The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,65

was insistent, however. “Why did you stop when I waved for you if you did not plan to take on a fare?”

The driver mumbled inaudibly, then reached back, found the lock with his hand, and unfastened it. Moore threw the door open and slid across the seat. Unwin hesitated, but Moore beckoned for him to follow, so he closed up his umbrella and got in.

Moore gave an address just a few blocks from Unwin’s own, then settled back into the seat. “Soon after I completed the Manual,” he said, “it was decided that only a few specially trained agents would be privy to the secrets of Chapter Eighteen, and a shorter edition was quickly printed for general use. Enormous changes were under way at the Agency at this time: a new building, the construction of the archives. Controls had to be tightened. Every copy of the original edition was cataloged and accounted for. But what the overseer and I both knew was that one copy of the book could not be so easily repressed.”

Moore tapped his own head and gave Unwin a meaningful look.

“But you would not have betrayed the Agency’s trust.”

“Of course not. I had been with the organization from the beginning, when fourteen of us shared one office heated by a coal stove. But the world had changed since then. The enemy had changed. Caligari’s Traveling Carnival had arrived, and with it the nefarious biloquist Enoch Hoffmann. The old boundaries were already eroding, and to know a thing was to put it in jeopardy. The overseer had dictated to me his profoundest secrets, and he knew that Hoffmann, if he chose, could break the lock on my brain as easily as a child tears the wrapping from a birthday present. I was a danger to the Agency, loyal or not.”

“The overseer threatened you?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“So you left. Made yourself forget everything.”

“It was easier than you might think. I had been the Agency’s first clerk. For years, I was its only clerk. I had developed memory exercises to retain all the information entrusted to me. Imaginary palaces, archives of the mind. They were structural; I could feel their weight in my head. The supports had been bending and groaning for a long time. I had only to loosen a brick or two, and let the rest collapse.” Moore leaned forward and said to the driver, “You there, can’t you go a bit faster?”

Unwin peered through the window. The streets were uncrowded, but despite Moore’s insistence the driver maintained his pace, keeping always to one lane, never hurrying to beat a traffic signal.

Moore fell back into the seat, shaking his head. “I can’t pretend to understand your role in all this, Mr. Unwin. But I think whoever has you on this case put you there because you know so little. How else to explain it? The enemy would not suspect your importance, even were he to search every corner of your mind.”

“That’s changing, though.”

Moore nodded. “You know the dangers, but the dangers know you, too. We will have to act swiftly, now. Our investigation depends upon it.”

“Investigation”: it was just the word Unwin had been trying to avoid. How long now had he been doing the work of a detective, in spite of himself? Ever since he had stolen the phonograph record from Lamech’s office. Or longer: since he first began to shadow the woman in the plaid coat.

“There’s a document,” Unwin said. “A phonograph record. I’ve played it, but I can’t understand the recording—it’s just a lot of garbled noises. I think Lamech intended to give it to me before he was killed.”

Moore’s face darkened. “It must have come from the Agency archives. That’s where the overseer was experimenting with the new methodologies. You’ll have to bring the record down there if you want to learn what it is.”

Moore stopped talking and turned to rub condensation from the window with his sleeve. He gazed out at the street, frowning. Unwin saw the problem, too: their driver was headed the wrong way. Where was the man taking them? Perhaps a reward had been posted for Unwin’s capture, and the cabbie meant to collect.

“I’m not paying you to take the scenic route,” Moore said. “Left, man. Turn left!”

The driver turned right. On the next block, they saw a car that had swerved off the road and struck a fire hydrant. Water shot in torrents into the air, cascading over the vehicle, flooding the gutter and part of the street. A