The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  The drive out of Manhattan, into the crisp winter hills of Westchester, took half an hour. During that time, Pendergast said nothing, sitting motionless, wrapped in his own thoughts. At last they passed through the dark metal gates and began climbing the gentle curve of a hill. Beyond lay another hill, and then another: a vast city of the dead, full of monuments and ponderous tombs. In time, the car stopped in a far corner of the cemetery, on a rise dotted with marble.

  Pendergast got out, then led them along a manicured path to a fresh row of graves. They were long frozen mounds of earth, laid out in geometrical precision, without tombstones, flowers, or markings of any kind save a spike at each head. Aluminum frames were set into each spike, holding cardboard placards, and on each placard was written a number, streaked with moisture, already mildewed and faded.

  They walked along the row of graves until they came to number 12. Pendergast stopped over it and remained there, head bowed, hands clasped as if praying. Beyond, the weak winter sun shone through the twisted branches of the oaks, and the hill fell away into mist.

  “Where are we?” Smithback asked, looking around. “Whose graves are these?”

  “This is where Fairhaven buried the thirty-six skeletons from Catherine Street. It was a very clever move. It takes a court order to get an exhumation, a long and difficult process. This was the next best thing to cremation, which of course he wasn’t allowed to do, by law. He did not want anyone to have access to these skeletons.”

  Pendergast gestured. “This grave, number 12, is the final resting place of Mary Greene. Gone, but no longer forgotten.” Pendergast reached into his pocket and removed a tattered piece of paper, folded into a small accordion. It trembled slightly in the breeze. He held it out, over the grave, almost as if it were an offering.

  “What is that?” Smithback asked.

  “The arcanum.”

  “The what?”

  “Leng’s formula for extending human life. Perfected. It no longer required the use of human donors. That is why he stopped killing in 1930.”

  In the sudden silence, Nora and Smithback exchanged glances.

  “Leng eventually worked it out. It wasn’t possible until the late twenties, when certain synthetic opiates and other biochemical assays became available to him. With this formula, he no longer had need of victims. Leng did not enjoy killing. He was a scientist; the killing was merely a regretful necessity. Unlike Fairhaven, who clearly took pleasure in it.”

  Smithback stared at the paper in disbelief. “You mean to tell me you’re holding the formula for eternal life?”

  “There is no such thing as ‘eternal life,’ Mr. Smithback. Not in this world, at least. This course of treatment would extend the human life span, by how much exactly I don’t know. At least a hundred years, perhaps longer.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “It was hidden in the house. As I knew it would be. I knew Leng would not have destroyed it. He would have kept a single copy for himself.” The look of internal conflict in Pendergast’s face seemed to grow stronger. “I had to find it. To let it fall into other hands would have been…” His voice trailed off.

  “Have you looked at it?” Nora asked.

  Pendergast nodded.

  “And?”

  “It involves fairly straightforward biochemistry, using chemicals obtainable at any good chemist’s. It is an organic synthesis that any reasonably talented chemistry graduate student could perform in a well-equipped laboratory. But there’s a trick involved, an original twist, which makes it unlikely it will be independently rediscovered—at least, not in the foreseeable future.”

  There was a silence. “What are you—what are we—going to do with it?” breathed Smithback.

  As if in answer, there was a sharp rasping sound. A small flame now hovered over Pendergast’s left hand: a slim gold lighter, burning yellow in the dim light. Without saying a word, he touched the flame to the end of the paper.

  “Wait!” cried Smithback, lunging forward. Pendergast, holding the burning paper aloft, adroitly sidestepped his grab.

  “What are you doing?” Smithback wheeled around. “For God’s sake, give me that—”

  The old, accordioned sheet was already half gone, black ash curling, breaking off, dropping to the frozen earth of the grave.

  “Stop!” Smithback gasped, stepping forward again. “Think this out! You can’t—”

  “I have thought it out,” Pendergast replied. “I’ve done nothing, these last six weeks of searching, but think it out. It was a member of the Pendergast family, to my everlasting shame, who brought this formula to light. So many died for it: so many Mary Greenes that history will never know. I, having uncovered it, must be the one to destroy it. Believe me: this is the only way. Nothing created out of such suffering can be allowed to exist.”

  The flame had crawled up to the final edge; Pendergast opened his fingers, and the unburned corner flared into ash on its way to the turned earth. Gently, Pendergast pressed it into Mary Greene’s grave. When he stepped back, nothing remained but a black stain in the brown earth.

  A brief, shocked silence followed.

  Then Smithback put his head into his hands. “I can’t believe it. Did you bring us here just to see that?”

  Pendergast nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because what I have just done was too important to do alone. It was an action that required witnesses—if only for the sake of history.”

  As Nora looked at Pendergast, she saw—behind the conflict still evident on his face—a bottomless sorrow, an exhaustion of spirit.

  Smithback shook his head miserably. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve just destroyed the greatest medical advance ever made.”

  The FBI agent spoke again, his voice low now, almost a whisper. “Can’t you see? This formula would have destroyed the world. Leng already had the answer to his problem right in his hand. Had he released this into the world, it would have been the end. He only lacked the objectivity to see it.”

  Smithback did not reply.

  Pendergast glanced at the writer for a moment. Then he dropped his gaze to the grave. His shoulders seemed to droop.

  Nora had been standing back, watching, listening, without saying a word. Suddenly, she spoke.

  “I understand,” she said. “I know how difficult that decision must have been. For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing.”

  As she spoke, Pendergast’s eyes remained on the ground. Then, slowly, his gaze rose to meet her own. Perhaps it was her imagination, but the anguish in his face seemed to lessen almost imperceptibly at her words.

  “Thank you, Nora,” he said quietly.

  «——THE END——»