The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All - By Laird Barron Page 0,51

underway.

Finally, he said, “This moment was inevitable. One can only contend with the likes of Blackwood and his ilk for a finite period before they turn on one like the wild animals they are. I’d considered moving overseas, somewhere with a more hospitable clime. No use, my enemies will never cease to pursue, and I’d rather die in my home. Well, Eadweard’s, technically.” Conrad Paxton’s face was long and narrow. His fingers were slender. He smoked fancy European cigarettes with a filter and an ivory cigarette holder. Too effete for cigars, I imagined. Well, me too, chum, me too.

“Maybe if you hadn’t done me and mine dirt you’d be adding candles to your cake for a spell yet.”

“Ah, done you dirt. I can only imagine what poppycock you’ve been told to set you upon me. My father knew your father. Now the sons meet. Too bad it’s not a social call—I’m hell with social calls. You have the look of a soldier.”

“Did my bit.”

“What did you do in the war, John?”

“I shot people.”

“Ha. So did my father, albeit with a camera. As for me, I do nothing of consequence except drink my inheritance, collect moldy tomes, and also the envy of those who’d love to appropriate what I safeguard in this place. You may think of me as a lonely, rich caretaker.”

“Sounds miserable,” I said.

Afternoon light was dimming to red through the trees that walled in the unkempt concourses of green lawn. Some twenty minutes after our arrival, and still more Model Ts, Packards and Studebakers formed a shiny black and white procession along the crushed gravel drive, assembling around the central fountain, a twelve-foot-tall marble faun gone slightly green around the gills from decades of mold. Oh, the feather boas and peacock feather hats, homburgs and stovepipes! Ponderously loaded tables of hors d’oeuvres, including a splendid tiered cake, and pails of frosty cold punch, liberally dosed with rum, were arrayed beneath fluttering silk pavilions. Servants darted among the gathering throng and unpacked orchestral instruments on a nearby dais. Several others worked the polo fields, hoisting buckets as they bent to reapply chalk lines, or smooth divots, or whatever.

Dick and Bly, resigned to their fate, loitered next to the punch, faces gray and pained even at this hour, following the legendary excesses of the previous evening. Both had cups in hand and were tipping them regularly. As for Paxton’s goons, those gents continued to maintain a low profile, confined to the fancy bunkhouse at the edge of the property, although doubtless a few of them lurked in the shrubbery or behind the trees. My fingers were crossed that Blackwood meant to keep his bargain. Best plan I had.

A bluff man with a pretty young girl stuck on his arm waved to us. Paxton indolently returned the gesture. He inserted the filter between his lips and dragged exaggeratedly. “That would be the mayor. Best friend of whores and moonshiners in the entire county.”

“I like that in a politician,” I said. “Let’s talk about you.”

“My story is rather dreary. Father bundled me off to the orphanage then disappeared into Central America for several years. Another of his many expeditions. None of them made him famous. He became famous for murdering that colonel and driving Mother into an early grave. I also have his slide collection and his money.” Paxton didn’t sound too angry for someone with such a petulant mouth. I supposed the fortune he’d inherited when his father died sweetened life’s bitter pills.

“My birth father, Eadweard Muybridge, died in his native England in 1904. I missed the funeral, and my brother Florado’s as well. I’m a cad that way. Floddie got whacked by a car in San Francisco. Of all the bloody luck, eh? Father originally sent me and my brother to the orphanage where I was adopted by the Paxtons as an infant. My real mother named me Conrad after a distant cousin. Conrad Gallatry was a soldier and died in the Philippines fighting in the Spanish-American War.

“As a youth, I took scant interest in my genealogy, preferring to eschew the coarseness of these roots, and knew the barest facts regarding Eadweard Muybridge beyond his reputation as a master photographer and eccentric. Father was a peculiar individual. In 1875 Eadweard killed his wife’s, and my dearest mum, presumed lover—he’d presented that worthy, a retired colonel, with an incriminating romantic letter addressed to Mrs. Muybridge in the Colonel’s hand, uttered a pithy remark, and then shot him dead. Father’s defense consisted