The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(138)

“So it’s you who tortured and killed Enoch Leng. I wondered who the impostor was. I am surprised. I do not like surprises, but there it is.”

The man aimed the gun carefully.

“You’re already holding my weapon,” said Pendergast, showing his hands. “I’m unarmed.” He continued leaning casually against the wall.

The man tightened his finger on the trigger. He felt a second unpleasant sensation: internal conflict. Pendergast was a very dangerous man. It would no doubt be best to pull the trigger now and have done with it. But by shooting now, he would ruin a specimen. Besides, he needed to know how Pendergast had escaped. And then, there was the girl to consider…

“But it begins to make sense,” Pendergast resumed. “Yes, I see it now. You’re building that skyscraper on Catherine Street. You didn’t just discover those bodies by accident. No—you were looking for those bodies, weren’t you? You already knew that Leng had buried them there, 130 years ago. And how did you learn about them? Ah, it all falls into place: your interest in the Museum, your visits to the Archives. You were the one who examined the Shottum material before Dr. Kelly. No wonder it was all in such disarray—you’d already removed anything you felt useful. But you didn’t know about Tinbury McFadden, or the elephant’s-foot box. Instead, you first learned about Leng and his work, about his lab notebooks and journals, from Shottum’s personal papers. But when you ultimately tracked down Leng, and found him alive, he wasn’t as talkative as you would have liked. He didn’t give you the formula. Even under torture, did he? So you had to fall back on what Leng had left behind: his victims, his lab, perhaps his journals, buried beneath Shottum’s Cabinet. And the only way to get to those was to buy the land, tear down the brownstones above, and dig a foundation for a new building.” Pendergast nodded, almost to himself. “Dr. Kelly mentioned missing pages in the Archives logbook; pages removed with a razor. Those pages were the ones with your name on them, correct? And the only one who knew you had been a frequent visitor to the Archives was Puck. So he had to die. Along with those who were already on your own trail: Dr. Kelly, Sergeant O’Shaughnessy, myself. Because the closer we came to finding Leng, the closer we came to finding you.”

A pained expression came over the agent’s face. “How could I have been so obtuse not to see it? It should have become clear when I first saw Leng’s corpse. When I realized Leng had been tortured to death before the Catherine Street bodies were found.”

Fairhaven did not smile. The chain of deduction was astonishingly accurate. Just kill him, a voice in his head said.

“What is it the Arab sages call death?” Pendergast went on. “The destroyer of all earthly pleasures. And how true it is: old age, sickness, and at last death comes to us all. Some console themselves with religion, others through denial, others through philosophy or mere stoicism. But to you, who had always been able to buy everything, death must have seemed a dreadful injustice.”

The image of his older brother, Arthur, came unbidden to the Surgeon’s mind: dying of progeria, his young face withered with senile keratoses, his limbs twisted, his skin cracked with hideously premature age. The fact that the disease was so rare, its causes so unknown, had been no comfort. Pendergast didn’t know everything. Nor would he.

He forced the image from his mind. Just kill the man. But somehow his hand would not act—not yet, not until he had heard more.

Pendergast nodded toward the still form on the table. “You’re never going to get there that way, Mr. Fairhaven. Leng’s skills were infinitely more refined than yours. You will never succeed.”

Not true, Fairhaven thought to himself. I have already succeeded. I am Leng as he should have been. Only through me can Leng’s work attain its truest perfection…

“I know,”Pendergast said. “You’re thinking I’m wrong. You believe you have succeeded. But you have not succeeded, and you never will. Ask yourself: Do you feel any different? Do you feel any revivification of the limbs, any quickening of the life essence? If you’re honest with yourself, you can still feel the terrible weight of time pressing on you; that awful, relentless, bodily corruption that is happening constantly to us all.” He smiled thinly, wearily, as if he knew the feeling all too well. “You see, you’ve made one fatal mistake.”

The Surgeon said nothing.

“The truth is,” Pendergast said, “you don’t know the first thing about Leng, or his real work. Work for which life extension was just a means to an end.”

Years of self-discipline, of high-level corporate brinksmanship, had taught Fairhaven never to reveal anything: not in the facial expression, not in the questions asked. Yet the sudden stab of surprise he felt, followed immediately by disbelief, was hard to conceal. What real work? What was Pendergast talking about?

He would not ask. Silence was always the best mode of questioning. If you remained silent, they always talked out the answer in the end. It was human nature.

But this time it was Pendergast who remained silent. He simply stood there, leaning almost insolently against the doorframe, glancing around at the walls of the chamber. The silence stretched on, and the man began to think of his resource, lying there on the gurney. Gun on Pendergast, he glanced briefly at the vitals. Good, but starting to flag. If he didn’t get back to work soon, the specimen would be spoiled.