The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(9)

I will not say my descent was eager, but it was swift and not entirely owing to my sense of duty. I did want to see what was in that box. Dreaded it and desired it. More than anything else, dread and desire were my chief inheritance from the monstrumologist.

I caught the word “Magnificent!” as I came down. The doctor was bent over his worktable with his back toward me, hiding the open box from view. The twine and brown paper wrapping, hastily ripped away, lay in a wad on the floor. The bottom step whispered the smallest of groans beneath my foot, and he whirled around, pressing the small of his back against the tabletop and spreading his arms wide to obscure what was on the table.

“Will Henry!” he cried hoarsely. “What the devil are you doing? I told you to stay with Kendall.”

“Mr. Kendall is asleep, sir.”

“I’ve no doubt that he is! He’s been injected with a ten percent solution of morphine.”

“Morphine, Dr. Warthrop?”

“And a bit of food coloring for effect. Perfectly harmless.”

I struggled to grasp his meaning. “It wasn’t the antidote?”

“There is no antidote for tipota, Will Henry.”

I gasped. Warthrop had lied, and I had never known him to tell a deliberate falsehood. In fact, he reserved his most vehement contempt for that very practice, calling it the worst sort of buffoonery and foolishness—and the monstrumologist was not the sort of man who suffered fools gladly.

What could be the explanation? To placate a doomed man? To give him a measure of peace upon his final moments on rth? Had his lie been indeed an act of mercy?

The doctor glanced over his shoulder at the table. He turned back to me with an icy glare. “What?” he demanded. “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing, sir. I only thought you might need—”

“I have all that I need at the present, thank you. Return at once to Mr. Kendall, Will Henry. He should not be left alone.”

“How… how long does he have?”

“That is very difficult to say—there are so many variables—thirty, perhaps forty, years.”

“Years! But you said there was no anti—”

“Yes, I did, and no, there isn’t, because there is no such thing, Will Henry. ‘Tipota’ is the Greek word for ‘nothing.’”

“It is?”

“No, I am lying to you. It is actually the Greek word for ‘stupid child.’ Yes, it means ‘nothing’ in Greek, and there is no such thing as a pyrite tree. Pyrite’s other name is ‘fool’s gold.’ And there is no Isle of Demons near the Galápagos. When Kearns instructed Kendall, ‘Tell him it is tipota,’ he meant it literally.”

“You mean it was… it was all a joke?”

“More of a trick. He needed Kendall to believe he was poisoned in order to ensure the package’s delivery. Now, if you’re quite finished standing there with your jaw hanging open like the most disagreeable of mouth-breathers, please do as I requested and attend to our guest.”

I did not obey immediately. My astonishment outweighed my loyalty.

“But his symptoms…”

“Are all attributable to the psychological distress produced by his belief that he had been poisoned.”

“So you knew the whole time? But why didn’t you—”

“Tell him the truth? Do you think the poor fool would have believed me if I had? He doesn’t know me from Adam. Might not he think I was part of Jack’s fiendish plan and keel over from a heart attack brought on by the enormity of his fear and the finality of all hope? There was a good possibility of that, and it was something Kearns probably anticipated, making his game all the more wickedly delicious. Imagine it, Will Henry! The lie sends him all the way here… and then the truth kills him! No, I saw through it at once and took the only moral path available to me—and so, even saints may sin that God’s will be done!”

He pointed up the stairs. “Snap to, Will Henry.”

So I did, though there wasn’t much snap in my to. He called after me, “Shut the door behind you and do not come down again.”

“Yes, sir. I will, Dr. Warthrop—and I won’t.”

I kept the first promise, at least.

I sat in the parlor with our unconscious guest, restless and bored. I was not accustomed to being dispensed with, after being told ad nauseam by my master how indispensable I was. I was suffering also from the dreadful notion that Warthrop might be wrong, that there was such a poison as tipota and at any moment Kendall would keel over; I did not wish to watch a man’s heart explode in our parlor.

But as the minutes ticked by, he continued to breathe—and I to stew. Why had the monstrumologist so abruptly dismissed me? What was in that box that he did not want me to see? He had never seemed particularly concerned about exposing me to the most disgusting and frightening of biologic phenomena—or to their handiwork. I was, like it or not, his apprentice, and had not he himself often said, “You must become accustomed to such things”?

Ten minutes. Fifteen. Then the crash and rattle of the basement door flying open, the thunder of his footsteps down the hall, and Warthrop barreled into the room. He went straight to the divan and hauled Kendall upright.

“Kendall!” he shouted into the man’s face. “Wake up!”