into that. Very likely they’ve been told you murdered him.”

“But I was in Wyoming when Rudwick was killed. Everyone knows that!”

“A wealthy man might hire the business done.”

“I’m not a wealthy man.”

Fraser said nothing.

“I wasn’t,” Mallory said, “not then . . .”

Fraser leafed deliberately through his notebook.

“I won the money gambling.”

Fraser showed mild interest.

“My colleagues have noticed how I spend it,” Mallory concluded, with a chill sensation. “And wondered whence the money came. And they talk about me behind my back, eh?”

“Envy does set tongues wagging, sir.”

Mallory felt a sudden giddy dread. Menace filled the air like a cloud of wasps. After a moment, in Fraser’s tactful silence, Mallory rallied himself. He shook his head slowly, set his jaw. He would not be mazed or driven. There was work to do. There was evidence at hand. Mallory bent forward with a scowl, and studied the picture fiercely. ” ‘First of a series,’ this says. This is a threat, Mr. Fraser. It implies similar murders to follow. ‘A catastrophic dissection.’ This refers to our scientific quarrel — as if he’d died because of that!”

“Savants take their quarrels very seriously,” Fraser said.

“Can you mean to say that my colleagues believe I sent this? That I hire assassins like a Machiavel; that I am a dangerous maniac who boasts of murdering his rivals?”

Fraser said nothing.

“My God,” Mallory said. “What am I to do?”

“My superiors have set this case within my purview,” Fraser said formally. “I must ask you to trust in my discretion, Dr. Mallory.”

“But what am I to do about the damage to my reputation? Am I to go to every man in this building, and beg his pardon, and tell him . . . tell him I am not some hellish ghoul?”

“Government will not allow a prominent savant to be harassed in this manner,” Fraser assured him quietly. “Tomorrow, in Bow Street, the Commissioner of Police will issue a statement to the Royal Society, declaring you a victim of malicious slander, and innocent of all suspicion in the Rudwick affair.”

Mallory rubbed his beard. “Will that help, you think?”

“If necessary, we will issue a public statement to the daily newspapers, as well.”

“But might not such publicity arouse more suspicion against me?”

Fraser shifted a bit in his library chair. “Dr. Mallory, my Bureau exists to destroy conspiracies. We are not without experience. We are not without our resources. We will not be trumped by some shabby clique of dark-lanternists. We mean to have the lot of these plotters, branch and root, and we will do it sooner, sir, if you are frank with me, and tell me all you know.”

Mallory sat back in his chair. “It is in my nature to be frank, Mr. Fraser. But it is a dark and scandalous story.”

“You need not fear for my sensibilities.”

Mallory looked about at the mahogany shelves, the bound journals, the leather-bound texts and outsized atlases. Suspicion hung in the air like a burning taint. After yesterday’s street-assault, the Palace had seemed a welcome fortress to him, but now it felt like a badger’s bolthole. “This ain’t the place to tell it,” Mallory muttered.