Текст книги "Relic"
Автор книги: Lincoln Child
Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
= 60 =
Smithback gripped the belt, playing a few more inches back toward the group. If anything, he thought, the water was rising even faster than before; there were surges every few minutes now, and although the current didn’t seem to be getting stronger, the roar at the end of the tunnel had grown deafening. The oldest, the weakest, and the poorest swimmers were directly behind Smithback, clutching to the rope of belts; behind them the others were clinging together, treading water desperately. Everyone was silent now; there was no energy left to weep, moan, or even speak. Smithback looked up: two more feet, and he’d be able to grab the ladder.
“Must be a mother of a storm out there,” said D’Agosta. He was next to Smithback, supporting an older woman. “Sure rained on the Museum’s party,” he added with a weak laugh.
Smithback merely looked up, snapping on the light. Eighteen more inches.
“Smithback, quit switching the light on and off, all [432] right?” D’Agosta said irritably. “I’ll tell you when to check.”
Smithback felt another surge, which buffeted him against the brick walls of the tunnel. There were some gasps among the group but no one cut loose. If the belt rope gave way, they’d all be drowned in thirty seconds. Smithback tried not to think about it.
In a shaky but determined voice, the Mayor started telling a story to the group. It involved several well-known people in City Hall. Smithback, despite scenting a scoop, felt sleepier and sleepier—a sign, he remembered, of hypothermia.
“Okay, Smithback. Check the ladder.” The gruff voice of D’Agosta jerked him awake.
He shined the light upward, rattling it into life. In the past fifteen minutes the water had risen another foot, bringing the end of the ladder almost within reach. With a croak of delight, Smithback played more of the belts back to the group.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” said D’Agosta. “You’re gonna go up first. I’ll help from down here, then I’ll follow last. Okay?”
“Okay,” Smithback said, shaking himself into consciousness.
D’Agosta pulled the belt taut, then grabbed Smithback by the waistband and heaved him upward. Smithback reached over his head, grabbing the lowest rung with his free hand.
“Give me the light,” said D’Agosta.
Smithback handed it down, then grabbed the rung with the other hand. He pulled himself up a little, then fell back, the muscles in his arms and back jerking spasmodically. With a deep breath, he pulled himself up again, this time reaching the second rung.
“Now you grab the rung,” D’Agosta said to someone. Smithback leaned against the rungs, gasping for breath. Then, looking upward again, he grasped the third rung, [433] then the fourth. He felt around lightly with his feet to secure them on the first rung.
“Don’t step on anyone’s hands!” D’Agosta warned from below.
He felt a hand guide his foot, and he was able to put his weight on the lowest rung. The firmness felt like heaven. He reached down with one hand and helped the elderly woman. Then he turned back, feeling his strength returning, and moved upward.
The ladder ended at the mouth of a large pipe jutting out horizontally where the curved vault of the roof met the tunnel wall. Gingerly, he moved to the pipe and began crawling into the darkness.
Immediately, a putrid odor assaulted his nostrils. Sewer, he thought. He stopped involuntarily for a moment, then moved forward again.
The pipe ended, opening into blackness. Gingerly, he brought his feet outward and downward. A hard, firm dirt floor met his shoes a foot or so beneath the mouth of the pipe. He could hardly believe their luck: a chamber of unknown size, hung suspended here between the basement and subbasement. Probably some architectural palimpsest, a long-forgotten by-product of one of the Museum’s many reconstructions. He clambered out and moved a few inches forward, then another few inches, sweeping his feet over the blackness of the floor. The stench around him was abominable, but it was not the smell of the beast, and for that he was profoundly grateful. Dry things—twigs?—crunched beneath his feet. Behind him, he could hear grunting, and the sound of others moving down the pipe toward him. The feeble light from D’Agosta’s flashlight in the subbasement beyond could not penetrate the blackness.
He turned around, knelt down by the mouth of the pipe, and began helping the bedraggled group out, directing them off to the side, warning them not to stray too far into the dark.
One at a time, people emerged and spread out against [434] the wall, feeling their way gingerly, collapsing in exhaustion. The room was quiet except for the sound of ragged breathing.
Finally, Smithback heard the voice of D’Agosta coming through the pipe. “Christ, what is that reek?” he muttered to Smithback. “That damned flashlight finally gave out. So I dropped it into the water. Okay, people,” he said in a louder voice, standing up, “I want you to count off.” The sound of dripping water started Smithback’s heart racing until he realized it was simply D’Agosta, wringing out his sodden jacket.
One by one, in tired voices, the group gave their names. “Good,” D’Agosta said. “Now to figure out where we are. We may need to look for higher ground, in case the water continues to rise.”
“I’d like to look for higher ground anyway,” came a voice from the darkness. “It stinks in here something awful.”
“It’ll be tough without light,” Smithback said. “We’ll need to go single file.”
“I’ve got a lighter,” one voice said. “Shall I see if it still works?”
“Careful,” said someone else. “Smells like methane, if you ask me.”
Smithback winced as a wavering yellow flame illuminated the chamber.
“Oh, Jesus!”somebody screamed.
The chamber was suddenly plunged into darkness again as the hand holding the lighter involuntarily jerked away—but not before Smithback got a single, devastating image of what lay around him.
Margo strained ahead in the dimness, slowly moving the flashlight around the hall, trying to keep from deliberately spotlighting the beast as it crouched at the corner, observing them.
“Not yet,” Pendergast murmured. “Wait until it shows itself fully.”
[435] The creature seemed to pause for an eternity, unmoving, as silent and motionless as a stone gargoyle. Margo could see small red eyes watching her in the gloom. Every now and then the eyes disappeared, then reappeared, as the creature blinked.
The creature took another step, then froze again as if making up its mind, its low, powerful frame tensed and ready.
Then it started forward, coming down the hall toward them with a strange, terrifying lope.
“Now!” cried Pendergast.
Margo reached up and fumbled for the miner’s helmet, and the hall was suddenly bathed in light. Almost immediately she heard a deafening WHANG!as Pendergast’s powerful handgun barked next to her. The creature stopped briefly, and Margo could see it squinting, shaking its head against the light. It bent back as if to bite its haunch where the bullet had passed. Margo felt her mind receding from the reality: the low, pale head, horribly elongated, the crease of Pendergast’s bullet a white stripe above the eyes; the powerful forequarters, covered with dense fur and ending in long, rending talons; the lower rear haunches, wrinkled skin descending to five-clawed toes. Its fur was matted with crusted blood, and fresh blood shone on the scales of the hindquarters.
WHANG!The creature’s right foreleg was yanked behind it, and Margo heard a terrible roar of rage. It spun back to face them and sprang forward, ropes of saliva swinging madly from its jaws.
WHANG!went the gun– a miss—and the creature kept coming, accelerating with horrible deliberation.
WHANG!
She saw, as if in slow motion, the left hind leg jerk back, and the creature falter slightly. But it recovered, and, with a renewed howl, coarse hair bristling high on its haunches, it came for them again.
WHANG!went the gun, but the creature did not slow, and at that point Margo realized with great clarity that [436] their plan had failed, that there was time for only one more shot and that the creature’s charge could not be stopped. “Pendergast!” she cried, stumbling backward, her miner’s light tilting crazily upward, scrambling away from the red eyes that stared straight into her own with a terrifyingly comprehensible blend of rage, lust, and triumph.
Garcia sat on the floor, ears straining, wondering if the voice he’d heard was real—if there was somebody else out there, trapped in this nightmare—or whether it had just been a trick of his overheated brain.
Suddenly, a very different sound boomed outside the door; then there was another, and another.
He scrambled to his feet. It couldn’t be true. He fumbled with the radio.
“Do you hear that?” a voice behind him said.
Then the sound came again, twice; then, a short silence; then again.
“I swear to God, somebody’s shooting in the hall!” Garcia cried.
There was a long, dreadful silence. “It’s stopped,” said Garcia in a whisper.
“Did they get it? Did they get it?” Waters whimpered.
The silence stretched on. Garcia clutched the shotgun, its pump and trigger guard slick from sweat. Five or six shots, that’s all he’d heard. And the creature had killed a heavily armed SWAT team.
“Did they get it?”Waters asked again.
Garcia listened intently, but could hear nothing from the hall. This was the worst of all: the brief raising, then sudden dashing, of his hopes. He waited.
There was a rattling at the door. “No,” whispered Garcia. “It’s back.”
= 61 =
“Hand me that lighter!” D’Agosta barked. Smithback, falling blindly backward, saw the sudden spark of the flint and instinctively covered his eyes.
“Oh, Christ—” he heard D’Agosta groan. Then Smithback jerked as he felt something clutch his shoulder and drag him to his feet.
“Listen, Smithback,” the voice of D’Agosta hissed in his ear, “you can’t crap out on me now. I need you to help me keep these people together.”
Smithback gagged as he forced his eyes open. The dirt floor ahead of him was awash in bones: small, large, some broken and brittle, others with gristle still clinging to their knobby ends.
“Not twigs,” Smithback said, over and over again under his breath. “No, no, not twigs.” The light flicked out again, D’Agosta conserving its flame.
Another yellow flash, and Smithback looked wildly around. What he had kicked aside was the remains of a dog—a terrier, by the looks of it—glassy, staring eyes, [438] light fur, small brown teats descending in ordered rows to the torn-out belly. Scattered around the floor were other carcasses: cats, rats, other creatures too thoroughly mauled or too long dead to be recognizable. Behind him, someone was screaming relentlessly.
The light went out, then reappeared, farther ahead now as D’Agosta moved forward. “Smithback, come with me,” came his voice. “Everybody, stare straight ahead. Let’s go.” As Smithback slowly placed one foot in front of the other, looking down just enough to avoid stepping on the loathesomeness beneath, something registered in his peripheral vision. He turned his head toward the wall to his right.
A pipe or duct had once run along the wall at shoulder height, but it had long since collapsed, its remains lying broken on the floor, half buried in offal. The heavy metal supports for the ductwork remained bolted to the wall, projecting outward like tines. Hung on the supports were a variety of human corpses, their forms seeming to waver in the dull glow of the flame. Smithback saw, but did not immediately comprehend, that all of the corpses had been decapitated. Scattered on the floor along the wall beneath were small ruined objects that he knew must be heads.
The bodies farthest from him had hung there the longest; they seemed more skeleton than flesh. He turned away, but not before his brain processed the final horror: on the meaty wrist of the nearest corpse was an unusual watch in the shape of a sundial. Moriarty’s watch.
“Oh, my God ... oh, my God,” Smithback repeated over and over. “Poor George.”
“You knew that guy?” D’Agosta said grimly. “Shit, this thing gets hot!”
The lighter flicked out again and Smithback immediately stopped moving.
“What kind of a place is this?”somebody behind them cried.
“I haven’t the faintest,” D’Agosta muttered.
[439] “I do,” Smithback said woodenly. “It’s a larder.”
The light came back on and he started forward again, more quickly now. Behind him, Smithback could hear the Mayor urging the people to keep moving in a dead, mechanical voice.
Suddenly, the light flicked out again, and the journalist froze in position. “We’re at the far wall,” he heard D’Agosta say in the darkness. “One of the passages here slopes down, the other slopes up. We’re taking the high road.”
D’Agosta flicked on the lighter again and continued forward, Smithback following. After several moments, the smell began to dissipate. The ground grew damp and soft beneath his feet. Smithback felt, or imagined he felt, the faintest hint of a cool breeze on his cheek.
D’Agosta laughed. “Christ, that feels fine.”
The tunnel grew damp underfoot, then ended abruptly in another ladder. D’Agosta stepped towards it, reaching up with the lighter. Smithback moved forward eagerly, sniffing the freshening breeze. There was a sudden rushing sound and then a thud-thud! above, and a bright light passed quickly above them, followed by a splash of viscous water.
“A manhole!” D’Agosta cried. “We made it, I can’t believe it, we fucking made it!”
He scrambled up the ladder and heaved against the round plate.
“It’s fastened down,” he grunted. “Twenty men couldn’t lift this. Help!”he started calling, clambering up the ladder and placing his mouth close to one of the pry-holes, “Somebody help us, for Chrissake!”And then he started to laugh, sinking against the metal ladder and dropping the lighter, and Smithback also collapsed to the floor of the passage, laughing, crying, unable to control himself.
“We made it,” D’Agosta said through his laughter. “Smithback! We made it! Kiss me, Smithback—you [440] fucking journalist, I love you and I hope you make a million on this.”
Smithback heard a voice above them from the street.
“You hear somebody yelling?”
“Hey, you up there!” D’Agosta cried out. “Want to earn a reward?”
“Hear that? There is somebody down there. Yo!”
“Did you hear me? Get us out of here!”
“How much?” another voice asked.
“Twenty bucks! Call the fire department, get us out!”
“Fifty bucks, man, or we walk.”
D’Agosta couldn’t stop laughing. “Fifty dollars then! Now get us the hell out of here!”
He turned around and spread his arms. “Smithback, move everybody forward. Folks, Mayor Harper, welcome back to New York City!”
The door rattled once more. Garcia pressed the buttstock tight against his cheek, crying quietly. It was trying to get in again. He took a deep breath and tried to steady the shotgun.
Then he realized that the rattling had resolved itself into a knock.
It sounded again, louder, and Garcia heard a muffled voice.
“Is anyone in there?”
“Who is it?” Garcia answered thickly.
“Special Agent Pendergast, FBI.”
Garcia could hardly believe it. As he opened the door he saw a tall, thin man looking placidly back at him, his pale hair and eyes ghostly in the dim hallway. He held a flashlight in one hand and a large pistol in the other. Blood trailed down one side of his face, and his shirt was soaked in crazy Rorschach patterns. A shortish young woman with mousy brown hair stood beside him, a yellow miner’s lamp dwarfing her head, her face, hair, and sweater covered with more dark, wet stains.
[441] Pendergast finally broke into a grin. “We did it,” he said simply.
Only Pendergast’s grin made Garcia realize that the blood covering the two was not their own. “How—?” he faltered.
They pushed their way past him as the others, lined up under the dark Museum schematic, stared, frozen by fear and disbelief.
Pendergast indicated a chair with the flashlight. “Have a seat, Ms. Green,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Margo, the miner’s light on her forehead bobbing upward. “Such a gentleman.”
Pendergast seated himself. “Does anyone have a handkerchief?” he asked.
Allen came forward, pulling one from his pocket.
Pendergast handed it to Margo, who wiped the blood from her face and handed it back. Pendergast carefully wiped his face and hands. “Much obliged, Mr.–?”
“Allen. Tom Allen.”
“Mr. Allen.” Pendergast handed the blood-soaked handkerchief to Allen, who started to return it to his pocket, froze, then dropped it quickly. He stared at Pendergast. “Is it dead?”
“Yes, Mr. Allen. It’s quite dead.”
“You killed it?”
“We killed it. Rather, Ms. Green here killed it.”
“Call me Margo. And it was Mr. Pendergast who fired the shot.”
“Ah, but Margo, you told me where to place the shot. I never would have thought of it. All big game—lion, water buffalo, elephant—have eyes on the sidesof their head. If they’re charging, you’d never consider the eye. It’s just not a viable shot.”
“But the creature,” Margo explained to Allen, “had a primate’s face. Eyes rotated to the front for stereoscopic vision. A direct path to the brain. And with that incredibly thick skull, once you put a bullet inside the [442] brain, it would simply bounce around until it was spent.”
“You killed the creature with a shot through the eye?” Garcia asked, incredulously.
“I’d hit it several times,” Pendergast said, “but it was simply too strong and too angry. I haven’t had a good look at the creature—I think I’ll leave that until much later—but it’s safe to say that no other shot could have stopped it in time.”
Pendergast adjusted his tie knot with two slender fingers—unusually fastidious, Margo thought, considering the blood and bits of gray matter covering his white shirt. She would never forget the sight of the creature’s brain exploding out of the ruined eye socket, at once a horrifying and beautiful sight. In fact, it was the eyes—the horrible, angry eyes—that had given her a sudden, desperate flash of an idea, even as she’d scrambled backward, away from the rotting stench and slaughterhouse breath.
Suddenly, she was clutching her sides, shivering.
In a moment, Pendergast had motioned to Garcia to give up his uniform jacket. He draped it over her shoulders. “Calm down, Margo,” he said, kneeling at her side. “It’s all over.”
“We have to get Dr. Frock,” she stammered through blue lips.
“In a minute, in a minute,” Pendergast said soothingly.
“Shall we make a report?” Garcia asked. “This radio has just about enough juice left for one more broadcast.”
“Yes, and we have to send a relief party for Lieutenant D’Agosta,” Pendergast said. Then he frowned. “I suppose this means talking to Coffey.”
“I don’t think so,” Garcia said. “Apparently, there’s been a change of command.”
Pendergast’s eyebrows raised. “Indeed?”
“Indeed.” Garcia handed the radio to Pendergast. [443] “An agent named Slade is claiming to be in charge. Why don’t you do the honors?”
“If you wish,” Pendergast said. “I’m glad it’s not Special Agent Coffey. Had it been, I’m afraid I would have taken him to task. I respond sharply to insults.” He shook his head. “It’s a very bad habit, but one I find hard to break.”
= 62 =
Four Weeks Later
When Margo arrived, Pendergast and D’Agosta were already in Frock’s office. Pendergast was examining something on a low table while Frock talked animatedly next to him. D’Agosta was walking restlessly around the office, looking bored, picking things up and putting them down again. The latex cast of the claw sat in the middle of Frock’s desk like a nightmare paperweight. A large cake, purchased by Frock in celebration of Pendergast’s imminent departure, sat in the middle of the warm sunlit room, the white icing already beginning to droop.
“Last time I was there, I had a crayfish gumbo that was truly magnificent,” Frock was saying, gripping Pendergast’s elbow. “Ah, Margo,” he said, wheeling around. “Come in and take a look.”
Margo crossed the room. Spring had finally taken hold of the city, and through the great bow windows she could see the blue expanse of the Hudson River flowing southward, sparkling in the sunlight. On the promenade below, joggers filed past in steady ranks.
[445] A large re-creation of the creature’s feet lay on the low table, next to the Cretaceous plaque of fossil footprints. Frock traced the tracks lovingly. “If not the same family, certainly the same order,” he said. “And the creature did indeed have five toes on the hind feet. Yet another link to the Mbwun figurine.”
Margo, looking closely, thought the two didn’t seem all that similar.
“Fractal evolution?” she suggested.
Frock looked at her. “It’s possible. But it would take extensive cladistic analysis to know for sure.” He grimaced. “Of course, that won’t be possible, now that the government has whisked the remains away for God only knows what purpose.”
In the month since the opening night disaster, public sentiment had gone from shock and incredulity, to fascination, to ultimate acceptance. For the first two weeks, the press had been abuzz with stories of the beast, but the conflicting accounts of the survivors created confusion and uncertainty. The only item that could settle the controversy—the corpse—was immediately removed from the scene in a large white van with government plates, never to be seen again. Even Pendergast claimed to be ignorant of its whereabouts. Publicity soon turned to the human cost of the disaster, and to the lawsuits that threatened the manufacturers of the security system and, to a lesser degree, the police department and the Museum itself. Timemagazine had run a lead story entitled “How Safe Are Our National Institutions?” Now, weeks later, people had begun to view the creature as a one-of-a-kind phenomenon: a freak throwback, like the dinosaur fishes that occasionally showed up in the nets of deep-sea fishermen. Interest had started to wane: the opening-night survivors were no longer interviewed on talk shows, the projected Saturday morning cartoon series had been cancelled, and “Museum Beast” action figures were going unsold in toy stores.
[446] Frock glanced around. “Forgive my lack of hospitality. Sherry, anyone?”
There were murmurs of “No, thanks.”
“Not unless you’ve got a 7-Up chaser,” D’Agosta said. Pendergast blanched and looked in his direction.
D’Agosta took the latex cast of the claw from Frock’s desk and held it up. “Nasty,” he said.
“Exceptionally nasty,” Frock agreed. “It truly was part reptile, part primate. I won’t go into the technical details—I’ll leave that to Gregory Kawakita, who I’ve put to work analyzing what data we do have—but it appears that the reptilian genes are what gave the creature its strength, speed, and muscle mass. The primate genes contributed the intelligence and possibly made it endothermic. Warm-blooded. A formidable combination.
“Yeah, sure,” D’Agosta said, laying the cast down. “But what the hell wasit?”
Frock chuckled. “My dear fellow, we simply don’t have enough data yet to say exactlywhat it was. And since it appears to have been the last of its kind, we may never know. We’ve just received an official survey of the tepuithis creature came from. The devastation there has been complete. The plant this creature lived on, which by the way we have posthumously named Liliceae mbwunensis, appears to be totally extinct. Mining has poisoned the entire swamp surrounding the tepui. Not to mention the fact that the entire area was initially torched with napalm, to help clear the area for mining. There were no traces of any other similar creatures wandering about the forest anywhere. While I am normally horrified by such environmental destruction, in this case it appears to have rid the earth of a terrible menace.” He sighed. “As a safety precaution—and against my advice, I might add—the FBI has destroyed all the packing fibers and plant specimens here in the Museum. So the plant, too, is truly extinct.”
[447] “How do we know it was the last of its kind?” Margo asked. “Couldn’t there be another somewhere?”
“Not likely,” said Frock. “That tepuiwas an ecological island—by all accounts, a unique place in which animals and plants had developed a singular interdependence over literally millions of years.”
“And there certainly aren’t any more creatures in the Museum,” Pendergast said, coming forward. “With those ancient blueprints I found at the Historical Society, we were able to section off the subbasement and comb every square inch. We found many things of interest to urban archaeologists, but no further sign of the creature.”
“It looked so sad in death,” Margo said. “So lonely. I almost feel sorry for it.”
“It waslonely,” said Frock, “lonely and lost. Traveling four thousand miles from its jungle home, following the trail of the last remaining specimens of the precious plants that kept it alive and free from pain. But it was very evil, and very fierce. I saw at least twelve bullet holes in the carcass before they took it away.”
The door opened and Smithback walked in, theatrically waving a manila envelope in one hand and a magnum of champagne in the other. He whipped a sheaf of papers out of the envelope, holding them skyward with one long arm.
“A book contract, folks!” he said, grinning. D’Agosta scowled and turned away, picking up the claw again.
“I got everything I wanted, and made my agent rich,” Smithback crowed.
“And yourself rich, too,” said D’Agosta, looking as if he’d like to use the claw on the writer.
Smithback cleared his throat dramatically. “I’ve decided to donate half the royalties to a fund set up in memory of Officer John Bailey. To benefit his family.”
D’Agosta turned toward Smithback. “Get lost,” he said.
[448] “No, really,” said Smithback. “Half the royalties. After the advance has earned out, of course,” he added hastily.
D’Agosta started to step toward Smithback, then stopped abruptly. “You got my cooperation,” he said in a low voice, his jaw working stiffly.
“Thanks, Lieutenant. I think I’ll need it.”
“That’s Captain, as of yesterday,” said Pendergast.
“Captain D’Agosta?” Margo asked. “You’ve been promoted?”
D’Agosta nodded. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, the Chief tells me.” He pointed a finger at Smithback. “I get to read what you say about me beforeit goes to press, Smithback.”
“Now wait a minute,” Smithback said, “there are certain ethics that journalists have to follow—”
“Balls!” D’Agosta exploded.
Margo turned to Pendergast. “I can see this will be an exciting collaboration,” she whispered. Pendergast nodded.
There was a light rapping, and the head of Greg Kawakita appeared from around the door to the outer office. “Oh, I’m sorry, Doctor Frock,” he said, “your secretary didn’t tell me you were busy. We can go over the results later.”
“Nonsense!” cried Frock. “Come in, Gregory. Mr. Pendergast, Captain D’Agosta, this is Gregory Kawakita. He’s the author of the G.S.E., the extrapolation program that allowed us to come up with such an accurate profile of the creature.”
“You have my gratitude,” Pendergast said. “Without that program, none of us would have been here today.”
“Thanks very much, but the program was really Dr. Frock’s brainchild,” Kawakita said, eyeing the cake. “I just put the pieces together. Besides, there were a lot of things the Extrapolator didn’ttell you. The forward placement of the eyes, for instance.”
“Why, Greg, success has made you humble,” [449] Smithback said. “In any case,” he continued, turning to Pendergast, “I’ve got a few questions for you. This vintage champagne doesn’t come free, you know.” He fixed the FBI agent with an expectant gaze. “Whose bodies did we discover in the lair, anyway?”
Pendergast raised his shoulders in a slight shrug. “I guess there’s no harm in telling you—although this is not for publication until you receive official word. As it happens, five of the eight remains have been identified. Two were those of homeless street persons, who crept into the Old Basement, presumably looking for warmth on a winter’s night. Another was that of a foreign tourist we found on Interpol’s missing persons list. Another, as you know, was George Moriarty, the Assistant Curator under Ian Cuthbert.”
“Poor George,” Margo whispered. For weeks, she had avoided thinking about Moriarty’s last moments, his final struggle with the beast. To die that way, then to be hung up like a side of beef ...
Pendergast waited a moment before continuing. “The fifth body has been tentatively identified from dental records as a man named Montague, an employee of the Museum who vanished several years ago.”
“Montague!” Frock said. “So the story was true.”
“Yes,” said Pendergast. “It seems that certain members of the Museum administration—Wright, Rickman, Cuthbert, and perhaps Ippolito—suspected there was something prowling the Museum. When a vast quantity of blood was found in the Old Basement, they had it washed away without notifying the police. When Montague’s disappearance coincided with that discovery, the group did nothing to shed any light on the event. They also had reason to believe that the creature was somehow connected to the Whittlesey expedition. Those suspicions may have been behind the moving of the crates. In retrospect, it was a terribly unwise move: It was what precipitated the killings.”
“You’re right, of course,” Frock said, wheeling [450] himself back toward his desk. “We know the creature was highly intelligent. It realized it would be in danger if its existence in the Museum was discovered. I think it must have curbed its normally fierce nature as a means of self-preservation. When it first reached the Museum, it was desperate, perhaps feral, and it killed Montague when it saw him with the artifacts and the plants. But after that, it grew quickly cautious. It knew where the crates were, and it had a supply of the plant—or, at least, it would until the packing material gave out. It was parsimonious in its consumption. Of course, the hormones in the plant were highly concentrated. And the beast supplemented its diet occasionally, in stealthy ways. Rats living in the subbasement, cats escaped from the Animal Behavior department ... once or twice, even luckless human beings that wandered too deep into the Museum’s secret places. But it was always careful to conceal its kills, and several years passed in which it remained—for the most part—undetected.” He shifted slightly, the wheelchair creaking.
