“God save the King,” said the Earl, which, Daniel guessed, was a way of saying you have got it right and thank you for not being cross with me.

“…save the King” said Daniel, meaning you’re welcome.

“Sir Isaac is…below,” said the Earl, looking down toward the gates of the Templar-tomb, which stood open and, as far as Daniel could make out, unwrecked.

“How did you get them open?” Daniel asked.

“We stood about them, discussing the use of force, until finally a great big chap showed up and undid the lock for us.”

Daniel took his leave and walked towards the gates, ignoring two different Persons of Quality who spotted him and demanded to know how long he had been there.

“HOW LONG HAVE YOU been here?” asked Sir Isaac Newton.

The Templar-tomb was a bubble of warm, oily smoke, for many candles and lanthorns had been brought down. The steam pulsing from the nostrils of half a dozen shovel-and-rake-wielding workmen, and the moist vapors rising from all of those lights, condensed on the chilly stone and brass of the sarcophagi and streaked them with rivulets.

“Long enough,” Daniel snapped. There was much here for him to be peevish about, but the worst of it was that Isaac, who was capable of being so interesting, had, by involving himself in these worldly doings, made himself so dull.

But it was all for the most ethereal of reasons. Daniel must keep reminding himself of that.

“This cannon-duel that was fought on Tower Hill the other day: it’s all about that, isn’t it?” Daniel tried.

“That, and the escape of the Shaftoes,” Isaac admitted. “My witnesses have a way of disappearing when they are most needed. Only Jack now remains.”

“You are not going to find anything by digging up these poor Templars,” Daniel said. “It must be obvious to you that what was here, has been moved.”

“Of course it is,” Isaac said, “but other Powers have involved themselves in the thing, as you can see, and they are not as quick to notice what is obvious, as you and I.”

This sounded almost like a compliment: Isaac reaching down to pull Daniel up to his plane for a moment. Daniel was pleased, then wary.

“It is all White’s fault,” Isaac went on. “I do think that he meant to die-to put himself beyond the grasp of Justice. But the manner of his death he could not have foreseen-and it has wrought in my favor.”

“By throwing the new government into a sort of panic, you mean.”

By way of an answer, Isaac spread his hands, and looked about at all of the perfervid diggers. “When they have grown as bored as I am with the ransacking of this place, they’ll move on to Bridewell, and if nothing is found there, they’ll follow the trail to the Bank of England.”

Daniel knew that there was an appendix to this sentence, which need hardly be spoken aloud: unless you help me by giving me some of what I need. And for a moment Daniel was ready to nip down to the Bank and fetch out a bit of Solomonic Gold for good old Isaac. Why not? Solomon Kohan would notice that it had gone missing, and Peter the Great would wax wroth, but there would probably be a way to patch it up.

Then Isaac spoke: “They say that to hide the escape of the Shaftoes from the strong-room of the Fleet, an old gager got the Mobb drunk, and told them tall tales of buried gold.”

This curdled the whole thing. Daniel remembered, now, why he had good reason to hold on to every grain of the gold: because people wanted it, and so having it gave Daniel power he might need. And, too, he was reminded of the farcical nature of the whole Alchemical world-view. So he said nothing more of substance, but excused himself, and went up above ground, and a minute later had joined the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm in that vacant apartment above what had been the Court of Technologickal Arts.

“YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE LEFT me alone here,” she said to him.

Somehow Daniel did not get the idea that she was complaining of a social faux pas. “Your grace?”

She was standing at a window that looked out over the Court, and talking over her shoulder at him. He approached, and drew up next to her, but well off to the side, so that the scurrying big-wigs below would not see them together in the window.

“Something has been troubling me about this investment ever since I agreed to it,” she continued.

These words, had they been spoken in anger, might have made Daniel spin on his heel and run all the way to Massachusetts. But she was bemused and a little distracted, with the makings of a smile on her lips.

She explained, “It came clear to me when I looked out this window. The last time I saw your Court of Technologickal Arts, it was a bazaar of the mind-all those clever men, each in his own wee shop, pursuing his peculiar interests, but exchanging ideas with the others when he went to fetch a cup of coffee or to use the House of Office. That seemed to work very well, didn’t it? And because I am curious about the same things, I was cozened by it-I admit that I was! And yet as enchanted as I was, a little voice kept whispering to me that it was not, au fond, a sound investment. Today I came here and found it all gone. All the clever fellows have packed up their tools and absconded. Only the land and the building remain. For those, your investors have overpaid. This place is destined to be just another suburban shop-block, of no greater value than the ones to the left and to the right.”

“As to the value of the property, I agree,” Daniel said. “Does that mean it was not a sound investment for you and for Roger Comstock?”

“Yes,” she said, again with a smile, “that is what it means!”

“In an accompt-book, maybe that is true-”

“Oh, believe me. It is.”

“But Roger never set much store by strict accompts, did he? He pursued more than strictly financial gain.”

“That is perfectly all right,” Eliza said. “You misunderstand me. I too have many goals that cannot be assessed or rendered in an accompt-book. But it has been my practice to keep those separate, in my head, from the sorts of projects that would make sense to any investor. In the case of the Court of Technologickal Arts, I made the error of confusing one with the other. That is all. I do not think one can ever own the quicksilver spirit that circulates among the minds of philosophers and ingenieurs. It is like trying to catch in a bucket the electrickal fluid of Mr. Hauksbee.”

“So it is hopeless, then?”

“Is what hopeless, Dr. Waterhouse?”

“Trying to support, to invest in such projects?”

“Oh, no. Not hopeless. I think it could be done. I got it wrong the first time. That’s all.”

“Is there to be a second time?”

Silence. Daniel tried again. “What is to be the final accounting, then? Even if I did not have any interest in the thing, I should need to know, for I am involved in the settling of Roger’s estate.”

“Oh. You need to know what this is all worth,” Eliza said.

“Yes. Your grace. Thank you.”

“It is worth whatever the building next to it is worth. You could, then, pursue claims on the value of the discoveries that were made here. Conceivably. For example, if six months from now a horologist who was once a tenant here builds a clock that wins the Longitude Prize, then Roger’s estate could lay claim to some part of the money. But it would be a fool’s errand. It would only enrich lawyers.”

“Very well. We shall write it off. But what of the Logic Mill-?”

“I heard that the card-punching organs had been torn out of Bridewell, and cast into the river.”

“Oh, yes. I made sure of that. Everything is gone from Bridewell.”

“The cards themselves-?”

“Are to be shipped to Hanover, and thence to the Tsar’s Academy in St. Petersburg.”

“So they neither add to nor subtract from the balance-sheet. What is it, then, that you are asking me about?”

Daniel was appalled, in some sense, by the pitiless brutality of this financial discourse. But he was also fascinated. It was a bit like vivisection: savage, but just interesting enough to keep him from slinking out of the room and going straight to the nearest boozing-ken. “I suppose I am asking you about the whole structure of ideas that gives the cards of the Logic Mill their value,” he said.