To relate further details were idle, since all that I observed there was more or less as Mr. Partry has led you to believe. My Suspicions, at least in so far as concern the Tatler-Lock and the operations of the Auction, are proven to be unfounded. The chest is in the Auction-room, awaiting the attention of the Buyer. Partry has gone away to wherever he spends his nights. During our absence Dr. Waterhouse fell asleep in the middle of his Watch: in the Army, a flogging offence, in the Clubb, I know not what. I shall take the first part of the night-watch myself and awaken him at the stroke of two.

Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac did not fail to awaken me at the time mentioned. I have obsvd. naught since. But I should not be perfectly honest if I stated that my eyes were open for the whole duration of my watch.

Dr. Waterhouse

If Brother Daniel had found the Discipline to keep his eyes open, he might have seen candle-light in the Tatler-Lock during the wee hours. For Mr. Partry called at ten of the clock, bringing the News that a five-guinea piece (sic) has been laid down in the Auction-room. Someone has perused the first page of the Receipt, and liked what he has seen; I’d wager five guineas of my own that he’ll offer us another such Coin for another Page.

Orney

Sent Partry to the Tatler-Lock with Page 2; but I do not like the Direction we are taking. What is to prevent the buyer from simply copying out the Receipt and then paying us nothing?

Threader

Lights have been burning behind the rude Veil of the Window in Question for better than an hour, which would seem to confirm Mr. Threader’s fears. I can allay these with a few particulars as to the Chest. As shall be obvious to anyone who gives it more than a few moments’ inspection, it has a false bottom. There is a locked compartment beneath. This can only be opened with a key, which we have not offered yet. If the buyer reads all the way to the end of Page 4 he shall reach a Notation to the effect that an Ingredient, essential to the Receipt, is concealed in the bottom of the Chest. Merely to copy out all four pages shall avail him nothing, save writer’s cramp. He must have the Chest and Key, and these he shall not get until he pays for them.

I also remind Mr. Threader that the purpose of the exercise is not to get paid, but to ensnare the Buyer.

Peter Hoxton, Esq.

Nothing.

Orney

Mr. Orney would have won his wager had anyone been foolhardy enough to accept it, for Partry reports a second five-guinea piece has been laid on top of the first. I have taken the liberty of sending down Page 3.

Kikin

Further Lucubrations obsvd. I suspect the Buyer is copying or translating the Receipt.

Peter Hoxton, Esq.

The point is conceded, that our Undertaking is a snare and not a legitimate commercial Transaction. But as this pile of five-guinea pieces ascends toward the sky I find myself sorely tempted to enter into the business of selling philosophical Arcana. Partry reports that the price offered is now fifteen (sic) guineas. I sent him back with the fourth and final Page.

Threader

Curtain was open in early eve. and I glimpsed our dark Philosopher at work once again. He goes hooded-this explains why I have not been able to see his face. Perhaps he is pox-marked, or burned in an Alchemical mishap. A gray goose-quill bobbed in the gloom next to his shoulder as he stain’d page after page of a Waste-book with ink. Later the curtain was dropp’d again, and my view replaced with dim flickerings that lasted until 11:12:30.

Peter Hoxton, Esq.

Disaster. Partry reports the five-guinea pieces are all gone, replaced by a silver penny.

Orney

I beg to differ with Brother Norman. This is not a disaster, but a clear sign from the Buyer that he has correctly decyphered the Receipt and understands that it is not useful to him without the Ingredient that is supposed to be contained in the bottom of the chest. I have sent Partry back to the Tatler-Lock with the key. Henceforth I shall remain here at the Main-Topp until the culmination of the Stake-out.

Dr. Waterhouse

Mr. Partry has been at the Tatler-Lock since day-break. He has persuaded Mr. Knockmealdown to allow him to sit vigil in a store-room directly beneath the place of the Auction. Such are the floor-boords of that edifice that not even a cat could stalk from the door to the table without producing a fusillade of cracks and booms. As soon as Mr. Partry hears anything of that nature he is to-

“Your pint, sirrah.”

“That is very kind of you, Saturn,” said Daniel, setting the quill into its pot, and glancing once more at the distant window where Partry was puffing on his pipe. “How did you guess I was in the mood for a pint?”

“I am in the mood for one,” Saturn said.

“Then why didn’t you bring up two?”

“You forget that I am a Paragon of Sobriety. I shall derive my pleasure from watching you drink yours.”

“I am happy to oblige,” Daniel said, and took a swallow. “There has been no signal from Mr. Partry,” he said, for Saturn’s dark eyes had strayed to the page of the Log, still dewy with unblotted ink. “I was merely refreshing the account.”

“I must ask, why you do not write it in the Real Character,” Saturn teased him, “if it is as excellent as all that.”

“It is excellent. A much better way of setting down knowledge than Latin or English. Which is why I have devoted some years to making it more excellent yet, by transliterating it into numbers.”

“Ah,” said Saturn, “are you saying, then, that the cypher in which the women of Bridewell punch the cards, is a descendant of the Real Character?” By now he had changed places with Daniel, and taken up that position on the balcony of which they had all grown so weary in the last eleven days.

Daniel moved the Log over to its customary station on a crate-top, and busied himself blotting the latest entry with sand. “Not so much a descendant as a sibling,” he said. “The father of both is the Philosophic Language, which is a system of classification of ideas. Once an idea has been enrolled or registered in the tables of the Philosophic Language, it may be addressed with a number, or a set of numbers-”

“Cartesian coordinates,” Saturn mused, “for plotting the wand’rings of our thoughts, like.”

“The similarity only holds to a point,” Daniel cautioned him. “To avoid ambiguity, the Philosophic Language-Leibniz’s version of it, anyway-employs only prime numbers. In this, it is quite different from the number-lines of Descartes. In any case, the Language, as it consists of ideas and numbers, may be writ down using any scheme one may care to choose. The binary cypher of our Logic Mill is one such. But when I was a young man, John Wilkins devised another-the Real Character-which for a time was all the rage in the Royal Society. Hooke and Wren used it fluently.”