Unpopular Science

Chapter 21

Mark Howard was surprised when Remo Williams answered the door of the big brick house in Providence.

“Hey, Junior, have I got something to show you.”

They went downstairs immediately, seeing no one else, and Mark was assaulted with the mildew smell of an ancient cellar. When Remo flipped the switch, thirty-five bare light bulbs set in the ceiling illuminated over seven rows of shelves crammed with boxes of paper memorabilia.

“It’s a museum!” Mark exclaimed.

“Sarah calls it a morgue,” Remo said. “Supposedly, this is all the documentation of a whole dynasty of suicidal dimwits named Slate. Half these boxes haven’t been opened since the family got mostly killed off in the 1930s. They’ve been sort of on the decline ever since. Sarah’s the last of them. Anyway,” Remo said, shrugging, “have at it.”

Mark Howard spent fifteen minutes wandering up and down the rows in a stupor, looking at more intriguing names and trinkets than he could process. Then he started at the beginning, looking for the thread of the organizational system that had obviously eluded him the first time.

“What a mess.”

“Yes, it is.”

Mark Howard spun.

“Sorry. I’m Sarah. You’re Howie Wyrd?”

“Yes,” Mark said, shaking her hand but looking as if he were biting something bitter.

“Don’t worry, I know the name’s fake. There is no organizational system down here, by the way. All this stuff used to be stored in the house. On the day my trustee turned over control of the estate, I had most of it shoved in crates and brought down here, out of sight.”

“You honestly don’t know what’s in here?”

“I know the nature of it,” she said, as if it was sad to think about. “These are the documented ravings of glory-hunters, irresponsible thrill-seekers and irrepressible egoists. The cellar is all they deserve. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Mark was wandering the rows again when she returned and informed him he had ignored the call to the evening meal.

“I have to find Archibald in all this,” Mark insisted. Sarah sent down a plate and a glass of iced tea.

“Sit. Eat.”

“I need to keep looking.”

“Howie.”

“Please, call me Mark.”

“Sit down, Mark.”

She touched him, on the shoulder. Mark Howard had barely been paying attention to her until that moment. When she guided him to the folding chair, he couldn’t begin to resist.

He sat down, thanked her for the plate of hot food and began eating it, thinking about the young woman. He ate the entire meal without knowing what he was eating; when the meal was done, he was startled to read on the box label in front of him: Archibald Slate.

She had seated him directly in front of the box he was seeking, and it only took him fifteen minutes to figure it out.