Page 38 of Angel of Vengeance
“Just some vitamins.” He glanced disapprovingly at the half-eaten food. “You really need to eat more—it’s important to keep up your strength. Clara will bring you some fresh oranges.”
“How can I eat while stuck in this cell, Doctor?”
Leng sat down on the bed and took her hand in his. “I did explain everything, you know… Perhaps you don’t remember. Quite understandable. There was an outbreak of smallpox, and I had to move you from the hospital before we were all quarantined.” He paused. “It’s a severe outbreak, a true pestilence; had we stayed, I fear it would have done you mischief.”
“But what about my brother, my—”
“Everyone is fine. You just have to be patient,” Dr. Leng said, patting her hand, then releasing it and rising again. “I’ll have Clara bring you fresh sheets and bathwater with the oranges—you’ll feel better afterward. And you won’t have to wait much longer down here—I understand the pestilence is beginning to subside.”
Leng moved quickly toward the door and grasped the handle. “Just a week, perhaps a little more. I promise.”
She looked at him. “Promise?”
“Yes, Mary. I promise.”
PART TWO
Things Fall Apart
32
THEY ARRIVED AT THE garish brownstone on the outskirts of the Tenderloin district at different intervals between midnight and one. First came the dandy, an obviously wealthy English fop whose mincing gait and exaggerated Oxbridge accent were reminiscent of so many callow younger sons of the peerage sent on “grand tours” to get them out of the way. Next came the traveling purveyor of dry goods, recently arrived in New York for an annual company meeting, whose very attempts at being inconspicuous in this high-priced house of turpitude were made all the more risible by his hayseed accent and awkward manners. He passed through the gaudy parlor, gaped in astonishment at the ladies lounging about on sofas and ottomans, dropped his hat in an attempt to doff it, then—after getting his bearings—ascended the stairs.
Last came the nightingale: the expensive lady of easy virtue, whose well-appointed charms could be had by the hour. The English dandy had paid the proprietress for the use of a large set of rooms on the third floor, and nothing about these two additional arrivals excited the faintest of curiosity in the parlor. Other groups of various sizes and compositions had already come in that evening, bent on celebrating the New Year, and more would be arriving soon enough.
Closing the door to the third-floor suite, Pendergast took off his ill-fitting hat and shrugged out of the shabby salesman’s overcoat. Diogenes was already seated in a gaudy Louis XV armchair, one that clashed appallingly with the rest of the furniture, a mishmash of faux pieces from other French periods. His back was to the door, but he glanced up briefly into a framed mirror, saw Pendergast, then returned his attention to a notebook balanced on one knee.
Pendergast looked around: at the huge four-poster bed with fringed canopy; the painted dressers and wardrobes; the various basins of fine china, already filled with water for post-laborem washing.
“Aren’t you going to get out of that ridiculous costume?” he asked his brother.
“This ‘ridiculous costume,’ as you call it, is my armor. It protects me from those who might seek out the Right Reverend Considine for assassination. It is also the uniform of the other life I now lead here: a certain Lord Cedric. I rather enjoy that life and the extracurricular opportunities it offers.”
At Diogenes’s mention of his other life, a pained expression crossed Pendergast’s face. “Speaking of Considine, how has Leng reacted? Does he suspect?”
“Not at all. Leng is so annoyed at being deprived of his victims that I suspect he will soon make an attempt on my life. I’ve grown adept at inflicting on him the finer points of Methodism, and in his rage he suspects nothing.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Pendergast’s eye fell on the notebook Diogenes had just opened. The page consisted of a list of names, of which he could make out only the first few:
Martha Jane Cannary
Clarissa H. Barton
Anna Mary Robertson
“What’s this?” Pendergast asked, as Diogenes finished drawing a line through the first name. “Martha Jane Cannary?”
“Better known as Calamity Jane,” said Diogenes, flashing a grin.
“And Clarissa Barton, no doubt better known in our day as Clara… Precisely what depraved extracurricular opportunities are you availing yourself of?”
“That, Frater, is none of your affair,” Diogenes replied, closing the book at the same moment that Constance opened the door.
The brothers, as one, looked over at her while she silently entered. Her disguise was so effective in its promise of loose sensuality, its disturbing mix of elegance and poor taste, that for a moment neither could say a word.
She took off her hat and hair netting and came over, glancing each of them up and down as if to assure herself neither had suffered serious harm in her absence. From the ease with which she moved, it was equally clear the injuries sustained from her altercation with Munck had healed.
“Let’s proceed with this meeting, shall we?” she said. “The winter wind off the Hudson is positively Siberian tonight.”