The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,91

seven years ago? It’s a dangerous job. I don’t have to tell you that. You have a wife, children.”

“A grandchild, too,” Lamech added. “Little girl, four years old. Wants to be like her grandpa when she grows up.”

Arthur clicked his tongue against his teeth, signaling approval. He set his hands down on the square of desk he had cleared. “But something has to go wrong, eventually.”

“Eventually,” Lamech agreed.

Just then a pigeon came in through a window, and Lamech ducked as it landed on the desk in an uproar of scattered feathers and paper. Arthur steadied the bird with one hand and got hold of its leg with the other. A tiny canister was fixed to the pigeon’s leg; Arthur opened it and withdrew a rolled slip of paper.

Carrier pigeons, Unwin thought. The dreamed equivalent of the Agency’s messengers.

Relieved of its charge, the pigeon flapped off and found its nest among the file drawers.

“It’s from your pal down the hall, Alice Cassidy,” Arthur said, reading the note. “Her agent’s been busy lately.”

Lamech leaned closer. “Sam Pith? What’s he up to?”

“Got him staking out the old Baker place. We think it might be where Hoffmann’s holed up these days. Time we got to the bottom of whatever all the chatter’s about.” He set the note down, and it curled again. “How’s the weather out there?”

Lamech sat back in his chair. “Clear skies and a balmy breeze,” he lied. “Sunshine, warm on the face. Piles of red leaves. Children run, laugh at themselves. Laugh at the whole damn thing.”

Arthur frowned and scratched the side of his face with one big fingernail. “What about your case, Ed?”

“Sivart,” Lamech began.

“Taken a powder, has he?”

The watcher got to his feet. He moved his jaw from side to side, as though he wanted to spit. “Well, you already know. You always already know. Why do you bother with these appointments? I’ll send a bird next time. I’ve got work to do.”

“Sit down.”

Lamech cursed under his breath and sat with his arms crossed.

Arthur smiled peaceably. “I wanted to hear about it, straight from the source. Was he angry? Was he furious? How furious was he? Tell me about it.”

“Whoever took my copy of the Manual turned around and gave it to him. Unexpurgated edition.”

A phone rang. Arthur dug through the papers on his desk while Lamech looked on, incredulous. The telephone was identical in appearance to every other telephone Unwin had seen in the Agency offices, but there was something different about the sound of this one’s bell. It echoed as though from the far end of a tunnel.

Arthur snatched up the receiver. “Yes. . . . What? . . . No, listen. Listen to me. . . . Hey, listen! I don’t care if he eats the same thing all next week, too. Keep on him, he’s your man. Check your frequencies. . . . Recheck them, then. I’ll do it myself next time.” He hung up.

“Funny,” Lamech said.

Arthur sucked his teeth and said, “That Miss Palsgrave is a wizard with the gadgetry. This is our latest development. Turns out the recording thingum can be plugged into the transmission gizmo, then spliced to a telephone’s domajig. Means instant communication between the oneiric mind and a mundane pay phone. Connection’s a little spotty, still.”

Lamech shook his head at all this.

“Nikolai there,” Arthur went on, nodding at the phone, “was at the Municipal Museum today. He thinks he’s found Edwin Moore. And it looks like our old friend was in touch with Sivart just before he went AWOL.”

“What, you think it’s connected?”

“Listen, Ed, I need help here. If Hoffmann gets too deep into Sivart’s head, it’s trouble for all of us. We need to find him.”

“Hoffmann’s keeping himself checked out. Even if we found him, we wouldn’t be able to wake him. Sivart’s trapped.”

“Who said anything about waking him?” Arthur said.

Lamech shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Then he looked around, as though something had startled him.

“What’s wrong?” Arthur said.

“Thought I heard—”

“Focus, Ed.”

Lamech grumbled. “Hoffmann’s up to something, something big, November twelfth big. But it sounds like Cassidy and Pith know more than I do. I hear Sam’s been working with you directly. With Sivart stuck where he is, we need to throw off the opposition, keep them guessing. So we do something we’ve never done before—and that means breaking some rules, Arthur. We promote someone. Someone completely incapable of solving a mystery. That should buy us the time we need to find Sivart. The harder their agents work to