The Difference Engine (51 page)

The stoker swabbed his face with a polka-dot kingsman. “Something here the press aren’t meant to see.”

“They’ve put it in the wrong street, then,” the driver said, “haven’t they?”

As Oliphant climbed from the gurney, Fraser came walking quickly toward him. “We’ve found her,” Fraser said glumly.

“And seem to have attracted considerable publicity in the process. Perhaps a few less infantry would be in order?”

“It isn’t a matter for levity, Mr. Oliphant. You’d best come with me.”

“Is Betteredge here?”

“Haven’t seen him. This way, please.” Fraser led the way between a pair of barricades. A soldier curtly nodded them past.

Oliphant glimpsed a mustachioed gentleman in urgent conversation with two Metropolitans. “That’s Halliday,” he said, “chief of Criminal Anthropometry.”

“Yes, sir,” Fraser said. “They’re all over this one. The Museum of Practical Geology has been broken into. The Royal Society is angry as a nest of hornets, and bloody Egremont will be in every first-edition, calling it a Luddite outrage. Our only bit of luck would seem to be that Dr. Mallory is well away in China.”

“Mallory? Why is that?”

“The Land Leviathan. Mrs. Bartlett and her cohorts attempted to make away with the thing’s skull.”

They rounded one of the makeshift barriers, its coarse fabric stamped at intervals with the broad-arrow mark of the Army Ordnance Department.

A cab-horse lay on its side in a great pool of darkening blood. The cab, a common one-horse fly, was overturned nearby, its dull black-lacquered panels stitched with bullet-holes.

“She was with two men,” Fraser said. “Three if you count a corpse they left behind in the Museum. The hack was driven by a Yankee exile called Russell, a bully-rock bruiser living in Seven Dials. The other man was Henry Dease of Liverpool, quite the accomplished cracksman. I’d our Henry in dock ten times, when I was on the force, but no more. They’re laid out there, sir.” He pointed. “Russell, the driver, evidently got into a shouting match with a real cabman, over who should give way. A Metropolitan on traffic-duty attempted to intervene, at which point Russell produced a pistol.”

Oliphant was staring at the overturned cab.

“The traffic officer was unarmed, but a pair of Bow Street detectives happened to be passing . . . ”

“But this cab, Fraser . . .”

“That’s the work of an Army-gurney, sir. The last of the temporary garrisons is just by the Holborn viaduct.” He paused. “Dease had a Russian shotgun . . . ”

Oliphant shook his head in disbelief.

“Eight civilians taken to hospital,” Fraser said. “One detective dead. But come along, sir — best we get this done with.”

“What is the meaning of these canvas screens?”

“Criminal Anthropometry ordered them.”

Oliphant felt as though he were moving through a dream, his limbs numb and without volition. He allowed himself to be led to where three canvas-draped bodies were arranged upon stretchers.

The face of Florence Bartlett was a hideous ruin.

“Vitriol,” Fraser said. “A bullet shattered whatever container she employed.”

Oliphant turned quickly away, retching into his handkerchief.

“Sorry, sir,” Fraser said. “No point in you seeing the other two.”

“Betteredge, Fraser — have you seen him?”

“No, sir. Here’s the skull, sir, or what remains of it.”

“The skull?”

Perhaps half-a-dozen massive fragments of petrified bone and ivory-tinted plaster were neatly arranged atop a varnished trestle-table. “There’s a Mr. Reeks here, from the Museum, come to take it back,” Fraser said. “Says it isn’t as badly damaged as we might think. Would you like to sit down, sir? I could find you a folding-stool —”

“No. Why does there seem to be fully half of Criminal Anthropometry about, Fraser?”

“Well, sir, you’re in a better position to determine that than I,” Fraser said, lowering his voice, “though I’ve heard it said that Mr. Egremont and Lord Galton have recently discovered they’ve much in common.”

“Lord Galton? The eugenics theorist?”

“Lord Darwin’s cousin, that is. He’s Anthropometry’s man in the House of Lords. Has a deal of influence in the Royal Society.” Fraser brought out his notebook. “You’d best see why I thought it urgent you come here, sir.” He led Oliphant back around the ruin of the cab. Glancing about for possible observers, he passed Oliphant a fold of blue flimsy. “I took it from the Bartlett woman’s reticule.”

The note was undated, unsigned:

That which you so persistently desire has been located, albeit in a most peculiar hiding-place. I am informed, by our mutual acquaintance of the Derby, Dr. Mallory, that it has been sealed up within the skull of his Land Leviathan. I would hope that you will consider this crucial intelligence a full repayment of all my debts to you. I am in some peril now, from recent political developments, and certainly I am observed by elements of Government; pray consider that in any further attempt to communicate. I have done all that I can, I swear it.

The elegant hand, as familiar to Oliphant as it was to Fraser, was Lady Ada Byron’s.

“The two of us alone have seen that,” Fraser said.

Oliphant folded the paper in quarters before putting it away in his cigar-case. “And what exactly was it, Fraser, that was hidden in the skull?”

“I’ll escort you back through the line, sir.”

Reporters surged forward as Fraser and Oliphant emerged from the barricades. Fraser took Oliphant’s arm and led him into a cluster of helmeted Metropolitans, some of whom he greeted casually by name. “To answer your question, Mr. Oliphant,” Fraser said, the policemen walling off the shouting crowd behind blue serge and brass buttons, “I don’t know. But we have it.”

“You do? By whose authority?”

“None but my own lights,” Fraser said. “Harris here, he found it in the cab, before Anthropometry arrived.” Fraser very nearly smiled. “The boys on the force aren’t too keen on Anthropometry. Bloody-minded amateurs, aye, Harris?”

“Aye, sir,” said a Metropolitan with blond side-whiskers, “they are that.”

“Where is it, then?” Oliphant asked.

“Here, sir.” Harris produced a cheap black satchel. “Just as we found it, in this.”

“Mr. Oliphant, sir, I think you’d best take that straight away,” Fraser said.

“Indeed, Fraser, I agree. Tell the Special Branch chap in the fancy gurney that I won’t be needing him. Thank you, Harris. Good evening.” The policemen parted smoothly. Oliphant, satchel in hand, strode smartly out through the throng who jostled for a better view of the soldiers and the canvas screens.

“Pardon, guv, but couldyer spare a copper?”

   Oliphant looked down into the squinting brown eyes of little Boots, every inch the crippled jockey. He was neither. Oliphant threw him a penny. Boots caught it adroitly, then edged forward on his cut-down crutch. He stank of damp fustian and smoked mackerel. “Trouble, guv. Becky’ll tell yer.” Boots wheeled about on his crutch and hobbled determinedly away, muttering as he went, a beggar intent upon finding a better pitch.

He was one of Oliphant’s two most talented watchers.

The other, Becky Dean, kept pace beside Oliphant as he neared the corner of Chancery Lane. She was gotten up as a rather successful tart, brass-heeled and brazen.

“Where has Betteredge got to?” Oliphant asked, as if talking to himself.

“Taken,” Becky Dean said. “Not three hours ago.”

“Taken by whom?”

“Two men in a hack. They’d been following you. Betteredge got on to them, then set us to watching the watchers.”

“I knew nothing of this.”

“Day before yesterday, he came to us.”

“And who were these men?”

“One’s a greasy little ponce of a private detective. Velasco his name is. The other was Government by the look of him.”

“He was taken in broad daylight? By force?”

“You know well enough how it’s done,” Becky Dean said.

In the soothing reek of his tobacconist’s quiet stock-room, at the corner of Chancery Lane and Carey Street, Oliphant held the corner of the blue flimsy above the concise jet of a bronze cigar-lighter in the shape of a turbaned Turk.

He watched the paper reduce itself to delicate pinkish ash.

The satchel had contained a Ballester-Molina automatic revolver, a silvered-brass pocket-flask filled with some sickly, sweet-scented decoction, and a wooden case. “This last was plainly the object in question, encrusted as it was with raw white plaster. It held a very large number of Engine-cards in the Napoleon gauge, cut from a novel material, milky and very smooth to the touch.

“The parcel,” he said to Mr. Beadon, the tobacconist, “is to be held for me alone.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“My man Bligh to be the sole exception.”

“As you wish, sir.”

“If any inquiry at all should be made, Beadon, please send a boy ‘round to advise Bligh.”

“Our pleasure, sir.”

“Thank you, Beadon. Could you possibly give me forty pounds cash, against my account?”

“Forty, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Yes I could, sir. With pleasure, Mr. Oliphant.” Mr. Beadon took a ring of keys from his coat and went to unlock an admirably modern-looking safe.

“And a dozen prime habanas. And Beadon?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I think it might be a very good idea if you were to keep the parcel in your safe there.”

“Of course, sir.”

“I believe that the Lambs is nearby, Beadon, the dining-club?”

“Yes, sir. Holborn, sir. A short walk.”

The year’s first snow began to fall, as he made his way up Chancery Lane, a dry gritty stuff that seemed unlikely to adhere to the paving.

Boots and Becky Dean were nowhere to be seen, which could reliably be taken to mean that they were about their customarily invisible business.

You know well enough how it’s done.

And didn’t he? How many had been made to vanish, vanish utterly, in London alone? How could one sit among friends at pleasant little dinners, sipping Moselle, listening to kind and careless talk, yet carry in one’s mind the burden of such knowledge?

He’d meant Collins to be the last, absolutely the last; now Betteredge had gone, and at the hands of another agency.

In the beginning, it had made so horribly elegant a sort of sense.

In the beginning, it had been his idea.

The Eye. He sensed it now — yes, surely, its all-seeing gaze full upon him as he nodded to the tasseled doorman and entered the marbled vestibule of the Lambs, Andrew Wakefield’s dining club.

Brass letter-boxes, a telegraph-booth, an excess of French-polished veneer, all thoroughly modern. He glanced back, through glass doors, to the street. Opposite the Lambs, beyond twin streams of snow-dusted traffic, he glimpsed a solitary figure in a tall derby hat.

A page directed him to the grill-room, which was done in dark oak, with an enormous fireplace topped with a mantel of carved Italian stone. “Laurence Oliphant,” he told the tightly jacketed head-waiter, “for Mr. Andrew Wakefield.”

A look of unease crossed the man’s face. “I’m sorry, sir, but he isn’t —”

“Thank you,” Oliphant said, “but I believe I see Mr. Wakefield.”

With the head-waiter at his heels, Oliphant marched between the tables, diners turning as he passed.

“Andrew,” he said, arriving at Wakefield’s table, “how very fortunate to find you here.”

Wakefield was dining alone. He seemed to experience a temporary difficulty in swallowing.

“Mr. Wakefield, sir,” the head-waiter began.

“My friend will be joining me,” Wakefield said. “Sit down, please. We’re attracting attention.”

“Thank you.” Oliphant took a seat.

“Will you be dining, sir?” the head-waiter asked.

“No, thank you.”

When they were alone, Wakefield sighed loudly. “Damn it all, Oliphant, but didn’t I make my terms clear?”

“What exactly is it, Andrew, of which you’ve become so frightened?”

“It should be fairly obvious.”

“Should it?”

“Lord Galton’s in league with your bloody Mr. Egremont. He’s the great patron of Criminal Anthropometry. Always has been. Their virtual founder. He’s Charles Darwin’s cousin, Oliphant, and he wields great influence in the House of Lords.”

“Yes, and in the Royal Society, and in the Geographical as well. I’m thoroughly familiar with Lord Galton, Andrew. He espouses the systematic breeding of the human species.”

Wakefield put down his knife and fork. “Criminal Anthropometry have effectively taken over the Bureau. For all intents and purposes, the Central Statistics Bureau is now under Egremont’s control.”

Oliphant watched as Wakefield’s upper teeth began to worry at his lower-lip.

“I’ve just come from Fleet Street,” Oliphant said. “The level of violence in this society” — and he drew the Ballester-Molina from within his coat — “or rather, I should say, the level of unacknowledged violence, has become remarkable, don’t you think, Andrew?” He placed the revolver on the linen between them. “Take this pistol as an example. All too readily obtainable, I’m told. It is of Franco-Mexican manufacture, though the invention of Spaniards. Certain of its internal parts, I am informed, springs and whatnot, are actually British, available on the open market. It becomes rather difficult, then, to say where a weapon like this comes from. Emblematic of something in our current situation, don’t you think?”

Wakefield had gone quite white.

“But I seem to have upset you, Andrew. I’m sorry.”

“They’ll erase us,” Wakefield said. “We’ll cease to exist. There’ll be nothing left, nothing to prove either of us ever lived. Not a check-stub, not a mortgage in a City bank, nothing whatever.”

“Exactly what I’m on about, Andrew.”

“Don’t take that moral tone with me, sir,” Wakefield said. “Your lot began it, Oliphant — the disappearances, the files gone missing, the names expunged, numbers lost, histories edited to suit specific ends . . . No, don’t take that tone with me. ”

Oliphant could think of nothing to say. He rose, leaving the pistol on the table-cloth, and left the grill-room without looking back.

“Pardon me,” he said, in the marbled vestibule, to a burgundy-jacketed bellman who was sifting cigar-ends from a sand-filled marble um, “but could you please direct me to the office of the club steward?”