The Other Log of Phileas Fogg

2

The Reform Club toward which Mr. Fogg proceeded at an exact velocity was only one-thousand-and-one-hundred-and-fifty-one paces from Mr. Fogg’s house on Savile Row. Verne does not say what transpired during Fogg’s walk. For him, the ordinary would not have been worth describing, and the extraordinary was not reported to him. However, the ordinary of our day and Fogg’s may be contrasted for the benefit of the reader. The Londoner of 1872 had his own brand of smog. Indeed, the word, formed from smoke and fog, is of London origin. The smoke of hundreds of thousands of industrial and domestic furnaces and stoves burning soft coal often darkened the skies and laid a sooty film over everything. It also gave the London air a rather acrid odor and doubtless contributed to the generation of tuberculosis and other diseases of the lung.

Another odor, not unpleasant under certain conditions and when in not too great quantities, emanated from the horse droppings. These littered the streets from West End to East End. During the dry periods, clouds of manure rose to mingle with coal dust and dirt dust as the wheels of carriages struck the piles. Mingled with these were the huge and pestiferous horseflies that were once a familiar and seemingly permanent part of the civilized world. This, however, was October, and the chilly nights of the past few weeks had considerably discouraged the activities of these insects.

Mr. Fogg walked on the sidewalk from No. 7, Savile Row, turned left onto Vigo Street, after a few paces crossed Vigo to Sackville Street, and proceeded along it until he came to Piccadilly. Having traversed this with no apparent attention to the hansoms and vans which filled this main thoroughfare (London traffic was a nuisance and a danger a century ago), he walked eastward until he reached the narrow Church Street. Here he turned right and, coming to Jermyn Street, turned right again, walked a few paces, and then went across Jermyn to enter the Duke of York’s. This led him to St. James Square. Having passed along this, he crossed Pall Mall to the Reform Club. This imposing and famed edifice is neighbor to the Traveler’s Club, which admits no one as a member who has not journeyed at least five-hundred miles in a straight line from London. Although Mr. Fogg could easily have joined this club both before and after his dash around the globe, he was never a member.

Across Pall Mall at an angle was the Athenaeum Club, devoted to bringing together the practitioners of the fine arts and sciences and their eminent patrons. This is the institution called the Diogenes Club in the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, at this time, Mycroft Holmes, its future member, was only twenty-six years old and his brother Sherlock was a mere eighteen. Yet, the paths of the younger Holmes and of one of the many pedestrians on Pall Mall that day were to cross many years later.

Although Fogg seemed to look neither to left nor to right, as if he were riding a rail and did not have to steer himself, he was missing little. Thus, he saw a tall, broadshouldered gentleman of about forty years of age standing in a doorway and lighting up a cheroot. Only the keenest of observers could have noted that Fogg’s stride checked ever so slightly. And only a nearby and very perceptive person would have detected a minute paling of Mr. Fogg’s skin.

His lips opened a tiny bit, and a name breathed out.

He did not otherwise betray himself. He walked on steadily as if he were a planet in its orbit and could be perturbed by nothing less than the sun going nova.

But behind that serene face millions of microscopic novas were exploding as neuron after neuron and neural circuit after circuit lit up. Could it indeed be he? Or had he been mistaken? After all, the man had been across the street and in the shadow of a deep doorway. The features had been indistinguishable. The physique certainly resembled the man whose name Fogg had exhaled. The safety match with which he lit his cigar could have illuminated his features in the shadow of the doorway, but the hand which held it shielded them. Nor could Fogg determine if the fellow had an unusual distance between his eyes.

Moreover, Fogg’s glance had been too brief to allow him any rechecking of his first impression. And, the further he got from the man, the less he thought that it could be he. Why would he stand where he might be seen? What purpose could he have in letting Fogg know that he was alive and shadowing him? Was it bravado? Or was he trying to stampede the unstampedable?

And how could he be alive? How had he escaped? As far as Fogg knew, he and three others were the only survivors. Still, at one time he had thought he was the only one not drowned, but he had found out later that others had had good fortune, too. The other survivors were French and Canadian and there was not much chance that they would ever see him again. To make sure that they did not recognize him if they did encounter him, he had grown his beard.

Despite an intensive investigation, no evidence had been found that anybody else had gotten away alive from the maelstrom. However, that could mean that the Capelleans had kept their secret a secret. They were very good at that.

Perhaps, Fogg thought, this was why everything was so suddenly upset, Forster ordered to an unknown destination, and Passepartout appearing with his distorter, the only one in the possession of the Eridaneans.

He walked on up the steps of the Reform Club. It was true that he had foreseen this possibility of other survivors, but he had calculated that the odds against this were so high as to make the event extremely unlikely.

But if anyone could survive, that fellow would be the one. He, Fogg, might have allowed his wishes to interfere with his mathematics.