The Alienist - Caleb Carr [203]
“Hello, Kermit,” I said with a grin. “Is your father at home?”
“No one shall pass!” the boy shouted grimly, staring me in the eye.
I lost my grin. “I beg your pardon?”
“No one shall pass!” he repeated. “I, Horatio, will guard this bridge!”
Sara let out a small laugh and I nodded in acknowledgment. “Ah. Yes, Horatio at the bridge. Well, Horatio, if it’s all the same to you…”
I took a step or two into the house, to which Kermit raised the rhino horn and banged it down with surprising force on the toes of my right foot. I let out a sharp cry of pain, prompting Sara to laugh harder, as Kermit again declared, “No one shall pass!”
Just then Edith Roosevelt’s pleasant but firm voice echoed in from somewhere to the rear of the house: “Kermit! What’s going on out there?”
Kermit’s eyes suddenly went round with apprehension, and then he spun and made for the nearby staircase, hollering “Retreat! Retreat!” as he went. With the pain in my toes beginning to subside I marked the approach of a rather serious-looking young girl of four or so: Theodore’s younger daughter, Ethel. She was carrying a large picture book full of vivid zoological illustrations and walking with evident purpose; but when she caught sight first of Sara and me and then of Kermit vanishing up the stairs, she paused, flicking a thumb in her brother’s direction.
“Horatio at the bridge,” she droned, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. Then she put her face back in the book and continued her progress down the hall.
Suddenly a doorway to our right burst open, producing a rotund, uniformed, and clearly terrified maid. (There were very few servants in the Roosevelt household: Theodore’s father, a prodigious philanthropist, had given away much of the family fortune, and Theodore supported his family primarily through his writing and his meager salary.) The maid seemed oblivious of Sara’s and my presence as she dashed over to take refuge behind the open front door.
“No!” she screamed, to no one that I could see. “No, Master Ted, I will not do it!”
The hall doorway through which the maid had appeared thereupon disgorged an eight-year-old boy who wore a solemn gray suit and spectacles much like Theodore’s. This was Ted, the oldest son, whose status as scion of the family was amply demonstrated not only by his appearance, but by a rather intimidating young barred owl that sat perched on his shoulder, as well as by a dead rat that he held by its tail in one gloved hand.
“Patsy, you really are being ridiculous,” Ted said to the maid. “If we don’t teach him what his natural prey is, we’ll never be able to send him back into the wild. Just hold the rat above his beak—” Ted stopped as he finally became aware that there were two callers standing in the doorway. “Oh,” he said, his eyes brightening behind the spectacles. “Good evening, Mr. Moore.”
“Evening, Ted,” I answered, shying away from the owl.
The boy turned to Sara. “And you’re Miss Howard, aren’t you? I met you at my father’s office.”
“Well done, Master Roosevelt,” Sara said. “It seems you have a good memory for detail—a scientist needs one.”
Ted smiled very self-consciously at that, then remembered the rat in his hand. “Mr. Moore,” he said quickly, with renewed enthusiasm. “Do you think you could take this rat—here, by the tail—and hold it about an inch above Pompey’s beak? He’s not used to the sight of prey, and it sometimes scares him—he’s been living on strips of raw beefsteak. I’ve got to have a free hand to make sure he doesn’t fly off.”
One less accustomed to life in the Roosevelt household might’ve balked at this request; I, however, having been present for many such scenes, simply sighed, took the rat by the tail, and positioned it