The Technologists: A Novel

by Matthew Pearl

  “Impossible! Stand aside.” After a thorough search of his own, Bob confirmed that the machine suits were not anywhere in either of the laboratories.

  “It had to be someone inside the building who took them,” said Ellen. “Maybe Professor Runkle, when he became aware of what we were doing, had them removed. Or Hammie—he has access to the laboratory and has no reason to think twice of borrowing materials from his own society. Or simply some juvenile classmate hatching a practical joke.”

  “I know who must have taken them,” Marcus said. “On Wednesday, a stranger approached me outside the Institute while Hammie was helping me with equipment. A man with a disfigured face. He knew we were investigating the disasters. He knew who we were; he even knew our names. Runkle heard a part of the exchange from his study, which is the reason he called Hammie and then me into his study.”

  Bob frowned in confusion. “Wednesday? That was three days ago. You didn’t tell us?”

  Marcus shrugged. “I’m sorry. I was hoping I could address his threats without causing you concern, and I couldn’t know if we were being listened in upon.”

  “Remember, Mansfield, forewarned, forearmed,” Bob said sternly, crossing his arms.

  “One more thing out of our control,” Ellen said nervously.

  “He said he was the avenging angel, with his tongue as a flaming sword,” Marcus continued.

  “What does that mean?” asked Bob.

  “In the Book of Genesis, God places a cherubim with a flaming sword that turns in every direction to the east of the garden of Eden, to prevent mankind from ever inhabiting it again,” said Edwin. “How did he know about us, Marcus?”

  “I wish I knew. He has been following us, or has some agent to do so. I have been trying to find out without success. He demanded that I tell him everything we have found, and if I did not comply he would expose us. He must have watched us go in and out of our laboratory, and found a time to sneak inside and take the machine suits as evidence against us. Now he might be planning to use the suits against us publicly in some fashion.”

  “Or as blackmail,” Ellen said.

  “We could be in grave danger either way!” Edwin declared. “We must see whether anything else is taken.”

  Bob laughed.

  Ellen narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve missed another one of your grand jokes, Mr. Richards.”

  “Don’t you see?” Bob said, pacing the room again and growing more animated by the moment. “It’s a test. All of it. A test of our skills, for God to toss all these problems at us at once. Like one of our final examinations at Tech. Think of what problems we have had to overcome. The intricacies of engineering, chemistry, physics we have had to master without any other pupils to pave our way. God has given Tech’s first students the most strenuous test, and we will not shrink from the occasion. It is the ultimate graduating examination!”

  “I’m only a freshman,” Ellen said.

  “Well, I’m ready for it. Anyone else?” Bob poured a serving from his small black bottle.

  “I never take alcohol,” said Ellen.

  “I should have expected as much,” Bob replied, but in a kinder tone than usual. “Our resolution must be incontrovertible, fellows, and we can take heart that after the explosion Runkle realized we are doing what we must. We must find the person who did all this and identify him as soon as possible, all with the certainty of Babbage’s calculating machine.”

  “Or her,” Ellen said.

  “Her!” Bob repeated, with a derisive laugh. “No mind of the gentler sex could be so cunning and malicious as …” Ellen tossed him a smile. He changed course with barely a beat. “Say, I believe Professor Swallow’s rooms aren’t very far from the chemists’ building.”

  Ellen nodded. “Not so far at all, really. Without fog, one should have a clear view of that building with my telescope from one side of my boardinghouse roof. In addition, I am rather expert at lipreading.”

  Bob smacked the palm of his hand on the table. “Good luck! Lipreading, eh? No wonder my bills for our slang ledger increase by the day. We go immediately to Miss Swallow’s roof and watch. We’ll find out how the cat jumps.”

  “I do not think Mrs. Blodgett will take to strange young men sneaking around,” Ellen pointed out.

  “I suppose not,” Bob said. “Does she have rooms free?”

  “Yes, two.”

  “Good. I will engage one, then, and that will give me freedom to roam. Cash will always triumph.”

  “You and Miss Swallow take turns watching tonight, since you’re both familiar with the chemists’ building. Keep at it until you find out who occupies that laboratory,” Marcus said.

  “I’d wager the experimenter must do his devious work there under cover of night,” Bob said. “We will have him like a moth into a candle!”

  “In the meantime,” Marcus said, “I will write up a paper that could be easily understood even by a Boston newspaper editor about how the harbor disaster was engineered. Edwin, can you do the same for what happened at the business district?”

  “Certainly, Marcus, but why not just lead the police to the laboratory Bob and Miss Swallow located?”

  “With Agassiz directing the police chief and his men, given his bile for the Institute, the officials won’t listen to any scientific theories from us. We will need to have all the particulars in place, complete with the name of the culprit, and ready for public consumption through the newspapers. Once the press is convinced, the pressure will mount and the police will be forced to act, with or without Agassiz. Any loose ends could be used to unravel the whole.”

  “What about your scar-faced friend?” Bob asked.

  Marcus took his hat from the rack on the wall. “That is just the man I hope to meet tonight.”

  XXXI

  Sleep

  ANOTHER NOCTURNAL EXCURSION FAILED to flush out the spy. This time, Marcus decided to visit the area around State Street, considering its apparent importance to the hooded man and his possible agents—but once again, various stratagems yielded nothing of interest. After all the dramatic events of the day, Marcus was not certain what he would have done had he really found the phantom. If they could only finish their enterprise before the stranger made good on his threats to disrupt it, all would be free and clear. It was entirely possible, too, that their adversary had fallen ill—his physical state seemed tenuous, at best—or had become otherwise diverted. Or perhaps he had been all brag from the beginning.

  That night, after stopping first at Edwin’s and picking up his written study of the causes of the State Street disaster—which was meticulous and brilliant—Marcus reached Bob’s rooms. Bob must have still been at Ellen’s boardinghouse. Marcus began composing his own paper about the harbor disaster. He had begun at the oak table, but now he climbed into his bed in the alcove. The few possessions and suits of clothes he had brought from Newburyport were stored in a small closet Bob had cleared for him. He leaned his notebook against the head of the cast-iron bedstead so he could rest a little while he wrote. His eyelids drooped, and he was drifting off, so he plunged his face in the washbasin and started once more. With the discovery of the location of the private laboratory, they were so near the end, so tantalizingly close, he could not allow himself to sleep. Not now! They had to finish, to protect Boston, to restore the standing of the Institute, and to win back Agnes’s faith.

  … magnetism induced by hammering, rolling &c. against the soft iron …

  When his eyes fluttered, he saw the Avenging Angel, the purple facial burns pulsating and flowing with pus. The face followed Marcus, chasing him, then, with the addition of a dark bushy beard, transformed itself into the hated Captain Denzler. He had not been entirely honest when Frank asked if he ever saw Denzler’s face in Boston: He saw it in his mind’s eye more often than he cared to admit.

  He did not know which disturbed him more, his nightmares that included those villains or the haunting images of the hurt and injured, of Captain Beal’s trembling
hands, of poor Chrissy, the girl in the glass. The boy Theo, waiting to heal, sobbing for himself and for the stockbroker, now dead, who used to drop him a shiny, cold coin. Something stopped Marcus in this line of thought. He had not noticed reports of any additional fatalities from the State Street catastrophe in the weeks since. In fact, among the scores of injuries, the actress had been the only reported fatality that day.

  He picked up Edwin’s report again, which had a lengthy addendum of news clippings. He confirmed that there were no other deaths reported in the dozens of columns—and the newspapers would have hungrily reported the details if they had discovered another one, just as they had done with Chrissy’s. Then his eye fell on an entry buried in a list of particulars from one of the cuttings he had not seen before. “Mr. Cheshire, commission agent of Boston”—wasn’t “Cheshire” the name Theo had mentioned?—“feared to have life-threatening injuries from severe burns, released by his doctors.”

  Burns. Released, yet little Theo, standing his loyal watch, had seen nothing of him on State Street. Thinking about the identity of the hooded man, it made perfect sense he would be a victim of the tragedy, filled with thoughts of revenge (I am the avenging angel), and flush with capital to finance his mission.

  “Iron,” Marcus said to himself, picking up his pen again and shaking off the distraction. Finding Cheshire, who might as easily have been a suffering victim trembling in bed rather than their hooded threat, would have to wait. Right now, they needed to convince the press of their findings. The explosion in Runkle’s study had made that plain. Nearby, he had some of the pieces of iron and copper cables from the trunk, and a few partial compasses and magnets they had used during their experiments.

  Staying awake is the least you can do for Rogers, he reminded himself, thinking that if he moved from the bed back to the table he’d probably do better, but not bothering to follow his own advice, since it would require standing. The joints and fingers of his rheumatic hand throbbed in agony, just as it had once sent pangs of desperation through him in the machine shop, when he could not stop the drill without risking being discharged by the foreman.

  Then he made the mistake of falling into a shallow sleep.

  “That’s the room.” The words floated in from the hallway.

  The door crashed open, kicked hard from outside. He bolted upright. The candle had gone out and he could only faintly see the four men in black masks and cloaks charging in. He struck one on the side of the head with his elbow, but before he could turn, there was an arm hooking on to his neck from behind and a rag stuffed down his mouth; someone tied his hands behind him with rope and a sack was thrown over his head.

  “The fellow fights hard,” said one of them. “He deserves to rest.” A blunt object stung the back of Marcus’s head.

  * * *

  Rap-rap rap-rap.

  Ellen leaned her ear against the door. “Clear?” she whispered.

  Again, two pairs of distinct raps.

  She unlatched the door to allow Bob to slip inside and then she closed it behind him.

  “I wouldn’t give the ‘clear’ signal, dear Professor, if it weren’t clear.”

  “Mrs. Blodgett moves with a silent step through the house. You must be careful, or she will throw you right out the window,” said Ellen. She had never had a man with her in her room before and enjoyed a spotless reputation among her fellow boarders, as well as in the eyes of Blodgett and her family. Ellen had coached Bob in his application for a room, telling him exactly what to say when confronted with the quintessential three-word question of Boston landladies, each one pronounced with the moral force of a hell-fire sermon: “Who are you?” Ellen’s guidance secured Bob a room, as she had known it would, but that would not erase Mrs. Blodgett’s suspicions of a young single man, which were only surpassed by those she harbored for young single women, and approximately equal to those held close to her breast about a student of science.

  Ellen knew she must seem quite nervous to Bob as they stood together in the room—and that annoyed her at the bottom of her soul. She abruptly turned her face from him. “The telescope is there, Mr. Richards—but it is heavy.”

  “It is good for our sakes I have used dumbbells every evening for three years,” Bob said, as he looked around and then paused, an expression of surprise on his face.

  “What? Out with it,” Ellen said impatiently.

  “It is remarkable! Your room.”

  She had never considered the room special, but smiled at his appreciation for something other than her scientific expertise.

  “I like everything in apple-pie order. Those are all my plants, you see. I have carved out the center of this dining table and lined it with zinc to better provide them with water.”

  At one window ivy emerged from a basket and wound its way up along the frame. An array of roses and silver-leaf geraniums were budding and spreading, while festooned clematis brightened the rest of the small parlor. Displayed above was a contraption made of two sheets of pasteboard and a pole.

  “That is a barometer of my own simple construction,” Ellen said before he could ask about it. “It is but a sample of the instruments, used correctly, that will allow science to predict the weather.”

  “Predictive weather! Another of your eccentric sciences.” He continued to survey the room.

  “If it should aid the practice of farmers, then indeed it is. What is it you’re so interested in here, Mr. Richards?”

  “Your rooms are not what I expected.”

  “Did you think I lived in a cave?”

  “Something like that, perhaps. Or perhaps I imagined your laboratory at the Institute as your home.”

  “Mr. Fogg laughs on the nights I’m there later than he and says I am a spook. He said it is a darky term for a ghost spirit that wanders through the night.” Ellen was chagrined to find herself speaking at an even quicker tempo than usual.

  Baby trotted out to greet him. “Greetings, old fellow—any new experiments today?” Bob asked, petting him above the tail. The feline gave his distinct mew.

  “Well,” Ellen said, wanting a little measure of revenge for his assumptions about her, “I expect a rich boy like you to come from a mansion in the acropolis of Beacon Hill, with your doting family.”

  “Pinckney Street, only with doting mother.”

  “This is all I have, Mr. Richards, and I am content with it. I believe I—and Mr. Mansfield—are what Bostonians like to call their country cousins. I take no offense at the notion. This is the Athens of America, the brains of our continent, and I intend to make it my home for the rest of my days.”

  “Nellie!”

  “What did you say?” Ellen asked, gasping.

  Bob had found a drawing on the wall that was signed “With gratitude, to Nellie.”

  “When I was at Vassar, in order to earn my pin money, I served as a coach to some of the girls who had mathematical difficulties. I had to submit to being hugged and kissed and thanked in return, I’m afraid.” She added, “I do not know why that is even on the wall. I suppose I cannot afford fine art.”

  “That is all good, but it is written here that this is a gift to Nellie! Is that what you are called?”

  “By friends, yes, Mr. Richards.” Even as she said it, she wished she had not. She meant only to be firm, direct, admirably unblinking, but not harsh. She no longer desired to control her fellow Technologists but would not be thrown off her guard. Bob appeared stung for a moment, though he quickly repaired his expression by unfurling his easy, charming smile. “We—you and I—are rather peers,” she added.

  “Peers,” Bob repeated gamely. “Will you not call me Bob, then? You say you wish to be treated like the other Tech boys; therefore I suggest you act as they do more often.”

  She thought about this and shook her head. “Robert will do.”

  “Closer, I suppose. Would you do it again?”

  “Say your name?”

  “Coach girls to be up in science and mathematics.”
<
br />   Ellen considered. “I do wish I could teach women of science like myself at the Institute who will then educate the world in ways men cannot. Women can reason—they must. They desire to vote, but first must prove they deserve it.”

  “You mean to have such ladies put their microscopes into my blueberry pie and my drinking glass.”

  “I look at anything that interests me. Once I see it under the microscope it will interest me for certain. I have of late, before our present study became so pressing, been analyzing the appearance of ergot in rye and wheat.”

  “That’s Dutch to me, Professor.”

  “Ergot is a disease occasioned by the presence of a fungus that needs far more study,” she explained, “as does its constitutional effects on any that consume it. Science must learn how to keep the body in good condition to do the bidding of the spirit. Do you know how few persons there are who can properly analyze the chemistry of babies’ food used to substitute for mothers’ milk?”

  “Well, I suppose you are set to bring many improvements to the Institute, with your vegetable chemistry and whatnot!”

  “Make no mistake, I have a debt to Professor Rogers greater than any other person’s at our school. He has given me a chance to do what no woman ever did. To be the first woman to enter the Institute of Technology, to enter any scientific school, and to do it by myself alone. Unaided.” She felt she owed this senior, however bullheaded he might be, an explanation for her serious demeanor.

  “Well, I promise not to aid you in any fashion after this is finished,” Bob said, his tone a bit colder.

  “Thank you for that,” she rejoined with equal coolness.

  “Shall we?”

  He stared at her, putting his hands out. She realized she was standing right in front of the telescope. She smoothed her dress and stepped to one side. Bob Richards was concerned with saving lives and saving the Institute, as she was, and could not care a whit what she had to say about herself. She felt silly for having momentarily imagined she had in any way injured such a handsome boy’s feelings. He who, when his beautiful hair grew out, looked like a statue of one of the ancient Greek gods. Until he cut it again and then looked like an ancient Roman god. How pathetic that she wished him to show feelings for her.