The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [160]
“But,” Mr. Moore said carefully, as we made for an old surrey what was standing outside the station, “are you sure you’re up to it, Rupert? I mean, I heard you weren’t well—”
“Not well?!” Mr. Picton thundered back. “Why, I’m as sound as a dollar—in fact, I’m even sounder, given the current strength of our currency. Oh, I know what they said in New York before I left, John, and I’ll admit that I needed a rest at the time. You know my disposition—high-strung I am, certainly, you’ll get no argument from me. But those rumors about my suffering a breakdown were just further attempts to discredit what I was saying.”
“Mmm, yes, I’m acquainted with that phenomenon,” the Doctor said, as Mr. Picton began to lob our luggage from the porter’s truck into his surrey, smoking furiously all the while.
“Yes, I understand you are, Dr. Kreizler!” our host answered. “I understand you are! And so you probably know the weariness it breeds—trying to stop what was going on in the district attorney’s office fairly well exhausted me, as I say, and wore my nerves positively raw. But that’s a far cry from madness, don’t you think?”
“Well—” the Doctor answered slowly; too slowly, it turned out, for Mr. Picton.
“Exactly my point!” he said. “It’s a funny world we’re living in, Dr. Kreizler—and I don’t mean funny in the amusing sense—where a man can be labeled mad simply for trying to expose egregious corruption! Ah, well, no matter …” Tossing the last of our bags into the surrey, Mr. Picton made for the driver’s bench. “Climb aboard, everyone. Mr. Montrose, perhaps you and Master Taggert might not mind riding on the steps, there. You can get a grip on the canopy, and we’re not going far.”
“Fine with me!” I said happily, finding that I was starting to enjoy Mr. Picton’s slightly crazy way of saying and doing things.
“Of course, sir,” Cyrus said, also taking an outside perch after the others had climbed aboard.
“Good men!” Mr. Picton said with a grin, saluting us with his pipe. “Hang, on, now—here we go!” The surrey began to roll, but we hadn’t even gotten out of the station yard before Mr. Picton had started in again. “As I say, Doctor, it doesn’t matter, really, all that business in New York, and what those people may have said about me—doesn’t matter at all, not in the long term. The world is going to Hell in a hack, and New York will be one of the first places to arrive, if it hasn’t already, and I could make a case for it having done so. That’s one of the reasons I came back to Ballston—it’s actually possible to do an occasional bit of good here without having to worry about the magnates and the bosses.” He let out a few more smokestack blasts with his pipe as he steered his horse along a street that ran west below the steepled hill. “But don’t let’s get drawn too far into this sort of talk—we have other matters that are pressing.” He took out his watch and checked it again. “Pressing, indeed! You must all get settled in and fed—Mrs. Hastings will see to that. My housekeeper.” He shook his head as we rattled our way toward the western edge of town. “Terrible case. She and her husband ran a dry-goods store together for most of their lives. Then, a couple of years ago, three local toughs—not all that much older than you, Master Taggert—robbed the place while she was out. Beat her husband to death with a shovel. I prosecuted the case, and afterwards she came to work for me—as much out of gratitude as anything else, I think.”
“Gratitude?” Miss Howard asked. “Because you helped her through a difficult time?”
“Because I made sure those three boys went to the electrical chair!” Mr. Picton answered. “Ah! There’s my house now—at the end of the street.”
Mr. Picton had a mansion-sized place at the juncture of Charlton and High Streets, not too far from the court house and close to the old Aldridge Spa (currently a boardinghouse) and the Iron Railing Spring, the pair of which were the last real remains of the town’s salad days as a health resort. To judge by the four big turrets what formed the corners of Mr. Picton’s house, along with the wide