“Damned smokeless fuel ration’s been cut again. You can only burn so much during a smog, or you run out and then it’s just too bad. Especially if the pipes burst. But when old father smog rolls down the Back Bay, you’d rather not have been born, lest pipes of a different kind should go pop.” He coughed for effect and patted his chest. “You speak the King’s English remarkably well for someone who doesn’t know a blessed thing. Where are you from, really?”
She put the book down on the heap on the sofa. “As far as I can tell, about ten miles and two hundred years away,” she said, feeling slightly light-headed at the idea of telling him even this much.
“Not France? Are you sure you don’t work for the dauphin’s department?” He cocked his head on one side, parrotlike.
“Not France. Where I come from they chopped his head off a long time ago.” She watched him carefully.
“Chopped his
“Thank you.” She accepted it.
“If this is madness, it’s a most extraordinary delusion,” he said, nodding. “Would you be so good as to tell me more?”
“In due course. I have a couple of questions for you, however.” She took a decorous sip of the tea. “Specifically, taking on trust the question of your belief in my story, you might want to contemplate some of the obstacles a traveler from, um, another world, might face in creating an identity for themselves in this one. And especially in the process of buying a house and starting a business, when one is an unaccompanied female in a strange country. I don’t know much about the legal status of women here other than that it differs quite significantly from where I come from. I think I’m probably going to need a lawyer, and possibly a proxy. Which is why I thought of you.”
“I see.” Burgeson was almost going cross-eyed in his attempts to avoid interrupting her. “Pray tell, why me?”
“Because an officer of the law recommended you.” She grinned. “I figure a fence who is also an informer is probably a safer bet than someone who’s so incompetent that he hasn’t reached a working accommodation with the cops.” There were other reasons too, reasons connected with Miriam’s parents and upbringing, but she wasn’t about to give him that kind of insight into her background. Trust went only so far, after all.
“A fence—” He snorted. “I’m not dishonest or unethical, ma’am.”
“You just sell books that the Lord Provost’s Court wants burned,” she said, with an amused tone. “And the police recommend you. Do I need to draw a diagram?”
He sighed. “Guilty as charged. If you aren’t French, are you sure you aren’t a Black Chamber agent playing a double game?”
“What’s the Black Chamber?”
“Oh.” Abruptly he looked gloomy. “I suppose I should also have sold you an almanac.”
“That might have been a good idea,” she agreed.
“Well, now.” He brushed papers from the piano stool and sat on it, opposite her, his teacup balanced precariously on a bony knee. “Supposing I avoid saying anything that might incriminate myself. And supposing we take as a matter of faith your outrageous claim to be a denizen of another, ah, world? Like this one, only different. No
“Connections.” Miriam relaxed a little. “I need to establish a firm identity here, as a woman of good character. I have some funds to invest—you’ve seen the form they take—but mostly…hmm. In the place I come from, we do things differently. And while we undoubtedly do some things worse, everything I have seen so far convinces me that we are far,
“I said I’d need a lawyer, and perhaps a proxy to sign documents for my business. I forgot to mention that I will also want a patent clerk and a front man for purposes of licensing my inventions.”
“Inventions. Such as?” He sounded skeptical.
“Oh, many things.” She shrugged. “Mostly little things. A machine for binding documents together in an office that is cheap to run, compact, and efficient—so much so that where I come from they’re almost as common as pens. A better design of brake mechanism for automobiles. A better type of wood screw, a better kind of electric cell. But one or two big things, too. A drug that can cure most fulminating infections rapidly and effectively, without side effects. A more efficient engine for aviation.”
Burgeson stared at her. “Incredible,” he said sharply. “You have some proof that you can come up with all these miracles?”
Miriam reached into her bag and pulled out her second weapon, one that had cost her nearly its own weight in gold, back home, a miniature battery-powered gadget with a four-inch color screen. “When I leave, you can start by looking at that book. In the meantime, here’s a toy we use for keeping children quiet on long journeys where I come from. How about some light Sunday entertainment?” And she hit the “start” button on the DVD player.
Three hours and at least a pint of tea later, Miriam stepped down from a hackney carriage outside the imposing revolving doors of the Brighton Hotel. Behind her, the driver grunted as he heaved her small trunk down from the luggage rack—“if you’re going to try to pass in polite society you’ll need one, no lady of quality would travel without at least a change of day wear and her dinner dress,” Burgeson had told her as he gave her the trunk—“and you need to be at least respectable enough to book a room.” Even if the trunk had been pawned by a penniless refugee and cluttered up a pawnbroker’s cellar for a couple of years, it looked like luggage.
“Thank you,” Miriam said as graciously as she could, and tipped the driver a sixpence. She turned back to the door to see a bellhop already lifting her trunk on his handcart. “I say! You there.”
The concierge at the front desk didn’t turn his nose up at a single woman traveling alone. The funereal outfit Burgeson had scared up for her seemed to forbid all questions, especially after she had added a severe black cap and a net veil in place of her previous hat. “What does milady require?” he asked politely.
“I’d like to take one of your first-class suites. For myself. I travel with no servants, so room service will be required. I will be staying for at least a week, and possibly longer while I seek to buy a house and put the affairs of my late husband in order.”
“Ah, by all means. I believe room fourteen is available, m’lady. Perhaps you would like to view it? If it is to your satisfaction…”
“I’m sure it will be,” she said easily. “And if it isn’t you’ll see to it, I’m sure, won’t you? How much will it be?”
He stiffened slightly. “A charge of two pounds and eleven shillings a night applies for room and board, ma’am,” he said severely.
“Hmm.” She sucked on her lower lip. “And for a week? Or longer?”
“I believe we could come down from that a little,” he said, less aggressively. “Especially if provision was made in advance.”
“Two a night.” Miriam palmed a huge, gorgeously colored ten-pound note onto the front desk and paused. “Six shillings on top for the service.”
The concierge smiled and nodded at her. “Then it will be an initial four nights?” he asked.
“I will pay in advance, if I choose to renew it,” she replied tonelessly.
“I’ll see to it myself.” He bowed, then stepped out from behind his desk. “If I may show you up to your suite myself, m’lady?”
Once she was alone in the hotel suite, Miriam locked the door on the inside, then removed her coat and hung it up to dry in the niche by the door. “I’m impressed,” she said aloud. “It’s huge.” She peeled off her gloves and slung them over a brass radiator that gurgled beneath the shuttered windows, then unbuttoned her jacket and collar and knelt to unlace her ankle boots—her feet were beginning to feel as if they were molded to the inside of the damp, cold leather.
