The Technologists (35 page)

Marcus, savoring her flowing handwriting as he read, folded the paper into his vest pocket and exhaled with relief. Now they could move forward again—with any luck, a step ahead of their scarred rival.

“You are a marvel, Miss Agnes.”

“Aggie.”

“Really?”

“I think so.”

“Thank you, Aggie.”

“Tell me, will this help very much?” She patted his vest pocket where he had stored the paper.

Her hand lingered and he put his over hers, then leaned forward and kissed her lips.

*   *   *

“W
HAT DO YOU WANT
?”
asked the white-aproned, stocky chemist, his nostrils flaring as he held open the street door to a brick building on Third Street and the corner of E in the region of South Boston.

“Good morning, sir,” said the handsome young man, who gracefully flipped away his bowler hat to free a crown of golden curls. “I am new to Boston and looking to settle in by finding something as an assistant in the chemical industry, however humble.”

“I am not out to hire anyone,” grumbled the chemist.

The visitor bit his knuckle in a show of vulnerability. “You see, I am in an awful spot. My wife is”—he hesitated—“with child. Sick.”

“Pregnant or sick?”

“Well, both, to say the truth,” the young man affirmed sadly. “See?”

They both looked over at the street corner, where a woman waited in a long dark dress, with a veil swept back over her tightly pinned and coiled hair.

“You see how pale and stringy she is? Almost like an apparition from another world.”

“I suppose she is a somber enough thing,” agreed the chemist as he studied the figure of Ellen. “Is that a mourning dress?”

“Yes! Mourning our future. She will continue to be quite distraught and treat me like a dead man until I find some worthwhile position. I beg you to consider it.”

“You know something of the chemical arts?”

“I was the First Scholar in my science course as a boy.”

The chemist rubbed his rough cheek with his hand. “You look like a good enough fellow. But I’m not hiring. Not unless you’re bringing a new patent along with you that can make me money. Now, good day!”

The door closed swiftly and was bolted. A moment later, the window was shuttered.

“Just our luck,” Bob said, his hands deep in his pockets as he returned to Ellen.

“I suppose having me here has not helped as much as Mr. Mansfield hoped,” Ellen said somberly.

“Not yet.” Bob held his agreement in check. “I see why you and Mansfield found these private chemists not the most sympathetic sort. I fear we shall have to resign our expedition in defeat.”

“My father used to say, ‘Where anyone else has been, there I can go.’ It was not a bad working motto, but I like to think adventurous spirits do what has never been done before.
That
is a pioneer.”

“Well,” he said, impressed, “perhaps we should have you stand beside me at the door when we ring at the next place on the list. Look distraught.”

“I am not above falling faint, Mr. Richards.”

“A-one idea! Come along.” Without thinking, he took her arm in his. He braced for her to pull away and perhaps even strike him across the face. But, to his pleasant surprise, she allowed him to escort her.

So far, they had been to nearly a dozen places, and already tried changing speeches and strategies several times. They consulted the list compiled by Agnes Turner that matched the names and addresses of purchasers to the multiple chemicals they’d identified.

“Goodness!” Bob gasped. “Turn to the east and walk slowly.”

Ellen’s sharp eyes darted ahead and landed on a tall beaver hat of a light pearl color and Parisian style, shading a full-bearded, sallow face. He held an umbrella by its throat and pumped it as he walked, as though leading an invisible parade of men behind him.

“Professor Watson,” she said under her breath, then wheeled around and followed Bob’s lead.

*   *   *

T
HE OTHER
T
ECHNOLOGISTS
were just as alarmed by the sighting when it was reported to them an hour later. Their minds oozed with the troubling possibilities: Could Professor Watson have learned about their activities and followed their delegates into South Boston, then acted nonchalant when Bob spotted him? Or could Squirty himself have been involved
with one of the private laboratories, perhaps even—unknowingly or not—one employing the experimenter?

“It makes sense of the whole thing, you see,” Bob said with a frenzy of thoughts on the subject.

“How so?” asked Marcus. “Watson was the only one at the faculty meeting who pushed to investigate the disasters.”

“What if he did so in order to have control over what was found,” Bob proposed. “This could knock everything into a cocked hat!”

But whatever conclusions were drawn in the next hours were undrawn when Bob approached Darwin Fogg late that day, at the close of classes, with a mysterious and tentative air.

“I wonder, my good Darwin, whether seeing a faculty member of the Institute out in South Boston, in that region filled with so many laboratories, would cause you any surprise.”

“Oh,” Darwin said with an easy chuckle that made light of Bob’s wary approach, “you mean Professor Watson.”

Bob could not conceal his amazement, but before he could say more, Darwin continued.

“Or Professor Storer,” he mused, “or Professor Eliot, or Henck …”

Bob stopped him. “You’ve just listed half the faculty, Darwin. What do you mean by it?”

“That’s because half the faculty members possess private laboratories in that district,” Darwin said.

“I never knew that!”

“They don’t shout about it, lest the affiliation appear, well, unseemly. President Rogers never liked it, but he did not prohibit it.”

In addition to explaining Watson’s presence there, it also explained what Eliot must have been doing when they saw him from the roof with his chemical case, sending materials along to South Boston without wanting attention.

“Remember,” Darwin went on, seeming to interpret Bob’s expression as one of moral disillusionment, “President Rogers and Professor Runkle must struggle to pay your instructors enough to live on. Private scientific endeavors at least help them supplement their wages, and allow them to continue to teach. You mustn’t think too unkindly about them.”

“I won’t, Darwin. Thank you.”

That put to rest most of their speculation about Squirty Watson. It also meant that Bob and Ellen would take more precautions to conceal themselves when they returned to South Boston the next morning, in case they encountered any other members of the faculty. Ellen kept her veil down and Bob wore a wide-collared greatcoat that made him look a size bigger, and a false mustache.

At the next five chemists’ doors, they were met with no answer or else distrust and annoyance. They had almost been through Agnes’s entire list and found no helpful clues. Soon they would have to return to the Institute again to be in time for Bob’s first Saturday class and Ellen’s private session with Henck, professor of civil and topographical engineering.

“Perhaps I am not convincing enough as an errant husband,” Bob said. They crossed the street where the next building on the list was located.

She sighed with empathy. “Or I as the wife. No surprise. The gentleman has not yet made his appearance who can entice me away from my free and independent life with the chains of matrimony. No matter. The world will surely be peopled without my help. Perhaps my reluctance shows through.”

He twirled the walking stick he had brought as part of his new costume. “I have no idea what a wife ought to be to me, to tell the truth, or what I ought to be to a wife, but I know that her aims in life should be along the lines that mine will follow, not some silly girl who will bat her eyelashes at a scientific coat. I know that.”

“When I first arrived at Tech this October, one of the students had found the letter I carried in my belongings confirming my admission and crossed out the ‘A.B.’ where it listed the type of degree I would study for. They left it in my laboratory where I would find it, and wrote ‘A.O.M.’ instead. What do you suppose they meant?”

“I haven’t a clue,” he said after thinking it over.

“I consulted with President Rogers and we believe it must be ‘An Old Maid.’ ”

“Didn’t that set your teeth on edge?”

“My feathers were well oiled when I arrived, Mr. Richards. Criticism runs off. The more I make myself useful, the more allies I have. That is
why I carry around needles, thread, pins, and scissors at most times. I do not scorn womanly duties, and each time I sew up a professor’s papers to be more easily carried or tie up a sore finger or dust the table, there is a smaller chance of a fuss being raised about my presence.”

“Well, I would have knocked them around for teasing you.”

“And suppose someone were to suggest I ought to return to Salem?”

Bob chuckled at the statement before recognizing his own coinage. “That’s different, Professor. That was before I knew you. And I was honest about what I thought! It would have crazed me to not know the underhanded tricksters.”

“Serenity is not natural. It is a virtue. I know the world questions whether a girl can get a science degree without injuring her health. I intend to demonstrate that it is not only possible, but desirable—even if it takes me through the desert of old maidenhood. Mr. Richards?”

“Yes, Professor,” he heard himself answer with amusement but also real deference.

“You recall when Mr. Hoyt initially experimented with the chemical compound when trying to arrive at the formula that would have caused the destruction on State Street. Do you remember the tint to the glass in your laboratory after his mixture escaped and discolored it?”

“I suppose.”

“The perpetrator we are looking for probably went through several trials to arrive at the right compound, perhaps similar to our own.”

“I suppose that would be natural, but what …” He paused when she wrested his walking stick from his hand and hoisted it upward. The tip was pointed to a small ventilating window on the third floor of another brick building a few doors down the street.

From where they stood, it appeared that a distinctive mixture of brown and pink spotted the window glass.

“Our day has come, Professor,” he whispered. “You’re one of us now. Stand beside me. Be prepared for anything.”

“I am.”

*   *   *

“M
R
. M
ANSFIELD
!”

Nearing the Institute that morning, Marcus stopped at an unexpected
sound: his name. He touched his hat upon seeing the speaker. “Why, Miss Agnes, Miss Lilly. I wish you ladies good morning. Miss Lilly, I am glad to see you looking recovered.”

“Hmph!” Lilly replied.

The pleasant surprise of Agnes’s appearance there was diminished by her companion, dressed in a stylish, heavy dark dress as though she were on her way to a funeral. She fixed him with a distinctly evil eye.

“I wouldn’t expect to find you out here on a Saturday,” Marcus said. “Aren’t you at Temple Place this morning?”

Agnes tried to smile but instead dabbed tears from her eyes.

“What is it, Miss Agnes?”

“Oh, I’ve done something terrible!” Agnes said.

“What do you mean?”

“I told Papa …”

“What did you tell him?” He took her by the shoulders and held on tightly, but she broke down into tears again. He began to panic at her words. He reassured her that she would be all right, but she only shook her head in despair.

“She told her father she wished to study science at one of the Catholic academies.” Lilly spoke the words as though they were in a courtroom and he the accused. “That she then wished to enter a women’s college and study science and perhaps astronomy, as girls our age have begun to do in some parts of the country.”

Agnes flushed in embarrassment, and nodded an admission to her part in the story.

“What happened? What did he say?”

“He was furious with her, naturally,” Lilly continued, “and believes—quite rightly, I say—her new desire has come from being in the employment of Professor Rogers. He has forced Aggie to resign her place and move back with her family. You see, Mr. Mansfield, we serving girls are meant to be machines, with particular functions that cannot be disrupted without consequences.”

“Miss Agnes,” Marcus began, then guided her as far away from Lilly as he could manage. “Aggie,” he said, “does this have something to do with the list you gave us?”

She nodded and composed herself to explain. “Investigating the ledgers
for you, and poring over all the complicated details about the chemical supplies, gave me such a thrill. It made me wish more than ever to study something real, to learn science—true science, not minerals meant to keep little girls occupied until their manners can be ‘finished’ and they can learn to keep house for the rest of their bodily existences—and be
finished
, indeed! I was doing something, however small—doing something important—like you and your friends do. I was not a nothing anymore, not just a servant to someone else.”

He took her by the shoulders again. “Agnes, did you
tell
your father?”

“What?”

“Did you tell him about me or the Institute or what we’re doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he asks too many questions, if he discovers that you gave us information, it could put me
and
Rogers and, as a consequence, our entire college at grave risk.… You must obey him for now.”

“Must I?” Her body stiffened and her lips quivered.

“For now, please, yes. Just satisfy him for now,” he said. “You cannot understand what it means.”

She wrenched violently away from him. “Is that what you worry about? When I am the one accused of being unwomanly and unreligious!”

“No. You misunderstand …”

Her voice broke with anger and sounded as though it belonged to another person entirely. “No, I don’t, Mr. Mansfield. I thought you were a different man.”

“Agnes!”

“Maybe I am prideful to think it, but what I do with my life matters as much as what you do with yours, Mr. Mansfield.”