The Technologists

by Matthew Pearl

  “Why, the electricity is attracting them!”

  “They actually become conductors,” he corrected her. “Then when the electricity escapes, or is discharged, they return to their positions, but are attracted once again by the electric current. Now watch this …” he said, as he made an adjustment to the machine. When he turned the handle this time, the dancers moved in the opposite direction.

  “You reversed their dance.”

  “Exactly. I reversed the current of electricity. It is the same principle in the telegraph; the operator controls the current depending on the direction the charge is to travel. In our demonstration, it causes our miniature gentleman and lady to revolve the other way.”

  “You invented a charming dance!”

  “Far better than my own feet can manage, I assure you, Miss Agnes! If only we had music for the little dancers.”

  “No, we needn’t any—this is marvelous! Can you show me something more of the machine?”

  “Will you draw the curtains?”

  Agnes hesitated, then, embracing their excursion and the delicious fact that this was no normal circumstance, did what would normally be forbidden. As she darkened the room, he modified the position of the dancing figures, and this time instructed her to turn the handle of the electrical machine. When she did, feeling the power of all science in her fingers, the dancers resumed, but this time in the dark, with luminous electric sparks passing between them.

  After they watched the performance, he led her outside and they walked hand in hand through the dusty plains that, it was said, would one day be filled with the finest museums, hotels, and homes in Boston. Marcus brought her along to the freight cars, or “dirt cars,” as they called them around Back Bay, that transported gravel day and night, and they looked at the same giant steam shovels that had so fascinated her as a child, though at the moment they were all at rest, like horses drinking water. The workmen would have to wait for the rain to pass.

  “Do not tell your papa you were here,” Marcus said laughingly.

  “No!” Agnes said more seriously than she intended.

  “I would not want him cross at you. I have arranged for a carriage to come that will bring you close enough to Temple Place that no time will be lost, as far as the other serving girls are concerned. Agnes, I must ask you something.”

  “Yes,” Agnes said, her heart pounding.

  “I need your help again with something important.”

  She realized this was a professional matter he was to discuss, and, despite a quiver of disappointment, took hold of herself. “Do go on, Mr. Mansfield.”

  Marcus explained that he wished to see a list of the individuals and companies supplied with a specific combination of chemicals over the last few months from the excess wares of the Institute, and that the ledgers were kept inside Temple Place.

  “I would never ask if it were not a serious matter. This may allow us to carry out Rogers’s work to its conclusion.”

  “Then you are not just sitting on your hands waiting. You are doing something!” she marveled. “I know where the ledgers are, but I will need your help trying to identify the markings in them.”

  “I will give you all the information you need.”

  “Have you found how those disasters happened?”

  “I think we are getting closer. As for the reason anyone would commit such horrors, well, that judgment may reside with religion. The dark and light shades of the soul.”

  “Well, I have been giving confession since I was eight years old, so I do understand about that. It is something to know how many misdeeds you have already committed after living less than ten years. Anyway, Papa will not permit my sisters to hear about what has happened and has confiscated all the newspapers. Of course, at Temple Place all the maids talk about it.”

  “I can see why your father would not wish it to be a topic of conversation. This is the work of the devil. I think it has stopped,” he added, putting out his hand, and then folding the umbrella.

  “You ought to be awfully careful attributing to man the work of the devil.”

  “Why?”

  “People say the same thing about Tech, don’t they?”

  “I suppose so,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Do they have requirement for chapel at Tech?”

  “Our laboratories are our chapels,” he answered.

  “Really!”

  “It is not a matter of not holding religious sentiment. My friend Edwin carries his Bible with him to read when we are not in class.”

  “What it must be like to go to college!”

  “There are several girls’ colleges, you know.”

  “I am at the age where I can try to be a child nurse for a year or two, if I am accepted. Then, I am to marry a good Catholic gentleman if I do not become a religious.”

  “A religious?”

  “It means to enter the holy orders—to go to the convent and become a nun.”

  “You are far too pretty for that,” Marcus said, very seriously.

  “There are many pretty women among the nuns, only their hair is cut and hidden under skullcaps and veils, so you do not know.”

  “It seems it would be a shame to have so few choices.”

  She shrugged self-consciously. “I know I sound like a featherbrain, a housemaid asking about serious subjects.”

  “Did your cousin tell you that?”

  “That is presumptuous, Mr. Mansfield,” Agnes replied, shaking her head. “But the answer is yes, she did. I suppose you are not influenced by what your companions do and say.”

  “Too often,” Marcus said quietly, “I’m certain.”

  “Lilly also says that there can be no such thing as a friendship between a man and a woman.”

  Marcus laughed. “Is Miss Maguire so accomplished a belle that she knows everything about men?”

  “A man who does not wish to make romance has no use for a woman, she says.”

  “I see. Does she say anything about me?”

  “Indeed. She says you are not a Catholic, and therefore you would never court or marry a girl like me because of the fear that your friends and family will shun you.”

  Bells rang in the distance.

  “Miss Agnes.” He parted the hair from her forehead. “Tell Miss Maguire I am not afraid.”

  XXIX

  Third and E

  IF ONLY HE COULD STOP TIME, thought a frustrated Marcus the next evening. Just now it was against them in a mighty way. This was the second consecutive night that he was strolling the city in a roundabout manner, watching by gaslight for any signs of enemies on his track. He traded greetings with tradesmen and beggars, talking of nothing more important than what an outrage it was that the snow shovels were still out in May. He periodically stepped behind a wall or into a doorway, to use Bob’s opera glass to examine the vicinity, in an attempt to recognize a face he might have seen the hour before or the evening prior after he parted from Agnes; and to see if those whom he had approached were questioned by any other night wanderer.

  He liked to think that if Hammie had not been standing beside him when that strange false prophet had appeared at the Institute, he would have given chase and at least gained some basic information about him, but the visitor had so taken him by surprise it was hard to be sure how he would have reacted. Then there was Professor Runkle. Had he witnessed the confrontation unfolding below his window, which Marcus had afterward noticed was open? Marcus had walked past Runkle in the corridor several times since then, but the professor, who was busy tending to Rogers’s duties as president pro tempore, didn’t glance his way.

  After a thorough examination of their chambers in the basement when the others were not present, Marcus had satisfied himself that the speaking tubes had not been redirected or tampered with, and that their conversations could not be overheard through the ventilation fans. That meant either they had a traitor in their midst or someone out there was watching them.

  But with this second night of
rambling through the city, he still found no sign of the hooded man or his carriage, or, as far as he could tell, his agents. There was also the stranger’s threat to expose them. If the stranger reported the Technologists to the authorities at the Institute, it would mean expulsion. Worse still, if the stranger went to the newspapers and city authorities, it could mean the most serious kind of trouble for themselves and the entire Institute, not to mention leaving the citizens of Boston vulnerable to the experimenter, with the matter entirely in the hands of Louis Agassiz and an overmatched police department.

  Marcus knew he had to find the scarred man before any of that could happen. But despite all the considerable determination he mustered, the menace remained at large. Finding the narrow, labyrinthine streets more and more desolate, Marcus started back for Mrs. Page’s, taking a detour to Temple Place. He checked whether Agnes had deposited another note for him in the hidden spot at the garden fence. She had left a message earlier, detailing various complications in her quest to obtain the list of chemical purchasers, but she had described her ingenious solutions with a game optimism and promised the list would be ready by the next morning. Nothing new yet in their hiding spot.

  As he was about to leave, he heard her voice call his name from one of the open windows. He did not see Agnes, but a few moments later she emerged from the servants’ door, running right into his arms.

  “Oh, I did it, Marcus!” she exclaimed.

  “You did?”

  She wore a flush of excitement and broke into a joyous laugh. “An opportune moment presented itself! Oh, it was delightful. Not even Lilly knows what I did. Do you see?”

  Marcus, savoring her flowing handwriting as he read, folded the paper into his vest pocket and exhaled with relief. Now they could move forward again—with any luck, a step ahead of their scarred rival.

  “You are a marvel, Miss Agnes.”

  “Aggie.”

  “Really?”

  “I think so.”

  “Thank you, Aggie.”

  “Tell me, will this help very much?” She patted his vest pocket where he had stored the paper.

  Her hand lingered and he put his over hers, then leaned forward and kissed her lips.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?” asked the white-aproned, stocky chemist, his nostrils flaring as he held open the street door to a brick building on Third Street and the corner of E in the region of South Boston.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the handsome young man, who gracefully flipped away his bowler hat to free a crown of golden curls. “I am new to Boston and looking to settle in by finding something as an assistant in the chemical industry, however humble.”

  “I am not out to hire anyone,” grumbled the chemist.

  The visitor bit his knuckle in a show of vulnerability. “You see, I am in an awful spot. My wife is”—he hesitated—“with child. Sick.”

  “Pregnant or sick?”

  “Well, both, to say the truth,” the young man affirmed sadly. “See?”

  They both looked over at the street corner, where a woman waited in a long dark dress, with a veil swept back over her tightly pinned and coiled hair.

  “You see how pale and stringy she is? Almost like an apparition from another world.”

  “I suppose she is a somber enough thing,” agreed the chemist as he studied the figure of Ellen. “Is that a mourning dress?”

  “Yes! Mourning our future. She will continue to be quite distraught and treat me like a dead man until I find some worthwhile position. I beg you to consider it.”

  “You know something of the chemical arts?”

  “I was the First Scholar in my science course as a boy.”

  The chemist rubbed his rough cheek with his hand. “You look like a good enough fellow. But I’m not hiring. Not unless you’re bringing a new patent along with you that can make me money. Now, good day!”

  The door closed swiftly and was bolted. A moment later, the window was shuttered.

  “Just our luck,” Bob said, his hands deep in his pockets as he returned to Ellen.

  “I suppose having me here has not helped as much as Mr. Mansfield hoped,” Ellen said somberly.

  “Not yet.” Bob held his agreement in check. “I see why you and Mansfield found these private chemists not the most sympathetic sort. I fear we shall have to resign our expedition in defeat.”

  “My father used to say, ‘Where anyone else has been, there I can go.’ It was not a bad working motto, but I like to think adventurous spirits do what has never been done before. That is a pioneer.”

  “Well,” he said, impressed, “perhaps we should have you stand beside me at the door when we ring at the next place on the list. Look distraught.”

  “I am not above falling faint, Mr. Richards.”

  “A-one idea! Come along.” Without thinking, he took her arm in his. He braced for her to pull away and perhaps even strike him across the face. But, to his pleasant surprise, she allowed him to escort her.

  So far, they had been to nearly a dozen places, and already tried changing speeches and strategies several times. They consulted the list compiled by Agnes Turner that matched the names and addresses of purchasers to the multiple chemicals they’d identified.

  “Goodness!” Bob gasped. “Turn to the east and walk slowly.”

  Ellen’s sharp eyes darted ahead and landed on a tall beaver hat of a light pearl color and Parisian style, shading a full-bearded, sallow face. He held an umbrella by its throat and pumped it as he walked, as though leading an invisible parade of men behind him.

  “Professor Watson,” she said under her breath, then wheeled around and followed Bob’s lead.

  * * *

  THE OTHER TECHNOLOGISTS were just as alarmed by the sighting when it was reported to them an hour later. Their minds oozed with the troubling possibilities: Could Professor Watson have learned about their activities and followed their delegates into South Boston, then acted nonchalant when Bob spotted him? Or could Squirty himself have been involved with one of the private laboratories, perhaps even—unknowingly or not—one employing the experimenter?

  “It makes sense of the whole thing, you see,” Bob said with a frenzy of thoughts on the subject.

  “How so?” asked Marcus. “Watson was the only one at the faculty meeting who pushed to investigate the disasters.”

  “What if he did so in order to have control over what was found,” Bob proposed. “This could knock everything into a cocked hat!”

  But whatever conclusions were drawn in the next hours were undrawn when Bob approached Darwin Fogg late that day, at the close of classes, with a mysterious and tentative air.

  “I wonder, my good Darwin, whether seeing a faculty member of the Institute out in South Boston, in that region filled with so many laboratories, would cause you any surprise.”

  “Oh,” Darwin said with an easy chuckle that made light of Bob’s wary approach, “you mean Professor Watson.”

  Bob could not conceal his amazement, but before he could say more, Darwin continued.

  “Or Professor Storer,” he mused, “or Professor Eliot, or Henck …”

  Bob stopped him. “You’ve just listed half the faculty, Darwin. What do you mean by it?”

  “That’s because half the faculty members possess private laboratories in that district,” Darwin said.

  “I never knew that!”

  “They don’t shout about it, lest the affiliation appear, well, unseemly. President Rogers never liked it, but he did not prohibit it.”

  In addition to explaining Watson’s presence there, it also explained what Eliot must have been doing when they saw him from the roof with his chemical case, sending materials along to South Boston without wanting attention.

  “Remember,” Darwin went on, seeming to interpret Bob’s expression as one of moral disillusionment, “President Rogers and Professor Runkle must struggle to pay your instructors enough to live on. Private scientific endeavors at least help them supplem
ent their wages, and allow them to continue to teach. You mustn’t think too unkindly about them.”

  “I won’t, Darwin. Thank you.”

  That put to rest most of their speculation about Squirty Watson. It also meant that Bob and Ellen would take more precautions to conceal themselves when they returned to South Boston the next morning, in case they encountered any other members of the faculty. Ellen kept her veil down and Bob wore a wide-collared greatcoat that made him look a size bigger, and a false mustache.

  At the next five chemists’ doors, they were met with no answer or else distrust and annoyance. They had almost been through Agnes’s entire list and found no helpful clues. Soon they would have to return to the Institute again to be in time for Bob’s first Saturday class and Ellen’s private session with Henck, professor of civil and topographical engineering.

  “Perhaps I am not convincing enough as an errant husband,” Bob said. They crossed the street where the next building on the list was located.

  She sighed with empathy. “Or I as the wife. No surprise. The gentleman has not yet made his appearance who can entice me away from my free and independent life with the chains of matrimony. No matter. The world will surely be peopled without my help. Perhaps my reluctance shows through.”

  He twirled the walking stick he had brought as part of his new costume. “I have no idea what a wife ought to be to me, to tell the truth, or what I ought to be to a wife, but I know that her aims in life should be along the lines that mine will follow, not some silly girl who will bat her eyelashes at a scientific coat. I know that.”

  “When I first arrived at Tech this October, one of the students had found the letter I carried in my belongings confirming my admission and crossed out the ‘A.B.’ where it listed the type of degree I would study for. They left it in my laboratory where I would find it, and wrote ‘A.O.M.’ instead. What do you suppose they meant?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” he said after thinking it over.

  “I consulted with President Rogers and we believe it must be ‘An Old Maid.’ ”

  “Didn’t that set your teeth on edge?”