by Andrew Mayne
April was reasonably certain she had never met this peculiar man before. He looked harmless enough, a bit on the thin side. Despite the fact that he looked like he had been sleeping for ages in his rumpled clothes, his manner was very polite and almost elegant, if not a bit too energetic. He was wearing dark slacks and a white collared shirt that was untucked and half unbuttoned. On his left wrist he wore a leather band with three watch faces. He was likable but unfamiliar. “Um, no. I don’t believe we have ... Mister ...?” she said.
He stared at her. “Mister? Mister what? Oh me?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the little card. “It says here Smith.”
“Mr. Smith then.”
“Um no,” he looked at the card again. “Just says Smith here. So let’s just leave it at that for now. I’m sure the rest will come to me before we’re done. So what do I call you?” He sat down at her desk and fished another doughnut from the sack. He waved it at April. “No? Sure?”
“No, thank you, Mr. .... No, thank you, Smith. My name is Miss Malone.” She looked down at the orchid she was absentmindedly holding. She brought it close to her nose. It smelled fresh.
“And ...?” he asked.
“It smells nice. Quite nice, in fact.”
“No hint of decay? No acrid odor?” he inquired.
She gave it another whiff. “Not at all. It’s quite pleasant.” Her eyes drifted to the open door.
“Excellent! I think.” He bolted up from her desk. April jumped backward. Oblivious to her reaction, he gallantly took her hand and kissed it.
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Malone!” He looked at her face. “Oh so sorry. I know I’m a bit archaic.”
“No, no. It’s quite all right. I’m just surprised. The gesture, that’s all.” She looked at his unkempt clothes and disheveled hair. “Were you in there all along?” She pointed to the metal door.
“I assume so.” Noticing his unkempt appearance for the first time, he self-consciously ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry. I saw a sign that said urgent, so I didn’t bother to wash up downstairs.”
April eyed the metal door. He grinned then walked over and gave it a push. The door slowly closed shut. He walked over to a bookcase filled with scientific and medical textbooks behind his desk and knocked on it four times. It swung open to reveal a walk-in closet and an ornate washroom. “Don’t know why I remembered that of all things. Give me a moment, Miss Malone.” He walked into the room and pulled the bookshelf partially closed.
What an odd man, thought April. She stared at the bookshelf and tried to piece together what had just happened. She had a thousand questions. Smith made no room for them as he peppered her with his own questions about world events, the latest music, what books she’d read and if there were any scientific discoveries he should know about.
Finally she interrupted him, “Have you been away on a trip of some kind?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m sure it’ll come to me.” He poked his head out from the hidden doorway. There was a spot of shaving lotion on his ear. He held out his razor. “Do they make an electric one yet?”
Yet? wondered April. “I’ll look into it.”
He ducked his head back in. “I’m sure Edison will figure out a way to fry the hair off or something.” He popped back out. “Is he still around?”
“I think so,” said April.
“Right bastard. Of course he is,” scoffed Smith.
“He built the dynamo stations for the electric streetcar,” offered April.
“Have you seen them?”
“Every day, running up and down the street. Like the horses got loose or a caboose without a locomotive,” she said.
“The dynamos, Miss Malone. Have you seen them?” he asked as he rummaged through his closet.
“No. I haven’t. You can’t miss the station though. The chimney must be a hundred feet tall.”
“Interesting. Ben would have loved to have seen that,” replied Smith.
“Ben, is he a friend of yours?”
Smith stepped out of the closet and adjusted his tie. “I don’t know. A mentor, I think.” He stepped back and presented himself. Shaven face, hair combed back and wearing a proper jacket and tie, he looked like the young men April saw walking around the financial district or going to the theater. “How’s this?”
“You look fine.” She noticed he was wearing shoes.
Smith looked down at his feet. “Ah, yes. I realized that it was too good to be true when I noticed that your feet were rather pale.” His cheeks turned red. “A very nice color actually, I mean. Er, um, you have nice feet. Uh, so, what’s the weather like?”
April laughed. His awkwardness was endearing. She’d grown up with three brothers and was not easily embarrassed by silly matters like ankles or feet. “We’ve had a most dreadful fog for the past few weeks. It just lingers. You can’t see three feet in front of your face at night.”
“Yes, of course. At this stage of industrial development, I’d expect the factories are making it worse. Don’t worry, it’ll get better.”
“That’s a relief,” said April, puzzled by his answer.
“If Mr. Edison is building power plants for streetcars, the electrification of factories will soon follow. I say it’ll clear up in about twenty years.”
“Oh. I was hoping for something a little more short term”
Smith walked over to his desk. “It’s all relative, Miss Malone. The thick stuff is much more temporary, I’m sure.” He pulled a black card from a slot on his desk.
April hadn’t noticed it before. It must have come out of the slot some time that morning.
Smith held it up and looked at the various punches in the card. “I’ll need my decoder to be sure, but I’m fairly sure it’s the reason that I’m here.” He sat down at his desk and pulled a key from around his neck and unlocked a drawer. He removed a flat piece of brass machinery and laid it on the desk. He placed the card in it and slid various panels over it and turned some dials.
“It’s an interpreter. A kind of astrolabe for numbers. The card is just a series of numbers generated from various pieces of information from those punch cards you insert into your desk. This tells me a little bit more.”
April vaguely remembered that an astrolabe was a mechanical device used to track the position of stars and planets. As she watched Smith’s nimble finger adjust the various parts of his interpreter, she tried to imagine what it was measuring. “If you don’t mind me asking, where do the cards come from?”
Smith looked up. “I don’t know.” He looked back at the interpreter. “I mean, I do know, but the amnesia is blocking it. I imagine another office rather like this one, only there someone sits at a desk and looks for word frequencies in newspapers, examines things like stock prices, peculiarities in the classifieds.”
“Peculiarities?” asked April.
“Lots of things. You could spot an unreported epidemic among newborns by the frequency of used cribs being sold compared to live births within the last year. A boarding house with a high turnover could suggest the landlord is murdering guests. You could also find morbid things, too ....” His voice trailed off as something caught his attention.
“Why?” asked April. “Why do you track these things?”
Smith pulled the card free and held it up to the light. “I don’t remember. But I know it’s important. Not the boarding house stuff or the infant deaths.” He paused. “I mean, those are important, of course. But that’s not why I’m here. At least I don’t think.”
He picked up the Boston Globe and started flipping through the pages. “Do you have the last two weeks of the Globe?” he asked.
“Yes.” She walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled out a stack of papers. “I keep six months here before I send them to be warehoused.”
“Excellent.” Smith turned the paper he was holding to a specific page and set it on the floor. He rifled through the other papers until he came to a similar page and laid them on the floor, as well. He had
six newspapers in all laid out on the rug in the middle of the wooden floor. “And here we go.” He stood up and gestured to the newspapers. He looked at April, expecting her to understand.
April thought the floor looked more suited to wrapping a large fish than explaining anything. “Um, I don’t quite see it.”
Smith knelt down and tapped several articles. “Missing persons, Miss Malone. This is a highly unusual number of missing persons under strange circumstances.”
“People go missing all the time. What makes it significant now?”
“There’s a higher than normal number. Not enough that police have realized there’s something really going. But mathematically speaking, it’s obscene.” He leaned over and picked up a paper. He handed it to April. “Some of these people went missing just a few feet away from people they knew.”
“It is a thick fog,” suggested April. “The papers will sensationalize anything.”
“Of course. But people just don’t walk into it and vanish. They have to go somewhere. We live in a world of science and rationality. The fog didn’t take them. Well, it probably didn’t take them.” He crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling. “Yes, I’m reasonably certain the fog itself didn’t do it. I mean, I suppose you could have some kind of acid fog that eats people. That would have to leave bones, though. Unless of course the calcium ....” Smith pulled a notepad from his desk and started writing some strange symbols.
April waited for him to finish his thinking.
Smith crossed off a row of calculations. “Nope. Doesn’t add up. It’s not people-eating fog with calcium-devouring microbes. Pity. I’d like to have seen that. But, someone or something out there has been taking people.” He gestured at the papers. “Maybe not all of these people but some of them. And quite likely other people who never made it into the papers.”
April stared down at the newspaper he had handed to her.
Miss Mary O’Mallory of Dover Street claims that her fiance, Mister Albert Carnegie, a merchant seaman, was bodily abducted at 10 PM Thursday night in her presence on Flaherty Street. She is currently being treated at St. Elizabeth’s Woman’s Hospital for hysteria.
“That could be a couple of his shipmates pulling him away to waylay him,” said April.
“Perhaps,” said Smith. He gestured at the papers. “Other accounts are similar. But the question you need to be asking is this, if it’s just a sailor being abducted to work on another ship, why is Miss O’Mallory being treated for hysteria?”
“Maybe she’s the hysterical type?”
“I’d like to have a look at the police reports and decide for ourselves.” He looked over at the corner. “Ah, the velocipede! Have you tried it?”
“Yes. It hurts a bit in ... never mind. It took me a while to figure out how to use it with my skirt on. To be honest, it seemed like an odd request that I use it.”
“All part of the job, Miss Malone. I apologize if it caused you any inconvenience or embarrassment. They make different ones for men and women. When they switched from wood to rubber, I understand they hurt much less,” he said.
April couldn’t imagine using one that was made from wood. The splinters alone gave her pause.
“I’m looking to have a motorized one made.” He looked up. “Or did I already? We’ll have to check the warehouse. Maybe it’s there already.” He looked at April. “Two people could use that one at the same time.”
That sounded very frightening to April, although the childlike look on Smith’s face made it seem like there might be some charm to it.
“We’ll look into that later. For now I think we should start with the case of poor Miss O’Mallory’s fiance.” He looked back at the device and then to April. “They don’t call them velocipedes anymore, do they?”
“No. Most people call them bicycles,” she corrected.
“Ah, that’s right. We’ll get another one later. For now a walk would be good. It’s been ages since I stretched my legs. Shall we go?”
“Go?” asked April. She looked at her desk and the office. “I’ve never left here during work hours.”
Smith gestured to the door. “Miss Malone, the books, the lectures, that’s not the job. That’s to prepare you for the real job. And that’s out there.” He held the door open for her and then stopped her. He took the orchid from her hand and threaded it through a buttonhole on her coat. “Ah, that’s better. Mustn’t forget why we’re here.”
Unsure of why they were there, April looked over her shoulder hesitantly, shrugged and then stepped through the door into the afternoon fog.
Across town in an upscale brownstone apartment, Dr. Lindestrom poured a cup of tea for Mrs. Reardon, wife of the late railroad baron. Her hands trembled when she took the cup.
“Thank you for making an appointment for me at your private practice,” said the woman. Her eyes passed over the plush couches and ornate furnishings that made up his office and approved.
“For special clients, I think this is more relaxing than the hospital,” said Lindestrom. “Let me look at your hands.”
The woman set the cup down, spilling half its contents. Lindestrom placed his palms under hers and felt the quivering.
“I’ve always had the tremor, ever since I was a little girl. It’s just gotten so much worse since I got older.”
Lindestrom nodded.
“I’ve heard that you might know of special remedies,” she hesitated, “ones that they won’t prescribe in other practices.”
Lindestrom placed her hands between his own. “There are some that are ... that are on the cutting edge of science, shall we say. Treatments that are years, some are even decades away, from the mainstream. Unpredictable. Potential side effects for a few, nothing serious. But treatments that have given comfort to a select few who choose to take them. I use a few myself. The trouble, of course, is the cost.” Lindestrom let go of her hands. “I’d be happy to prescribe you some traditional remedies as a courtesy.”
Mrs. Reardon shook her head. “Cost isn’t a problem, Dr. Lindestrom.”
“Now, now, Mrs. Reardon. Let’s not let two people of our stature discuss something so crass.” He got up and walked over to a cabinet. He unlocked it and pulled out a small ampoule filled with black liquid. He sat back down and placed it on the table in front of her. “A gift. Try this. If it works for you, we might be able to develop an alternative course of treatment.” He nodded to her trembling hands. “One more effective than the one you’re on.”
She picked up the ampoule and placed it into her pocket with some difficulty. “I’d be happy to pay you for this ....”
“Shhh, Mrs. Reardon. Let’s just see if it works first. It was obtained under great difficulty and is quite a rare substance to process. I don’t want you to worry about cost if it’s not going to be right for you.” He stood up and helped her to her feet. “Call upon me in three days. We’ll have our assistants talk about compensation then if it’s necessary and you insist.”
Mrs. Reardon smiled as he held open the door for her. “Bless you, Dr. Lindestrom.”
He saw her out the door and then waved for the handsome young man waiting in the foyer to enter. The doctor walked back to the cabinet and locked it. Lindestrom had no idea if the substance he gave the woman was going to work. His research had only begun. But Lindestrom was certain that the large dose of cocaine mixed with the liquid would certainly make her think it was doing something and send her back for more. He could continue experimenting with different dilutions and refer to his colleagues on the matter.
The young man sat down. “Looks like your friend is back in town.”
“Are you certain?”
The young man nodded.
“His timing is most peculiar,” said Lindestrom as he tapped his fingers on the cabinet.
He unlocked a door to his basement. The young man followed him down the steps.
It was cold down there. Large crates were packed with sawdust and ice. Inside were various strange shapes the young
er man didn’t recognize. A pungent smell permeated the air. He had to cover his nose. Lindestrom seemed oblivious.
“We’ll have to ship these to our employers sooner than later, perhaps.”
Lindestrom walked over to a shelf lined with various bottles and jars filled with dark murky liquids. “I have enough for my own experiments.” He turned back to the crates. “These specimens were interesting, but the one I really want is still out there.”
Lindestrom’s fingers curled over the edge of one of the ice-filled crates. “Contact our carpenter friend and have one more crate made. This one large enough for a man.”
Chapter 3
“It’s about elliptical problems, Miss Malone,” Smith explained as they walked down the sidewalk. “This way to the police station?” He pointed his umbrella down the street. “Some of it comes back in bits and pieces. Other parts not so much. The hard part is sorting out things in what order. We’ve never met?”
“No, Mister ... no, Smith. I’m certain of it.” She’d never had any reason to doubt her memory. “Elliptical problems? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of those before.”