The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and, crossing the room, stepped through the doorway into the stone corridor beyond.

  It was the work of five minutes to explore the basement, a warren of narrow passages and small damp rooms, all of the same undressed stone. The passages were low and dark, and she lost her way more than once. She found the crashed elevator—and, tragically, the corpse of O’Shaughnessy—but the elevator was inoperable, and there was no way up the shaft. Ultimately, she found a massive iron door, banded and riveted, which clearly led upstairs. It was locked. Pendergast, she thought, might be able to pick the lock—but then Pendergast wasn’t here.

  At last she returned to the operating room, chilled and despondent. If there was another way out of the basement, it was too well hidden for her to find. They were locked in.

  She approached the unconscious Smithback and caressed his brown hair. Once again, her eye fell on the opening in the wall that gave onto a descending staircase. It was pitch black, silent. She realized it had been silent for what seemed a long time, ever since the second shot. What could have happened? she wondered. Could Pendergast…

  “Nora?”

  Smithback’s voice was barely a whisper. She glanced down quickly. His eyes were open, his pale face tight with pain.

  “Bill!” she cried, grabbing his hands. “Thank God.”

  “This is getting old,” he murmured.

  At first, she thought he was delirious. “What?”

  “Getting hurt, waking up to find you ministering to me. The same thing happened in Utah, remember? Once was enough.” He tried to smile, but his face contorted in agony.

  “Bill, don’t talk,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here. I’ll find a—”

  But—mercifully—he had already slipped back into unconsciousness.

  She glanced at the vitals and felt a huge rush of relief. They had improved—slightly. The saline bag continued to deliver critical fluid.

  And then she heard the scream.

  It came up from the dark stairs, faint and muffled. Nevertheless it was the most frightening, bone-chilling sound she had ever heard. It started at a high, tearing pitch: shrill, inhuman. It remained at a piercing high for what seemed at least a minute, then began wavering, ululating, before dropping into a gasping, slobbering growl. And then there was the distant clang of metal against stone.

  And then, silence once again.

  She stared at the opening in the wall, mind racing through the possibilities. What had happened? Was Pendergast dead? His opponent? Were they both dead?

  If Pendergast was hurt, she had to help him. He’d be able to pick the lock on the iron door, or find some other way for them to get Smithback out of this hell-hole. On the other hand—if the Surgeon was still alive, and Pendergast dead—she’d have to face him sooner or later anyway. It might as well be sooner: and on her own terms. She was damned if she was going to wait up here, a sitting duck, for the Surgeon to return and pick her off—and then finish the job on Smithback.

  She plucked a large-bladed scalpel from the surgical stand. Then—holding the light in one hand and the scalpel in the other—she approached the doorway that led down into the subbasement.

  The narrow stone panel, swung to one side, had been perfectly disguised to look part of the wall. Beyond was a pool of blackness. Shining the beam ahead of her, she began descending, slowly and silently.

  Reaching the last turn at the bottom, she turned off the light and waited, heart beating rapidly, wondering what to do. If she shone her light around, it might betray her presence, give the Surgeon—if he was waiting out there in the darkness—a perfect target. But with the light off, she simply could not proceed.

  The light was a risk she’d have to take. She snapped it back on, stepped out of the stairwell, then gasped involuntarily.

  She was in a long, narrow room, crowded floor to ceiling with bottles. Her powerful beam, lancing through the endless rows, cast myriad glittering colors about the room, making her feel as if she was somehow inside a window of stained glass.

  More collections. What could all this mean?

  But there was no time to pause, no time to wonder. Two sets of footprints led on into the darkness ahead. And there was blood on the dusty floor.

  She moved through the room as quickly as she could, beneath an archway and into another room filled with more bottles. The trail of footsteps continued on. At the end of this room was another archway, covered by a fringed tapestry.

  She turned off her light and advanced toward it. There she waited, in the pitch black, listening. There was no sound. With infinite care, she drew back the tapestry and peered into the darkness. She could see nothing. The room beyond seemed empty, but there was no way to be sure: she would simply have to take a chance. She took a deep breath, switched on her light.

  The beam illuminated a larger room, filled with wooden display cases. She hurried ahead, sidestepping from case to case, to an archway in the far wall that led on into a series of smaller vaults. She ducked into the nearest and turned off her light again, listening for any sound that might indicate that her presence had been noticed. Nothing. Turning on the light again, she moved forward, into a room whose cases were filled with frogs and lizards, snakes and roaches, spiders of infinite shapes and colors. Was there no end to Leng’s cabinet?

  At the far end of the room, before another low archway that led into further darkness, she again crouched, turning off her light to listen for any noises that might be coming from the room beyond.

  It was then she heard the sound.

  It came to her faintly, echoing and distorted by its passage through intervening stone. Remote as it was, it instantly chilled her blood: a low, gibbering moan, rising and falling in a fiendish cadence.

  She waited a moment, flesh crawling. For a moment, her muscles tensed for an involuntary retreat. But then, with a supreme effort, she steeled herself. Whatever lay beyond, she would have to confront it sooner or later. Pendergast might need her help.

  She gathered up her courage, switched on her light, and sprinted forward. She ran past more rooms full of glass-fronted cases; through a chamber that seemed to contain old clothing; and then into an ancient laboratory, full of tubes and coils, dust-heavy machines festooned with dials and rusted switches. Here, between the lab tables, she pulled up abruptly, pausing to listen again.

  There was another sound, much closer now, perhaps as close as the next room. It was the sound of something walking—shambling—toward her.

  Almost without thinking, she threw herself beneath the nearest table, switching off her light.

  Another sound came, hideously alien and yet unmistakably human. It started as a low chatter, a tattoo of rattling teeth, punctuated with a few gasps as if for breath. Then came a high keening, at the highest edge of audibility. Abruptly, the noise stopped. And then Nora heard, in the silence, the footsteps approach once again.

  She remained hidden behind the table, immobilized by fear, as the shuffling drew closer in the pitch black. All of a sudden, the darkness was ripped apart by a terrible shriek. This was immediately followed by a coughing, retching sound and the splatter of fluid on stone. The echoes of the shriek died out slowly, ringing on through the stone chambers behind her.

  Nora struggled to calm her pounding heart. Despite the unearthly sound, the thing that was approaching her was human. It had to be, she had to remember that. And if it was human, who could it be but Pendergast or the Surgeon? Nora felt it had to be the Surgeon. Perhaps he had been wounded by Pendergast. Or perhaps he was utterly insane.

  She had one advantage: he didn’t seem to know she was there. She could ambush him, kill him with the scalpel. If she could summon the courage.

  She crouched behind the lab table, scalpel in one trembling hand and light in the other, waiting in the enfolding dark. The shambling seemed to have stopped. A minute, an eternity, of silence ticked by. Then she heard the unsteady f
ootsteps resume. He was now in the room with her.

  The footsteps were irregular, punctuated by frequent pauses. Another minute went by in which there was no movement; then, half a dozen jerky footsteps. And now she could hear breathing. Except it wasn’t normal breathing, but a gasping, sucking sound, as if air were being drawn down through a wet hole.

  There was a sudden explosion of noise as the person stumbled into a huge apparatus, bringing it to the ground with a massive crash of glass. The sound echoed and reechoed through the stone vaults.

  Maintain, Nora said to herself. Maintain. If it’s the Surgeon, Pendergast must have wounded him badly. But then, where was Pendergast? Why wasn’t he pursuing?

  The noises seemed to be less than twenty feet away now. She heard a scrabbling, a muttering and panting, and the tinkling of something shedding broken glass: he was getting up from his fall. There was a shuffling thump, and another. Still he was coming, moving with excruciating slowness. And all the time came that breathing: stertorous, with a wet gurgle like air drawn through a leaky snorkel. Nothing Nora had ever heard in her life was quite so unnerving as the sound of that breathing.

  Ten feet. Nora gripped the scalpel tighter as adrenaline coursed through her. She would turn on her light and lunge forward. Surprise would give her the advantage, especially if he was wounded.

  There was a loud wet snoring sound, another heavy footfall; a gasp, the spastic stamp of a foot; silence; then the dragging of a limb. He was almost upon her. She crouched, tensing all her muscles, ready to blind the man with her light and strike a fatal blow.

  Another step, another snuffle: and she acted. She switched on the light—but, instead of leaping with her scalpel, she froze, arm raised, knife edge glittering in the beam of light.

  And then she screamed.

  THIRTEEN

  CUSTER STOOD ATOP the great flight of steps rising above Museum Drive, looking out over the sea of press with an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. To his left was the mayor of the City of New York, just arriving with a gaggle of aides; to his right, the commissioner of police. Just behind stood his two top detectives and his man, Noyes. It was an extraordinary assemblage. There were so many onlookers, they’d been forced to close Central Park West to traffic. Press helicopters hovered above them, cameras dangling, brilliant spotlights swiveling back and forth. The capture of the Surgeon, aka Roger C. Brisbane III—the Museum’s respected general counsel and first vice president—had riveted the media’s attention. The copycat killer who had terrorized the city hadn’t been some crazy homeless man, living in Central Park on a piece of cardboard. It had instead been one of the pillars of Manhattan society, the smiling, cordial fixture at so many glittering fund-raisers and openings. Here was a man whose face and impeccably tailored figure were often seen in the society pages of Avenue and Vanity Fair. And now he stood revealed as one of New York’s most notorious serial killers. What a story. And he, Custer, had cracked the case single-handedly.

  The mayor was conferring sotto voce with the commissioner and the Museum’s director, Collopy, who had at last been tracked down to his own West End residence. Custer’s gaze lingered on Collopy. The man had the gaunt, pinched look of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, and he wore clothes straight out of an old Bela Lugosi movie. The police had finally broken down his front door, suspecting foul play when they observed figures moving against the drawn shades. The scuttlebutt was that the police found him in a pink lace teddy, tied to his bed, with his wife and a second female dressed in dominatrix uniforms. Staring at the man, Custer refused to believe such a rumor. True, the man’s somber clothes looked just a tad disheveled. Still, it was impossible to believe such a pillar of propriety could ever have donned a teddy. Wasn’t it?

  Now, Custer saw Mayor Montefiori’s eyes dart toward him. They were talking about him. Although he maintained his stolid expression, arranging his face into a mask of duty and obedience, he was unable to prevent a flush of pleasure from suffusing his limbs.

  Commissioner Rocker broke away from the mayor and Collopy and came over. To Custer’s surprise, he did not look altogether happy.

  “Captain.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The commissioner stood there a moment, indecisive, face full of anxiety. Finally he leaned closer. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure, sir?”

  “Sure that it’s Brisbane.”

  Custer felt a twinge of doubt, but quickly stepped down on it. The evidence was overwhelming.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did he confess?”

  “No, not confess—exactly—but he made a number of self-incriminating statements. I expect he’ll confess when he’s formally questioned. They always do. Serial killers, I mean. And we found incriminating evidence in his Museum office—”

  “No mistake about it? Mr. Brisbane is a very prominent person.”

  “No mistake about it, sir.”

  Rocker scrutinized his face a moment longer. Custer stirred uneasily. He had been expecting congratulations, not the third degree.

  Then the commissioner leaned still closer and lowered his voice to a slow, deliberate whisper. “Custer, all I can say is, you’d better be right.”

  “I am right, sir.”

  The commissioner nodded, a look of guarded relief, still mixed with anxiety, settling on his face.

  Now Custer stepped respectfully into the background, letting the mayor, his aides, Collopy, and the commissioner arrange themselves before the throngs of press. A feeling like electricity, an anticipatory tingling, filled the air.

  The mayor raised his hand, and a hush fell on the crowd. Custer realized the man wasn’t even permitting his aides to introduce him. He was going to handle this personally. With the election so near, he wasn’t going to let even a crumb of glory escape.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” the mayor began. “We have made an arrest in the case of the serial killer popularly known as the Surgeon. The suspect taken into custody has been identified as Roger C. Brisbane III, first vice president and general counsel of the New York Museum of Natural History.”

  There was a collective gasp. Although everyone in the crowd already knew this, hearing it from the mayor made it official.

  “Although it’s important to state that Mr. Brisbane must naturally be presumed innocent at this time, the evidence against him is substantial.”

  There was a brief hush.

  “As mayor, I made this case a top priority. All available resources were brought to bear. I therefore want to thank, first of all, the fine officers of the NYPD, Commissioner Rocker, and the men and women of the homicide division, for their tireless work on this difficult case. And I would especially like to single out Captain Sherwood Custer. As I understand it, Captain Custer not only headed the investigation, but personally solved the case. I am shocked, as many of you must be, at the most unusual twist this tragic case has taken. Many of us know Mr. Brisbane personally. Nevertheless, the commissioner has assured me in no uncertain terms that they have the right man, and I am satisfied to rely on his assurances.”

  He paused.

  “Dr. Collopy of the Museum would like to say a few words.”

  Hearing this, Custer tensed. The director would no doubt put up a dogged defense of his own right-hand man; he’d question Custer’s police work and investigative technique, make him look bad.

  Collopy stood before the microphone, rigid and correct, his arms clasped behind his back. He spoke in cool, stately, and measured tones.

  “First, I wish to add my thanks to the fine men and women of the New York Police Department, the commissioner, and the mayor, for their tireless work on this tragic case. This is a sad day for the Museum, and for me personally. I wish to extend my deepest apologies to the City of New York and to the families of the victims for the heinous actions of our trusted employee.”

  Custer listened with growing relief. Here, Brisbane’s own boss was practically throwing him to the wolves. So much the better. And he fe
lt a twinge of resentment at Commissioner Rocker’s excessive concern about Brisbane, which, it seemed, even his own boss didn’t share.

  Collopy stepped back, and the mayor returned to the microphone. “I will now take questions,” he said.

  There was a roar, a rippling flurry of hands through the crowd. The mayor’s spokesperson, Mary Hill, stepped forward to manage the questioning.

  Custer looked toward the crowd. The unpleasant memory of Smithback’s hangdog visage flitted across his mind, and he was glad not to see it among the sea of faces.

  Mary Hill had called on someone, and Custer heard the shouted question. “Why did he do it? Was he really trying to prolong his life?”

  The mayor shook his head. “I cannot speculate on motive at this time.”

  “This is a question for Captain Custer!” a voice shouted. “How did you know it was Brisbane? What was the smoking gun?”

  Custer stepped forward, once again gathering his face into a mask of stolidity. “A derby hat, umbrella, and black suit,” he said, significantly, and paused. “The so-called Surgeon, when he went out to stalk his victims, was seen to wear just such an outfit. I discovered the disguise myself in Mr. Brisbane’s office.”

  “Did you find the murder weapon?”

  “We are continuing to search the office, and we have dispatched teams to search Mr. Brisbane’s apartment and summer house on Long Island. The Long Island search,” he added significantly, “will include cadaver-trained tracking dogs.”

  “What was the role of the FBI in this case?” a television reporter shouted.