The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,79

liminal directive is that?”

The underclerk clapped Unwin on the shoulder, then shuffled away into the dark. A minute later Unwin heard a door open and close, and he was alone again with the sleeping underclerks.

Unwin sat on the edge of the bed. He should have been exhausted, but his brain was moving as quickly as his feet had been. The underclerk had repeated the phrases the taxi driver and his passengers had used to identify one another. They were swimming in the same strange dream—but for what purpose had Hoffmann devised it? Hopefully, Moore had made progress with his investigation.

Unwin looked back toward the center of the archive and saw Miss Palsgrave seated in her pink chair. She wore a lavender dress, and her hair was all soft brown curls. From this distance her eyes appeared as dark hollows. She seemed to be watching him.

Unwin stood and began to speak over the distance. “Miss Palsgrave, I—” but she immediately put a finger to her lips.

The nearest underclerks turned in their beds, and some mumbled in their sleep. One adjusted his headphones and said, “Trying to work here.”

Miss Palsgrave began to turn the crank on her phonograph. When she finished, she set the needle down and Cleo Greenwood’s voice, accompanied by an accordion, filled the archive again. Those underclerks who had been disturbed were perfectly quiet now, and Unwin, too, felt the effects of the music.

He set down his briefcase, switched off the light, and settled back onto the bed. It was comfortable despite its small size. He kicked off his shoes without bothering to untie them and swung his legs up onto the mattress. The pillow was very soft, and the blanket, once he had slipped beneath it, was the finest, most luxurious blanket in the world. It might have been made of silk, he thought.

He took off his hat and dropped it beside his shoes. He would never need any of those things again. He would stay down here where no one knew him and sleep through the rest of his days, and when he died, they could tuck him away into a long file drawer, write his name on the label, and close it up forever. His mind lingered for a time in the hinterlands of sleep, words drifting over the border as though on a warm wind, unfastened from their meanings. He had almost let the wind take him when a few of the words appeared in boldface and he woke himself by speaking aloud.

“Papers and pigeons,” he said, and knew he had forgotten something important.

Fighting the effects of Miss Greenwood’s mesmeric voice, he reached over the side of the bed and undid the clasp on his briefcase, found the record from Lamech’s office, and drew it from its sleeve. He fitted it onto the turntable of the electric phonograph by the bed, fumbled with the machine’s controls, and set it playing. Then he found the headphones and put them on.

Miss Greenwood’s voice faded, and with it the somber strains of the accordion music. He heard the familiar static, the shushing, the cadenced crackling. It was a language of sorts, but Unwin understood none of it. Then he stopped hearing the sounds and began instead to see them. The static had shape to it, dimensions; it rose like a waterfall in reverse and then froze in place. More walls leapt up, and in the one before him was a window, in the one behind him a door, and lining the other two were rows of books with blue and brown spines. The static spilled over the floor and made a carpet, made shadows of chairs and then made chairs.

The crackling sound was rain tapping against the window. The shushing was the shushing of secrets in a desk, and on the desk were a green-shaded lamp and a typewriter. A man was seated behind it with his eyes closed, breathing very slowly.

“Hello, Mr. Unwin,” Edward Lamech said.

“Sir,” said Unwin, but Lamech raised his hand.

“Do not bother speaking,” he said. “I cannot hear you. Nor, for that matter, can I be certain that it’s you, Mr. Unwin, to whom I am speaking. In recording this session, I am merely preparing for one of many contingencies. I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to place this file directly into your hands. If I do not, or if it falls instead into the hands of our enemies, then . . .” Lamech wrinkled his considerable brow. “Then they will already have