The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The House on the Edge of Oblivion

Previously: "A Slippery Sale" 

Faculty meeting, my ass! you snarl to yourself as your truck tears up in front of the address on the card. Fast-talking sonofabitch slipped that past you real neatly, didn't he? All it took was a quick look on the internet to get a phone number, and then a phone call to the Archaeology Department to discover that there wasn't any faculty meeting planned for that day. Fucker clearly thought he was dealing with an amateur. Well, he was right, but he didn't know what kind of amateur he was fucking with!

You strongly suspect that Blackwell will be at his house until six and will then bug out before your putative appointment, so you're surprised when you pull up in front of a whitewashed stone wall to find no car in front. After staring hard at it a moment, you park and walk slowly around the place. The wall goes all the way around and is punctuated by a single, ornate iron gate. But there is no garage or any other kind of structure nearby. In fact, it stands on the western edge of Saratoga Falls, just off Farm Road near the river, and there are no houses at all near it.

Back around the front, you peer in through the gate. The house itself is a large villa, two stories (with maybe an attic) that glows in the late afternoon sun like a brick of burnished copper. It's surrounded by a large yard that is, despite the ornamental flower beds, entirely dead. Well, that's not quite true. There is a yew tree at the corner of the house, standing over a stone gardening shed.

You eye this pair closely. It would be easy to get to the top of the shed and there into the tree ... You follow it the line of the bough and branches up, and spot an open window on the second floor.

You look at your watch: Five-fifteen. In a house like this, you could probably find lots of stuff that is easily worth five hundred dollars, maybe more; and it's so big that Blackwell would probably not miss it for a good long time. The shifty bastard would never connect a theft to you, either. Even if he is back by six, you probably have plenty of time to slip in, do a quick search, and slip out again.

But wait, are you actually thinking of breaking and entering a man's home? After all, he did give you a legitimate address, and he seems to have set up a legitimate meeting time. Maybe you've misjudged him; maybe he himself just got the faculty meeting time mixed up in his own head. You could go home, get something to eat, and then come back over later tonight, when he is sure to be home.

That's all for now.

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"