The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  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, this is 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 rent an 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 gigantic story. 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.”

  “Did you get a photocopy?”

  The dark look on Nora’s face lifted slightly. “Pendergast asked me to make one after we first read the letter. I didn’t understand his hurry then. I do now.”

  “Do you have it?”

  She nodded toward her briefcase.

  Smithback thought for a moment. Nora was right: the conservation orders, of course, were no coincidence. What was the Museum covering up? Who was this man Enoch Leng? Was he connected to the early Museum in some way? Or was it just the usual Museum paranoia, afraid to let out any information that wasn’t buffed and polished by their PR people? Then of course there was Fairhaven, the developer, who also happened to be a big contributor to the Museum… This whole story was getting good. Very good.

  “Can I see the letter?”

  “I was going to give it to you for safekeeping—I don’t dare bring it back into the Museum. But I want it back tonight.”

  Smithback nodded. She handed him a thick envelope, which he shoved into his briefcase.

  There was a sudden buzz of the intercom.

  “There’s my next appointment,” said the broker. “Should I tell them you’re taking it, or what?”

  “We’re not,” said Nora decisively.

  She shrugged, went to the intercom, and buzzed them in.

  “Nora,” Smithback implored. He turned to the real estate agent. “We are taking it.”

  “I’m sorry, Bill, but I’m just not ready.”

  “But last week you said—”

  “I know what I said. But I can’t think about apartments at a time like this. Okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay.”

  The doorbell rang and the broker moved to open the door. Two men came in—one bald and short, one tall and bearded—gave the living room a quick look, swept through the kitchen and into the bedrooms.

  “Nora, please,” Smithback said. “Look, I know this move to New York, the job at the Museum, hasn’t been as smooth as you hoped. I’m sorry about that. But that doesn’t mean you should—”

  There was a lengthy interval while the shower was being turned on, then off. And then the couple were back in the living room. The inspection had taken less than two minutes.

  “It’s perfect,” said the bald one. “Eighteen percent broker’s fee, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Great.” A checkbook appeared. “Who do I make it out to?”

  “Cash. We’ll take it to your bank.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” Smithback said, “we were here first.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said one of the men politely, turning in surprise.

  “Don’t mind them,” said the broker harshly. “Those people are on their way out.”

  “Come on, Bill.” Nora began urging him to the door.

  “We were here first! I’ll take it myself, if I have to!”

  There was a snap as the man detached the check. The broker reached for it. “I’ve got the lease right here,” she said, patting her bag. “We can sign it at the bank.”

  Nora dragged Smithback out the door and slammed it shut. The ride downstairs was silent and tense.

  A moment later, they were standing on the street. “I’ve got to get back to work,” Nora said, looking away. “We can talk about this tonight.”

  “We certainly will.”

  Smithback watched her stride down Ninety-ninth Street in the slanting light, the trenchcoat curling away from her perfect little behind, her long copper hair swinging back and forth. He felt stricken. After all they had been through, she still didn’t want to live with him. What had he done wrong? Sometimes he wondered if she blamed him for pressuring her to move east from Santa Fe. It wasn’t his fault the job at the Lloyd Museum had fallen through and her boss here in Manhattan was a prize asshole. How could he change her mind? How could he prove to her that he really loved her?

  An idea began to form in his mind. Nora didn’t reall
y appreciate the power of the press, particularly the New York Times. She didn’t realize just how cowed, how docile and cooperative, the Museum could be when faced with bad publicity. Yes, he thought, this would work. She would get the collections back, and get her carbon-14 dating funded, and more. She would thank him in the end. If he worked fast, he could even make the early edition.

  Smithback heard a hearty yell. “Hey, friend!”

  He turned. There were the two bums, fiery-faced now, holding on to each other, staggering up the sidewalk. One of them lifted a paper bag. “Have a drink on us!”

  Smithback took out another twenty and held it up in front of the bigger and dirtier of the two. “Tell you what. In a few minutes, you’ll see a thin lady dressed in black come out of this building with two guys. Her name’s Millie. Give her a really big hug and kiss for me, will you? The sloppier the better.”

  “You bet!” The man snatched the bill and stuffed it into his pocket.

  Smithback went down the street toward Broadway, feeling marginally better.

  EIGHT

  ANTHONY FAIRHAVEN SETTLED his lean, muscular frame into the chair, spread a heavy linen napkin across his lap, and examined the breakfast that lay before him. It was minuscule, yet arrayed with excessive care on the crisp white damask: a china glass of tea, two water biscuits, royal jelly. He drained the tea in a single toss, nibbled absently at the cracker, then wiped his lips and signaled the maid for his papers with a curt motion.

  The sun streamed in through the curved glass wall of his breakfast atrium. From his vantage point atop the Metropolitan Tower, all of Manhattan lay prostrate at his feet, glittering in the dawn light, windows winking pink and gold. His own personal New World, waiting for him to claim his Manifest Destiny. Far below, the dark rectangle of Central Park lay like a gravedigger’s hole in the midst of the great city. The light was just clipping the tops of the trees, the shadows of the buildings along Fifth Avenue lying across the park like bars.

  There was a rustle and the maid laid the two papers before him, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Freshly ironed, as he insisted. He picked up the Times and unfolded it, the warm scent of newsprint reaching his nostrils, the sheets crisp and dry. He gave the paper a little shake to loosen it, and turned to the front page. He scanned the headlines. Middle East peace talks, mayoral election debates, earthquake in Indonesia. He glanced below the fold.

  Momentarily, he stopped breathing.

  NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTER SHEDS LIGHT ON 19TH-CENTURY KILLINGS

  BY WILLIAM SMITHBACK JR.

  He blinked his eyes, took a long, deep breath, and began to read.

  NEW YORK—October 8. A letter has been found in the archives of the New York Museum of Natural History that may help explain the grisly charnel discovered in lower Manhattan early last week.

  In that discovery, workmen constructing a residential tower at the corner of Henry and Catherine streets unearthed a basement tunnel containing the remains of thirty-six young men and women. The remains had been walled up in a dozen alcoves in what was apparently an old coal tunnel dating from the middle of the nineteenth century. Preliminary forensic analysis showed that the victims had been dissected, or perhaps autopsied, and subsequently dismembered. Preliminary dating of the site by an archaeologist, Nora Kelly, of the New York Museum of Natural History, indicated that the killings had occurred between 1872 and 1881, when the corner was occupied by a three-story building housing a private museum known as “J. C. Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities.” The cabinet burned in 1881, and Shottum died in the fire.

  In subsequent research, Dr. Kelly discovered the letter, which was written by J. C. Shottum himself. Written shortly before Shottum’s death, it describes his uncovering of the medical experiments of his lodger, a taxonomist and chemist by the name of Enoch Leng. In the letter, Shottum alleged that Leng was conducting surgical experiments on human subjects, in an attempt to prolong his own life. The experiments appear to have involved the surgical removal of the lower portion of the spinal cord from a living subject. Shottum appended to his letter several passages from Leng’s own detailed journal of his experiments. A copy of the letter was obtained by the New York Times.

  If the remains are indeed from murdered individuals, it would be the largest serial killing in the history of New York City and perhaps the largest in U.S. history. Jack the Ripper, England’s most famous serial killer, murdered seven women in the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. Jeffrey Dahmer, America’s notorious serial killer, is known to have killed at least 17 people.

  The human remains were removed to the Medical Examiner’s office and have been unavailable for examination. The basement tunnel was subsequently destroyed by Moegen-Fairhaven, Inc., the developer of the tower, during normal construction activities. According to Mary Hill, a spokesperson for Mayor Edward Montefiori, the site did not fall under the New York Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act. “This is an old crime scene of little archaeological interest,” Ms. Hill said. “It simply did not meet the criteria spelled out in the Act. We had no basis to stop construction.” Representatives of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, however, have taken a different view, and are reportedly asking a state senator and the New York Investigator’s office to assemble a task force to look into the matter.

  One article of clothing was preserved from the site, a dress, which was brought to the Museum for examination by Dr. Kelly. Sewn into the dress, Dr. Kelly found a piece of paper, possibly a note of self-identification, written by a young woman who apparently believed she had only a short time to live: “I am Mary Greene, agt [sic] 19 years, No. 16 Watter [sic] Street.” Tests indicated the note had been written in human blood.

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken an interest in the case. Special Agent Pendergast, from the New Orleans office, has been observed on the scene. Neither the New York nor the New Orleans FBI offices would comment. The exact nature of his involvement has not been made public, but Pendergast is known as one of the highest ranking special agents in the Southern Region. He has worked on several high-profile cases in New York before. The New York City Police Department, meanwhile, has shown little interest in a crime that occurred more than a century ago. Captain Sherwood Custer, in whose precinct the remains were found, says the case is primarily of historical interest. “The murderer is dead. Any accomplices must be dead. We’ll leave this one to the historians and continue to devote our resources to crime prevention in the twenty-first century.”

  Following the discovery of the letter, the New York Museum removed the Shottum Cabinet collection from the museum archives. Roger Brisbane, First Vice President of the Museum, called the move “part of a long-scheduled, ongoing conservation process, a coincidence that has nothing to do with these reports.” He referred all further questions to Harry Medoker in the Museum’s Public Relations Department. Mr. Medoker did not return several telephone calls from the Times.

  The story continued on an inside page, where the reporter described the details of the old murders with considerable relish. Fairhaven read the article to the end, then turned back and read the first page once again. The dry leaves of the Times made a faint rustling sound in his hands, echoed by the trembling of the dead leaves clinging to the potted trees on the balcony outside the atrium.

  Fairhaven slowly laid down the paper and looked out once again over the city. He could see the New York Museum across the park, its granite towers and copper roofs catching the newly minted light. He flicked his finger and another cup of tea arrived. He stared at the cup without pleasure, tossed it down. Another flick of his finger brought him a phone.

  Fairhaven knew a great deal about real estate development, public relations, and New York City politics. He knew this article was a potential disaster. It called for firm, prompt action.

  He paused, thinking who should receive the first telephone call. A moment later he dialed the mayor’s private number, which he knew by heart.

&
nbsp; NINE

  DOREEN HOLLANDER, of 21 Indian Feather Lane, Pine Creek, Oklahoma, had left her husband twenty-six stories overhead, mumbling and snoring in their hotel room. Gazing across the broad expanse of Central Park West, she decided now was the perfect time to view Monet’s water lilies at the Metropolitan Museum. She’d wanted to get a glimpse of the famous paintings ever since seeing a poster at her sister-in-law’s house. Her husband, service technician for Oklahoma Cable, hadn’t the faintest interest in art. Chances were, he’d still be asleep when she returned.

  Consulting the visitor’s map the hotel had so generously volunteered, she was pleased to discover the museum lay just across Central Park. A short walk, no need to call for an expensive taxi. Doreen Hollander liked walking, and this would be the perfect way to burn off those two croissants with butter and marmalade she had unwisely eaten for breakfast.

  She started off, crossing into the park at the Alexander Humbolt gate, walking briskly. It was a beautiful fall day, and the big buildings on Fifth Avenue shone above the treetops. New York City. A wonderful place, as long as you didn’t have to live here.

  The path dropped down and soon she came to the side of a lovely pond. She gazed across. Would it be better to go around it to the right, or to the left? She consulted her map and decided the left-hand way would be shorter.

  She set off again on her strong farmgirl legs, inhaling the air. Surprisingly fresh, she thought. Bicyclists and Roller-bladers whizzed past as the road curved alongside the pond. Soon, she found herself at another fork. The main path swerved northward, but there was a footpath that continued straight, in the direction she was going, through a wood. She consulted her map. It didn’t show the footpath, but she knew a better route when she saw it. She continued on.

  Quickly, the path branched, then branched again, wandering aimlessly up and down through hillocks and little rocky outcrops. Here and there through the trees, she could still make out the row of skyscrapers along Fifth Avenue, beckoning her on, showing her the way. The woods grew more dense. And then she began to see the people. It was odd. Here and there, young men stood idly, hands in pockets, in the woods, waiting. But waiting for what? They were nice-looking young men, well dressed, with good haircuts. Out beyond the trees a bright fall morning was in progress, and she didn’t feel the slightest bit afraid.