The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(81)

He screamed into my face, “Your precious doctor’s going to hang. It’s over for him—and for you unless you talk!”

He bellowed, “Do you think we’re fools, boy? Is that what you think? You think we don’t know about the Mountie and that French Canuck? How he killed one to hide the fact that he’d killed the other? You think we’re ignorant, boy? And that fat Bohemian at Bellevue—you really believe some ninety-pound weakling stole his knife and gutted him like a pig? What fools do you take us for? Your doctor knows his way around the body, don’t he? He’s cut up his fair share of ‘specimens,’ ain’t he? Knows how to cut ’em up good, just like he cut off that black butler’s face and hung it on the old lady, right?”

Graduating next to hard slaps to my cheeks, delivered as a kind of exclamation point. “Don’t you think we know his game?” Slap! “‘Oh, it ain’t me; it’s some monster that’s doin’ it!’” Slap! “Then he takes his knife to his ladylove, don’t he? Don’t he?”

Then towering behind me, yanking my head back by a fistful of hair and shoving his flushed pockmarked face into mine. “You want to see him before he hangs? Huh?” Pulling so hard I could hear the roots ripping free from my scalp.

“You start talkin’, you miserable pup. You was with him; you saw it. Say you saw it. Say it!”

He slammed his fist into my solar plexus. I folded over in the chair and fell into a miserable ball on the concrete floor. O’Brien leisurely stepped over my writhing body and knocked once upon the door.

Two strong arms lifted me from the cold floor. I found myself enfolded in Byrnes’s arm, pulled tightly to his chest. His large hands caressed me and wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“There, there, boy,” murmured the chief inspector. “It’ll all be over soon.”

I could not speak. I brought my hand to my mouth and sucked on my knuckles like a squalling babe.

“It ain’t fair what that man’s put you through. Why, it just makes me sick, thinking how much hurt he’s done. And not just to you, Will. . . . I should’ve showed you. I should’ve showed you what he did to that poor lady—that poor, beautiful lady, Will! Do you want to know what he did, Will? You want to know what your doctor’s done?”

I shook my head fiercely.

He told me anyway.

And then: “All’s you got to do is say it, Will,” he said. “Say you saw it. You saw him do it.”

“No.”

“You want to see him, don’t you? You can. All’s you got to do is tell me you were with him and you saw it.”

“I—I was with him.”

“Good boy.”

“I’m always with him.”

“That’s the lad.”

“I—I am with him.”

“And you saw . . .”

“And I saw . . .”

I was shaking uncontrollably in the warmth of his embrace. I had seen . . . but what had I seen? A dead man straining toward the indifferent sky. The ruins of God’s temple impaled upon a tree. I had seen the yellow eye and the emerald eye, the desolation and the abundance . . . what had been given and what was still owing. There was the heart cradled in the monstrumologist’s hands. There was the brilliant smile of the one who had danced with me, and there was the jagged teeth of the one who had ferried me into the golden light.

“What did you see, William Henry?”

TWENTY-FOUR

“He Wanted Me to See”

I was taken to a holding room—not precisely a cell, since there were no bars anywhere, but close enough. There was a cot, a washstand, and a very narrow window of frosted glass that filtered the weakened autumn sun into a kind of mockery of light, light’s emaciated cousin. I threw myself upon the cot and fell almost immediately into a deep sleep—so deep, in fact, that it took Connolly several hard shakes to wake me.

“You have a visitor, Will.”

I must have been staring uncomprehendingly at him, for he said it again, smiling reassuringly all the while, a friendly hand upon my shoulder.

“Take your hands off him!” I heard a familiar voice cry. “He’s had quite enough of your department’s hospitality, my good sir!”

Von Helrung jostled Connolly out of the way and crouched beside me. He cupped my face in his pudgy hands and stared intently into my eyes.

“Will . . . Will,” he murmured. “What have these animals done to you?”

He swept me up into his arms with surprising vigor and swung round, kicking open the door with his foot and marching out, a panicky Connolly trailing behind us like an abandoned puppy.

“Doctor von Helrung, sir, I don’t think you’re allowed to do this,” huffed Connolly.

“Watch, and you will see what I am allowed to do!” von Helrung roared over his shoulder.

“Inspector Byrnes left strict orders—”

“And you may take the orders of Herr Inspector Byrnes and stick them up your wide Irish arse!”

He had reached the front doors. I could see the glare of the bawdy houses glimmering across Mulberry Street. He might have made good his escape then—his bluster had frozen the half dozen or so personnel in their tracks—but he could not resist a final parting shot across the bow.