The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist)

by Rick Yancey

  “Saved you,” I gasped.

  He whirled upon me and snarled, “What did you say?”

  “You said I’ve done it, and that’s what I did.”

  “Saved me? Is that what you think?”

  He was shaking with fury. His fist rose, froze before my face for an agonizing moment, then slammed into his own thigh. “You very well may have just signed my death warrant.”

  TWO

  Abram von Helrung handed me the glass of port and lowered himself into the divan beside me. He smelled of cigar smoke and that odd musty odor of the very old. I could hear his breath rattling deep in his barrel chest.

  “There you are, dear Will,” he murmured. “There, there.” Patting my leg.

  “What the devil are you doing, von Helrung?” Warthrop demanded. He was standing by the windows overlooking Fifth Avenue. He had not budged from the spot since we’d arrived. His hand fidgeted in the pocket that held his revolver.

  “Now, Pellinore,” his old master scolded gently. “Will Henry is just a boy . . .”

  The monstrumologist laughed harshly. “That ‘boy’ just murdered two men in cold blood! More to the point, he has declared war upon the Camorra, which will not limit itself to retribution upon him—or me, or even you, Meister Abram. Those men were not lowly foot soldiers; they were Competello’s nephews, his youngest sister’s sons, and we may expect wholesale slaughter!”

  “Oh, no, no, mein Freund. No, let us not lose ourselves in wild talk of war and retribution. He is a reasonable man, as we are, all of us, reasonable men. We will talk to Competello, explain to him—”

  “Oh, yes, I am sure he will understand how ten thousand dollars justified the execution of his family!”

  “Dr. von Helrung told me he owed you a favor,” I said, keeping my voice under control. It was not easy. “It made no sense that he would kidnap you—”

  “Shut up, you imbecilic hotheaded snot!” the monstrumologist yelled. “It makes no sense to betray the code of the Black Hand.”

  “Which is exactly why I betrayed it!”

  Warthrop’s mouth came open, snapped closed, and then opened again: “I may just kill you myself and save them the trouble.”

  “Well, did Competello owe you a debt or not?” I asked.

  “Pellinore,” von Helrung said softly but urgently. “We must tell him.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “What good will it do now?” Warthrop asked, ignoring me.

  “So he may understand.”

  “You give him too much credit, von Helrung,” the doctor said bitterly. He turned back to the window.

  Von Helrung said, “The debt was repaid, Will, the slate wiped clean, and so Competello had no obligation to keep.”

  I shook my head. I did not understand. Perhaps Warthrop was right: The old monstrumologist was giving me too much credit.

  “The man who was shot in the Monstrumarium, he was a watchman and an ally, not a thief,” von Helrung explained.

  “He was . . . ? What are you saying, Meister Abram? He was a Camorrista?”

  “Oh, dear God!” Warthrop cried out, his back still to us.

  “Pellinore and I thought it wise to post men about the headquarters, just to keep an eye on things until the presentation before the congress. It was I who suggested calling in Competello’s chit to perform the service. The Irishmen were spied breaking in, the poor soul followed them down and was ambushed from behind, and then . . . well, you know the rest. The prize was snatched from our grasp.”

  “No,” Warthrop said firmly. “It was handed over by a certain mentally challenged apprentice possessing all the subtlety of a three-toed sloth!”

  “I will endure no more of these uselessly cruel remarks,” von Helrung said sharply. He wagged his finger at the doctor.

  “Very well; I shall stick to only the useful ones.”

  “The murder of that man in the Monstrumarium wasn’t Dr. Warthrop’s fault,” I said. “So why was Dr. Warthrop kidnapped?” I, the three-toed sloth, was trying to think it through.

  “Because kidnapping me had nothing to do with it!” The monstrumologist couldn’t help himself. “Do you begin to understand the terrible burden under which I labor, von Helrung?”

  Von Helrung patted the terrible burden’s leg. “Pellinore went to Competello to offer his condolences—and to ask for help, as I explained yesterday, Will. My old pupil ignored my advice that a sleeping dog is best left undisturbed and it was in bad form to ask a favor from one who had just repaid one in blood. Competello took offense, as I warned you he would,” von Helrung said to Warthrop, glaring at him beneath his bushy white brows. He turned back to me. “You know the rest. He made Pellinore his ‘guest,’ pending payment for his generous ‘hospitality.’ Not for the money so much, I think, but to make a point.”

  “You might have told me this, Meister Abram,” I scolded him. “You should have told me. If you had, those men would still be—”

  “The point is they are not,” Warthrop barked. “And now not only have you turned a potential ally into a deadly enemy, you have jeopardized the survival of the greatest find in monstrumology in the past hundred years! The last of its kind! I would have thought that you, being the apprentice to the greatest aberrant biologist who has ever walked the face of the earth . . .” He sputtered for a moment, the thought skittering away. “That that fact might have occurred to your reptilian brain before you took it upon yourself to play white knight to my damsel in distress!”

  “Damsel in distress?” von Helrung wondered.

  “An awkward metaphor—but not inaccurate.”

  “I’ll go to them,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. “I will explain to Competello—”

  “Oh, that seems like a capital idea!” Warthrop replied sardonically. “I am sure he will be more than understanding.”

  “Young Will is correct, though,” von Helrung said. “We must make peace with the Camorra.” He puffed out his chest. “And that duty falls by necessity to the president of the Society.”

  “Absolutely not,” the doctor replied. “You are no Daniel and this is no lion’s den, Meister Abram. More like a pit of vipers. Ha! An entirely accurate metaphor. I agree we need an emissary, someone to represent the Society, but not one so vital to it or in any way connected to this affair. Someone, to be perfectly frank, whom we can afford to lose should our apology be rejected . . .”

  The bell rang. Warthrop dropped his hand into his coat pocket. My hand closed around the handle of the switchblade in mine, and I took a step toward von Helrung. The old man’s butler appeared.

  “Sir, Dr. Walker is here.”

  “Well,” said Warthrop. “Well!”

  THREE

  Our return to the Plaza Hotel was marked by silence; the atmosphere in the cab was positively arctic. Warthrop stared at the landscape and I at nothing. We both seethed. I was not convinced that I had failed to save his life once again. He was equally convinced that what I had done would ultimately cost him that—and worse, his precious reputation. Time was running out. The grand presentation of the crowning jewel of his career was nearly upon him, and the possibility of professional failure was more appalling to him than death. In part I understood. Heaven and hell, he often said, he left to the theologians and those “pious hypocrites” who dropped a dollar and a prayer in the basket every Sunday like wily gamblers hedging a bet. Warthrop was neither a gambler nor a hypocrite. The only judgment he feared was the eternal damnation of a life unrecognized and forgotten.

  A tall, broad-shouldered man was waiting for us in the lobby. Warthrop stiffened at the sight of him.

  “Mr. Faulk,” he said tightly. “I don’t recall requesting the pleasure of your company.”

  “Came to tell Mr. Henry something,” Mr. Faulk replied. “But now it doesn’t matter, seeing that you’re back safe and sound.”

  “I am neither.” And I remembered his wound. I hadn’t noticed him walking with a limp, but that would not be unusual. The monstrumolo
gist took grim pleasure in hiding his pain.

  “I think it would be a good idea if Mr. Faulk remained in the lobby until we hear back from Dr. Walker,” I suggested.

  The doctor started to say something, then nodded curtly. “Would that be a difficulty, Mr. Faulk?” Slipping him a twenty.

  “No difficulty at all, Dr. Warthrop,” murmured the faithful Mr. Faulk. “Down here? Might be better to wait with you in the room.”

  “No, no, not necessary.” There seemed to be something about the big man that unnerved Warthrop. Not me. I quite enjoyed his company.

  Mr. Faulk shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ll ring your room if anyone comes making inquiries.” He turned to me. “More blue then red, Mr. Henry?”

  “Completely,” I answered. “No red at all.”

  In the elevator my master leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. “As I recall, there was quite a bit of red, ‘Mr. Henry.’ ”

  “Mr. Faulk was referring to a conversation we had regarding the nature of love.”

  One eye came open. “You were discussing love with Mr. Faulk? How extraordinary.”

  “He’s a very wise man.”

  “Hmm. Well, that ‘very wise man’ is wanted in three states for the crime of first-degree murder.”

  “And he walks a free man. That proves he’s wise.”

  He snorted. “That isn’t wisdom; that’s luck.”

  “Of the two, I’d much rather have the latter.”

  Once in our rooms, he proceeded to barricade us in, pushing the large dresser against the door, checking the locks on our windows eight stories above the street, then drawing the heavy curtains. He fell upon the sofa, gasping for air.

  “I should check the dressing,” I said, indicating his outstretched leg.

  “You should count yourself lucky I don’t throw you out on the street.”

  “There is still one thing I don’t understand.”

  “Just one?”

  “Why such a small ransom? You must not have told Competello the true value of the prize.”

  “Why would I tell a criminal overlord that?”

  “Well, what did you tell him?”

  “First I told him I was sorry that one of his own had been killed in the performance of an invaluable service to the advancement of human knowledge—namely, keeping an eye on the Monstrumarium pending the official presentation to the Society—and that it was my intent to make full recompense to the poor man’s family. Then I told him who was responsible. . . .”

  “But that is something we don’t know—and why I thought you went to him in the first place.”

  “We know they were Irish—part of an organized criminal enterprise or not, undoubtedly they were Irish, and there is no love lost between the Sicilians and the Irish. Before you arrived to seal our death warrants, I had extracted a pledge from him to aid us in our quest.”

  “I thought it might be Walker.”

  “You thought what might be Walker?”

  “The one behind it all. The only thing he is more ravenous about than money is destroying you.”

  He shook his head, waved his hand, rolled his eyes. “Hire two-bit hoodlums to snatch a specimen to which he himself had ready access? Even Sir Hiram isn’t that stupid.”

  “Your reasoning rules out every monstrumologist as a suspect.”

  He nodded. “Which leaves Maeterlinck and this mysterious client of his.”

  “It’s not Maeterlinck. He’s in Europe.”

  “As you’ve told me, though how you might know that . . .”

  “Perhaps this client had a change of heart and decided to steal back his former property.” I hurried on. “He could have assumed where you would place it for safekeeping. Not a monstrumologist, since all monstrumologists have access to the Monstrumarium. But an outsider who is well-versed in our practices.”

  “I would agree with you, Will Henry, except for the inconvenient fact that your premise is nonsensical. You and his agent agree upon a price, the transaction is consummated, and then he steals something he easily could have kept? As Maeterlinck himself said, there are men who would pay a king’s ransom for the prize—yet he did not offer it to them when he had the chance. In other words, why all the bother? The only hypothesis that fits the facts is the broker was cheated in some way: that you stole it rather than purchased it, and the offended party has taken back what is rightfully his.”

  His accusation hung in the air. I had no doubt he took my silence as a confession, for he went on: “You have been with me for nearly six years. At times I think you understand this dark and dirty business better than I, but understanding that leads to arrogance and a willful disregard for simple human decency . . .”

  “I do not think you should lecture me about arrogance or simple human decency.”

  “I think I will lecture you about anything that suits me!” He slammed his open palm upon the cushions. “I don’t know why I waste my time with you. The more I try to teach you, the more you take from me the wrong lessons!”

  “Really? What lessons would those be? What exactly are you trying to teach me, Dr. Warthrop? You are angry with me for killing those men—”

  “No, I am angry with you for costing me my reputation and for jeopardizing the most spectacular find in biology in two generations!”

  “You should be angry with yourself—and with Dr. von Helrung—for lying to me.”

  “I have lied?” He threw back his head and laughed.

  “By omission, yes! If you had told me who that man was in the Monstrumarium, had shared with me your arrangement with the Camorra that resulted in his death . . .”

  “Why would anyone share that with you?”

  “Because I am . . .” I stuttered to a stop, face burning, hands clenched at my sides.

  “Yes. Tell me,” he said softly. “What are you?”

  I wet my lips. My mouth was bone-dry. What was I? “Misinformed,” I said finally.

  He seemed to think it a wondrous witticism. He was still laughing when the telephone rang. I made a move to answer it and he waved me away. His chuckles died abruptly as he listened to the party on the other end of the line.

  “Yes, please, have him bring it up at once,” he said, and hung up. “Help me move this dresser, Will. We have a delivery.”

  A moment later there was a soft rap upon the door. Warthrop, leaving nothing to chance, drew out his revolver and shouted, “Who is it?”

  “Faulk.”

  He threw back the bolt and opened the door. Mr. Faulk stepped inside holding a hat-size box. The doctor motioned for him to set it on the table by the windows and locked the door.

  “Who?” Warthrop demanded, dropping the gun back into his pocket and examining the box without touching it. His agitation was palpable.

  “Didn’t give his name, but he’s an old friend from earlier this evening,” Mr. Faulk answered. “Short, swarthy, ill-smelling.”

  “Competello’s courier,” I said.

  Warthrop waved his hand at me without turning.

  “ ‘A present for the goodly Dr. Warthrop,’ was the message,” Mr. Faulk said.

  “Stand back—against the far wall, please,” the monstrumologist instructed us. “I suspect I know what this ‘present’ is, but one cannot be too careful.”

  “That’s my motto, Doctor,” Mr. Faulk replied. He edged toward the other side of the room and urged me to follow. Warthrop rubbed his hands together vigorously, then cupped them to his mouth and blew hard. He placed his index finger on the edge of the lid and gingerly exerted upward pressure. Mr. Faulk and I held our breaths, our bodies tense.

  The lid fell back—and then the monstrumologist fell too, bringing up his hands to hide his face, his voice rising in an unearthly cry of anguish, the same cry I had heard years before from the summit of a manure block, where he had found the faceless corpse of his beloved among the stinking refuse. He spun round, colliding with the coffee table, lost his balance or perhaps his will to remain upright, and fell
to his knees with a keening wail. Mr. Faulk and I rushed forward, he to Warthrop and I to the box.

  A tangled mass of feathery white hair seemed to float above the blood-speckled forehead and prominent nose and age-mottled cheeks and bright blue eyes, the brightest blue I had ever seen, staring into oblivion with an expression of horror pure all the way down to the bottom: the severed head of Dr. Abram von Helrung, full lips stretched wide around the thing they had stuffed into his mouth, the thing with the lidless amber eyes that had captured me first in the basement when it broke through its shell, and I the corrupted, crowning achievement of evolution dumbstruck by the purity of its being, its godless, sinless, conscienceless perfection, now staring sightlessly back at me, dead yellow eye and dead blue eye sucking me under to be crushed in the airless, lightless depths.

  From behind me the monstrumologist screamed, “What have you done?”

  I did not know whether he spoke to von Helrung or to me. It may have been both. It may have been neither.

  “What in God’s name have you done?”

  Nothing, nothing, nothing, in God’s name, nothing.

  FOUR

  Abram was dead, and Pellinore was inconsolable. I’d never seen him so broken and helpless, borne down by what he had called “the dark tide.” He wailed and railed, cried and cursed; even Mr. Faulk sensed that it could not continue indefinitely: Either Warthrop would best the spell or the spell would best him. I bore a special responsibility, not because I felt in any way responsible for von Helrung’s death—no, fate had decreed me his sole caretaker, the lone guardian of the Warthropian animus. It had taken me years to understand this. He didn’t need me to sustain his body. He could hire a cook to feed him, a tailor to clothe him, a washerwoman to keep those clothes clean, a valet to wait upon him hand and foot. What he could not afford, though he possessed the wealth of Midas, the one indispensable service that only I could provide, was the care and feeding of his soul, the nurture of his towering intellect, and the incessant stroking of his pitiful, mewling, insufferable ego, the I am! squeal to the silent, inexorable Am I?