He checked the shoes and the stockings, more items of distaste. He looked under the bed, under the mattress, and drew a chair over to peer on top of the bed canopy. He searched behind the chest of drawers and beneath the iron-legged stand that held the waterbasin. He exhausted all possible hiding places in the room, and then he took stock of the sheets of parchment.
Lying in plain sight, he thought. If a code was indeed written somewhere in those sheets, then why bother to hide them?
He picked up a few of the sheets and scanned them. Nothing remarkable that he could decipher. Just someone with time on his hands, scribing for the sake of something to do. He found the line of stage-direction from Cymbeline that Smythe had read to him from the play: Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle; he throws a thunderbolt.
That was the line that had prompted the professor’s titling of the new weapon? How had Smythe described it? Oh, yes…Cymbeline is the foundation upon which future devices shall be constructed.
The foundation, Matthew thought. Something basic. Something…ordinary that now was extraordinary?
Thunder and lightning, Matthew mused. The throwing of a thunderbolt by Jupiter, king of the gods. The professor would surely identify with Jupiter. And what happens when a thunderbolt hits the earth? Matthew asked himself.
Fire, of course. No, no…wait…first, before the fire…there is…
…the explosion.
Matthew walked out upon the balcony. From this vantage point he could see, far in the distance, a thin smudge of smoke that must be rising from the fort at the far end of Pendulum. The forbidden fort, where intrusion meant death. That, Matthew surmised, must be where the Cymbeline was being created.
Because he realized what Cymbeline must be. In fact, he’d already had a taste of it. A very hot and searing taste, in fact.
The foundation of future weapons was gunpowder. Professor Fell was creating a new and more potent—certainly more powerful—kind of gunpowder. The kind that could in a fairly small quantity tear a building to pieces and hurl a roof back into Jupiter’s realm. Oh yes, they were using the Cymbeline to good effect in New York, all right. Matthew nodded, watching the smoke smudge. Of course the chemicals had to be cooked. The fire kept away from the finished product. But what made it different? What ingredient made it more powerful or better in any way from the gunpowder normally created?
Matthew knew.
He recalled a certain Solomon Tully, wailing for his losses on the Great Dock.
…there’s something wicked afoot with this constant stealing of sugar.
“Indeed there is,” said Matthew Corbett, his eyes steel-gray and his voice grim.
For sugar was the new ingredient in the professor’s formula for death. Some chemical component of sugar, cooked and introduced into the process. Professor Fell was making his Cymbeline with sugar, and it was the foundation of what the professor hoped was not only new weapons using that powder, but a source of revenue that perhaps was the greatest he’d yet known.
And here stood Matthew, seeking a traitor or two who had decided England’s security was more important than Fell’s power or money. Truly, for Matthew, it was the world turned upside down. He decided it was time to vacate these premises. He put everything back upon the desktop exactly as it had been, for he thought Smythe would have a sharp eye for such irregularities. The chair he’d used to perch upon also was returned to its exact position. Everything else looked right. But no evidence of a traitor was to be found in here today, and probably not any day. Matthew left the room, closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. “Here!” said someone down the hallway. “What are you doing?” The voice made Matthew jump. As he turned toward it, he put the key in his pocket. Adam Wilson, the invisible man, was striding toward him.
“Spade? I asked you what you’re doing.” The voice was as slight and vapid as its owner, yet insistent in its own way. The watery blue eyes stared at Matthew behind the square-lensed spectacles. “Were you trying to get into Edgar’s room?”
Matthew recognized that the man of finances had not seen him leave Smythe’s room, but had only seen him standing at the door. Possibly it looked as if Matthew was working the doorknob. “I knocked at Smythe’s door, yes,” he said.
“It looked to me as if you were trying to get in, sir.” Wilson had small teeth that showed between the bloodless lips and came together as he spoke, as if taking small vicious bites from the air.
“I…suppose I did try the knob.” Matthew shrugged, as if to say it was his nature. “Smythe and I were having a discussion in the library earlier. I’d hoped to continue it.”
“Really?” It was spoken with either droll unconcern or a lingering touch of suspicion.
“Yes,” Matthew answered. “Really.”
“Edgar is meeting with the professor at this moment,” came the reply. The eyes narrowed. “What happened to you, sir? You are much the worse for wear.”
“You should have seen the horse after I beat it up.”
“You were thrown from a horse?”
“Regrettably, yes. Early this morning.”
“Hm.” Wilson took two backward steps to look Matthew over from head to toe. “Nothing is broken, I presume?”
“My pride,” said Matthew, with a tight smile that made his nose ache.
“Your sense of humor seems undamaged,” said Wilson, humorlessly. “I should think you would take to bed rather than seeking companionship.”
“In my line of work, those two things go together.”
“Ah.” A slight smile disturbed the small ugly mouth. “As you say.” Wilson gave a small nod of his head and shoulder-stoop to pass for a bow of respect and started to turn away.
But the problem-solver had at last detected something, and meant to hone in upon it. “Pardon me, Mr. Wilson, but…why do you refer to Mr. Smythe by his first name?”
“Because that is his name,” was the stone-faced reply.
“Of course it is, but…it indicates a certain familiarity. A friendship, I suppose. Or, as you put it…a companionship. I noted that at dinner last night there was a very strict air of formality in how everyone addressed everyone else. I suppose it’s an indicator of the distance we must keep from each other regarding our businesses. So why do you call him Edgar and not Mr. Smythe? Is it because…oh…you and he communicate with each other outside the realm of the professor’s view?”
“You know that would be forbidden.”
“I do know. But I also know you’re very comfortable calling him by his first name. Are you two friends in London?”
“No, we are not. But we have become friends here. Because as you must know, this is not the first of our conferences.” The eyes took on a wicked gleam behind the square lenses. “And if we’re speaking of noticing such things, Mr. Spade, I should say I heard Madam Cutter calling you Nathan. Does that mean, then, that you and she are…hmmmm…an item in London?”
“I’ve never met her before.”