Даргер и Довесок - [9]

“I remind you of this, so that you may imagine the determination of the survivors to ensure that the Eiffel Tower would never be raised again. Today, we think only of the seven thousand three hundred tons of puddled iron of its superstructure, and of how much it would be worth on the open market. Then, it was seen as a monster, to be buried where it could never be found and resurrected.”

“As indeed, for all this time, it has not. Yet now, you tell me, you have found it. How?”

“By seeking for it where it would be most difficult to excavate. By asking ourselves where such a salvage operation would be most disruptive to contemporary Paris.” He nodded to Surplus, who removed a rolled map from his valise. “Have you a table?”

Madame d’Etranger clapped her hands sharply twice. From the ferny undergrowth to one end of the orangery, an enormous tortoise patiently footed forward. The top of his shell was as high as Darger’s waist, and flat.

Wordlessly, Surplus unrolled the map. It showed Paris and environs.

“And the answer?” Darger swept a hand over the meandering blue river bisecting Paris. “It is buried beneath the Seine!”

For a long moment, the lady was still. Then, “My husband will want to speak with you.”

With a rustle of silks, she left the room.

As soon as she was gone, Darger turned on his friend and harshly whispered, “Damn you, Surplus, your sullen and uncooperative attitude is queering the pitch! Have you forgotten to how behave in front of a lady?”

“She is no lady,” Surplus said stiffly. “She is a genetically modified cat. I can smell it.”

“A cat! Surely not.”

“Trust me on this one. The ears you cannot see are pointed. The eyes she takes such care to hide are a cat’s eyes. Doubtless the fingers within those gloves have retractable claws. She is a cat, and thus untrustworthy and treacherous.”

Madame d’Etranger returned. She was followed by two apes who carried a thin, ancient man in a chair between them. Their eyes were dull; they were little better than automata. After them came a Dedicated Doctor, eyes bright, who of course watched his charge with obsessive care. The widow gestured toward her husband. “C’est Monsieur.”

“Monsieur d’Etrang —” Darger began.

“Monsieur only. It’s quicker,” the ancient said curtly. “My widow has told me about your proposition.”

Darger bowed. “May I ask, sir, how long you have?”

“Twenty-three months, seven days, and an indeterminable number of hours,” the Dedicated Doctor said. “Medicine remains, alas, an inexact science.”

“Damn your impudence and shut your yap!” Monsieur snarled. “I have no time to waste on you.”

“I speak only the truth. I have no choice but to speak the truth. If you wish otherwise, please feel free to deprogram me, and I will quit your presence immediately.”

“When I die you can depart, and not a moment before.” The slight old man addressed Darger and Surplus: “I have little time, gentlemen, and in that little time I wish to leave my mark upon the world.”

“Then — forgive me again, sir, but I must say it—you have surely better things to do than to speak with us, who are in essence but glorified scrap dealers. Our project will bring its patron an enormous increase in wealth. But wealth, as you surely know, does not in and of itself buy fame.”

“But that is exactly what I intend to do — buy fame.” A glint came into Monsieur’s eyes, and one side of his mouth turned up in a mad and mirthless grin. “It is my intent to re-erect the ancient structure as the Tour d’Etranger!” 

* * *

“The trout has risen to the bait,” Darger said with satisfaction. He and Surplus were smoking cigars in their office. The office was the middle room of their suite, and a masterpiece of stage-setting, with desks and tables overflowing with papers, maps, and antiquarian books competing for space with globes, surveying equipment, and a stuffed emu.

“And yet, the hook is not set. He can still swim free,” Surplus riposted. “There was much talk of building coffer dams of such and so sizes and redirecting so-many-millions of liters of water. And yet not so much as a penny of earnest money.”

“He’ll come around. He cannot coffer the Seine segment by segment until he comes across the buried beams of the Tower. For that knowledge, he must come to us.”

“And why should he do that, rather than searching it out for himself?”

“Because, dear fellow, it is not to be found there. We lied.”

“We have told lies before, and had them turn out to be true.”

“That too is covered. Over a century ago, an eccentric Parisian published an account of how he had gone up and down the Seine with a rowboat and a magnet suspended on a long rope from a spring scale, and found nothing larger than the occasional rusted hulk of a Utopian machine. I discovered his leaflet, its pages uncut, in the Bibliothèque Nationale.”

“And what is to prevent our sponsor from reading that same chapbook?”

“The extreme unlikelihood of such a coincidence, and the fact that I later dropped the only surviving copy in all the city into the Seine.” 

* * *

That same night Darger, who was a light sleeper, was awakened by the sound of voices in the library. Silently, he donned blouse and trousers, and then put his ear to the connecting double doors.