followed Wolf out of the office, Sacha looked back and saw Payton frowning over the fish wrapper as if he expected it to reveal all the secrets of the universe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The House of Morgaunt
S ACHA AND LILY followed Wolf downstairs, through the chaos of the booking hall, and out onto the sidewalk. The Inquisitors Division was right on the edge of Hell's Kitchenâa notorious slum where no cabbie would risk picking up a fare. Nonetheless, a shiny black hansom cab jingled around the corner and stopped in front of them before Wolf even had time to put his hand up. Wolf climbed in as calmly as if cabs always appeared out of nowhere for him, and soon they were trotting through Central Park.
As they neared the East Side, the scene grew more fashionable. Society ladies strolled under the towering elms and chestnuts. Nurses pushed wicker prams full of fat babies. Draft horses gave way to thoroughbreds, and there were even a few long black motorcars gliding among the carriages like sharks prowling through schools of lesser fish.
Sacha forced himself not to stare at the motorcars; he didn't want to give Lily the satisfaction. But when he caught his first glimpse of Millionaire's Mile, he couldn't stop his jaw from dropping.
He felt as if he had fallen out of New York and landed in a book of fairy tales. Roman villas sprawled beside French châteaus and Venetian palazzi. And each mansion was larger and more opulent than the next. New York's Wall Street Wizards and Robber Barons were determined to outshine their neighbors, and they had the money to do it.
Still, everyone who'd ever read a New York newspaper knew that James Pierpont Morgaunt's new mansion would be the greatest of them all. It had been under construction for years, not because the work was going slowlyâno one who worked for Morgaunt would dare to dawdleâbut because Morgaunt kept updating its design to incorporate the latest scientific advances.
Morgaunt had hired Thomas Edison to install every imaginable modern convenience. The kitchen was equipped with automated ovens and automated dish washers. The books in Morgaunt's vast library were recorded in an automated card catalog. The central heating plant was connected to an exotic-sounding device called a Therm-O-Stat. Even the bathrooms were automatedâwhatever that meant!
From the outside, the Morgaunt mansion was a crouching Gothic pile that covered a whole city block. But as their cab pulled through the monumental front gate, the illusion of a medieval fortress gave way to the reality of a construction site. The bones and sinews of Edison's modern conveniences sprawled everywhere like broken clockwork. Half of the courtyard was buried under something that looked like a giant bicycle chain. A group of engineers were puzzling over it like paleontologists trying to put together one of the dinosaurs over at the Museum of Natural History.
"What do you think
that
is?" Sacha whispered to Lily.
"It's the automated horseless carriage parking system," she answered promptly. "Morgaunt told us about it last time he came to dinner. You press a button, and the car you want just rolls right off the conveyer belt. He's already assigned number and letter codes to all his motorcars. He's even bought the rights to print special numbered license plates from City Hall. He says it's a growth industry. In five years everyone's going to be building automatic motorcar parks."
"But who'll use them?" Sacha asked doubtfully. "You can't park a horse like that."
"Horses are history," Lily scoffed. "Too much pollution."
Sacha expected a butler to meet them at the door, but instead they were met by a black-eyed, black-haired, olive-skinned woman in a black dress tight enough to make him blush.
"That's Morgaunt's librarian," Lily whispered as they followed her across an echoing marble entrance hall toward a set of double doors that looked as if they were carved out of solid blocks of bronze. "Her name is Bella da
CHAPTER SEVEN
The House of Morgaunt
S ACHA AND LILY followed Wolf downstairs, through the chaos of the booking hall, and out onto the sidewalk. The Inquisitors Division was right on the edge of Hell's Kitchenâa notorious slum where no cabbie would risk picking up a fare. Nonetheless, a shiny black hansom cab jingled around the corner and stopped in front of them before Wolf even had time to put his hand up. Wolf climbed in as calmly as if cabs always appeared out of nowhere for him, and soon they were trotting through Central Park.
As they neared the East Side, the scene grew more fashionable. Society ladies strolled under the towering elms and chestnuts. Nurses pushed wicker prams full of fat babies. Draft horses gave way to thoroughbreds, and there were even a few long black motorcars gliding among the carriages like sharks prowling through schools of lesser fish.
Sacha forced himself not to stare at the motorcars; he didn't want to give Lily the satisfaction. But when he caught his first glimpse of Millionaire's Mile, he couldn't stop his jaw from dropping.
He felt as if he had fallen out of New York and landed in a book of fairy tales. Roman villas sprawled beside French châteaus and Venetian palazzi. And each mansion was larger and more opulent than the next. New York's Wall Street Wizards and Robber Barons were determined to outshine their neighbors, and they had the money to do it.
Still, everyone who'd ever read a New York newspaper knew that James Pierpont Morgaunt's new mansion would be the greatest of them all. It had been under construction for years, not because the work was going slowlyâno one who worked for Morgaunt would dare to dawdleâbut because Morgaunt kept updating its design to incorporate the latest scientific advances.
Morgaunt had hired Thomas Edison to install every imaginable modern convenience. The kitchen was equipped with automated ovens and automated dish washers. The books in Morgaunt's vast library were recorded in an automated card catalog. The central heating plant was connected to an exotic-sounding device called a Therm-O-Stat. Even the bathrooms were automatedâwhatever that meant!
From the outside, the Morgaunt mansion was a crouching Gothic pile that covered a whole city block. But as their cab pulled through the monumental front gate, the illusion of a medieval fortress gave way to the reality of a construction site. The bones and sinews of Edison's modern conveniences sprawled everywhere like broken clockwork. Half of the courtyard was buried under something that looked like a giant bicycle chain. A group of engineers were puzzling over it like paleontologists trying to put together one of the dinosaurs over at the Museum of Natural History.
"What do you think
that
is?" Sacha whispered to Lily.
"It's the automated horseless carriage parking system," she answered promptly. "Morgaunt told us about it last time he came to dinner. You press a button, and the car you want just rolls right off the conveyer belt. He's already assigned number and letter codes to all his motorcars. He's even bought the rights to print special numbered license plates from City Hall. He says it's a growth industry. In five years everyone's going to be building automatic motorcar parks."
"But who'll use them?" Sacha asked doubtfully. "You can't park a horse like that."
"Horses are history," Lily scoffed. "Too much pollution."
Sacha expected a butler to meet them at the door, but instead they were met by a black-eyed, black-haired, olive-skinned woman in a black dress tight enough to make him blush.
"That's Morgaunt's librarian," Lily whispered as they followed her across an echoing marble entrance hall toward a set of double doors that looked as if they were carved out of solid blocks of bronze. "Her name is Bella da
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