Текст книги "The Cabinet of Curiosities"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“Of course. I just don’t see why it couldn’t be someplace else. Someplace comfortable. Like, say, the restaurant at the Carlyle.”

“I’m sure we’ll learn the reason.”

“I’m sure we will. But if he offers me a Leng cocktail out of one of those mason jars, I’m leaving.”

Now the old house appeared in the distance, up the Drive. Even in the bright sunlight it seemed somehow dark: sprawling, haunted, framed by bare trees, black upper windows staring westward like empty eye sockets.

As if at a single thought, Nora and Smithback paused.

“You know, just the sight of that old pile still scares the bejesus out of me,” Smithback muttered. “I’ll tell you, when Fairhaven had me laid out on that operating table, and I felt the knife slice into my—”

“Bill, please,” Nora pleaded. Smithback had grown fond of regaling her with gory details.

He drew his arm around her. He was wearing the blue Armani suit, but it hung a little loosely now, his gaunt frame thinner for the ordeal. His face was pale and drawn, but the old humor, the mischievous twinkle, had returned to his eyes.

They continued walking north, crossing 137th Street. There was the carriage entrance, still partially blocked by windblown piles of trash. Smithback stopped again, and Nora watched his eye travel up the facade of the building, toward a broken window on the second floor. For all his display of bravado, the writer’s face paled for a moment. Then he stepped forward resolutely, following Nora under the porte-cochère, and they knocked.

A minute passed, then two. And then at last the door creaked open, and Pendergast stood before them. He was wearing heavy rubber gloves, and his elegant black suit was covered in plaster dust. Without a word of greeting he turned away, and they followed him through silent echoing passages toward the library. Portable halogen lamps were arrayed along the hallways, throwing cold white light onto the surfaces of the old house. Even with the light, however, Nora felt a shiver of fear as she retraced the corridors. The foul odor of decay was gone, replaced by a faint chemical wash. The interior was barely recognizable: panels had been taken off walls, drawers stood open, plumbing and gas lines exposed or removed, boards ripped from the floor. It looked as if the house had been torn apart in an unbelievably exhaustive search.

Within the library, all the sheets had been removed from the skeletons and mounted animals. The light was dimmer here, but Nora could see that half the shelves were empty, and the floor covered with carefully piled stacks of books. Pendergast threaded his way through them to the vast fireplace in the far wall, then—at last—turned back toward his two guests.

“Dr. Kelly,” he said, nodding to her. “Mr. Smithback. I’m pleased to see you looking well.”

“That Dr. Bloom of yours is as much an artist as he is a surgeon,” Smithback replied, with strained heartiness. “I hope he takes Blue Cross. I have yet to see the bill.”

Pendergast smiled thinly. A brief silence ensued.

“So why are we here, Mr. Pendergast?” Nora asked.

“You two have been through a terrible ordeal,” Pendergast replied as he pulled off the heavy gloves. “More than anyone should ever have to endure. I feel in large part responsible.”

“Hey, that’s what bequests are for,” Smithback replied.

“I’ve learned some things in the last several weeks. Far too many are already past help: Mary Greene, Doreen Hollander, Mandy Eklund, Reinhart Puck, Patrick O’Shaughnessy. But for you two, I thought perhaps hearing the real story—a story nobody else must ever know—might help exorcize the demons.”

There was another brief pause.

“Go ahead,” Smithback said, in an entirely different tone of voice.

Pendergast looked from Nora, to Smithback, then back again.

“From childhood, Fairhaven was obsessed with mortality. His older brother died at age sixteen of Hutchinson-Guilford syndrome.”

“Little Arthur,” Smithback said.

Pendergast looked at him curiously. “That’s correct.”

“Hutchinson-Guilford syndrome?” Nora asked. “Never heard of it.”

“Also known as progeria. After a normal birth, children begin to age extremely rapidly. Height is stunted. Hair turns gray and then falls out, leaving prominent veins. There are usually no eyebrows or eyelashes, and the eyes grow too large for the skull. The skin turns brown and wrinkled. The long bones become decalcified. Basically, by adolescence the child has the body of an old man. They become susceptible to atherosclerosis, strokes, heart attacks. The last is what killed Arthur Fairhaven, when he was sixteen.

“His brother saw mortality compressed into five or six years of horror. He never got over it. We’re all afraid of death, but for Anthony Fairhaven the fear became an obsession. He attended medical school, but after two years was forced to leave for certain unauthorized experiments he’d undertaken; I’m still looking into their exact nature. So by default he went into the family business of real estate. But health remained an obsession with him. He experimented with health foods, diets, vitamins and supplements, German spas, Finnish smoke saunas. Taking hope from the Christian promise of eternal life, he became intensely religious—but when his prayers were slow in being answered he began hedging his bets, supplementing his religious fervor with an equally profound and misplaced fervor for science, medicine, and natural history. He became a huge benefactor to several obscure research institutes, as well as to Columbia Medical School, the Smithsonian, and of course the New York Museum of Natural History. And he founded the Little Arthur Clinic, which in fact has done important work on rare diseases of children.

“We cannot be sure, exactly, when he first learned of Leng. He spent a lot of time digging around in the Museum Archives, following up some line of research or other. At some point, he came across information about Leng in the Museum’s Archives. Whatever he found gave him two critical pieces of information: the nature of Leng’s experiments, and the location of his first lab. Here was this man who claimed to have succeeded in extending his life. You can imagine how Fairhaven must have reacted. He had to find out what this man had done, and if he had really succeeded. Of course, this is why Puck had to die: he alone knew of Fairhaven’s visits to the Archives. He alone knew what Fairhaven had been examining. This wasn’t a problem until we found the Shottum letter: but then it became essential to remove Puck. Even a casual mention by Puck of Fairhaven’s visits would have linked him directly to Leng. It would have made him suspect number one. By luring you down there, Dr. Kelly, Fairhaven figured he could kill two birds with one stone. You had proven yourself unusually dangerous and effective.

“But I get ahead of myself. After Fairhaven discovered Leng’s work, he next wondered if Leng had succeeded—in other words, if Leng was still alive. So he began to track him down. When I myself started to hunt for Leng’s whereabouts, I often had the sense someone had walked the trail before me in the not too distant past.

“Ultimately, Fairhaven discovered where Leng had once lived. He came to this house. Imagine his exultation when he found my great-grand-uncle still alive—when he realized that Leng had, in fact, succeededin his attempt to prolong life. Leng had the very secret that Fairhaven so desperately wanted.

“Fairhaven tried to make Leng divulge his secret. As we know, Leng had abandoned his ultimate project. And I now know why. Studying the papers in his laboratory, I realized that Leng’s work stopped abruptly around the first of March 1954. I wondered a long time about the significance of that date. And then I understood. That was the date of Castle Bravo.”

“Castle Bravo?” Nora echoed.

“The first dry thermonuclear bomb, exploded at Bikini. It ‘ran away’ to fifteen megatons, and the fireball expanded to four miles in diameter. Leng was convinced that, with the invention of the thermonuclear bomb, the human race was destined to kill itself anyway, and far more efficiently than he ever could. The march of technology had solved his problem for him. So he gave up his search for the ultimate poison. He could grow old and die in peace, knowing it was only a matter of time before his dream of curing the earth of its human plague came true.

“So, by the time Fairhaven found him, Leng had not taken the elixir for many years—since March 1954, in fact. He had grown old. Perhaps he almost wanted to die. At any rate, he refused, even under brutal torture, to reveal his formula. Fairhaven pushed too hard and killed him.

“But there was still another chance for Fairhaven. There was still Leng’s old lab, where crucial information—both in the form of human remains, and especially in the form of Leng’s journal—might be found. And Fairhaven knew where the lab was: underneath Shottum’s Cabinet. Of course, the lot was now covered by apartment buildings. But Fairhaven was in the perfect position to buy the land and tear down the buildings, all in the name of urban renewal. Construction workers I’ve spoken to mentioned that Fairhaven was conspicuously present at the site while the foundation was being dug. He was the second man to enter the charnel pit, after the worker who originally found the bones had fled. No doubt he found Leng’s notebook in there. Later, he was able to study the effects taken from the tunnel at his leisure. Including the bones—and that, no doubt, is why the marks on both the old corpses and the new were so similar.

“Now, Fairhaven had Leng’s notebooks. He began trying to replicate Leng’s experiments, hoping to retrace the path Leng had taken. But of course, his attempts were amateurish, with no real understanding of Leng’s true work.”

As Pendergast’s narrative ceased, the old house settled into a profound silence.

“I can’t believe it,” Smithback said at last. “When I interviewed him, Fairhaven seemed so confident, so calm. So . . . so sane.”

“Madness wears many disguises,” Pendergast replied. “Fairhaven’s obsession was deep, too deep and abiding to show itself openly. And one can reach the gates of hell just as easily by short steps as by large. Fairhaven seemed to think that the formula for longevity had always been destined for him. Having taken in Leng’s life essence, he now began to believe that he was Leng—Leng as he should have been.He took on Leng’s persona, his manner of dress. And the copycat killings began. But a different sort of copycat killing than the police ever imagined. Killings, by the way, that had nothing to do with your article, Mr. Smithback.”

“Why did he try to kill you?” Smithback asked. “It was such a risk. I never understood that.”

“Fairhaven was a man who thought far, far ahead. That was why he was so successful in business—and, of course, one reason why he was so frightened of death. When I succeeded in finding Mary Greene’s address, he realized it was only a matter of time before I found Leng’s. Whether I believed Leng was alive or dead didn’t matter—he knewI would come to Leng’s house, and then all his efforts would be ruined. It would expose the connection between the modern-day killer known as the Surgeon and the old killer named Leng. It was the same with Nora. She was hot on the trail; she’d been to visit McFadden’s daughter; she had the archaeological expertise I lacked. Clearly, it was only a matter of time before we figured out where Leng lived. We couldn’t be allowed to proceed.”

“And O’Shaughnessy? Why kill him?”

Pendergast bowed his head. “I will never forgive myself for that. I sent O’Shaughnessy on what I believed was a safe errand, investigating New Amsterdam Chemists, where Leng had procured his chemicals many years ago. While there, it seems O’Shaughnessy had the luck to find some old journals, listing chemical purchases in the 1920s. I call it luck, but it turned out to be quite the opposite, I’m afraid. I didn’t realize Fairhaven was on high alert, monitoring our every move. When he became aware that O’Shaughnessy not only knew where Leng bought his chemicals, but had managed to retrieve some old sales books—which might be extremely useful, and certainly dangerous in our hands—he had to kill him. Immediately.”

“Poor Patrick,” said Smithback. “What a terrible way to die.”

“Terrible, terrible indeed,” Pendergast murmured, the anguish all too clear on his face. “And the responsibility for it lies on my shoulders. He was a good man, and a fine officer.”

Looking up at the rows of leather-bound books, at the worm-eaten tapestries and peeling wallpaper, Nora shivered.

“Oh, God,” Smithback murmured at last, shaking his head. “And to think I can’t publish any of this.” Then he looked over at Pendergast. “So what happened to Fairhaven?”

“That which he feared most, death, came at last. In a nod to Poe, I walled up the poor wretch within a basement alcove. It would not do for his body to surface.”

This was followed by a short silence.

“So what are you going to do with this house and all these collections?” Nora asked.

A wan smile played about Pendergast’s lips. “Through a tortuous route of inheritance, this house and its contents have ended up in my possession. Someday, perhaps, some of these collections will find their way anonymously into the great museums of the world—but not for a very long time.”

“And what’s happened to the house? It’s torn apart.”

“That brings me to one final request I would make of you both.”

“And that is—?”

“That you come with me.”

They followed Pendergast down winding passageways to the door leading to the porte-cochère. Pendergast opened the door. Outside, Pendergast’s Rolls was silently idling, jarring in this forlorn neighborhood.

“Where are we going?” Smithback asked.

“Gates of Heaven Cemetery.”

The drive out of Manhattan, into the crisp winter hills of Westchester, took half an hour. During that time, Pendergast said nothing, sitting motionless, wrapped in his own thoughts. At last they passed through the dark metal gates and began climbing the gentle curve of a hill. Beyond lay another hill, and then another: a vast city of the dead, full of monuments and ponderous tombs. In time, the car stopped in a far corner of the cemetery, on a rise dotted with marble.

Pendergast got out, then led them along a manicured path to a fresh row of graves. They were long frozen mounds of earth, laid out in geometrical precision, without tombstones, flowers, or markings of any kind save a spike at each head. Aluminum frames were set into each spike, holding cardboard placards, and on each placard was written a number, streaked with moisture, already mildewed and faded.

They walked along the row of graves until they came to number 12. Pendergast stopped over it and remained there, head bowed, hands clasped as if praying. Beyond, the weak winter sun shone through the twisted branches of the oaks, and the hill fell away into mist.

“Where are we?” Smithback asked, looking around. “Whose graves are these?”

“This is where Fairhaven buried the thirty-six skeletons from Catherine Street. It was a very clever move. It takes a court order to get an exhumation, a long and difficult process. This was the next best thing to cremation, which of course he wasn’t allowed to do, by law. He did not want anyoneto have access to these skeletons.”

Pendergast gestured. “This grave, number 12, is the final resting place of Mary Greene. Gone, but no longer forgotten.” Pendergast reached into his pocket and removed a tattered piece of paper, folded into a small accordion. It trembled slightly in the breeze. He held it out, over the grave, almost as if it were an offering.

“What is that?” Smithback asked.

“The arcanum.”

“The what?”

“Leng’s formula for extending human life. Perfected. It no longer required the use of human donors. That is why he stopped killing in 1935.”

In the sudden silence, Nora and Smithback exchanged glances.

“Leng eventually worked it out. It wasn’t possible until the late twenties, when certain synthetic opiates and other biochemical assays became available to him. With this formula, he no longer had need of victims. Leng did not enjoy killing. He was a scientist; the killing was merely a regretful necessity. Unlike Fairhaven, who clearly took pleasure in it.”

Smithback stared at the paper in disbelief. “You mean to tell me you’re holding the formula for eternal life?”

“There is no such thing as ‘eternal life,’ Mr. Smithback. Not in this world, at least. This course of treatment would extendthe human life span, by how much exactly I don’t know. At least a hundred years, perhaps longer.”

“Where did you find it?”

“It was hidden in the house. As I knew it would be. I knew Leng would not have destroyed it. He would have kept a single copy for himself.” The look of internal conflict in Pendergast’s face seemed to grow stronger. “I hadto find it. To let it fall into other hands would have been . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Have you looked at it?” Nora asked.

Pendergast nodded.

“And?”

“It involves fairly straightforward biochemistry, using chemicals obtainable at any good chemist’s. It is an organic synthesis that any reasonably talented chemistry graduate student could perform in a well-equipped laboratory. But there’s a trick involved, an original twist, which makes it unlikely it will be independently rediscovered—at least, not in the foreseeable future.”

There was a silence. “What are you—what are we—going to do with it?” breathed Smithback.

As if in answer, there was a sharp rasping sound. A small flame now hovered over Pendergast’s left hand: a slim gold lighter, burning yellow in the dim light. Without saying a word, he touched the flame to the end of the paper.

“Wait!” cried Smithback, lunging forward. Pendergast, holding the burning paper aloft, adroitly sidestepped his grab.

“What are you doing?” Smithback wheeled around. “For God’s sake, give me that—”

The old, accordioned sheet was already half gone, black ash curling, breaking off, dropping to the frozen earth of the grave.

“Stop!” Smithback gasped, stepping forward again. “Think this out! You can’t—”

“I havethought it out,” Pendergast replied. “I’ve done nothing, these last six weeks of searching, butthink it out. It was a member of the Pendergast family, to my everlasting shame, who brought this formula to light. So many died for it: so many Mary Greenes that history will never know. I, having uncovered it, must be the one to destroy it. Believe me: this is the only way.Nothing created out of such suffering can be allowed to exist.”

The flame had crawled up to the final edge; Pendergast opened his fingers, and the unburned corner flared into ash on its way to the turned earth. Gently, Pendergast pressed it into Mary Greene’s grave. When he stepped back, nothing remained but a black stain in the brown earth.

A brief, shocked silence followed.

Then Smithback put his head into his hands. “I can’t believe it. Did you bring us here just to see that?”

Pendergast nodded.

“Why?”

“Because what I have just done was too important to do alone. It was an action that required witnesses—if only for the sake of history.”

As Nora looked at Pendergast, she saw—behind the conflict still evident on his face—a bottomless sorrow, an exhaustion of spirit.

Smithback shook his head miserably. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve just destroyed the greatest medical advance ever made.”

The FBI agent spoke again, his voice low now, almost a whisper. “Can’t you see? This formula would have destroyed the world. Leng already had the answer to his problem right in his hand.Had he released this into the world, it would have been the end. He only lacked the objectivity to see it.”

Smithback did not reply.

Pendergast glanced at the writer for a moment. Then he dropped his gaze to the grave. His shoulders seemed to droop.

Nora had been standing back, watching, listening, without saying a word. Suddenly, she spoke.

“I understand,” she said. “I know how difficult that decision must have been. For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing.”

As she spoke, Pendergast’s eyes remained on the ground. Then, slowly, his gaze rose to meet her own. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the anguish in his face seemed to lessen almost imperceptibly at her words.

“Thank you, Nora,” he said quietly.

*

Warning!! Certain plot secrets may be given away below, and in any case the epiloguewill not make sense until you have already completed reading CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. Donot proceed unless you have already finished the novel!

A N D      L A S T

It was five minutes to closing at York Avenue Chemists & Pharmaceutical Supply, and Charlie McDorr was not at all pleased to see the gaunt man enter the shop and approach the counter. It was two days before Christmas, and he had some last minute shopping to catch up on after dinner. McDorr gave the man a peripheral glance—if he avoided eye contact, maybe he could discourage the fellow—but what he saw surprised him sufficiently to turn and stare.

At first the man looked like the director of a funeral parlor. He wore an impeccable black suit, brilliant white shirt, grayish tie of fine silk. But this was clearly no mortician: the suit was too expensive, the cut too elegant and fresh. The face, however, was worn and creased, with dark circles under the eyes: the man looked like he hadn’t been sleeping well at all. And yet the pale blue eyes were as clear and cold as two chips of ice, and there was a severity, an aloofness, about him that McDorr found unsettling.

The man spoke, his voice soft, subdued, yet overlain with a mellifluous southern accent. Without pleasantries or introductions, the names of the chemicals he desired began rolling off his tongue, with such felicity McDorr realized at once that, despite his dress, the man must be either a fellow pharmacologist or a chemist. He straightened up. The chemicals the man wanted were pretty sophisticated. Then, suddenly, McDorr had him pegged: the fellow was one of those famous medical researchers from nearby Rockefeller University, perhaps even a Nobel Laureate. Usually they sent underlings to buy their chemicals. Well, he’d come to the right place: York Avenue Chemists was the only place in Manhattan that carried what he was looking for, in stock, no waiting, ready in an hour.

McDorr jotted down the chemicals as the man spoke. Funny the man hadn’t just faxed or brought in a list. It was a damned complicated series of compounds, too, and he was amazed the man could have kept it all in his head.

In less than five minutes the man had finished his recitation. Some of them were restricted chemicals—Schedule C synthetic opiates, various poisons, and the like—but the man had all the required paperwork for each one, ready and waiting on the counter.

"How’s tomorrow at ten?" McDorr asked.

The man stared back. "I need them now. I’ll wait."

McDorr glanced at the clock. "It’s past closing time, sir."

The fleeting look on the man’s face—something not at all genteel—unnerved him. But when the man spoke, the voice remained soft, aristocratic, modulated. "I shall pay you triple if you would kindly fill this order immediately."

It was already close to a thousand-dollar order: there were some expensive exotics on the list. McDorr stared back. "Really?"

The man nodded, his face relaxing, the fleeting look, if it had ever been there, now gone. "It’s an ongoing experiment. Once I get started, I can’t bear to be interrupted. An annoying habit, but very hard to break."

McDorr nodded. "Suit yourself." Pretty cushy if the university’s springing for it, he thought to himself. What’s a thousand here, a thousand there? While he had to watch every penny.

He went into the back and began pulling bottles and cans and vials off the shelves, weighing or measuring them out, packing and sealing. A damned odd group of chemicals. McDorr wondered what kind of experiment this strange-looking professor was running. The look in the eyes, when he’d said he couldn’t fill the order until tomorrow. . . Like most pharmacologists, he’d seen that look before. A look, not of detached scientific curiosity, but of personal, desperate need. It occurred to him that the man might very well be some kind of drug addict. Still, it wasn’t his place to question a good order, with all the correct paperwork and a hefty profit besides.

Forty minutes later he was back with three plastic trays, their compartments loaded with chemicals.

The man eyed the tray with an intensity—even a hunger—that again alarmed McDorr. But when the man spoke it was in the same mild voice: "If it isn’t too much trouble, I’ll take the trays, too."

"Of course," said McDorr, setting them down on the counter and ringing up the order.

"The paper?" the man said.

McDorr’s hand paused at the register. "What paper?"

"The list of chemicals you wrote out."

McDorr removed it from his shirt pocket. "This?"

The man plucked it from his fingers. "Thank you. Proprietary information."

He paid. McDorr rapidly counted the money, but by the time he’d finished and looked up to give the man his change, he found himself staring at an empty shop. The man had vanished. Odd: the entry buzzer hadn’t even sounded when he’d opened the door to leave. Perhaps McDorr had been too busy counting the crisp new hundred-dollar bills the man had given him to hear it. And the man had left with almost thirty dollars in change coming to him. He glanced down at the name on the paperwork: Maurice de Poincarélle, M.D., and he remembered he was supposed to have asked for identification. He cursed inwardly, but it was too late.

And then the phone began to ring. The wife, no doubt, checking on why the hell he wasn’t home yet.

With a sigh, McDorr exited the shop, locking the door on the still ringing phone. Outside, he paused to look down East Sixty-Second, inhaling the crisp evening air. It was a beautiful night. Snow was falling. The big flakes dropped slowly out of the night sky, glittering momentarily as they passed the streetlights, then settling onto a layer of fresh snow covering the sidewalks and parked cars. He paused, staring for a moment at the single dark set of footprints that led from his shop door and off into the night, footprints that were rapidly vanishing under the deepening blanket of snow. Strange man. He wondered just what Maurice de Whatever would be doing that Christmas, and shivered involuntarily.

As for himself, he thought, what could be more perfect than a quick stop at Tammany’s on the way home for a little refreshment with the boys? Yes, that’s exactly what he would do, damn the Christmas shopping and damn the wife.

Life, he said to himself, was just too short.

Copyright © 2002 by Splendide Mendax, Inc. and Lincoln Child