What a strange collection. In another house some of these items might have been displayed as whimsical objets d'art-that astrolabe must be worth a pretty penny, for one, and the beads on the abacus appeared to be real ivory-but in this room they looked startlingly utilitarian, as though they were in constant use.
There were also computers. An IBM and a Macintosh lined up next to each other. Both were booted up and running. Both shared the same screen saver: a woman with long flowing hair and a swirling cloak holding in her hands a brightly glowing sun, which would grow bigger and bigger before slowly shrinking again, the pulsing red mass becoming ever smaller until only a pinpoint of light was left between her palms. The effect of two suns waxing and waning in tandem was oddly mesmerizing.
He sat down on an old-fashioned typist's chair and tapped a key on the keyboard of the IBM. No password necessary. Actually, the computer was already open on an Internet Web page.
Great. He'd be able to get into the sisters' e-mail. Maybe access some old correspondence with Robert Whittington. There had been no computer at Whittington's apartment, but according to Frankie, he used to be the owner of a pretty decent machine until he had decided, shortly before his disappearance, to donate the thing to charity. To Gabriel this was a completely off-the-wall thing to do, but Frankie didn't seem to find the idea of her stepson giving away a six-thousand-dollar notebook all that unusual. "Robbie did all kinds of inexplicable things when the spirit moved him." She shrugged. "So today he's all excited about being a Luddite. Tomorrow it's something else again."
The machine was used by both sisters, but when he checked the e-mail in their in- and out-boxes and personal filing cabinets, he was disappointed. The messages were innocuous-friends, business colleagues-and as far as he could determine not one message sent to, or received from, Robert Whittington.
Perhaps there might be something of more value among their documents. He started accessing files at random. The contents seemed fairly mundane. A file named Accounts was just that, a neat synopsis of household expenses, although the figure at the bottom made him purse his lips in a soundless whistle. Frugality was not an issue in this house.
He continued scrolling down the list of entries and paused. Diary. Jackpot.
He centered the mouse on the file name and clicked. But here the easy part ended. The screen cleared and he was asked for a password. Gate barred.
Passwords, of course, were not necessarily foolproof. If you knew the person you were snooping on, it was sometimes not that difficult to guess a password. Most home users used words related to their everyday life and interests. But he did not know Minnaloushe and Mor-righan Monk and had no idea what they were into. So after tapping in the names of the sisters-although how the heck does one spell "Minnaloushe"-and receiving no joy, he accepted defeat.
He leaned back in the chair, his hands cradled behind his head. So that was that. He was stymied. At least for the moment. But the mere fact that this was the only password-protected file in the list must be significant. He would have to consult with Isidore and make a plan. They would probably be able to gain access through a Trojan horse virus sent via an e-mail message. Not that this course of action would be plain sailing. Embedded in the taskbar of the machine in front of him was the icon for Kaspersky Anti-Virus software. KAV was the best there was: its ability to sniff out viruses and Trojans was excellent. Isidore was going to have to get creative.
He swiveled the chair around and faced the Mac. Maybe he'd have better luck with this machine. He tapped the enter key and the screen saver dissolved.
He paused. This was odd. First, the computer was not connected to the Internet. Second, the computer seemed to be dedicated to the maintenance of one document only. The document was named The Promethean Key.
This sounded interesting. At Oxford he had done a course in Classical Culture and History, and there was a time he had fancied himself a bit of a classics buff. Prometheus, if memory served him, stole a spark of fire from the gods to give to mankind to open their minds to knowledge. He was punished by Zeus and spent his days chained to a rock with a giant eagle feeding on his liver. Pretty tough stuff. Those Greek gods did not mess around.
He clicked on the file without much hope. As he expected, this file was password-protected as well.
Two password-protected files. They would certainly warrant a closer look somewhere along the way. Except that where the Mac was concerned, he was faced with a significant added complication. Since the computer was not connected to the Internet, he and Isidore would not be able to access the machine from outside via a convenient broadband connection. In order to crack this thing, he was going to have to return in person. Not exactly a prospect he was looking forward to. He very much preferred surveillance from a distance.
But for the present there was no use wasting any more time on the computers. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see that he had already spent a full forty minutes inside the house.
But as he got up from his seat, he froze. On the shelf right in front of him, at eye level, was a glass box. Inside the box were stone pebbles, sand, and pieces of rock illuminated by a weak violet light. An eerie little desert landscape. Hovering ghostlike on one of the rocks, its hairy legs delicately poised, was one of the biggest spiders he had ever seen.
He blinked. The creature seemed not quite real-a phantasm, a monster from a dream. He realized that his body was flooded with adrenaline-the sight of the spider had bypassed the analytical side of his brain, had elicited an impulse that came straight from the amygdalae.
Hesitantly, he brought his head up close to the box. The lavender light made the color of the spider difficult to fathom and contributed to the thing looking like something from a particularly bad acid trip. The spider's body alone must have been all of four inches long. The legs seemed to be floating. Massive fangs. He was no expert, but he was almost certain he was looking at a tarantula. Which should have reassured him. Tarantulas were harmless to humans- that much he knew. He had read somewhere that people even kept them as pets.
Pets? He stared at the spider in its glass box. It was moving its front legs almost imperceptibly. Feeling slightly queasy, Gabriel recognized the dark splodge lying to one side of the box. A half-eaten cricket.
Oh, man. This was too much. He had to force himself to step back. He couldn't spend all his time on this freakish thing. But what the hell else was waiting for him inside this house?
The next room was the dining room, dark with mahogany, followed by a guest bathroom designed for pygmies and a rather workmanlike kitchen. He opened the fridge and peeked inside. A bottle of Krug champagne shared shelf space with several delectable-looking cartons and trays sporting Harrods Food Halls stickers. He lifted the corner on one of the white boxes. Duck confit. Their taste in literature and decor, not to mention pets, might be odd, but the ladies showed real class when it came to food.
On the one wall on the far side of the room were some rather interesting-looking prints. They were not exactly the still-life pictures you'd expect to find in a kitchen: no jolly tomatoes or ears of corn. The prints were watercolors and pretty damn weird to say the least. Lots of naked hermaphroditic figures in rural settings, dancing next to roaring furnaces. A creepy proliferation of snakes, suns and moons.