Page 37 of Angel of Vengeance
COMFORTABLE WITHIN THE RECESSES of his coach, curtains partially drawn, Murphy at the reins, Pendergast waited. They stood on the corner of Little Water Street and Anthony Street, as deep into the heart of the Five Points as Murphy would go, the horses wearing heavy blinders and their bits tight under the reins. Around the coach were decrepit tenements, with strings of laundry hanging over the street, itself piled with uncollected garbage and coal ash, prowled by emaciated cats and furtive, abandoned children. His gold watch was in his hand. Even though half past nine on a Monday morning was normally a relatively tranquil time in the slum, Pendergast’s carriage might nevertheless have been overwhelmed by curious residents, save for the underground explosions that had occurred as they pulled up, exactly three minutes before.
“Jesus!” Murphy abruptly yelled. And then a moment later, as if finishing an equation, he added: “Mary and Joseph!”
Pendergast drew back the curtain and peered outside.
He had seen many incredible sights in his life, wondrous and terrible, ghastly and awe inspiring—but he had never seen anything quite like a cityscape becoming suddenly engulfed in rats. They poured out of every drain, every cellar hole, every ditch and manhole and crack and hollow: a streaming horde of wild, insane, gibbering rats, all tumbling over each other, biting and thrashing, accompanied by a deafening chorus of squealing and squeaking. Pendergast had never seen so many rats; he’d had no idea so many rats could exist in one place. They poured through the streets and alleyways, tributaries into rivers into deltas and then, at last, into a living ocean of brown and pink, frantically seeking escape or cover, streaming past and underneath the carriage, some trying to climb its wheels or scrabble up its slick, varnished sides. The entire floor of the city seemed to shudder and rock.
Despite their expert training, the horses began to prance and stamp in fear. Murphy wielded his whip, expertly flicking off one rat after another as they tried to climb aboard. “Sir!” he cried, a note of panic in his voice. “Sir, we better be moving on!”
“Stay just a bit longer, please. It will be over soon, I promise.”
As the rats slowly began to thin out, a growing hiss could be heard over their shrieks—the sound of pressurized air being forced from the same holes, vents, and openings the rats had come, blowing out bits of trash and effluence with it. And then came an unfamiliar noise, but one Pendergast presumed was the hollow sound of water swilling in caves, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The few people in the street had fled in terror at the invasion. Now, with a rhythmic sloshing, the sounds gradually died away until, ten minutes later, all had grown still once more. A most unusual silence fell on Little Water Street, now empty of both rats and people, the winter mists settling down again as if nothing had happened—only a sticky layer of short, matted, brownish-black hairs, clinging knee-high to every surface, to show where the flood of rats had passed.
“Thank you for indulging me, Murphy,” said Pendergast, with a rap of his cane on the carriage roof. “You may drive on.”
31
PIETER DE JONG SCRAPED marmalade over his toast with the same slow, methodical deliberation he employed in all things. The toast was just to his liking: baked on the hearth that morning, a faint burst of steam rising with a crackle of crust as the cook first sliced it; the marmalade was made by his maiden aunt and shipped to him from Delft. Every bite reminded him of his childhood.
Although it was winter, the sun was out—and not all work on the farm could wait for spring. He heard the bleating of sheep in the ten-acre bottomland, and the calls of William, his factotum, to the sheepdog as he kept them from straying. Just a few years ago, New York City had carved its latest borough, the Bronx, out of the western edge of Westchester, which included his farm. This did not trouble him; the area remained rural, and his thirty acres—surrounded as they were by other dairy farms—would not be encroached upon. The road had been somewhat improved, and that had been a godsend: it allowed him to transport his prize cheeses across Hell Gate and south, to the eagerly waiting grocers and restaurateurs of Manhattan.
“Some more toast, Master De Jong?” asked Clara, the housekeeper.
“No, thank you, Clara. Please tell the cook she hasn’t lost her touch with the bread.”
“I’ll do that, sir.” Clara curtsied and left the breakfast room.
With a contented sigh, De Jong returned his attention to the New York Star, perusing it from front to back, occasionally grunting in approval or displeasure as one article or another caught his eye. He didn’t get out to the farm often enough, and he enjoyed the relaxed, pastoral air. But at last he took out his pocket watch and peered at it. Ten o’clock: time to get busy with chores.
Enoch Leng had created several identities with meticulous care, of which Pieter De Jong was one. Some, like the good doctor Leng himself, required frequent curation, while others—such as this pastoral Dutch farmer in Whitlock Dell, West Farms, New York—needed only infrequent effort. Each of his identities was of unimpeachable pedigree and could stand a thorough background check. He was equally careful in choosing his staff. In this regard, the insane ward at Bellevue had proved a veritable cornucopia of potential talent. William, for example, out tending the flock—he’d been locked up for expressing a strong desire to eat his older brother. After several examinations and interviews, Leng decided this request was not as outrageous as it seemed on the surface; the brother, a vile person, had abused William abominably as a child. Leng intuited that William would be forever grateful if given the opportunity to achieve his heart’s desire. This Leng was able to arrange without much difficulty. After the repast was complete, Leng took on the appreciative—and quite handy—William as farm help. Clara, on the other hand, had the occasional need to burn down a building. As long as she was given a day off once or twice a year to do so, and assisted in locating a suitable target, she was the best of housekeepers. Several others had required the use of a surgical device of Leng’s own design, which resembled an icepick; this device was inserted into the brain through the lower edge of the orbital socket and then given a very specific up-and-down wiping motion. The operation worked wonders, turning the most refractory patients docile and obedient—and, under Leng’s grooming, fanatically loyal, with none of the normal ethical constraints that might encumber ordinary servants.
Leng passed through the rooms of the large old farmhouse, exited through a side door, then crossed snow-encrusted stubble to a wedge-shaped structure with two metal doors rearing out of the ground: the cheese cellar. He removed the padlock with a key, pocketed it, and pulled one of the heavy doors wide with a grunt. Stone steps led down into darkness. A kerosene lamp hung on a peg nearby and, lighting it, he began to descend.
The cellar was deep—thirty steps into the earth. One reason his cheeses were in such demand at the city’s finest restaurants was the hay, wildflowers, and pasture grasses unique to the soil of his farm; another was the cellar itself. Carved deep into the pink feldspar of the land’s substratum, it afforded the ideal, constant temperature and humidity for his cheeses to deepen in flavor and complexity as they aged.
Reaching the bottom landing, he moved down a long corridor whose stone walls curved into a groined archway overhead. As he passed, he glanced over the rows of cheese stacked on both sides, sitting on wooden shelves and marble trestles, observing the progress of their aging. A number were now ready for sale: his finest crumbly sharp cheddars, aged up to three years; a nutty Gruyère that he found needed fifteen months to bring out its natural firmness; and the pride of the De Jong cellars—grana Padano, an Italian cheese no one else in America knew the secret of—voluptuous yet fine-grained, with a faintly sweet flavor.
Reaching the end of the storage area, he descended a few more steps to another, heavier door, which he unlocked. In the room beyond, he turned up the lamps until what was obviously a laboratory became visible.
On one table sat a tray of test tubes in a centrifuge ring full of liquid. This marvelous device had been invented less than a decade earlier for separating milk from cream. Leng had found a more important use for it. He picked up one of the test tubes and held it to his eye, examining it for both color and viscosity.
Perfect. He knew from prior research this light saffron color was the hallmark of a properly prepared elixir, but he had never before achieved such clarity and uniformity. Perhaps Constance had given him the true Arcanum after all. Time would tell.
He reached into a drawer, pulled out a syringe of metal and glass, and filled it from the tube. Then he returned the tube to its rack, dimmed the lights of the laboratory, and—keeping the syringe behind his back—unlocked and entered a door at the rear of the lab.
Beyond was a small, spartan room, with a bed, a desk, a clothes hanger, and an armchair. None of these, nor the single print on the wall, helped alleviate the cell-like claustrophobia. The room was lit by a single lamp, set high on one wall. There was a chamber pot under the bed, and a tray of plates covered with half-eaten food on the desk.
A girl in her late teens lay on the bed, dozing fitfully. Rousing herself at the sound of his entry, she sat up.
“Dr. Leng!” she said.
“Hello, my dear,” Leng answered, in a gentle voice, as he approached.
“I’m so frightened. You said you’d explain everything—ouch, what’s this?”
He smoothly injected the fluid into her plump arm.