Microscopes and Canvases - Chapter 13

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 13
The orchestra began playing a waltz, and the dance floor filled with a rush of people.
Their eyes found him too—the young ladies standing primly, waiting for dance invitations—but Patrick gave them no attention whatsoever.
The only person he sought was Edward Rockwell. He couldn’t bear to waste a single moment, and his impatience gnawed at him constantly.
There!
He was no more than five meters away. Patrick’s heart hammered in his chest as he took a step forward, but he could manage no more than three paces before he was forced to stop.
Around Edward Rockwell, the curator, a dense crowd had gathered—one side of the floor was now a wall of bodies.
While gentlemen from the Board of Directors stood in rows offering their congratulations to the new curator, curious dowagers and guests were murmuring and jockeying for an opportunity to pay their respects.
As members of the press joined the crush, the commotion only swelled, and through the layered human barrier, only Edward Rockwell’s brown hair could be glimpsed now and then before disappearing again.
“Curator! When might we read your next column? Will you be publishing under your real name now?”
“Is there a special reason you’ve chosen to abandon your pen name and reveal your face?”
“The Museum will surely undergo many changes under your leadership—what specific direction do you envision?”
As flashbulbs erupted in chaos, Patrick tried everything he could to squeeze through the gaps and push forward, but the tightly packed throng yielded no space.
At last, pressed back by the crowd, he made his way to the far corner of the hall, beside a towering potted palm, where he finally came to a stop.
Damn it. He had to find some way to deliver this research proposal….
Yet he had no desire to rudely shove people aside and force his way through. Even if he managed it, there was no guarantee he could properly introduce himself by simply thrusting a manuscript at the man.
Better to be patient. Sometimes one must step back in order to move forward.
Patrick gripped the research paper he held to his chest and exhaled slowly. The night was young. A gathering of this scale would continue until dawn broke anyway. There would be time enough to approach once the crowds had thinned.
To escape the noise of the ballroom, Patrick walked slowly and found himself drifting into the dimly lit Exhibition Corridor.
How far had he come? As he glanced around absently, foreign swords and masks in glass display cases caught the faint glow of the gas lamps and gleamed softly. While he walked lost in thought, he seemed to have reached the Anthropology Hall.
“The thing that fascinates me is….”
A voice carried over from beyond the display case, and Patrick’s steps halted.
“Just by examining the shape of a human skull, one can identify criminals who are irredeemably beyond correction. Don’t you find that remarkably elegant?”
Ah, someone was invoking that old pseudoscience again. The connection between skull shape and criminality, no less.
Patrick frowned and peered discreetly into the display case.
Before a display of skull specimens arranged by race, a well-built man in police uniform with a sword at his belt and a familiar middle-aged professor wearing round spectacles were engaged in an animated discussion.
“Chief, phrenology is dead superstition. The academic world abandoned it long ago. There’s no evidence whatsoever to support it….”
“It’s not that the theory is flawed—it’s simply that scholars are too fearful.”
The Police Chief pointed at the skulls beyond the glass, letting out a derisive chuckle.
“Do you truly believe it serves society to suppress a theory that could prevent crime before it occurs?”
Good heavens. Patrick recognized both men.
One was the Police Chief of Brionia who had been introduced among the guests earlier, and the other was Professor James Whitmore of Collins University.
Patrick had attended a couple of his public lectures, held at the great hall of his alma mater.
To be generous, he was an exacting traditionalist. A renowned scholar who also served as a reviewer for several academic journals, yet Patrick had always found him stubborn and hidebound.
Years ago, when Whitmore had reviewed Patrick’s research proposal, he had dismissed it as a “waste of time”—so the professor was among those who had shown him contempt.
“Judging criminality based on skull shape is not science.”
Professor Whitmore sighed and adjusted his spectacles.
“Those statistics you trust are merely forced constructions—cherry-picked results tailored to suit your preconceptions.”
“Bah, in the field we know a man by his bones alone. I appreciate your humanitarian instincts, but you scholars are too imprisoned in your books.”
“If such opinions gain wider currency, the consequences will be gravely dangerous. There was once an era, after all, when people seized the heads of the poor in the slums, all in the name of crime prevention.”
As Patrick half-listened to their exchange, a cunning thought flickered through his mind. Perhaps he could ask this man for an introduction?
Despite having disparaged Patrick Bennett’s research in the past, Whitmore was still a senior professor at his alma mater, after all. If Patrick made a respectful request for him to arrange a meeting with Mister Greenleaf….
“By the way, what does the academic world make of this new curator? That gentleman called Mister Greenleaf, I mean. I’ve read his columns in the papers a few times—quite accessible and entertaining, really. My wife was absolutely charmed by them.”
Just then the conversation shifted.
“Well, as for his writing talent, who could fault that?”
Professor Whitmore gave a slight shrug.
“But there’s a good deal of talk in academic circles. Honestly, while he does hold a degree, he’s never held a professorship. A celebrity who prefers the daily papers to scholarly journals, you might say. He hardly endears himself to those who quietly pursue the scholarly path.”
Patrick had been about to approach them quietly when he stopped himself in the shadows.
“He does strike me as rather an odd sort.”
The Police Chief lowered his voice.
“By convention, the curator ought to appear alongside his spouse, wouldn’t you say? Yet here he stands entirely alone—it looks rather peculiar. And for a man of such standing to remain a bachelor all this time, no less. Is there some problem with him?”
“Well, that is….”
Professor Whitmore took a sip of champagne instead of answering immediately.
“I gather he simply wishes to concentrate entirely on his work. It’s uncommon, certainly.”
“Hmph.”
The Police Chief stroked his mustache.
“My wife was absolutely delighted. She says he’ll monopolize high society gossip for months to come, and she seemed quite taken with his appearance besides—I can’t say the prospect puts me in a cheerful mood.”
“It is rather unconventional.”
The professor swirled his champagne glass absently, and as he gazed into the clear liquid, something seemed to occur to him, and he added abruptly:
“And there’s the matter of his bringing workers into the Museum—it also seems he intends to lend support to the women’s suffrage movement.”
“Women’s Suffrage?”
The Police Chief’s thick brows rose slightly.
“I thought he was talking about increasing the proportion of women employed. Does he have connections to them as well?”
“Actually… the Marchioness of Somerset once wrote a petition on behalf of some Suffragettes who had been arrested. The museum director’s sister, sir.”
Professor Whitmore lowered his voice and added with deliberate discretion.
“Is that so? Why did the Marquess of Somerset allow such behavior? Those women are absolutely vicious troublemakers stirring up social chaos.”
The Police Chief clicked his tongue disapprovingly and shook his head.
“Well, that household needs to keep a tighter rein on the wife. A noblewoman can’t go around doing such things.”
“It’s a family matter, so I wouldn’t presume to judge. But since the Board of Directors brought her in and seated her, there must be good reason for it. Perhaps we ought to wait and see?”
Patrick withdrew quietly toward the shadows, dampening his footfall as much as he could. Fortunately, the two men standing in the darkness hadn’t noticed him.
All the strength seemed to drain from his limbs.
The faces of professors who had laughed at his research paper, dismissing it as the “hobby of an aristocratic dilettante,” flickered through his mind one after another.
It stung that even Edward Rockwell had to endure such slander and gossip. In this climate, could he truly see his own research through to completion?
Yet paradoxically, as the academic world’s attitudes weighed upon him, his hope in Edward Rockwell only grew stronger.
If the man had been seated here not merely as a popular scholar, but as someone determined to sweep away old conventions and enact real reform—
Then perhaps he would recognize the value in research that no one else had bothered to notice. He was certain of it.
Patrick steadied himself and turned to make his way back toward the Ballroom.
At that moment, someone seized his elbow firmly from behind.
“Patrick!”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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