Philip Jose Farmer by The Other Log of Phileas Fogg Read Free Book Online

so for the continent. Otherwise, he would not have transported the European guide with him. Or perhaps he had committed this to memory, too, but considered that people would think it strange if he did not use such a reference.
    At any rate, we may be sure that Verne was guessing or exaggerating when he said that the cab drove “rapidly” to the Charing Cross Station.
    However, it could be that Verne’s transit time is correct and that something happened on the way which Fogg and his valet would have kept to themselves. Perhaps the Capelleans tried to abduct them. If this were so, then this account is missing an adventure. But Fogg did not record it, and since this is not a novel but a reconstruction of a true story, the gap will regretfully have to be left just that: a gap.
    At the entrance to the station, the two were confronted by a wretched beggar woman holding an infant. They were two of the horde that roamed the streets of London. The Western capitals seldom see them now, but then they were an all-too-familiar sight, as common as they are in present-day Bogota, Colombia. The barefooted woman, shivering in the autumnal chill and its fine rain, asked for money.
    Mr. Fogg had won twenty guineas at whist, and since he always donated his winnings to charity, and a not inconsiderable sum of his private fortune, he gave her the whole sum.
    “Here, my good woman, I’m glad that I met you,” he said.
    This incident engendered tears in the soft -hearted Passepartout. His master, after all, was human.
    Both men, as a matter of fact, being Eridaneans, were much touched by the poverty, disease, and suffering that afflicted the numerous poor of mid-Victorian England. Such a condition would be wiped out once the Eridaneans had set into motion their long-range program. The ideal society toward which they would strive would be modeled on the state which the nonhuman Eridaneans said existed on their home planet. But before that could be brought about, the evil Capelleans must be exterminated.
    What Verne does not mention about this incident, but Fogg does, is what the beggar woman exchanged for money. Fogg received a small piece of paper. It was actually a tiny clipping from a newspaper. It was not only meaningless to any Earthling but of no significance to Fogg. It was a few sentences from an article on the bank theft which had been discussed that very evening at the Reform Club.
    Fogg pulled out his watch and seemed to be looking at it. In reality, he was absorbing the article, which lay over the front of his watch. His cupped hand prevented anybody but Passepartout from seeing the clipping, and the good Frenchman was looking through tears at the rapidly departing beggar woman and her infant.
    The article had been sent by Stuart, of course. But what did it mean? Something to do with him, no doubt, something he would find out in time, though not, he hoped, too late to do him any good.
    He snapped the cover of the watch shut, enclosing the folded article in it. Later, he would remove the clipping and swallow it.
    There are times, and this was one, when he wished that communication could be conducted, if not more openly, at least more fully. The short cryptic messages often left him as much in the dark as before, if not more so, and invariably filled him with uneasiness. It was true that he did not have to suffer from anxiety unless he wished to. He could block it off mentally and so retain his inward composure. The price (there is always a price) was that he had to turn the anxiety back on someday. If he didn’t, it stayed undiminished in the circuit in which he had placed it. Its current, so to speak, would be added to anxieties previously shuttled in and switched into a sidetrack.
    Later anxieties would increase the pressure even more, or, to preserve the analogy, congest the tracks. Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, he had to open the switch and push some of the anxieties out into the main track. If he didn’t,