Spring-heeled Jack and the President's Ring

Chapter 1~ Magnetron Reads All About It

"Even now, nearly twenty-five years afterward, the heartbreak of those horrific black words thrums anew, a cackling, bilious affront to my life's work."

As I was once a voracious reader of newspapers, I was not merely keen on keeping abreast of current affairs but was in fact fearful that critical knowledge might escape me should I fail to feed this craving.  On extended journeys I often found myself yearning for dispatches from the world around me, and was known to embark on lengthy discursions in search of any reputable periodical.  During lengthy periods of deep occupation in such absorbing matters as I have described in the previous volume of these journals, I regretfully eschewed reading apart from those materials containing information directly pertinent to the matter at hand.  And yet the appetency persisted, as did the peculiar anxiety that some occurrence requiring my attention would pass unnoticed.  In this I would not be disappointed, as my abstract anxiety would soon take terrifyingly concrete form.

Now, in the case of Dr. Hogalum's death, I knew that the truth I sought would most certainly not be found in newspapers, as their combined reportage of that sad event had been utterly refuted by the good doctor's own first-hand account of it.  I would have to investigate this matter myself.  As previously arranged, I made ready to travel by rail to visit Dr. Wilhelm Glockenholz, who was not merely Dr. Hogalum's physician, but one of the two men present when he died.

Before purchasing my ticket to Richmond, I was obliged to question the ticket agent about Anders' trip approximately one month earlier.  In fact, I was under strict orders from Mrs. Mackenzie to collect any information which might aid in determining his whereabouts.  The ticket agent was of little help, however.  He recalled a man fitting Anders's description embarking from that station, but to where he could not recollect.  When I purchased my own ticket to Richmond, he immediately recalled that "the big quiet man" had also been traveling to Richmond.  My sense was that he was eager to please and simply parroted the name of that city upon hearing it from my lips.

I boarded the train and immediately cursed myself for not having allotted sufficient time to purchase a newspaper in the station.  As the train lurched forward, I resolved to direct my attention to the task of making notes and rehearsing my interview with Dr. Glockenholz.  However, as I took my seat I noticed a tattered two-week-old copy of the New York Sun on the seat opposite me and surreptitiously snatched it up.  My eyes swept casually over the oddly comforting newsprint, stopping suddenly, and ever so gradually filling with tears.

"THE GREAT PATENT-OFFICE FIRE."

Even now, nearly twenty-five years afterward, the heartbreak of those horrific black words thrums anew, a cackling, bilious affront to my life's work.  On the day of the fire, I was of course otherwise engaged with Dr. Hogalum.  Nearly three weeks later, the news had finally reached me in the form of Bret Harte's putatively humorous dispatch.

Perhaps 80,000 patent models had been destroyed, including those from tens of thousands of postponed and rejected patent cases, which were housed in the Patent Office's northern wing.  From what I read that day, I surmised that my models—perhaps 700 of them—had been among the first to burn.  My coal-fired "Macaroni-matic" pasta steamer, my Whale-Thruster proto-type, even my Electro-Auto-Acousti-Graph-o-Matic sound recording device designs (which had already been pilfered by that scoundrel Edison); all of it was gone.

The newspaper had said that no cause had yet been determined, but I knew the cause.  One man alone could possibly commit an act so heinous, and I vowed silently that he would one day pay dearly for his crime—as indeed he eventually would.  I put the newspaper aside.