第 27 页

Mallory studied the sky. The thready jellyfish mess of rising smoke was gone now, swallowed in a looming opaque fog. Here and there, grey flakes of something like snow were settling delicately over Fleet Street. Mallory examined one that lit on his jacket-sleeve, a strange slaggy flake of crystallized grit. At his touch it burst into the finest ash.

Fraser was shouting at him from beneath a lamp-post across the street. “Dr. Mallory!” Fraser beckoned in a manner that was, for him, remarkably animated; Mallory realized belatedly that Fraser had likely been shouting at him for some time.

Mallory fought and dodged his way across the traffic: cabs, carts, a large stumbling herd of bleating, wheezing sheep. The effort of it set him gasping.

Two strangers stood beneath the lamp-post with Fraser, both their faces tightly swathed with white kerchiefs. The taller fellow had been breathing through his kerchief for some time, for the cloth beneath his nose was stained yellow-brown. “Take ’em off, lads,” Fraser commanded. Sullenly, the two strangers tugged their kerchiefs below their chins.

“The Coughing Gent!” Mallory said, stunned.

“Permit me,” Fraser said wryly. “This is Mr. J. C. Tate, and this is his partner, Mr. George Velasco. They style themselves confidential agents, or something of the sort.” Fraser’s mouth grew thinner, became something almost like a smile. “I believe you gents have already met Dr. Edward Mallory.”

“We know ’im,” Tate said. There was a swollen purple bruise on the side of Tate’s jaw. The kerchief had hidden it. “Bloody lunatic, he is! Violent bloody maniac, as ought to be in Bedlam.”

“Mr. Tate was an officer on our metropolitan force,” Fraser said, fixing Tate with a leaden stare. “Till he lost the post.”

“I resigned!” Tate declared. “I quit on principle, as there’s no way to get justice done in the public police in London, and you know that as well as I do, Ebenezer Fraser.”

“As for Mr. Velasco, he’s one of your would-be dark-lantern men,” Fraser said mildly. “Father came to London as a Spanish royalist refugee, but our young Mr. George is apt to turn his hand to anything—false passports, keyhole-peering, blackjacking prominent savants in the street….”

“I am a native-born British citizen,” said the swarthy little half-breed, with an ugly glare at Mallory.

“Don’t put on airs, Fraser,” Tate said. “You walked a beat same as me, and if you’re a big brass-hat now, it’s only so you can sit on dirty scandals for the Government. Clap the darbies on us, Fraser! Take us into custody! Do your worst! I’ve my own friends, you know.”

“I won’t let Dr. Mallory hit you, Tate. Stop worrying. But do tell us why you’ve been dogging him.”

“Professional confidentiality,” Tate protested. “Can’t nark on a patron.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Fraser said.

“Your gentleman here is a bloody murderer! Had his rival gutted like a fish!”

“I did no such thing,” Mallory said. “I’m a Royal Society scholar, not some back-alley conspirator!”

Tate and Velasco exchanged glances of amazed skepticism. Velasco began to snicker helplessly.

“What’s so amusing?” Mallory said.

“They were hired by one of your colleagues,” Fraser said. “This is a Royal Society intrigue. Is that not so, Mr. Tate?”

“I told you I ain’t tellin’,” Tate said.

“Is it the Commission on Free Trade?” Mallory demanded. No answer. “Is it Charles Lyell?”

Tate rolled his smoke-reddened eyes and elbowed Velasco in the ribs. “He’s as pure as the snow, your Dr. Mallory is, just as you say, Fraser.” He wiped his face with his stained kerchief. “Things’ve come to a pretty pass, damn it all, with London stinking to perdition and the country in the hands of learned lunatics with too much money and hearts of stone!”

Mallory felt the strong impulse to give the insolent rascal another sharp taste of the fist, but with a swift effort of will he throttled the useless instinct. He stroked his beard with a professorial air, and smiled on Tate, coldly and deliberately.

“Whoever your employer may be,” Mallory said, “he shan’t be very happy that Mr. Fraser and I have found you out.”

Tate watched Mallory narrowly, saying nothing. Velasco put his hands in his pockets and looked ready to sidle off at any moment.

“We may have come to blows earlier,” Mallory said, “but I pride myself that I can rise above a natural resentment, and see our situation objectively! Now that you’ve lost the cover of deceit under which you have been stalking me, you’re of no use to your patron anymore. Is that not so?”

“What if it is?” Tate asked.

“The two of you might still be of considerable use to a certain Ned Mallory. What is he paying you, this fancy patron fellow?”

“Have a care, Mallory,” Fraser warned.

“If you’ve watched me at all closely, you must be aware that I’m a generous man,” Mallory insisted.

“Five shillings a day,” Tate muttered.

“Each,” Velasco put in. “Plus expenses.”

“They’re lying,” Fraser said.

“I’ll have five golden guineas waiting for you, in my rooms at the Palace of Paleontology, at the end of this week,” Mallory promised. “In exchange for that sum, I want you to treat your former patron exactly as you’ve treated me—simple poetic justice, as it were! Stalk him secretly, wherever he goes, and tell me everything he does. That’s what you were hired for, is it not?”

“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 cardsharper’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 kinosloganry 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 smoke-stacks. 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?”