Passepartout, after five years on the island, was accustomed to the eccentricity of the English. Thus, he was not surprised to find a septuagenarian baronet tramping around in the wilds of Africa after some fabled, doubtless totally nonexistent, city. He was interested when he found out that the dead Phileas was not Sir William’s first child of that name. He eavesdropped on Lady Martha’s conversations with her crony, the widowed Lady Jane Brandon of nearby Brandon Beeches. And he discovered that Sir William’s fourth marriage, in 1832, had resulted in two children, a Phileas and a Roxana. His fourth wife, daughter of an old and noble Devonshire family, had remarried after divorcing Sir William. Lady Martha did not know whom the woman had married, since all her information was based on some scattered remarks by Sir William. She did know that Lady Lorina had hated Sir William so much that she had gotten her new husband to adopt her children. Sir William had not objected to this nor to her wish that he never see her or their children again. This was why, Lady Martha told Lady Jane, Sir William’s son by his tenth marriage would inherit the baronetcy. His children by Lady Lorina would inherit nothing. Of course, there had been some legal difficulties, since the title was supposed to go to the eldest surviving son. But that had been taken care of.
Passepartout had thought little of this and some additional information she had let drop. When he had ascertained that Sir William would probably not be back to civilization for a long time, he was removed from the case. After his resignation, he was sent into the service of Lord Longferry, a Member of Parliament and a drunk. (In those days, the two were often synonymous.) Passepartout was startled when he found out that Longferry’s Christian name was Phileas. Could this be a coincidence? Or was it connected, no doubt in a sinister way, with Sir William and his Phileases?
During his short stay with Longferry, Passepartout managed to spend some time in the reading room of the British Museum. It was necessary to get a recommendation for admittance, but Longferry himself had furnished this. He had laughed when his valet asked him for it, as if a member of the lower classes and a Frenchman at that, could not possibly be interested in intellectual matters. But he had consented to send down a note to the proper authority. Passepartout had then discovered a very definite connection between the Phileases, though its significance had been beyond him at that time. The grandfather of the present Lord Longferry had been a Phileas, the original, in fact. He had been a very close friend of William Clayton in their youth. Both had gone off to fight with Byron and the Greeks in their battle for independence. Captured by the Turks, young Longferry had died of maltreatment (probably of gang rape by the homosexual Turks, Passepartout thought) and of a fever. William Clayton had grieved for a long time for his dead friend. He had tried to perpetuate the memory of his friend by naming two sons after him. The first had disappeared, as far as the records went. He looked through the newspapers of 1832 through 1836. He found a notice of Sir William’s and Lady Lorina’s divorce (which had required an act of Parliament), but he could find nothing about her remarriage.
A record of it had to exist, of course, and Passepartout intended to track it down. But he was ordered, via a game of cards, to quit his present master. He did this by severely reprimanding the noble for having been carried home intoxicated early one morning. Two days later, the cards, dealt out by a beautiful woman of twenty-five, told him to seek immediate employment with a Mr. Phileas Fogg.
Phileas! One more thread, no, cable, rather, in this mysterious network. Passepartout felt frightened. What did all these Phileases mean? Surely an enlightenment would come someday, and what now seemed so complex would turn out to be laughably simple.
When he received his first message, he had assumed that Fogg was another of the long line suspected of being Capellean. But during the trip with Forster to Savile Row, Passepartout knew that he was in a different area of the case. The 2°F. signal told him that both Fogg and Forster were his kind. It only remained to be verified by the code words.
After his new master had left, he inspected the domicile carefully. As the valet, he would have done this anyway, but as an Eridanean he was obligated to, if only for the sake of survival. Verne says that the house seemed to Passepartout like a snail’s shell. This is a more appropriate comparison than Verne knew. A snail’s shell is not only a comfortable home but a fortress. He scoured No. 7 from cellar to garret to determine more than its layout. He wanted to know how vulnerable it was to attackers and what defenses it contained. Curiously, it was its very accessibility to intruders and its total lack of firearms or weapons of any kind which pleased him. This meant that no attacks were expected, and none were expected because its owner did not dream-apparently-that he had any special need for defense.
“Everything betrayed the most tranquil and peaceable habits,” Verne says.
No wonder that Passepartout rubbed his hands and smiled. No wonder that he spoke aloud. “This is exactly what I desired! Oh, we shall get along, Mr. Fogg and I! What a domestic and regular gentleman! A real machine! Well, I don’t mind serving a machine!”
He spoke aloud for several reasons. One, he was genuinely pleased. Two, his words were designed to reassure any hidden recorders or observers that he and Fogg were only what they pretended to be. Fogg was a rigidly self-controlled English gentleman, and he was a French itinerant who had finally found a snug and unchanging berth.
Passepartout should have known better. The long string of Phileases should have put him on the alert. But he so needed a rest that he allowed his emotions to overcome his logic. Imagine his consternation when his master entered the house, not at the prescribed hour of midnight but at ten minutes to eight or somewhere near that. Because of surprise and apprehension, Passepartout said nothing to Mr. Fogg as he went into his bedroom. He had to be called twice before he went into the master’s bedroom. Imagine his dismay on hearing that he was to leave with Fogg for Dover and Calais inside the next ten minutes. Picture his near-collapse when he was informed that they were going to journey completely around the Earth in record time. Visualize the lights bursting in his brain and the shivers running through him when he heard that they would be traveling through India. He knew about the rajah of Bundelcund. And they would be taking the distorter so close to him!
At eight o’clock, he was ready. Then he almost collapsed when handed a carpetbag containing the travel expenses. Twenty thousand pounds in bank notes!
So it was true, and here was the result of his investigations into the multi-Phileas! But why had he had to make sure that Sir William Clayton was out of reach of news from the civilized world?
6
At the end of Savile Row, the two took a cab, which drove rapidly to the Charing Cross Station. Presumably, the street at the end of Savile Row was Vigo, since to walk to Conduit would have taken them further away from their destination. The traffic must have been excessively heavy that night, and perhaps an accident delayed them. Verne says that they arrived at the station at twenty minutes after eight. Since the station is less than a mile from Savile Row, the two could have walked there more quickly. Especially since they were not overburdened. Fogg carried Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Steam Transit and General Guide under one arm, and his valet carried the carpetbag. Though Verne states that Fogg’s house contained no books, he must not have counted the Bradshaw as this type of literature. And if Fogg had memorized the Bradshaw for the English railways, he had not done 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.