Philip Jose Farmer Read Free Page A

the Frenchman’s name had indicated his function, and the “enormous” watch was so large because it contained more than a timepiece. Mr. Fogg’s taking his hat with his left hand had been the final signal, since he was right-handed. If he were left-handed, he would have used the right. Passepartout had observed his last confirmation and so was also pleased.
    After Fogg left the room, he stood listening for a moment. The door to the street shut. That would be his ally and master leaving at exactly 11:30 a.m. A few seconds later, the door closed again. That would be James Forster going to wherever the plan dictated. There Forster would make another move in the secret and martial chess game that had been going on for two-hundred years between the Eridaneans and the Capelleans.

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    The Reform Club toward which Mr. Fogg proceeded at an exact velocity was only one-thousand-and-one-hundred-and-fifty-one paces from Mr. Fogg’s house on Savile Row. Verne does not say what transpired during Fogg’s walk. For him, the ordinary would not have been worth describing, and the extraordinary was not reported to him. However, the ordinary of our day and Fogg’s may be contrasted for the benefit of the reader. The Londoner of 1872 had his own brand of smog. Indeed, the word, formed from smoke and fog, is of London origin. The smoke of hundreds of thousands of industrial and domestic furnaces and stoves burning soft coal often darkened the skies and laid a sooty film over everything. It also gave the London air a rather acrid odor and doubtless contributed to the generation of tuberculosis and other diseases of the lung.
    Another odor, not unpleasant under certain conditions and when in not too great quantities, emanated from the horse droppings. These littered the streets from West End to East End. During the dry periods, clouds of manure rose to mingle with coal dust and dirt dust as the wheels of carriages struck the piles. Mingled with these were the huge and pestiferous horseflies that were once a familiar and seemingly permanent part of the civilized world. This, however, was October, and the chilly nights of the past few weeks had considerably discouraged the activities of these insects.
    Mr. Fogg walked on the sidewalk from No. 7, Savile Row, turned left onto Vigo Street, after a few paces crossed Vigo to Sackville Street, and proceeded along it until he came to Piccadilly. Having traversed this with no apparent attention to the hansoms and vans which filled this main thoroughfare (London traffic was a nuisance and a danger a century ago), he walked eastward until he reached the narrow Church Street. Here he turned right and, coming to Jermyn Street, turned right again, walked a few paces, and then went across Jermyn to enter the Duke of York’s. This led him to St. James Square. Having passed along this, he crossed Pall Mall to the Reform Club. This imposing and famed edifice is neighbor to the Traveler’s Club, which admits no one as a member who has not journeyed at least five-hundred miles in a straight line from London. Although Mr. Fogg could easily have joined this club both before and after his dash around the globe, he was never a member.
    Across Pall Mall at an angle was the Athenaeum Club, devoted to bringing together the practitioners of the fine arts and sciences and their eminent patrons. This is the institution called the Diogenes Club in the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, at this time, Mycroft Holmes, its future member, was only twenty-six years old and his brother Sherlock was a mere eighteen. Yet, the paths of the younger Holmes and of one of the many pedestrians on Pall Mall that day were to cross many years later.
    Although Fogg seemed to look neither to left nor to right, as if he were riding a rail and did not have to steer himself, he was missing little. Thus, he saw a tall, broadshouldered gentleman of about forty years of age standing in a doorway and lighting up a cheroot. Only the keenest of