The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [70]
“But?” Marcus said.
“Well, from the way it hit just the right spot in the frame—I’d say no. Whoever threw it meant to come close. Nothing more.”
“Or less,” the Doctor said, taking the knife. “Well… the señora said she felt she’d been followed here.”
“You didn’t see anyone?” Mr. Moore asked Cyrus.
“No, sir. A young boy, running around a corner—but he couldn’t have been the one. This was an expert, if you ask me.”
The Doctor handed the knife back to Lucius. “An expert—sending a warning.” He pointed at the knife. “A peculiar blade, Detective Sergeant. Do you recognize it?”
Lucius frowned. “I do, though I wish I didn’t. It’s called a kris. The weapon of the Manilamen—they believe it has mystical powers.”
“Ah,” the Doctor noised. “Then the señora was right. Her husband knows where she’s been. We can only hope that he doesn’t know why, and that she can invent a story that he will believe.”
“Wait,” I said. “How can you be so sure she’s right? What is that thing, anyway? Who are the Manilamen?”
“They’re pirates and mercenaries,” Marcus answered. “Some of the toughest characters in the western Pacific. They take their name from the capital of the Philippine Islands.”
“Yeah? So what?”
The Doctor took the knife again. “The Philippine Islands, Stevie, are one of the most important colonies in the Spanish Empire. A most valued jewel in the queen regent’s crown. Well…” He walked toward the center of the room, still examining the knife. “It would seem that we have gained an advantage tonight—and lost one.” He gave us all a very serious look. “We must move.”
CHAPTER 13
The strange knife from the Philippines may not have done Miss Howard or Cyrus any harm, but it dealt a death blow to Mr. Moore’s reluctance to get started on finding the woman in our sketch. He’d known Miss Howard since childhood (her family’d had a house on Gramercy Park in addition to their estate in the Hudson Valley), and though she was always quick to maintain that she didn’t need any man’s help to protect herself—which was as true as true could be—Mr. Moore didn’t like the idea of crazed Filipinos following her or any of us around with kris at the ready. And so, bright and early Friday morning, he marched into Number 808, carrying a long list of every agency in town that offered care for infants and children. He’d told his bosses at The New York Times that he wasn’t going to be around for a while, and that if they didn’t like it they could go ahead and fire him. They hadn’t been much surprised by this statement, as Mr. Moore was known to be a loose cannon around his office; but since the scoops he periodically came up with continued to make it worth putting up with his uppity behavior, they didn’t let him go but gave him an indefinite vacation. (There were only a couple of occasions during his years at the Times when he crossed the line far enough to get the sack, and even then the exile was only temporary.)
The detective sergeants, Miss Howard, and Mr. Moore proceeded to divide the list up, and then each set out with photographic copies of Miss Beaux’s sketch, ready for long days of frustrating inquiries at places that were often run by very uncooperative people. All of us at Seventeenth Street knew that this process would take some time, time that would pass faster if we filled it with constructive activity. For the Doctor, that meant locking himself back up in his study and combing through more psychological texts, trying to determine a hypothetical background for the woman we were tracking. The occasional cries, curses, and execrations that came out of that room, though, indicated that he was failing to get much further than he had earlier in the week. As for Cyrus, the detective sergeants had secretly asked him to prepare a report on each member of the Doctor’s staff at the Institute, since they’d have to juggle that investigation with the Linares affair. No one knew the Doctor’s assistants—the teachers, matrons, even the custodians—better than Cyrus, and he took advantage of the time to put together a set of summaries what were very