The Difference Engine (26 page)

Fraser did not seem much impressed by the story. Mallory surmised it was an old and tiresome tale to Inspector Fraser of the Special Branch, or perhaps a mere fragment of larger and more shadowy misdoings. But Fraser did not pursue the matter of politics; he confined himself to the facts of crime. “Tell me about the first attack on your own person.”

“That came at the Derby. I saw a veiled lady within a hired cab, treated dreadfully by a man and woman, whom I took to be criminals — the woman being one Florence Russell Bartlett, as I presume you know?”

“Yes. We are searching most vigorously for Mrs. Bartlett.”

“I could not identify her male companion. But I may have overheard his name: ‘Swing.’ Or ‘Captain Swing.’ ”

Fraser seemed a touch surprised. “Did you tell that fact to Mr. Oliphant?”

“No.” Mallory, feeling himself on thin ice, said nothing more.

“Perhaps that’s just as well,” Fraser said, after a thoughtful pause. “Mr. Oliphant’s a bit fanciful at times, and ‘Captain Swing’ is quite a famous name in conspiracy; a mythical personage, much like ‘Ned Ludd,’ or ‘General Ludd.’ The Swing bands were Luddites of the countryside, years ago. Arsonists mostly, rick-burners. But in the Time of Troubles, they grew savage, and killed a deal of the landed gentry, and burned down their fine mansions.”

“Ah,” said Mallory. “Do you think this fellow is a Luddite, then?”

“There are no more Luddites,” Fraser said calmly. “They’re as dead as your dinosaurs. I rather suspect some mischievous antiquary. We have this fellow’s description, we have our methods — when we take him, we’ll quiz him on his taste in false identities.”

“Well, this fellow’s certainly no rural laborer — he’s some sort of Frenchified race-track dandy. When I defended the lady, he went for me with a stiletto! Nicked me in the leg. I suppose I’m lucky that the blade was not venomed.”

“Perhaps it was,” Fraser said. “Most poisons are far less potent than the public supposes . . . ”

“Well, I knocked the rascal down, and drove them off from their victim. The tout swore twice that he would kill me. ‘Destroy’ me, was the word he used . . . Then I realized that the lady could be only Lady Ada Byron. She began to talk in a very strange manner — as if drugged, or frightened witless . . . She begged me to escort her to the Royal Enclosure, but as we approached the Royal Box, she escaped me by a trick — without so much as a word of thanks for my pains.”

Mallory paused, fingering the contents of his pockets. “I suppose that’s the gist of the matter, sir. Shortly after, I won a good deal of money, wagered on a steam-gurney built by a friend of mine. He gave me very useful information, and it changed me in a moment from a modest scholar to a man of means.” Mallory tugged his beard. “Great as that change has been, it seemed much the lesser wonder at the time.”

“I see.” Fraser walked on silently. They approached Hyde Park Corner, where men stood on soap-boxes, haranguing the crowd and coughing. Fraser and Mallory fell silent as they walked among the clumped and skeptical listeners.

They crossed the frantic crackling bustle of Knightsbridge, Mallory waiting for Fraser to speak, but the policeman said nothing. At the tall iron gates of Green Park, Fraser turned and watched the street behind them for a long moment. “We can cut short through Whitehall,” he said at last. “I know a back way.”

Mallory nodded. He followed Fraser’s lead.

At Buckingham Palace, the guard was changing. The Royal Family, as was their habit, were summering in Scotland, but the elite Brigade of Guards carried out the daily ritual in the Queen’s absence. The Palace troops proudly marched in the very latest and most efficient British military gear, dun-colored Crimean battle-garb, scientifically spattered to deceive the enemy eye. The clever fabric had utterly confused the Russians, by all accounts. Behind the marchers, a team of artillery horses towed a large military calliope, its merry piping and rousing drones sounding strangely forlorn and eerie in the still, foul air.

Mallory had been waiting for Fraser to reach a conclusion. At last he could wait no longer. “Do you believe I met Ada Byron, Mr. Fraser?”

Fraser cleared his throat, and spat discreetly. “Yes, sir, I do. I don’t much like the matter, but I don’t see much to marvel at in it.”

“You don’t?”

“No, sir. I believe I see the root of it, clear enough. It is gambling-trouble. Lady Ada has a Modus.”

“A Modus — what is that?”

“It is a legend in sporting circles, Dr. Mallory. A Modus is a gambling-system, a secret trick of mathematical Enginery, to defeat the odds-makers. Every thieving clacker wants a Modus, sir. It is their philosopher’s stone, a way to conjure gold from empty air!”

“Can that be done? Is such an analysis possible?”

“If it is possible, sir, perhaps Lady Ada Byron could do it.”

“The friend of Babbage,” Mallory said. “Yes — I can believe it. Indeed I can!”

“Well, perhaps she has a Modus, perhaps she only thinks she does,” Fraser said. “I’m no mathematician, but I know there’s never been any betting-system that worked worth a damn. In any case, she’s blundered into something nasty again.” Fraser grunted in disgust. “She’s pursued that clackers’ phantom for years now, and rubbed shoulders with very ugly company — sharpers, low clackers, loan-makers, and worse. She’s amassed gambling-debts, to the point of open scandal!”

Absently, Mallory hooked his thumbs within his money-belt. “Well! If Ada’s truly found a Modus, she won’t have debts much longer!”

Fraser offered Mallory a look of pity for such naivete. “A true Modus would destroy the institutions of the Turf! It would wreck the livelihood of all your sporting-gents . . . Ever seen a track-crowd mill-up about a welsher? That’s the sort of stir a Modus would bring. Your Ada may be a great blue-stocking, but she hasn’t any more common sense than a housefly!”

“She is a great savant, Mr. Fraser! A great genius. I have read her papers, and the superb mathematics . . .”

” ‘Lady Ada Byron, Queen of Engines,’ ” Fraser said, in an utterly leaden tone that had more weariness than contempt. “A strong-minded woman! Much like her mother, eh? Wears green spectacles and writes learned books . . . She wants to upset the universe, and play at dice with the hemispheres. Women never know when to stop . . . ”

Mallory smiled. “Are you a married man, Mr. Fraser?”

“Not I,” Fraser said.

“Nor I, not yet. And Lady Ada never married. She was a bride of Science.”

“Every woman needs a man to hold her reins,” Fraser said. “It’s God’s plan for the relations of men and women.”

Mallory scowled.

Fraser saw his look, and thought the matter over again. “It’s Evolution’s adaptation for the human species,” he amended.

Mallory nodded slowly.

Fraser seemed markedly reluctant to meet Benjamin Disraeli, making some brief excuse about watching the streets for spies, but Mallory thought it far more likely that Fraser knew Disraeli’s reputation, and did not trust the journalist’s discretion. And small wonder.

Mallory had met many men-of-affairs in London, but “Dizzy” Disraeli was the Londoner’s Londoner. Mallory did not much respect Disraeli, but he did find him amusing company. Disraeli knew, or pretended to know, all the backstage intrigues in the Commons, all the rows of publishers and learned societies, all the soirees and literary Tuesdays at Lady So-and-So’s and Lady This-and-That’s. He had a sly way of alluding to this knowledge that was almost magical.

Mallory happened to know that Disraeli had in fact been blackballed at three or four gentlemen’s clubs, perhaps because, although a professed and respectable agnostic, Disraeli was of Jewish descent. But the man’s modes and manners somehow left the invincible impression that any Londoner who did not know “Dizzy” was an imbecile, or moribund. It was like a mystic aura, a miasma that surrounded the fellow, and there were times when Mallory himself could not help but believe it.

A female servant in mobcap and apron showed Mallory in. Disraeli was awake and eating his breakfast, strong black coffee and a stinking platter of mackerel fried in gin. He wore slippers, a Turkish robe, and a tasseled velvet fez. “Morning, Mallory. Dreadful morning. Beastly.”

“It is, rather.”

Disraeli crammed the last of his mackerel into his mouth and began to stuff the first pipe of the day. “Actually, you’re just the fellow I need to see today, Mallory. Bit of a clacker, technical expert?”

“Oh?”

“New damned thing, I bought it just last Wednesday. The shopman swore it would make life easier.” Disraeli led the way into his office, a room reminiscent of Mr. Wakefield’s office in the Central Statistics Bureau, though far less ambitious in scale, and littered with pipe-dottles, lurid magazines, and half-eaten sandwiches. The floor was crowded with carved blocks of cork and heaps of shredded excelsior.

Mallory saw that Disraeli had bought himself a Colt & Maxwell Typing Engine, and had managed to haul the thing out of its packing-crate and set it upright on its curved iron legs. It squatted on the stained oak boards before a patent office-chair.

“Looks all right,” Mallory said. “What is the problem?”

“Well, I can pump the treadle, and I can manage the handles well enough,” Disraeli said. “I can get the little needle to move to the letters I want. But nothing comes out.”

Mallory opened the side of the casing, deftly threaded the perforated tape through its gearing-spools, then checked the loading-chute for the fan-fold paper. Disraeli had failed to engage the sprockets properly. Mallory sat in the office-chair, foot-pumped the typer up to speed, and grasped the crank-handles. “What shall I write? Dictate something.”

” ‘Knowledge is power,’ ” Disraeli said readily.

Mallory cranked the needle back and forth through its glass-dialed alphabet. Perforated tape inched out, winding neatly onto its spring-loaded spool, and the rotating printing-wheel made a reassuring popping racket. Mallory let the flywheel die down and ratcheted the first sheet of paper out of its slot.
KNOWLEDGEE
IS
PPOWER
, it said.

“Takes a dab hand,” Mallory said, handing the page to the journalist. “But you’ll get used to it.”

“I can scribble faster than this!” Disraeli complained. “And in a better hand, by far!”

“Yes,” Mallory said patiently, “but you can’t reload the tape; bit of scissors and glue, you can loop your punch-tape through and the machine spits out page after page, so long as you push the treadle. As many copies as you like.”

“Charming,” Disraeli said.

“And of course you can revise what you’ve written. Simple matter of clipping and pasting the tape.”

“Professionals never revise,” Disraeli said sourly. “And suppose I want to write something elegant and long-winded. Something such as . . .” Disraeli waved his smoldering pipe. ” ‘There are tumults of the mind, when, like the great convulsions of Nature, all seems anarchy and returning chaos; yet often, in those moments of vast disturbance, as in the strife of Nature itself, some new principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct, develops itself, and controls, and regulates, and brings to an harmonious consequence, passions and elements which seem only to threaten despair and subversion.’ ”

“That’s rather good,” Mallory said.

“Like it? From your new chapter. But how am I to concentrate on eloquence while I’m pushing and cranking like a washer-woman?”

“Well, if you make some mistake, you can always reprint a new page fresh from the tape.”

“They claimed this device would save me paper!”

“You might hire a skilled secretary, and dictate.”

“They said it would save me money, as well!” Disraeli puffed at the amber tip of his long-stemmed meerschaum. “I suppose it can’t be helped. The publishers will force the innovation on us. Already the Evening Telegraph is setting up entirely with Engines. Quite a to-do about it in Government. The typesetting brotherhoods, you know. But enough shoptalk, Mallory. To work, eh? I’m afraid we must hasten. I should like to take notes for at least two chapters today.”

“Why?”

“I’m leaving London for the Continent, with a group of friends,” Disraeli said. “Switzerland, we think. Some little cantonment high in the Alps where a few jolly scribes can draw a breath of fresh air.”

“It is rather bad outside,” Mallory said. “Very ominous weather.”

“It’s the talk of every salon,” Disraeli told him, seating himself at his desk. He began to hunt through cubbyholes for his sheaf of notes. “London always stinks in summer, but they’re calling this ‘The Great Stink.’ All the gentry have their travels planned, or are gone already! There shall scarcely be a fashionable soul left in London. They say Parliament itself will flee upstream to Hampton Court, and the Law Courts to Oxford!”

“What, truly?”

“Oh yes. Dire measures are in the works. All planned sub rosa of course, to prevent mob panic.” Disraeli turned in his chair and winked. “But measures are coming, you may depend upon that.”

“What sort of measures, Dizzy?”

“Rationing water, shutting off smokestacks and gaslights, that sort of thing,” Disraeli said airily. “One may say what one likes about the institution of merit-lordship. But at least it has guaranteed that the leadership of our country is not stupid.”

Disraeli spread his notes across the desk. “The Government have highly scientific contingency plans, you know. Your invasions, your fires, your droughts and plagues . . .” He leafed through the notes, licking his thumb. “Some people dote on contemplating disasters.”

Mallory found this gossip difficult to believe. “What exactly is contained in these ‘contingency plans’?”

“All sorts of things. Evacuation plans, I suppose.”

“Surely you’re not implying that Government intend to evacuate London.”

Disraeli smiled wickedly. “If you smelled the Thames outside Parliament, you wouldn’t wonder that our solons want to bolt.”

“That bad, eh?”

“The Thames is a putrid, disease-ridden tidal sewer!” Disraeli proclaimed. “Thickened with ingredients from breweries, gas-works, and chemical and mineral factories! Putrid matter hangs like vile seaweed from the pilings of Westminster Bridge, and every passing steamer chums up a feculent eddy that nearly overwhelms her crew with foetor!”