The room was in dark except for one flame, a fat verdigris glow that lit only the nostrils, cheeks and brows of the two men so that they looked like nothing more than grotesque levitating masks. The strong stench of rotten eggs permeated the room.
‘It all depends on the amount of zinc,’ Roman said. ‘That and whether you use earth pigments or chemical compounds.’
‘This is safer than tasting?’ Sloan asked.
‘Not as a steady atmosphere. On the other hand, sulfur and lead won’t do your stomach any good.’
Sloan squinted into the fumes of the flame he held in the teaspoon. Roman turned aside to breathe. They had been burning paints in Sloan’s workshop for two hours. He had to give the man credit: Sloan was a fast learner.
‘You can make the pigments also?’ Sloan asked.
‘Sure, if you want to take the trouble. Buying it in the store is simpler and cheaper.’
‘Naturally, naturally,’ Sloan agreed. ‘But I’m restoring the récamier. I’m not going to be able to buy orpiment in any store, am I?’
‘No,’ Roman admitted.
‘Well then, how difficult is it to make? I’ll have to have some.’
‘Not difficult at all.’
‘How?’
Roman felt one heartbeat pass through his chest like a train in the dark. There was no way to avoid an answer.
‘Simple. All you need is sulfur, arsenic and a covered crucible. Heat it and let it cool. The orpiment will gather on the cover.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. And don’t mix it with lead or copper carbonate because neither will go with a sulfide. And don’t taste it.’
‘It’s that powerful?’ Sloan urged.
‘You wouldn’t be able to poison anybody with it,’ Roman said lightly. ‘It would be impossible to disguise the taste. Some artists have died, though, without wanting to.’
Sloan blew the flame out, and the room was black for a moment until Roman put the light on. The dealer was not trying to hide his satisfaction. He’d learned more in one afternoon than he had in a year. The future unfolded as a calendar of profits in his mind. Roman opened the door and stepped into the office. The stink of sulfur had insinuated itself there, too, and he went on to the living room without waiting for his host.
‘I suppose you’re hungry,’ Sloan said when he caught up.
Dinner was a cold salmon. Roman paid more attention to the brandy. He’d had his fill of the gaja household and its diet. What he wanted now was a hot stew bright with paprika with the loud arguing of hungry Romanies, not gelid civility. He withdrew into himself as Hillary tried to gain his attention with her wit. If he had pumped the father and daughter dry, they had pumped him, too. Sloan attempted to draw him into a dispute over the merits of the Reveres and got nothing but grunts. It didn’t matter to Sloan. He would be rid of his guest tomorrow, and he had what he wanted.
Roman retired early, going to his room and making a bed for himself on the floor. He put an ashtray beside him and smoked one Gauloise after another in the dark. Below he could hear them still carrying on. Sloan wanted to know what she and the Armenian had been doing in the woods for so long. She said he wasn’t Armenian, and who was her father to talk about fooling around? He said he didn’t care what Grey was; he wanted her to stay away from him. They weren’t yelling. From the tone of their voices, a conversational hum, many people wouldn’t have been aware that they were arguing. But it was far hotter than any talk Roman had heard between them before. The strain of living together for even a short time was beginning to split their charade at the seam. The wooden beams of the old house carried their mutual hate like a wire transmitting electricity.
She excused herself and left to drive to Boston to see some friends. Sloan said good-night and reminded her that she knew what he’d do if any of her friends showed up around his house. Roman expected Sloan to go to his bedroom soon after that, but instead he moved to his office. The sounds of drawers opening and feet pacing went on for two hours. At last, Sloan slammed the office door shut, locked it, and went upstairs to bed. Roman waited another hour for his host to fall asleep.
He got up and opened a window that looked out over the back lawn. The stars were very bright, dimming only where they came close to the nearly full moon. Scorpio sprawled up from the trees. Cassiopeia, the Queen of Ethiopia, reigned over duller subjects. Roman’s cigarette imitated a shooting star as it spun out the window to the grass.
No gardener on a night shift appeared. Roman sat on the sill with his stockinged feet hanging over the two-story drop to the lawn. He let go and came down on the grass on all fours. He had a moment of fear when he lost his breath, but it returned as he moved back into the shadow of the house. The last thing he wanted was to be staggering about blind and gagging outside a locked house. He was in the garden where Sloan had first offered him a glass of wine. The marble bathers held each other for warmth under the moon. He moved around the trellis to the rose garden and past to where the house spread to accommodate Sloan’s workshop and office. Roman stopped in front of the image of himself in Sloan’s office.
Sloan’s arrogance showed in the precautions he took against theft. There was no electric alarm system, just two impressively heavy bolts on the sides of the window. During the time Roman spent in the office while Sloan sorted out paints and spoons, he’d had ample time to remove the latch screws. The sturdy bolts were shot and secure, but Roman lifted the window easily, the bar carrying the latch with it.
Roman passed through the office into the workshop. Because Sloan kept his silver there, he’d kept a closer eye on Roman in this room. The paints were still out, and sulfur clung to the air. He picked out the saw with his pocket flashlight. It was a relatively new machine, large enough to split a tree with, no doubt an instrument of pride to its owner. A ring of curling teeth rested in the thin slot. Roman took the saw out of gear and turned the wheel slowly in the light’s beam. There was no sign of blood. The teeth had been cleaned very recently.
He turned the light onto the floor. The sawdust was new, and there were no stains under it that he could see. He crouched next to the wheel and examined the slot it lay in. The cleaning hadn’t been as thorough here. The back end of the groove was spotted brown. It would take sawing a board dripping with stain to produce them, if it were stain.
In another half hour there was nothing else to find in the shop besides the metal stamps Sloan did his forging with. A sample read: ‘Mills & Deming, 374 Queen ftreet, two doors above the Friends Meeting, NEW YORK, Makes and fells, all kinds of Cabinet Furniture and Chairs, after the moft modern fafhions and on reafonable terms.’ Mills and Deming had been master cabinetmakers, but they didn’t print their labels with a border that only became popular in the second half of the nineteenth century.
He went into the office. Through the window he saw how the sky had shifted. It was about 2 a.m. None of the files was locked, and he didn’t bother with them. There wasn’t enough time. Every drawer in the desk was locked. Roman took a ring of thin metal rods from his pants pocket. Working fast, bending a variety of rods of differing lengths, he created a key for each set of tumblers.
He found the typical gaja idea of valuables. There were papers to the house, stocks and bonds, insurance policies, bills of sale, loan notes, memberships in clubs, newspaper clippings with the Sloan name, five hundred dollars in cash, checkbooks, deposit slips and a list of Sloan’s customers. There was nothing of recent business that demanded Sloan stay up two nights in a row.
The letters were in the back of the bottom drawer. They were unlike any of the other papers, written in longhand, the address in a girl’s rounded manner. There was no return address. There were fifteen in all, and he chose the latest one, postmarked a week ago. Roman could hear Hillary now, ‘. . . who are you to talk about fooling around?’
Dear Hoddinot,
Today passed as slowly as if it were a year. You joke about life being more enjoyable the slower it goes. It’s not very funny to me. As it is, I spend all my time thinking about us.
Writing again. The head librarian came by to make sure I was filing. She’s jealous because starting Monday, I have a week’s vacation and she doesn’t want to do the work herself.
Back again. She’s finally gone to lunch. At last I can get down to it. I’m sorry it takes so long to work up to things, I’d meant to make it short and sweet. The fact is I meant what I said on the telephone. This is the end. It took a long while to sink in, but now I finally realize that we aren’t getting anywhere. Or, I should say, I’m not getting anywhere.
As a matter of fact, I’m just beginning to figure out what a fool I’ve been. Never being seen with you in public. Sneaking into New York to some sordid hotel and never telling my friends where I’m going and who this fascinating older man is who’s going to marry me. Calling you late at night so the servants won’t catch on. And why? Because society isn’t ready for me yet. I have to be introduced properly to become an eligible wife for Hoddinot Sloan. As if meeting you for weekends in New York was helping me get introduced in Boston! I guess I’m just sick of hearing you say that we just haven’t set the date.
This isn’t easy. Ever since you came into the library that day I’ve been in love with you. Maybe you’re in love with me. All I know is that Monday I leave for the Virgin Islands, and when I come back, I have an interview to become a stewardess. I’m good-looking and fairly smart, and they say I shouldn’t have any trouble. I know how you feel about stewardesses, but let’s admit it, thanks to you I’m no virgin anymore.
So I finally agree with you. I’m too young, too lower-class, too gauche to ever fit into your society. Let’s just call it quits and part friends. Don’t worry about me; all your secrets are safe.
Love,
Judy
Roman turned to the first page. The letterhead had an embossed script reading: ‘Judy Mueller.’ He folded the letter neatly and put it back with the others. Scorpio was searching the middle of the sky as Roman climbed up the trellis to the second floor.
Roman’s eyes adjusted to the more complete darkness of his bedroom. There was a subtle change in it. The hundred and twenty-five million optical rods that marked man as a night animal reflected faint patterns of light and shadow. The four thin posts of his bed were partially broken, snapped where they rose from the frame and joined over the center of the bed to form a pyramid. Something was moving, though Roman was sure nobody else was in the room.
He turned the flashlight on toward the top of the pyramid. A string hung from it, and the light followed it down to within a foot of the bed, where, slowly describing circles with the open cone, was the frozen ivory grin and matted hair of a devil’s head.