The Technologists (32 page)

Bob was about to make some objection when Edwin asked, “How do we do that, Miss Swallow?”

“By taking the next step, Mr. Hoyt,” Ellen responded. “The barium compound used on the windows would be difficult to procure. That is what is troubling me. It had to be developed by the experimenter in private somewhere, using the proper equipment.”

Marcus nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I was thinking something similar. As part of my assistance to the Institute—I mean, to compensate for what would be my tuition—I am sent on various errands. The Institute on occasion purchases hard-to-find equipment from commercial chemists, or sells some that is no longer needed here to the same places. The majority of the private laboratories are in one area, near many of the factories and foundries. Though it is in the city, that district is like an island
in itself—here.” Marcus went over to the map of Boston and pointed to South Boston, near Dorchester Bay.

“I know that area well,” said Ellen. “My boardinghouse is not far from there. When I applied for a position in a chemist’s office, the addresses where I posted my letters were all in that region.”

“
You
applied for positions in chemists’ firms?” Bob asked.

Ellen nodded wearily before replying. “After I was graduated from Vassar studying chemistry, I knocked at doors that never opened. I had made up my mind to find a suitable opportunity in that field. But there was nothing for me until President Rogers answered my letter and invited me here without any charge of any kind, for I am a poor country girl. Many of the private chemists in that district told me they did not operate out of a lady’s parlor, and that the laboratory was no place for fine silk dresses, while a few others said they might sympathize with the desire for female education, but would not be the one to provide it.”

“Marcus, what did you have in mind?” Edwin asked.

“If one of us approaches those laboratories as though seeking a job, we might be able to strike up enough of a conversation to gather some information on any experiments using the specific compounds in question. That is a singular spot on the map of Boston, and I suspect the scientists watch one another closely.”

“With so many private laboratories!” Edwin said. “It is a long shot.”

“Do you have a better idea, Eddy?” Bob asked.

“I suppose not.”

“Some of the laboratories are even in the private dwellings of the operators, without any signs posted,” Ellen pointed out.

“It could take months, and yield nothing,” persisted Edwin.

Bob nodded. “You’re both right—it would be nearly impossible to know where to start. But I have another idea. If we can obtain a list of the most active purchasers of extra equipment and chemicals from the Institute, and can find any that have purchased contents that make up the barium-fluoride compound you two re-created, that might give us guidance. Of course, it would work only if the experimenter happened to have bought chemicals from the Institute’s surplus.”

“How would we get such a list?” asked Ellen.

“Those ledgers are kept at President Rogers’s home on Temple Place so that they remain confidential,” said Marcus.

“I know who would happily help us,” said Bob. “Or, should I say, help Mansfield.”

Marcus listened intently, then nearly leaped up. “Bob! I don’t want her involved.”

“Why not? She helped you before! No one will know.”

Marcus leaned back. “She saw me with Miss Campbell at the opera. I do not think she was pleased by it.”

“This will be your chance to make it up to her,” Bob said.

“Assuming you can get the information, who would go to the laboratory district?” Ellen asked.

“Well, I have done those errands from time to time, so I would risk being recognized as coming from the Institute,” Marcus said, backing down from the argument with Bob.

“I am afraid I would not be able to speak a single sentence of such a ruse without my teeth chattering, even to save my soul,” admitted Edwin.

“That leaves me, I suppose,” Bob said, sighing with pride and tossing back his luxurious hair.

“Or me,” Ellen said.

Bob gave a suppressed chuckle. “You are going to go out there alone, Professor? You are only a woman.”

“I do recall it. I have gone out onto the public streets several times before without getting hurt in the course of my lifetime, Mr. Richards.”

“These are very dangerous times in Boston.”

“For two years before I left for my studies, I visited the jail in Worcester as a missionary to the prisoners, Mr. Richards,” she rejoined, rising to her feet for emphasis.

“But you yourself said those laboratories will not hire women,” Marcus pointed out.

“True,” Ellen said, softening her position. “Do you think you can manage yourself, Mr. Richards?”

“Do I?” he laughed.

“Still …” Marcus began.

“Mansfield? You don’t think I can be an actor for an afternoon?”

“I know you could, Bob. But I have met some of the men in these private chemistry firms. They are distrustful by nature, and I daresay collegies in their minds are about as unpopular a lot as there is. They must be secretive to prevent their processes from being used by an enterprising neighbor, which could empty their bank accounts in a hurry. If there was some way to elicit more of their sympathies, we stand a better chance. I think Miss Swallow might be able to help in that regard.”

“Well,” said Bob impatiently, “do you have another bright idea or not, Mansfield?”

“I might,” Marcus said, “but first I’ll need to plan how to recruit Agnes’s assistance to find the names we need.”

“Then you will do it?” Bob asked.

“Just this once,” Marcus said.

Ellen and Edwin resumed work arranging their chemicals, while Bob followed Marcus to the closet, where he was changing out of his laboratory clothes.

“You’re not dressing for the visit to the workshops at the Navy Yard yet?” Bob asked. “We have another hour before we’re to gather.”

“I won’t be going today, Bob,” replied Marcus. “I think we have our chance right now. Can you invent some excuse for me?”

Bob reflected a moment, then nodded. “I have it!”

“I won’t even ask. I’ll need to hurry. But you can help me with a little engineering work before I go.”

“Excellent. What equipment will we need?”

“Just a piece of paper and a pen.”

Bob leaned in as Marcus slipped on his vest and said, “Something else is bothering you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Four years I’ve known you, Mansfield—”

“I know, Bob,” Marcus interrupted. He was still chasing down the disfigured man in his thoughts and deciding what was to be done. The hooded stranger would have been difficult to miss: Either someone was following them on his behalf, or his stealth was exceptional, or someone had provided him with just enough information for him to make it seem that they had been followed all along.

“There
is
something else, Bob …” Marcus said.

At that moment, his eyes landed on the speaking tubes they had installed, then traveled up to the ventilation fan. Could the privacy even inside their laboratory have been breached?

Marcus hesitated. If they
were
being followed, it was the best course to tell the others. But though he trusted their intelligence and scientific knowledge, knowing they were being watched on the streets would be an entirely different test for them. Edwin might be afraid to ever leave the building again; already accustomed to harassment, fearless Ellen might accuse every man who passed by her, calling suspicion down upon their group. As for Bob, the adventure of espionage might draw him off the track of their priorities. In this case, at least for the moment, it would be best for everyone if Marcus pursued this new challenge on his own. He had the germ of a plan in mind to learn more about the hooded man.

“Well, what is it?” Bob asked impatiently. “The opera?”

“The opera. Yes.”

“You said you saw Miss Campbell.”

Marcus shrugged.

“Don’t play bluff with me, Marcus Mansfield. I take it that means she was a dazzling vision with the blush and bloom of her eighteen years.”

“She is a very fair girl—you know that, Bob. Unfortunately, Will Blaikie was also there.”

“Well, what did that rascal Blaikie do? I bet he didn’t say a word.”

“That’s just it,” Marcus said with surprise. “Nothing. I thought for certain he would attempt to start a set-to, or speak poorly of Tech to try to embarrass me. Instead, he shook my hand as though we were bosom friends!”

Bob laughed with satisfaction.

“But how did you know?” Marcus asked.

“Do you see, it is written in the unwritten rules of respectable Boston. If he became unpleasant in manner while you were joined, even temporarily, with Miss Campbell, he would remove himself from the world they inhabit and appear permanently stained in vulgarity to those he lives to please. Once you gain entrance into their orbit, you are free to live among them. This calls for congratulations.”

“On what account?”

“Why, Marcus Mansfield, you’ve just made your appearance as a Boston gentleman, with all of the advantages and benefits that await you!”

Marcus paused to think about this, then clapped on his cap. “Well, I suppose it means Blaikie no longer sees everyone from Tech as his enemies.”

“Wrong, Mansfield. I guarantee he is even more heated now than when we doused him in the river.”

“T
HE ANSWER IS NO
.
Absolutely no! Haven’t I told you enough times? Every day the same interruption …”

“But, sir,” pressed the youngster. “Sir, I’m right well enough to do the work again now. I vow it!”

“Listen here, Leo. What kind of atrocity is it, anyway, to be named after a Pope?”

“Theo, sir!”

“Ah.” The bank director frowned, his indignation momentarily suspended. “Lad, you’ve been loping outside our bank too long now, with that lame hand of yours.”

“I’ve been trying to show you. It’s healed so very much, sir, as good as new, even.”

“Let me have a look.”

Theo struggled to lift his right hand, as if each finger were tied to a tiny weight. His knuckles sank below his wrist and his fingertips trembled.

“Blast it!” the bank director called out, waving the spectacle of the limp hand away. “Move along, young lad. This is a place of business, not a home for cripples!”

“But, sir, if Mr. Goodnow were here, he would surely tell you—”

“Goodnow can’t even see out of his left eye. Why, that Cyclops is more useless than even you! Boy, no one in Boston wants to be reminded of that day by having to see your crippled hand, or that sweaty pig Goodnow’s bad eye. We’ve moved on already, and so should you! Keep your chin up!”

Theo was left alone in the middle of the bank that had once seemed
almost to belong to him as much as it had to the bank director or to the swells, like poor Mr. Cheshire, who had money in the vaults. He wanted to cry but would not give the satisfaction to the bank porters, who stared at him ruthlessly from their stations, knowing that he had been better than the whole lot of them before his accident.

Now what would he do?

He skulked out of Front Merchants’ Bank and down the stairs, lamenting the difficulty of his position, that at fourteen years old his career was finished. He had more pluck in him than to give up so easily, but for the moment he felt like the starfish he had once seen washed up on a beach, caught in the wrong wave and suffering. He had flung it back.

He’d show them how wrong they were! (There was that old pluck, but it was fleeting, and then lost again a moment later.) How much like an old man he felt, all of the sudden. He felt slow and dumb—useless, just as the director had declared. Only four o’clock now, but the black sky made it feel like nighttime on the street. The crowds jostled him, as though they, too, were filled with hated bank porters waiting for him to go away and make room for someone stronger. There was another sensation that dawned on him as well, an even more unpleasant one than being ignored: the sensation that someone was following him.

He accelerated his pace. He had nothing on him for anyone to steal, but he also couldn’t defend himself from an attack by thieves, not with this hand, and that had made him see villains in thin air ready to take what little belonged to him. At least he still had his speed—he used it now—and his knowledge of the short, confusing streets that knotted the center of Boston together.

He rounded a corner and fled down a flight of old wooden steps. These led into a dark alley that would not be found on any city maps, because no one would wish to find it.

Once in the safety of the hidden alleyway, he realized how loudly his heart was thumping at his chest and tried to quiet it by taking a deep breath. This wouldn’t do, this behavior. Not for a lad known for his brave and adventurous spirit.

“Blast it all!” he cried despondently to himself, then sat down on the bottom step and broke into tears.

When he had gathered himself and stood to go, a figure cloaked by
the darkness appeared at the top stair. Theo jumped back into the alley. The figure took the next step down, and Theo stumbled back some more. Then the figure took another step, and so did Theo. The man was covered by a thick hood, and only when Theo ran out of space behind him in the alley could he make out the alarming face, lined in scars and dead tissue.