Carpenter felt his anger dissipate.

Control yourself. This man is not your enemy.

“Needless to say, I will take up position outside the building and will be ready to assist in any way that is required,” Willis continued. “Unless that does not sit well with you?”

“That sits fine,” replied Carpenter. “I will be grateful for your presence.”

“That settles it then,” said Willis, and he forced a smile. “Now, let us turn our attention to breakfast. It promises to be a long day.”

John Carpenter stood at the corner of Central Park West and West Eighty-Third Street, waiting for Frankenstein. The sun had long since disappeared below the horizon, and the night was cold and dark.

He had left Willis in the diner and caught a carriage uptown to take care of some errands. He purchased a dinner suit from a tailor that Willis had recommended on Madison Avenue, continued north into Harlem to pay a short visit to a builder’s merchant before returning to his hotel to prepare himself for the ball, eating a light dinner in a restaurant on Sixth Avenue and making his way toward the wide expanse of Central Park.

“Cold night,” said a deep voice from behind him.

Carpenter started and spun around. Frankenstein towered above him, a beautiful dinner suit covering his huge frame. He was looking down at Carpenter with a faint smile on his face.

“Sorry if I startled you,” he said, and the smile widened a fraction.

“Apology accepted,” Carpenter managed in reply.

You bloody fool. Concentrate on the matter in hand, for God’s sake. To be so easily surprised is unacceptable.

Frankenstein nodded. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “Shall we?” He gestured along Central Park West, to the corner of the Upper West Side that was their destination.

The two men walked quickly to the address the invitations had specified. On the corner before them was a vast Gothic town house, dominated by a tall circular tower that rose high above the slanted roof. The many windows of the building blazed with light, and even from their position across the road, the sounds of laughter and music could be heard. Standing by the large wooden door was an equally large figure in a dark gray overcoat and an expressionless Venetian mask, and it was to this apparition that the two men presented their invitations.

The figure studied them carefully. “Masks,” it said, in a flat voice.

Carpenter pulled a black eye mask from his pocket and set it in place. Frankenstein carefully looped the ribbons of a white mask with a long, narrow nose over his ears, and the doorman stood aside.

The hallway was wide and grandly appointed, mirrors and paintings hanging at intervals along the walls, vases of fresh flowers on every flat surface. A black-and-white tiled marble floor gleamed beneath their feet. An elderly waiter clad in immaculate white tie appeared beside them, proffering a tray of delicate crystal champagne flutes. The two men accepted and walked down the corridor toward a pair of double doors, from behind which came the sounds of a ball in full swing.

Carpenter opened one of the doors, and they walked inside. There were at least two hundred people in the cavernous ballroom, some on the wide marble dance floor, others standing in groups around the edges of the room, or sitting at round tables, laughing and conversing. At the back of the room, a low stage held a jazz quartet who were thumping out a furious rhythm of bass and drums, over which the pianist was rattling out a ragtime melody. The air was full of cigarette smoke, the pungent scents of opium and incense, shrill peals of laughter, and the hum of a great many voices mingled together.

“Look how big you are!” shrieked a voice to their left, and the two men turned.

A young woman with a feathered mask hiding her face and her figure wrapped in a dark red ball gown that brushed the floor was staring openly at Frankenstein, a look of wonder on her face as she swayed ever so slightly on towering stiletto heels.

“It’s considered rude to stare,” said Carpenter.

“Don’t be so silly,” the woman replied, turning her face toward him. Through the holes in the mask Carpenter could see that the woman’s eyes were struggling to focus, and he relaxed.

“I believe you may have had too much to drink,” he said to her. “Perhaps a little fresh air would do you good. I’m sure you don’t wish to embarrass yourself.”

He stepped back and opened the door to the corridor, holding it for her. She looked at him for a moment, as if she were trying to construct a riposte, then lifted her nose high into the air and strode unsteadily into the hallway without giving them a second look.

“Thank you,” Frankenstein said as soon as the door was again closed. “I would have surely lost my temper had you not removed her.”

“You’re welcome,” Carpenter replied. “I suggest we part company and search for our respective targets.”

Frankenstein agreed, turned away, and disappeared into the crowd. Carpenter went in the other direction, skirting the edge of the dance floor, looking for Jeremiah Haslett.

He passed a table full of sleek young men, their dinner suits gleaming black, the pleats razor sharp, and he found himself unable to look away. There was something intoxicating about them, the cigarettes dangling casually from their pale fingers, the easy manner of their conversation, the—

“Watch where you’re going, for heaven’s sake,” said a loud voice.

Carpenter pulled his gaze from the table, sought the source of the reprimand, and felt his heart lurch. In front of him stood a large, stocky man wearing a carved vulture mask, from the eyeholes of which flashed a dark red glow. The man leaned forward, peering at Carpenter. He seemed about to speak when a young woman in a black dress danced into him, and he spun around and berated her for her clumsiness. When he turned back toward Carpenter, the glow from the mask was gone, and the man shoved roughly past him and disappeared.

I saw them, though. I saw his eyes. What is this place?

He worked his way to the long bar and was about to place an order when he saw a skeletally thin shape in the corner of his eye and turned toward it.

Jeremiah Haslett was standing fifteen feet away from him, leaning on the corner of the wooden bar, talking to a beautiful blonde woman who could barely have been more than a teenager. He was wearing a red velvet eye mask and a triangular hat, but Carpenter recognized the sharp nose and the thin, cruel mouth from the photographs that had belatedly filled the London newspapers.

Carpenter reached into his pocket, withdrew a narrow wooden stake, and let his arm drop to his side, concealing the weapon in his hand. He stepped forward, slowly, not wishing to announce his presence before it was necessary, then suddenly found the path to his target blocked by a group of laughing men and women, as they carried a tray of drinks and cigars away from the bar and back to the tables. He pushed one of the women gently out of the way, trying not to lose sight of his quarry, and she rounded on him, hissing loudly, the same dark red glow emanating from the holes in her delicate feathered mask. His heart leapt, but he stepped past her.

Haslett was gone.

Carpenter cursed and ran to where his quarry had stood, attracting looks of disapproval from the throng of drinking, dancing men and women. He looked around in every direction, but there was no sign of the Englishman.

Behind him the band struck up a new number, and the activity on the dance floor intensified. A grandfather clock set between two long mirrors behind the bar tolled once, and Carpenter looked at it; the hands on the ornate face told him that it was a quarter to midnight.

He no longer wanted another drink. He pushed on into the crowd, looking for Haslett, or for Frankenstein, but could see neither man. He passed a heavy locked door that he presumed led into the rest of the house, then found himself caught among a large group of guests and was carried out onto the dance floor, his feet barely touching the ground.