Throne.
1872 —The book-length expansion of ‘Diffractive Properties’ lands Stent the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. This is like the VC of science. Wear that little ribbon and lesser astronomers swallow their chalk with envy when you walk by.
1873 — Stent publishes again!
On an Inequality of Long Period in the Motions of the Earth and Venus
so radically revises the Solar Tables set out a generation earlier by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre that the Delambre Formulae are tossed into the bin and replaced by the Stent Formulae. JB is dead or Moriarty would have had to queue up behind him for the job of Nev’s arch-enemy, methinks.
1878 — Stent knighted by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria — who couldn’t even count her own children, let alone calculate an indice of diffraction — and is therefore universally hailed the greatest astronomical mathematician of the age. Rivals choke on their abacus beads. Naturally, Sir Nevil is also appointed Astronomer Royal and allowed to play with all the toys and telescopes in the land. Gets first pick of which bits of the sky to look at. Can name any cosmic bodies he discovers after his cats. The AR position comes with Flamsteed House, an imposing official residence. Greenwich Observatory is tacked onto it, rather like a big garden shed. Lesser mortals have to throw themselves on the ground before Sir Nevil Airey Stent if they want to take so much a shufti at the man in the moon.
Cast your glims over that little lot, and consider the picture of Sir Nevil in the rotogravure. Tall, fair-haired, eyes like a romantic poet, strong arms from working an altazimuth mount, winning little-boy smile. Mrs Sir Nevil is the former Caroline Broughton-Fitzhume, second daughter of the Earl of Stoke Poges, reckoned among the beauties of the age. Tell me you don’t hate the swot right off the bat.
Now… imagine how you’d feel about Stent if you were a skull-faced, reptile-necked, balding astronomical-mathematical genius ten years older than the Golden Youth of Greenwich Observatory. Though recognised as a serious brain, that ‘European vogue’ for your ‘Treatise on the Binomial Theorem’ is but a faded memory. Your career has scarcely stretched beyond being ousted from an indifferent, non-Plumian chair — no more than a stool, they say — at a provincial university few proper dons would toss a mortarboard at. Officially, you’re an army coach — cramming sums into the heads of dimwit subalterns who need to pass exams before haring off to do daring deeds (or die of jungle fever) in far distant quarters of the Empire. No one knows about the coups and triumphs of your other business. And Stent is a hero of the world of science, a veritable comet zooming through the night sky. If you aren’t grinding your teeth with loathing, you probably lost them years ago.
Stent. It’s even a horrible name, isn’t it?
All the Dictionary of National Biography business I found out later. When Professor Moriarty, tense as a coiled cobra and twice as venomous, slithered into the reception room brandishing a copy of The Observatory — trade journal for astronomers, don’t you know — I’d have been proud to say I had never heard of the flash nob who was giving that evening’s lecture to the Royal Astronomical Society in Burlington House.
My understanding was that my flatmate and I were due to attend an exclusive sporting event in Wapping. Contestants billed as ‘Miss Lilian Russell’ and ‘Miss Ellen Terri’ in the hope punters might take them for their near look-alikes Lillian Russell and Ellen Terry were to face off, stripped to drawers and corsets, and Indian-wrestle in an arena knee-deep in custard. My ten bob was on Ellen to shove Lilian’s face into the yellow three falls out of four. I was scarcely best pleased to be informed that our seats at this cultural event would go unclaimed. We would be skulking — in disguise, yet — at the back of the room while Sir Nevil Stent delivered his latest crowd-pleasing lecture.
His title: ‘The Dynamics of an Asteroid: A Comprehensive Refutation’.
II
‘Has it not been said that The Dynamics of an Asteroid “ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics there is no man in the scientific press capable of criticising it”?’
Sir Nevil Stent smiled and held up a thick volume.
I was familiar with the blasted book. At least a dozen presentation copies were stuffed into the shelves in our study. It was the Professor’s magnum opus, the sum total of his knowledge of and contribution to the Whole Art of Mathematical Astronomy. In rare moments of feeling, Moriarty was wont to claim he was prouder of these 652 pages (with no illustrations, diagrams or tables) than of the Macao-Golukhin Forgery, the Bradford Beneficent Fund Swindle or the Featherstone Tiara Theft.
‘Of course,’ Stent continued, ‘we sometimes have our doubts about “the scientific press”. More sense can be found in Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday.’ [19]
A tide of tittering ran through the audience. Stent raised his eyebrows, and shook the book in humorous fashion, as if hoping something would fall out. Chuckles ensued. Stent tried to read the book upside down. Something which might be diagnosed as a guffaw erupted from an elderly party near us. Moriarty turned to aim a bone-freezing glare at the old gent — but was thwarted by his disguise. He wore opaque black spectacles and held a white cane in order to pass himself off as a blind scholar from Trinity College, Dublin.
Stent slammed the book down on the lectern.
‘No, my friends, it will not do,’ he said. ‘Being beyond understanding is of no use to anyone. Astronomy will never progress from simple stargazing if we allow it to be dominated by such… and I don’t hesitate to use the term… piffling tripe as Professor Moriarty’s pound and a half of waste paper. It would be better titled The Dynamics of a Haemorrhoid, for its contents are piles of nonsense. This copy was taken by me this afternoon from the library of the Greenwich Observatory. As you know, this is the greatest collection of publications and papers in the field. It is open to the finest scholars and minds on the planet. Let us examine this Dynamics of an Asteroid, and see what secrets it has to tell…’
Stent picked up the book again and began to leaf through it. He showed the title page. ‘A first, and indeed only, edition!’ Then, he turned to the opening chapter, and drew his finger down the two-columned text, turned the page, and did the same, then turned the page and…
‘Aha,’ he exclaimed. ‘After twenty pages, we find that the next leaf is uncut. As are all remaining leaves. What can we deduce from that? This book has been in the library for six years. I have a list of academics, students and astronomers who have taken it out. Seventy-two names. Many I see before me this evening. It seems no one has managed to read beyond the first twenty pages of this masterwork. Because I am not averse to suffering for my field, I have read the book, cover to cover, 652 pages. I venture to say I am the only man in the room who can claim such a Herculean achievement. Is there any comrade here, to whom I can extend my condolences, with whom I can share my sufferings? In short, has anyone else managed to finish The Dynamics of an Asteroid? Hands up, don’t be shy. There are worse things to admit to.’
The handle of the Professor’s cane snapped. He’d been gripping it with both knotted fists. The sound was like a gunshot.
‘So you have joined us, James,’ Stent said. ‘I rather thought you might.’
19