His eye roamed farther. On the opposite wall was an unfinished painting in the Caravaggesque style, showing the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. It was a smaller and even more intense version of Caravaggio’s famous painting in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The more Pendergast looked at it, the more he doubted it was a copy or a “school of” rendering. In fact, it looked like a study in the master’s own hand.
Pendergast now turned his attention to the right-hand wall, where a third painting hung: a little girl in a dark room, reading a book by candlelight. Pendergast recognized it as very similar to—yet not a copy of—a series of paintings on the same subject, The Education of the Virgin by the mysterious French painter Georges de la Tour. Could it possibly be real?
They were the only three paintings in the room: three breathtaking gems. But they weren’t displayed with pomp and pretense; instead, they seemed to be part of the environment of the room, placed for private enjoyment rather than public envy. None of the paintings even bore a label.
His curiosity about Fosco increased.
More faint sounds emanated from chambers beyond. Immediately, the agent’s preternatural hearing focused on them. A distant door had opened, and Pendergast could hear the whistling of a bird, the light patter of footsteps, and a deep, gentle voice.
Pendergast listened intently.
“Come out and hop upstairs! One, two, three, and up! Three, two, one—and down!”
A burst of chirping and twittering, combined with another sound—clacking and whirring—floated into the room from beyond, mingled with cheerful exhortations. Then, softly, a beautiful tenor voice sounded, singing the notes of a bel canto aria. The bird—if that’s what it was—fell silent, as if under a spell. The voice rose in pitch and volume, then faded slowly away, and as it did, the butler returned.
“The count will see you now.”
Pendergast rose and followed him down a long, broad corridor, lined with books, to a studio beyond.
The count stood in all his corpulent majesty in a capacious studio, one end with floor-to-ceiling glass, his back turned, looking out on a small balcony framed with rosebushes, sinking into twilight. He was wearing slacks and a crisp white shirt, open at the collar. Beside him was an immaculate worktable. At least a hundred tools were lined up on the table in geometric precision: tiny screwdrivers, pinpoint soldering irons, tiny jeweler’s saws, watchmaker’s vises and files. Laid out next to them was an array of exquisitely small gears, ratchets, springs, levers, and other finely machined metal parts, along with chips, small circuit boards, bundles of fiber-optic cabling, LEDs, bits of rubber and plastic, and other electronic objects of mysterious function.
In the center of the worktable stood a wooden T-bar stand, and on the stand stood a strange object that at first glance looked like a Triton cockatoo, brilliant white with a lemon-colored crest, but which on closer inspection proved to be a mechanical device: a robotic bird.
The butler indicated politely for Pendergast to seat himself on a nearby stool. As if by magic, his half-drunken glass of amontillado appeared; then the butler vanished like a ghost.
Pendergast watched the count. With his free hand, he plucked a casuarina nut from a tray, placed it between his fat lips, then protruded it. With a whistle of excitement, the robot cockatoo climbed to Fosco’s shoulder, then to his ear, and—leaning forward with a whirring of gears—plucked the seed from the projecting lips, cracked it with its mechanical bill, and made every appearance of eating it.
“Ah! My pretty, playtime is over!” cooed the count. “Back to your perch.” He gave his gloved hand a little wave. The cockatoo gave a screech of displeasure and flared his mechanical crest, but made no further movement.
“Ah, stubborn today, I see.” The count spoke louder, more firmly. “Back to your perch, my pretty, or you will be eating millet instead of nuts the rest of the day.”
With another screech, the cockatoo hopped off his shoulder onto the table, waddled over to the stand, climbed it with metal claws, and resumed its place, casting its beady LED eyes on Pendergast.
And now at last, the count turned with a smile and bow, offering Pendergast his hand. “I am so sorry to keep you waiting. My friend—as you see—requires his exercise.”
“Most interesting,” said Pendergast dryly.
“No doubt it is! It is true, I cut a ridiculous figure with my pets.”
“Pets?”
“Yes. And you see how they love me! My cockatoo and—” He inclined his suety head toward the other side of the room, where what looked like a pack of mice were disporting themselves within an elaborate wire pagoda with various clicks and whirs and digital squeaks. “And my dear little white mice! But, of course, of all my pretties, Bucephalus here is my pride and joy.” And Fosco turned toward the cockatoo. “Are you not, my pretty?”