Page 64 of Angel of Vengeance

Leng added, in a significant tone: “The invitation is extended to Constance Greene, if she will lay aside her vengeful mission. The children will come, too—Joe and Binky; that is, young Constance. They are highly intelligent. Even Mary, whom I am on the verge of vivisecting to ensure the Arcanum does its work without damage to the internal organs—I’ll spare her, as well.”

“A family affair. I see.”

“I’ll even throw in your friend D’Agosta as a sweetener, although he is hardly suitable material for our new world. Together, Nephew, we can create a just society, a logical society, one rooted in respect, stability, and obedience to rational principles of good order.”

“And how will you accomplish this?”

“Through use of your portal. Our small band will travel to your century. Science in your time is superhuman in its power. From what I understand, a biologically engineered pestilence—like the Black Plague, but far more virulent—combined with a special vaccine for our select few will do the trick. As I’ve said, humanity is going to destroy itself regardless. I have no doubt bad actors in your century are already working on doomsday weapons.”

“No doubt.”

“But we,” Leng said triumphantly, “will beat them to it!” He paused, finding his heart rate elevated. He took a deep breath and looked at Pendergast, trying again to see into his mind. He thought, not for the first time, that he spied glimmers of curiosity, if not actual interest.

“Just so we’re clear: your ‘wiping the slate clean’ means, at its core, ridding the world of ninety-nine percent or more of its inhabitants—and beginning again with a handpicked few. Not unlike Dr. Strangelove.”

“I’m unfamiliar with this doctor you speak of, so I imagine his brilliant work lies in the future. But that’s beside the point. Will you join me?”

A long silence ensued. “It is worth considering,” Pendergast finally said, slowly and deliberately.

“My dear nephew, the time has come for you to make a decision. I will not wait. What is it to be? Will you join my endeavor: yes or no?”

A long silence. And then: “Yes.”

56

SITTING ON A FLY-BLOWN couch in an otherwise barren second-floor room, Otto Bloom had just finished rolling a cigarette and was about to light it when he heard a commotion among the sandhogs milling about on the floor below.

“Look—it’s his nibs!”

“So it is. And he’s got his muffin with him, looks like.”

“Between the two of them, I don’t know which one’s the more barmy.”

Dropping the cigarette, Bloom jumped to his feet and raced downstairs to the small group clustered about the sole entrance that remained open to Forty-Second, sniggering and chortling.

“Shut your pieholes!” he said, pulling the men bodily back from the doorway, leaving only the two guards in place. “Back to your posts!”

As the bricklayers, carpenters, and other construction workers scattered into the dim fastness of the empty tenement, Bloom stepped out onto the street to watch the glittering cab pull up. There was a brief pause, then the door opened and a resplendently dressed man descended, pausing on the lowest step to glance right and then left through his monocle, grimacing as if the street were made of cowshit and he were searching for the spot most thinly daubed. At last he condescended to tread the pavement, where he paused to snatch a silk handkerchief from a vest pocket and polish the handle of his snakewood walking stick. Giving the enameled surface a final stroke, he tossed the kerchief into the gutter, shot his cuffs to a precise amount of Mechlin lace, then turned to assist his companion out of the carriage. This was a young woman—young and, Bloom had to admit, very beautiful—whose shoulders were wrapped in sable and whose sweeping silk gown exposed—given the cold January air—an unhealthy amount of décolletage. The dandified gent gave her his arm and then guided her to a cart where a woman was selling apples to select one for his companion and another for himself. Reaching into a pocket of his satin waistcoat, he extracted a coin and tossed it to the vendor, a glint of gold flashing end over end. He looked up at the building before him, his gaze moving languorously east to west across the heavily scaffolded façade. He patted his companion’s hand with satisfaction and proceeded toward the guards framing the doorway, their expressions carefully stolid. As he did so, Bloom moved back a few steps into the maze of carpentry, preparing himself for another meeting with Lord Cedric.

When Mr. Billington had employed Bloom and his gang to contrive a small collapse in Smee’s Alley, then fill the alley and its surrounding buildings with enough obstacles—in the form of structural girders and buttresses—to keep out a small army, Bloom hadn’t asked many questions. The pale-looking man had paid handsomely indeed. It was only once the site was fully secured that he was let in on the secret. And it was bizarre indeed.

Billington said his family had an estate in Surrey, where he had an older brother—Cedric, Lord Jayeaux, fifth baron in his line. Thanks to the English system of primogeniture, Lord Cedric got all the money, and Billington’s allowance was dictated by his brother’s whims.

One of these whims, Billington explained, was Lord Cedric’s study of the occult. His Lordship was a member of various mystical orders and secret societies devoted to alchemy, divination, necromancy, and other occult sciences. Billington described to him Cedric’s interest in mummy “unwrapping parties” and “spirit boards” and his devotion to the charismatic Helena Blavatsky, a Russian spiritualist who had arrived in New York a few years earlier and founded the Theosophical Society.

Bloom’s recollections were interrupted by the high, nasal tones of Lord Cedric, searching for him.

“Stab me if I’ve ever seen such a beastly mess in all my life! Bloom!”

Summoning patience, Bloom stepped out into the corridor.

“Odd’s fish, where is that layabout? Bloom, I say! Come out of your hole and face me!”

Turning a corner, Bloom reached the spot where Lord Cedric currently stood, spreading his costume out to full glory, like a peacock fanning his feathers.

“There you are!” cried Lord Cedric. “Bloom, have you been introduced to this, my trembling hyacinth of the Dartmoor bogs, my hothouse Brixton orchid—the Lady Livia?”

“We’ve met,” Bloom said, putting a hand to his cap. Lord Cedric had, in fact, brought the woman here only once before, to the great entertainment of the sandhogs. He fell in behind Lord Cedric, who was now continuing on through the dust and intervening joists, making for a shaft of light that marked the interior entrance to Smee’s Alley.

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