Read Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller for Free Online

alleyways.
    “Don't do it, Miss,” Willie said. “You mustn't stay put here. This neighborhood ain't no place for a lady all by herself.”
    Her countenance was resolute, squarely taking me in. Wood smoke from one of the chimneys of the Langley mansion—mixed with a faint, unidentifiable mélange of odors—wafted by us. Horns honked in the street. A young negress shuffled by along the sidewalk behind Miss Buxton, eyes stealing up and down the blue fox overcoat.
    “Well-played, Miss Buxton,” I said at last. “For the truth is, I more than half-believe your threat. Follow me, if you're not to be warned off.” Instead of mounting the steps leading to the entry porch landing, I proceeded rightwards, down the sidewalk.
    “Hey, where we going?” Howard asked, trailing behind the social worker.
    “To the side of the house,” I shot back over my shoulder. “Noah never answers the front door, but I know how to draw his attention. We've worked out a system.” Still, I wondered whether Noah would even acknowledge our presence, given he'd refused to allow me inside the last time I'd called upon the household.
    I turned left at the corner and, twenty yards later, halted and stepped over the knee-high iron fence tracing the perimeter of the Langley property. The hand I offered Miss Buxton to help her over the barrier she refused. She hiked up her overcoat and transgressed on her own, more nimbly than Howard, who caught his pant leg on a rusty spear point and spilled to the ground.
    At the base of the mansion we waded into a patch of waist-high weeds brittle from the cold and the dry winter weather, crackling to the touch. Thousands of glass shards crunched beneath our feet. The sounds sent a pair of hitherto hidden alley cats bolting from the weeds near Willie's legs. The startled workman cursed in a manner altogether improper to mixed company. I cautioned him on his language. He apologized to Miss Buxton. I bent down and picked up a stone the size of a chicken egg from the large assortment hurled against the house however long ago and tapped it against a rain pipe, three times in quick succession. The metallic sound carried far and precipitated a sudden, alley cat chorus of yowls.
    “So is it true what the newspapers say, Mister Trenowyth?” Howard asked. “That the Langleys aren't actually poor, despite appearances? That in fact they're eccentric millionaires?”
    “I'm not at liberty to discuss the matter.” I delivered three more quick taps to the pipe.
    “No? Well, I guess that answers my question all the same. If they were destitute there'd be no harm in saying so. Here's another question: What's this about one of the earlier generation of Langleys being an explorer of some kind? Raided ancient tombs in faraway places and brought back gold and silver treasure and marble statues and Egyptian mummies and whatnot?”
    “You mean Noah's father,” I said. There had been a lengthy newspaper article in the Post—headlined Fall of a Great American Family, as I recall—that had limned the Langley pedigree in depth, tracing it all the way back to a 17 th century Puritan who'd been a founding member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. “Colonel Langley was an amateur archaeologist, responsible for a few major finds in Egypt and Turkey.”
    “That's right, 'the colonel,' ” he said while I tapped the pipe again. “The newspaper said he'd brought back 'unfathomable wealth' from his digs overseas. Exact word: 'unfathomable.' ”
    “So he was a scavenger too?” Willie said. “ 'Like father, like son?' ”
    “Right,” Howard said, laughing. “Only the father had taste, eh?” He added, when he'd finished laughing, “I kind of like that word, 'unfathomable.' Stimulates the imagination.”
    Willie asked me, “So what did the colonel do with it all?”
    “I believe he gave it away to museums. The Metropolitan here in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington.” This I vaguely remembered from conversations with my