The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (44 page)

Letter #1

30 September 1872

London, England

My dearest Elizabeth,

I leave this note for
you, as the house was empty when I came home to pack. Doubtless you’re out
enjoying a quaint diversion with your women friends. As for me, I am
unexpectedly off to the Suez, my dear. I’ve been dispatched to intercept a
notorious thief who stole fifty thousand pounds from the Bank of England.

The villain is sure to
leave the country and use his ill-gotten fortune to live extravagantly abroad.
Detectives have been dispatched, one to each major port, and I have been chosen
to keep a sharp eye on all British travellers who come through the Suez. I have
a clear description of the thief, a well-dressed man with fine manners. Should
I find him, I will shadow him till a warrant can be dispatched.

I’m sorry to leave you
with nothing more than a note on this, our first anniversary, particularly
since you never had the proper wedding you deserved. I still feel a bit of
remorse over our brash elopement to Gretna Green, but you know your parents
would never have consented to our love match. I still remember how haughtily
your mother said that, because I need to work for a living, I should come in
through the tradesman’s entrance.

I trust you will keep a
stiff upper lip while I’m away. The bank has offered a substantial reward to
the detective who captures the thief, and I am convinced I’ll get him if he
comes my way. All that’s needed in law enforcement these days is flair. You
have to know how to nose these vermin out. And I, of course, have excellent
flair. As I’ve told you many times, I have a veritable sixth sense for these
things.

Two thousand pounds will
allow us to buy a better home and to hire a servant to do the housework for
you. I know you expect such things out of life. It will also prove to your
parents that, though you disobeyed them, you were ultimately right to choose me
as your husband.

Meanwhile, I will write
to you every day I possibly can. I’m sure you’ll hardly notice I’m gone.

Yours, with much love,

Herbert Fix, Inspector, First grade

Letter #9

9 October

Suez, Egypt, Africa

My dear Elizabeth,

Good news! After all
these days of waiting, the thief has finally come to the Suez.

Today, when the steamer
Mongolia
docked at the quay in Suez, I spotted
a passenger forcing his way through the clamouring and stinking crowd of
locals. You would not believe the mob of natives and black Africans that press
around every passenger, offering to sell monkeys, unguents, jewellery, and the
most grotesque pagan idols. One wretch even had the temerity to offer me some
ground mummy which, he said, would strengthen my virile parts! I shudder to
think, my dear, of you having to witness such sights.

By great luck, the
fellow who came out of the
Mongolia
was in search of a government official. He nosed his way directly
to me and held out a passport, for which he wished to procure a visa from the
British consul. He was a wiry, dark-haired Frenchman, but he carried an
Englishman’s passport — his master’s. Of course, I immediately glanced at the
passport, and the description was exactly that of our thief! I could do no less
than try to stop the man.

I told my suspicions to
the consul and begged him to delay this man until I could get my arrest
warrant. To my great disappointment, however, the consul said that I had no
proof the traveller — Phileas Fogg — was guilty of any crime, and that without
such proof he could not be detained.

I must therefore follow
this rogue to his next stop, which is Bombay. I have talked to his servant,
Passepartout — a good sort of fellow, but French and therefore garrulous. The
man is convinced his master means to circle the globe to win a preposterous
bet. Apparently the cunning devil made a wager with the gentlemen in his club
that he could go completely around the world in a mere eighty days. With my
keen intellect, I realized immediately that this outrageous boast is nothing
more than cover for his escape with the stolen money.

Hoping to pry more
information from the talkative Frenchman, I took him on a shopping expedition
to the bazaar. There, merchants offer all types of goods, including a very
expensive perfume called Attar of Roses, of which a single drop can be mixed
with oil or water to make many concoctions prized by the local ladies. Since
you are always in my thoughts, I meant to buy you a dram of it. I also saw a
fly swatter made from an elephant’s tail, which I thought might amuse you. But,
as I’m sure you’ll understand, I had scarcely any time for frivolous purchases.

Passepartout wished to
obtain new shirts and other accoutrements for his master. Due to the haste with
which they left London, they had brought no more luggage than a carpetbag! Tell
me, what man — not a thief and not in possession of $50,000 — would thus
abandon his home and everything in it? The loquacious Frenchman continually
bemoaned the fact that he had left the gas burning in his room and that his
master wouldn’t allow him so much as a moment to run back to turn it off. This
is not the natural behaviour of a man who truly intends to return home.

I have applied for a
warrant, which should catch up with us in Bombay. My dear Elizabeth, the reward
money is as good as ours. I have not had the time to pick up any souvenirs for
you just yet, but I am sure to buy you something in Bombay, once the villain
Fogg has been arrested.

Yours affectionately,

Herbert Fix

Letter # 20

20 October 1872

Bombay, British India

My dear Elizabeth,

Here I am, once more,
fulfilling my promise of writing a letter a day to you. I will also post at
once the letters I wrote aboard the steamer.

Unfortunately, we have
made such rapid progress — Fogg bribed the owner of the liner to have the
engine stoked with extraordinary zeal — that my warrant is not yet with the
police here. I am more certain than ever of my quarry’s guilt. What man but a
fleeing criminal would throw away money in such a way?

Only those who have not
had to work for their income view it as of little importance. I know you do not
like it when I speak of the extravagance of the lace on your sister’s gowns,
but were it not for your parents’ private income, she would surely weigh her
expense more carefully and not burden herself with so much expensive frippery.

But worry not, my dear.
Soon you’ll be able to afford dresses as good’ or better than hers. In fact,
time permitting, I might pick up some fabric in Bombay, which is a city of
goodly size and filled with all manner of strange things.

The streets are
extraordinarily crowded with dark people attired in cotton robes. On the way to
the police station, I saw a man who lay completely at ease upon a bed of sharp
nails. Imagine! I also saw a man hypnotize a deadly snake by playing his flute.

I’m rather upset at not
having received the warrant yet, but you may be confident in my abilities, my
dear. Rest assured — Phileas Fogg, who really has no intention of going around
the world, will no doubt remain several days here, which will certainly be
sufficient time for me to arrest him. Meanwhile, maybe I’ll find you an
appropriate gift . . . perhaps some silk with which the native women wrap
themselves. Something called, as I understand it, a sari.

Oh, I almost forgot to
acknowledge that I received your letter, which you sent ahead to Bombay. It is
extraordinarily kind of you to say that you’d gladly forego the two thousand
pounds for the sake of having me near you again. Your female emotionalism is
quite charming, in its own way, but I know you are not serious. If I obeyed
you, I have no doubt you’d soon resent our poverty. And, more importantly, I
cannot let the villain Fogg go unpunished.

Bear my absence with
fortitude, for I’m sure the arrest warrant will come soon, and I’ll return to
you in glory and bearing the reward money that will start your climb back to
the sphere you abandoned in order to marry me.

With my regards,

Herbert Fix

Letter # 21

21 October 1872

Dear Elizabeth,

The warrant is not yet
here. I write in haste and frustration. It turns out that Phileas Fogg intended
to leave Bombay for Calcutta via the Great Peninsular railway. I was at the
point of stepping into another train carriage, when Fogg’s servant Passepartout
arrived breathless, hatless, barefoot, and bearing the marks of a scuffle.

Though I fear you’ll
reproach me for my rudeness, I confess that I eavesdropped on the conversation
between him and his master. The Frenchman had lost his shoes and barely escaped
after violating the sanctity of a heathen pagoda on Malabar Hill — which is
forbidden to Christians (or, at any rate, to anyone wearing shoes).

I was, as I said, on the
point of stepping into the train carriage when I realized that, rather than
waiting for the warrant from England — which might not reach us in time — I
could simply find the temple and give the heathen priests the name and
destination of their transgressor. Then
they
could press charges.

You see, the British
authorities are extraordinarily careful never to offend the native religions —
it is part of keeping control over this great uncivilized mob — and therefore,
what that fool Passepartout did was an offence before British law. I’ll get a
warrant for that crime, too, then meet them at Calcutta, and have both men
properly arrested.

I will write to you soon
and announce the date of my return home with the reward money.

Yours, in haste,

Herbert Fix

Letter #25

25 October 1872

Calcutta, British India

Dear Elizabeth,

At last Fogg and his
servant have arrived. I was in some anxiety that something had befallen them in
the jungle as they crossed the subcontinent. I could not stop thinking of the
thief and all those bank notes rotting away in the verdant wildness of India,
and my reward unclaimed! I was truly in despair — but now they’ve arrived at
last, and the magistrates had them arrested at the train. Everything was going
so well.

Unfortunately, Fogg bought
his way out of the situation by posting an exorbitant bail of £2,000, as if it
were nothing.

Two thousand pounds —
the same amount that could have made the two of us comfortable for
so long, thrown out like so much rubbish!

As I’ve said before,
money that one has not earned is easy to discard.

Sadly, it appears that
the thief will escape once more, and I must continue my relentless pursuit,
even if it takes me all the way around the world. He is boarding the
Rangoon,
which lays at anchor and is to depart in an hour for Hong Kong.

I have no choice but to
follow, despite your half dozen letters imploring me to come home, which I
recently collected from the consulate. I’m a little puzzled as to how you seem
to be sending your letters ahead to my next destination. Perhaps you believe
the extravagant story of a trip around the world in eighty days. Yes, doubtless
it’s been published in every newspaper in England, and it appeals to your
romantic female imagination. I must dissuade you from continuing for soon the
thief will stop his travels and your charming letters will be lost forever in
some city to which I’ll never travel.

And still the warrant
hasn’t caught up with me. Bureaucracy can be truly exasperating.

My greatest worry now is
that Fogg is flinging money about with such abandon that the reward — being a
fixed percentage of the recovered money — is shrinking visibly before my eyes.

I’m sure it will still
be enough to make you happy.

I shall get him in the
British colony of Hong Kong. Fogg and Passepartout are now travelling with a
beautiful and clearly genteel young lady they picked up somewhere in the
jungles of India. I suspect an elopement, and though you might call it unworthy
of me — considering that we also eloped — I should be able to arrest Fogg for
that,
too, because elopement, until sanctified by marriage, can be prosecuted as
a crime. I will question Passepartout for details about this woman.

Yours,

Herbert Fix.

Letter #37

6 November 1872

Hong Kong

Elizabeth,