The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  “Save it how?”

  “By eliminating it.”

  Nora looked back at him.

  “That was Leng’s grand project: to rid the earth of humanity, to save mankind from itself, from its own unfitness. He was searching for the ultimate poison—hence those rooms full of chemicals, plants, poisonous insects and reptiles. Of course, I had plenty of tangential evidence before: the poisonous materials on the glass fragments you unearthed from Leng’s old laboratory, for example. Or the Greek inscription on the escutcheon outside the house. Did you notice it?”

  Nora nodded her head numbly.

  “It’s the final words of Socrates, spoken as he took the fatal poison. . ‘Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?’ Yet another thing I should have realized sooner.” He cauterized another vein. “But it wasn’t until I saw the room full of weapons that I made the connection and realized the scope of his plans. Because creating the ultimate poison alone wasn’t enough—he would also have to create a delivery system, a way to make it reach across the globe. That’s when the more vexing, inexplicable parts of the cabinet—the clothing, weapons, migratory birds, windborne spores, and the rest—made sense to me. Among other things, while researching this delivery system, he had collected all manner of poisoned objects: clothing, weapons, accessories. And much of it was poisoned by himself—redundant experiments with all manner of poisons.”

  “My God,” Nora said. “What a crazy scheme.”

  “It was an ambitious scheme, certainly. One he realized would take several lifetimes to complete. That was why he developed his, ah, method of life extension.”

  Pendergast put the electrocauterer carefully to one side. “I’ve seen no evidence here of any supplies for closing incisions,” he said. “Clearly, Fairhaven had no need of them. If you’ll hand me that gauze and the medical tape, I’ll butterfly the wound until it can be properly attended to. Again, I’ll need your assistance.”

  Nora handed him the requested items, then helped him close. “Did he succeed in finding the ultimate poison?” she asked.

  “No. Based on the state of his laboratory, I would say he gave up around 1950.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Pendergast said as he taped gauze over the exit wound. The troubled look she’d noticed earlier returned. “It’s very curious. It’s a great mystery to me.”

  Dressing completed, Pendergast straightened up. Following his instructions, Nora helped him make a sling for his injured arm using torn surgical sheets, then helped him into his shirt.

  Pendergast turned once again to Smithback, examining his unconscious form, studying the monitors at the head of the table. He felt Smithback’s pulse, examined the dressing Nora had made. After rummaging through the cabinet he brought out a syringe, and injected it into the saline tube.

  “That should keep him comfortable until you can get out of here and alert my doctor,” he said.

  “Me?” Nora said.

  “My dear Dr. Kelly, somebody has to keep watch over Smithback. We daren’t move him ourselves. With my arm in a sling and a gunshot wound in my abdomen, I fear I’m in no condition to go anywhere, let alone row.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will, shortly. And now, please assist me back down these stairs.”

  With a final look at Smithback, Nora helped Pendergast back down the staircase and through the series of stone chambers, past the endless collections. Knowing their purpose made them seem even more dreadful.

  At the laboratory, Nora slowed. She angled her light into the weapons room beyond, and saw Fairhaven, still motionless, sitting in the corner. Pendergast regarded him a moment, then moved to the heavy door in the far wall and eased it open. Beyond it lay another descending staircase, much cruder, seemingly fashioned out of a natural cavity in the earth.

  “Where does this go?” Nora asked as she approached.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, to the river.”

  They descended the staircase, the perfume of mold and heavy humidity rising to greet them. At the bottom, Nora’s light revealed a stone quay, lapped by water, with a watery tunnel leading off into darkness. An ancient wooden boat lay upturned on the quay.

  “The river pirate’s lair,” Pendergast said as Nora shone the light around. “This was how he snuck out to the Hudson to attack shipping. If the boat’s still seaworthy, you can take it out into the river.”

  Nora angled the light toward the skiff.

  “Can you row?” Pendergast inquired.

  “I’m an expert.”

  “Good. I believe you’ll find an abandoned marina a few blocks south of here. Get to a phone as quickly as possible, call 645-7884; that’s the number of my chauffeur, Proctor. Explain to him what’s happened. He’ll come get you and arrange everything, including the doctor for Smithback and myself.”

  Nora turned over the rowboat and slid it into the water. It was old, loose-jointed, and leaky, but it appeared to be seaworthy.

  “You’ll take care of Bill while I’m gone?” she said.

  Pendergast nodded, the reflected water rippling across his pale face.

  She stepped gingerly into the boat.

  Pendergast stepped forward. “Dr. Kelly,” he said in a low voice. “There is something more I must tell you.”

  She looked up from the boat.

  “The authorities must not know about what is in this house. Somewhere within these walls, I’m convinced, is the formula for the prolongation of human life. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Nora replied after a moment. She stared at him as the full import of what he was saying began to sink in. The secret to prolonged life: it still seemed incredible. Unbelievable.

  “I must also admit to a more personal reason for secrecy. I do not wish to bring more infamy down on the Pendergast name.”

  “Leng was your ancestor.”

  “Yes. My great-grand-uncle.”

  Nora nodded as she fitted the oarlocks. It was an antique notion of family honor; but then, she already knew that Pendergast was a man out of his time.

  “My doctor will evacuate Smithback to a private hospital upstate where they do not ask inconvenient questions. I will, of course, undergo surgery there myself. We need never mention our adventure to the authorities.”

  “I understand,” she repeated.

  “People will wonder what happened to Fairhaven. But I doubt very much the police will ever identify him as the Surgeon, or make the connection with 891 Riverside Drive.”

  “Then the Surgeon’s murders will remain unsolved? A mystery?”

  “Yes. But unsolved murders are always the most interesting, don’t you think? Now, repeat the telephone number for me, please.”

  “Six four five-seven eight eight four.”

  “Excellent. Now please hurry, Dr. Kelly.”

  She pushed away from the quay, then turned back to look at Pendergast once again, her boat bobbing in the shallow water.

  “One more question. How in the world did you escape from those chains? It seemed like magic.”

  In the dim light, she saw Pendergast’s lips part in what appeared to be a smile. “It was magic.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Magic and the Pendergast family are synonymous. There have been magicians in my lineage for ten generations. We’ve all dabbled in it. Antoine Leng Pendergast was no exception: in fact, he was one of the most talented in the family. Surely you noticed the stage apparatus in the refectory? Not to mention the false walls, secret panels, trapdoors? Without knowing it, Fairhaven bound his victims with Leng’s trick cuffs. I recognized them right away: the American Guiteau handcuffs and Bean Prison leg-irons, fitted with a false rivet that any magician, once manacled, could remove with his fingers or teeth. To a person who knew the secret, they were about as secure as transparent tape.”

  And Pendergast began laughing softly, almost to himself.

  Nora rowed away, the splashing of the oars di
storted in the low, rocky cavern. In a few moments she came to a weed-choked opening between two rocks, just large enough to admit the boat. She pushed through and was suddenly on the broad expanse of the Hudson, the vast bulk of the North River plant rising above her, the great glittering arc of the George Washington Bridge looming farther to the north. Nora took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. She could hardly believe they were still alive.

  She glanced back at the opening through which she had just come. It looked like a tangle of weeds and some boulders leaning together—nothing more.

  As she bent to the oars, the abandoned marina just coming into view against the distant gleaming towers of Midtown Manhattan, she thought she could still make out—borne on the midnight wind—the faint sound of Pendergast’s laughter.

  epilogue: Arcanum

  FALL HAD TURNED TO WINTER: ONE OF THOSE CRISP, SUNNY days of early December before the first snowfall, when the world seemed almost crystalline in its perfection. As Nora Kelly walked up Riverside Drive, holding hands with Bill Smithback, she looked out over the Hudson. Already, cakes of ice were drifting down from the upper reaches. The New Jersey Palisades were etched in stark sunlight, and the George Washington Bridge seemed to float above the river, silvery and weightless.

  Nora and Smithback had found an apartment on West End Avenue in the Nineties. When Pendergast had contacted them and asked them to meet him at 891 Riverside Drive, they had decided to walk the two miles, taking advantage of the beautiful day.

  For the first time since the hideous discovery on Catherine Street, Nora had felt a certain peace return to her life. Her work at the Museum was progressing well. All the carbon-14 dates on her Utah specimens had come back, and they were a gratifying confirmation of her theory regarding the Anasazi-Aztec connection. There had been a terrific housecleaning at the Museum, with a whole new administration put in place—except Collopy, who had somehow come through it all with his reputation and prestige intact, if not enhanced. In fact, Collopy had offered Nora an important administrative post—which she had politely declined. The unfortunate Roger Brisbane had been released: the arrest warrant voided a day before the election, after Brisbane’s lawyer provided airtight alibis for the time periods of all three copycat murders, and an angry judge pointed out there was no physical evidence linking the man to any crime. Now, Brisbane was suing the city for wrongful arrest. The papers were screaming that the Surgeon was still at large. The mayor had lost his reelection bid. Captain Custer had been busted all the way down to street cop.

  There had been a flurry of newspaper stories about the sudden disappearance of Anthony Fairhaven, but the speculation had ended with an IRS raid on his company. After that, everyone assumed tax problems were the reason for his disappearance. Word was Fairhaven had been last spotted on a beach somewhere in the Netherlands Antilles, drinking daiquiris and reading the Wall Street Journal.

  Smithback had spent two weeks at the Feversham Clinic, north of Cold Spring, where his wound had been sewn and dressed. It had healed surprisingly quickly. Pendergast had also spent several weeks recuperating at Feversham after a series of operations to his elbow and abdomen. Then he had disappeared, and neither Nora nor Smithback had heard from him. Until this mysterious summons.

  “I still can’t believe we’re up here again,” Smithback said as they walked northward.

  “Come on, Bill. Aren’t you curious to see what Pendergast wants?”

  “Of course. I just don’t see why it couldn’t be someplace else. Someplace comfortable. Like, say, the restaurant at the Carlyle.”

  “I’m sure we’ll learn the reason.”

  “I’m sure we will. But if he offers me a Leng cocktail out of one of those mason jars, I’m leaving.”

  Now the old house appeared in the distance, up the Drive. Even in the bright sunlight it seemed somehow dark: sprawling, haunted, framed by bare trees, black upper windows staring westward like empty eye sockets.

  As if at a single thought, Nora and Smithback paused.

  “You know, just the sight of that old pile still scares the bejesus out of me,” Smithback muttered. “I’ll tell you, when Fairhaven had me laid out on that operating table, and I felt the knife slice into my—”

  “Bill, please,” Nora pleaded. Smithback had grown fond of regaling her with gory details.

  He drew his arm around her. He was wearing the blue Armani suit, but it hung a little loosely now, his gaunt frame thinner for the ordeal. His face was pale and drawn, but the old humor, the mischievous twinkle, had returned to his eyes.

  They continued walking north, crossing 137th Street. There was the carriage entrance, still partially blocked by windblown piles of trash. Smithback stopped again, and Nora watched his eye travel up the facade of the building, toward a broken window on the second floor. For all his display of bravado, the writer’s face paled for a moment. Then he stepped forward resolutely, following Nora under the porte-cochère, and they knocked.

  A minute passed, then two. And then at last the door creaked open, and Pendergast stood before them. He was wearing heavy rubber gloves, and his elegant black suit was covered in plaster dust. Without a word of greeting he turned away, and they followed him through silent echoing passages toward the library. Portable halogen lamps were arrayed along the hallways, throwing cold white light onto the surfaces of the old house. Even with the light, however, Nora felt a shiver of fear as she retraced the corridors. The foul odor of decay was gone, replaced by a faint chemical wash. The interior was barely recognizable: panels had been taken off walls, drawers stood open, plumbing and gas lines exposed or removed, boards ripped from the floor. It looked as if the house had been torn apart in an unbelievably exhaustive search.

  Within the library, all the sheets had been removed from the skeletons and mounted animals. The light was dimmer here, but Nora could see that half the shelves were empty, and the floor covered with carefully piled stacks of books. Pendergast threaded his way through them to the vast fireplace in the far wall, then—at last—turned back toward his two guests.

  “Dr. Kelly,” he said, nodding to her. “Mr. Smithback. I’m pleased to see you looking well.”

  “That Dr. Bloom of yours is as much an artist as he is a surgeon,” Smithback replied, with strained heartiness. “I hope he takes Blue Cross. I have yet to see the bill.”

  Pendergast smiled thinly. A brief silence ensued.

  “So why are we here, Mr. Pendergast?” Nora asked.

  “You two have been through a terrible ordeal,” Pendergast replied as he pulled off the heavy gloves. “More than anyone should ever have to endure. I feel in large part responsible.”

  “Hey, that’s what bequests are for,” Smithback replied.

  “I’ve learned some things in the last several weeks. Far too many are already past help: Mary Greene, Doreen Hollander, Mandy Eklund, Reinhart Puck, Patrick O’Shaughnessy. But for you two, I thought perhaps hearing the real story—a story nobody else must ever know—might help exorcize the demons.”

  There was another brief pause.

  “Go ahead,” Smithback said, in an entirely different tone of voice.

  Pendergast looked from Nora, to Smithback, then back again.

  “From childhood, Fairhaven was obsessed with mortality. His older brother died at age sixteen of Hutchinson-Guilford syndrome.”

  “Little Arthur,” Smithback said.

  Pendergast looked at him curiously. “That’s correct.”

  “Hutchinson-Guilford syndrome?” Nora asked. “Never heard of it.”

  “Also known as progeria. After a normal birth, children begin to age extremely rapidly. Height is stunted. Hair turns gray and then falls out, leaving prominent veins. There are usually no eyebrows or eyelashes, and the eyes grow too large for the skull. The skin turns brown and wrinkled. The long bones become decalcified. Basically, by adolescence the child has the body of an old man. They become susceptible to atherosclerosis, strokes, heart attacks. The last is what killed Arthur F
airhaven, when he was sixteen.

  “His brother saw mortality compressed into five or six years of horror. He never got over it. We’re all afraid of death, but for Anthony Fairhaven the fear became an obsession. He attended medical school, but after two years was forced to leave for certain unauthorized experiments he’d undertaken; I’m still looking into their exact nature. So by default he went into the family business of real estate. But health remained an obsession with him. He experimented with health foods, diets, vitamins and supplements, German spas, Finnish smoke saunas. Taking hope from the Christian promise of eternal life, he became intensely religious—but when his prayers were slow in being answered he began hedging his bets, supplementing his religious fervor with an equally profound and misplaced fervor for science, medicine, and natural history. He became a huge benefactor to several obscure research institutes, as well as to Columbia Medical School, the Smithsonian, and of course the New York Museum of Natural History. And he founded the Little Arthur Clinic, which in fact has done important work on rare diseases of children.

  “We cannot be sure, exactly, when he first learned of Leng. He spent a lot of time digging around in the Museum Archives, following up some line of research or other. At some point, he came across information about Leng in the Museum’s Archives. Whatever he found gave him two critical pieces of information: the nature of Leng’s experiments, and the location of his first lab. Here was this man who claimed to have succeeded in extending his life. You can imagine how Fairhaven must have reacted. He had to find out what this man had done, and if he had really succeeded. Of course, this is why Puck had to die: he alone knew of Fairhaven’s visits to the Archives. He alone knew what Fairhaven had been examining. This wasn’t a problem until we found the Shottum letter: but then it became essential to remove Puck. Even a casual mention by Puck of Fairhaven’s visits would have linked him directly to Leng. It would have made him suspect number one. By luring you down there, Dr. Kelly, Fairhaven figured he could kill two birds with one stone. You had proven yourself unusually dangerous and effective.