The Technologists: A Novel

by Matthew Pearl

  (Here B. approaches the table to stay my hand, but I must write, or I shall not know how to go on.)

  Yes, we did run from the scene of this disaster before we could speak to the authorities. I know that to flee was wrong, but at the very same time I knew M. was right. We may yet be Boston’s last hope, and had we reported the events to the police just now our endeavors to help would be made impossible.

  I was frightened outside the ruins of that building, but I was not afraid. I have learned through this enterprise that science makes no place for cowardice. As long as I can protect my friends, and my city, I know I, too, shall be protected from harm. This, I know now, must be my purpose: I must keep the Technologists together, for if we are split apart the city will follow. Yet I cannot escape the feeling, dear Bible, that the deeper we become engulfed by these atrocities, the harder it is to know what actions are right. The scientific arts represent the mind of God better than any other human endeavor. Yet, we are chasing one who is vicious and without conscience, and as we stay at his heels, I live in a tremble that we will all be darkened by the shadow of the devil.

  XL

  Gatehouse

  THE GATEHOUSE opposite the dam had been called a model of security by a national magazine, fireproof and exceptionally well protected. With its hammered granite exterior and floors, and metal roof, and granite floors, the building was designed to preclude interference with the gates and conduit below. But the lake itself was three and a half miles long. It could not all be protected.

  Around dusk that Sunday, the intruder entered the water from a secluded area toward the northern portion of the glittering lake. A beast, a creature, a waterlogged Frankenstein’s monster: That’s how the figure would have appeared to a watcher along the shore of the Cochituate, encased in a suit from which tubes sprouted like tentacles, its face concealed within a bulbous, windowed helmet. But there were no watchers as the thing lumbered into the shallows, moved deeper and deeper, and then submerged itself.

  Down, down, down, through the pure, untouched waters channeled for all the needs of the city of Boston. Since its last use, the suit had been modified with a self-sustaining air supply, and now featured a specially designed air reservoir with a regulator valve at the shoulder. The suit’s initial engineering had been skillful, clever. Its modifications reflected superior skills—genius, in fact. Now it could go deeper, for a longer period of time, independent of assistance from above. That proved an important point to the wearer. If all had to be done alone, without the help once promised and afforded him, so be it.

  Soon enough beneath the gatehouse, the aquatic Frankenstein barely paused before fastening a mine to the cast-iron gates that allowed water to flow freely through the conduit, into the aqueduct, in order to fill the main that traveled into Boston. He turned the crank four times to charge the device.

  Retreating to a safe distance to wait for the muted, glorious explosion, the saboteur patted with a gloved hand the vials protected inside the pocket of the suit. Boston would be reeling again soon enough. Almost as satisfying as thinking about this was to imagine how the destruction would all look through the astonished eyes of Marcus Mansfield.

  XLI

  May 17, 1868

  ELLEN LEANED OVER HER STOVE TOP, bringing a spoonful of hot liquid to her lips and puckering. When she looked up from stirring some more, she saw Bob approaching Edwin’s place at her table. He was nervous and distracted, and she worried he might tease Edwin, to repair his own ego after having lost control of his emotions at the site of the collapsed building.

  “Put that away, Eddy,” Bob said, mildly enough, after watching his friend’s relentless fit of writing. “Isn’t that sacrilege and whatnot?”

  “I haven’t anything else to write on,” Edwin answered quietly, softly stroking his pocket Bible, the front leaves of which had now been filled with his microscopic print. “Every piece of paper in Miss Swallow’s room is filled with equations and formulas. Besides, it seems an appropriate place for a diary, somehow.”

  “It is as appropriate as anywhere else after a day like this,” she said, causing Bob to return to pacing around her living room. “But you both should be resting, gentlemen. The soup is almost done.” They had retreated here because it was the closest of all their lodgings, but perhaps also because this was where they could be cared for best. She had not expected to take a motherly role toward the upperclassmen when all this started, but how could she not in her own boardinghouse, after such experiences together?

  She removed a rag soaking in a dish of warm water and soap and walked over to Edwin’s chair. “Let us see how it is,” she said. He finished the sentence he was writing and closed his Bible as she pressed the rag with a gentle motion over a bump on his temple and began blowing softly on it.

  “He looks better,” Bob insisted, getting between them hastily and inspecting his friend’s head, then patting his hair. “All better, see? Professor, but have you noticed this gash in my knee?”

  Ellen gave Edwin a few more moments of care, then turned her attention to Bob. Fortunately, all their cuts and abrasions appeared to be minor. “Have a seat, Mr. Richards. We’ll have a look.”

  Bob found a chair and rolled his trousers up over his knee.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what, Professor?” Bob asked.

  “For asking me to leave when you and Mr. Mansfield were locked inside the stairwell. I believe you were concerned about me.”

  “We need you,” Bob replied wholeheartedly. Then he quickly added, “You are a true chemist, and that is most useful.”

  “There,” she said, judging the injury harmless.

  “Why?” he said, falling back into his distracted state and turning to Marcus, who was sitting across from Edwin at the dining table with the cut-out center square that was filled with plants. “Why should the experimenter save Mansfield when he fell, Professor? He nearly turned all of us into dust!”

  “The experimenter wants us to witness the power he has over us,” Ellen surmised.

  “The power to allow us to live,” Marcus added, “or to finish us. He wants us to know one thing above all else—that he is better than us.”

  “Every fiber in my being still wants to tell the police we were present, and what happened,” said Edwin.

  “I know,” Marcus said apologetically, holding out a glass of water to him. “Thank you for being patient, Edwin.”

  “Mr. Hoyt,” Ellen said, “when you first arrived at the laboratory building, you said there was something about Professor Eliot you needed to tell us.”

  Edwin nodded, gulping down the glass of water before he explained what had happened that morning at Harvard, which now seemed a year ago.

  “You’re certain Professor Eliot was proposing to Harvard that the Institute be annexed, Edwin?” Marcus asked.

  “When I questioned it, his eyes flashed with fire like a furnace and he implied strongly that if I informed President Rogers about it, he would make inquiries about how we were involved in what happened on the Harvard grounds.”

  “So no matter what we do, the Institute might be chewed up,” Ellen said, “and then spat out.”

  “That is a worry for a later time,” Bob said grimly. “At the moment, not only has the evidence of the experimenter’s crimes been destroyed but so have our clues as to his next exercise in mayhem!”

  “No, they haven’t,” said Ellen enigmatically. “Not entirely, at least. We have saved the most important clue we could.”

  “Why, my dear Professor, did you see the ruins of that building? Fortunately it is Sunday, or dozens of people would have been crushed flat, but there is decidedly nothing left to salvage, not with the most sophisticated equipment we might conjure.”

  “I believe Miss Swallow means something else by the most important clue, Bob,” said Marcus. “You.”

  “Precisely,” Ellen added.

  * * *

  “ME?” Bob laughed dismissively. “What are you t
wo driving at?”

  Marcus nodded. “You saw the demonstration table in the experimenter’s sanctuary last night. You viewed it up close.”

  “Indeed, for hardly a full minute before I left to tell all of you! And I am no chemist.”

  “Come, Bob, Miss Swallow is right. You must at least try to remember!” Edwin said.

  “If I remembered anything more, don’t you think I’d have told you?” Bob roared. “Foofaraw and bull, all of this talk! I won’t hear another word.”

  “Very well,” agreed Marcus, disappointed. “Let us think of something better to try, then.”

  “I will!” Bob promised.

  Ellen began dishing out bowls. Beef with noodles as thin as sewing needles, the soup’s aroma seemed to soothe the mood in the room. “I think the time has come to tell Hammie,” she commented as she passed around the bowls. “Tell him everything that has happened, omitting no detail.”

  “Hammie?” Bob and Edwin asked at the same time, both clearly opposed. Marcus looked at her with curiosity but did not make an objection.

  “That’s right. Hammie,” Ellen repeated blandly. “He helped rescue Mr. Mansfield at Harvard, didn’t he? And he is, after all, among the brightest intellects in the Institute.”

  “Hold on, Professor,” Bob said, suddenly full of energy, “between Hammie and Eddy here, I’d take Eddy any day!”

  “I hold nothing against Hammie and would never belittle his particular gifts, Bob,” Edwin said diplomatically. “It’s only the impression of a competition I reject. Well, in all events, perhaps Miss Swallow is correct, that we could use more help.”

  “This is not a contest, after all,” Ellen remarked.

  “No, no, I suppose it is not,” Bob said, “but I don’t care for the tone Hammie too often takes with you.”

  “With me?” she asked, sounding surprised, though not changing her expression.

  “It’s too … familiar. He doesn’t know the first thing about addressing a woman properly, probably never has in his life, and I shouldn’t like him around you more. He stares his eyes out at you. I shouldn’t like to see that at all.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’m merely suggesting—”

  “You know,” he interrupted, “perhaps I can recall more about that laboratory. I’ll try, at least. It’s worthwhile.”

  “Excellent idea,” Ellen said, smiling, and allowing the other topic to vanish. “Close your eyes, Mr. Richards—the dark opens up new windows and vistas of our minds.”

  “Mens et Manus,” Edwin said encouragingly. “Mind and Hand, Bob. I know you can do it.”

  Eyes closed tightly, Bob stretched himself out and extended his long legs across the sofa arm. Ellen’s cat took a liking to the position and made himself a comfortable nest in the folds of Bob’s vest.

  “Now, think back. Cast everything else out of your thoughts except the laboratory. What was it you saw in there?”

  “Well, Professor, there was a quantity of chloride of lime there, as I said. Some must have been heated—there were remnants in a tray over a burner—and dissolved in a wooden bowl next to it, I believe. And there was a glass ball with a liquid inside. But I’ve already told you all that, haven’t I? You see, I’ve said everything!”

  “Did you touch it? The glass ball.”

  “I think—yes, I believe I did.”

  “Was it cold or hot?”

  “Cold, I believe. Cold.” Then, thinking about it: “Very cold.”

  “There was a substance inside the glass?”

  Bob squeezed his eyelids together more tightly. His eyes underneath seemed to move, as though roving the laboratory as he spoke. “There was a chemical cloud of some kind; it appeared as if … frozen.”

  “What equipment was closest to it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t!”

  “Envision the space around the glass ball.”

  “A platinum crucible and … some glass vials. A sieve! A blowpipe … another Bunsen burner.”

  Ellen exchanged satisfied glances with Marcus and Edwin. “A platinum crucible, you say?”

  “Yes,” answered Bob.

  After another half hour, Ellen had coaxed intricate details from Bob’s memory, with Marcus supplementing the information from his own short time inside the laboratory, while Edwin wrote every word down in his Bible. When Bob, exhausted body and soul by the exercise, insisted he had dredged up every possible detail, Ellen excused herself to the next room and reappeared wearing dark gloves and an apron of India rubber and carrying a box of vials.

  “You store chemical supplies here, Miss Swallow?” Marcus asked.

  “Naturally. I cannot always be at the Institute, you know, Mr. Mansfield.” She sent Edwin to a nearby pharmacist for certain items on their list that she did not possess in her miniature store. As soon as he returned, they began to trace backward the steps the experimenter had likely taken.

  Bob took up the newspaper Edwin had brought back from his excursion.

  “Mansfield?” he said, gasping. “The man who browbeat you and Hammie—what did you say you believed his name might be?”

  “Cheshire, I think. But it was only a flight of fancy. At least, until we have time to investigate. Why?”

  Bob rolled up the newspaper and tossed it to him.

  A GHASTLY DEATH

  UNSUSPECTING MAN BURNT TO DEATH FROM SEWER EXPLOSION

  An unfortunate accident in Boston Sunday took the life of Joseph Cheshire, respectable commission stockbroker, born in Cape Cod. It appears that Mr. Cheshire was walking along when the explosion occurred from a sewer below, immediately enveloping him in a sheet of flame, then spreading rapidly below along the sewer for some distance. A surgeon arrived on the scene but gave up hope for the victim, who died minutes later. Mr. Cheshire, in addition to being known in the world of business, recently exhibited great bravery and Christian perseverance as a victim of the catastrophe in State Street, which left permanent and revolting chemical injuries to his face, head, and hands. The Sewer Department is in pursuit of clues, but there is little doubt the explosion was occasioned from an escape of gas from a faulty main in the street communicating with the sewer.

  XLII

  Farewell, Boston

  SIMON CAMP HAD BEEN A MINOR OPERATIVE on missions for the Pinkerton agency long enough to know when there was going to be serious trouble. Long enough to know when to stand his ground and fight, or, at times like this, when to flee and not look back.

  This was not the first time he’d had to get out of Boston in a hurry, and as soon as he’d read in the newspaper of his client Cheshire’s death, he knew the sands had run out. He did not feel much of an emotional qualm about the man’s demise. After all, the deformed stockbroker was rather a miserable pissant, whose chief quality of any value was being rich. But he was rich, and he had thrown plenty of money in Camp’s direction. Camp now regretted telling Cheshire about the boy with the lame arm whom one of his informants heard speaking of the stockbroker, and he had not asked or really wanted to know what it was Cheshire did about it, but he had seen the fury in Cheshire’s eyes as he listened to Camp’s report. Cheshire’s murder—if that’s what it was, but what else could an exploding sewer be in the jaded mind of a private detective?—was a shame. He did not like Cheshire, could not like him no matter what he was paid, but Cheshire was a true speculator, and Camp had always fancied himself a type of speculator—not in money and investments, but in people.

  Simon Camp was a professional, through and through. He took cases to the end, and would not run away from one. But, he thought, as he packed his valise and laid aside his train ticket, this case was over. Prematurely, but still it had ended the moment Joseph Cheshire was burnt to a crisp. Cheshire was his client, Boston was not.

  Certainly, Boston remained in great danger, and that was another shame. Joseph Cheshire’s madness for revenge and his fiery end had convinced Camp not only that there was a lunatic scientist somewhere in Boston, but that the perpetrator wou
ld stop at nothing to carry his plan for the city—whatever it was—through to its unnatural conclusion. In that, Camp almost admired the unknown monster, though he liked Boston well enough and preferred not to see it destroyed. Camp indirectly had been witness to the most gruesome murders in Boston history, nearly three years before, and now? What word would one of those dandified bookmen he once trailed use for this chain of events? Anyway, Boston’s security was a matter for the police department, and Camp didn’t care a brass farthing what police ever did. Or, as he said in polite society, or to other detectives, he did not meddle with police affairs. He was a professional Pinkerton man, and had a much more lucrative opportunity up his sleeve that he was now free to pursue, whether Allan Pinkerton liked it or not, and that was that.

  He did give a passing thought to those collegies the stockbroker had ordered him to follow and gather information on. Marcus Mansfield and the fellows he ran with knew something, and whatever they knew put them in danger, but also gave Boston a chance.

  Just not a chance that Camp was willing to bet on.

  “Your bill was paid in advance, Mr. Melnotte,” said the hotel clerk at the Parker House, addressing him by the alias he had used upon arrival. Camp had insisted on staying at the nicest hotel at Cheshire’s expense—the hotel where no less than Charles Dickens had slept on his visit to Boston. “We hope your stay in Boston was pleasant.”

  “It’s been a fly in my teacup, actually. Thanks, fellow.” He looked around at the shining marble elegance and felt a pang of regret for this proud city, which always seemed to think it could sail through any circumstance unscathed.