The Wheel of Darkness

“Yes.”

“He’s an ill-mannered cur.” He circled the table again, then stopped to look at her. “This is all?”

“I wasn’t able to do the upstairs of the suite. Not with the maid in residence. I’m sorry, Aloysius.”

“Don’t be. It was an afterthought anyway. The important thing is that we know the size and location of his safe. And you’ve given me an excellent precis of his collections. Too bad the Agozyen doesn’t seem to be among them.” He dipped one hand into his pocket, pulled out a pair of latex gloves, snapped them on, then began to examine the trash. He picked up an empty seltzer bottle from the table, examined it, put it aside. This was followed by several dry-cleaning tags; a cigar butt and accumulated ash; a crumpled business card; a soiled cocktail napkin; a champagne cork; a broken compact disk case; a ship’s brochure, torn in half; a swizzle stick; an empty Swan Vesta box and half a dozen spent wooden matches. Pendergast sorted through it all with great care. Once he had put the last item aside, he again circled the table, hands behind his back, pausing to examine various items with a loupe. Then, with a quiet sigh, he straightened up.

“Let’s put this away where housekeeping won’t take it,” he said. “Just in case we want to examine anything again.” He pulled off the gloves, dropped them on the table.

“What next?” Constance asked.

“Next we find a way to take a look inside that safe. Preferably when Blackburn has absented himself.”

“That might be difficult. Something seems to have spooked him—he seems reluctant to leave his suite for any length of time, and he won’t let anybody in.”

“If it were anybody else, I’d say the two disappearances you informed me of have spooked him. But not Mr. Blackburn. Too bad we didn’t narrow down my list more quickly; I could have examined his chambers with relative ease yesterday.” He glanced at Constance. “And we mustn’t forget that, though Blackburn may be the prime suspect, we also need to examine the rooms of Calderon and Strage, if only to rule them out.”

He walked to the sideboard and poured himself a snifter of calvados, then came over to the couch and took a seat. He rolled the amber liquid gently, brought it to his nose, took a small sip, and gave a sigh that was half contentment, half regret. “Well, thank you, my dear,” he said. “I’m sorry you were assaulted. In the fullness of time, I shall make sure Blackburn regrets it.”

“I’m only sorry that—” Then, abruptly, Constance fell silent.

“What is it?”

“I almost forgot. I retrieved something else from his suite. I used the vacuum to pick up some odd dust samples.”

“Why odd?”

“Considering the man has a live-in maid, and he’s clearly a petty tyrant, I thought it was strange the room was so dusty.”

“Dusty?” Pendergast repeated.

Constance nodded. “Most of it was along the walls, under the wainscoting. It looked like sawdust, actually.”

Pendergast was on his feet. “Where’s the vacuum bag, Constance?” He spoke quietly, but his silver eyes glittered with excitement.

“There, by the door—”

But almost before the words were out, Pendergast had flitted to the front door, scooped up the bag, plucked a clean plate from a kitchen cabinet, and returned to the table. Now his movements grew excessively careful. Taking a switchblade from his pocket, he carefully slit the vacuum bag and slowly emptied the contents onto the plate. Fixing a jeweler’s loupe to his eye, he began separating the debris with the blade of his knife, scrape by tiny scrape, as if he were examining the individual grains.

“Do you know, Constance,” he murmured as he bent over the table, face just inches from the surface of the wood. “I believe you’re right. This is sawdust.”

“Left over from construction?”

“No.

Fresh

sawdust. And if

this

is what I think it is”—here he jabbed at something with a pair of tiny forceps, then straightened up—“then we won’t have to bother ourselves with Calderon or Strage.”

Constance looked at Pendergast’s pale, eager face. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how sawdust could fit in.

As she stood up and drew near, he rummaged for an ashtray and a match. Then he motioned her to move closer. As he held the forceps over the ashtray, she could just make out, in the steel jaws, the glittering of a tiny brownish crystal.

“Pay attention,” he said quietly. “This won’t last long.” And then he lit the match; waited a moment while the initial bloom of sulfur faded from the air; then applied the flame to the crystal.

As they watched, it flared and smoked in the forceps. And then, very briefly, Constance caught a faint scent, borne on the air of the stateroom: a rich, musky, exotic whiff of myrrh, strange, faintly intoxicating—and unmistakable.

“I know that smell,” she breathed.

Pendergast nodded. “The smell of the inner monastery of Gsalrig Chongg. A special kind of incense, made only by them, used to keep a uniquely voracious species of woodworms at bay.”

“Woodworms?” Constance repeated.

“Yes.”

She turned to the small mound on the table. “You mean that sawdust . . . ?”

“Exactly. Some of those same woodworms must have come on board in the box that housed the Agozyen. Blackburn has done the North Star line no favors by introducing them to theBritannia .” He turned to face her, his eyes still glittering with excitement. “We have our man. Now all that remains is to lure him from his lair and get inside his safe.”

32

SCOTT BLACKBURN WALKED TO THE FRONT DOOR OF HIS SUITE, placed a Do Not Disturb card on the outside knob, then bolted it from the inside. Climbing two flights of stairs to his dressing room, he yanked off his tie, removed his suit jacket and shirt, tossed them into a corner for his maid to hang up, and slipped out of his pants. For a moment he stood in front of the full-length mirror, rippling his muscles, absently admiring his torso. Then, from a locked drawer, he drew out a set of saffron-colored Toray silk robes. He slowly dressed himself in them, first the inner robe, then the upper robe, and finally the outer robe, the fine silk slipping across his skin like quicksilver. He arranged the pleats, folding the robe over and leaving one chiseled shoulder and arm bare.

He stepped into his private sitting room, shut the doors, and stood in its center, surrounded by his Asian art collection, deep in thought. It was necessary, he knew, to calm his mind, which had been greatly disturbed by what he had heard at the dinner table that evening. So a maid had been in his room yesterday. And she had subsequently gone crazy, killed herself. The chief of security had questioned him—all allegedly routine. And then again, just now, he’d caught another ship’s maid in his suite, despite his strictest orders to the hotel manager and the head of the housekeeping staff. Was it a coincidence?

Or was he, in fact, under scrutiny? Had his movements, his activities, his

acquisitions