The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  Sitting nearby on one of several small leather sofas was Sergeant O’Shaughnessy, in mufti. He was crossing and uncrossing his legs and looking uncomfortable.

  Pendergast closed the door and glided toward Nora, hands behind his back.

  “May I get you anything? Mineral water? Lillet? Sherry?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “Then if you will excuse me for a moment.” And Pendergast disappeared through a doorway that had been set, almost invisibly, into one of the rose-colored walls.

  “Nice place,” she said to O’Shaughnessy.

  “You don’t know the half of it. Where’d he get all the dough?”

  “Bill Smi—That is, a former acquaintance of mine said he’d heard it was old family money. Pharmaceuticals, something like that.”

  “Mmm.”

  They lapsed into silence, listening to the whispering of the water. Within a few minutes, the door opened again and Pendergast’s head reappeared.

  “If the two of you would be so kind as to come with me?” he asked.

  They followed him through the door and down a long, dim hallway. Most of the doors they passed were closed, but Nora caught glimpses of a library—full of leather- and buckram-bound volumes and what looked like a rosewood harpsichord—and a narrow room whose walls were covered with oil paintings, four or five high, in heavy gilt frames. Another, windowless, room had rice paper walls and tatami mats covering its floor. It was spare, almost stark, and—like the rest of the rooms—very dimly lit. Then Pendergast ushered them into a vast, high-ceilinged chamber of dark, exquisitely wrought mahogany. An ornate marble fireplace dominated the far end. Three large windows looked out over Central Park. To the right, a detailed map of nineteenth-century Manhattan covered an entire wall. A large table sat in the room’s center. Upon it, several objects resting atop a plastic sheet: two dozen fragments of broken glass pieces, a lump of coal, a rotten umbrella, and a punched tram car ticket.

  There was no place to sit. Nora stood back from the table while Pendergast circled it several times in silence, staring intently, like a shark circling its prey. Then he paused, glancing first at her, then at O’Shaughnessy. There was an intensity, even an obsession, in his eyes that she found disturbing.

  Pendergast turned to the large map, hands behind his back once again. For a moment, he simply stared at it. Then he began to speak, softly, almost to himself.

  “We know where Dr. Leng did his work. But now we are confronted with an even more difficult question. Where did he live? Where did the good doctor hide himself on this teeming island?

  “Thanks to Dr. Kelly, we now have some clues to narrow our search. The tram ticket you unearthed was punched for the West Side Elevated Tramway. So it’s safe to assume Dr. Leng was a West Sider.” He turned to the map, and, using a red marker, drew a line down Fifth Avenue, dividing Manhattan into two longitudinal segments.

  “Coal carries a unique chemical signature of impurities, depending on where it is mined. This coal came from a long-defunct mine near Haddonfield, New Jersey. There was only one distributor for this coal in Manhattan, Clark & Sons. They had a delivery territory that extended from 110th Street to 139th Street.”

  Pendergast drew two parallel lines across Manhattan, one at 110th Street and one at 139th Street.

  “Now we have the umbrella. The umbrella is made of silk. Silk is a fiber that is smooth to the touch, but under a microscope shows a rough, almost toothy texture. When it rains, the silk traps particles—in particular, pollen. Microscopic examination of the umbrella showed it to be heavily impregnated with pollen from a weed named Trismegistus gonfalonii, commonly known as marsh dropseed. It used to grow in bogs all over Manhattan, but by 1900 its range had been restricted to the marshy areas along the banks of the Hudson River.”

  He drew a red line down Broadway, then pointed to the small square it bordered. “Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that our Dr. Leng lived west of this line, no more than one block from the Hudson.”

  He capped the marker, then glanced back at Nora and O’Shaughnessy. “Any comments so far?”

  “Yes,” said Nora. “You said Clark & Sons delivered coal to this area uptown. But why was this coal found downtown in his laboratory?”

  “Leng ran his laboratory in secret. He couldn’t have coal delivered there. So he would have brought small amounts of coal down from his house.”

  “I see.”

  Pendergast continued to scrutinize her. “Anything else?”

  The room was silent.

  “Then we can assume our Dr. Leng lived on Riverside Drive between 110th Street and 139th Street, or on one of the side streets between Broadway and Riverside Drive. That is where we must concentrate our search.”

  “You’re still talking hundreds, maybe thousands, of apartment buildings,” said O’Shaughnessy.

  “Thirteen hundred and five, to be exact. Which brings me to the glassware.”

  Pendergast silently took another turn around the table, then reached out and picked up a fragment of glass with a pair of rubber-tipped tweezers, holding it into the light.

  “I analyzed the residue on this glass. It had been carefully washed, but with modern methods one can detect substances down to parts per trillion. There was a very curious mix of chemicals on this glassware. I found similar chemicals on the glass bits I recovered from the floor of the charnel. Quite a frightening mixture, when you begin to break it down. And there was one rare organic chemical, 1,2 alumino phosphocyanate, the ingredients for which could only be purchased in five chemists’ shops in Manhattan at the time, between 1890 and 1918, when Leng appears to have used his downtown laboratory. Sergeant O’Shaughnessy was most helpful in tracking down their locations.”

  He made five dots on the map with his marker.

  “Let us first assume Dr. Leng purchased his chemicals at the most convenient place. As you can see, there is no shop near his lab downtown, so let us postulate he purchased his chemicals near his house uptown. We can thus eliminate these two East Side shops. That leaves three on the West Side. But this one is too far downtown, so we can eliminate it as well.” He made crosses through three of the five dots. “That leaves these two others. The question is, which one?”

  Once again, his question was greeted by silence. Pendergast laid down the piece of glass and circled the table yet again, then stopped in front of the map. “He shopped at neither one.”

  He paused. “Because 1,2 alumino phosphocyanate is a dangerous poison. A person buying it might attract attention. So let us assume, instead, that he shopped at the chemist farthest from his haunts: his house, the Museum, the downtown lab. A place where he would not be recognized. Clearly, that has to be this one, here, on East Twelfth Street. New Amsterdam Chemists.” He drew a line around the dot. “This is where Leng shopped for his chemicals.”

  Pendergast spun around, pacing back and forth before the map. “In a stroke of good fortune, it turns out New Amsterdam Chemists is still in business. There may be records, even be some residual memory.” He turned to O’Shaughnessy. “I will ask you to investigate. Visit the establishment, and check their old records. Then search for old people who grew up in the neighborhood, if necessary. Treat it as you would a police investigation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Pendergast spoke again.

  “I’m convinced Dr. Leng didn’t live on any of the side streets between Broadway and Riverside Drive. He lived on Riverside Drive itself. That would narrow things down from over a thousand buildings to less than a hundred.”

  O’Shaughnessy stared at him. “How do you know Leng lived on the Drive?”

  “The grand houses were all along Riverside Drive. You can still see them, mostly broken up into tiny apartments or abandoned now, but they’re still there—some of them, anyway. Do you really think Leng would have lived on a side street, in middle-class housing? This man had a great deal of money. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. He wouldn’t want a
place that could be walled in by future construction. He’d want light, a healthy flow of fresh air, and a pleasant view of the river. A view that could never be obstructed. I know he would.”

  “But how do you know?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

  Suddenly, Nora understood. “Because he expected to be there for a very, very long time.”

  There was a long silence in the cool, spacious room. A slow, and very uncharacteristic, smile gathered on Pendergast’s face. “Bravo,” he said.

  He went to the map, and drew a red line down Riverside Drive, from 139th Street to 110th. “Here is where we must look for Dr. Leng.”

  There was an abrupt, uncomfortable silence.

  “You mean, Dr. Leng’s house,” said O’Shaughnessy.

  “No,” said Pendergast, speaking very deliberately. “I mean Dr. Leng.”

  Horse’s Tail

  ONE

  WITH A HUGE SIGH, William Smithback Jr. settled into the worn wooden booth in the rear of the Blarney Stone Tavern. Situated directly across the street from the New York Museum’s southern entrance, the tavern was a perennial haunt of Museum staffers. They had nicknamed the place the Bones because of the owner’s penchant for hammering bones of all sizes, shapes, and species into every available surface. Museum wags liked to speculate that, were the police to remove the bones for examination, half of the city’s missing persons cases still on the books would be solved immediately.

  Smithback had spent many long evenings here in years past, notebooks and beer-spattered laptop in attendance, working on various books: his book about the Museum murders; his follow-up book about the Subway Massacre. It had always seemed like a home away from home to him, a refuge against the troubles of the world. And yet tonight, even the Bones held no consolation for him. He recalled a line he’d read somewhere—Brendan Behan, perhaps—about having a thirst so mighty it case a shadow. That’s how he felt.

  It had been the worst week of his life—from this terrible business with Nora to his useless interview with Fairhaven. And to top it all, he’d just been scooped by the frigging Post—by his old nemesis Bryce Harriman, no less—twice. First on the tourist murder in Central Park, and then on the bones discovered down on Doyers Street. By rights, that was his story. How had that weenie Harriman gotten an exclusive? He couldn’t get an exclusive from his own girlfriend, for chrissakes. Who did he know? To think he, Smithback, had been kept outside with the milling hacks while Harriman got the royal treatment, the inside story…. Christ, he needed a drink.

  The droopy-eared waiter came over, hangdog features almost as familiar to Smithback as his own.

  “The usual, Mr. Smithback?”

  “No. You got any of the fifty-year-old Glen Grant?”

  “At thirty-six dollars,” the waiter said dolefully.

  “Bring it. I want to drink something as old as I feel.”

  The waiter faded back into the dark, smoky atmosphere. Smithback checked his watch and looked around irritably. He was ten minutes late, but it looked like O’Shaughnessy was even later. He hated people who were even later than he was, almost as much as he hated people who were on time.

  The waiter rematerialized, carrying a brandy snifter with an inch of amber-colored liquid in the bottom. He placed it reverently before Smithback.

  Smithback raised it to his nose, swirled the liquid about, inhaled the heady aroma of Highland malt, smoke, and fresh water that, as the Scots said, had flowed through peat and over granite. He felt better already. As he lowered the glass, he could see Boylan, the proprietor, in the front, handing a black-and-tan over the bar with an arm that looked like it had been carved from a twist of chewing tobacco. And past Boylan was O’Shaughnessy, just come in and looking about. Smithback waved, averting his eyes from the cheap polyester suit that practically sparkled, despite the dim light and cigar fumes. How could a self-respecting man wear a suit like that?

  “?’Tis himself,” said Smithback in a disgraceful travesty of an Irish accent as O’Shaughnessy approached.

  “Ach, aye,” O’Shaughnessy replied, easing into the far side of the booth.

  The waiter appeared again as if by magic, ducking deferentially.

  “The same for him,” said Smithback, and then added, “You know, the twelve-year-old.”

  “Of course,” said the waiter.

  “What is it?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

  “Glen Grant. Single malt scotch. The best in the world. On me.”

  O’Shaughnessy grinned. “What, you forcing a bluidy Presbyterian drink down me throat? That’s like listening to Verid in translation. I’d prefer Powers.”

  Smithback shuddered. “That stuff? Trust me, Irish whisky is better suited to degreasing engines than to drinking. The Irish produce better writers, the Scots better whisky.”

  The waiter went off, returning with a second snifter. Smithback waited as O’Shaughnessy sniffed, winced, took a swig.

  “Drinkable,” he said after a moment.

  As they sipped in silence, Smithback shot a covert glance at the policeman across the table. So far he’d gotten precious little out of their arrangement, although he’d given him a pile on Fairhaven. And yet he found he had come to like the guy: O’Shaughnessy had a laconic, cynical, even fatalistic outlook on life that Smithback understood completely.

  Smithback sighed and sat back. “So what’s new?”

  O’Shaughnessy’s face instantly clouded. “They fired me.”

  Smithback sat up again abruptly. “What? When?”

  “Yesterday. Not fired, exactly. Not yet. Put on administrative leave. They’re opening an investigation.” He glanced up suddenly. “This is just between you and me.”

  Smithback sat back. “Of course.”

  “I’ve got a hearing next week before the union board, but it looks like I’m done for.”

  “Why? Because you did a little moonlighting?”

  “Custer’s pissed. He’ll bring up some old history. A bribe I took, five years ago. That, along with insubordination and disobeying orders, will be enough to drag me down.”

  “That fat-assed bastard.”

  There was another silence. There’s one potential source shot to hell, Smithback thought. Too bad. He’s a decent guy.

  “I’m working for Pendergast now,” O’Shaughnessy added in a very low voice, cradling his drink.

  This was even more of a shock. “Pendergast? How so?” Perhaps all was not lost.

  “He needed a Man Friday. Someone to pound the pavement for him, help track things down. At least, that’s what he said. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to head down to the East Village, snoop around a shop where Pendergast thinks Leng might have bought his chemicals.”

  “Jesus.” Now, this was an interesting development indeed: O’Shaughnessy working for Pendergast, no longer shackled by the NYPD rules about talking to journalists. Maybe this was even better than before.

  “If you find something, you’ll let me know?” Smithback asked.

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what you can do for us with that something.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “You’re a reporter, right? You do research?”

  “It’s my middle name. Why, you guys need my help with something?” Smithback suddenly glanced away. “I don’t think Nora would like that.”

  “She doesn’t know. Neither does Pendergast.”

  Smithback looked back, surprised. But O’Shaughnessy didn’t look like he planned to say anything else about it. No use trying to force anything out of this guy, Smithback thought. I’ll wait till he’s good and ready.

  He took a different tack. “So, how’d you like my file on Fairhaven?”

  “Fat. Very fat. Thanks.”

  “Just a lot of bullshit, I’m afraid.”

  “Pendergast seemed pleased. He told me to congratulate you.”

  “Pendergast’s a good man,” Smithback said cautiously. O’Shaughnessy nodded, sipped. “But you alwa
ys get the sense he knows more than he lets on. All this talk about how we have to be careful, how our lives are in danger. But he refuses to spell it all out. And then, out of nowhere, he drops a bomb on you.” His eyes narrowed. “And that’s where you may come in.”

  Here we go. “Me?”

  “I want you to do a little digging. Find something out for me.” There was a slight hesitation. “See, I worry the injury may have hit Pendergast harder than we realized. He’s got this crazy theory. So crazy, when I heard it, I almost walked out right then.”

  “Yeah?” Smithback took a casual sip, carefully concealing his interest. He knew very well what a “crazy theory” of Pendergast’s could turn out to mean.

  “Yeah. I mean, I like this case. I’d hate to turn away from it. But I can’t work on something that’s nuts.”

  “I hear that. So what’s Pendergast’s crazy theory?”

  O’Shaughnessy hesitated, longer this time. He was clearly struggling with himself over this.

  Smithback gritted his teeth. Get the man another drink.

  He waved the waiter over. “We’ll have another round,” he said.

  “Make mine Powers.”

  “Have it your way. Still on me.”

  They waited for the next round to arrive.

  “How’s the newspaper business?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

  “Lousy. Got scooped by the Post Twice.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “I could’ve used some help there, Patrick. The phone call about Doyers Street was nice, but it didn’t get me inside.”

  “Hey, I gave you the tip, it’s up to you to get your ass inside.”

  “How’d Harriman get the exclusive?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is, they hate you. They blame you for triggering the copycat killings.”

  Smithback shook his head.“Probably going to can me now.”

  “Not for a scoop.”