The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(24)

“Well, it certainly matches the descriptions in the literature,” he told me, “scant and imprecise as those may be. It could be the ovum of a T. cerrejonensis. Certainly not a crocodile or turtle egg—much too big for one of those. Definitely reptilian. Perhaps a distant cousin, the giant anaconda or boa, but, again, the size rules them out. Well! In this instance we must rely upon the old adage that time will tell.” He straightened and pushed the loupe onto the top of his head. His cheeks were flushed. He did not know for certain what he had, but at the same time he knew. “We shall nurture it, keep it warm and well insulated, and see what emerges in a few weeks’ time.”

“Just in time for the annual congress,” I pointed out. “It obliges you, Doctor.”

He stiffened slightly. “I am not sure what you mean by that.”

“The last of its kind,” I said. “As if your cap didn’t already have enough feathers!”

“Do you know, Will Henry, for about a year now, whenever you make a remark like that, I cannot decide if you are praising me or mocking me or both.”

“I am acknowledging the obvious, sir,” I said.

“Usually the purview of politicians and novelists. I would suggest you avoid it.”

He returned the egg to its bower of straw and for the next thirty minutes fussed with the small heat lamp, using a thermometer to measure the ambient temperature near the surface of the egg.

“We must keep close watch,” Warthrop said. “Check it upon the hour until it’s ready to hatch, and then we cannot leave it unattended. For our protection as well as its own. At least two others know of its existence and location, perhaps more. Should intelligence of our find fall upon the wrong ears . . . it could pose a greater danger than the thing itself.”

He was speaking to me but looking at “the thing itself.”

“Its venom is the most toxic on record, five times as potent as that of Hydrophis belcheri. A drop that would fit upon the head of a pin is enough to kill a grown man.”

I whistled. “No wonder it is so valuable. You could wipe out an entire army with a cupful. . . .”

He shook his head and chuckled ruefully. “And thus our own natures determine our conclusions.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is valuable not for what it takes away, Will Henry. It is valuable for what it gives.”

“That was my point, Doctor.”

“Death as something one gives?”

“And receives. It is both.”

Still smiling: “I really have failed, haven’t I?” He looked back at the egg. “Take that same pinhead-size drop. Dilute it in a ten percent solution. It may be injected directly into the vein, or some prefer to soak tobacco in it and ingest it through a pipe. The effect, I hear, is indescribably euphoric—orgasmic, for lack of a better word. One dose—one puff—is sufficient to leave the user more hopelessly ensnared than the most hopeless opium addict. It is irrevocable, like the fruit from Eden’s tree: Once it’s tasted, there is no going back. More begets the desire for more—and more, and more—until the brain has rewired itself. The body needs it as the lungs need air or the cells glucose.”

I saw it immediately. A supplier of this überopium would become very rich, very quickly. Richer than all the richest robber barons combined, Warthrop had said. Maeterlinck had not been lying: His client’s asking price was ridiculously low—suspiciously so, to my mind.

“There is something foul here,” I said. “If this client of Maeterlinck’s was willing to practically give it away . . .”

“Very astute of you, Will Henry. Perhaps I am premature in my assessment. Yes, the price was much too low if he understood what he had—and much too high if he didn’t!”

“Unless Maeterlinck never intended to let you have it. You were to be used to verify its authenticity.”

“And what purpose would that serve? All he had to do was wait for it to hatch, harvest the venom, and—if you’ll pardon the expression—give it a shot.”

“Whoever hired him knows you, or knows of you. . . .”

He crossed his arms and threw back his head, considering me down the length of his patrician nose. “And? What does that tell you?”

“There is a motive here beyond profit.”

“Excellent, Mr. Henry! It is true: I must reevaluate to the last premise my conclusions about your acumen. But what could that motive be?” He held up his hand as my mouth came open. “I have a few thoughts along those lines, which I will hold in abeyance for now. Far too many serve the cakes before they’re fully baked.”

I frowned. “Is that a quote from somewhere?”

He laughed. “It is now.”

The vigil lasted nearly a month. As the “big day” approached, his anxiety grew—along with his beard and hair—and his appetite withered. He hovered over the egg for hours, fiddling with the lamp, rearranging the straw, listening to the developing life inside its leathery cocoon through the stethoscope. My major duties, excluding the usual ones of cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping, answering letters, and the like, included keeping watch by the basement door, the doctor’s loaded revolver always by my side. He started at every little noise, slept no more than thirty minutes at a stretch, and generally devolved from philosopher of aberrant biology into a surrogate mother. More than once, when I dragged myself down the stairs to check on him, I would find Warthrop perched upon his stool in a semistupor, resting his chin on his palm, half-shut eyes fixed upon the thing in the straw.