by Andrew Mayne
“Look over there. We’re about to see one.” He gestured his umbrella at a three-story building across the street.
The building read “Varley’s Textile Emporium.” A horse-drawn wagon was parked in the street in front while three men unloaded crates. At the top floor, two doors were wide open. A pulley and winch were suspended in front of the doors. Below it, the three men on the ground used it to lift a large burlap-wrapped bundle.
“If you saw the rope start to fray, what would you think?” asked Smith.
“I’d think the rope was about to snap and the whole mess would come crashing to the ground,” answered April as she watched the men struggle with the awkward load.
“Exactly. That’s a kind of linear problem. The consequences are directly related to the evidence at hand. Elliptical problems are those where you have the evidence but don’t know the relative consequences. Look at that rope. What do you see?”
April scrutinized the rope. It didn’t look like it was coming apart. It had a slight green color to it. That seemed a little odd to her. “The color.”
“What’s odd about the color?” he asked.
“Well, it looks a little green.” Why did that sound familiar?
“What kind of things are green, Miss Malone?”
“Living things, generally.” She looked at the rope again. “It’s a kind of nautical rope, isn’t it? Something they use on sailing vessels? It comes from the tropics, I think.” She remembered a book on her reading list about ropes, cords and other abysmally boring topics. “It shouldn’t be that green, though. The rope has a fungus in it that’s kept in check by saltwater or dryer climates.”
Smith waved his umbrella over his head in a circle through the mist. “Does this look like a dry climate?”
“No, it does not.” She looked at the large burlap-covered bundle they were lifting to the third-story loft.
“Anything else? Did something catch your eye in the paper today?” Smith darted across the street to the sidewalk near where the men were lifting the bundle. An old woman with two canes was walking toward the front of the store.
“Keeping warm, mum?” said Smith.
“Doing my best, dear,” replied the old woman.
Smith looked up at the bundle. “Best to hold up one minute.” He looked over at April.
April had read an advertisement saying Varley’s received a large order of spun wool and was offering it at a steep discount the next day.
She looked across the street as Smith was engaged in small talk with the old woman. He looked over at April and shouted, “Think elliptically, Miss Malone.”
The three men on the ground lifted the bundle higher. The rope looked intact, but as they gave it a heave, she could see it stretch slightly. The men seemed oblivious. The wool had soaked up more moisture than they realized.
She was too embarrassed to say anything until she watched the bundle bounce again and the rope stretch more. The men had probably never tried lifting such a heavy load when the rope was in that condition. Smith looked over at her expectantly, waiting for her to say something.
“Watch out!” she shouted to the men.
The men on the ground and the man in the loft guiding the rope with leather gloves looked over at her. April pointed at the rope. “The rope!” she shouted.
The men looked at their perfectly solid rope and then back at the silly girl shouting at them. Shamefaced, she remained quiet. She looked over at Smith. He was ignoring her as he talked to the old woman. Was this all a put-on?
To heck with him. “Your rope!” she shouted. “Doesn’t it look a little green?”
The men on the ground laughed. The man in the loft waved her off. “Stick to darning threads, miss,” he shouted across the street.
April shot an angry look at Smith. He was turned away from her and had his back to the men and their load. He held up three fingers in April’s direction as he asked Mrs. Broadbent about her begonias.
He ticked his fingers off one by one. April heard a snap as he reached one, and the bundle of wool came crashing to the ground, making a loud thump as it hit. The three men jumped back, barely making it clear of the bale.
The man in the loft leaned out to see if anyone was hurt. The men picked themselves up and dusted themselves off. The ripped-apart bundle covered the sidewalk in a downy mess of white. The man looked out at April and shouted. “Sorry, miss. Should have listened. Thank you for the warning.”
April nodded back at the man. Smith guided Mrs. Broadbent around the heap of wool to the other side of the sidewalk and then walked back to April.
“Well done, Miss Malone. I doubt anyone would have been seriously hurt, other than maybe the dowager Mrs. Broadbent. But it was an excellent test of your elliptical thinking skills. What have you learned?”
She wanted to tell him that he was a peculiar and infuriating young man. “That people don’t listen.”
“Precisely. Just because you can see the problems of an elliptical problem doesn’t mean that others will listen. And that’s what we do.”
“How do you mean?” she asked.
“We solve elliptical problems. Problems that others don’t recognize.”
“Why you?”
“Us. I think you meant to say, ‘Why us?’ You’re not just a random person, Miss Malone. You were hired for very specific reasons. You have an exceptional recall ability. That alone is an asset to my deficit of retention, temporary as it may be. All those books and journals,” he pointed to her head, “they’re up there in that pretty head of yours. You have an exceptional ability that not one in 50,000 people has. A human computer. And there’s the other equally rare asset you have.”
“What would that be?” asked April.
“When those men ignored you, why didn’t you walk away? It must have been embarrassing.”
“I guess I didn’t want them to get hurt.” April wasn’t quite sure why she didn’t just storm off. She guessed some part of her told her she had to make them see.
“It’s morality, Miss Malone.”
April laughed. “I’m not quite sure about that.” Although she wasn’t as “free” of a spirit as some of the young women she knew, she hardly thought of herself as a moral, churchy woman.
“I don’t mean the uptight Bostonian brand of morality that would ban a play or sheet music because it puts naughty suggestions into their tiny minds. I mean morality in the Enlightenment sense. You care for the well-being of your fellow man.” He pointed his umbrella at the men trying to gather up the broken bundle of wool. Mrs. Broadbent was offering them not very helpful suggestions. “You’d sacrifice a moment’s worth of embarrassment to see to it that they were unhurt. That’s the kind of morality that’s important to me.”
April had never thought of morality in those terms before. Most of the moral lessons she’d got in church were about what she should and should not do. Little of it was about how she should treat others beyond turning the other cheek, which everyone ignored.
“Your morality and your encyclopedic brain, Miss Malone, are the two most important qualities we require.”
“Require for what?”
“A much larger elliptical problem. One that I can’t seem to recall at the moment. But I know it’s important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.” He guided her arm around a corner toward the police station.
“How did you know precisely when the rope was going to snap?” she asked.
“I cheated.”
“Cheated? How?”
Smith ignored the question and walked up the steps to the Boston police substation. “No time for that now, Miss Malone.”
They watched as a blue-uniformed police officer led a man with one hand on the collar of the man’s jacket and a billy club in the other.
Smith looked back at April with a grin. “Someone’s been naughty.”
Chapter 4
Desk Sgt. Robertson looked at the man and woman standing in front of him. The woman looked to be about nineteen or twen
ty. Attractive with dark hair, she had intelligent eyes that looked right at him when she spoke. The man had a smile as he looked around the room at the suspects handcuffed to benches and the police officers sitting at desks going over paperwork. He reminded Robertson of his ten-year-old nephew when he took him to visit the station. To him it was all a game.
“So you’re not reporters, attorneys or family members?” asked Robertson as he leaned back in his chair. His right hand absentmindedly stirred his teaspoon while his left hand went to the goatee on his chin.
“No, sergeant, we’re not.” Smith looked over at April and then back at the desk sergeant. “We’re concerned citizens. We’d like to look at the following police reports.” He reached into his pocket. “Er, I don’t seem to have the list with me.” He looked over at April.
“May I?” she motioned to a notepad and pencil on the sergeant’s desk.
“Certainly, but there’s a procedure here. We don’t just hand out police reports to anyone who walks in off the street.”
“Don’t you?” asked Smith. “Isn’t it public record?”
“Yes, but there are forms to be filled out.”
“What kind of forms?” asked April as she finished writing and set the list of names and dates on the desk in front of the man.
He looked down. “There are over a dozen people here. It’ll take a couple days to get the clerk to pull the files. But first you need to fill out request forms.”
“Oh bother,” said Smith. “I don’t think we have days.” He motioned toward the notepad. “I think that list will get longer if we don’t do anything about it.”
Robertson picked up the notepad and read through the names. “These are all unrelated. I can’t see why they would be of any interest to you at all.”
“Well, um,” said Smith. “The connection might not be obvious to you at first. But we have reason to believe that there’s an elliptical connection to them all, one that we intend to prove and make quite obvious. It’s really all about mathematics ....” Smith’s voice trailed off when he noticed Robertson’s arched eyebrow.
“What Smith is trying to say is that for the play he’s writing he’s very interested in the subject of missing persons and their connections to others. It’s actually a love story,” said April.
Smith shot her a confused glance. “Miss Malone, are you mad?”
April put a hand on his arm. “I know it’s supposed to be a secret, but I think we can trust Sgt. Robertson.” April looked up at Robertson and gave him a wink. “Can’t we?”
Robertson looked at April and then back to Smith. “A play?”
Smith gave a glance to April then smiled at Robertson. “Shhh, it’s a secret for now. If my uncle finds out how I plan on spending my inheritance, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I see,” said Robertson. “How very interesting.” He tore the slip off the pad of paper. “I think I can make an exception. It’ll take me just a moment. If you don’t mind transcribing them here.” He gave them a smile and then walked toward the records room.
Smith turned to April. “A play, Miss Malone? Why on earth would you say that? I was trying to appeal to the man’s sense of reason.”
“You were talking yourself into a trip to the nut house. I appealed to his sense of vanity,” she replied.
Smith crossed his arms and looked at the door Robertson walked through. “Vanity? How so?”
“Did you notice his goatee, the way it was trimmed?”
Smith shook his head.
“It’s trimmed just like Sir Arthur Ladd’s, the famous actor. He was at the Orpheum three months back,” said April. “I got tickets in one of the envelopes that arrived at the office. I took my aunt. She was quite taken by Ladd, as were a number of the ladies. Bit of a buffoon, in my opinion.”
“I see,” said Smith. “So he’s a fan of the theater?”
“Rather his wife or girlfriend is. He shaved his beard to look like Ladd to impress someone.”
“Do I have to create a play now and cast him in it?” asked Smith.
April wasn’t sure if he was serious. “No. We’ve done our part. When he goes home and tells her about the playwright he met who was asking for the reports, the first thing she’s going to ask is if he helped you.”
“And he wants to look like a hero in her eyes. Very clever, Miss Malone.” His voice quieted when Robertson returned from the records room with a stack of folders.
Robertson sat back at his desk. He pointed to an empty bench. “I brought all the reports from the last three weeks. You can look at them over there.” He pushed the notepad and pencil to April. “You can use this.”
“Thank you, Sgt. Robertson,” said April as she helped Smith pick up the folders. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Sir Arthur Ladd?”
Robertson’s mouth curled into a sheepish grin. “Once or twice, miss.”
Smith and April sat down on the bench and began to look through the folders.
“What are we looking for?” asked April.
“We need three things,” said Smith. “Location and time of day, anything unusual, like if there was a witness who saw the person disappear and occupation and home address.”
That was technically five things, but April decided not to mention it. “So we can find them?”
Smith lifted his head from a case report. “Er, Miss Malone, I’m afraid these people are most likely dead.”
“Dead? Then what are we doing?”
“We need to find out what took them,” he said.
“And do what?” she replied.
“Stop him or it.”
“Why us?” She looked over at the policemen in the station.
“Because,” said Smith, “they’re never going to find something if they don’t know what they’re looking for.”
April went through the files, stealing a glance from time to time at Smith. She was beginning to suspect that he hadn’t been on a trip but, in fact, had been in the basement all these years. Doing what? Toiling away on the huge machine she could feel under the floor of the office? Locked in a study, pondering some philosophical problem? Sleeping in a coffin?
Her curiosity in the man outweighed her fear. He was a mystery. But at least his intent seemed noble. For the present, at least.
Chapter 5
It took them an hour to sort through the files and find ones they thought relevant. Many of the missing persons cases were clearly people who decided to leave of their own volition. Renters skipping out on landlords. Deadbeat men who decided to move on. Women who had enough of their loutish husbands.
While they looked through the folders and made notes, Smith made light of the somber mood by making a game of trying to guess the transgressions of the men (and occasional woman) who were brought in front of the desk sergeant.
“Horse thief,” April would whisper as a drunken old man on a wooden crutch was hauled up in front of Robertson.
“Embezzler,” whispered Smith as a soot-covered nine-year-old boy was brought in by the ear.
“Mass murderer about to confess,” said April when an old woman went up to the desk to ask a question.
“Pimp,” said Smith. He apologetically covered his mouth when he realized what he’d just said in the presence of a lady.
April looked over her shoulder at a priest standing in front of the desk. She let out a cackle that turned every head in the room. She quickly buried her nose in a folder to avoid the glare of Sgt. Robertson.
“Miss Malone, I fear that I may be a bad influence upon you,” said Smith in a hushed tone. “Prostitute.”
April lowered her folder. “Pardon me?”
Smith looked away from the woman in front of the desk. “That woman over there, she seems quite distressed. I can assume from her attire that she’s ... well, that’s not important. I wasn’t making a judgment.”
April noticed the woman’s sloppy clothes and crude makeup. She certainly looked like some of the women she’d seen by the wharf p
lying their wares to the men as they got off the boats.
Smith quietly walked over to the desk. He could overhear the woman complaining to Robertson.
“I keep asking that ya find out what happened to O’Bannon. But you lazy micks won’t have none of it,” said the distressed woman.
She had curly hair and skin that was pale from all of the makeup she had caked on. It was an almost comical effect until Smith noticed it was to cover up severe acne scars and rosacea.
“You’re better off without O’Bannon in your life, Miss Shelly. He’s trouble,” said Robertson. He looked over at Smith. “Something else?”
“I’m sorry to intrude. Is this O’Bannon fellow missing as well?” asked Smith.
“Not officially, Mr. Smith,” said Robertson.
“Just Smith. What do you mean by ‘not officially’?”
“He means he’s too lazy to write up a report,” said Miss Shelly. She gave Smith a wary eye.
“I mean that O’Bannon is a no-good pimp and that the world is better off without him. And since Miss Shelly isn’t a wife, family member or fellow boarder, there’s not much we can do in the way of making a report,” answered a terse Robertson.
“I see,” said Smith. He gestured to April and the stack of folders. “We have eleven cases that seem a little peculiar to us over there.” He gave Miss Shelly a cordial smile. “How many more would we have if we included the ‘unofficial’ reports, like Miss Shelly’s?”
Robertson crossed his arms and squinted. “It’s the fog, Mr. Smith.”
“Smith. Just Smith. The fog? I don’t think it’s the belief of the South Boston Police Department that the fog is eating people, is it?” He failed to mention the plausibility of that happening.
“What? Of course not. People don’t like the fog.” He shot a glance at Miss Shelly. “For some people, let’s just say it makes working at night more difficult. Fewer customers, less money to be had. These people aren’t exactly long-term planners, so they move on to other places.”