The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  “That adds a further dimension to the problem. However, the answer is quite clear. When this formula comes into your possession, you must destroy it immediately.”

  Pendergast looked at her curiously. “Are you quite sure? It’s what medical science has most desired since the beginning.”

  “There is an old French curse: may your fondest wish come true. If this treatment is cheap and available to everyone, it will destroy the earth through overpopulation. If it is dear and available only to the very rich, it will cause riots, wars, a breakdown of the social contract. Either way, it will lead directly to human misery. What is the value of a long life, when it is lived in squalor and unhappiness?”

  “What about the immeasurable increase in wisdom that this discovery will bring, when you consider the one, maybe two hundred years, of additional learning and study it will afford the brilliant mind? Think, Aunt Cornelia, of what someone like Goethe or Copernicus or Einstein could have done for humanity with a two-hundred-year life span.”

  The old woman scoffed. “The wise and good are outnumbered a thousand to one by the brutal and stupid. When you give an Einstein two centuries to perfect his science, you give a thousand others two centuries to perfect their brutality.”

  This time, the silence seemed to stretch into minutes. By the door, Dr. Ostrom stirred restlessly.

  “Are you all right, my dear?” the old lady asked, looking intently at Pendergast.

  “Yes.”

  He gazed into her dark, strange eyes, so full of wisdom, insight, and the most profound insanity. “Thank you, Aunt Cornelia,” he said.

  Then he straightened up. “Dr. Ostrom?”

  The doctor glanced toward him.

  “We’re finished here.”

  TWO

  CUSTER STOOD IN a pool of light before the archives desk. Clouds of dust—by-products of the ongoing investigation—billowed out from aisles in the dimness beyond. The pompous ass, Brisbane, was still protesting in the background, but Custer paid little attention.

  The investigation, which had started so strongly, was bogging down. So far his men had found an amazing assortment of junk—old maps, charts, snakeskins, boxes of teeth, disgusting unidentifiable organs pickled in centuries-old alcohol—but not one thing that resembled an actual clue. Custer had been certain that, once in the Archives, the puzzle would immediately fall into place; that his newfound investigative skill would make the critical connection everyone else had overlooked. But so far there had been no brainstorm, no connection. An image of Commissioner Rocker’s face—staring at him through lowered, skeptical brows—hung before his eyes. A feeling of unease, imperfectly suppressed, began to filter through his limbs. And the place was huge: it would take weeks to search at this rate.

  The Museum lawyer was talking more loudly now, and Custer forced himself to listen.

  “This is nothing but a fishing expedition,” Brisbane was saying. “You can’t just come in here and turn the place upside down.” He gestured furiously at the NYPD evidence lockers lying on the floor, a riot of objects scattered within and around them. “And all that is Museum property!”

  Absently, Custer gestured toward the warrant that Noyes was holding. “You’ve seen the warrant.”

  “Yes, I have. And it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. I’ve never seen such general language. I protest this warrant, and I am stating for the record that I will not permit the Museum to be further searched.”

  “Let’s have your boss, Dr. Collopy, decide that. Has anybody heard from him yet?”

  “As the Museum’s legal counsel, I’m authorized to speak for Dr. Collopy.”

  Custer refolded his arms gloomily. There came another crash from the recesses of the Archives, some shouting, and a ripping sound. An officer soon appeared, carrying a stuffed crocodile, cotton pouring from a fresh slit in its belly. He laid it in one of the evidence lockers.

  “What the hell are they doing back there?” Brisbane shouted. “Hey, you! Yes, you! You’ve damaged that specimen!”

  The officer looked at him with a dull expression, then shambled back into the files.

  Custer said nothing. His feeling of anxiety increased. So far, the questioning of Museum staff hadn’t come up with anything either—just the same old stuff the earlier investigation had produced. This had been his call, his operation. His and his alone. If he was wrong—it almost didn’t bear thinking, of course, but if—he’d be hung out to dry like last week’s laundry.

  “I’m going to call Museum security and have your men escorted out,” Brisbane fumed. “This is intolerable. Where’s Manetti?”

  “Manetti was the man who let us in here,” Custer said distractedly. What if he’d made a mistake—a huge mistake?

  “He shouldn’t have done that. Where is he?” Brisbane turned, found Oscar Gibbs, the Archives assistant. “Where’s Manetti?”

  “He left,” Gibbs said.

  Custer watched absently, noticing how the young man’s insolent tone, his dark look, conveyed what he thought of Brisbane. Brisbane’s not popular, Custer thought again. Got a lot of enemies. Puck sure must have hated the guy, the way Brisbane came down on him. Can’t say I blame him one bit for—

  And that was when the revelation hit him. Like his initial revelation, only bigger: much bigger. So obvious in retrospect, and yet so difficult to first perceive. This was the kind of brilliant leap of intuition one received departmental citations for. It was a leap of deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

  He turned now, watching Brisbane subtly, but intently. The man’s well-groomed face was glistening, his hair askew, eyes glittering with anger.

  “Left where?” Brisbane was demanding.

  Gibbs shrugged insolently.

  Brisbane strode over to the desk and picked up the phone. Custer continued to watch him. He dialed a few numbers, and left low, excited messages.

  “Captain Custer,” he said, turning back. “Once again, I am ordering you to remove your men from the premises.”

  Custer returned the glance from between lowered lids. He’d have to do this very carefully.

  “Mr. Brisbane,” he asked, taking what hoped sounded like a reasonable tone. “Shall we discuss this in your office?”

  For a moment, Brisbane seemed taken aback. “My office?”

  “It’ll be more private. Perhaps we needn’t search the Museum much longer. Perhaps we can settle this in your office, now.”

  Brisbane seemed to consider this. “Very well. Follow me.”

  Custer nodded to his man, Lieutenant Detective Piles. “You take over here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then Custer turned toward Noyes. The merest crook of his fat finger brought the little man to his side.

  “Noyes, I want you with me,” he murmured. “Got your service piece on you?”

  Noyes nodded, rheumy eyes glistening in the dusky light.

  “Good. Then let’s go.”

  THREE

  THE SLOT OPENED AGAIN. In the endless period of darkness and terror, Smithback had lost his perception of time. How long had it been? Ten minutes? An hour? A day?

  The voice spoke, lips once again gleaming in the rectangle of light. “How kind of you to visit me in my very old and interesting house. I hope you enjoyed seeing my collections. I am particularly fond of the corydon. Did you, by chance, see the corydon?”

  Smithback tried to respond, belatedly remembering that his mouth was taped.

  “Ah! How thoughtless of me. Do not trouble yourself to answer. I will speak. You will listen.”

  Smithback’s mind raced through the possibilities for escape. There were none.

  “Yes, the corydon is most interesting. As is the mosasaur from the chalk beds of Kansas. And of course the durdag from Tibet is quite unusual, one of only two in the world. I understand it was fashioned from the skull of the fifteenth reincarnation of the Buddha.”

  Smithback heard a dry laugh, like the scattering of withered leaves.

  “Alto
gether a most interesting cabinet of curiosities, my dear Mr. Smithback. I’m sorry that so few people have had a chance to see it, and that those so honored find themselves unable to make a return visit.”

  There was a silence. And then the voice continued, softly and gently: “I will do you well, Mr. Smithback. No effort will be spared.”

  A spasm of fear, unlike anything he had ever known, racked Smithback’s limbs. I will do you well… Do you well… Smithback realized that he was about to die. In his extremity of terror, he did not immediately notice that Leng had called him by name.

  “It will be a memorable experience—more memorable than those who have come before you. I have made great strides, remarkable strides. I have devised a most exacting surgical procedure. You will be awake to the very end. Consciousness, you see, is the key: I now realize that. Painstaking care will be taken, I assure you.”

  There was a silence as Smithback struggled to keep his reason about him.

  The lips pursed. “I shouldn’t want to keep you waiting. Shall we proceed to the laboratory?”

  A lock rattled and the iron door creaked open. The dark figure in the derby hat who approached was now holding a long hypodermic needle. A clear drop trembled at its end. A pair of round, old-fashioned smoked glasses were pushed into his face.

  “This is merely an injection to relax your muscles. Succinyl choline. Very similar to curare. It’s a paralyzing agent; you’ll find it tends to render the sort of weakness one feels in dreams. You know what I mean: the danger is coming, you try to escape, but you find yourself unable to move. Have no fear, Mr. Smithback: though you’ll be unable to move, you will remain conscious throughout much of the operation, until the final excision and removal is performed. It will be much more interesting for you that way.”

  Smithback struggled as the needle approached.

  “You see, it’s a delicate operation. It requires a steady and highly expert hand. We can’t have the patient thrashing about during the procedure. The merest slip of the scalpel and all would be ruined. You might as well dispose of the resource and start afresh.”

  Still the needle approached.

  “I suggest you take a deep breath now, Mr. Smithback.”

  I will do you well…

  With the strength born of consummate terror, Smithback threw himself from side to side, trying to tear free his chains. He opened his mouth against the heavy tape, trying desperately to scream, feeling the flesh of his lips tearing away from his skin under the effort. He jerked violently, fighting against the manacles, but the figure with the needle kept approaching inexorably—and then he felt the sting of the needle as it slid into his flesh, a sensation of heat spreading through his veins, and then a terrible weakness: the precise weakness Leng had described, that feeling of paralysis that happens in the very worst of dreams, at the very worst possible moment.

  But this, Smithback knew, was no dream.

  FOUR

  POLICE SERGEANT Paul J. Finester really hated the whole business. It was a terrible, criminal, waste of time. He glanced around at the rows of wooden tables set up in parallel lines across the library carpet; at the frumpy, tweed-wearing, bug-eyed, moth-eaten characters who sat across the tables from the cops. Some looked scared, others outraged. Clearly, none of these museum wimps knew anything: they were just a bunch of scientists with bad teeth and even worse breath. Where did they find these characters? It made him mad to think of his hard-earned tax dollars supporting this stone shitpile. Not just that, but it was already ten P.M., and when he got home his wife was going to kill him. Never mind that it was his job, that he was being paid time and a half, that they had a mortgage on the fancy Cobble Hill apartment she forced him to buy and a baby who cost a fortune in diapers. She was still going to kill him. He would come home, dinner would be a blackened crisp in the oven—where it had been since six o’clock, at 250 degrees—the ball and chain would already be in bed with the light out, but still wide awake, lying there like a ramrod, mad as hell, the baby crying and unattended. The wife wouldn’t say anything when he got into the bed, just turn her back to him, with a huge self-pitying sigh, and—

  “Finester?”

  Finester turned to see his partner, O’Grady, staring at him.

  “You okay, Finester? You look like somebody died.”

  Finester sighed. “I wish it was me.”

  “Cheese it. We’ve got another.”

  There was something in O’Grady’s tone that caused Finester to look across their set of desks. Instead of yet another geek, here was a woman—an unusually pretty woman, in fact—with long copper hair and hazel eyes, trim athletic body. He found himself straightening up, sucking in the gut, flexing the biceps. The woman sat down across from them, and he caught a whiff of her perfume: expensive, nice, very subtle. God, a real looker. He glanced at O’Grady and saw the same transformation. Finester grabbed his clipboard, ran his eye down the interrogation lineup. So this was Nora Kelly. The famous, infamous Nora Kelly. The one who found the third body, who’d been chased in the Archives. He hadn’t expected someone so young. Or so attractive.

  O’Grady beat him to the opening. “Dr. Kelly, please make yourself comfortable.” His voice had taken on a silken, honeyed tone. “I am Sergeant O’Grady, and this is Sergeant Finester. Do we have permission to tape-record you?”

  “If it’s necessary,” the woman said. Her voice wasn’t quite as sexy as her looks. It was clipped, short, irritated.

  “You have the right to a lawyer,” continued O’Grady, his voice still low and soothing, “and you have the right to decline our questioning. We want you to understand this is voluntary.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  O’Grady chuckled in a friendly way. “It’s not my decision, you understand, but they might subpoena you, make you come down to the station. Lawyers are expensive. It would be inconvenient. We just have a few questions here, no big deal. You’re not a suspect. We’re just asking for a little help.”

  “All right,” the woman said. “Go ahead. I’ve been questioned several times before. I suppose once more won’t hurt.”

  O’Grady began to speak again, but this time Finester was ready, and he cut O’Grady off. He wasn’t going to sit there like an idiot while O’Grady did all the talking. The guy was as bad as his wife.

  “Dr. Kelly,” he said, hastily, perhaps a little too loud, quickly covering it with a smile of his own, “we’re delighted you’re willing to help us. For the record, please state your full name, address, the date, and time. There’s a clock on the wall over there, but no, I see you’re wearing a watch. It’s just a formality, you know, so we can keep our tapes straight, not get them mixed up. We wouldn’t want to arrest the wrong person.” He chuckled at his joke and was a little disappointed when she didn’t chuckle along with him.

  O’Grady gave him a pitying, condescending look. Finester felt the irritation toward his partner rise. When you got down to it, he really couldn’t stand the guy. So much for the unbreakable blue bond. He found himself wishing O’Grady would stop a bullet someday soon. Like tomorrow.

  The woman stated her name. Then Finester jumped in again and recorded his own, O’Grady following a little grudgingly. After a few more formalities, Finester put the background sheet aside and reached for the latest list of prepared questions. The list seemed longer than before, and he was surprised to see some handwritten entries at the bottom. They must have just been added, obviously in haste. Who the hell had been messing with their interrogation sheets? This whole thing was balls up. Totally balls up.

  O’Grady seized on Finester’s silence as an opportunity. “Dr. Kelly,” he jumped in, “could you please describe in your own words your involvement in this case? Please take all the time you need to recall the details. If you don’t remember something, or are unsure about it, feel free to let us know. I’ve found that it’s better to say you can’t remember than to give us details that may not be accurate.” He gave her a broad smile, his blue eyes twinkling wit
h an almost conspiratorial gleam.

  Screw him, thought Finester.

  The woman gave a testy sigh, crossed her long legs, and began to speak.

  FIVE

  SMITHBACK FELT THE PARALYSIS, the dreadful helplessness, take complete possession of him. His limbs were dead, motionless, foreign. He could not blink his eyes. Worst of all—by far, the worst of all—he could not even fill his lungs with air. His body was immobilized. He panicked as he tried to work his lungs, struggled to draw in breath. It was like drowning, only worse.

  Leng hovered over him now, a dark figure backlit by the rectangle of the door, spent needle in his hand. His face was a shadow beneath the brow of his derby hat.

  A hand reached forward, grasped the edge of the duct tape that still partially sealed Smithback’s mouth. “No need for this anymore,” Leng said. With a sharp tug, it was ripped away. “Now, let’s get you intubated. After all, it wouldn’t do to have you asphyxiate before the procedure begins.”

  Smithback tried to draw breath for a scream. Nothing came but the barest whisper. His tongue felt thick and impossibly large in his mouth. His jaw sagged, a rivulet of saliva drooling down his chin. It was a consummate struggle just to draw in a spoonful of air.

  The figure took a step back, disappearing beyond the door. There was a rattle in the hallway and Leng returned, wheeling a stainless steel gurney and a large, boxlike machine on rubber wheels. He positioned the gurney next to Smithback, then bent over and, with an old iron key, quickly unlocked the cuffs around the reporter’s wrists and legs. Through his terror and despair Smithback could smell the musty, mothball odor of antique clothes, along with the tang of sweat and a faint whiff of eucalyptus, as if Leng had been sucking on a lozenge.

  “I’m going to place you on the gurney now,” Leng said.

  Smithback felt himself being lifted. And then, cold unyielding metal pressed against his naked limbs. His nose was running but he could not raise his arm to brush it away. His need for oxygen was becoming acute. He was totally paralyzed—but, most terrible of all, he retained an utter clarity of consciousness and sensation.