He had been unjust to the kipper. Outside the dining room, the Palace itself stank: bad fish, or something much like it. There was a soapy perfume in the front lobby, left from the morning's mopping, but the air was heavy with the humid distant reek of something dreadful, and apparently long-dead. Mallory knew he had smelled that reek beforeit was sharp, like acid, mixed with the greasy stench of a slaughterhousebut he could not place the memory. In a moment the stink was gone again. He stepped to the desk for his mail. The wilted clerk greeted him with a show of courtesy; Mallory had won the staff's loyalty with generous tips. "Nothing in my box?" said Mallory, surprised.
"Too small. Dr. Mallory." The clerk bent to lift a large woven-wire basket, crammed to the brim with envelopes, magazines, and packages.
" 'Struth!" Mallory said. "It gets worse every day!"
The clerk nodded knowingly. "The price of fame, sir."
Mallory was overwhelmed. "I suppose I shall have to read through all of this "
"If I may be so bold, sir, I think you might do well to engage a private secretary."
Mallory grunted. He had a loathing of secretaries, valets, butlers, chambermaids, the whole squalid business of service. His own mother had been in service once, with a wealthy family in Sussex, in the old days before the Rads. The fact rankled.
He carried the heavy basket into a quiet corner of the library and began to sort through it. Magazines first: the gold-spined 'Transactions of the Royal Society', 'Herpetology of All Nations', 'Journal of Dynamickal Systematics', 'Annales Scientifiques de l'Ecole des Ordinateurs', with what seemed to be an interesting article on the mechanical miseries of the Grand Napoleon This business of the scholarly subscriptions had been a faggot-above-a-load, though he supposed it kept the editors happy, happy editors being half the key to placing one's own articles.
Then the letters. Swiftly, Mallory divided them into piles. Begging-letters first. He had made the mistake of answering a few, that had seemed especially tearful and sincere, and now the scheming rascals had swarmed upon him like lice.
A second pile of business-letters. Invitations to speak, requests for interviews, bills from shopmen, Catastrophist bone-men and rock-hounds offering co-authorship of learned papers.
Then the letters in feminine hand. The broody-hens of natural history"flower-snippers," Huxley called them. They wrote in their scores and dozens, most merely to request his autograph, and, if he so pleased, a signed carte-de-visite. Others would send him coy sketches of common lizards, requesting his expertise in reptile taxonomy. Others would express a delicate admiration, perhaps accompanied with verses, and invite him to tea if he was ever in Sheffield, or Nottingham, or Brighton. And some few, often marked by spiky handwriting, triple underlining!!!, and ribboned locks of hair, would express a warm womanly admiration, and this in terms so bold as to be quite disconcerting. There had been a remarkable flurry of these after his fancy portrait had appeared in 'The Englishwoman's
Domestic Weekly'.
Mallory stopped suddenly. He had almost flung aside a letter from his sister Ruth. Dear little Ruthiebut of course the baby of the family was a good seventeen years old now. He opened the letter at once.
DEAR NED,I write to you at Mother's dictation as her hands are quite bad today. Father thanks you very much for the splendid lap-rug from London. The French liniment has helped my hands (Mother's) very nicely thow more in the knees than the hands. We all miss you much in Lewes thow we know you are busy on yr great affairs of the Royal Society! We read aloud each of yr American adventures as they are written by Mr. Disraeli in Family Museum. Agatha asks will you please please get her Mr. Disraeli's autograph as her favorite novel is his "Tancred"! But our great news is that our dear Brian is back from Bombay, safely with us this very day June 17! And he has brought with him our dear brother-to-be Lt. Jerry Rawlings, also of the Sussex Artillery, who asked our Madeline to wait for him and of course she did. Now they are to be married, and Mother wants you to know particularly that it will NOT be in a Church but a civil seremony with the J.R Mr. Witherspoon in Lewes City Hall. Will you attend June 29 as Father gives away almost his last brideI did not want to write that but Mother made me.
All our Love,
RUTH MALLORY (Miss)
Mallory took the letter-basket to his room, piled the mail on the floor beside his overflowing bureau, and left the Palace, dropping the basket at the desk on his way out.
A group of Quakers, men and women, stood on the pavement outside the Palace. They were droning another of their intolerable sermonizing ditties, something about a "railway to Heaven," by the sound of it. The song did not seem to have much to do with Evolution, or blasphemy, or fossils; but perhaps the sheer monotony of their bootless protests had exhausted even the Quakers. He hurried past them, ignoring their proffered pamphlets. It was hot, uncommon hot, beastly hot. There was not a ray of sun, but the air was mortally still and the high cloudy sky had a leaden, glowering look, as if it wanted to rain but had forgotten the trick of it.