Bilocations, Chapter Twelve: The Slow and the Stupefied!

Now we're back in the UK with Lew, because why not, I reckon. Lew comes back to the office to find a police inspector named Vance Aychrome, who is eating all the food. Aychrome is a devotee of Cesare Lombroso's theories on phrenology--as was the anarchist Alexander Ossipon in Conrad's Secret Agent.

He wants Lew to check out this fellow named Lamont Replevin, who is the current holder of the Tarot position of The Hanged Man. His shop is visited by "a constant stream of suspect characters...but our main worry at the Yard is the high proportion of German traffic between here and Inner Asia that always seems to find its way through Replevin's establishment" (606-607).

Replevin has an interesting hobby: he

was a practicing devotee of communication by means of coalgas--that is, gasmains city and suburban figured, in his map of London, as networks of communication, every bit as much as pneumatic or telephone lines. The population who communicated by Gas, who indeed were unwilling to communicate in any other way, appeared pretty substantial and, according to Aychrome, was growing daily, as secret interconnections continued to be made among urban and local or village gasmains, and the system expanded, netwise, as if destined soon to cover all Britain. (607)

We're talking here about Secret Knowledge, always a Pynchonian concern. If the anarchists communicate via explosion, why not via gas as well? This also relates to the Gentleman Bomber of Headingly whom Lew, in theory, is still on the trail of. What messages is he sending?

He goes to see Nookshaft (heh), who is going to be replaced as Cohen, it apparently being a limited-time position. Cohen tells him that Replevin is thought to have in his possession a map of Shambhala--so he's off to investigate. He enters the guy's shop and finds him hanging upside down with his head in the oven. But it's not suicide or some bizarre ritual murder! He is merely "enjoying a regular daily broadcast of the ongoing drama The Slow and the Stupefied, broadcast in gas! As you do. Lew pretends to be an insurance agent looking in--real spy stuff--and Replevin shows him his artifacts, including the said map, of which Lew gets surreptitious photos. Anyway, he escapes, and that is that for now.