“How did you burn the images into the wall?”
“The hoofprint in Grove’s house was done directly, focusing the microwave. The image in Cutforth’s apartment had to be done indirectly—Pinketts couldn’t get into the apartment—by focusing the device against a mask. That was a little trickier, but it worked. Burned the image right through the wall. Brilliant, don’t you think?”
“You’re sick,” said D’Agosta.
“I am a tinkerer. I like nothing more than solving tricky little problems.” He grinned horribly and picked up the device. “Now please stand back. I need to adjust the range of the beam. It wouldn’t do to scorch us as well as the pumpkin.”
Fosco raised the ungainly thing, slid its leather strap over his shoulder, aimed it at the pumpkin, adjusted some knobs. Then he pressed a rudimentary kind of trigger. D’Agosta stared in horrified fascination. There was a humming noise in the capacitor—that was all.
“Right now the device is working up from its lowest setting. If that pumpkin were our victim, he would begin to experience a most awful crawling sensation in his guts and over his skin about now.”
The pumpkin remained unaffected. Fosco turned a knob, and the humming went up a notch.
“Now our victim is screaming. The crawling sensation has gotten unbearable. I imagine it’s like a stomach full of wasps, stinging endlessly. His skin, too, would start to dry and blister. The rising heat within his muscles would soon cause the neurons to begin firing, jerking his limbs spasmodically, causing him to fall down and go into convulsions. His internal temperature is soaring. Within a few more seconds he’ll be thrashing on the ground, biting off or swallowing his tongue.”
Another tick of the dial. Now a small blister appeared on the skin of the pumpkin. It seemed to soften, sag a bit. A soft pop, and the pumpkin split open from top to bottom, issuing a spurt of steam.
“Now our victim is unconscious, seconds from death.”
There was a muffled boiling sound inside the pumpkin, and the fissure widened. With a sudden wet noise, a jet of orange slime forced itself from the split, oozing over the floor in steaming rivulets.
“No comment necessary. By now, our victim is dead. The interesting part, however, is yet to come.”
Blisters began swelling all over the surface of the pumpkin, some popping with little puffs of steam, others breaking and weeping orange fluid.
Another tick of the dial.
The pumpkin split afresh, with a second rush of boiling pulp and seeds squeezing out in a hot viscous paste. The pumpkin sagged further and darkened, the stem blackening and smoking; more fluid and seeds oozed from the cracks along with jets of steam. And then suddenly, with a sharp popping sound, the seeds began to explode. The pumpkin seemed to harden, the room filling with the smell of burned pumpkin flesh; then, with a sudden paff!, it burst into flame.
“Ecco! The deed is done. Our victim is on fire. And yet, if you were to place your hand on the stone next to the pumpkin, you would find it barely warm to the touch.”
Fosco lowered the device. The pumpkin continued to smolder, a flame licking the stem, sizzling and crackling as it burned, a foul black smoke rising slowly.
“Pinketts?”
The servant, without missing a beat, picked up a bottle of acqua minerale from the dinner table and poured it over the pumpkin. Then he gave the bubbling remains a deft kick into the fire, heaped on a few more sticks, and retired again to the corner.
“Marvelous, don’t you think? And yet it’s much more dramatic with a human body, I can assure you.”
“You’re one sick fuck, you know that?” said D’Agosta.
“This man of yours, Pendergast, is beginning to annoy me.”
“Clearly a man of many virtues,” Pendergast replied. “But I think this has gone on long enough. It is time for us to get to the remaining business at hand.”
“Quite, quite.”
“I have come here to offer you a deal.”
“Naturally.” Fosco’s lip curled cynically.
Pendergast glanced at the count a moment, his looks unreadable, letting the silence build. “You will write out and sign a confession of all that you have told us tonight, and you will give me that diabolical machine as proof. I will escort you to the carabinieri, who will arrest you. You will be tried for the murders of Locke Bullard and Carlo Vanni, and as an accomplice in the murder of the priest. Italy has no death penalty, and you will probably be released in twenty-five years, at the age of eighty, to live the remainder of your days in peace and quiet—if you manage to survive prison. This is your side of the bargain.”
Fosco listened, an incredulous smile developing on his face. “Is that all? And what will you give me in exchange?”
“Your life.”