The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(144)

Once again, motionless in the dark, Pendergast reviewed how his plans had miscarried; how he had miscalculated. From the beginning, he had known this would be the most difficult case of his career. But what he had not anticipated were his own psychological shortcomings. He had cared too much; the case had become too important to him. It had colored his judgment, crippled his objectivity. And now for the first time he realized that there was a possibility—indeed, a high probability—of failure. And failure meant not only his own death—which was inconsequential—but also the deaths of Nora, Smithback, and many other innocent people in the future.

Pendergast paused to explore the wound with his hand. The bleeding was growing worse. He slipped off his jacket and tied it as tightly as he could around his lower torso. Then he uncloaked the lantern and, once again, held it briefly aloft.

He was in a smaller room now, and he was surprised at what he found. Instead of more chemical compounds, the tiny space was crowded with cases of birds, stuffed with cotton. Migrating birds. All arranged taxonomically. A superb collection, even including a suite of now-extinct passenger pigeons. But how did this collection fit with the rest? Pendergast felt staggered. He knew, deep down, that all this fit together, was part of some great plan. But what plan?

He stumbled on, jostling his wound as little as possible, into the next room. He lifted his light once again, and this time froze in utter astonishment.

Here was a collection entirely different from the others. The lantern revealed a bizarre aggregation of clothing and accessories, arrayed on dressmaker’s dummies and in cases along both walls: rings, collars, hats, fountain pens, umbrellas, dresses, gloves, shoes, watches, necklaces, cravats—all carefully preserved and arranged as if in a museum, but this time with no apparent systemization. It seemed very unlike Leng, this haphazard collection from the past two thousand years, from all over the world. What did a nineteenth-century Parisian man’s white kid glove have to do with a medieval gorget? And what did a pair of ancient Roman earrings have to do with an English umbrella, or to the Rolex watch sitting next to it, or to the flapper-era high-heeled shoes beside that? Pendergast moved painfully forward. Against the far wall, in another case, were door handles of all kinds—none holding the slightest aesthetic or artistic interest—beside a row of eighteenth-century men’s powdered wigs.

Pendergast hid the lantern, pondering. It was an utterly bizarre collection of commonplace objects, none of them particularly distinguished, arranged without regard to period or category. Yet here they were, preserved in cases as if they were the most precious objects in the world.

As he stood in the dark, listening to the drip of his blood against the stone floor, Pendergast wondered for the first time if Leng had not, in the end, gone mad. This certainly seemed the last collection of a madman. Perhaps, as he prolonged his life, the brain had deteriorated even while the body had not. This grotesque collection made no sense.

Pendergast shook his head. Once again, he was reacting emotionally, allowing his judgment to be affected by feelings of familial guilt. Leng had not gone mad. No madman could have assembled the collections he had just passed through, perhaps the greatest collection of chemicals, inorganic and organic, the world had ever seen. The tawdry objects in this room were related. There was a systematic arrangement here, if only he could see it. The key to Leng’s project was here. He had to understand what Leng was doing, and why. Otherwise…

Then he heard the scrape of a foot on stone, saw the beam of Fairhaven’s flashlight lance over him. Suddenly, the small red dot of a laser appeared on the front of his shirt. He threw himself sideways just as the crash of the gun sounded in the confined space.

He felt the bullet strike his right elbow, a sledgehammer blow that knocked him off his feet. He lay on the ground for a moment, as the laser licked through the dusty air. Then he rolled to his feet and limped forward, ducking from case to case as he crossed the room.

He had allowed himself to become distracted by the strange collection; he had neglected to listen for Fairhaven’s approach. Once again, he had failed. With this thought came the realization that, for the first time, he was about to lose.

He took another step forward, cradling his shattered elbow. The bullet seemed to have passed above the medial supracondlar ridge and exited near the coronoid process of the ulna. It would aggravate the blood loss, render him incapable of resistance. He must get to the next room. Each room had its own clues, and perhaps the next would reveal Leng’s secret. But as he moved a wave of dizziness hit him, followed by a stab of nausea. He swayed, steadied himself.

Using the reflected light of Fairhaven’s searching beam, he ducked beneath an archway into the next room. The exertion of the fall, the shock of the second bullet, had drained the last of his energy, and the heavy curtain of unconsciousness drew ever closer. He leaned back against the inside wall, breathing hard, eyes wide against the darkness.

The flashlight beam stabbed abruptly through the archway, then flicked away again. In its brief illumination, Pendergast saw the glitter of glass; rows of beakers and retorts; columnar distillation setups rising like city spires above long worktables.

He had penetrated Enoch Leng’s secret lab.





EIGHT




NORA STOOD OVER THE METAL TABLE, HER GAZE MOVING FROM THE monitoring machines to Smithback’s pallid form, then back again. She had removed the retractors, cleaned and dressed the wound as best she could. The bleeding had finally stopped. But the damage was already done. The blood pressure machine continued to sound its dire warning. She glanced toward the saline bag: it was almost empty, but the catheter was small, and even at maximum volume it would be difficult to replenish lost fluids quickly enough.