Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet

by H. P. Wood

  Spencer sighs. “I can’t force you. But if you change your mind, you can find me at Magruder’s. In fact…” Spencer takes a step backward and raises his voice to address the entire line. “I’m on my way to a doctor right now. Come with me. Money is not an issue. Please, let me help.”

  The Unusuals stare balefully at the Brooklyn prince, reduced to pleading in the street. They can’t help but enjoy saying no to someone who’s enjoyed such a glittering lifetime of yes.

  Spencer notices the sparkle of triumph in their eyes. He’s wasting his time. “All right. Offer stands. You know who I am, all of you. I’m stopping at Magruder’s, and I will help if you ask.”

  As he walks away, he hears Whitey’s girlfriend mutter “jackass.” No one argues.

  • • •

  The gathering outside the doctor’s apartment is even more chaotic than Spencer expected. People in the line, such as it is—it’s more like a festering clot of affliction—have boils and hacking coughs. They wring their hands and moan and weep. They poke one another with gangrenous fingers. They mutter angrily to themselves and scream obscenities at the air. A man collapses, and the people behind step over him, happy to be that much closer to the front.

  My God. It’s like the dinner bell rang at the madhouse.

  Spencer takes a position behind an elderly woman wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket. She’s sweating and shaking and ranting at no one in particular. “Go up, thou bald head,” she cries. “Go up, bald head! Go up, goddamn it!”

  Spencer lowers his chin and tries to cover his mouth with the collar of his shirt but discreetly, so as not to cause offense. Then he thinks, Offense? To whom, exactly? So he takes his handkerchief from his pocket and ties it around his face.

  A basket is lowered by rope from the window. The gaggle of deranged diseased all reach up to the sky, even though there’s only one miracle per customer, and this one isn’t theirs.

  Before the lucky patient can retrieve his medicine, a lunatic war cry echoes among the buildings. A pack of young men comes screaming along the street, whooping and roaring, gripping glass bottles full of fire. They rush the building, throwing their bottles in high arcs toward the windows of the doctor’s apartment. Some of the bottles smash onto the crowd, who shriek in terror at the shower of flames. But some hit their target, bursting through the windows and setting the doctor’s curtains on fire. Seconds later, one of the bottles connects with the apartment’s gas line. Windows blow out like a horizontal fireworks show, and the building is ablaze.

  “Come out, come out, Medicine Man,” taunts the pack. On the street, the sick, the mad, and the confused run every which way in panic. A thin man bumps into a fat one, the fat one screams, and the thin one vomits at the fat man’s feet. The little old lady in her blanket cackles delightedly and points at the building. “Behold,” she shouts, “the smoke goes up forever and ever!” She grabs Spencer with rotting hands. “Blessed is the one who stays awake! Hallelujah!”

  Startled, Spencer pushes her away, and the weakened old woman goes sprawling. Muttering an apology, he reaches down to help her up, but she has already rolled away. Spencer takes a step to follow, but a child sobs, and instinctively, he moves toward the sound when a shriek makes him turn back toward the burning building, just in time to see some poor soul leap out a window and land with a smack on the sidewalk. He rushes over and asks, “Are you all right?” but the pile of bones makes no reply, and Spencer notes something unnatural about the way its neck is tilted. He looks around and spots the young men who threw the bottles—a murder of raggedy crows, robbing their way through the hysterical crowd. A necklace from her, a wallet from him, a handbag over here, perhaps a brooch. No pickpocket’s subtlety required—stride up to a demented sack of pestilence and snatch whatever trinket is available, and if someone has the presence of mind to object, just punch them in the face, easy peasy. But most don’t object; they don’t see, and how could they? Spencer glances at the doctor’s building, belching smoke from numerous windows on different floors, and his only thought is, No. No, it does not end like this.

  He runs toward the front door, one fish swimming against the current, and a mad thought strikes him. Actually, this is perfect; this is just the break I needed. I’ll drag that goddamned doctor from his burning apartment, bring him back to Magruder’s, and he’ll toil day and night to bring Mrs. Hayward back to life. Nazan will be thrilled, I’ll be a hero, and she’ll forget all about Zeph.

  Spencer shoves his way toward the door, dodging thieves and vomit. He worries he’ll have trouble finding the doctor—he has no idea what he looks like.

  But somebody does.

  Spencer reaches the stoop and looks up to see two figures emerge. First out is a small, gray-haired man wearing spectacles and a white coat. He looks terrified, and who wouldn’t—there is a muscled arm wrapped around his neck. The arm connects to a brick wall of a man who follows right behind, a powerful, beefy slab of a human, but something is wrong, Spencer realizes; something is wrong with this man, and then he sees. The slab is rotting. Fingers black and skin mottled and nose missing and… Nose missing? Spencer blinks hard and looks again—perhaps the smoke is playing tricks—but sure enough, there’s just a dark stain where his nose should be. Does he have the Cough? Can the Cough even do that? As the two men stumble a bit down the steps, Spencer gets a good look at the telltale obsidian eggs sprouting from either side of his neck. He has it. The noseless man has it, and now he has the doctor too.

  “No! Leave him alone! You can’t do that! You can’t take him! It isn’t fair!” Spencer knows he sounds ridiculous, like a child. But he can’t watch his only chance get dragged away by some hunk of festering, noseless flesh. The man and his captive brush past Spencer on their way out of the building, and Spencer grabs the old man’s white coat. “No, you can’t do this. You mustn’t—”

  Something cold and heavy connects with the back of Spencer’s head, and he goes down, his smooth-shaven face scraping across the sandy pavement as his own nose goes crunch. The whole world is suddenly a carousel, and Spencer grabs the sidewalk as it spins. He rolls onto his back and sees he’s lying at the foot of an enormous castle.

  No, not a castle. A man. A man who looks like a castle.

  The Castle Man’s green eyes gleam, and his yellow teeth glisten, and he holds a length of heavy pipe in his hand like a prize. A rat sits on the Castle Man’s shoulder, and the rat is laughing.

  No, the man is laughing. Maybe they both are laughing. It hardly matters, Spencer; you need to focus. There’s laughing and spinning and blood everywhere—blood from his nose and his eyes and the back of his head. Bloody fire pours from the building, and Spencer’s head is full of smoke, and it’s too much, too damn much, and Spencer vomits, which makes the rat laugh even harder. Bessie’s a cow’s name, stupid.

  Spencer rests his broken head on the sidewalk, and it hurts in a way that feels like it’s happening to someone else. The pipe clanks down against the sidewalk beside his head, echoing in his ear like a bell.

  “Hey, Goo-Goo,” the Castle Man says. “C’mere and look at this.” He leans down and yanks the vomit-soaked kerchief down from Spencer’s face. “You’re that Reynolds kid. I recognize you from the papers.”

  No Nose stalks over, dragging the doctor along with him.

  “Look,” the Castle Man says to him. “A Reynolds! I caught us a goddamn prince of the city right here.”

  From his position on the sidewalk, Spencer sees two heads appear in a swimmy, confusing sky. They squint down at him angrily.

  “So what are you gonna do with your prince now?” No Nose growls. “Keep him as a pet?”

  The Castle Man frowns. “Nah, let’s just take his wallet.”

  “Good thinking, dummy. Leave him here so he can describe us to the cops. You started this, Pete—you finish it.”

  “What cops? Haven’t you noticed—everybody’s gone! Be
sides, his head’s gonna hurt so bad tomorrow, he won’t even remember where he was.”

  “I said finish him off, Pete.”

  “Just leave it alone, for Chrissake.”

  “What are you, some little girl all of a sudden? Some pretty girl with pretty pictures painted all over her pretty face? I said do it.” No Nose picks up the pipe and shoves it at his partner.

  The Castle Man takes the pipe but shakes his head. “You lost your mind. I ain’t killing this kid.”

  “Somebody fucking is.”

  “Well, I’m fucking not.” The Castle Man holds the pipe out and opens his hand, letting it clatter to the street.

  “You’re useless.” No Nose shoves the doctor at Castle to hold, and he picks up the pipe.

  “Please,” Spencer tries to say. “What are you doing?” But little red bubbles dribble from his lips instead of words. He tries to raise his arms to protect himself. “No…please…please don’t.” He gazes up at the gathering dusk, flecks of fire drifting across the sky like runaway stars, and he thinks, Pretty. Then the pipe comes down, and the sky goes out forever.

  Chapter 39

  Houseguests

  Zeph sighs and closes the chemistry book. “Sorry, Mrs. H… We’re gonna have to wait for Reynolds. Maybe he can figure this bunkum out, ’cause I sure can’t.”

  He looks over at Nazan, sitting beside Kitty’s mother and holding her hand. “You sure you should be so close to her? Touching her and all? Is that safe?”

  Nazan shrugs. “What do you suggest? Shall I watch her die from across the room? I’m sorry, but I won’t allow a bunch of fourteen-year-old bellhops to be braver than me.”

  “I’m sorry too, but I’d like you to be alive-r than those bellhops are right now. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I’m not moving.”

  Zeph sighs, rolling his eyes in surrender. “She looks peaceful at least.” Nazan nods in agreement. “Bit too peaceful. She looks like she’s gone to a nice place and don’t feel like coming back.” Nazan, sadly, agrees with this observation too.

  Zeph glances around the room helplessly. While Nazan made up a bed for Mrs. Hayward, he’d been up in the lab with Timur, trying to wheedle a practical explanation of this electrified silver business. All he got for his trouble was a stream of insults and a beaten-up chemistry book hurled at his head. He’d taken the book and come to sit with Mrs. Hayward, hoping the sight of her—okay, of her and Nazan—would inspire him. And it did, no doubt. But good intentions don’t explain milliamps.

  Spencer’s been gone fetching medicine for the better part of the day. What could be taking so damn long? From the look of her, Mrs. H. doesn’t have much time to spare. He opens the book again. “So, a milliamp. A milliamp is…” He sighs again.

  “Milliamp?” Nazan asks mildly.

  “Yeah, it’s…well, damned if I know. Something I gotta figure out to make this silver solution Doc was talking about.”

  Nazan picks up a damp cloth and daubs at Mrs. Hayward’s forehead. “A milliamp is a measurement of electrical current. One milliamp equals one thousandth of an ampere, which describes the amount of electrical current that can pass through a particular point in a circuit within a particular amount of time.”

  Zeph’s jaw drops open. “Why…but…Miss Nazan, you been sittin’ there watching me struggle! When were you gonna tell me you knew this stuff?”

  She smiles mischievously. “I was just curious to see how long it was going to take you to figure out that a girl might have read a science textbook.”

  “You!” He laughs and shakes his index finger. “You are… You are a beauty is what you are, and I’m taking you up to the lab.”

  “I don’t know… Doctor Timur sounds a bit formidable.”

  “Reckon you can handle him. Bold, remember?”

  Nazan shudders. “We agreed I was through being bold.”

  “The world may think differently.”

  A knock at the front door.

  “Thank the Lord. Prince Charming returns to the castle,” Zeph says. He climbs off the bed. “I’m getting Reynolds. Hopefully, he’s got a dose of that medicine. Then I’m introducing you to the Doc.”

  Nazan wipes Mrs. Hayward’s forehead again. “You hold on, ma’am. Please hold on.”

  • • •

  But the visitor is not Spencer after all.

  “Bonjour?” a feminine voice sings out. “Is anyone at home?”

  Vivi Leveque waits fretfully in the blackness of the museum’s entrance. She wears a primrose-yellow suit with a floor-length skirt and a wide hat with fluffy egret feathers.

  Zeph maneuvers his cart past the heavy black curtains. “Hello there, Miss Vivi. What can I do for you? You need something?”

  “Ah. Oui.” She hesitates. “There is a question. But I admit, it may be…difficile.”

  “Well now. This sounds interesting.”

  “It is the leopards. You know, they are to me like children. We sometimes do strange things for children.”

  Zeph scratches his flea-bitten hand. “You got that right.”

  “Monsieur Bostock tells me that with quarantine and parks closed, we cannot keep the animals. He says he will sell my babies to some stranger!” Viv starts to cry. “I think they intend to eat them! I have to get them away from these terrible men!” She removes a handkerchief from her clutch and daubs her eyes like a silent film star. “Monsieur Zeph, I do not know what to do!”

  Zeph shakes his head, thinking, Goddammit, Archie, what have you gotten me into? He sighs. “Look, Miss Vivi, you can keep your babies here. We’ll protect ’em from Bostock and…whoever else.”

  “C’est vrai? It is this I want to ask, but…”

  “Yeah, go ahead. Our yard’s all fenced off in the back; they ain’t goin’ nowhere. Leopards aren’t jumpers, are they?”

  Vivi frowns. “But of course! However, they have the cages, so…”

  “There you go. Magruder’s is now in the big cat business.”

  “Oh, Monsieur Zeph!” Vivi hugs him impulsively, nearly toppling him off the cart. She smells of jasmine. “Thank you! Merci! Merci beaucoup!”

  “Sure, I just got some old stuff I gotta move out of—oh.” Zeph remembers what else is in the backyard: the two Committeemen, or whatever is left of them after a few days in the Coney Island sun. “Say, Vivi,” he says, as casually as can. “What do leopards eat, anyways?”

  “Meat, of course. Normally I give them chickens, because they love to chase. Of course, with this quarantine, I don’t know precisely—”

  “Right, right. But do they ever eat, you know…dead things? Maybe, say, dead folks?”

  “Folks? Qu’est-ce que c’est? You mean, people?”

  Zeph nods.

  “Leopards kill what they eat, Monsieur Zeph. They are not scavengers.”

  “Right, of course. Just a question.”

  “A terrible question.”

  “Sorry.”

  Vivi wipes her eyes again and pats Zeph on the shoulder. “Thank you. I will have the cages delivered. Of course”—she bats her eyelashes—“I should stay also. To look after them.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure. What with the quarantine, we gotta stick together anyway, right? We’ve got Ros, we’ve got Miss Nazan, now you… Timur will love the company.”

  Zeph says this, but he thinks, Uh-oh.

  Chapter 40

  Important Men

  Archie stomps back down Surf Avenue, resenting every step. He should be riding home in style, perhaps escorted by the Reynolds’ family chauffeur. Instead, he’s hoofing it down the street in his old, worn-out shoes.

  He’d talked his way into the Committee for Public Safety’s headquarters in Dreamland. He intended to rat out Spencer to his father, tell him all about how the kid was claiming to own Magruder’s now. Magruder’s! Some disrep
utable shit hole that should have been burned down by the Committee anyway. Was that truly the type of property the Reynolds family should be managing? Imagine the scandal in town…

  Archie wanted so much to humiliate that smug bastard, see him disinherited, crush him under his boot like a bug. But instead of the great senator, the only person at Dreamland headquarters was some pompous strut-noddy called Gibson Tilden Jr.

  Regardless, there was a time when he’d have had a nitwit like Tilden eating out of his hand. Instead? The kid had barely even listened to Archie’s litany of complaints about the Reynolds boy. He rolled his eyes and sent Archie on his way. Dammit, Archie thinks. At the very least, I should have gotten enough reward money for a taxi!

  Archie’s poor performance at the Dreamland office fills him with self-reproach. “This,” he says to the empty avenue, “this is the exquisite glory that age brings. Bah.”

  He knows he would have done better with that child Kitty by his side—she’s got the makings of a proper confidence man, that one. Reminds Archie of himself at that age. He feels a pang of worry about what’s become of her, but self-pity pushes it aside. She thinks she’s got problems!

  Archie’s knows he’s lucky to have naive optimists like Zeph to fall back on. No matter how many times he burns that kid, no matter how many times Zeph says, “That’s it, we’re through,” Archie can always talk the lad into one more chat, one more drink, one more ride around the…

  Jesus H. Christ.

  Tilden hadn’t been interested in Archie’s complaints. He clearly didn’t give a damn about whether Spencer was alive or dead. But he had, just for a moment, shown a flicker of interest in Magruder’s. “Magruder’s should have been torched days ago,” he’d said. “We’ll need to rectify that.”

  Archie abruptly stops walking. “Oh. What have I done?”

  • • •

  Gibson Tilden Jr. sits in the gilded lobby of the Dreamland ballroom. Under the quarantine, the building has been taken over by the Committee for Public Safety. Where once ladies and gents waltzed the night away, now there dwells an unromantic landscape of file cabinets, desks, and bureaucrats who study maps from morning till night.