Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [12]
So with a clientele composed of professors and amateurs of the game, engineers and scientists, and the great General Public that loves a mystery, Mr. Greet might have remained in London for a long period of great pecuniary satisfaction. Then, without any warning, it was announced in the papers that the Automaton had made its last move, for the present at any rate, in the metropolis, and would shortly set out on a tour through the principal towns of the provinces.
Birmingham, Manchester and all the great centers of the North and Midlands were visited with the usual triumphs, and one morning the public were startled at their breakfast tables with the brief announcement that Mr. Greet would back his Automaton against any chess player in the world for £2,000 a side, the match to take place in the Theatre Royal at Bristol within three weeks’ time.
No one had been more completely mystified or more intensely amazed at the triumphal progress of the Automaton than Mr. Stuart Dryden, considered by most people to be the leading chess player in England. He had himself refrained from hazarding his reputation in a contest with the thing, for, after carefully watching the easy defeat of those noted professors who had been bold enough to put its skill to the test, he had been forced to confess that in this machine, by some unfathomable means or other, had been placed an understanding of the game that he could not hope to compete with. He felt, however, that a time must come when he would be obliged to court the defeat that he knew to be certain, and the growing nearness of the contingency embittered every day of his life. He worked ceaselessly at problems of the game, and studied with the greatest care the records of the matches that had been played against the Automaton, but he found it quite impossible to coax himself into the least degree of self-confidence.
Professor Dryden was a bachelor, possessed of a small regular income, which he had always supplemented largely with his earnings at chess by way of stake-money and bets. He was a man of solitary habit and lived much alone in a small house in the northwestern quarter of London. An old woman attended to all his wants; he was surrounded by a large and complete library, and between his little house and the St. George’s Chess Club he spent almost the entire portion of his life. It was his custom to rise early every morning, and after a long walk in the Regent’s Park to arrive at the Chess Club about noon. There, as a rule, he stayed till about ten o’clock of the evening, when he would return to a quiet supper and several hours with his books.
On the morning that Mr. Greet’s announcement had been made public to the world, he left the house very early indeed, before the arrival of the daily papers.
On this morning he was in an exceptionally bad temper. He was by nature a sullen man, and the continued triumphs of this Automaton, which pointed to a probable reduction in his income, had been gradually making him more and more sour. Then, to complete his misery, he found last night, on his return from the club, that by the failure of a company, considered sound by the most skeptical, his small private means had been reduced almost to a vanishing point. All night long he had lain sleepless with anxiety, and as he tramped the Regent’s Park this morning his head burnt feverishly and his heart was very bitter against the world. The glorious freshness of the morning kindled no spark of happiness in his morose mind, and