AtDTdA (9): 241

[Jasper]

241 Lew meets Renfrew at Cambridge (continued)

Page 241:
"You recognize him?"
As, presumably, Webb.

How can that be? Webb is dead, there's nothing to suggest he went to 
England, the costume is not right for him, and—most tellingly—his medium 
is dynamite, not phosgene.

Who might Lew recognize in the photo? The "suspects" are Neville, Nigel, 
the Grand Cohen, Dr. Coombs De Bottle, Clive Crouchmas and Professor 
Renfrew. If Prof. Werfner looks much like Prof. Renfrew, he goes on the 
list too. If the "Gentleman Bomber" is allowed to be possibly female, 
add Yashmeen and Mme. Eskimoff. We haven't met anyone else (except 
members of the Icosadyad, who don't have faces).

Suppose we rule out the ladies and Werfner. Neville or Nigel wouldn't be 
able to hide their identities with a suit of white flannels. Renfrew is 
sitting right there when Lew sees the picture, but Lew's reaction (his 
stomach sinks) does not seem Lew-like if it's Renfrew he has recognized. 
The Cohen, De Bottle and Crouchmas are left.

Would Lew experience dread on spotting Crouchmas? He doesn't know much 
about C.C. at this point, so it isn't clear why he would suppress that 
recognition.

Seeing the Cohen might lead to this gastric reaction: Lew might think 
he's on the fringe of an anarchist group again (and look where it got 
him the last time). The Cohen stays on the list.

Dr. De Bottle not only follows cricket but bets on it; he speaks almost 
with reverence about phosgene; he knows a nonobvious fact about the 
bombs; and he dresses like a gentleman. None of these points applies to 
the Cohen. And recognizing De Bottle would give Lew that sinking feeling 
because D.B. is purportedly fighting against bombers on behalf of the 
government.

De Bottle goes to the top of the short list.
*wiki*

Or a parallel universe Webb? Or perhaps Lew saw himself?

---

A bosie from a beamer
More cricket! A bosie is now more commonly known as a googly (cf. p237). 
A beamer is a full-pitched delivery that reaches the batsman above waist 
height.
*wiki*

---

"[Renfrew] motioned Lew to a smaller room, where a globe of the Earth 
hung gleaming, at slightly below eye-level, from a slender steel chain 
anchored overhead, surrounded by an aether of tobacco smoke, house-dust, 
ancient paper and book bindings, human breath..."

aether: A medium of great elasticity and extreme tenuity, once supposed 
to pervade all space, the interior of solid bodies not excepted 
(Websters 1913)

Descartes postulated a fluid aether filling all space and moving in the 
form of vortices pushing the planets around the sun mechanically like 
clockwork.
http://www.new-science-theory.com/rene-descartes.html

Luminiferous aether: the term used to describe a medium for the 
propagation of light. Later theories including special relativity were 
formulated without the aether concept, and today the aether is 
considered to be a superseded scientific theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether

Aether: in Greek mythology, is one of the Protogenos (first-born). He is 
the personification of the "upper sky," space, and heaven, and the 
elemental god of the "Bright, Glowing, Upper Air." He is the pure upper 
air that the gods breathe, as opposed to regular air (᾿Αήρ, aer), the 
gloomy lower air of the Earth, which mortals breathe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(mythology)

Renfrew is almost like a super-villain in this scene, reaching through 
the aether, lifting the globe "in both hands like a brandy snifter", 
giving the following speech:

"Here then -- keeping the North Pole in the middle, imagining for 
purposes of demonstration the area roundabout to be solid, some unknown 
element one can not only walk on but even run heavy machinery across -- 
Arctic ice, frozen tundra -- you can see that it all makes one great 
mass, doesn't it? Eurasia, Africa, America. With Inner Asia at its 
heart. Control Inner Asia, therefore, and you control the planet."

North polar aspect:
http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/mp/gif/nstereo.gif

Which is also the emblem and flag of the United Nations:
http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/maplib/flag.html