FIVE
SMITHBACK STOOD IN the dark hall, struggling to control his fright. It was fright that was his problem here, not locked doors. Clearly, at least one of them must be unlocked: he had just come through it.
As deliberately as he could, he went down the hall once again, trying all the doors, shaking harder this time, even at the cost of making some noise, pushing at the jambs, making sure they weren’t simply stuck. But no, it wasn’t his imagination. They were all securely locked.
Had somebody locked the door behind him? But that was impossible: the room had been empty. A gust of wind had closed it. He shook his head, searching unsuccessfully for amusement in his own paranoia.
The doors, he decided, must lock automatically when shut. Maybe that was a feature of old houses like this. No problem: he would find another way out of the house. Downstairs, through the reception hall and out a first floor window or door. Perhaps out the porte-cochère door, which had every appearance of being functional—in fact it was probably the very door used by the custodian. Relief coursed through him at this thought. It would be easier; it would save him the trouble of having to climb back down that outside wall.
All he had to do was find his way to it through the dark house.
He stood in the hall, waiting for his heartbeat to slow. The place was so quiet, so unusually quiet, that he found his ears alert for the faintest sound. The silence, he told himself, was a good sign. No custodian was around. He probably came only once a week, at most; or maybe only once a year, given all the dust in the place. Smithback had all the time in the world.
Feeling a little sheepish, he made his way back to the head of the stairs and peered down. The carriage door, it seemed to him, should be to the left, somewhere off the reception hall. He descended the stairs and paused warily at the bottom, peering again at the strange, endless displays. Still, no sound. The place was clearly deserted.
He remembered Pendergast’s theory. What if Leng really had succeeded…?
Smithback forced himself to laugh out loud. What the hell was he thinking about? Nobody could live 150 years. The darkness, the silence, the mysterious collections were getting to him.
He paused, taking stock. A passage ran off from the hall to the left, in what he thought was the right direction. It lay in complete darkness, yet it seemed the most promising. He should have thought to bring a damn flashlight. No matter: he would try that first.
Stepping carefully, avoiding the display cases and sheeted objects, he walked across the hall and into the side passage. His pupils refused to dilate further and the corridor remained pitch black, the darkness an almost palpable presence around him. He fumbled in his pocket, found the box of matches he’d picked up at the Blarney Stone. He lit one, the scraping and flaring of the match unpleasantly loud in the still air.
The flickering light revealed a passage leading into another large room, also crammed with wooden cabinets. He took a few steps forward until the matchlight died away. Then he went on as far as he dared into the blackness, felt around with his hand, found the doorframe of the room, drew himself forward again. Once he was inside, he lit another match.
Here was a different kind of collection: rows and rows of specimens in jars of formaldehyde. He caught a quick glimpse of rows of gigantic, staring eyeballs in jars—whale eyeballs? Trying not to waste the light, he hurried forward, stumbling over a large glass jeroboam on a marble pedestal, filled with what looked like a huge floating bag. As he got back on his feet and lit another match, he caught a glimpse of the label: Mammoth stomach, containing its last meal, from the icefields of Siberia…
He went quickly on, passing as fast as he could between the rows of cabinets, until he arrived at a single wooden door, battered and scarred. There was a sudden sharp pain as the match burned his fingers. Cursing, he dropped it, then lit another. In the renewed flare of light, he opened the door. It led into a huge kitchen, tiled in white and black. There was a deep stone fireplace set into one wall. The rest of the room was dominated by a huge iron stove, a row of ovens, and several long tables set with soapstone sinks. Dozens of pots of greenish copper were suspended from ceiling hooks. Everything looked decayed, covered with a thick layer of dust, cobwebs, and mouse droppings. It was a dead end.
The house was huge. The matches wouldn’t last forever. What would he do when they ran out?
Get a grip, Smithback, he told himself. Clearly, no one had cooked in this kitchen in a hundred years. Nobody lived in the house. What was he worrying about?
Relying on memory, without lighting any more matches, he backtracked into the large room, feeling his way along the glass-fronted cases. At one point he felt his shoulder brush against something. A second later, there was a tremendous crash at his feet, and the sudden biting stench of formaldehyde. He waited, nerves taut, for the echoes to abate. He prepared to light a match, thought better of it—was formaldehyde flammable? Better not experiment now. He took a step, and his stockinged foot grazed something large, wet, and yielding. The specimen in the jar. He gingerly stepped around it.
There had been other doors set into the passageway beyond. He would try them one at a time. But first, he paused to remove his socks, which were sodden with formaldehyde. Then, stepping into the passageway, he ventured another match. He could see four doors, two on the left wall, two on the right.
He opened the closest, found an ancient, zinc-lined bathroom. Sitting in the middle of the tiled floor was the grinning skull of an allosaurus. The second door fronted a large closet full of stuffed birds; the third, yet another closet, this one full of stuffed lizards. The fourth opened into a scullery, its walls pocked and scarred, ravaged by traceries of mildew.
The match went out and Smithback stood in the enfolding darkness. He could hear the sound of his own stertorous breathing. He felt in the matchbook, counted with his fingers: six left. He fought back—less successfully this time—the scrabbling panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He’d been in tough situations before, tougher than this. It’s an empty house. Just find your way out.
He made his way back to the reception hall and its shrouded collections. Being able to see again, no matter how faintly, calmed him a little—there was something utterly terrifying about absolute darkness. He looked around again at the astounding collections, but all he could feel now was a rising dread. The foul smell was stronger here: the sickly-sweet odor of decay, of something that by all rights belonged under several feet of earth…
Smithback took a series of deep, calming breaths. The thick layers of undisturbed dust on the floor proved the place was deserted; that even the caretaker, if there was one, hardly ever came.
He glanced around again, eyes wide against the faint light. On the far side of the hall, a shadowy archway led into what looked like a large room. He walked across the hall, bare feet padding on the parquet floor, and passed beneath the archway. The walls of the room beyond were paneled in dark wood, rising to a coffered ceiling. This room, too, was filled with displays: some shrouded, others raised on plinths or armatures. But the displays themselves were utterly different from what he had seen before. He stepped forward, looking around, bafflement mixing with the sharp sense of trepidation. There were large steamer trunks, some with glass sides, bound in heavy leather straps; galvanized containers like antique milk cans, their lids studded with heavy bolts; an oddly shaped, oversized wooden box, with copper-lined circles cut out of its top and sides; a coffin-shaped crate, pierced by half a dozen swords. On the walls hung ropes, strings of moldering kerchiefs tied end-to-end; straitjackets, manacles, chains, cuffs of various sizes. It was an inexplicable, eerie display, made the more unsettling by its lack of relation to what he had seen before.
Smithback crept on into the center of the room, keeping away from the dark corners. The front of the house, he figured, would be straight ahead. The other side of the house had proven a dead end; surely he would have better luck this way. If need be, he would batter down the front door.
; At the far end of the room, another passageway led off into darkness. He stepped gingerly into it, feeling his way along one wall, sliding his feet forward with small, tentative steps. In the faintest of light he could see the hall ended in another room, much smaller and more intimate than the ones he had passed through before. The specimens were fewer here—just a few cabinets filled with seashells and some mounted dolphin skeletons. It seemed to have once been a drawing room or parlor of some kind. Or perhaps—and at the thought, fresh hope surged within him—an entryway?
The only illumination came from a single pinprick of light in the far wall, which sent a pencil-thin beam of light through the dusty air. A tiny hole in one of the boarded windows. With a huge sense of relief he quickly crossed the room and began feeling along the wall with his fingers. There was a heavy oak door here. The hope that was rising within him grew stronger. His fingers fell on a marble doorknob, oversized and terribly cold in his hands. He grasped it eagerly, turned.
The knob refused to budge.
With desperate strength, he tried again. No luck.
He stepped back and, with a groan of despair, felt along the edge of the door with his hands, searching for a deadbolt, lock, anything. An overwhelming sense of fear returned.
Heedless of the noise now, he threw himself against the door, once, twice, rushing at it with all his weight, trying desperately to break it down. The hollow thumps echoed through the room and down the hall. When the door still refused to budge, he stopped and leaned against it with a gasp of panic.
As the last echoes died away, something stirred from within the well of blackness in a far corner of the room. A voice, low and dry as mummy dust, spoke.
“My dear fellow, leaving so soon? You’ve only just got here.”
SIX
CUSTER BURST THROUGH the door to the archives and planted himself in the middle of the entryway, hands on his hips. He could hear the patter of heavy-shod feet as his officers fanned out behind him. Fast and furious, he reminded himself. Don’t give ’em time to think. He observed—with more than a little satisfaction—the consternation of the two staff members who had leapt up at the sight of a dozen uniformed officers bearing down on them.
“This area is to be searched,” Custer barked out. Noyes, stepping forward out of Custer’s shadow, held up the warrant in a superfluous gesture. Custer noted, with approval, that Noyes was glaring almost as balefully at the archivists as he was himself.
“But, Captain,” he heard Manetti protest, “the place has already been searched. Right after the body of Puck was found, the NYPD had forensics teams, dogs, fingerprint sweepers, photographers, and—”
“I’ve seen the report, Manetti. But that was then. This is now. We have new evidence, important evidence.” Custer looked around impatiently. “Let’s get some light in here, for chrissakes!”
One of the staff jumped and, passing his hand over a vast cluster of ancient-looking switches, turned on a bank of lights within.
“Is that the best you can do? It’s as dark as a tomb in here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right.” Custer turned to his detectives. “You know what to do. Work row by row, shelf by shelf. Leave no stone unturned.”
There was a pause.
“Well? Get to it, gentlemen!”
The men exchanged brief, uncertain glances. But without a questioning word they dutifully fanned out into the stacks. In a moment they were gone, like water absorbed into a sponge, leaving Manetti and Custer and the two frightened staffers alone by the reference desk. The sound of thumping, banging, and rattling began to echo back down the stacks as Custer’s men started to pull things off the shelves. It was a satisfying sound, the sound of progress.
“Have a seat, Manetti,” said Custer, unable now to keep condescension completely out of his voice. “Let’s talk.”
Manetti looked around, saw no available chairs, and remained standing.
“Okay.” Custer removed a leather-covered notebook and gold pen—purchased in Macy’s just after the commissioner gave him the new assignment—and prepared to take notes. “So, what we got here in these Archives? A bunch of papers? Newspapers? Old takeout menus? What?”
Manetti sighed. “The Archives contain documents, as well as specimens not considered important enough for the main collections. These materials are available to historians and others with a professional interest. It’s a low-security area.”
“Low security is right,” Custer replied. “Low enough to get this man Puck’s ass hoisted on a goddamned petrified antler. So where’s the valuable stuff kept?”
“What’s not in the general collection is kept in the Secure Area, a location with a separate security system.”
“What about signing in to these Archives, and all that?”
“There’s a logbook.”
“Where’s the book?”
Manetti nodded at a massive volume on the desk. “It was photocopied for the police after Puck’s death.”
“And what does it record?”
“Everybody who enters or leaves the Archives area. But the police already noticed that some of the most recent pages were razored out—”
“Everybody? Staff as well as visiting researchers?”
“Everybody. But—”
Custer turned to Noyes, then pointed at the book. “Bag it.”
Manetti looked at him quickly. “That’s Museum property.”
“It was. Now it’s evidence.”
“But you’ve already taken all the important evidence, like the typewriter those notes were written on, and the—”
“When we’re done here, you’ll get a receipt for everything.” If you ask nicely, Custer thought to himself. “So, what we got here?” he repeated.
“Dead files, mostly, from other Museum departments. Papers of historical value, memos, letters, reports. Everything but the personnel files and some departmental files. The Museum saves everything, naturally, as a public institution.”
“What about that letter found here? The one reported in the papers, describing those killings. How was that found?”
“You’ll have to ask Special Agent Pendergast, who found it along with Nora Kelly. He found it hidden in some kind of box. Made out of an elephant’s foot, I believe.”
That Nora Kelly again. Custer made a mental note to question her himself once he was done here. She’d be his prime suspect, if he thought her capable of hoisting a heavyset man onto a dinosaur horn. Maybe she had accomplices.
Custer jotted some notes. “Has anything been moved in or out of here in the past month?”
“There may have been some routine additions to the collection. I believe that once a month or so they send dead files down here.” Manetti paused. “And, after the discovery of the letter, it and all related documents were sent upstairs for curating. Along with other material.”
Custer nodded. “And Collopy ordered that, did he not?”
“Actually, I believe it was done at the order of the Museum’s vice president and general counsel, Roger Brisbane.”
Brisbane: he’d heard that name before, too. Custer made another note. “And what, exactly, did the related documents consist of?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Brisbane.”
Custer turned to the two museum employees behind the desk. “This guy, Brisbane. You see him down here a lot?”
“Quite a bit, recently,” said one.
“What’s he been doing?”
The man shrugged. “Just asking a lot of questions, that’s all.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Questions about Nora Kelly, that FBI guy… He wanted to know what they’d been looking at, where they went, that kind of thing. And some journalist. He wanted to know if a journalist had been in here. I can’t remember the name.”
“Smithbrick?”
“No, but something like that.”
Custer picked up his notebook, flipped through it. There it was. “William Smith
back, Junior.”
“That’s it.”
Custer nodded. “How about this Agent Pendergast? Any of you see him?”
The two exchanged glances. “Just once,” the first man said.
“Nora Kelly?”
“Yup,” said the same man: a young fellow with hair so short he looked almost bald.
Custer turned toward him. “Did you know Puck?”
The man nodded.
“Your name?”
“Oscar. Oscar Gibbs. I was his assistant.”
“Gibbs, did Puck have any enemies?”
Custer noticed the two men exchanging another glance, more significant this time.
“Well….” Gibbs hesitated, then began again. “Once, Brisbane came down here and really lit into Mr. Puck. Screaming and yelling, threatening to bury him, to have him fired.”
“Is that right? Why?”
“Something about Mr. Puck leaking damaging information, failing to respect the Museum’s intellectual property rights. Things like that. I think he was mad because Human Resources hadn’t backed up his recommendation to fire Mr. Puck. Said he wasn’t through with him, not by a long shot. That’s really all I remember.”
“When was this, exactly?”
Gibbs thought a moment. “Let’s see. That would have been the thirteenth. No, the twelfth. October twelfth.”
Custer picked up his notebook again and made another notation, longer this time. He heard a shattering crash from the bowels of the Archives; a shout; then a protracted ripping noise. He felt a warm feeling of satisfaction. There would be no more letters hidden in elephants’ feet when he was done. He turned his attention back to Gibbs.
The Cabinet of Curiosities Page 34