The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [57]
“Say, Pinkie,” I said, following him, “I guess you know you’ve got oatmeal in your shoes.”
“The best thing for rheumatism,” he answered, fetching a few bottles of beer and running a couple of suspicious-looking glasses under a cold tap. “My walks have become a bit painful lately. Straw and cold oatmeal—that’s the answer.” He started back for the front room.
“O-kaay” I said with a shrug, still trailing him. “You oughtta know, ain’t nobody in New York walks as much as you do.”
Moving with little huffing sounds, Pinkie set the beer bottles and glasses down on a table made of an old wooden crate and then started to pour. “Here we are,” he said, handing the glasses to the Doctor and Miss Howard. “To you, Miss Howard,” he toasted, holding his glass up. “‘I look upon thy youth, fair maiden, I look upon thy youth and fancy laden, Would that I a fairy were, That with magic wand I could deter, All evil chance, and spare thy coming years, All unwrought by rain of tears, With a rainbow bright.’”
“Well said, Albert,” the Doctor replied, holding up his glass and drinking his beer. “Your own?” he asked, though I could tell that he knew it was.
Pinkie inclined his head humbly. “Poor, but my own. And fitting for your companion.”
Miss Howard seemed genuinely touched—and that was no easy trick, for a member of the male sex to move her. “Thank you, Mr. Ryder,” she said, holding up her glass and taking a sip. “That was lovely.”
“Say, Pinkie,” I tossed in, knowing that he was also a turf enthusiast, “how’d you make out in the Suburban today?”
A look of mingled disappointment and excitement came into his face. “I’m afraid I had no time to put a bet down,” he said. “But it’s odd that you should mention the races, Stevie …” He lifted the same long finger again and directed us to follow him to the studio, which we did. “A very strange coincidence, indeed! You see, I’ve been working on something. A picture with a story behind it, you might say. Some years ago, a waiter with whom I had a passing but convivial acquaintance wagered all of his life’s savings on a horse race—and lost. Despairing, he then shot himself.”
“How dreadful,” Miss Howard said; but her shock could not hide the fact that she was becoming what you might call enchanted by the paintings that began to close in around her.
“Yes,” Pinkie said. “It set my mind to work, I shall not tell you precisely how—but you must see the result, as I think it may have possibilities.”
He took us over to a large easel in one corner of the room, on which rested a canvas of about two feet by three, covered with a light, stained piece of cloth. Pinkie lit a nearby gas lamp, turned its flame up, and then stepped to the easel.
“Mind you, it’s nothing like finished,” he said, “but—well…”
He took the cloth away.
On the easel was one of the most eerie of all his pictures that I’d ever seen. It showed a scraggly oval track, surrounded by a similarly rough horse fence. On the muddy ground in front of the track was a large, nasty-looking snake; above it, in the distance, some barren hills and a sky so gloomy that it could’ve been either day or night; and on the track itself, a lone rider—Death, the Reaper himself—riding bareback in the wrong direction, holding his scythe high.
Now; most of Pinkie’s pictures were mysterious, but this thing was downright grim—scary, even. The Doctor and Miss Howard, however, were clearly impressed, for their eyes positively glowed with fascination as they studied it.
“Albert,” the Doctor said slowly, “it’s brilliant. Harrowing, but brilliant.”
Pinkie shuffled self-consciously in his oatmeal at that, and did so again when Miss Howard added, “Extraordinary. Really … entrancing in its way …”
“I’ve decided to call it simply ‘The Race Track,’ “Pinkie said.
I looked from the Doctor and Miss Howard to Pinkie and finally back to the picture. “I don’t get it,” I said.
Pinkie smiled at me and stroked his beard. “Now, that’s what I like to hear. What don’t you get, young Stevie?”
“What’s with the snake?” I said, pointing at it.