“It was nice meeting you,” I said. “I hope your work isn’t set back too much by this. It must be something very important if people are willing to take a risk like that.”
“Yes. Very disturbing. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a new laptop.”
“I’ll see myself out.”
Chapter 16
The Magician
July 3: London
I left Jutting’s house feeling confused, my thoughts disjointed. I chose a direction at random and began walking. I had some thinking to do. The evening air was warm and humid, prickling the hairs on my arms and I wandered along the edge of Hyde Park where a light breeze rustled the leaves. I passed through an upscale shopping area, and into a more lively, youthful area where the streets narrowed and the pedestrian traffic thickened. There were trendy shops and coffee bars, neon signs, bicycles, graffiti and graffiti inspired street art everywhere.
As I walked, I mulled over the state of my job. I had found Wolhardt’s notes only to have them snatched out from under my nose. I found them again, only to have them spirited away a second time. The cast of characters—Wolhardt, Molly, Benderick, Dworkin, Bathmore, Morgan Jutting, Victoria Butler—seemed trapped by fate, like automatons stuck in an ingenious Victorian mechanism, traveling well-defined paths, bumping into each other, circling and finding each other again, all the time passing Wolhardt’s notes back and forth, running variations on an enigmatic theme. Was I a puppet in the machine too? Or was there a way for me to stand back, observe the mechanism, find its weakness, and exploit it to achieve my goal? I needed to track down Dworkin now and I needed to do it before Jutting found him. The odds were lengthening. Jutting’s house was, as I had expected, a fortress—complete with a creepy cave in the basement for occult rituals. Somehow, though, Dworkin had landed on just the right strategy for stealing what he was after. I would never have thought of it or tried it myself. He had to have been staking out the house. He knew, somehow, where St. Martin was working and pinpointed a weakness. How had he known? Now he was surely hiding somewhere in London or possibly even on his way back to Philadelphia. Thinking it all over, I felt dispirited and out of my element. I glanced at the faces of people I passed on the sidewalk. They didn’t all look happy but they at least looked like they knew where they were and what they were doing. Somehow, I had chosen two professions that required me to make things up as I went along. In my art, I was always responding to the form, shaping the aesthetic vision in real time. As a hunter of stolen things, I was finding that plans often had to be abandoned in the face of new conditions and unexpected circumstances.
I must have been walking for an hour or more at that point, stewing in my obsessive rumination. I resolved to head back to my little apartment and check out. I had booked a new place just down the street from Jutting’s house. Improbably, I had found a three bedroom townhouse that was available for five days. From the photos, it looked like a traditional house that had been gutted and reimagined as an ultra-modern party playground for wealthy tourists. The price tag matched the photos but I took it anyway. I had been thinking I needed to be close to Jutting’s house in order to plan my break in. Now I wasn’t sure when or if that would happen but it couldn’t hurt to be close while I considered my next step.
I paused for a moment on the sidewalk, watching the stream of humanity pass by. Something was bothering me about the whole scene at Jutting’s house. I had an intuition that something was off but I couldn’t quite grasp it. I was about to turn around, head back to the busy street I had just passed, and try to hail a cab, when I heard a voice.
“You look a bit lost.”
I turned and saw a woman standing in the doorway of a narrow storefront—small and tough looking, with the arm muscles of an aerialist and lavender hair in an asymmetrical bob. She wore a simple blue sleeveless dress. Despite her small physical size, there was something outsized about her presence. My eyes were drawn to hers and the space between us seemed to collapse.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I replied.
“Sorry, but you do look lost to me,” she paused, smiling, leaning her head against the ancient wooden door frame of her shop. “Not physically. Your spirit. I see it wandering strange paths. Maybe you need some guidance from the unseen forces.” Her accent was heavy—maybe from Wales or Scotland. It took me a moment to decode what she was saying.
I looked at the sign above the door. In curling, hand painted letters, it said Green Goddess Books. A neon sign in the window flickered and buzzed, advertising Tarot Readings.
“That’s okay,” I said, smiling politely. “Thanks, though.” With an effort, I pulled away from her gaze and turned to go but her soft voice called me back.
“Are you afraid of what the unseen forces might reveal? No, you don’t look like a fearful person. Maybe you believe you can do everything yourself? You don’t need help from anyone or anything? Give it a try. A free reading. Pay me only if it’s useful. I’m bored here tonight. I want to feel the spirits talking through me. The veil is thin this evening. They’re close.” Her eyes were avid, hopeful, but with a touch of distance, like she was looking not just at me but also surveying a barren internal plain, watching for a flash of movement.
“All right,” I answered, feeling drawn in against my better judgment. “I guess it can’t hurt.” Maybe listening to a stranger read my fortune would help
