Before I could apologize for my mistake in assuming the carriage was empty, Balzac walked in and hugged the man, at the same time lifting him off the seat and depositing him onto a narrow table. He seemed to coo as the brute was transporting him although it may have been a suffocating sound. “At this moment in time, I present the Stenographer,” Balzac said, rather formally.
The man began some sort of finger-dance but I soon saw that he was pretending to transcribe something onto an invisible tablet with an invisible pen. “I didn’t see you earlier,” I told him. “Are you part of the team?” He pointed up and the brute gazed in that direction. Both men seemed to be studying the patterns on the carriage’s roof. After about two minutes or so, I asked them, “Could you explain what we are doing?”
