The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (17 page)

             
"Traveling roundabout London is the best way to get to know the city," the Mummer told him.

             
So Barnett leaned back in the cab and watched as the streets of London passed under the two wheels of the hansom and district gave way to district with the bewildering changes of character that were commonplace in this amalgam of towns which had grown into the world's greatest city. Up they went past Victoria Station, sooty monument to the queen who had lent her name to the age. Then around Westminster Abbey and toward Trafalgar Square, passing the prime minister's residence, the Admiralty, and the spot where Charles I was beheaded. All the while, Mummer Tolliver kept up a running commentary on the history of the buildings and monuments they passed which was so rich and so personal that Barnett had a sudden image of Tolliver, with spade in hand and that irrepressible cockney grin lighting his face, busily laying the cornerstone of every public building in London since the eleventh century.

             
In less than half an hour, their hansom pulled into Upper Swan-dam Lane, which despite its name was not much more than an alley sitting behind the wharves lining the north side of the Thames to the east of London Bridge. "See that slop shop, cabby?" the Mummer called to the driver perched over their heads. "Right to the other side of that, if you please."

             
The cabby pulled past "Abner's Nautical Outfitters, Uniforms for all Principal Lines" and stopped before the unmarked door on the far side. The Mummer tossed him a shilling and hopped down. "Here we are," he told Barnett. "Come along."

             
Barnett climbed out of the cab and stepped gingerly through the muddy street to the sidewalk. In the late afternoon light the building he faced seemed to have a strange and exotic character. Three stories high, it was constructed from ruddy bricks that might have seen service in some ancient Celtic fortress and then lain buried for two thousand years before being resurrected for their present use in this Upper Swandam Lane facade. There were no windows on the ground floor, and those on the second and third were fitted with great iron shutters, crusted with layers of maroon paint. The front door, large enough to pass a four-wheeled carriage when opened, was similarly of iron, and featureless except for six iron bands bolted to it in a crisscross pattern and a small window at eye level, not more than four inches square.

             
"What is this place?" Barnett asked.

             
"What would you say it was?" the Mummer responded.

             
"The treasure house of some Indian maharaja," Barnett said, staring up at the building, "who's in London buying modern plumbing supplies for his palace."

             
The Mummer cocked his head to one side and stared up at Barnett's face, as though half afraid he might have said something funny. And then, reassured, he went and stood in front of the great iron door.

             
Inside of half a minute the peephole in the door opened and someone within examined them carefully.
That's peculiar,
Barnett mused.
How did he know we were out here?

             
A small door, which had been artfully concealed by the pattern of iron bands in the large door, sprang inward, and a Chinese boy in his mid-teens, wearing a frock coat and a bowler hat, nodded and smiled at them from inside. "Mr. Mummer," he said, "and, as I trust, Mr. Barnett. Please enter."

             
The Mummer nodded Barnett through the door and then stepped in after him. "Afternoon, Low," he said. "Where's your dad?"

             
The youth had closed the small door and slid two heavy bolts silently into place. "Come," he said. They were in a large room filled with orderly rows of packing cases stacked one atop the other. Two gas mantles affixed to stone pillars near the door were lit, but out of their circle of harsh light the area quickly receded into gloom and then into utter black. It was impossible to judge the size of the room, but Barnett instinctively felt that it was immense.

             
The Chinese youth picked up a lantern and led them down the aisle to an iron staircase and then preceded them up to the next floor.

             
At the top of the stairs they passed through an anteroom into a medium-sized room that was fitted out like an antique store or a curio shop. The iron shutters were thrown back on the two windows and the late afternoon sun shone directly in, illuminating some of the finest Oriental furniture and pottery that Barnett had ever seen. A teak cabinet and several brass-fitted
teak traveling chests were along the wall. In the middle of the room a large walnut table inlaid with ivory dragons at the four corners attracted Barnett's attention. He had a slight knowledge of Chinese furniture, which was in vogue in Paris at the moment, and he had never seen anything so fine. And the dragons were representations of the Imperial dragon—forbidden to anyone not of Manchu blood.

             
"I never thought I'd say this about a piece of furniture," Barnett said, "but this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

             
The boy nodded and smiled. "My father's," he said. "Come." He led the way past rows of delicate vases with the traditional patterns of long-defunct dynasties to another staircase, and they followed him up to the third floor.
(Second floor,
Barnett reminded himself.
Here it's ground floor, first floor, second floor. When in London ...")

             
This floor was again one long room, but a row of windows and a mosaic of skylights in the ceiling flooded it with what was left of the daylight. The room was divided into sections: one held several large tables and drafting boards; another had a small furnace or forge resting on a stone slab; across the room was a complex of interconnected chemical apparatus on a scale several times larger than that in Professor Moriarty's basement laboratory. The whole center area had been cleared out and the floorboards scrubbed clean, and long bolts of white silk were laid out on it in a complex pattern that meant nothing to Barnett. Several men in white smocks and felt slippers were crouched on different parts of the pattern industriously sewing one section of white silk to another section of white silk. It looked to Barnett like makework in a madhouse.

             
It was then that Barnett noticed the tall, stoop-shouldered figure of Professor Moriarty hovering about one of the drawing boards. He held a pencil in one hand and a large gutta percha eraser in the other, and he alternately attacked a paper pinned to the board with one and then the other. Standing at his right shoulder, peering intently at the drawing growing under Moriarty's hand, was a tall, thin, elderly Chinese in a sea-green silk robe. Every time Moriarty drew in a line or wrote down a figure, the Chinese gentleman ran the fingers of his left hand along a small ivory abacus he held in his right and then murmured a few words into Moriarty's left ear.

             
With the Mummer tagging close behind him, Barnett strode across the room to join Moriarty.

             
"Ah, Barnett," Moriarty said, glancing up from his work, "Tolliver. Just on time, I see."

             
" 'Course," the Mummer said.

             
"Mr. Benjamin Barnett," Moriarty said, "allow me to introduce Prince Tseng Li-chang, a former minister from the court of the son of Heaven to various Western nations, and quite possibly the finest mathematical mind of the nineteenth century. Mr. Barnett, as I mentioned, is a journalist."

             
Prince Tseng bowed. "Professor Moriarty has told me something of your travail, Mr. Barnett," he said in a deep, precise voice. "I trust you shall find your period of association with
Professor Moriarty to be a stimulating and rewarding experience. He has an incisive mind, quick as a crossbow dart; it is only his occasional companionship that makes my years of exile tolerable."

             
Barnett's journalist's ear perked up. "Exile?" he repeated.

             
Prince Tseng nodded sadly. "My step-cousin-in-law, the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi, who rules China through her adopted son, the Emperor Kuang-hs
ü
, has no use for Western ways. She chooses to believe that if you ignore the barbarians at the gates and insult their envoys, they will go quietly away. I advised her otherwise and she did not wish to listen. Soon she no longer wanted to see me or tolerate my presence. I was allowed to request the privilege of residing elsewhere."

             
"And so the Empress Dowager has lost a valuable advisor," Moriarty said. "And I have gained a trusted friend."

             
"Say," Barnett said, "if you don't mind my asking, what is all this?" He swept his hand around to indicate all the diverse activities that filled the room.

             
"This is my factory," Professor Moriarty said. "On the floor below, Prince Tseng manufactures antiques, while up here I create dreams."

             
"Two conundrums," Barnett said.

             
"Not at all, not at all," Prince Tseng said. "Here, look!" He went to a ring set into the floor and pulled it up, opening a three-foot-square trapdoor which led down to the floor below. Squatting by the opening, he gestured down. "There you see my workshop. There are my skilled artisans engaged in re-creating the T'ang, the Sung, the Yuan, and the Ming dynasties through representations of their art. Very precise representations."

             
Barnett gingerly approached the square hole in the floor. Directly below, a row of young women with kerchiefs tied around their heads sat before a long table. Each of them was painting patterns on a piece of unfired pottery with a fine Chinese brush.

             
"There is a great demand for the antiquities of my country, Mr. Barnett," Prince Tseng said. "It is a vogue—a fad. Unfortunately, very few of these objects have left my country. But the demand must be filled, must it not?" He dropped the trapdoor back into place and stood up.

             
"That's very interesting," Barnett said, for want of anything better to say. He was in the curious position of not knowing what reaction to have. Here was a prince of the royal family of China—if he was to be believed—presently in exile for unpopular political opinions, who supported himself by manufacturing fake Chinese antiques.

             
"Not all that interesting, Mr. Barnett," Prince Tseng said. "It's very mundane, really. It's what I must do to finance my work."

             
"You mean all this?" Barnett asked, gesturing around the room.

             
"No, sir. My work takes place in my homeland."

             
"All this," Professor Moriarty interrupted, "is mine. My responsibility entirely. Prince Tseng is good enough to aid me with the calculations and with his scientific insight, but the project is mine."

             
Barnett looked around the room again. The workers seemed to have tacitly agreed that it was time to quit for the day; they had gathered at a row of wooden lockers and were exchanging their smocks and slippers for street clothes. "I hope this doesn't appear a naive question," Barnett said, "but just what is going on in here?"

             
"You see before you," Moriarty said, indicating the neat mounds of white silk with a wave of his hand, "the beginnings of what is to become the world's first aerostat observatory."

             
"Aerostat—"

             
"An aerostat is a balloon that is filled with some gaseous substance which makes it lighter than air," Prince Tseng said.

             
"Yes," Barnett said. "Of course. My Uncle Ben was a balloonist in McClellan's army during the Rebellion. After the war he used to give exhibition balloon rides at county fairs. I helped him for a summer, and he taught me a bit about ballooning. It's the juxtaposition of the two words that puzzled me. Does an aerostat observatory observe aerostats or observe from an aerostat?"