The Cabinet of Curiosities

by Douglas Preston

  She stared at the monitors for a moment, a horrible feeling of powerlessness stealing over her. And then she closed her eyes and let her head sink onto Smithback’s shoulder: bare, motionless, cold as a marble tomb.

  NINE

  PENDERGAST STUMBLED PAST the long tables of the old laboratory. Another spasm of pain wracked his gut and he paused momentarily, mentally willing it to pass. Despite the severity of his wounds, he had so far managed to keep one corner of his mind clear, sharp, free of distraction. He tried to focus on that corner through the thickening fog of pain; tried to observe and understand what lay around him.

  Titration and distillation apparatuses, beakers and retorts, burners; a vast thicket of glassware and metal. And yet, despite the extent of the equipment, there seemed to be few clues to the project Leng had been working on. Chemistry was chemistry, and you used the same tools and equipment, regardless of what chemicals you were synthesizing or isolating. There were a larger number of hoods and vintage glove boxes than Pendergast expected, implying that Leng had been handling poisons or radioactive substances in his laboratory. But even this merely corroborated what he had already surmised.

  The only surprise had been the state of the laboratory. There was no mass spectrometer, no X-ray diffraction equipment, no electrophoresis apparatus, and certainly no DNA sequencer. No computers, nothing that seemed to contain any integrated circuits. There was nothing to reflect the revolution in biochemistry technology that had occurred since the 1960s. Judging by the age of the equipment and its neglected condition, it looked, in fact, as if all work in the lab had ceased around fifty years before.

  But that made no sense. Leng would certainly have availed himself of the latest scientific developments, the most modern equipment, to help him in his quest. And, until very recently, the man had been alive.

  Could Leng have finished his project? If so, where was it? What was it? Was it somewhere in this vast basement? Or had he given up?

  The flicker of Fairhaven’s light was licking closer now, and Pendergast ceased speculating and forced himself onward. There was a door in the far wall, and he dragged himself toward it through an overwhelming wash of pain. If this was Leng’s laboratory, there would be no more than one, perhaps two, final workrooms beyond. He felt an almost overpowering wave of dizziness. He had reached the point where he could barely walk. The endgame had arrived.

  And still he didn’t know.

  Pendergast pushed the door ajar, took five steps into the next room. He uncloaked the lantern and tried to raise it to get his bearings, examine the room’s contents, make one final attempt at resolving the mystery.

  And then his legs buckled beneath him.

  As he fell, the lantern crashed to the floor, rolling away, its light flickering crazily across the walls. And along the walls, a hundred edges of sharpened steel reflected the light back toward him.

  TEN

  THE SURGEON SHONE the light hungrily around the chamber as the echoes of the second shot died away. The beam illuminated moth-eaten clothing, ancient wooden display cases, motes of disturbed dust hanging in the air. He was certain he had hit Pendergast again.

  The first shot, the gut shot, had been the more severe. It would be painful, debilitating, a wound that would grow steadily worse. The last kind of wound you wanted when you were trying to escape. The second shot had hit a limb—an arm, no doubt, given that the FBI agent could still walk. Exceedingly painful, and with luck it might have nicked the basilic vein, adding to Pendergast’s loss of blood.

  He stopped where Pendergast had fallen. There was a small spray of blood against a nearby cabinet, and a heavier smear where the agent had obviously rolled across the ground. He stepped back, glancing around with a feeling of contempt. It was another of Leng’s absurd collections. The man had been a neurotic collector, and the basement was of a piece with the rest of the house. There would be no arcanum here, no philosopher’s stone. Pendergast had obviously been trying to throw him off balance with that talk of Leng’s ultimate purpose. What purpose could be more grand than the prolongation of the human life span? And if this ridiculous collection of umbrellas and walking sticks and wigs was an example of Leng’s ultimate project, then it merely corroborated how unfit he was for his own discovery. Perhaps with the long, cloistered years had come madness. Although Leng had seemed quite sane when he’d first confronted him, six months before—as much as one could tell anything from such a silent, ascetic fellow—appearances meant nothing. One never knew what went on inside a man’s head. But in the end, it made no difference. Clearly, the discovery was destined for him. Leng was only a vessel to bring this stupendous advancement across the years. Like John the Baptist, he had merely paved the way. The elixir was Fairhaven’s destiny. God had placed it in his path. He would be Leng, as Leng should have been—perhaps would have been, had it not been for his weaknesses, his fatal flaws.

  Once he had achieved success, he, Fairhaven, would not hole up like a recluse in this house to let the years roll endlessly by. Once the transformation was complete—once he had perfected the elixir, absorbed all Leng had to give into himself—he would emerge, like a butterfly from a pupa. He would put his long life to wonderful use: travel, love, learning, pleasure, exotic experiences. Money would never be a problem.

  The Surgeon forced himself to put aside these reflections and once again take up Pendergast’s irregular path. The footprints were growing smudged at the heels: the man was dragging his feet along the ground. Of course, Pendergast could be faking the gravity of his wound, but Fairhaven sensed he wasn’t. One couldn’t fake that heavy loss of blood. And the man couldn’t fake that he had been hit—not once, but twice.

  Following the trail of blood, he crept through the archway in the far wall and entered the next room. His flashlight revealed what looked like an ancient laboratory: long tables set up with all manner of strange glassware, racked into fantastic shapes, tubes and coils and retorts mounting almost to the ceiling of undressed rock. It was old and dusty, the test tubes caked with rust-colored deposits. Leng clearly hadn’t used the place in years. On the nearest table, one of the racks had rusted through, causing glassware to fall and shatter into pieces on the dark woodwork.

  Pendergast’s ragged steps went straight through this lab, without stopping, to a door on the far side. Fairhaven followed more quickly now, gun raised, steady pressure on the trigger. It’s time, he thought to himself as he approached the door. Time to finish this.

  And as he moved eagerly ahead into the next room, Pendergast’s weapon pointing the way, he was unaware of the small pair of eyes that watched him from the darkness behind a wall tapestry: eyes that, somehow, managed to appear both young and very old at the same time.

  ELEVEN

  AS HE ENTERED the room, Fairhaven immediately saw Pendergast: on his knees, head drooping, in a widening pool of blood. There was to be no more hiding, no more evading, no more clever dissembling.

  The man reminded Fairhaven of the way an animal died when gut-shot. It didn’t instantly keel over dead. Instead, it happened in stages. First, the animal stood there, shocked, trembling slightly. Then it slowly kneeled, holding the position for a minute or more, as if praying. Then its rear legs collapsed into a sitting position. And there it might remain for several minutes before suddenly rolling onto its side. The slow-motion ballet always ended with a spasm, that violent jerk of the legs at the moment of death.

  Pendergast was in the second stage. He could survive as much as a few more hours—helpless as a baby, of course. But he wasn’t going to live that long. The chase had been diverting, but pressing business remained upstairs. Smithback was spoiled by now, but the girl was waiting.

  The Surgeon approached Pendergast, gun hand extended, allowing himself to briefly savor the triumph. The clever, the diabolically cunning Special Agent Pendergast lay before him: stuporous, unresisting. Then he stepped back to give himself room for the final shot and, without much curiosity, raised his light to illuminate the r
oom. He wouldn’t want to spoil anything with his bullet, on the remote chance this room contained anything useful.

  He was amazed at what he saw. Yet another bizarre collection of Leng’s. Only this one was different. This was all weapons and armor. Swords, daggers, crossbows and bolts, harquebuses, lances, arrows, maces were mixed higgledy-piggledy with more modern guns, rifles, blackjacks, grenades, and rocket launchers. There were also medieval suits of armor, iron helmets, chain-mail, Crimean, Spanish-American, and World War I army helmets; early bulletproof vests and stacks of ammunition—a veritable arsenal, dating from Roman times to the early twentieth century.

  The Surgeon shook his head. The irony was incredible. If Pendergast had been able to get here a few minutes earlier, in better condition, he could have armed himself with enough firepower to fight off a battalion. The contest might have gone very differently. But as it was, he’d spent too much time browsing the earlier collections. He’d arrived here a little too late. Now he lay there in his own blood, half dead, lantern near his feet. Fairhaven barked a laugh, his voice ringing off the vaults, and raised the gun.

  The sound of laughter seemed to rouse the agent, who looked up at him, eyes glassy. “All I ask is that you make it quick,” he said.

  Don’t let him speak, the voice said. Just kill him.

  Fairhaven aimed the gun, placing Pendergast’s head squarely before the center dot of the tritium sights. A solid hit with a hollow-point bullet would effectively decapitate the FBI agent. It would be about as quick as you could get. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  And then something occurred to him.

  Quick was a lot more than Pendergast deserved. The man had caused him a lot of grief. Pendergast had dogged his trail; ruined his latest specimen; brought him anxiety and suffering at the very moment of triumph.

  As he stood over the agent, he felt a hatred rise within him; the hatred he had felt for the other one, Leng, who had looked so similar. The hatred he had felt for the trustees and professors of his medical school, who had refused to share his vision. Hatred for the pettiness and small-mindedness that kept people like him from achieving their true greatness.

  So Pendergast wanted it quick? Not with this arsenal at his disposal.

  He walked over to Pendergast and once again searched the unresisting man carefully, recoiling a little from the warm sticky blood that soaked his side. Nothing. The man had not been able to slip a weapon from the surrounding walls. In fact, he could see that Pendergast’s faltering footsteps led directly to the center of the room, where he had collapsed. But it would do to be careful. Pendergast, even in this pathetic state, was dangerous. If he tried to talk, it would be best to just shoot him. Words, in the mouth of this man, were subtle and pernicious.

  He looked around again, more carefully this time. There was every weapon imaginable on the walls. He had read histories of some of them, studied others in museums. The choice would prove amusing.

  The word fun came to mind.

  Always keeping Pendergast in his field of vision, Fairhaven shone his light around, finally selecting a bejeweled sword. He plucked it from the wall, hefted it, turned it around in the beam of the flashlight. It would have served his purpose, except it was rather heavy, and the blade was so rusty it looked as if it wouldn’t cut butter. Besides, the handle was sticky and unpleasant. He hung it back up on the shelf, wiping his hands on his surgical cloth.

  Pendergast was still sitting, watching him with pale, cloudy eyes. Fairhaven grinned. “Got any preferences?”

  There was no reply, but Fairhaven could see a look of profound distress cross the agent’s face.

  “That’s right, Agent Pendergast. ‘Quick’ is no longer in the cards.”

  A slight, terrified widening of the eyes was Pendergast’s only response. It was enough. The Surgeon felt a swell of satisfaction.

  He moved along the collections, picked up a dagger with a handle of gold and silver, turned it over, laid it down. Next to it was a helmet shaped like a man’s head, with spikes inside that you could screw closed, driving the spikes bit by bit through the skull. Too primitive, too messy. Hanging on the wall nearby was an oversized leather funnel. He’d heard of this: the torturer would jam it into the victim’s mouth, then pour water down the victim’s throat until the poor wretch either drowned or exploded. Exotic, but too time-consuming. Nearby was a large wheel on which people could be broken—too much trouble. A cat-o’-nine tails, studded with iron hooks. He hefted it, lashed it overhead, laid it back down, again wiping his hands. The stuff was filthy. All this junk had probably been hanging around in Leng’s dingy subbasement for more than a century.

  There had to be something here that would be suitable for his needs. And then his eye fell on an executioner’s axe.

  “What do you know?” said Fairhaven, his smile broadening. “Perhaps you’ll get your wish, after all.”

  He plucked the axe from its mounting hooks and gave it a few swings. The wooden shaft was almost five feet long, fitted with several rows of dull brass nails. It was heavy, but well balanced and sharp as a razor. It made a whistling noise as it cut through the air. Sitting below the axe was the second part of the executioner’s outfit: a tree stump, well worn and covered with a dark patina. A semicircle had been hollowed from it, clearly intended to receive the neck. It had been well used, as many chop marks attested. He set down the axe, rolled the block over to Pendergast, tipped it flat, positioned the block in front of the agent.

  Suddenly, Pendergast resisted, struggling feebly, and the Surgeon gave him a brutal kick in the side. Pendergast went rigid with pain, then abruptly fell limp. The Surgeon had a brief, unpleasant sensation of déjà vu, remembering how he had pushed Leng just a little too hard and ended up with a corpse. But no: Pendergast was still conscious. His eyes, though clouded with pain, remained open. He would be present and conscious when the axe fell. He knew what was coming. That was important to the Surgeon: very important.

  And now another thought occurred to him. He recalled how, when Anne Boleyn was to be put to death, she’d sent for a French executioner, skilled in the art of decapitating with a sword. It was a cleaner, quicker, surer death than an axe. She had knelt, head erect, with no unseemly block. And she had tipped the man well.

  The Surgeon hefted the axe in his hands. It seemed heavy, heavier than it had before. But surely he could swing it true. It would be an interesting challenge to do without the block.

  He shoved the block away with his foot. Pendergast was already kneeling as if he had arranged himself in position, hands limp at his sides, head drooping, helpless and resigned.

  “Your struggles cost you that quick death you asked for,” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll have it off in—oh—no more than two or three strokes. Either way, you’re about to experience something I’ve always wondered about. After the head goes rolling off, how long does the body remain conscious? Do you see the world spinning around as your head falls into the basket of sawdust? When the executioner raised the heads in Tower Yard, crying out ‘Behold the head of a traitor!,’ the eyes and lips continued to move. Did they actually see their own headless corpse?”

  He gave the axe a practice swing. Why was it so heavy? And yet he was enjoying drawing out this moment. “Did you know that Charlotte Corday, who was guillotined for assassinating Marat during the French Revolution, blushed after the assistant executioner slapped her severed head before the assembled crowd? Or how about the pirate captain who was caught and sentenced to death? They lined up his men in a row. And they told him that after he was beheaded, whichever men he managed to walk past would be reprieved. So they cut off his head as he stood, and wouldn’t you know it, but that headless captain began to walk along the row of men, one step at a time. The executioner was so upset that he wouldn’t have any more victims that he stuck out his foot and tripped the captain.”

  With this the Surgeon roared with laughter. Pendergast did not join in.

  “Ah well,” Fairhaven said. �
��I guess I’ll never know how long consciousness lasts after one has lost one’s head. But you will. Shortly.”

  He raised the axe over his right shoulder, like a bat, and took careful aim.

  “Give my regards to your great-grand-uncle,” he said, as he tensed his muscles to deliver the stroke.

  TWELVE

  NORA PILLOWED HER head on Smithback’s shoulder, tears seeping through her closed eyelids. She felt weak with despair. She had done all she could—and yet, all she could was not enough.

  And then, through the fog of grief, she realized something: the beeping of the EKG had steadied.

  She quickly raised her head, glanced at the monitors. Blood pressure had stabilized, and the pulse had risen slightly, to 60 beats per minute.

  She stood in the chill room, trembling. In the end, the saline solution had made the crucial difference. Thank you. Thank you.

  Smithback was still alive. But he was far from out of the woods. If she didn’t further replenish his fluid volume, he’d slip into shock.

  The saline bag was empty. She glanced around the room, spotted a small refrigerator, opened it. Inside were half a dozen liter bags of similar solution, feeder lines wrapped around them. She pulled one out, detached the old line from the catheter, removed the empty bag from the IV rack and tossed it aside, then hung the new bag and attached its line. She watched the fluid dribble rapidly down the clear tube. Throughout, Smithback’s vital signs remained weak but stable. With any luck, he’d make it—if she could get him out of here and to a hospital.

  She examined the gurney. It was on wheels, but detachable. There were straps. If she could find a way out of the basement, she just might be able to drag the gurney up a flight of stairs. It was worth a try.

  She searched through the nearby cabinets, pulled out half a dozen green surgical sheets, and covered Smithback with them. She plucked a medical light from one of the cabinets, slipped it into her pocket. She gave another glance at the monitors at the head of the operating table, another look into the dark opening that led down into darkness. It was from there that the sound of the second shot had come. But the way out of the house lay up, not down. She hated to leave Smithback, if only for a moment, but it was vital he get real medical attention as soon as possible.