The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(152)

She turned the light away from the obscene spectacle, feeling sick. Worse even than the loathsome sight was her sudden recognition. It had come to her in a flash, when the bloated eye had fixed on hers: she knew this man. As grotesquely malformed as it now was, she remembered seeing that distinctive face before, so powerful, so self-confident, emerging from the back of a limousine outside the Catherine Street digsite.

The shock nearly took her breath away. She looked with horror at the figure’s retreating back. What had the Surgeon done to him? Was there anything she could do to help?

Even as the thought came to her, she realized the man was far beyond help. She lowered the flashlight from the grotesque form as it shuffled slowly, aimlessly away from her, back toward a room beyond the lab.

She thrust the light forward. And then, in the edge of the flashlight’s beam, she made out Pendergast.

He was in the next room, lying on his side, blood pooling on the ground below him. He looked dead. Nearby, a large, rusted axe lay on the floor. Beyond it was an upended executioner’s block.

Suppressing a cry, she ran through the connecting archway and knelt before him. To her surprise, the FBI agent opened his eyes.

“What happened?” she cried. “Are you all right?”

Pendergast smiled weakly. “Never better, Dr. Kelly.”

She flashed her light at the pool of blood, at the crimson stain that covered his shirtfront. “You’re been hurt!”

Pendergast looked at her, his pale eyes cloudy. “Yes. I’m afraid I’ll need your help.”

“But what happened? Where’s the Surgeon?”

Pendergast’s eyes seem to clear a little. “Didn’t you see him, ah, walk past?”

“What? The man covered with sores? Fairhaven? He’s the killer? ”

Pendergast nodded.

“Jesus! What happened to him?”

“Poisoned.”

“How?”

“He picked up several of the objects in this room. Take care not to follow his example. Everything you see here is an experimental poison-delivery system. When he handled the various weapons, Fairhaven absorbed quite a cocktail of poisons through his skin: neurotoxins and other fast-acting systemics, no doubt.”

He grasped her hand with his own, slippery with blood. “Smithback?”

“Alive.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Leng had started to operate.”

“I know. Is he stable?”

“Yes, but I don’t know for how long. We’ve got to get him—and you—to a hospital right away.”

Pendergast nodded. “There’s an acquaintance of mine, a doctor, who can arrange everything.”

“How are we going to get out of here?”

Pendergast’s gun lay on the ground nearby, and he reached for it, grimacing a little. “Help me up, please. I need to get back to the operating room, to check on Smithback and stop my own bleeding.”

She helped the agent to his feet. Pendergast stumbled a little, leaning heavily on her arm. “Shine your light on our friend a moment, if you please,” he said.

The Fairhaven-thing was shuffling along one wall of the room. He ran into a large wooden cabinet, stopped, backed up, came forward again, as if unable to negotiate the obstacle. Pendergast gazed at the thing for a moment, then turned away.

“He’s no longer a threat,” he murmured. “Let’s get back upstairs, as quickly as possible.”

They retraced their steps back through the chambers of the subbasement, Pendergast stopping periodically to rest. Slowly, painfully, they mounted the stairs.

In the operating room, Smithback lay on the table, still unconscious. Nora scanned the monitors quickly: the vitals remained weak, but steady. The liter bag of saline was almost empty, and she replaced it with a third. Pendergast bent over the journalist, drew back the covers, and examined him. After a few moments, he stepped back.

“He’ll survive,” he said simply.

Nora felt a huge sense of relief.

“Now I’m going to need some help. Help me get my jacket and shirt off.”

Nora untied the jacket around Pendergast’s midsection, then helped him remove his shirt, exposing a ragged hole in his abdomen, thickly encrusted in blood. More blood was dripping from his shattered elbow.

“Roll that tray of surgical instruments this way,” he said, gesturing with his good hand.

Nora rolled the tray over. She could not help but notice that his torso, although slender, was powerfully muscled.

“Grab those clamps over there, too, please.” Pendergast swabbed the blood away from the abdominal wound, then irrigated it with Betadine.

“Don’t you want something for the pain? I know there’s some—”

“No time.”Pendergast dropped the bloody gauze to the floor and angled the overhead light toward the wound in his abdomen. “I have to tie off these bleeders before I grow any weaker.”

Nora watched him inspect the wound.

“Shine that light a little lower, would you? There, that’s good. Now, if you’d hand me that clamp?”

Although Nora had a strong stomach, watching Pendergast probe his own abdomen made her feel distinctly queasy. After a moment he laid down the clamp, took up a scalpel, and made a short cut perpendicular to the wound.