The noise reached a crescendo when Lorraine, one of the most recent hires on the floor, slammed her receiver onto its cradle, flung back her head, and emitted a long, thin wail. As though in response, other clerks knocked stacks of pages off their own desks, rattled drawers, slammed typewriter keys, or went to the windows for air. Unwin, appalled and bewildered, threw himself over his files to protect them.
What had happened?
The overclerk’s door opened, and Mr. Duden materialized for the first time that week. He jogged between the desks toward the center of the room, clutching his hair. “Stop!” he cried.
Unwin could see in the overclerk’s eyes the same panic that had seized the others. Mr. Duden had not come to calm them; he had come to join them. “Stop everything you’re doing!” he cried. “Everything is wrong! It isn’t Wednesday, it’s Tuesday!”
Unwin clutched his files more tightly. Mr. Duden was right—it was Tuesday, only two days since Unwin had woken to the ringing of the city’s church bells. Yesterday’s lunch had been cucumber and horseradish: his Monday sandwich.
He counted the number of times he had written the date since arriving that morning. November thirteenth: it was everywhere, in his notes, in memoranda, entries of at least four indices, the master log, the ancillary log, in the final sections of The Episode of the Facing Mirrors. He tried to multiply in his mind the number of errors he alone had committed by the number of people on the floor, and that by the number of floors in the Agency office building, but his calculative powers failed him. It would take weeks to undo the damage, and traces of the calamity were sure to abide indefinitely.
The story trickled in over the course of the afternoon, and the clerks gathered in circles at one desk or another, sharing new tidbits of information. Calls came in from people out of town who had noticed the discrepancy—Wednesday in the city and Tuesday everywhere else. There was chaos in the harbor: ships held in port or turned away by bewildered customs officials, goods piled on the wharf with no one to accept them, longshoremen brawling with sailors, radio officers trading insults on every frequency. Traffic on the major bridges halted as delivery trucks choked both lanes and drivers left their vehicles to huddle confused and indignant amid the mayhem. Appointment desks at beauty salons, employment bureaus, doctors’ offices, and the courts were overwhelmed. At the schools children wept over examinations for which they had not studied.
Unwin remained in his own seat, trying not to listen to this news, working instead to list the corrections he would have to make. (He lost the list by the end of the day and would have to start over the next morning.)
That Hoffmann was responsible came as no surprise to anyone on the fourteenth floor, though it added to Unwin’s dread the weight of impending responsibility. Evidently, the magician’s criminal network extended well beyond the rickety sprawl of the Travels-No-More Carnival. His agents had somehow infiltrated all the major newspaper offices, radio stations, and civic departments, just to set the calendars ahead one day. But that did not explain how an additional X appeared on wall calendars in homes throughout the city. The biloquist might imitate any one of us, Unwin thought, but surely we are not all working for him.
Though the effects of the disruption were pervasive, it was at the Central Bank that the true purpose of Hoffmann’s gambit was discovered. There a convoy of armored cars with a cargo of gold was slated to arrive midmorning. But because it was expected on Tuesday, and not Wednesday, no members of the bank staff were there to greet them. Hoffmann’s own agents, dressed for the part, were ready to fill in. The gold went from one set of cars to another and would have left in them had Sivart not intervened.
It was all in the early edition the next day, the second issue of the city paper to bear the date of Wednesday, November thirteenth. Unwin skimmed the article in the elevator and went quickly to his desk. He had come to the office early and was the first to arrive on the fourteenth floor, except for Mr. Duden, who peeked through his office door and nodded gratefully. From the circles beneath the overclerk’s eyes, Unwin guessed he had stayed through the night.
Sivart’s report was already on Unwin’s desk. It was improbably thin and, according to the cover page, the first and last in the series.
I don’t think I really have to file a report on this one, Sivart began, because I wasn’t working on the Agency’s dime. Call it a sick day if you like. Still, I’ll give you a few of the details, and you can do what you want with them.
There was little in the report that had not already appeared in the papers. Sivart said he had no idea how Hoffmann managed the trick; furthermore, he did not intend to find out. Unwin was dizzied by the implication—to file a case with no true solution!—but he read on.
Sivart, acting on that hunch of his, had alerted several other detectives from his floor and called them all down to the parking lot behind Central Bank. They staked out the place and waited for an hour. Hoffmann’s agents arrived, not in their usual carnival remainders but driving a column of black trucks and dressed as bank staff. Sivart paid attention to one of them in particular.
The limp, he wrote, was familiar.
I had my men circle the place, just to be safe. Then I shimmied up to the lead vehicle and opened the door. The driver was picking his teeth in the mirror. I hit him as hard as was necessary and rolled him under the cab. Then I took his place and waited.
They were quick about their work. They had rehearsed. The one in charge got in beside me and let the hair out of her hat. “Okay,” she said, “that’s all of it.”
“Not by a long shot,” I said.
Greenwood wasn’t happy to see me. And I saw a look on her face, one I’d never seen there before. I think it was surprise, but we might need a new name for it, just because it was hers.
“That’s a lot of gold, honey. What’s your cut?”
“I’ll show you,” she said, but I was ready for the dagger and got hold of the wrist on the other side of it.
I told her about my friends outside. I told her the game was up, goose cooked, et cetera. Eventually she came around, though neither of us was feeling good about it.
Listen, clerk. I wasn’t on the job. Nobody assigned me to this case. What I did next I did as a citizen of this unfair land. I think I broke a law or two. If someone wants to come and arrest me for it, fine. I’m too tired to care.
I said, “We’re going to round up your helpers, here, and we’re going to bring the shiny stuff inside. But you, lady, you’re going to leave. I don’t ever want to see you in this town again.”
“After this,” she said, “you won’t be the only one.”
I left with her and let the others clean up. They’re a decent bunch of yahoos, and none of them tried to stop me. I walked her to Central Terminal. We had pretzels on the way, just like old times, except we didn’t have any old times, so we had to make them up. The whole town had gone mad, but the trains were still running. I paid for her ticket, one way, and we stood together awhile down on the platform. I won’t tell you what we talked about. I won’t tell you what happened just before I put her on the train. What business is it of yours, what we said?
I watched the train until the tunnel ate it.
Now I’m in my office. It’s dark in here, and I’m choking on my own smoke. I’m starting to wonder about early retirement. I was wrong about her, clerk. As per usual. All wrong.
Unwin scoured the report again, searching for some better explanation. How did Sivart know what had happened that morning, when everyone else was fooled? The best explanation he could find, and the only conclusion the file would ever have, was Sivart’s assertion that he had simply remembered.
UNWIN’S UMBRELLA WAS FOLDED on the bed beside him, droplets of water clinging to the black fabric. The bed was made, though the blankets were soggy and rumpled, as were his clothes. His briefcase was on the floor by the bed. From the kitchen came the sound of the icebox door clinking open and closed. A woman was humming to herself, and Unwin recognized the tun
e from Miss Greenwood’s performance the night before.
It hurt too much to move his head, so he raised his wristwatch to his eyes. Six thirty-two—still early. But early for what? For work? They would apprehend him as soon as he brought his bicycle through the lobby door. For coffee at Central Terminal? They could be waiting for him anywhere: in line at the breakfast cart, next to the information booth, beneath the arch of Gate Fourteen. Even the woman in the plaid coat, it seemed, was in on it.
Then he remembered Edwin Moore, remembered how he had looked in the back of the steam truck, shivering among all those alarm clocks. They will find me, Moore had told him in the museum storeroom, and he was right—they had found him. Would the Rooks murder him, as they murdered Detective Pith?
“Breakfast is ready,” Emily called from the kitchen.
He sat up slowly. What was his assistant doing in his apartment? The sleep drained out of his head and pooled sickeningly in his stomach. He peeled the damp socks off his feet and dropped them onto the floor next to his shoes. He would have to find Edwin Moore, and quickly.
He rose shakily and went to the kitchen. Buttered toast was piled at the center of the table, and a pair of eggs, sunny side up, were set on a plate for him. Emily was swirling more butter over the hot surface of a skillet. It had been a late night for her, but she appeared rested, dressed now in a gray skirt and pinstripe blouse. The pencils in her hair were freshly sharpened.
“I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in,” she said. “I found the spare key in your desk yesterday. And since I couldn’t go back to the office, I came right here. I figured you’d want to start on your case first thing.”
“You stole my spare key?”
“ ‘Stole’ is unfair,” she said. She selected an egg from the open carton, cracked its shell, and spilled it into the skillet, all with one hand.
“Emily, we don’t have time for breakfast. One of my . . . primary contacts. He’s been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped? Who is he?”
Unwin wondered whether her question was genuine. Emily always seemed to know more than she let on. Still, she had only helped him thus far, so he would have to trust her for now. “He’s a museum attendant. He—”
“Eat while you talk, Detective. I won’t consider it rude.”
It was more a command than a suggestion. Unwin helped himself to his plate from the table, took some toast, and ate standing up. He was hungrier than he thought, and the eggs were perfect, the whites cooked through but the yolks still runny. “His name’s Edwin Moore,” he said between bites. “He told me he used to work for the Agency.”
She thought that over for a moment. “He could be valuable, then—if he’s telling the truth. Where is he?”
“The Rook brothers took him.”
She stood still, running the tip of her tongue along her crooked teeth. Then she sprinkled pepper over the eggs in the pan. “Nobody’s seen the Rooks since Hoffmann went into hiding,” she said.
“Emily, do you remember anything about last night? About the Cat & Tonic?”
He saw a twitch at the corner of her eye, magnified by her glasses. Some part of her knew what he was talking about, but she said, “I went straight home after I dropped you off at the Gilbert. I worked on a crossword puzzle and went to sleep. Cat, tonic. It sounds familiar. Did you do the same puzzle? I think maybe ‘cat’ was one of the answers, and so was ‘tonic.’ They might have shared their letter t. I’m not sure, though. I don’t remember what the clues were.”
She would not remember their dance, then, or anything else she had seen.
Unwin sat down. “Enoch Hoffmann’s back,” he told her. “The Rooks are working for him again, and they’re up to something. Something big, I think. If we’re ever going to find Sivart, we’ll have to figure out what he was investigating when he disappeared.”
She was quiet a moment. Then she flipped her eggs onto a plate and said, “In that case, you’ll have to go to the Travels-No-More.”
Unwin knew she was right. The Rooks had always operated out of the carnival—they arrived in the city with it thirteen years before. They would not have taken Moore to the Forty Winks: too many questions to answer there. But in the lightless center of Caligari’s, they could carry on with their plans undisturbed.
Emily brought her plate to the table and sat down, then unfolded a napkin on her lap. “I just hope he’s worth it,” she said.
THEY WALKED TOGETHER UNDER Unwin’s umbrella. Neither of them had seen the morning papers yet, but they knew that Unwin’s photograph would likely have made front page by now. They kept to the alleyways and side streets, and Emily went ahead to peer around the corners. She took his hand, pulling him along while he kept the umbrella low over his face.
“Aren’t we going the wrong way?” he asked.
“I think the closest entry point is a block north of here.”
He knew better than to ask what she meant, and besides, Emily was doing a good job of keeping them out of sight. They passed no one on the sidewalks, and no vehicles moved on the streets. Still, Unwin felt they were being watched. He tried to remind himself that Sivart considered that a good thing. Means I’m doing my job, he often wrote.
She waved him into a subway station and produced a pair of tokens from her skirt pocket. As she passed through the turnstile, she raised her lunch box in the air. Unwin did the same with his umbrella. He had left his briefcase in his apartment: safer there than with him.
When the train arrived, Emily ushered him into an empty car. He moved to take a seat, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him over to a door on the opposite side. With a swift movement, she snatched the umbrella out of his hand and wedged it between the doors, forcing them open. Then she gave the umbrella back and led him onto the platform beyond. They went along the narrow walkway to a gate at its end—the entrance, Unwin thought, to a place only the city’s transit workers could ever need to access. Emily lifted the padlock in her hand. “I know a few of the codes,” she said, and added bashfully, “in case of emergencies.”
She turned the dial a few times, and the lock popped open. Once they were in, she closed the gate and reached through the bars to lock it again. The air was cold and musty here, and Unwin could hear a low electrical hum. They took a flight of stairs downward, switching back at a landing, moving slowly until their eyes adjusted to the dimness of the place.
They had come to a second subway platform below the first. Water dripped from leaky pipes in the ceiling and formed grimy puddles amid bits of trash. Emily took only a few steps before turning to face the tracks. She grabbed hold of his left arm, lifting it to bring his wristwatch close to her face. The scent of her lavender perfume nearly blocked out the stench of the place.
“The eight train always arrives on time,” she said.
“You mean the A train?”
Emily pursed her lips, then said, “I mean the eight train. I suppose they didn’t cover that in your orientation. It’s an old line, decommissioned by the city years ago. The Agency made arrangements. Only detectives are allowed to ride it.”
He nodded as though to say that yes, of course, he remembered all that now.
“Not even assistants are permitted on board,” she went on. “Really, we’re not even supposed to know about it.”
Unwin refrained from asking the obvious question.
The rails began to warble, and then the light of the approaching train appeared in the tunnel. Unlike the station, the train itself looked clean and well maintained. It glided into place alongside the platform, and the doors hissed open. Unwin got on, then turned to face his assistant.
“They say every detective has a dagger-sharp understanding of the human mind,” she said to him. “Do you have a dagger-sharp understanding of the human mind, Detective Unwin? Can you tell me what I have in my lunch box?”
He had tested her; now she was testing him. Unwin wondered whether some part of The Manual of Detection might have prepared him for a question like this. Lo
oking at the lunch box, he could not even tell if it was a detail or a clue. Finally he made his guess. “Your lunch?”
The doors closed. Through the window, behind her thick glasses, Emily’s eyes were unreadable. She stood unmoving at the platform’s edge as the train left the station.
He was the only passenger in the car—maybe the only passenger in the train. He took a seat and watched the tunnel walls slide past the windows.
It was seven o’clock now, and on a normal day he would already be on his way to Central Terminal. He thought of the woman in the plaid coat. Had she gone to wait at Gate Fourteen as usual? What if the person she was waiting for chose this day to arrive? Unwin would never see her there again, never know what happened. Who was she, to have taken his job on the fourteenth floor? To have sipped milk at the Cat & Tonic? Enoch Hoffmann was enraged at the mention of her. Did they know each other?
The train screeched as it rounded a bend. Unwin saw abandoned stations go by—not real places anymore, just forgotten hollows, decaying in the dark under the city. The train halted at one of them and opened its doors. It was not his stop.
All this was happening, he imagined, not because Sivart was gone, or because Lamech promoted him, or because Hoffmann was stealing the city’s alarm clocks. It was happening because the woman in the plaid coat had dropped her umbrella and he failed to pick it up. If he had picked it up, she would have spoken to him. They might have left the terminal together, before Detective Pith could find him. They might have walked side by side and talked, he pushing his bicycle along the sidewalk.
His bicycle! It was still chained to the fire escape outside the Gilbert Hotel. Its chain would rust badly in this weather.
The door at the back of the car opened, and a gray, coveralled figure shuffled in, pushing a wheeled bucket in front of him. It was Arthur, the custodian. The man seemed to be everywhere—first in Central Terminal, then on the stage of the Cat & Tonic, and now in the subway. The train rounded another bend, and he stumbled. Unwin rose to offer assistance, but Arthur hopped to keep his balance, then resumed his advance.
The Manual of Detection Page 12