The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [353]
We’d known that Welles was an unpredictable character; but no public official had ever made that kind of statement in support of the Doctor’s work, and the event was enough to make you think that maybe there was some kind of justice in the world, after all. Mr. Moore’d taken the hopeful chance of engaging a private room at Mr. Delmonico’s restaurant for after the hearing (such rooms being the only places in the joint where Cyrus and I were allowed to eat), and during the meal that followed the adults stuffed themselves on more kinds of strangely named French food than I could possibly rattle off all these years later. As for me, I made do with a steak and fried potatoes, and Mr. Delmonico even rounded me up a bottle of root beer (though I think he had to send one of his boys out to fetch it from a local grocer). But even if I can’t remember just what it was that everybody ate, I can remember that it was an evening of a type what was rare for us: there’d been no killings or kidnappings, and no great mystery was the main topic of conversation. In fact, crime didn’t come up much at all—it was just a time to be happy in each other’s company, and remember that terrible events were not the only things that bonded us together.
Being as the rest of the day had gone so well, we probably should’ve known that some unpleasant or at least disturbing surprise would be waiting for us at its end. The Doctor invited everyone back to his house after the meal at Delmonico’s, and when we arrived we discovered a very handsome brougham sitting at the curb in front of the front yard. But the two men sitting up on the driving seat didn’t exactly match the rig: wearing rough sailor’s jackets what indicated a familiarity with the seamier parts of the waterfront, they had the kind of deep brown features, thin, drooping mustaches, and large, dark eyes what immediately suggested they were from India, or that general part of the world. I was riding in a cab with Detective Sergeant Lucius, whose face—always jolly and rosy after a big meal and lots of red wine at Mr. Delmonico’s—suddenly went straight, even a little pale, when he saw the carriage and the men.
“What the—” he whispered. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, no?” I answered, looking at the brougham and then back at the detective sergeant. “What’s ‘oh, no’ about it? Who are they?”
Taking a deep breath, Lucius said, “They look like lascars.”
“Lascars?” I repeated, now a little disturbed myself: even I knew about the tough breed of sailors and pirates whose home waters were the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. “What the hell are they doing here?”
“Care to guess?” the detective sergeant said. “Lascars are a very common sight—on the Manila waterfront.”
“Oh,” I noised, glancing again at the two mugs on the brougham. Then I just sank down into my seat. “Aw, shit…”
By the time Lucius’s and my cab stopped, the others had already gotten out of a second hansom and the Doctor’s calash, and were gathered around the door of the brougham. There was no sign of life from inside the thing yet, and the first such that we got was a question:
“Dr. Kreizler?” said a deep voice, one what bore a strong Spanish accent.
The Doctor stepped forward. “I am Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. May I be of assistance?”
The door of the brougham finally opened, and out stepped a very dark, handsome man of medium height and build, his hair carefully fixed with pomade. His clothes looked to be about the best that money could buy, and had that formal cut what seems to always mark the diplomat. In his hand he carried a walking stick what had a heavy ball of silver for a handle.
“I am Señor Narciso Linares. I believe you know of me.”
The Doctor just nodded with a small smile, having already guessed, like the rest of us, who