The Technologists (45 page)

“There are still traces of a woman’s housekeeping in these quarters,” she said, passing a finger along the perimeter of the wall. “These rooms were once neater, though, I grant, probably not for some time. Poor man must have been abandoned by a wife, or sister, leading him into the vice of drink.” She continued her investigation, pushing against another door.

“What are you doing?” In the absence of Bob and Marcus, he felt vaguely that he should order, or at least request strongly, that she stop and heed Marcus’s command.

“I’m going to look in the basement.”

“Marcus said to stay right here.”

“Please remind me, Mr. Hoyt, who elected Mr. Mansfield general of our little squadron?”

Edwin scratched at his neck, no longer so keen to direct her. “Well, why go downstairs?”

“The superintendent may well know more about what has been happening in that laboratory than he has told Mr. Richards. From Mr. Richards’s description, the gentleman may be too intoxicated to even remember what he knows, but he may have kept some sort of records for the building somewhere down there. Coming?”

Marcus
had
told them to stay in the vestibule and watch for anyone possibly trying to enter the building. On the other hand, as a responsible gentleman Edwin should be at Ellen’s side and ensure her safety. Maybe if he counted to three Marcus and Bob would return.

One … two …

“Good-bye, Mr. Hoyt,” she said as she started downstairs.

Her swift exit put his own feet into motion. “I’ll escort you, Miss Swallow,” he said. He followed her down a winding narrow wooden staircase into the dark, poorly ventilated basement. There was a layer of dirty straw on the rocky ground and buckets filled with water at various points. The dismal, rustic compartment seemed like a cave, with its dark-red walls and a single, dimly burning lamp. It was an oozy mass of shadows, to which their own were added.

“I see the superintendent continues his habits down here, too, perhaps when he feels too many disapproving eyes on him up above,” Ellen said with a frown, picking up one of the bottles littering the ground and releasing a few last drops from it.

There was a noise, like an inhale. The damp air made Edwin wheeze, and he had to force his words out. “Did you hear something? Breathing?”

Ellen stopped in her tracks, gasping. “Mr. Hoyt!”

Under two small windows that were covered by wooden shutters, by
the sole lamp, a large shape slumped in the shadows. They moved closer one step at a time until they could see the face of the corpulent keeper of the building, his mouth hanging slack, his eyes closed.

Ellen smoothed her dress and dropped onto her knees, inspecting the moist folds of the man’s chin and neck, then his hand. “No pulse.” She moved closer to his lips, where there was a frothy residue faintly visible in the flickering light. “This man was poisoned.”

“What? How do you know?”

“Mr. Hoyt, for the last eight months I’ve studied the composition of the most deadly poisoning agents known to humanity.”

“But that is not in the curriculum of the—”

“It is in my own curriculum!”

“From his position, it looks like he was dragged down here,” he whispered, determined to contribute despite the dread creeping up his spine. “If he’s been dead, who was just breathing?”

She examined his collar and shirt. Then she opened her nostrils and took in the odor. Cringing, she pried open his lips and pulled out his tongue between two of her fingers.

“What in heaven are you doing with his tongue, Miss Swallow?”

“The membrane around the mouth is white and softened. But I need better light and some more delicate equipment in order to determine when and how this was done.” She rose to her feet. “Hold on a minute, Mr. Hoyt. If I am right—and I am right—that this man has been a victim of foul play, we must warn them!”

Edwin tried to clear his mind. He was grateful that she was here, and thankful she did not hesitate to decide their next move.

“You noticed it yourself, Mr. Hoyt,” she went on. “It appears he was dragged, probably from his chambers upstairs. Whoever did it left all the doors upstairs unlocked but rolled the body down here—not wanting his dead body to frighten away a visitor from coming inside and continuing up. Someone was expected to enter.
We
were expected.”

His face paled. “It’s a trap, Miss Swallow.” Taking a step backward to try to steady himself, he lifted his face to gaze at the upper wall. There was a large arch that extended up and had been filled in with brick. “There!” he cried out.

Wires were hanging out of the archway, plugged into squares of some kind of clay.

Then the noise again, rising up and dissipating as though from some remote horizon. “You heard that?”

“Breathing,” she whispered back, nodding. “I heard someone breathing, Mr. Hoyt.”

*   *   *

T
HREE STORIES ABOVE THEM
,
Bob was stretching his finger in the keyhole of the door under the sign that read
POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE
.
Bob smiled when Marcus caught up with him. “I arranged the lock plate to hide the effects of the gunpowder,” he explained calmly, “and to open when I pressed it to one side. You could call me an engineer at this rate.”

“Bob! Why was the street door unlocked?”

“A riddle, Mansfield? We need to study what I saw inside this laboratory to know what will happen next; otherwise it’s all for nothing! More people will be hurt!”

“Professor Runkle was nearly killed in an explosion. It might have been the same scientist behind the disasters, and if it is, if the experimenter knows you found this, that laboratory could be loaded with explosives, ready to blow us to the sky when you open that door. Or the experimenter might be waiting to ambush us.”

Bob had contemplated these possibilities, but thinking about them only bolstered his confidence. “No. No, I don’t think so, Mansfield. You see, this door is just how I left it. I am certain. Nobody’s been back here. This might—”

“You don’t know that nobody’s been in here since then, Bob!”

Bob hesitated. The easiest thing to do would be to step away. “This could well be our last chance, Mansfield. Our last chance to find what we need.”

“Let us bring Edwin and Miss Swallow out of this building and to safety, and then decide what to do next.”

Bob bit down hard on his lower lip. “It’s easy for you to say that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Telling me to wait!” He heard his voice shake, and that produced an
odd flood of honesty. “I’ve waited my whole life to do something real, to act like a man. I will not shrink when my time comes—not again.”

“Bob, wait!”

He pressed his finger into the lock plate, causing the door to pop open.

Marcus slowly joined him in the threshold to the laboratory. They both stood stock-still. The laboratory space appeared just as Bob had first seen it, and the enigmatic experiment inside the glass enclosure at the central table did not seem to have been touched since he had rushed out to find the others the night before. There were no explosives in sight, no wires, no phantom assassins lying in wait.

“There,” Bob said, exhaling too loudly. “You see? It’s all right, Mansfield, just like I said. You get the others up here and let us get to work immediately analyzing all of this.”

Marcus tried to hold him back from entering, but Bob shook him off and took a big step inside, then froze again.

“Wait a minute,” Bob said, his heart dropping. “That standing desk by the window—when I was here, there was a large ledger, lined with gold leaf, leaning on top of it. I’m certain of it. Now it’s gone.”

Click
.

“Mansfield, did you hear that?” Bob asked, hoping to God he hadn’t.

*   *   *

S
ECONDS EARLIER
,
Ellen and Edwin had climbed back to the first floor from the basement.

“The archways bricked-up down below …” Edwin was speaking in urgent bursts.

“What about them, Mr. Hoyt?” asked Ellen.

“I think this building must have originally been one of the barracks built during the Revolution to protect Boston in case of invasion of the harbor.” Upon seeing her questioning expression, he added, “My father builds military forts; I have studied every variation of their design since I was a child. Those arches extend all the way to the top, and if those are damaged by explosives—if those wires extend all the way up—the whole place will come down on our heads, floor upon floor!”

As they reached the vestibule, the iron door leading to the staircase
emitted a loud
click
—the same one heard above by their friends—before either Edwin or Ellen could reach the handle. They pushed and pulled but the door separating them from the rest of the building wouldn’t budge.

“No use,” Ellen said. “Some kind of locking mechanism.”

“We have to tell them it’s a trap!”

Ellen searched the desk and drawers in the chambers, while Edwin rapped his fists and kicked against the door.

“Are there any keys?” Edwin asked.

“Not that I see—maybe in the superintendent’s pockets?”

“We don’t have time to go back down there.”

“Here, Mr. Hoyt! This might be our best chance.”

He rushed over to her side. She had found a large knot of a half dozen speaking tubes, each tube half an inch in diameter, protruding from the wall.

“They must be arranged to communicate with the different parts of the building,” he said.

“We could use this to warn them. But there are over a dozen of them, and they aren’t labeled as they should be. I don’t know which—”

“Try them! Try them all!” Edwin said, panic rising.

*   *   *

“Y
OU HEARD THAT?”
Bob repeated as they stood in the third-floor laboratory.

“A clicking noise,” Marcus responded, his eyes sweeping across the laboratory.

Bob held his breath, closed his eyes for a long moment, then puffed out an exhale. “Nothing happened. Nothing happened to us, did it?”

“No.”

“We’re safe,” Bob said. “It was probably just old Eddy tripping over something.”

They were both stunned when the voice of Ellen Swallow popped into the air. “You must get out! Quickly!”

“What the devil?” Marcus asked.

“There, the speaking tube.”

At the wall where the tube emerged, Marcus spoke into the cupped
opening. “Miss Swallow? Are you all right?” he said, then put the end to his ear.

“The superintendent is down below, Marcus! Poisoned!” It was Edwin’s voice now. “The door—”

Another sound from the knot of tubes, the sound of someone breathing, interrupted them and they fell silent.

“Is that you, Edwin?” Marcus asked.

“It’s not us,” Edwin’s voice replied.

Then a voice—a hoarse whisper, maybe a muffled laugh—slithered out from the end of the flexible tube: “Very sorry.
Positively
no admittance, gentlemen … and lady. Technology lives!”

Marcus and Bob traded terrified glances. A moment later, the stove in the corner of the laboratory began to vibrate. This was followed by a series of ominous cracking noises. Piece by piece, the floor bulged; cracks strained into holes. The wood and brick groaned; the west wall swayed.

“Thunder and lightning, Mansfield,” Bob gasped. “Run, run for your life!”

The floor of the laboratory sagged, sucking the tables, cabinets, and machinery into a hole, as the ceiling split and the walls gaped open.

Tumbling down the stairs to the first floor, they stopped at the inner door to the vestibule.

“Ellen! Eddy! Open up!” Bob called out.

The walls rumbled, then growled.

“Something is jamming the door frame!” Marcus cried.

They could hear their friends pounding from the other side of the door to try to free them.

Bob pressed his mouth against the cold surface of the unyielding door that divided them. “Nellie, can you hear me?”

“Yes!” her voice was faint from the other side of the thick barrier.

“Take Eddy and run away as fast as you can!”

“Do not presume to order me, Robert!” her voice cried from the other side.

“Damn all stubborn women!” He pounded hard with his fist. “Eddy, you drag her out of here if you have to! Do you hear me? Eddy!”

“No!” shouted back Edwin. “We’re not leaving you here! We will live or die together, by the will of God!”