The System of the World

The Kit-Cat Clubb
THAT EVENING

“I AM QUITE CERTAIN THAT we are being watched,” Daniel said.

Dappa laughed. “Is that why you were at such pains to sit facing the window? I venture that no one in the history of this Clubb has ever desired a view of yonder alley.”

“You might do well to come round the table, and sit beside me.”

“I know what I’d see: a lot of Whigs gaping at the tame Neeger. Why don’t you come and sit beside me, so that we may enjoy a view of that naked lady reclining in that strangely long and narrow painting above your head?”

“She’s not naked,” Daniel retorted crossly.

“On the contrary, Dr. Waterhouse, I see incontrovertible signs of nakedness in her.”

“But to call her naked sounds prurient,” Daniel objected. “She is professionally attired, for an odalisque.”

“Perhaps all the eyeballs you phant’sy are watching us, are, truth be told, fixed on her. She is a new painting, I can still smell the varnish. Perhaps we should instead go sit ’neath yonder dusty sea-scape,” Dappa suggested, waving in the direction of another long narrow canvas that was crowded with stooped and shivering Dutch clam-diggers.

“I happened to see you greeting the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm earlier,” Daniel confessed.

“She goes by de la Zeur-’tis less formal that way,” Dappa broke in.

Daniel was brought up short for a moment, then finally got a wry look on his face, and shook his head. “You are strangely giddy. I should never have ordered you usquebaugh.”

“Too long on land.”

“When do you sail for Boston?”

“Ah, to business! We’d hoped to depart in the second half of April. Now, we think early May. What do you wish us to fetch from there?”

“Twenty years’ work. I do hope you shall have a care with it.”

“In what form is the work? Manuscripts?”

“Yes, and machinery.”

“That is an odd word. What does it mean?”

“I beg your pardon. It is theatre-jargon. When an angel descends, or a soul lights up to heaven, or a volcano erupts, or any other impossible thing seems to happen on the stage, the people behind the scenes, who’ve made it happen, give the name machinery to the diverse springs, levers, rigging, et cetera used to create the illusion.”

“I did not know you ran a theatre in Boston.”

“You jest, sir, the Bostonians would never have allowed it-they’d have sent me packing to Providence.”

“Then how comes it you have machinery in Boston?”

“I used the term ironically. I built a machine there-across the river actually, in a shack about halfway ’tween Charlestown and Harvard-a machine that has nothing to do with theatrical illusions. I need you to bring it to me.”

“Then I must know, in order: Is it dangerous? Is it bulky? Is it delicate?”

“In order: yes, no, yes.”

“In what wise is it dangerous?”

“I’ve no idea. But I’ll tell you this, ’tis only dangerous if you turn the crank, and give it something to think on.”

“Then I’ll take the crank off and keep it in my cabin, and use it only to bash pirates on the head,” announced Dappa. “And I shall forbid the crew to hold conversations with your machinery, unless they are devoid of intellectual stimulation: nothing beyond a polite ‘Good day, machinery, how goes it with thee, does the stump of thy crank ache of a damp morning?’ ”

“I suggest you pack the parts in barrels, stuffed with straw. You shall also find many thousands of small rectangular cards with words and numbers printed on them. These are likewise to be sealed in watertight casks. Enoch Root may already have seen to it by the time you reach Charlestown.”

At the mention of Enoch’s name, Dappa glanced away from Daniel’s face, as if the older man had committed an indiscretion, and picked up his dram to take a sip. And that was all the opening needed for the Marquis of Ravenscar to irrupt upon their conversation. He appeared so suddenly, so adroitly, it was as if some machinery had injected him into the Kit-Cat Clubb through a trap-door.

“From one odalisque to another, Mr. Dappa! Haw! Is it not so! For I take it that you are the writer.”

“I am a writer, my lord,” Dappa answered politely.

“I hope I do not offend by confessing I’ve not read your books.”

“On the contrary, my lord,” Dappa said, “there is nothing quite so civilized as to be recognized in public places as the author of books no one has read.”

“If my good friend Dr. Waterhouse were polite enough to make introductions, I should not have to rely ’pon guess-work; but he was raised by Phanatiques.”

“It is too late for formalities now,” Daniel answered. “When another begins a conversation with a cryptickal outburst on odalisques, what is there for a polite gentleman to do?”

“Not cryptickal at all! Not in the slightest!” protested the Marquis of Ravenscar. “Why, ’tis known to all London now, at” (checking his watch) “nine o’clock, that at” (checking his watch a second time) “four o’clock, Mr. Dappa was on hand to greet the Duchess of Arcachon and of Qwghlm!”

“I told you!” Daniel said, in an aside to Dappa, and put his two fingers to his eyes, then pointed them across the room toward the phant’sied spies and observers.

“You told him what!?” Roger demanded.

“That people were watching us.”

“They’re not watching you,” Roger said, highly amused. Which told Daniel, infallibly, that they were. “Why should anyone watch you? They’re watching Dappa, making the rounds of the odalisques!”

“There you go again-what on earth-?” Daniel demanded.

Dappa explained, “He alludes to a sort of legend, only whispered by discreet well-bred Londoners, but openly bandied about by drunken merry lords, that the Duchess was once an odalisque.”

“Figuratively-?”

“Literally a harem-slave of the Great Turk in Constantinople.”

“What a bizarre notion-Roger, how could you?”

Roger, slightly nettled by Dappa, raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

Dappa proclaimed, “England being a nation of clam-diggers and sheep-shearers, must forever be a net importer of fantastickal tales. Silk, oranges, perfume, and strange yarns must all be supplied from across the seas.”

“If only you knew,” Daniel returned.

“I agree with Mr. Dappa!” Roger said forcefully. “The story of his tete-a-tete with the Duchess is racing up and down Grub Street like cholera, and will be in newspapers tomorrow at cock-crow!”

And then he was gone, as if by trap-door.

“You see? If you were more discreet-”

“Then Grub Street would be unawares. Nothing would be written, nothing printed, concerning me, or the Duchess. No one would hear of us-no one would buy my next book.”

“Ah.”

“Light dawns ’pon your phizz, Doctor.”

“ ’Tis a novel, strange form of commerce, of which I was unawares until just now.”

“Only in London,” Dappa said agreeably.

“But it is not the strangest form of commerce that goes on in this city,” Daniel pressed on.

Dappa visibly put on an innocent face. “Do you have some strange yarn to set beside my lord Ravenscar’s?”

“Much stranger. And, note, ’tis a domestic yarn, not imported. Dappa, do you recollect when we were being harried in Cape Cod Bay by the flotilla of Mr. Ed Teach, and you put me to work, down in the bilge?”

“You were in the hold. We do not put elderly doctors in the bilge.”

“All right, all right.”

“I remember that you obliged us by smashing up some old crockery to make ammunition for the blunderbusses,” Dappa said.

“Yes, and I remember that the location of that old crockery was pricked down, with admirable clarity, on a sort of bill posted on a beam next the staircase. A diagram, shewing how the hold, and the bilge, were packed with diverse goods.”

“There you go again with your confusion of ‘hold’ and ‘bilge.’ We do not pack goods in the bilge, as it is generally full of what I will euphemistically call water, which rapidly turns goods into bads. If you doubt it, I’ll pack some of your machinery in the bilge on our return voyage this summer, and you may see its condition ’pon arrival. If you had any idea of the foulness-”

Daniel was showing Dappa his palms. “Not necessary, my good man. Yet your lading-diagram does include the bilge, and all that lies in that foulness, does it not?”

“Are you referring to the ballast?”

“I suppose I am.”

“The ballast is carefully diagrammed, because it affects the balance and the trim of the ship,” Dappa said. “From time to time we must shift a few tons this way or that, to compensate for an uneven load, and then it is of course useful to have a diagram of where it is.”

“As I recollect that diagram, the bottom-most hull-planks of the ship are covered with flat rectangular iron pigs, laid down side by side, like floor-tiles.”

“Kentledge, ’tis called. We also have some cracked cannons and old faulty cannonballs down there.”

“Atop that, you have piled many tons of rounded stones.”

“Shingle from a Malabar beach. Some use sand, but we use shingle, because it does not foul the pumps.”

“It is atop the shingle that you pile up casks of shot, salt, water, and other heavy goods.”

“As is the common-nay, universal-practice on non-capsizing ships.”

“But I recall that another layer of ballast was shewn on this diagram. It was below any casks, below the shingle, below the scrap metal, below even the kentledge. It was the thinnest possible layer, a mere membrane, and on the diagram it looked like onion-skin. It was pressed against the tarry inner surface of the hull-planks themselves, and it went by some name such as anti-fouling plates.”

“What of it?”

“Why put anti-fouling plates on the inside?”

“They are spares. You must have noticed that we carry extra stores of everything, Dr. Waterhouse. Minerva’s hull is clad in copper sheets-she’s famous for it-and the last time we had a coppersmith make up an order of such material, we had him make more than we needed, so as to get a better price, and to have some in reserve.”

“Are you certain you are not confusing them with the spares that are stowed in crates near the foremast step? I seem to recall sitting on them.”

“Some are stored there. Others are stored against the inside of the hull-planks, under the kentledge, as you described.”

“What an odd place to store anything. To get at them, one would have to unload the ship entirely, pump out the unspeakable contents of the bilge, shovel out tons of shingle, and winch up the massive pigs of kentledge, one by one.”

Dappa did not respond, but had taken to drumming his fingers on the table irritably.

“It seems more like buried treasure than ballast.”

“If you’d care to test your hypothesis, Doctor, you may do so the next time we are dry-docked, provided you show up with your own shovel.”

“Is that what you say to inquisitive Customs inspectors?”

“We are more polite to them-as they generally are to us.”

“But politeness aside, the underlying meaning is the same. The hold may be emptied, if some official demands it. Minerva shall then bob like a cork, but she shall not capsize, thanks to the ballast. But those anti-fouling plates may not be inspected unless the ballast is removed, which would render the vessel unstable-it could only be done if she were beached, or in dry-dock-as she was just a few weeks ago. No Customs inspector ever demands that, does he?”

“This is a very odd conversation,” Dappa observed.

“On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the oddest conversation I’ve ever had, and seven being the oddest conversation I have in a typical day, this rates no better than five,” Daniel returned. “But to make it less odd for you, I shall now speak directly. I know what those plates are made of. I know that you take some out from time to time, when you are in London, and I know that they find their way into the coinage. It does not matter to me how this is done, or why. But I say to you that you are putting yourselves in danger every time you spend the treasure from that bilge. You imagine that it may be fused, in a coiner’s crucible, with like metal from other sources, and that, once it has been thus con-fused, it has gone out into the world, and can never be traced back to you. But I say that there is one man, at least, who is not con-fused in the slightest, and who has drawn to within a hair’s breadth of divining your secret. You may find him at the Tower of London most days.”

Dappa had been greatly disquieted early in this little speech, but then had got a distracted, calculating look, as if reckoning how quickly Minerva could weigh anchor and get out of the Pool. “And you tell me this-why? To be good?”

“As you were good to me, Dappa, when Blackbeard called for me by name, and you refused to give me up.”

“Oh. We did not do that out of goodness, but stubbornness.”

“Then my warning to you is strictly an act of Christian charity,” Daniel said.

“God bless you, Doctor!” Dappa replied, but he was still wary.

“Until such time as we arrive at an understanding concerning the disposition of the gold,” Daniel added.

“There is something in this word disposition that makes me leery. How do you imagine we’ll dispose of it?”

“You have to get rid of it before it is found by the gentleman I spoke of,” Daniel pointed out. “But if you coin it, ’twill be as if you sailed Minerva under the guns of the Tower at noon, and ran those sheets of gold up the yard-arms.”

“But what good is it, if not coined?”

“Gold has other uses,” Daniel said. “Of which I shall tell you more some day. But not today. For we are approached by Peer, and must bring the oddness of our discourse down to a value of one or two on the scale I mentioned earlier.”

“Peer? Who or what is Peer?”

“For a man who, moments ago, was lecturing me ’pon the workings of Grub Street, you’ve not been attending to your newspapers at all, have you?”

“I know it exists, how it works, and that it’s important, but-”

“I read the papers every day. Let me tell you quickly then: there is a newspaper called Ye Lens which was started by Whigs, when their Juncto held power; several clever men write for it; Peer is not one of them.”

“You mean, he doesn’t write for the Ye Lens?”

“No, I mean he is not very clever.”

“How’d he get the job, then?”

“By being in the House of Lords, and always taking the Whig side.”

“Ah, so he is a peer!”

“A Peer of the Realm, with writerly ambitions. And as he writes for the Lens, and a lens is something you peer through, he has given himself the pen-name of Peer.”

“This is the longest prolog to an introduction I’ve ever heard,” Dappa remarked. “When is he actually going to show up?”

“I believe he-they-are waiting for you to notice them,” Daniel said, pointing with his eyeballs. “Brace yourself.”

Dappa narrowed his eyes, flared his nostrils, and then torqued himself round in his chair until he had-heeding Daniel’s sage advice-braced one elbow on the table.

Facing him from roughly twelve feet away were the Marquis of Ravenscar, planted stolidly on the booze-slickened Kit-Cat floor-boards, and an even better-dressed chap, who was dangling by both arms from one of the Clubb’s low-hanging beams, his impeccably shod feet swinging back and forth just a few inches above the floor.

When this man saw that Dappa was looking his direction, he let go and dropped to the floor with a loud, chesty “Hoo!” His knees bent deeply, creating alarming strains in the crotch of his breeches, and allowing his knuckles to dangle near the floor. After making certain he’d caught Dappa’s eye, he moved in a waddling gait to the Marquis of Ravenscar, who was standing still as a star, his face pinched up in a pickled smile.

Peer now pursed his lips, thrust them out as far as they would go, and, glancing back frequently to make sure he still had Dappa’s attention, began to make little “Hoo! Hoo!” noises while circling cautiously around Roger. After completing a full orbit of Roger, he shuffled in closer, leaned in so that he was almost nuzzling Roger’s shoulder, and began to make snuffling noises whilst cocking his head this way and that. Noting something apparently caught in the tresses of Roger’s splendid wig, he raised one hand off the floor, reached into the luxuriant mass of curls, pinched something tiny, pulled it out, examined it, gave it a good thorough sniffing, then popped it into his mouth and began to make exaggerated chewing noises. Then, in case Dappa had glanced away during this, he sidled around Roger and repeated the performance some half-dozen times, until even Roger became sick of it, raised one hand in the mildest of threats, and muttered, “Oh, will you stop it!”

Peer’s response was extreme: he jumped back out of cuffing-range, came to rest on his knuckles and the balls of his feet, made excited screeching noises (or as near as a member of the House of Lords could come to it), then sprang into the air while flinging his arms above his head. He grabbed the beam again, knocking loose a shower of dust that sifted down, stained his white wig gray, and caused him to sneeze-which was most unfortunate, as he’d been taking snuff. A bolo of reddish-brown mucus hurtled out of his nose and made itself fast to his chin.

The Kit-Cat Clubb had become quiet as a monastery. Perhaps three dozen men were in the place. By and large, they were of a mind to find nearly anything funny. Rarely did a minute tick away without all conversation in the Clubb being drowned out by a storm-burst of booming laughter from one table or another. But there was something in Peer’s performance so queer that it had shut them all up. Daniel, who had phant’sied that the crowding and the hubbub gave him and Dappa some sort of privacy, now felt even more exposed, and acutely spied upon, than ever.

The Marquis of Ravenscar swaggered toward Dappa. Behind him, Peer dropped from the rafters and got busy with a Belgian gros-point lace handkerchief. After Roger had moved along for a few paces, Peer followed him, cringing along in Roger’s wake.

“Dr. Waterhouse. Mr. Dappa,” said Roger with tremendous aplomb. “It is good to see you both again.”

“And you likewise, et cetera,” answered Daniel shortly, as Dappa had been temporarily robbed of the power of speech.

Conversations resumed, tentatively, around the Clubb.

“I pray you will not take it amiss if I refrain from picking lice out of your hair, as my lord Wragby has been so considerate as to do for me.”

“It’s not even my hair, Roger.”

“May I introduce to you, Dappa, and re-introduce to you, Daniel, my lord Walter Raleigh Waterhouse Weem, Viscount Wragby and Rector of Scanque, Member of Parliament, and Fellow of the Royal Society.”

“Hullo, Uncle Daniel!” said Peer, suddenly straightening up. “Very clever of someone to dress him up in a suit of clothing! Was that your conceit?”

Dappa was staring sidelong at Daniel. “I forgot to mention that Peer is my half-great-nephew once removed, or something like that,” Daniel explained to him, behind his hand.

“Who are you talking to, uncle?” Peer inquired, looking past Dappa’s head into a void. Then, with a shrug, he continued, “Do you phant’sy my demonstration worked? I did ever so much research, to get it right.”

“I’ve no idea, Wally,” Daniel returned, and then looked over at Dappa, who was still frozen in the sidelong-glare attitude. “Dappa, did you understand, from what you just observed, that my lord Wragby, here, is a member of my lord Ravenscar’s ape-tribe, and that he plays a submissive role, fully acknowledging my lord Ravenscar’s dominance?”

“Who are you talking to?” said Peer for the second time.

“To whom are you talking!” Dappa corrected him.

A few moments’ silence from Peer, greatly savoured by Roger and Daniel. Peer raised one hand, pointed his index finger at Dappa as if holding him at bay with a pistol, and turned to Daniel with his mouth a-jar.

“What you didn’t know, my nephew,” Daniel said, “is that Dappa was, at a very young age, taken aboard ship by pirates as a sort of pet. And these pirates, being a polyglot group, amused themselves by training Dappa to speak twenty-five different languages fluently.”

“Twenty-five different languages!” Peer exclaimed.

“Yes. Including better English than you, as you just saw.”

“But…but he doesn’t actually understand any of them,” Peer said.

“No more than a parrot does, when it squawks out a demand for a cracker,” Daniel affirmed, then let out a squawk of his own as Dappa kicked him in the shin under the table.

“What a remarkable feat! You should exhibit him!”

“What do you think I’m doing right now?”

“How was the weather yesterday?” Peer inquired of Dappa, in French.

“In the morning it was miserable and rainy,” Dappa returned. “After noon I thought it would clear but, alas, it was still overcast until nightfall. Only as I was getting ready for bed did I begin to see stars shining through gaps between clouds. Could I trouble you for a cracker?”

“I say, the French pirate who taught him that trick must have been an educated man!” Peer exclaimed. Then he got a look on his face as if he were thinking. Daniel had learned, in his almost seventy years, not to expect much of people who got such looks, because thinking really was something one ought to do all the time. “One would suppose there would be no point in holding a conversation with a man who does not understand what he is saying. And yet he described yesterday’s weather better than I could! In fact, I think I’ll use his wording in tomorrow’s edition!” Again, now, the thoughtful look. “If he could relate other experiences-such as his tete-a-tete with the Duchess-as faithfully as he recalls the weather, it would make my interview with him ever so much easier. I had come prepared to do it all in grunts and sign language!” And Peer gave a note-book in his hip-pocket an ominous pat.

“I suppose that whenever one speaks in the abstract-which is to say, most of the time-what one is really doing is interacting with some sort of image that is held in the mind,” Dappa said. “For example, yesterday’s weather is not here in the Kit-Cat Clubb with us. I cannot feel yesterday’s rain on my skin, nor can I see yester-eve’s stars with my eyes. When I describe these things to you (in French or any other language) I am really engaging in some sort of internal colloquy with a stored image inside of my brain. It is an image I may call up on demand, as a Duke might demand that a certain painting of his be brought down out of the garret. Once it is before my mind’s eye, I may see it as if it were there, and describe it.”

“That is all well and good for recollecting what you have gathered in through your senses, and stored in the garret, as it were,” Peer said. “So I could ask you to relate your observations of the Duchess of Qwghlm today, and rely on your account. But as you do not understand the conversation you had with her, or indeed the one you are having with me now, I fear your interpretation of what went on at Leicester House might be wide of the mark.” He spoke haltingly, unsure of how to converse with someone who didn’t understand what he was saying.

Preying on this, Daniel inquired, “But how could he interpret anything if he didn’t understand it?”

This stopped Peer’s gob for a few awkward moments.

“I would refer you to the work of Spinoza,” Dappa said, “whose words are of course perfect gibberish to me, but who wrote in his Ethics, ‘The order and connexion of ideas is the same as the order and connexion of things.’ Meaning that if there are two things, call them A and B, that have a particular relationship to each other, for example, my lord Wragby’s wig, and my lord Wragby’s head, and if I have in my mind an idea of my lord Wragby’s wig, call it alpha, and an idea of his head, call it beta, then the relationship between alpha and beta is the same as that between A and B. And owing to this property of minds, it is possible for me to construct in my head an whole universe of ideas, yet each idea will relate to all of the other ideas in precisely the same way that the things represented by those ideas relate to one another;lo, ’tis as if I have created a microcosm ’tween my ears, without understanding a bit of it. And some of the ideas may be records of sensory impressions, for example, yesterday’s weather. But others may be abstract concepts out of religion, philosophy, mathematics, or what have you-not that I’d know, since to me they are all a meaningless parade of hallucinations. But insofar as they are all ideas, they are all fungible. Whatever their origins may have been, they are now all con-fused into the same currency, and so I may speak of the Pythagorean Theorem or the Treaty of Utrecht as well as I may speak of yesterday’s weather. To me, they are all just crackers-as are you, my lord Wragby.”

“That is quite clear,” Peer said vaguely, for he had gone a bit glassy-eyed round the point where Dappa had begun to use Greek letters. “Tell me, Dappa, were there any German pirates aboard your ship?”

“You mean, native speakers of High-Dutch, or Hochdeutsch? Alas, they are a rare breed ’mong pirates, for the Germans fear water, and love order. Most of them were Dutchmen. However, there was a prisoner, kept in fetters down in the bilge, a Bavarian diplomat who taught me his language.”

“Right then!” And Peer flipped opened his note-book, and began to scan pages filled with laboriously botched cartoons. “Well, Dappa, you may not be aware that we Englishmen dwell on something very much like the sandbars you used to see in your rivers, save that ours is much larger, and free of crocodiles-” He held up a sketch.

“We call it an island,” said the Marquis of Ravenscar helpfully.

“There is a great river of cold, salty water,” Peer said, holding his arms far apart, “ever so much broader than the distance between my book and my pencil, separating us from a place called Europe which is full of nasty nasty apes. In your system of mental ideas, you might liken it to a lot of monkey-bands who are forever screeching and throwing rocks at each other.”

“But sometimes we cross the salty river on things like hollow logs, except much larger,” said the Marquis of Ravenscar, now getting into the spirit of things, “and throw a few rocks of our own, just to stay in practice!” He winked at Dappa, who gave back a brooding stare.

“There is a frightfully enormous and strong old gorilla, a silver-back, of whom we are terrified, just over the river.”

Dappa sighed, sensing that there was no way out. “I think I’ve seen his image on French coins, he is called Leroy.”

“Yes! He owns more bananas than anyone else, has more apes in his tribe, and has thrown a lot of rocks at us.”

“That must be very painful indeed,” Dappa said, not very sympathetically.

“Yes, quite,” said Peer. “But we have a mighty silver-back of our own, a really stupendous and deadly accurate stone-thrower, who, some moons ago, chased Leroy right up a tree! Because of this, our little band, here on our sandbar in the salty river, cannot make out whether to worship and revere our big silver-back as a god, or fear and revile him as a devil. Now, we have an enormous clearing in the jungle, actually not far from where we are right now, where we convene to make obeisance to a certain female silver-back, rather frail-and where we beat our chests, and throw f?ces at each other.”

“Ugh! Until you told me that, I was about to say, I should like to see this clearing.”

“Yes, it is rather frightful,” Roger put in, dismayed by Peer’s similitude, “but we have found throwing f?ces preferable to throwing rocks.”

“Do you throw your f?ces, my lord Wragby?” Dappa asked.

“It is what I do for a living!” answered Peer, shaking his note-book, “and what you see here is the Instrument I use to scrape my Ammunition off the jungle floor.”

“May I ask, what is special about this female silver-back, that you should brave flying f?cal material to pay homage to her?”

“She holds our Stick of Power,” Peer answered, as if that settled it. “Now, to the matter at hand. There are two tribes vying for the favor of the ancient female silver-back. The leader of one of those tribes stands before you.” He indicated Roger, who made a courtly bow. “Alas, we have been driven to the periphery of the clearing by the most incredible and sustained f?ces-barrage this jungle has ever witnessed; and the terribly, terribly mighty and enormous English silver-back I spoke of was nearly buried alive in it, and withdrew across the cold, salty river to a place named Antwerp, where it is possible for him to sit and enjoy the occasional banana without being struck in the face by a flying turd. And we who follow Roger, here, are frightfully curious to know if, and when, our big silver-back is coming back over the river, and whether he might be in a mood to throw any actual stones at any of us if, and when, he does, and whether he has any designs on the Stick of Power.”

“And what of Leroy? Is he still up his tree?”

“Leroy is halfway to the ground! And from his distance, with his failing eye-sight, he cannot easily distinguish between apes throwing stones, and apes throwing mere f?ces; at any rate, if he thinks we are distracted, why, he’ll scamper right back down to terra firma like the cheeky monkey he is, and we don’t want that.”

“If I may ask a direct question, why are you telling me these things, my lord?”

“That nice female you paid a call on earlier today,” said Peer, “that most admirable yellow-haired chimp, why, she has just crossed over the cold salty river and returned to our sandbar after sojourning, for many moons, in the jungle that lies off where the sun rises every morning, where a thousand different German-speaking ape-tribes vie for the control of individual trees, or, indeed, individual branches of trees. She came over on a giant hollow log that seemed to have a larger-than-normal number of these German-speaking apes on board. She came from the general direction of the place where our formidable silver-back has been biding his time, and enjoying his bananas. Which band does she belong to? For in the country where she was sojourning dwells another female silver-back, who has the run of several biggish trees, and who has her eye on our Stick. Does your friend belong to her tribe? Or is she in the camp of him who bides his time in Antwerp? Or both, or neither?”

Now it was Dappa’s turn to look glazed. After working this through for a moment, he guessed: “You’re trying to work out whether it would enure to your benefit to hurl some f?ces at Eliza.”

“I say, you are spot on!” Peer exclaimed. “That Spinozzel chap really was on to something!”

Roger Comstock had a particular way of holding himself, when he wanted to say something, that caused everyone within a pike-length to shut up and turn towards him worshipfully. This everyone now did, because he was holding himself in that way. After collecting himself for a few moments, he held up one hand, thumb tucked into palm, and gave Dappa another wink. “Four silver-backs.” The other hand came up, two fingers extended. “Two Sticks of Power. One of them rather firmly in the grip of Leroy and his heirs and assigns. The other, widely seen as being Up for Grabs. So, let us consider the four silver-backs.” Now he was holding up both hands, two fingers extended from each. “Two female, two male, all very very old, though, ’tmust be allowed, the one in Antwerp is as vigorous as a battle-weary sixty-four-year-old could ever be. The German female has a son, a great oafish gorilla who is going to have our Power-Stick lodged in his fat fist quite soon, if I’ve anything to say about it. Now his mum is hated by the female who presides over our sandbar today; why, she begins to screech and wave the Stick about the moment she detects a whiff of this German on the breeze. So quite naturally the son is persona non grata here. But he has a son of his own, and we’d very much like to see him swinging through English trees and eating English bananas as soon as we can get him over here. So-”

“Then don’t throw shit at Eliza,” Dappa said.

“Thank you.”

“Perhaps we should throw a bit so it doesn’t look as if we are colluding,” Peer suggested, clearly disappointed.

“Perhaps you should go pick some nits out of her hair, my lord,” Dappa returned.

“Thank you, Dappa, that will be all,” said Roger sternly, and led Peer away by the elbow.

“Before you ask,” Daniel said, “that was a ten.”

DAPPA BROODED THROUGH most of the trip to Crane Court.

Daniel ventured: “I hope I did not offend you, in the way I dealt with Peer. I could not think of any other way to respond.”

“To you, he is just a singular imbecile,” Dappa returned. “To me, he is a typical sample of the sort of bloke I need to reach with my books. And so, if I seem distracted, it is not because I am annoyed with you-though I am a little. It is because I am asking myself, what is the point of trying to reach such persons at all? Am I wasting my time?”

“My nephew simply believes whatever the people around him believe,” Daniel said. “If every man in the Kit-Cat Clubb proclaimed you King of England, why, he would fall on his knees and kiss your ring.”

“This may be true, but it does not help me, or my publisher.”

“Your publisher,” Daniel said. “The Duchess. She and you were simply talking about selling books, weren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“She doesn’t speak to you of those matters that so concern the Whigs.”

“Of course she doesn’t. Don’t tell me you were going to ask about it as well?”

“I admit to some curiosity about the Duchess, and what she is up to in London,” Daniel said. “I knew her once, Dappa, many years ago. Recently, she has let me know that she means to renew the acquaintance. I do not phant’sy this is owed to my looks, or my charm.”

Dappa offered nothing. They rattled on wordlessly for a bit. Daniel sensed that this bit of news had only made Dappa more anxious. “Will it create a tremendous hardship for Minerva if you follow my advice, and do not unload the anti-fouling plates?”

“It will create the need for a loan,” Dappa replied, “which will have to be repaid, in gold, upon our return.”

“I can arrange something,” Daniel said.

In the dim light scattering into the carriage he could see Dappa’s eyes flick towards the window, a gesture of annoyance. Daniel could guess what he was thinking: what sort of pass have we come to when we must look to an aged scientist as our banker?

HE INSISTED THAT THE DRIVER let him off at the entrance to Crane Court, rather than squeezing through that narrow arch and driving all the way to the Royal Society’s front door. The short walk would do him some good. He bid Dappa good-bye and tottered on creaky legs through the entrance. The hackney remained where it was for a few moments, keeping an eye on him. But Crane Court was an unlikely place for footpads, as they’d have no way to escape from it if a hue and cry were raised. So presently the horses were given orders to move, and the hackney clattered away, taking Dappa down to White Friars Stairs where he could find a waterman to row him down the Thames to Minerva.

Daniel was alone in the familiar confines of Crane Court; and at that moment he was struck by a monstrous thought.

Now, it had been a very long day indeed, beginning with a journey up to the Templar-tomb in Clerkenwell and continuing through Hockley-in-the

–Hole, an odd conversation with Peter (Saturn) Hoxton, a refreshing visit to Catherine Barton at Roger’s house, the long-dreaded reunion with Miss Barton’s uncle, and later the Kit-Cat Clubb. Too many threads, and too much information for his stiff old brain to cope with. Any part of the day would have given him plenty to think about during his short stroll from Fleet Street to the door of the R.S. But what his mind seized upon was Isaac’s sedan chair.

Just before and after the explosion, a sedan chair had been poised at the very place where Daniel had just alighted from the hackney, there in the arched tunnel where Crane Court debouched into Fleet Street.

Tonight his way up the Court was nearly barred by a vault-wagon drawn up to exhaust the sewage from one of the town-houses. He diverted round it, desiring to give it the widest berth possible, lest he get splashed. But just before he did, he turned round and looked back toward Fleet, peering through the arch. Golden light was gleaming through from whale-oil street-lanthorns on Fleet, just as on the night of the explosion.

On that Sunday evening, the mysterious sedan chair had been framed in the entry, dead center, a black doorway suspended in the arch of light. It had followed them to that point; paused; waited (or so it seemed) for the explosion; and then it had fled, pursued, briefly, by the hapless Watchman.

Isaac had said something, earlier today, to the effect he’d been shocked to see Daniel traveling in the company of Mr. Threader. This could be interpreted more than one way; but the most straightforward was that he literally had observed the two of them together in Mr. Threader’s carriage.

Which could only have occurred along Fleet Ditch in the minutes before the explosion. Perhaps Isaac had been in that sedan chair. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a coincidence that he had fallen in alongside Mr. Threader’s carriage when he had. Perhaps he had been on his way from some errand-and it would have had to’ve been a very dark and strange one indeed-in the dangerous alleys on the eastern brink of the Ditch, en route to his dwelling off Leicester Fields. But then why had he stopped in the entrance to Crane Court?

Daniel turned about and gazed at the arch again, trying to re-summon the fading memory.

But instead of seeing the remembered image of the black box, he saw a limbed shadow detach itself from one side of the arch and flit across the opening. It was a man who had been lurking there, and who had just made his departure onto Fleet Street. A moment later Daniel heard iron horseshoes splashing sparks on the brittle ashlars of the street. It was a rider, who had dismounted, and led his horse quietly to the entrance, so that he could spy on Daniel more discreetly. He had probably lost Daniel in the shadows of the vault-wagon and decided to call it a night.

Daniel had lost his train of thought concerning the sedan chair. He turned and walked quickly until his nostrils and his eyes no longer burned from the ammonia-cloud surrounding the vault-wagon. He was hardly surprised to hear footsteps behind him.

“Are you the gager Saturn names Doc?” said a pre-adolescent boy. “Don’t loap off, I ain’t a scamperer.”

Daniel considered stopping, but reckoned the boy could keep up with him. “Are you of the Black-guard?” he asked wearily.

“No, Doc, but I’ve my Aspirations.”

“Very well.”

“This is for you, then,” said the boy, and held out a folded stick of paper, very white compared to his filthy hand. Daniel accepted it. The boy darted back down the court and climbed aboard the vault-wagon he’d rode in on. “Lovely watch you’ve there-best keep an eye on it!” he called out, as a sort of pleasantry.

Henry Arlanc let him in, and helped stow away his coat and walking-stick. “It is a great honour to have been named Secretary of your Clubb, sir,” he observed. “I’ve just been copying out today’s Minutes.”

“You will do very well,” Daniel assured him. “I only wish our Clubb was one that met in a nice house and offered food and drink.”

“For that, I’ve the Royal Society, Doctor.”

“Yes, but you are not the Secretary.”

“I could be. If a Secretary’s job is to prick down all comings and goings, doings and discussions, why ’tis all here,” said Arlanc-strangely talkative this evening-and pointed to his head. “Why’re you peering at me so, Doctor?”

“I just had a thought.”

Henry Arlanc shrugged. “Would you like me to fetch a quill and-”

“No, thank you. This one will rest secure up here,” said Daniel, and imitated Henry’s head-pointing gesture. “Henry, does it ever happen that Sir Isaac will come here in his sedan chair, on a Sunday evening?”

“Frequently!” Henry answered. “There is always business here, pressing in on him. In the week, he has responsibilities at the Mint. Then, when he comes here, there are so many visitors, distractions. But he has learnt the trick of coming late on Sundays, when no one is in the building except for me and Madame, who understand that he is not to be disturbed. Then he can work late into the night, sometimes even until sunrise on Monday.”

“No one calls for him then, eh?”

“Pourquoi non, for no one knows he is here.”

“Except for you, and Madame Arlanc, and his own servants.”

“All I meant, sir, was that no one who would dare to disturb him knows he is here.”

“Of course.”

“Why do you ask, Doctor?” Arlanc said; an odd and rude thing for a porter to say to a Doctor.

“I phant’sied I had seen signs of his presence round the house on some Sunday evenings, and wondered if I were imagining things.”

“You have imagined nothing, Doctor. May I assist you up stairs?”

Doc,

If you are reading this it means that the boy found you in Crane Court. You may wish to check your pockets, amp;c.

Know that a representative of mine is scheduled to partake of high tea with a friend of a friend of Mr. Teach on Thursday next. Inquiries will be made.

I went to your hole in the ground and chased out two culls who had gone down there, and not for the usual purpose, viz. buggery. I believe they mistook me for the Ghost of a Knight Templar, from which I conclude, they were cultivated men.

Saturn

Saturn,

Thank you for your diligence. It is what I would expect of an Horologist.

Suppose I had come into possession of some odds and ends of yellow metal; then do you know any of the sort of men who would buy them from me? Any you particularly dislike? I ask purely as an academic exercise, on behalf of a noted Natural Philosopher.

Dr. Waterhouse

Isaac,

I can think of no better way to repay the hospitality you showed me at your house today, than to respectfully inform you that someone may be trying to Blow you Up. Whoever it is, would appear to be well acquainted with your habits. Consider varying them.

Your humble and obedient servant,

Daniel

P.S. Concerning the other topic of our discussion, I am making inquiries.