The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(12)

“Why not speak to him now? I will wait. . . .”

“Oh, not now. I’ll have to let him cool down a bit. He’s got his dander up. In his current mood you couldn’t convince him the sky was blue.”

“I suppose . . .” He rubbed his quivering hand over his lips. “I suppose I could bring it here for him to have a look, but what assurances . . . ?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Your instincts were quite right not to bring it here—if it is as valuable as you say. This place is watched, you know, by all sorts of rough characters. The house of Warthrop is known to attract unsavory business—not that your business is unsavory; that’s not what I meant. . . .”

His eyes were wide. “I must tell you, I didn’t even know what monstrumology was a fortnight ago.”

“Maeterlinck.” I smiled. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in it for more than five years and I still am not entirely certain. In an hour, then, at the Publick. I shall meet you in the drawing room—”

“Best if we meet privately,” he whispered, now my coconspirator. “Room thirteen.”

“Ah. Lucky thirteen. If we aren’t there in an hour, you may assume we are not coming. And then you must do what your conscience and your business interests dictate.”

“They are not mutually exclusive,” he said with great pride. “I am no swindler, Mr. Henry!”

And I am no fool, I thought.

THREE

While Warthrop fumed and pouted in the library, nursing his wounded pride and wrestling with the one adversary that ever threatened to undo him—self-doubt—I gathered my supplies for the expedition, loading them into my jacket pocket, where they fit nicely with no untoward bulges. Then I brewed another pot of tea and carried it into the library, setting the tray before him on the large table, over which he slouched, paging through the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Bestia, the authoritative compendium of all creatures mean and nasty. Muttering under his breath. Running restless fingers through his thick hair until it framed his lean face like the halo of a byzantine icon. He flinched when I set the tray down and said, “What is this?”

“I thought you might like another cup.”

“Cup?”

“Of tea.”

“Tea. Will Henry, the last known specimen of T. cerrejonensis was killed by a coal miner in 1801. The species is extinct.”

“A charlatan who let his avarice get the better of him. You were right to throw him out, sir.”

I dropped two sugars into his tea and gave it a swirl.

“Do you know I once paid six thousand dollars for the phalanges of an Immundus matertera?” he asked. There was an uncharacteristic pleading tone in his voice. “It isn’t as if I’m above paying for the furtherance of human knowledge.”

“I’m not familiar with the species,” I confessed. “Say he actually did have a living specimen. Would it be worth his asking price?”

“How can one put a price on something like that? It would be beyond price.”

“In the furtherance-of-human-knowledge sense or . . . ?”

“In nearly every sense.” He sighed. “There is a reason it was hunted to extinction, Will Henry.”

“Ah.”

“What does that mean, ‘ah’? Why do you say ‘ah’ like that?”

“I take it to mean a reason beyond the usual one of eradicating a threat to life and limb.”

He shook his head at me. “Where did I fail? Maeterlinck—if that’s his real name, which I doubt—spoke true about one thing: an actual living specimen of T. cerrejonensis would have the potential to make its captor richer than all the robber barons combined.”

“Really! Then a million is not so outlandish an asking price.”

He stiffened. “It would be, in all likelihood, the last of its kind.”

“I see.”

“Clearly you do not. You know next to nothing about the matter, and I would appreciate it if you dropped it and never brought it up again.”

“But if there is even a possibility that—”

“What have I said that you fail to understand? You ask questions when you should be quiet and hold your tongue when you should ask!” He slammed the hefty book closed. The attending wallop was loud as a thunderclap. “I wish my father were alive. If my father were alive, I would apologize to him for failing to understand the Solomon-like wisdom of shipping off a teenager until he’s fully grown! Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Yes,” I replied calmly. “I must go to the market before it closes. The larder is completely bare.”

“I am not hungry,” he snapped with a dismissive wave.

“Perhaps not. I, however, am famished.”

FOUR

The Publick House was the finest establishment of its kind in town. With its well-appointed rooms and attentive staff, the inn was a favorite gathering place and stopover point for wealthy travelers on their way east along the Boston Post Road. John Adams had slept there, or so the proprietor claimed.

Number 13 was located at the end of the first-floor hall, the last room on the left. Maeterlinck’s practiced but entirely genuine smile quickly faded when he realized I had come alone.

“But where is Dr. Warthrop?”