Page 49 of Angel of Vengeance
Now the boy himself stepped into the back parlor to join D’Agosta. One hand gripped the leather strap that bound his schoolbooks together, the other his prized possession: a metal dip pen. This pen, though it was used like the others in school and even looked rather common, was in fact very special.
Two packages had arrived from Pendergast since they reached the island: both addressed from Mr. Rockefeller to Mrs. Cookson, but holding inside smaller packages with George Harrison’s name on them. The first contained necessaries, including money and instructions he had burnt after reading. The second package contained a present for Joe. Pendergast, who knew Joe had been developing an interest in astronomy before being rushed out of the Fifth Avenue mansion, had given him a dip pen with a metal shaft. D’Agosta, reading from Pendergast’s note, explained to Joe that the pen was exceedingly rare, having been machined from a piece of the Bendegó meteorite, which had impacted in Brazil almost a hundred years before. In the package Pendergast had also included a pamphlet on meteors and meteorites, along with some photographs. It turned out to be the perfect gift. Joe treasured it above all things and kept its origin as secret as if his life depended on it. D’Agosta smiled as he watched the boy unfasten the strap around his schoolbooks. No doubt half the fun of the gift was being the only one to know just how valuable the ordinary-looking item was.
A thump sounded from downstairs. Immediately, Joe’s eyes met D’Agosta’s. A minute later, the basement door opened and Mr. Cookson could be heard emerging, preparing to do the morning chores, speaking briefly to his wife before shuffling away again. D’Agosta could see Joe’s shoulders sag, his eyes wandering. The boy was easily bored—and no wonder, being stuck on a frozen island.
The combination clock–barometer–temperature gauge on the mantel told him it was nine thirty—an entire day ahead, unexpectedly without school.
“You know what?” D’Agosta asked. “I think it’s high time we went looking for that old ghost. You can do your studying afterward. What do you say?”
Joe’s eyes lit up.
D’Agosta leaned forward conspiratorially. “We’ll just have a quick look… for now. If we find anything suspicious, we’ll make preparations and investigate more thoroughly tomorrow. But we’d better put on our winter coats—those closed parts of the house are as cold as Siberia.”
“Jiminy!” Joe half slid, half jumped out of his chair, then followed D’Agosta into the back kitchen to collect their coats and a kerosene lantern.
Almost an hour later, a freezing D’Agosta sat on the top step of the attic staircase, wrapping his scarf more tightly around his neck. He hadn’t considered just what an ordeal a “quick look” through a mansion entailed. While he’d regularly made a circuit of the primary rooms of the house as part of his cover, he’d never penetrated its recesses. He was shocked at the sheer number of storerooms, larders, closets, and shut-up bedrooms the mansion contained, all of which Joe had insisted on exploring. They were now both covered in dust and cobwebs.
When he’d made the suggestion, it had seemed like a way to make good on his promise to entertain Joe, and in the process give the structure a really thorough going-over. And now, he estimated that, in the last sixty minutes, he had walked up and down at least two dozen flights of stairs. They had ended up here in the freezing, sprawling attic, filled with dust and mothballs and rat traps, many already accommodating frozen rats not yet disposed of. Brick chimneys stood here and there like sentinels, rising through the gloom to pierce the gables overhead.
So far their explorations had not revealed any sign of ghosts, and no rattle of chains had greeted their passing. Joe, however, was having a marvelous time. D’Agosta was exhausted.
“Well, if there were any ghosts,” he said, “we scared ’em off for sure. Time to call it a morning.”
“What about back there?” Joe asked, still eager, pointing to the darkest ends of the attic, where the eaves sloped down into a series of crawl spaces.
“No ghosts in there,” D’Agosta said.
“How do you know?”
“Too cold.”
“Ghosts can’t feel cold,” Joe said authoritatively.
D’Agosta shrugged. “I’m cold.”
Joe accepted this explanation. “What about the carriage house?”
“We’ll look there tomorrow,” D’Agosta replied. “Come on: careful with these stairs—they’re steep.” And, rising, he led the way down to the third floor. Joe followed, closing first the attic door, then the door at the bottom of the stairs.
For several minutes, silence returned to the attic. Then, with a brief, almost indetectable scraping noise, a packing crate shifted in the darkness beneath a far gable. A shape emerged. Edwin Humblecut rose and moved to the front of the crate, on which he took a seat, wiping dust from his heavy clothes and setting his homburg beside him. And then—idly fingering his handlebar mustache—he settled down to wait.
44
THE SUN HAD ALREADY risen in the eastern sky an hour before Pendergast peered down from the top of a hill, surveying the landscape with a pair of binoculars. After spending the night in a meadow some distance away, where he’d made sure Napoleon was fed and watered, he’d left the horse tied up in a copse, well hidden, while he made his way up the hill at dawn, creeping the last few yards. Mists had risen from the fells and dales of the surrounding farms.
The trail of knotted straw—sparse to begin with—seemed to have vanished. Whatever its origin, it seemed likely Leng’s wagon had turned off the road and headed to one of three farms Pendergast could see in the valley. All were isolated, the farmhouses and outbuildings buried in hollows or surrounded by trees, the encircling fields spreading out broadly across the land, separated by hedgerows and windbreaks. This was dairy country, and he saw small herds of dairy cows, released from the barns, make their way to grazing areas that, despite the season, were clear of snow and offered some meager sustenance. He remained in his blind—motionless, watching—until at the farthest farm he saw what he was looking for: a flock of sheep meandering up a hill, driven by a shepherd with a dog.
The sheep’s milk, he felt sure, was for making cheese. If the farthest farm specialized not in dairy per se, but in cheese making, such an establishment would have cellars or natural caves of the kind necessary for aging cheese—and useful for other, more nefarious purposes.
He crept down from the summit of the hill and back to Napoleon. Stroking the horse, he praised him and murmured a soft goodbye in his ear. Then he unbridled and unsaddled the horse, hung the bridle on a tree branch, propped the saddle on a rock, and turned the horse loose. He knew such a beautiful animal would soon find a good home, and the lucky traveler who happened upon the abandoned saddle and bridle would be grateful indeed.
He ventured back to the road, where he could just make out the gables of the target farm’s main house peeking above the protected dell in which it lay. A stream ran past the rambling old structure, deep in shadow, and it was along these wooded banks that Pendergast decided he would make his approach.
He cast a final glance back at Napoleon, who was standing next to the road, ears perked, watching him quizzically. Another murmured goodbye, and then the horse turned and trotted away, tossing his head with newfound freedom, breathing out clouds of condensation as the sun broke over the horizon.
Crossing the road, Pendergast vaulted a split-rail fence, then traversed a field, moving rapidly and keeping to low areas of ground. He had fixed the terrain in his mind during his long vantage from the top of the hill; he had seen no movement except in the immediate vicinity of the barn, and it was a simple matter to work his way to the small stream burbling along a pebbled course edged by ice, overhung on both sides with bare trees.
He moved downstream, following the meandering course of the rivulet and staying under cover. He calculated it was about eight-tenths of a mile to the farmhouse—a distance he could cover in less than fifteen minutes. Keeping rigid track of both time and distance allowed him to follow his progress across the landscape as clearly as if he were viewing his location on a modern GPS. As the sun rose over the bare tops of the trees, the stream brightened and he began moving more cautiously, keeping to areas of heavier vegetation. The farmhouse was now one final turn of the stream away, and as he came around, creeping through the bushes, he could see it clearly across a broad expanse of matted grass. The farm was showing robust signs of life: smoke streaming from the house’s chimneys, a strange-looking man carrying wood inside, another rolling open the door of the adjacent barn—but the shepherd was away with his sheep and, once he’d satisfied himself as to the rest, Pendergast could plan his final approach.