Dark Matter

“This Major Mornay. We must look closely at him, as through a prism, and see if he be refrangible or no.”

“You have the advantage of me, Doctor,” I told him. “For I confess I know not what you mean by that word.”

“What?” exclaimed Newton. “Is it possible that you are ignorant of my experimentum cruets?”

I confirmed that I was, and so we went to my house, where Newton searched in an old brass-bound chest from which he fetched a prism of his own manufacture and showed me how the ordinary daylight was a complex mixture of colours, and how, by holding a second prism within the spectrum he had made with the first, colours could be diverted or deflected from their previous course, like streams of water. This diversion Newton called refraction, and the property of refraction he called refrangibility. All prismatical colours were immutable and could not be altered by projecting upon them other colours.

“Thus you may perceive a very useful object lesson for those of us whose occupation it is to discover matters artfully or criminally concealed: that all is never as it seems; and that purity is sometimes an illusion.”

Newton allowed me to hold the second prism and to divert the colours in various directions to my heart’s content.

“It may be that Major Mornay can be similarly refracted from his normal course,” I suggested, understanding his original meaning. “But what shall we use for a prism?”

“Something broad,” mused Newton. “Something strong and pure. Yes, I do believe I have just the instrument we need. You, my dear fellow. You shall be our prism.”

“Me? But how?”

“Has Major Mornay ever noticed that he has been followed?”

“Never. He does not seem to be a particularly observant man.”

“Then you must help him. Let the Major see that he is followed and then observe how he is refracted. Will he go away from Lord Ashley’s house without going in? Will he remonstrate with you? Whom will he tell that he is being followed? And what will happen then? It may prove to be a tedious and dangerous task to do as it ought to be done, but I cannot be satisfied till we have gone through with it.”

“I am not afraid,” said I. “I shall carry both my pistols and my sword.”

“That is the spirit,” urged Newton, and clapped me on the shoulder. “If he asks why you are following him, say that you are not. It will only serve to divert him yet further. But be careful not to fight with him, though. If you kill him we shall learn nothing.”

“And if he kills me?”

“For Miss Barton’s sake, please don’t be killed, Ellis. She would hold me responsible and I should never hear the end of it. Therefore I say to you, if you pity me, Ellis, then keep yourself safe.”

“I will, sir.”

This information pleased me enormously, of course; and for the rest of the afternoon I diverted myself with a most elegant fancy in which Miss Barton pressed my most grievously wounded body to her bare bosom as Cleopatra mourned Mark Antony. Since my recovery from the ague, I saw her but once a week, at the weekly suppers at Newton’s house; this was hardly enough to satisfy one who loved her as much as I; yet there was no proper way for us to meet more than this and so I did construct many baroque but harmless fantasies of her such as this one.

But not all my fantasies of Miss Barton were so innocent as this one.

That very same evening, when Mornay came off duty, I followed him out of the Tower and straightaway I made myself as plain as a pikestaff. Not that it mattered, for he was quickly away in a hackney and heading west along Fleet Street, which I pursued in a hackney of my own. At one of the many alleys on the east side of the Fleet Ditch, between Fleet and Holborn bridges, his coach stopped. A minute later my own coach pulled up and, having handed the driver a shilling, I looked around for Mornay, but not finding him in sight, was obliged to ask the driver who had set him down. The driver snorted loudly and then shrugged.

“He didn’t come to get married, I can tell you that much,” he said sourly. “Look, mate, I just drive them. Once they’re out the back of that coach they’re invisible.”

“I’ll tell you for a penny,” offered the links boy who had carried a lighted taper in front of my coach to light our way through the dark streets.

I handed over a coin.

“He’s gone for a bit of trumpery,” said the boy. “There’s a nice buttered bun along the alley, name of Mrs. Marsh, who keeps a nunnery where the vows ain’t so strict, if you know what I mean, sir. Just ask one of those other bunters if you want to find the place.”