Текст книги "The Cabinet of Curiosities"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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One spring evening earlier this year, I had occasion to stay on very late at the Cabinet, finishing work on an accumulation of documents and preparing the exhibition space for my latest acquisition, the double-brained child, of which we have previously spoken. This latter task proved far more engrossing than the tiresome paperwork, and I was rather surprised to hear the city bell toll midnight.

It was in the moments following, as I stood, listening to the echoes of the bell die away, that I became aware of another sound. It came from over my head: a kind of heavy shuffling, as if of a man bearing some heavy burden. I cannot tell you why precisely, McFadden, but there was something in that sound that sent a thrill of dread coursing through me. I listened more intently. The sound died away slowly, the footsteps retreating into a more distant room.

Of course there was nothing for me to do. In the morning, as I reflected on the event, I realized the culprit was undoubtedly my own tired nerves. Unless some more sinister meaning should prove to be attached to the footsteps—which seemed a remote possibility—there was no cause for approaching Leng on the matter. I ascribed my alarm to my own perverse state of mind at the time. I had succeeded in creating a rather sensational backdrop for displaying the double-brained child, and no doubt this, along with the late hour, had roused the more morbid aspects of my imagination. I resolved to put the matter behind me.

It chanced that some few weeks later—the fifth of July, last week, to be precise—another event took place to which I most earnestly commend your attention. The circumstances were similar: I remained late at the Cabinet, preparing my upcoming paper for the Lyceum journal. As you know, writing for learned bodies such as the Lyceum is difficult for me, and I have fallen into certain routines which ease the process somewhat. My old teakwood writing desk, the fine vellum paper upon which this note is now being written, the fuchsia-colored ink made by M. Dupin in Paris—these are the petty niceties which make composition less onerous. This evening, inspiration came rather more easily than usual, however, and around half past ten I found it necessary to sharpen some new pens before work could continue. I turned away from my desk briefly to effect this. When I returned I found, to my utmost astonishment, that the page on which I had been at work had been soiled with some small number of inkstains.

I am most fastidious with a pen, and was at a loss to explain how this came about. It was only when I took up my blotter to clear away the stains that I realized they differed slightly in color from the fuchsia of my pen, being a somewhat lighter shade. And when I blotted them aside, I realized they were of a thicker, more viscous, consistency than my French ink.

Imagine my horror, then, when a freshdrop landed upon my wrist as I was in the act of lifting the blotter from the paper.

Immediately, I lifted my eyes to the ceiling above my head. What devilment was this? A small but widening crimson stain was leaching between the floorboards of Leng’s chambers overhead.

It was the work of a moment to mount the stairs and pound upon his door. I cannot describe precisely the sequence of thoughts that ran through my mind—foremost among them, however, was fear that the Doctor had fallen victim to foul play. There had been rumors circulating through the neighborhood of a certain vicious and predatory murderer, but one pays little heed to the gossip of the lower classes, and alas, death is a frequent visitor to the Five Points.

Leng answered my frantic summons in due course, sounding a trifle winded. An accident, he said through the door: he had cut his arm rather severely during an experimental procedure. He declined my offers of assistance, and said he had already done the necessary suturing himself. He regretted the incident, but refused to open the door. At last I went away, riven by perplexity and doubt.

The morning following, Leng appeared at my doorstep. He had never called on me at my residence before, and I was surprised to see him. I observed that one arm had been bandaged. He apologized profusely for the inconvenience of the previous night. I invited him inside, but he would not stay. With another apology, he took his leave.

I watched with unsettled heart as he descended the walk and stepped into an omnibus. I pray you will do the honor of understanding me when I say that Leng’s visit, coming upon the heels of such strange events at the Cabinet, had precisely the opposite effect to which he had intended. I felt now more sure than ever that, whatever it was he was about, it would not stand up to scrutiny in the honest light of day.

I fear I can write no more this evening. I will hide this letter inside the elephant’s-foot box that, along with a group of curiosities, is being forwarded to you at the Museum in two days’ time. God willing, I will find the fortitude to return to this and conclude it on the morrow.

July 13, 1881

I must now summon the strength of will to complete my narrative.

In the aftermath of Leng’s visit, I found myself in the grip of a terrific internal struggle. A sense of scientific idealism, coupled perhaps with prudence, argued that I should take the man’s explanation at its face value. Yet another inner voice argued that it was beholden on me, as a gentleman and a man of honor, to learn the truth for myself.

At last I resolved to discover the nature of the man’s experiments. If they proved benign, I could be accused of inquisitiveness—nothing more.

Perhaps you will consider me the victim of unmanly feelings in this matter. I can only say that those vile crimson drops now seemed as imprinted upon my brain as they had been upon my wrist and my writing-paper. There was something about Leng—about the manner in which he had looked at me, there upon my doorstep—that made me feel almost a stranger in my own home. There was some manner of chill speculativeness behind those indifferent-looking eyes that froze my blood. I could no longer tolerate having the man under my roof without knowing the full breadth of his work.

By some personal caprice unfathomable to me, Leng had recently begun donating his medical services to a few local Houses of Industry. As a result, he was invariably absent from his chambers during the latter part of the afternoon. It was on Monday last, July 11, that I saw him through the front windows of the Cabinet. He was crossing the avenue, clearly on his way to the workhouses.

I knew this was no accident: fate had afforded me this opportunity.

It was with some trepidation that I ascended to the third floor. Leng had changed the lock on the door leading into his room, but I retained a skeleton key which turned the wards and unshot the bolt. I let the door fall open before me, then stepped inside.

Leng had decorated the front room into the semblance of a parlor. I was struck by his choice of decoration: gaudy sporting prints were on the walls, and the tables were aclutter with tabloids and penny-dreadfuls. Leng had always struck me as a man of elegance and refinement; yet this room seemed to reflect the tastes of uncultured youth. It was the sort of dive a pool-room tramp or a girl of low breeding would find inviting. There was a pall of dust over everything, as if Leng had spent little time in the parlor of late.

A heavy brocade curtain had been hung over the doorway leading into the rear rooms. I lifted it aside with the end of my walking stick. I thought I had been prepared for almost anything, but what I found was, perhaps, what I least expected.

The rooms were almost entirely empty. There were at least half a dozen large tables, here and there, whose scarred surfaces bore mute testimony to hours of experimental labor. But they were devoid of furnishing. There was a strong ammoniac smell in the air of these rooms that almost choked me. In one drawer I found several blunt scalpels. All the other drawers I examined were empty, save for dust mites and spiders.

After much searching, I located the spot in the floorboards through which the blood had seeped a few nights before. It seemed to have been etched clean with acid; aqua regia, judging by the odor. I glanced around at the walls then, and noticed other patches, some large, others small, that also seemed to indicate recent cleaning.

I must confess to feeling rather a fool at that moment. There was nothing here to excite alarm; nothing that would rouse the faintest trace of suspicion in even the most perspicacious policeman. And yet the sense of dread refused to wholly leave me. There was something about the oddly decorated parlor, the smell of chemicals, the meticulously cleaned walls and floor, that troubled one. Why were these hidden back rooms clean, while the parlor had been allowed to gather dust?

It was at that moment I remembered the basement.

Years before, Leng had asked, in an offhand way, if he could use the old coal tunnel in the basement for storing excess laboratory equipment. The tunnel had fallen into disuse a few years earlier, with the installation of a new boiler, and I had no need of it myself. I had given him the key and promptly forgotten the matter.

My feelings on descending the cellar stairway behind the Cabinet can scarcely be described. On one occasion I halted, wondering if I should summon an escort. But once again, sane reasoning prevailed. There was no sign of foul play. No—the only thing for it was to proceed myself.

Leng had affixed a padlock to the coal cellar door. Seeing this, I was momentarily overcome by a sense of relief. I had done my utmost; there was nothing else but mount the stairs. I even went so far as to turn around and take the first step. Then I stopped. The same impulse that had brought me this far would not let me leave until I had seen this bad business through.

I raised my foot to kick in the door. Then I hesitated. If I could contrive to remove the lock with a pair of bolt cutters, I reasoned, Leng would think it the work of a sneak-thief.

It was the work of five minutes to retrieve the necessary implement and cut through the hasp of the lock. I dropped it to the ground, then pushed the door wide, allowing the afternoon light to stream down the stairway behind me.

Immediately upon entering, I was overwhelmed with far different sensations than those that had gripped me on the third floor. Whatever work had ceased in Leng’s chambers was, clearly, still active here.

Once again, it was the odor I noticed first. As before, there was a smell of caustic reagents, perhaps mixed with formaldehyde or ether. But these were masked by something much richer and more powerful. It was a scent I recognized from passing the hog butcheries on Pearl and Water Streets: it was the smell of a slaughterhouse.

The light filtering down the rear stairs made it unnecessary for me to ignite the gas lamps. Here, too, were numerous tables: but these tables were covered with a complicated sprawl of medical instruments, surgical apparatus, beakers, and retorts. One table contained perhaps three score small vials of light amber liquid, carefully numbered and tagged. A vast array of chemicals were arranged in cabinets against the walls. Sawdust had been scattered across the floor. It was damp in places; scuffing it with the toe of my boot, I discovered that it had been thrown down to absorb a rather large quantity of blood.

I knew now that my apprehensions were not entirely without merit. And yet, I told myself, there was still nothing to raise alarm here: dissections were, after all, a cornerstone of science.

On the closest table was a thick sheaf of carefully jotted notes, gathered into a leather-bound journal. They were penned in Leng’s distinctive hand. I turned to these with relief. At last, I would learn what it was Leng had been working towards. Surely some noble scientific purpose would emerge from these pages, to give the lie to my fears.

The journal did no such thing.

You know, old friend, that I am a man of science. I have never been what you might call a God-fearing fellow. But I feared God that day—or rather, I feared his wrath, that such unholy deeds—deeds worthy of Moloch himself—had been committed beneath my roof.

Leng’s journal spelt it out in unwavering, diabolical detail. It was perhaps the clearest, most methodical set of scientific notes it has been my eternal misfortune to come across. There is no kind of explanatory gloss I can place upon his experiments; nothing, in fact, I can do but spell it all out as plainly and succinctly as I can.

For the last eight years, Leng has been working to perfect a method of prolonging human life. His own life, by evidence of the notations and recordings in the journal. But—before God, Tinbury—he was using other human beingsas material. His victims seemed made up almost entirely of young adults. Again and again, his journal mentioned dissections of human craniums and spinal columns, the latter on which he seems to have focused his depraved attentions. The most recent entries centered particularly on the cauda equina, the ganglion of nerves at the base of the spine.

I read for ten, then twenty minutes, frozen with fascination and horror. Then I dropped the abhorrent document back onto the table and stepped away. Perhaps I wasa little mad at that point, after all; because I still contrived to find logic in all of this. Body-snatching the recent dead from graveyards is an unfortunate but necessary practice in the medical climate of our day, I told myself. Cadavers for medical research remain in critically short supply, and there is no way to supply the need without resorting to grave-robbing. Even the most respectable surgeons need resort to it, I told myself. And even though Leng’s attempts at artificially prolonging life were clearly beyond the pale, it was still possible he might unintentionally achieve other breakthroughs that would have beneficial effects . . .

It was at that point, I believe, that I first noticed the sound.

To my left, there was a table I had not taken note of before. A large oilcloth had been spread over it, covering something large and rather bulky. As I watched, the faint sound came again, from beneath the oilcloth: the sound of some animal dispossessed of tongue, palate, vocal cords.

I cannot explain where I found the strength to approach it, other than my own overpowering need to know. I stepped forward, and then—before my resolution could falter—I gripped the greasy cloth and drew it away.

The sight uncovered in that dim light will haunt me until my last day. It lay upon its stomach. A gaping hole lay where the base of the spine had once been. The sound I had heard was, it seemed to me, the escaping gases of decay.

You might have thought me incapable of registering fresh shock at this point. Yet I noticed, with a rising sense of unreality, that both the corpse and the wound appeared fresh.

I hesitated for perhaps five, perhaps ten seconds. Then I drew closer, my mind possessed by one thought, and one thought only. Could this be the body that had bled so profusely on Leng’s floor? How, then, to explain the rawness of the wound? Was it possible—even conceivable—that Leng would make use of two corpses within the span of a single week?

I had come this far: I had to know all. I reached forward, gingerly, to turn the body and check its lividity.

The skin felt supple, the flesh warm in the humid summer cellar. As I turned the body over and the face was exposed, I saw to my transcendent horror that a blood-soaked rag had been knotted around the mouth. I snatched my hand away; the thing rolled back onto the table, face upwards.

I stepped back, reeling. In my shock, I did not immediately understand the terrible import of that blood-soaked rag. I think if I had, I would have turned and fled that place—and in so doing been spared the final horror.

For it was then, McFadden, that the eyes above the rag fluttered open. They had once been human, but pain and terror had riven all humanity from their expression.

As I stood, transfixed by fear, there came another low moan.

It was, I knew now, not gas escaping from a corpse. And this was not the work of a man who trafficked with body snatchers, with corpses stolen from graveyards. This poor creature on the table was still alive. Leng practiced his abominable work on those who still lived.

Even as I watched, the horrible, pitiable thing on the table moaned once more, then expired. Somehow, I had the presence of mind to replace the body as I had found it, cover it with the oilcloth, close the door, and climb up out of that charnel pit into the land of the living . . .

I have barely moved from my chambers within the Cabinet since. I have been trying to gather courage for what I know in my heart remains to be done. You must see now, dear colleague, that there can be no mistake, no other explanation, for what I found in the basement. Leng’s journal was far too comprehensive, too diabolically detailed, for there to be any misapprehension. As further evidence, on the attached sheet I have reproduced, from memory, some of the scientific observations and procedures this monstrous man recorded within its pages. I would go to the police, except I feel that only I can—

But hark! I hear his footstep on the stair even now. I must return this letter to its hiding place and conclude tomorrow.

God give me the strength for what I must now do.

SIX

ROGER BRISBANE LEANED back in his office chair, his eyes roaming the glass expanse of desk that lay before him. It was a long, enjoyable perambulation: Brisbane liked order, purity, simplicity, and the desk shone with a mirror-like perfection. At last, his gaze came to the case of jewels. It was that time of day when a lance of sunlight shot through the case, turning its occupants into glittering spheres and ovals of entangled light and color. One could call an emerald “green” or a sapphire “blue,” but the words did no justice to the actual colors. There were no adequate words for such colors in any human language.

Jewels. They lasted forever, so hard and cold and pure, so impervious to decay. Always beautiful, always perfect, always as fresh as the day they were born in unimaginable heat and pressure. So unlike human beings, with their opaque rubbery flesh and their odoriferous descent from birth to the grave—a story of drool, semen, and tears. He should have become a gemologist. He would have been much happier surrounded by these blooms of pure light. The law career his father had chosen for him was nothing more than a vile parade of human failure. And his job in the Museum brought him in contact with that failure, day in and day out, in stark illumination.

He turned to lean over a computer printout with a sigh. It was now clear the Museum should never have borrowed one hundred million for its new state-of-the-art planetarium. More cuts were needed. Heads would have to roll. Well, at least that shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish. The Museum was full of useless, tweedy, overpaid curators and functionaries, always whining about budget cuts, never answering their phones, always off on some research trip spending the Museum’s money or writing books that nobody ever read. Cushy jobs, sinecures, unable to be fired because of tenure—unless exceptional circumstances existed.

He put the printout through a nearby shredder, then opened a drawer and pulled out several tied packets of inter-office correspondence. The mail of a dozen likely candidates, intercepted thanks to a man in the mailroom who had been caught organizing a Super Bowl pool on Museum time. With any luck, he’d find plenty of exceptional circumstances inside. It was easier—and easier to justify—than scanning e-mail.

Brisbane shuffled the packets without interest. Then he stopped, glancing at one of them. Here was a case in point: this man Puck. He sat in the Archives all day long, doing what? Nothing, except causing trouble for the Museum.

He untied the packet, riffled through the envelopes within. On the front and back of each were dozens of lines for addresses. The envelopes had a little red tie string and could be reused until they fell apart, simply by adding a new name to the next blank line. And there, on the second-to-last line was Puck’s name. And following it was Nora’s name.

Brisbane’s hand tightened around the envelope. What was it that arrogant FBI agent, Pendergast, had said? Most of the work will be archival in nature.

He unwound the string and slid out a single piece of paper. A whiff of dust rose from the envelope and Brisbane hastily raised a protective tissue to his nose. Holding the paper at arm’s length, he read:

Dear Dr. Kelly,

I found another small box of papers on Shottum’s Cabinet, which somehow had been recently misplaced. Not nearly as astonishing as what you have already uncovered, yet interesting in its own way. I will leave it for you in the Archives Reading Room.

P.

Color crept into Brisbane’s face, then drained out again. It was just as he thought: she was still working for that arrogant FBI agent, and she was continuing to enlist Puck’s help. This thing had to be stopped. And Puck had to go. Just look at this note,Brisbane thought: manually typed on what was clearly an ancient typewriter. The very inefficiency of it made Brisbane’s blood boil. The Museum was not a welfare program for eccentrics. Puck was a fossilized anachronism who should have been put out to pasture long before. He would gather suitable evidence, then draw up a recommended termination list for the next Executive Committee meeting. Puck’s name would be at the top.

But what about Nora? He remembered the words of the Museum director, Collopy, at their recent meeting. Doucement, doucement,the director had murmured.

And softly it would be. For now.

SEVEN

SMITHBACK STOOD ON the sidewalk, midway between Columbus and Amsterdam, gazing speculatively up at the red-brick facade before him. One hundred eight West Ninety-ninth Street was a broad, prewar apartment house, unembarrassed by any distinguishing architecture, bright in the noonday sun. The bland exterior didn’t bother him. What mattered lay within: a rent-stabilized, two-bedroom apartment, near the Museum, for only eighteen hundred a month.

He stepped back toward the street, giving the neighborhood a once-over. It wasn’t the most charming Upper West Side neighborhood he had seen, but it had possibilities. Two bums sat on a nearby stoop, drinking something out of a paper bag. He glanced at his watch. Nora would be arriving in five minutes. Christ, this was going to be an uphill battle anyway, if only those bums would take a walk around the corner. He fished into his pocket, found a five dollar bill, and sauntered over.

“Nice day if it don’t rain,” he said.

The bums eyed him suspiciously.

Smithback brandished the five. “Hey, guys, go buy yourself lunch, okay?”

One of them grinned, exposing a row of decaying teeth. “For five bucks? Man, you can’t buy a cup of Starbucks for five bucks. And my legs hurt.”

“Yeah,” said the other, wiping his nose.

Smithback pulled out a twenty.

“Oh, my aching legs—”

“Take it or leave it.”

The closest bum took the twenty and the pair rose to their feet with histrionic groans and sniffles. Soon they were shuffling toward the corner, heading no doubt to the nearby liquor store on Broadway. Smithback watched their retreating backs. At least they were harmless rummys, and not crackheads or worse. He glanced around and saw, right on schedule, a blade-thin woman in black come clicking down the block, a bright, fake lipstick smile on her face. The real estate broker.

“You must be Mr. Smithback,” she said in a smoker’s croak as she took his hand. “I’m Millie Locke. I have the key to the apartment. Is your, er, partner here?”

“There she is now.” Nora had just rounded the corner, cotton trenchcoat billowing, knapsack thrown over her shoulder. She waved.

When Nora arrived the agent took her hand, saying, “How lovely.”

They entered a dingy lobby, lined on the left with mailboxes and on the right with a large mirror: a feeble attempt to make the narrow hall look bigger than it actually was. They pressed the button for the elevator. There was a whir and a rattle somewhere overhead.

“It’s a perfect location,” said Smithback to Nora. “Twenty-minute walk to the Museum, close to the subway station, a block and a half from the park.”

Nora did not respond. She was staring at the elevator door, and she did not look happy.

The elevator creaked open and they stepped in. Smithback waited out the excruciatingly long ride, silently willing the damn elevator to hurry up. He had the unpleasant feeling that he, not just the apartment, was undergoing an inspection.

At last they got out at the sixth floor, took a right in a dim hallway, and stopped in front of a brown metal door with an eyehole set into it. The real estate broker unlocked four separate locks and swung the door open.

Smithback was pleasantly surprised. The apartment faced the street, and it was cleaner than he expected. The floors were oak; a bit warped, but oak nevertheless. One wall was exposed brick, the others painted sheetrock.

“Hey, what do you think?” he said brightly. “Pretty nice, huh?”

Nora said nothing.

“It’s the bargain of the century,” said the broker. “Eighteen hundred dollars, rent-stabilized. A/C. Great location. Bright, quiet.”

The kitchen had old appliances, but was clean. The bedrooms were sunny with south-facing windows, which gave the little rooms a feeling of space.

They stopped in the middle of the living room. “Well, Nora,” Smithback asked, feeling uncharacteristically shy, “what do you think?”

Nora’s face was dark, her brow furrowed. This did not look good. The real estate broker withdrew a few feet, to give them the pretense of privacy.

“It’s nice,” she said.

“Nice? Eighteen hundred bucks a month for an Upper West Side two-bedroom? In a prewar building? It’s awesome.”

The real estate broker leaned back toward them. “You’re the first to see it. I guarantee you it’ll be gone before sunset.” She fumbled in her purse, removed a cigarette and a lighter, flicked on the lighter, and then with both hands poised inches apart, asked, “May I?”

“Are you all right?” Smithback asked Nora.

Nora waved her hand, took a step toward the window. She appeared to be looking intently at something far away.

“You did talk to your landlord about moving out, didn’t you?”

“No, not quite yet.”

Smithback felt his heart sink a little. “You haven’t toldhim?”

She shook her head.

The sinking feeling grew more pronounced. “Come on, Nora. I thought we’d decided on this.”

She looked out a window. “This is a big move for me, Bill. I mean, living together . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Smithback glanced around at the apartment. The real estate broker caught his eye, quickly looked away. He lowered his voice. “Nora, you do love me, right?”

She continued looking out the window. “Of course. But . . . this is just a really bad day for me, okay?”

“It’s no big deal. It’s not like we’re engaged.”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“Not talk about it? Nora, thisis the apartment. We’re never going to find a better one. Let’s settle the broker’s fee.”

“Broker’s fee?”

Smithback turned to the agent. “What did you say your fee was for this place?”

The agent exhaled a cloud of smoke, gave a little cough. “I’m glad you asked. It’s quite reasonable. Of course, you can’t just rentan apartment like this. I’m doing you a special favor just showing it to you.”

“So how much is this fee?” Nora asked.

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen what? Dollars?”

“Percent. Of the first year’s rent, that is.”

“But that’s—” Nora frowned, did the calculation in her head. “That’s close to four thousand dollars.”

“It’s cheap, considering what you’re getting. And I promise you, if you don’t go for it, the next person will.” She glanced at her watch. “They’ll be here in ten minutes. That’s how much time you have to make your decision.”

“What about it, Nora?” Smithback asked.

Nora sighed. “I have to think about this.”

“We don’t have time to think about it.”

“We have all the time in the world. This isn’t the only apartment in Manhattan.”

There was a brief, frozen silence. The real estate broker glanced again at her watch.

Nora shook her head. “Bill, I told you. It’s been a bad day.”

“I can see that.”

“You know the Shottum collection I told you about? Yesterday we found a letter, a terrible letter, hidden among that collection.”

Smithback felt a feeling akin to panic creeping over him. “Can we talk about this later? I really think this is the apartment—”

She rounded on him, her face dark. “Didn’t you hear what I said? We found a letter.We know who murdered those thirty-six people!”

There was another silence. Smithback glanced over at the real estate broker, who was pretending to examine a window frame. Her ears were practically twitching. “You do?” he asked.

“He’s an extremely shadowy figure named Enoch Leng. He seems to have been a taxonomist and a chemist. The letter was written by a man named Shottum, who owned a kind of museum on the site, called Shottum’s Cabinet. Leng rented rooms from Shottum and performed experiments in them. Shottum grew suspicious, took a look into Leng’s lab when he was away. He discovered that Leng had been kidnapping people, killing them, and then dissecting out part of their central nervous system and processing it—apparently, for self-administered injections.”

“Good God. What for?”

Nora shook her head. “You’re not going to believe this. He was trying to extend his life span.”

“That’s incredible.” This was a story—a giganticstory. Smithback glanced over at the real estate broker. She was now intently examining the door jambs, her next appointment seemingly forgotten.

“That’s what I thought.” Nora shuddered. “God, I just can’t get that letter out of my head. All the details were there. And Pendergast—you should have seen how grim his face was while he was reading it. Looked as if he was reading his own obituary or something. And then this morning, when I went down to check on some more Shottum material that had turned up, I learn that orders had come down for some conservation work in the Archives. All the Shottum papers were included. And now, they’re gone. You can’t tell me that’s coincidence. It was either Brisbane or Collopy, I’m sure of that, but of course I can’t come right out and ask them.”