What it all amounted to was this: up to about the turn of the century, the Royal Society had been able to store things by the acre. There had been no need to cull out, to throw away, or even to organize. But during the first decade of the century they’d lost Gresham’s and they’d lost Hooke. Their storage space had shrunk by a factor of ten, at the least. Which might have been a very favorable turn if the sorting out and throwing away had been done by someone who was qualified-who had been around from the beginning-and who had had the time to do a good job of it. To put it plainly, Newton, Wren, or Waterhouse. But Sir Isaac had been busy with the Mint, with prosecuting a war against Flamsteed, and with making the second edition of Principia Leibniz-proof. Sir Christopher Wren, during the same days, had been finishing St. Paul’s and building the Duke of Marlborough’s London house, just next door to St. James’s Palace: two significant jobs for an architect. Daniel had been in Massachusetts trying to build a Logic Mill.

Who then had performed the sorting-out? One of Newton’s acolytes. And he had probably done it in a hurry. If Daniel had been fully aware of this four years ago, when it had been happening, he’d have been in a panic. Now he could only look on the contents of this attic in the same spirit in which he had looked at the remains of Drake’s house on the morning after the Fire.

Most of the Science Crapp was still packed in the crates, barrels, bundles, and bales in which it had been carted hither. Each of these containers was an impediment to the casual investigator. Daniel spied a crate, not far below the rafters, with its lid slightly askew. The only thing atop it was a glass bell jar covering a dessicated owl. Daniel set the bird to one side, drew out the crate, and pulled off the lid. It was the old Archbishop of York’s beetle collection, lovingly packed in straw.

This, and the owl, told all. It was as he had feared. Birds and bugs, top to bottom, front to back. All salvaged, not because they had innate value, but because they’d been given to the Royal Society by important people. They’d been kept here just as a young couple keeps the ugly wedding present from the rich aunt.

He heard someone stifling a sneeze. Straightening up carefully, so as not to burst any of the juicy bits in his spinal column, he looked down the stairs and caught the eye of Henry Arlanc. Henry looked nervous, and studiously mournful, like a vicar at a wake, who did not know the deceased, but who is aware that the living have suffered a grievous loss and are likely to be in a foul mood. “I have endeavoured, Dr. Waterhouse, to preserve all that was brought here, in the condition it was brought.”

“No solicitor could have worded it more carefully,” Daniel muttered under his breath.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

Daniel stepped over to the top of the staircase, and steadied himself with a hand on the wall, for this was halfway between a ladder and a stair, and it made him dizzy.

“You have done well…you are absolved,” Daniel said. “The owl was free of dust.”

“Thank you, Dr. Waterhouse.”

Daniel sat down at the top of the stairs, resting his feet on the first step down. Between his knees he now enjoyed a clear and direct view of Henry’s face. Up here in the attic it was gloomy, but the walls and doors of the storey below were all painted white or close to it. The doors had been left open to release the light coming in the windows, and so Henry was bathed in pitiless and revealing illumination, like a specimen on a microscope stage. He was regarding Daniel uneasily.

“How long have you served here, Henry?”

“Since you moved in, sir.”

Daniel was a bit confused until he realized you meant The Royal Society.

“I like to say, that I came with the property,” Henry continued.

“When we moved here from Gresham’s College, there must have been a good deal of…rubbish. At Gresham’s, I mean.”

Henry looked inexpressibly relieved. “Oh yes, sir, more than you could ever imagine.”

“Cart-loads, then, was it?”

“Yes, sir, dozens of cart-loads hauled away,” Henry affirmed, in the pride of a job well done.

“Hauled away where, precisely?”

Henry faltered. “I-I would not know that, Dr. Waterhouse, there are salvage-men who pick through rubbish looking for objects of value, and sell them to tinkers…”

“I understand, Henry. What is more, I agree that neither you, nor any other man, can be asked to know whither rubbish has gone, after the rubbish-cart has disappeared from view. But I have a different question for you along the same lines, on which you must concentrate as intently as you can.”

“I shall strain to do so, Dr. Waterhouse.”

“At the time that Gresham’s was being cleared out, and the rubbish being carted away, and the treasures brought safely here-I say, at that time, was any rubbish taken away, or treasures produced, from other locations?”

“Other locations, Dr. Waterhouse?”

“Hooke. Mr. Robert Hooke. He might have squirrelled things away at Bedlam, or in the additions to the Marquis of Ravenscar’s house, or the College of Physicians-”

“Why those places, sir?”

“He built them. Or St. Paul’s, or the Fire Monument-he had a hand in those as well. He might have left things in those buildings; and just as the nuts, hidden in out-of-the-way places by a squirrel, are oft forgotten, and discovered later by others-”

“I do not recollect anything coming from Bedlam, or any other place besides Gresham’s College,” Henry said flatly.

Henry looked curiously red in the face. He had been simple enough to fall into the trap that Daniel had set by speaking of rubbish. But he was sharp enough to see it in hindsight. His response was to become angry rather than fearful. Daniel sensed immediately that to have this man angry at him was undesirable. He explained, in softer tones, “It is only that the Royal Society is so pre-eminent among the scientific academies of the world, that what is rubbish to us, would be esteemed treasure to some who are accounted savants in backward places; and as a gesture of friendship towards such countries, we could send them odds and ends for which we have no further use.”

“I take your meaning now, sir,” said Henry, the flush fading from his cheeks.

“Better for one of Mr. Hooke’s old clocks to be studied by a student in Muscovy, than for some Shadwell tinker to make the gears into jewelry.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“I have been asked by a colleague on the Continent to keep an eye out for any such items. It is probably too late for the dozens of cart-loads. Perhaps not for what might have been stowed by Hooke in other buildings to which he had keys.”

“Sir Christopher Wren was an old friend of Mr. Hooke’s.”

“That he was,” said Daniel, “though I wonder how you know it, since Hooke died seven years before you had any connection to the Royal Society.”

Again Henry’s face flushed. “ ’Tis common knowledge. Sir Christopher is here all the time-why, he stopped in just this morning-and often speaks of Hooke with a kind of affection.”

Henry got a wry distracted look which proved he was speaking truth. God and the angels might speak of Hooke with outright and unalloyed affection; but a kind of affection was the best that could be achieved by Wren, or any other mortal.

“I should simply refer my inquiries to Sir Christopher, then.”

“He has stated more than once that he would enjoy renewing your acquaintance, sir, whenever…”

Henry trailed off and made a furtive glance at the doorway to the garret, near the top of the stairs.

“Whenever I came to my senses. Consider me healed, Henry. And if you are seized by an urge to throw anything away, do make me aware of it, so that I can pluck out any items that would pass for wonders in Muscovy.”

Daniel went out for a walk: a most imprudent act.