With Ada in tow, Alden once again descended the stairs to the laboratory. The maid seemed a little nervous, but that was quite understandable given her last visit to the place. As the final door opened, the cluttered sprawl of the laboratory spread out before them. “Go ahead, Ada. Take a look around. Tell me if there’s anything out of place.” Ada nodded, though she was clearly avoiding looking towards the big desk and the pile of ashes next to it. Instead she started her search going counter-clockwise around the room, directly away from the desk. On occasion, she reached out and ran a finger over some surface or piece of equipment as if checking it for dust. But given her work as a maid, that was probably more force of habit than anything else. She did stop at the analytical engine, though. “Poor man never got to run his last set of calculations.” She said sadly. “What do you mean?” “There’s a set of calculations all clicked in place on the machine, but they in’t been run.” “Hmmm… Perhaps it would be helpful if we could work out what exactly was being calculated…” “Gravitational repulsion.” Alden did a small double take. “I’m… I’m sorry, how could you possibly know that?” “I don’t know my letters, but I know my numbers just fine. See that there bunch of numbers and things? That’s the ‘gravitational constant’. Dr. Rawleigh never told me nothing specific about what he’s working on, but he knew I liked numbers, so he told me about some of the numbers he worked with. That bunch tells you how much two things pull together if you know how heavy they is and how far apart.” “But you said this was calculating gravitational repulsion.” “That’s right, sir. On account of one of these two variable inputs here, sir. That one is set to calculate different distances, but the other is set to calculate how heavy a thing is, and it’s set as a negative number, sir. So it would make the gravity push apart, not together, like.” “So he was working on something to do with phlogiston? I don’t believe anything else has negative mass… Did Dr. Rawleigh work on airships?” “Don’t know, sir. But he was working with gravity and velocity and momentum a lot when he did his numbers, sir.” “But airships don’t total negative mass… They’d just keep rising until they vanished up into the aether if they did that…” “Don’t rightly know about that, sir. I just knows my numbers, is all.” “Do you think you could run these calculations and get the results, Ada?” “Maybe. I’ve never run the engine myself, but I’ve seen Dr. Rawleigh do it plenty of times. It would probably take me a while to get it working…” “In your own time then, Ada. Once I leave for the day, I want you to run these calculations. You can tell me about the result the next time we meet, or send a message for me.” “Just as you say, sir.” “Good. Let’s carry on the search.” Ada kept making her way around the laboratory. She occasionally remarked on things having been moved about since the last time she cleaned up in there, but she also said that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. However, when she got up on a small platform to inspect some of the machinery on the ceiling, she called out. “You should come up here, sir. There’s something strange.” Alden followed her up onto the platform, and found her standing next to some sort of device that seemed to be taking in air near the top of the ceiling and running it through some sort of complex machinery. Near the front was a big dial with a needle that currently hovered between zero and one on the scale it displayed, but the scale went all the way up to twenty, with the white backing gradually shifting into red as it went. “Any idea what this device is for?” He asked. “No sir. I just know that if it ever went up over three, Dr. Rawleigh would start the ventilation fans.” “Perhaps it’s measuring some dangerous substance in the air, then?” “Maybe. But that’s not the strange bit. There’s something behind the face of the dial, see? It’s actually screwed into the workings of it, sir. That wasn’t there the last time I cleaned.” Looking at the back of it, Alden did indeed find a little device that looked rather out of place. It was well concealed, only visible if you looked around the back of the dial. “Curious. Could Dr. Rawleigh have installed this here himself?” “Could be, but it wasn’t here last time I dusted up here, sir.” “Be a dear and fetch me a screw-driver, would you?” “Of course, sir.” As Ada rushed off, Alden took a closer look at the little device. Its shape and design didn’t really fit with the rest of the devices here, and a small, cloth-insulated wire extended from the base of it, cleverly concealed behind piping and tubes, which eventually connected to a long piece of metal. “…Like an aetheric transmission antenna… But such a short antenna couldn’t possibly transmit anything very far… The one they’re building in front of the palace is taller than the Tower…” “Screwdriver, sir.” “Thank you, Ada.” Carefully unscrewing and removing the device, Alden realized it actually had a little switch that had extended into the internal workings of the dial. Flicking it didn’t appear to do anything, but when he attempted to flick it back and forth at a short interval, it sparked ever so slightly in his hand and made him drop the device with a curse. “Blasted thing! What on…” He fell silent as he looked back at the dial. Ideas were percolating inside his head. “Ada, fetch me something that will burn easily. Some dry wood or a big sheaf of paper. Matches as well, and a big metal pan or tray to put it on…” Ada bustled off once more, returning in short order with a large pile of coarse note paper and a metal bucket with a long handle. “Dr. Rawleigh used this to burn his notes. The ones he didn’t want to keep. He lit them on fire and held them up to the ventilation fan so he wouldn’t get smoke everywhere.” “Perfect, thank you Ada.” Alden carefully stuffed the metal bucket with paper, making sure the mess of papers was packed loosely enough to burn well. Then he lit the whole thing on fire and held up the bucket by the handle, placing it directly beneath the air intake for the device. At first, nothing much happened, but as the paper began to burn more intensely, the needle gradually moved up to one, then to two. As the fire abated, it gradually moved back down again, eventually settling back to almost the same level it started at. “It’s a phlogiston detector of some sort. It measures the phlogiston content in the air.” “What does that mean, sir?” “It means that this little device that was on the back of it was made to react to a sharp but short-lived increase in phlogiston levels. Like from an intense but very brief fire…” “Like Dr. Rawleigh burning up?” “Just so… Whoever is behind the death of Dr. Rawleigh, they wanted to know exactly when it happened. And they must have gained access to this laboratory at least once, possibly multiple times.” “Then it really was a murder, sir?” “So it seems, Ada. So it seems.” Ada looked rather distraught for a moment, then her face grew hard. “Whoever did this, sir, you better hunt them down. Dr. Rawleigh wasn’t a cheery sort, but he was a good man. And whatever bastards did this to him, they deserve to swing for what they done.” “I fully intend to do my best to bring them to light, Ada. Don’t you worry. But for now, I’d ask that you keep what we’ve learned here to yourself. There’s more going on here than meets the eye, and I think we would do well to move carefully.” “Whatever you think is best, sir.” “Let’s keep looking. There might be more to find, here.” With a determined nod, Ada resumed her search of the laboratory. When she got to the pile of ashes that was all that remained of Dr. Rawleigh, she was visibly distraught. Still, she persevered. “It is strange that the safe is shut, sir. He usually never shut it while he was busy working. He needed to keep his notes handy to read them and change them and all. That’s why he wouldn’t let anyone down here what could read when he was working.” “Is that so? But according to Mr. Hope, Mrs. Baines opened the safe and confirmed that nothing appeared missing when the constabulary were conducting their investigation.” “I’m just saying as I sees it, sir. There’s a big empty space on the desk, too. Like he’d cleared it to lay out his notes. But there’s no notes th…” She suddenly fell silent, which rather drew Alden’s attention. “Anything wrong, Ada?” “His pen in’t here, sir!” Alden looked over at the five pens occupying the pen stand. “There seems to be plenty of pens.” “Not the writing pens, sir! His gold pen in’t here!” “He had a pen made of gold?” “Gold and steel, sir, but mostly gold. With a big old moonstone set into the back of it, large as the tip of your thumb and pretty as anything.” “A gold pen set with a large semi-precious stone sounds rather cumbersome to write with.” “He never wrote with it, sir. It was a keepsake or a lucky charm or some such. He said having it around inspired him. I think he was given it as a gift when he got his doctorate, sir.” “Did he tell you as much?” “No sir, but it had a date stamped on the gold, and it’s the same date what’s on the big fancy bit of paper he keeps framed in his bedroom, sir. And all along the gold was a bunch of words I think was names, but I couldn’t read any of those, of course.” “Of course… And he always brought it with him when he worked in the lab?” “Always, sir. Brought it down every single day and put it in the pen stand. Regular as clockwork. Don’t think it was ever anywhere else but here in the laboratory, in his personal safe in the bedroom, or in his pocket.” Alden nodded thoughtfully. “Well then… I really wish I didn’t have to do this…” Feeling more than a little uncomfortable, Alden once again started sifting through the ashes of the late Dr. Rawleigh. He was more thorough this time, and he found a few small bits of metal slag, about large enough for buttons, but nothing that could possibly have been a golden pen. “No sign… You said he kept it in his personal safe otherwise?” “That’s right, sir.” “Probably no way to check if it’s in there…” “Sure there is, sir. I know the combination. It’s where he kept his tincture bottle and his pocket watches. I needed to know the combination to put his things away.” “It strikes me that the late Dr. Rawleigh trusted you a great deal, Ada.” “He was a good man, sir. I only worked with him a few years, but he took care of me.” “Very well, let’s go take a look at his safe.” As the two of them went through the arduous process of unlocking each door in turn and locking it again behind them, Alden took note of the scratched-up lock plates. You would have to be very careless with your keys to scratch them this badly simply in the process of unlocking them. “Tell me, Ada, when did you first notice these scratches?” “Oh, I think I first spotted them two or three weeks ago. But they wasn’t so bad then. They’s much worse now.” “How very curious…” They made their way up to Dr. Rawleigh’s bedroom, where Ada dutifully entered the combination to his personal safe, which was a lot smaller and simpler than the big safe in the lab. Opening it up revealed a number of very fine pocket watches, a few pieces of personal correspondence mostly related to property taxes and minor banking matters, and a large tincture bottle. It completely failed to reveal any golden pen. “Well then…” Alden said thoughtfully. “Despite what the constabulary might have believed, it appears that something was indeed stolen…” “But surely they can’t have killed Dr. Rawleigh just to get his pen?” “No, I very much doubt that they did. But murderers are hardly known for their strong moral fibre. I suspect such a glittering treasure just sitting right out in the open might have proven to be too strong a temptation for the murderer to resist. And I’m hoping it will prove to be his undoing…” As he mused upon the matters at hand, Alden reached into the safe and picked up the tincture bottle. Like most tincture bottles, it was made of ceramic to keep the light out. Pulling the stopper, he took a deep inhale of the tincture’s scent. It was indeed saffron and thornroot, and very potent by the smell of it. Taking another deep breath, Alden could feel as a wave of calm seemed to wash across his mind. “This is a highly concentrated tincture. He really took this every day?” “A full tincturer’s measure, sir. Every day. From this here glass.” She showed him a tiny crystal drinking glass, perfectly sized to hold a single measure. “And you’re sure this is the tincture he took?” “Very sure, sir. The smell is hard to mistake.” “Remarkable. It’s a wonder his heart didn’t just stop beating. I suppose he must have built up a partial resistance to it over the years, but I cannot imagine a man so heavily dosed with saffron and thornroot could simply go up in flames… There’s something very strange happening here, and I shall do my utmost to get to the bottom of it.” As Alden returned home that evening, he was unsurprised to see the light still shining in Mrs. Tatter’s office. The sun hadn’t even fully set yet, after all. What did surprise him was the light shining from the little side window of the workroom. Deciding he had better check on his new employee, Alden went through the closed shop and into the back room, passing by the large storage area to get to the workroom itself. There, he found Harold Dawkins deeply immersed in some complex process of tinctury. “Working late, Mr. Dawkins? I didn’t think there was enough work piling up to keep you here this long.” Mr. Dawkins jumped slightly, though to his credit he managed to contain his reaction enough not to knock anything over or spill anything. After making a few quick checks to make sure nothing of his work would burn or spoil if he took his attention from it for a few moments, he turned around with a slightly guilty expression marring his delicate features. “Mr. Stowe! I wasn’t expecting you back so soon!” “The sun is setting, Mr. Dawkins.” “My word, is it really? I must have lost track of time.” “Happens to the best of us, lad. So, what has you so busy? These are some exotic ingredients you have here. In fact, I don’t fully recognize all of them.” “Oh, this? I must admit, this isn’t work I’m doing for the shop. After I finished my tasks for the day I took the opportunity to work on some personal projects. I do apologize.” “Nothing to apologize for, lad. In fact, as long as you pay for your own ingredients and reagents and you don’t break anything, feel free to use the workroom for any purpose that takes your fancy.” “Really? That’s very generous of you, Mr. Stowe. Thank you ever so much.” “Think nothing of it, lad. So, what are you working on?” “Just some matters of personal interest, Mr. Stowe. Continuing my personal research from my days at the institute.” “Good lad. It’s that kind of personal initiative that improves and expands the field of tinctury as a science. Do you need help with anything?” “I was just finishing up, Mr. Stowe. But thank you for offering.” “Very well then. In that case, please provide your report on the day’s business.” Harold Dawkins gave a quick recounting of the business of the day. Orders received, orders completed, work performed. He also provided minute samples of all the tinctures he had bottled that day for Alden to inspect. All told, Alden could find no flaws with the young man’s work. He seemed highly competent and very efficient. “I must say, Mr. Dawkins, I’m rather impressed. Despite never having worked in a commercial tinctury before, you have risen to the occasion with aplomb. I shall have to keep a close eye on you, lest someone else realize your worth and lure you away with a better offer.” Mr. Dawkins actually blushed faintly from the praise. “Little risk of that, Mr. Stowe. The pay you are offering is extremely generous, and allowing me to use the workroom for my personal projects is a far greater perk than you might realize. I’m quite certain I’ll be working for you for as long as you’ll have me.” “Glad to hear it, lad. I’m more than happy to have you with us.” Alden turned to leave, but he stopped short in the doorway. “Tell me, lad, in your professional opinion as a tincturer, what do you think would be the long-term effect of taking a full measure of concentrated tincture of saffron and thornroot every single day?” “Every day? Why, I’d worry that your heart might just stop beating on its own! But if it proves survivable, I would expect it to result in an extremely even temper with a near-total absence of emotional impulses. Depending on the underlying temperament of the person, I would assume this would result in either severe depression or intense personal ambition.” “And would you believe such a person would be at risk of spontaneous combustion?” “With their sanguine humour so harshly suppressed? Never.” “And if, despite all this, they nevertheless were to combust?” “What an outlandish scenario… In such an event, I would highly suspect a hoax or faulty information. But if it was all true and correct, the only possible answer I could imagine would be that the person was suffering from some unknown disease, or perhaps had been given some sort of novel poison I have never heard of…” “Yes…” Alden muttered thoughtfully. “Yes, that was my thought as well…”