The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(18)

Waste, Will Henry, waste.

I dropped the brass knuckles and knife into my pocket and crouched close to the floor, and the light from the gas jets flung my shadow over the body.

When presented with a problem, look for the simplest solution first; that is always the route nature takes.

He had not expected the blow, obviously. His back had been turned. His killer had crept up unawares or betrayed him—either a competitor or a mutinous cohort, or perhaps more than one. The find was, as Maeterlinck said, a prize for which wealthy men might sacrifice their fortunes and desperate men their very souls.

TWO

Von Helrung understood that too.

“Congratulations are in order, of course, mein guter Freund,” he gruffed, clipping off the tip of his Havana cigar. It was the evening before his niece and I would flee the dance. “Any other natural philosopher, who presented a living specimen of T. cerrejonensis, even if he was a distinguished member of our Society, would be tossed out of the assembly as a charlatan and profiteer.”

“How fortunate, then, that I am not any other—or either,” Warthrop replied dryly. We were lounging in the well-appointed sitting room of the Zeno Club, where gentlemen of like-minded philosophical outlooks gathered to share a glass of port over quiet conversation or simply to enjoy the languid atmosphere of a vanishing age: the age of reasoned discourse by serious men. We were but two decades away from a worldwide conflagration that would claim thirty-seven million lives. The fire was warm, the chairs comfortable, the carpet lush, the waiters obsequiously attentive. Warthrop had his tea and scones, von Helrung his sherry and cigar, and I my Coca-Cola and cookies. It was like the old days, except I was no longer a boy and von Helrung no longer old, but tending toward ancient. Hair thinner, face paler, stubby fingers not quite as steady. But his eyes still gleamed bird bright, and he had lost none of his acumen—or his humanity. The same could not be said of me.

He’s going to die soon, I decided as I sat silently listening to their conversation. He won’t live out the year. When he spoke or took the smallest breath, you could hear the death rattle deep in his barrel chest. I could feel it when he wrapped his short arms around my waist and pressed his snowy white mane against me: the life force fading, the heat leaching through his vest like the earth’s heat fading into the desert sunset.

“Dear Will, how you have grown, and in the passing of but a year!” he exclaimed when he saw me. He looked up into my face intently. “Pellinore must have finally decided to feed you!” He chuckled at his own joke, and then grew very serious. “But what is it, Will? I can see that your heart is troubled. . . .”

“There is nothing troubling me, Meister Abram.”

“No?” He was frowning. Something in my expression—or perhaps lack thereof—seemed to bother him.

“No, of course not,” snapped the monstrumologist. “Why should anything be troubling Will Henry?”

“I worry, though,” the old Austrian said now, after rolling the tip of the cigar upon his flattened tongue. “On the matter of security . . .”

“I have placed it in the Locked Room,” Warthrop answered. He sipped his tea. “I suppose we could station an armed guard at the door.”

Von Helrung lit his cigar and waved away the plume of bluish smoke. “I speak of your presentation to the colloquium. The less who know of the find for now, the better. A private gathering of our most trusted colleagues.”

Warthrop stared at him from over his cup. “The general assembly is closed to the public, Meister Abram.”

“Pellinore, you know there is none dearer to me than you, unless it is young Will here, such a fine young man, such a tribute to your, may I say, paternal guidance and affection . . .”

I nearly choked on my cola. Paternal guidance and affection!

“. . . so there is no one who understands better your desire to place your name in the firmament of scientific achievement. . . .”

“I do not labor—nor have I suffered—to advance my reputation above the advancement of human knowledge, von Helrung,” the doctor said with a perfectly straight face. “But I do understand your concern. If news of a living T. cerrejonensis reaches certain quarters, we might expect a bit of trouble.”

Von Helrung nodded. He seemed relieved that my master understood the central dilemma. The most astounding discovery in a generation, one that held theory-altering implications not just for aberrant biology but for all the natural sciences, including key tenets of evolution—and it must be kept secret!

“Ach, if only this broker who brought it to you had revealed the name of his client!” cried von Helrung. “For this mysterious personage knows you, knows as well as Maeterlinck that the prize now rests in the possession of a certain Pellinore Warthrop of 425 Harrington Lane! I do not exaggerate, mein Freund. You have been in no greater peril in all your dangerous career. This, your greatest prize, may also be your undoing.”

Warthrop stiffened. “My ‘undoing,’ as you call it, must come sometime, von Helrung. Better that it comes at the height of my career than in the last bitter dregs of it.”

Von Helrung puffed on his cigar and watched his former pupil down the final drops of his tea.

“It may yet,” he murmured. “It may yet.”

THREE

The last bitter dregs of it.

Nineteen years after uttering those words, he was sitting at the foot of his bed wrapped in a towel. I could count every rib in his bony chest, and with his wet hair and haggard features he reminded me, for some reason, of one of Macbeth’s witches. Fair is foul and foul is fair!