The Policeman of Secrets

Chapter 5 Part 2

The venerable Captain Plunkett saw to it that Balthazar and Solomon were well fed as they woke aboard the Empress of India. A sturdy breakfast was accompanied by a better than average wine at the captain’s insistence, and the count followed the meal with a small cigar—his last, he said sadly—before Solomon demanded a closer examination of the book that had thrust him from what he now thought of as his previous life.

Balthazar laid it on the stateroom’s small table, clearing a space among the remains of their food. “Take a good look, but I will stop you if I see anything... untoward happening.”

Solomon bent over the pages and began reading. At first glance, Theories of Mortalityseemed as dull as the other books by Richard Lenksham he had come across. Its first chapter involved a lonely pastor questioning his role after being abandoned by the church, a question the author posed in weighty and dry prose.

This was the first book Solomon had read in many months, and he knew it would not take long for his headaches to begin. The text was clear and reasonably well printed but his vision would soon waver, his eye would water, and pain would spread throughout his skull. Once again he cursed his wound.

He skimmed through the pages as fast as he could, but the pain was fierce by the time he found the first sign of anything unusual. It was on the penultimate page, in an overlong paragraph describing the pastor’s death and hoped-for rebirth: a wholly unconnected string of letters, grouped in blocks of five. It appeared to be gibberish, but this had to be what Balthazar had been seeking. Several lines later there were more such combinations, and then a whole paragraph of them, the typesetting haphazard and hurried. Richard Lenksham, Solomon guessed, must have decided on the code late in the writing process, and perhaps thought that the common reader would never make it this far in the book, or would put the bizarre words down to a poor printer. Maybe Lenksham had planned for the book to reach some friends, or even one of his regular readers, who would have taken the time to decipher these special lines.

His fingers shaking with the thumping in his head, Solomon turned to the last page, which was filled with further sets of five letters crammed onto the paper. At the bottom of the page were two lines written by hand, clearly by somebody with no time to spare. The ink was blotched and smeared but readable enough: I did not know the purpose of this hateful magic when I helped create it. May God forgive me for what I have done, and may He guide you to the answer in these lines.

Solomon raised his head and gratefully closed his eye, massaging his temples to alleviate the pain. It was some moments before he could speak. “I cannot look at it any more. My damned wound, you know.”

The count gave a sympathetic look. “But you have seen enough to grasp its significance? He had a rare brain, Lenksham, and ministries called on him all the time for his expertise in mathematics, the sciences, and what-have-you. He researched any number of arcane arts, and our masters were quick to contact him when they wanted to control the population. Fortunately for us, it seems he had a change of heart.”

He picked up the book, weighing it thoughtfully in his hand. “It would have helped enormously if he could have simply explained how the Assembly worked in plain English, but all his government work involved codes and secrets, and I expect he could not break the habit. His publisher was an ill-funded house that printed verbatim anything he gave them, as you will know from his pitiful early works. Clearly they did not ask any questions about the final few pages. By all accounts, a handful of copies reached his subscribers as he intended, but either they could not decipher the code or did not understand what it was. After Doctor Flair killed him, the Arcanum made sure that his death was described as the suicide of a broken alcoholic. He was painted as a lunatic, his last writings the ramblings of a man in his cups. Anybody still of a mind to read his books probably dismissed the last paragraphs as proof of his insanity. But just in case one copy should reach somebody observant enough to know a code when they see one, the Arcanum have been disposing of any they could find, and we have been trying to stop them.”