The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(67)

His shirt had been torn open, exposing his hairy torso, in the middle of which yawned a hole the size of a pie plate. Protruding from the hole’s jagged lip was a portion of his dislodged heart, partially ripped from its moorings and missing large bite-size chunks.

It was the heart that drew Warthrop’s attention. He knelt beside the body, heedless of the tacky blood, to examine it.

“The nurse found him around seven o’clock this morning,” said Byrnes.

“Where have you taken Chanler?” the doctor asked, not turning from his task.

“I haven’t taken him anywhere. Dr. Chanler is gone.”

“Gone?” Warthrop looked up at him sharply. “What do you mean—gone where?”

“I was hoping you could help with the answer to that question.”

The door flew open, and von Helrung hurried into the room, his wide face flushed, hair flying willy-nilly around his square head.

“Pellinore! Thank God, you are here. Oh, this is terrible. Terrible!”

The doctor rose, his pants now soaked in Skala’s blood. “Von Helrung, where is John?”

“Dr. Chanler has disappeared,” said Byrnes before von Helrung could answer. He nodded toward the shattered window. “We think through there.”

Warthrop stepped over to the window and looked down four stories to the ground below. “Impossible,” he murmured.

“The door was locked from the inside,” Byrnes rumbled. “Chanler is gone. There is no other explanation.”

“The laws of nature demand another, Inspector,” snapped the doctor. “Unless you propose that he sprouted wings and flew away.”

Byrnes glanced at von Helrung, and then curtly told his men to wait outside, leaving the four of us alone with the remains of Augustin Skala.

“Dr. von Helrung has informed me of the particulars of Dr. Chanler’s case.”

Warthrop threw up his hands and said, “John Chanler is suffering from the mental and physical effects of a particular dementia, Inspector, called the Wendigo Psychosis. It has a well-documented history in the literature—”

“Yes, he mentioned this Wendigo business.”

“It is finished,” von Helrung put in gravely. “He has gone fully to Outiko now.”

Warthrop groaned. “Inspector, I beg you not to listen to this man. I appeal to your reason. What man—much less a man in John Chanler’s condition—could withstand a fall from a four-story window without suffering such injuries as to make escape impossible?”

“I’m not a doctor. All I know is that he’s missing and that window was the only way out.”

“He rides the high wind now,” pronounced von Helrung.

“Shut up!” cried Warthrop, jabbing his index finger in the older man’s face. “You may have enlisted Byrnes in this madness, but I will have no part of it.” He turned to Byrnes. “I wish to speak with the nurse.”

“She has gone home for the day,” answered Byrnes. “She is quite shaken, as you might imagine.”

“He must have walked out. . . .”

“Then he made himself invisible,” countered the chief inspector. “There’s always a nurse on this floor, and doctors and orderlies going about besides. He would have been seen.”

“There have been some eyewitness accounts of—,” von Helrung began.

“Not . . . another . . . word,” Warthrop growled at his old master. He turned back to Byrnes. “Very well. I will allow for the moment that he somehow managed to endure the fall without losing the ability to ambulate. I assume you have men searching for him; he could not have gotten far in his condition.”

A man came into the room at that moment—around von Helrung’s age but taller and more athletic of build, well-dressed in a tailcoat and top hat, with piercing eyes and a thrust-forward chin.

“Warthrop!” he cried, marching straight to the doctor and striking him with the back of his hand.

The doctor touched the corner of his mouth and found blood. The blow had opened up his bottom lip.

“Archibald,” he said. “Delighted to see you again too.”

“You brought him here!” John Chanler’s father shouted. The sole policeman in the room did not try to intervene; he seemed to be enjoying the show.

“This is a hospital,” replied the doctor. “The usual spot for the sick and injured.”

“And your spot as well when I’m finished with you! How dare you, sir! You had no right!”

“Don’t speak to me of rights,” Warthrop shot back. “Your son had the right to live.”

The elder Chanler snorted angrily and whirled on Inspector Byrnes. “I want him found posthaste, with as little fuss and bother as possible, Detective. The quicker this matter is resolved, the better. And under no circumstances are you or anyone in your department to speak to the press. I will not have the Chanler name dragged through the muckraking penny dailies!”

Byrnes concurred with a brief nod, his lips curling around the dead stogie with disgust. “I’ll shoot any man who even whispers the name, sir.”

Chanler confronted the doctor again, saying, “I am holding you fully responsible, Warthrop. I’ve already spoken to my attorneys about your unconscionable negligence in regard to my son’s treatment, and I can assure you, sir, there will be a reckoning. There will be reparations paid!”