“And how would we succeed in such an undertaking without Feenix and Pupker and all the others getting wind of it, Muntle?” I asked. “Think clearly, man. They already suspect that we’ve something seditious in the works — that we stand poised upon the brink of outright insurrection. Now how much of a vault of the imagination would it require to re-ascribe our insurrectionary motives to something not communistic at all, but to that which threatens them most of alclass="underline" our growing realisation of the true nature of Dingley Dell? The Moles cannot be blind to the fact that as events have escalated on their side with the approach of their day of rescue and repatriation with the Outland, some of us should begin — as indeed we have — to become more observant, to become much better at putting together the pieces of that no longer inchoate mosaic.”
“Aye,” said Muntle, nodding slowly, his exuberance for immediate action having dissipated. “Especially when so many of those pieces of late have been so generously handed us. Trimmers, you make a compelling case for keeping our heads, and keeping our feet planted firmly upon the soil of the Dell. At least for the time being.”
“And to that end — the end to be achieved by our collective cerebration — I should enquire as to the specific whereabouts of the most celebrated cerebrater in the valley — Professor Chivery. Where within that Minotaur’s maze of rooms-within-rooms in Bedlam, Miss Wolf, would we find this brilliant gentleman?”
“On the top floor. In a secured room in the building’s attic. He was put there amongst the Limbo Returnees.”
“The Limbo Returnees — now who would they be?” asked Muntle.
“Those who have either come back to the Dell under their own industry or have been conducted here by the offices of my rescuing group. Those like Trimmers’ nephew Newman who are assumed to remain still in the Outland.”
“And that is where they are keeping Newman?” I asked.
Ruth Wolf nodded. “I enquired about him just this evening. He is well. He is safe. And he has become quite adept at winning backgammon for toothpicks.”
I smiled. Muntle did not. “Why do they not simply kill all of them in that attic room if their presence here is unknown to anyone but that small group that attends them in the asylum?”
“Towlinson, to his credit, refuses to stain his hands with the blood of a single Dinglian,” said Ruth.
Muntle laughed dryly. “I cannot believe that the ogre has grown such a conscience as that with which you impute him.”
“Granted, it is a small conscience. But even Gamfield was never meant to die. Fibbetson accidentally injected him with a second dose of the general soporific.”
“A point of fact which you had no recourse to rebut at this evening’s meeting,” said I.
Ruth nodded. Bevan drew near and took her hand in his.
“In your interview with Chivery, was there anything else that was said?” I asked, suddenly thinking that whatever intelligence had been imparted by Chivery to Miss Wolf would vanish with her, until such time as we were able to meet with the quarantined man to learn it ourselves.
“He said very little except this: that ‘his calculations proved that all of it could work. The first stage and the second.’ He was most cryptic in this regard, and so I asked him whatever did he mean. ‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘But you must release me to do any good. My calculations cannot be of benefit if they are not to be applied with the utmost speed. Take these papers,’ he said, giving me the memoranda between Miss Martin and Miss Kreis. ‘Use the papers to win my release. Time is of the essence. Time is of the essence.’ I recall all of the words he communicated to me because he began to repeat himself until the appeal became almost nonsensical in its redundant utterance.”
Muntle now turned to me with a look of the most profound urgency. “Yet there should be a great deal of sense and order to what he said. Once one knows how the words are to be interpreted. We must go to Bedlam, Trimmers. You and I. We cannot wait until Towlinson and Fibbetson and the others have fled. By then it will perhaps be too late to use the product of Chivery’s calculations to our benefit. What could he mean? We will draw it out of him.”
“And what if we fail, my friend?” I asked. “And we are put under arrest in the course of the attempt? What good will we do in a gaol cell?”
“And have you an opinion one way or another, Miss Wolf?” Muntle asked. “To attempt to effect a rescue earlier rather than later or to wait and employ caution as the overriding watchword?”
Ruth Wolf spoke without hesitation: “I would go in. As soon as you can. To-morrow night, in fact.”
“You would do it?” I asked, surprised that Miss Wolf should answer so quickly and with such adamancy.
Ruth Wolf nodded. “Whilst I do not believe that Towlinson or any of his minions would take such rash and murderous action as to vacate that attic room through the wholesale slaughter of its occupants, each day that draws nearer to the day of departure for the Moles makes for the possibility of circumstantial, unwonted actions — actions that put certain men and women — yourselves included — into a most precarious state. I would not wish to think that at some point between now and July 15—well, I shall not say it. What I will say is this: there is a particular person who shares that room with Newman and Chivery and several others, whose name should be of interest to you, Sheriff. His last name is Muntle. You see, Vincent, your brother George is there. He is, in fact, the longest held of the Limbo Returnees.”
As we bid our adieus to Ruth Wolf and her lover Bevan Dabber and Bevan’s father Sir Seth Dabber, Muntle sat upon the sofa in Dabber’s library, shaking his head in disbelief over what he had just been told, and asking over and over again of anyone who would hear him, “Could it be true? Is it really possible that George lives? Or is this a dream from which I will soon awake?”
Outside, I stood back and watched as Ruth was being handed into the cabriolet that would take her two companions and her to Road’s End in Black Heath. Suddenly, I was struck by something else that had come up in that most revelatory Thursday night and early Friday morning gathering of the Fortnightly Poetry League. “Miss Wolf,” I said, “would you indulge the curiosity of this scribbling and enquiring amateur historian for one last time?”
Ruth put her head out the window and nodded.
“The books that were found by the First-Generation boys in the fruit cellar — the only books that were left here when all the adults fled in that early epoch of Dingley Dell — you said that you would later tell us if they were left there by accident or were placed there on purpose.”
“On purpose, if we are to believe the story. The perpetrator’s name was Elizabeth Cochran, a young woman from Armstrong County, northeast of Pittsburgh. She is better known by her pen name, for she was a writer like you, Trimmers: Nellie Bly. She had just returned from a seventy-two-day trip around the world — a record-breaking trip — and came hither to live for a while so that she could write about a very special orphanage that she had heard was being been built here — an orphanage that would give a home to children from around the world. During her visit, Miss Bly learnt quite a bit more about the place than she ever expected, and was troubled by what she found out. The Project administrators learnt, in turn, that she intended to write an exposé, something she had gotten quite good at doing, and a serious threat was made against her life. She was quickly escorted from the valley, but not before she was able to secret her travelling library away in a place that she hoped would later be discovered by the children. To protect her identity, she removed all of the identifying bookplates. But if you look in one corner of the frontispiece for Our Mutual Friend, you will find her name written there: “Pink.” For this was her childhood nickname.