Page 45 of Angel of Vengeance
The tramp frowned. “Not sure I recollect.” He shrugged. “Monday sounds right. Then again, it might have been Sunday.”
“Which way did it go?”
“North.”
“Who was driving it?”
“He was all mufflered up on account of the cold, black scarf and greatcoat, but I think it was the master of the house himself—he’s a right tall feller.” He hesitated. “Why so interested? You some kind of second-story man?”
“Good gracious, no! My interest, sir, is for the very simple reason that they couldn’t find a better drayman than yours truly! Why would the master be driving some old farm wagon if he had a decent wagoner? Now, if he had a man like me—”
“I wouldn’t knock on that door if my life depended on it—and that’s a bottom fact.”
“What do you mean?”
“Thems are some rum coves lounging around that place, comings and goings at night—all sorts of doings. It’s a strange house with queer folk, and you’d do better to toughen your knuckles on doors farther up.”
“Well, you’ve scoured the place, and I haven’t… but crikey, it’s the biggest mansion on the whole stretch! More horses, more money. And with a separate stables, a man can likely get a fair amount of shut-eye in without being overly troubled.”
Galloon shook his head.
“What was it carrying?”
“A load of hay, I believe.”
“Out of the city? For dunnage?”
Galloon shrugged. “It was dark, and they was moving fast. If I were you I’d pack away that curiosity—it’s like to get you into deep tar.”
“I thankee for the advice, Mr. Galloon, sir, and I leave you with the bottle as a parting gift. Now, good night. I had better freshen up my wind afore I go a-knocking on doors.”
The tramp rose and headed north along Riverside Drive, eyes scanning the ground. In short order, his vigilance was rewarded with two items—crumpled pieces of damp hay and a single round pellet, which he recognized as the dung of a sheep.
39
THE FLICKERING LIGHT FROM Constance’s candle gleamed and winked among the hundreds of glass jars, bottles, beakers, and phials that crowded the shelves in the chemical storeroom housed in the basement of 891 Riverside Drive. She moved silently on stockinged feet, holding the candle to the labels in each row of vessels in turn, on which an impeccable hand had written the name of the item or substance within—a venomous insect, snake, or other noxious creature; a swollen poison gland dissected from a toad; a deadly plant, mineral, liquid, powder, crystalline, or colloid.
This was the heart of Leng’s collections—poisons, toxins, banes, and venoms. He had only begun to stock this most valuable and dangerous storeroom; over the years, Constance knew, it would grow to embrace virtually every lethal substance known to exist, as he searched for the ultimate poison capable of driving the human race to extinction. It had been an unpleasant experience for Constance—delving into her memory, back to the time when she was a young girl living in this same mansion, acting as Leng’s assistant in various chemical and toxicological experiments—but necessary, if she were to reacquaint herself with its layout.
She was looking for a certain toxin Leng had been fascinated with, found in the death cap mushroom, Amanita phalloides. The toxins of that infamous species of mushroom were thermostable: they could be cooked yet remain deadly. In addition, the mushroom had a pleasant taste resembling beef broth, allowing food to be heavily laced with it yet take on no bitter or unusual flavor. But what primarily attracted Leng was the fact that the mushroom’s deadly effects took days to appear—much too late to purge the stomach with an emetic. By the time you felt sick enough to realize something was seriously wrong, you were already a dead person. You could ingest a fatal dose and remain unaware of it for as long as two weeks—until your liver began inexorably to fail. For this reason, the death cap had been used as a poison for thousands of years, playing a role in the demise of, among others, the Roman emperor Claudius, Pope Clement VII, and the Austrian emperor Charles VI.
Once the poison finally manifested, it made itself felt in a most unpleasant manner indeed. An antidote was not developed until some time into the twenty-first century. Prior to that, nothing could save the victim except immediate liver transplantation.
In the nineteenth century, there was no cure at all.
She recalled that, during the 1890s, Leng had labored in this laboratory for weeks: preparing a desiccated and powdered form of the death cap, trying to isolate and identify its poison. He had discovered it contained not one, but seven toxins, each biochemically distinct and with different effects. The empress of these toxins, alpha-amanitin, was the deadliest and also had the advantage of taking the longest to manifest itself. The ingestion of as little as ten milligrams was fatal.
Constance had helped Leng isolate the toxin, and she had searched her memory for the exact process. She wanted to make sure to prepare an absolutely fatal dose, and that meant concentrating the poison through biochemical extraction. Although it would be a decade before he turned his attention to studying its properties, even as early as 1881 she knew Leng had kept a cache of powdered Amanita phalloides somewhere in his storeroom.
At last, the candle flame flickered over the label she was searching for:
AMANITA PHALLOIDES
DEATH CAP
DESICCATED
She could not simply take the jar of white powder—Leng frequently haunted the laboratory, and she planned on leaving nothing to chance, not even the remote possibility he might spy that the level of powder had dropped in a single jar. Removing a small bottle, a piece of paper, an empty phial, and a packet from the pockets of her dress, she placed them on a shelf. Rolling the paper into a funnel, she gently shook out two tablespoons of the amanita powder into the phial; then, transferring the funnel to Leng’s jar, she took the packet—containing confectioners’ sugar—and restored the powder to its former level, stoppering the jar and shaking it to disperse the sugar.