The Cabinet of Curiosities

ONE

SAFELY ON THE street, Smithback ducked through the Seventy-seventh Street gate into Central Park and settled on a bench by the lake. The brilliant fall morning was already warming into a lovely Indian summer day. He breathed in the air and thought once again of what a dazzling reporter he was. Bryce Harriman couldn’t have gotten his hands on these papers if he had a year to do it and all the makeup people of Industrial Light and Magic behind him. With a sense of delicious anticipation, he removed the three sheets from his pocket. The faint scent of dust reached his nose as sunlight hit the top page.

It was an old brown carbon, faint and difficult to read. At the top of the first sheet was printed: Application for Access to the Collections: The New York Museum of Natural History

Applicant: Prof. Enoch Leng, M.D., Ph.D. (Oxon.), O.B.E., F.R.S. &tc.

Recommender: Professor Tinbury McFadden, Department of Mammalogy

Seconder: Professor Augustus Spragg, Department of Ornithology

The applicant will please describe to the committee, in brief, the purposes of his application:

The applicant, Dr. Enoch Leng, wishes access to the collections of anthropology and mammalogy to conduct research on taxonomy and classification, and to prepare comparative essays in physical anthropology, human osteology, and phrenology.

The applicant will please state his academic qualifications, giving degrees and honors, with appropriate dates:

The applicant, Prof. Enoch Leng, graduated Artium Baccalaurei, with First Honors, from Oriel College, Oxford; Doctor of Natural Philosophy, New College, Oxford, with First Honors; Elected Fellow of the Royal Society 1865; Elected to White’s, 1868; Awarded Order of the Garter, 1869.

The applicant will please state his permanent domicile and his current lodgings in New York, if different:

Prof. Enoch Leng

891 Riverside Drive,

New York New York

Research laboratory at

Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities

Catherine Street, New York

New York

The applicant will please attach a list of publications, and will supply offprints of at least two for the review of the Committee.

Smithback looked through the papers, but realized he had missed this crucial piece.

The disposition of the Committee is presented below:

Professor is hereby given permission to the free and open use of the Collections and Library of the New York Museum of Natural History, this 27th Day of March, 1870.

Authorized Signatory: Tinbury McFadden

Signed: E. Leng.

Smithback swore under his breath. He felt abruptly deflated. This was thin — thin indeed. It was too bad that Leng hadn’t gotten his degree in America — that would have been much easier to follow up. But maybe he could pry the information out of Oxford over the telephone — although it was possible the academic honors were false. The list of publications would have been much easier to check, and far most interesting, but there was no way he could go back and get it now. It had been such a good idea, and he’d pulled it off so well. Damn.

Smithback searched through the papers again. No photograph, no curriculum vitae, no biography giving place and date of birth. The only thing here at all was an address.

Damn. Damn.

But then, a new thought came to him. He recalled the address was what Nora had been trying to find. Here, at least, was a peace offering.

Smithback did a quick calculation: 891 Riverside lay uptown, in Harlem somewhere. There were a lot of old mansions still standing along that stretch of Riverside Drive: those that remained were mostly abandoned or broken up into apartments. Chances were, of course, that Leng’s house had been torn down a long time ago. But there was a chance it might still stand. That might make a good picture, even if it was an old wreck. Especially if it was an old wreck. Come to think of it, there might even be bodies buried about the premises, or walled up in the basement. Perhaps Leng’s own body might be there, moldering in a corner. That would please O’Shaughnessy, help Nora. And what a great capstone for his own article — the investigative journalist finding the corpse of America’s first serial killer. Of course, it was very unlikely, but even so…

Smithback checked his watch. Almost one o’clock.

Oh, God. Such a brilliant bit of detective work and all he’d really got was the damn address. Well, it was a matter of an hour or two to simply go check and see if the house was still standing.

Smithback stuffed the papers back into his pocket and strolled to Central Park West. There wasn’t much point in flagging down a cab — they’d refuse to take him that far uptown, and once there he’d never find a cab to take him home again. Even though it was broad daylight, he had no intention of doing any wandering around in that dangerous neighborhood.

The best thing to do might be to rent a car. The Times had a special arrangement with Hertz, and there was a branch not far away on Columbus. Now that he thought about it, if the house did still exist, he’d probably want to check inside, talk to current tenants, find out if anything unusual had come to light during renovations, that sort of thing.

It might be dark before he was through.

That did it: he was renting a car.

Forty-five minutes later, he was heading up Central Park West in a silver Taurus. His spirits had risen once again. This still could be a big story. After he’d checked on the house, he could do a search of the New York Public Library, see if he could turn up any published articles of Leng. Maybe he could even search the police files to see if anything unusual had happened in the vicinity of Leng’s house during the time he was alive.

There were still a lot of strong leads to follow up here. Leng could be as big as Jack the Ripper. The similarities were there. All it took was a journalist to make it come alive.

With enough information, this could be his next book.

He, Smithback, would be a shoo-in for that Pulitzer which always seemed to elude him. And even more important — well, just as important, at least — he’d have a chance to square himself with Nora. This would save her and Pendergast a lot of time wading through city deeds. And it would please Pendergast, who he sensed was a silent ally. Yes: all in all, this was going to work out well.

Reaching the end of the park, he headed west on Cathedral Parkway, then turned north onto Riverside Drive. As he passed 125th Street he slowed, scanning the addresses of the broken buildings. Six Hundred Seventy. Seven Hundred One. Another ten blocks went by. As he continued north, he slowed still further, holding his breath in anticipation.

And then his eye alighted on 891 Riverside Drive.

The house was still standing. He couldn’t believe his luck: Leng’s own house.

He gave it a long, searching look as he passed by, then turned right at the next street, 138th, and circled the block, heart beating fast.

Eight Ninety-one was an old Beaux Arts mansion that took up the entire block, sporting a pillared entryway, festooned with Baroque Revival decorations. There was even a damn coat of arms carved above the door. It was set back from the street by a small service road, forming a triangle-shaped island that adjoined Riverside Drive. There were no rows of buzzers beside the door, and the first-floor windows had been securely boarded up and covered with tin. The place, it seemed, had never been broken into apartments. Like so many old mansions along the Drive, it had simply been abandoned years before — too expensive to maintain, too expensive to tear down, too expensive to revamp. Almost all such buildings had reverted to the city for unpaid taxes. The city simply boarded them up and warehoused them.

He leaned over the passenger seat, squinting for a better look. The upper-story windows were not boarded up, and none of the panes appeared to be broken. It was perfect. It looked just like the house of a mass murderer. Front page photo, here we come. Smithback could just see his story generating a police search of the place, the discovery of more bodies. This was getting better and better.

So how best to proceed? A little peek through a window might be in order — provided he could find a place to park.

Pulling away from the curb, he circled the block again, then drove down Riverside, looking for a parking spot. Considering how poor the neighborhood was, there were a remarkable number of cars: junkers, aging Eldorado pimpmobiles, fancy SUVs with huge speakers tilting up from their rear beds. It was six or seven blocks before he finally found a semilegal parking spot on a side street off Riverside. He should have hired a livery driver, damn it, and had him wait while he inspected the house. Now, he had to walk nine blocks through Harlem. Just what he had tried to avoid.

Nudging the rental car into the space, he glanced carefully around. Then he got out of the car, locked it, and — quickly, but not so quickly as to attract attention — walked back up to 137th Street.

When he reached the corner, he slowed, sauntering down the block until he came to the porte-cochère entrance. Here, he paused to look at the house more carefully, trying to look as casual as possible.

It had once been very grand: a four-story structure of marble and brick, with a slate mansard roof, oval windows, towers, and a widow’s walk. The facade was encrusted with carved limestone details set into brick. The streetfront was surrounded by a tall spiked iron fence, broken and rusty. The yard was filled with weeds and trash, along with a riot of sumac and ailanthus bushes and a pair of dead oaks. Its dark-browed upper-story windows looked out over the Hudson and the North River Water Pollution Control Plant.

Smithback shivered, glanced around one more time, then crossed the service road and started down the carriageway. Gang graffiti was sprayed all over the once elegant marble and brick. Windblown trash had accumulated several feet deep in the recesses. But in the rear of the carriage drive, he could see a stout door made of oak. It, too, had been sprayed with graffiti, but still looked operable. It had neither window nor peephole.

Smithback slipped farther down the carriageway, keeping close to the outside wall. The place stank of urine and feces. Someone had dropped a load of used diapers beside the door, and a pile of garbage bags lay in a corner, torn apart by dogs and rats. As if on cue, an enormously fat rat waddled out of the trash, dragging its belly, looked insolently at him, then disappeared back into the garbage.

He noticed two small, oval windows, set on each side of the door. Both were covered with tin, but there might be a way to pry one loose. Advancing, Smithback carefully pressed his hand against the closest, testing it. It was solid as a rock: no cracks, no way to see in. The other was just as carefully covered. He inspected the seams, looking for holes, but there were none. He laid a hand on the oaken door: again, it felt totally solid. This house was locked up tight, nigh impregnable. Perhaps it had been locked up since the time of Leng’s death. There might well be personal items inside. Once again, Smithback wondered if the remains of victims might also be there.

Once the police got their hands on the place, he’d lose his chance to learn anything more.

It would be very interesting to see inside.

He looked up, his eye following the lines of the house. He’d had some rock climbing experience, gained from a trip to the canyon country of Utah. The trip where he’d met Nora. He stepped away, studying the facade. There were lots of cornices and carvings that would make good handholds. Here, away from the street, he wasn’t as likely to be noticed. With a little luck, he might be able to climb to one of the second-story windows. Just for a look.

He glanced back down the carriageway. The street was deserted, the house deathly silent.

Smithback rubbed his hands together, smoothed his cowlick. And then he set his left wing tip into a gap in the lower course of masonry and began to climb.

TWO

CAPTAIN CUSTER CHECKED the clock on the wall of his office. It was nearly noon. He felt a growl in his capacious stomach and wished, for at least the twentieth time, that noon would hurry up and come so he could head out to Dilly’s Deli, purchase a double corned beef and swiss on rye with extra mayo, and place the monstrous sandwich in his mouth. He always got hungry when he was nervous, and today he was very, very nervous. It had been barely forty-eight hours since he’d been put in charge of the Surgeon case, but already he was getting impatient calls. The mayor had called, the commissioner had called. The three murders had the entire city close to panicking. And yet he had nothing to report. The breathing space he’d bought himself with that article on the old bones was just about used up. The fifty detectives working the case were desperately following up leads, for all the good it did them. But to where? Nowhere. He snorted, shook his head. Incompetent ass-wipes.

His stomach growled again, louder this time. Pressure and agitation encircled him like a damp bathhouse towel. If this was what it felt like to be in charge of a big case, he wasn’t sure he liked it.

He glanced at the clock again. Five more minutes. Not going to lunch before noon was a matter of discipline with him. As a police officer, he knew discipline was key. That was what it was all about. He couldn’t let the pressure get to him.

He remembered how the commissioner had stared sidelong at him, back in that little hovel on Doyers Street when he’d assigned him the investigation. Rocker hadn’t seemed exactly confident in his abilities. Custer remembered, all too clearly, his words of advice: I’d suggest you get to work on this new case of yours. Get right to work. Catch that killer. You don’t want another, fresher stiff turning up on your watch — do you?

The minute hand moved another notch.

Maybe more manpower is the answer, he thought. He should put another dozen detectives on that murder in the Museum Archives. That was the most recent murder, that’s where the freshest clues would be. That curator who’d found the corpse — the frosty bitch, what’s her name — had been pretty close-mouthed. If he could—

And then, just as the second hand swept toward noon, he had the revelation.

The Museum Archives. The Museum curator…

It was so overwhelming, so blinding, that it temporarily drove all thoughts of corned beef from his head.

The Museum. The Museum was the center around which everything revolved.

The third murder, the brutal operation? It took place in the Museum.

That archaeologist, Nora Kelly? Worked for the Museum.

The incriminating letter that reporter, Smithbank or whatever, had leaked? The letter that started the whole thing? Found in the Museum’s Archives.

That creepy old guy, Collopy, who’d authorized the removal of the letter? Director of the Museum.

Fairhaven? On the Museum’s board.

The nineteenth-century killer? Connected to the Museum.

And the archivist himself, Puck, had been murdered. Why? Because he had discovered something. Something in the Archives.

Custer’s mind, unusually clear, began racing over the possibilities, the myriad combinations and permutations. What was needed was strong, decisive action. Whatever it was Puck had found, he would find, too. And that would be key to the murderer.

There was no time to lose, not one minute.

He stood up and punched the intercom. “Noyes? Get in here. Right away.”

The man was in the doorway even before Custer’s finger was off the button.

“I want the top ten detectives assigned to the Surgeon case over here for a confidential briefing in my office. Half an hour.”

“Yes, Captain.” Noyes raised a quizzical, but appropriately obsequious, eyebrow.

“I’ve got it. Noyes, I’ve figured it out.”

Noyes ceased his gum chewing. “Sir?”

“The key to the Surgeon killings is in the Museum. It’s there, in the Archives. God knows, maybe even the murderer himself is in there, on the Museum’s staff.” Custer grabbed his jacket. “We’re going in there hard and fast, Noyes. They won’t even know what hit them.”

THREE

USING CORNICES AND escutcheons as hand- and footholds, Smithback slowly pulled his way up the wall toward the stone embrasure of a second-story window. It had been harder than he expected, and he’d managed to scrape a cheek and mash a finger in the process. And, of course, he was ruining a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pair of handmade Italian shoes. Maybe the Times would pay. Spreadeagled against the side of the house, he felt ridiculously exposed. There must be an easier way to win a Pulitzer, he thought. He grabbed for the window ledge, pulled himself upward with a grunt of effort. Gaining the wide ledge, he remained there a moment, catching his breath, looking around. The street was still quiet. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything. He turned his attention back to the rippled glass of the window.

The room beyond seemed utterly empty and dark. Dust motes hung in the anemic shafts of light that slanted inward. He thought he could make out a closed door in the far wall. But there was nothing to give him any indication of what lay beyond, in the rest of the house.

If he wanted to learn anything more, he’d have to get inside.

What could the harm be? The house had clearly been deserted for decades. It was probably city property now, public property. He’d come this far, done this much. If he left now, he’d have to start all over again. The image of his editor’s face, shaking a fistful of copy, eyes popping with anger, filled his mind. If he was going to charge them for the shoes, he better have something to show for it.

He tried the window, and, as expected, found it locked — or, perhaps, frozen shut with age. He experienced a moment of indecision, looked around again. The thought of clambering back down the wall was even less pleasant than climbing up had been. What he could see from the window told him nothing. He had to find a way in — just for the briefest look. He sure as hell couldn’t stay on the ledge forever. If anyone happened by and saw him…

And then he spotted the cop car a few blocks south on Riverside Drive, cruising slowly north. It would not be good at all if they caught sight of him up here — and he had no way to get down in time.

Quickly, he pulled off his jacket, stuffed it into a ball, and placed it against one of the lowest of the large panes. Using his shoulder, he pressed until it gave with a sharp crack. He pried out the pieces of glass, laid them on the ledge, and crawled through.

Inside the room, he stood up and peered through the window. All was calm; his entry hadn’t been noticed. Then he turned around, listening intently. Silence. He sniffed the air. It smelled, not unpleasantly, of old wallpaper and dust — it was not the stale air he’d been expecting. He took a few deep breaths.

Think of the story. Think of the Pulitzer. Think of Nora. He would do a quick reconnaissance and then get out.

He waited, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness. There was a shelf in the back, and a single book lay on it. Smithback walked over and picked it up. It was an old nineteenth-century treatise titled Mollusca, with a gold engraving of a conch on the cover. Smithback felt a slight quickening of his heart: a natural history book. He opened it, hoping to find a bookplate reading Ex Libris Enoch Leng. But there was nothing. He flipped the pages, looking for notes, then put the book back.

Nothing else for it: time to explore the house.

He carefully removed his shoes, placed them by the window, and proceeded in stockinged feet. With careful steps he made his way to the closed door. The floor creaked, and he stopped. But the profound silence remained. It was unlikely that anyone would be in the house — it looked like even the junkies and bums had been successfully kept out — but caution would be wise nonetheless.

He placed his hand on the doorknob, turned it ever so slowly, eased the door open an inch. He peered through the crack. Blackness. He pushed it wider, allowing the dim morning light from the window behind him to spill into the hallway. He saw that it was very long, quite grand, with flocked wallpaper in a heavy green design. On the walls, in gilded alcoves, were paintings draped with white sheets. The sheets clung to the heavy frames. At the far end of the hall, a broad set of marble stairs swept downward, disappearing into a pool of deeper darkness. At the top of the stairs stood something — a statue, perhaps? — draped in yet another white sheet.

Smithback held his breath. It really did look as if the house had been shut up and deserted since Leng’s death. It was fantastic. Could all this stuff be Leng’s?

He ventured a few steps down the hall. As he did so, the smell of mold and dust became suffused with something less pleasant: something organic, sweet, decayed. It was as if the rotten old heart of the house had finally died.

Perhaps his suspicions were right, and Leng had entombed the bodies of his victims behind the heavy Victorian wallpaper.

He paused, an arm’s length from one of the paintings. Curious, he reached out, took the corner of the white sheet, and lifted. The rotting sheet fell away in a cloud of dust and tatters, and he stepped back, momentarily startled. A dark painting stood revealed. Smithback peered closer. It depicted a pack of wolves ripping apart a deer in a deep wood. It was ghoulish in its anatomical detail, but beautifully executed nevertheless, and no doubt worth a fortune. Curiosity aroused, Smithback stepped to the next alcove and plucked at the sheet, which also turned to powder at his touch. This painting showed a whale hunt — a great sperm whale, draped with harpoon lines, thrashing about in its death throes, a huge jet of bright arterial blood rising from its spouter, while its flukes dashed a boatful of harpooners into the sea.

Smithback could hardly believe his luck. He had struck paydirt. But then, it wasn’t luck: it was the result of hard work and careful research. Even Pendergast hadn’t yet figured out where Leng lived. This would redeem his job at the Times, maybe even redeem his relationship with Nora. Because he was sure that — whatever information about Leng Nora and Pendergast were looking for — it was here.

Smithback waited, listening intently, but there were no sounds from below. He moved down the carpeted hallway in slow, small, noiseless steps. Reaching the covered statue at the top of the banister, he reached up and grasped at the sheet. As rotten as the others, it fell apart, dropping to the ground in a dissolving heap. A cloud of dust, dry rot, and mold billowed up into the air.

At first Smithback felt a frisson of fear and incomprehension at the sight, until his mind began to understand just what he was looking at. It was, in fact, nothing more than a stuffed chimpanzee, hanging from a tree branch. Moths and rats had chewed away most of the face, leaving pits and holes that went down to brown bone. The lips were gone as well, giving the chimpanzee the agonized grin of a mummy. One ear hung by a thread of dried flesh, and even as Smithback watched it fell to the ground with a soft thud. One of the chimp’s hands was holding a wax fruit; the other was clutching its stomach, as if in pain. Only the beady glass eyes looked fresh, and they stared at Smithback with maniacal intensity.

Smithback felt his heart quicken. Leng had, after all, been a taxonomist, collector, and member of the Lyceum. Did he, like McFadden and the rest, also have a collection, a so-called cabinet of curiosities? Was this decayed chimp part of his collection?

He again experienced a moment of indecision. Should he leave now?

Taking a step back from the chimpanzee, he peered down the staircase. There was no light except what little filtered in from behind nailed boards and wooden shutters. Gradually, he began to make out the dim outlines of what seemed to be a reception hall, complete with parqueted oak floor. Lying across it were exotic skins — zebra, lion, tiger, oryx, cougar. Ranged about were a number of dark objects, also draped in white sheets. The paneled walls were lined with old cabinets, covered with rippled glass doors. On them sat a number of shadowy objects in display cases, each with a brass plate affixed below it.

Yes, it was a collection — Enoch Leng’s collection.

Smithback stood, clutching the upper knob of the banister. Despite the fact that nothing seemed to have been touched in the house for a hundred years, he could feel, deep in his gut, that the house hadn’t been empty all this time. It looked, somehow, tended. It bespoke the presence of a caretaker. He should turn around now and get out.

But the silence was profound, and he hesitated. The collections below were worth a brief look. The interior of this house and its collections would play a big role in his article. He would go down for a moment — just a moment — to see what lay beneath some of the sheets. He took a careful step, and then another… and then he heard a soft click behind him. He spun around, heart pounding.

At first, nothing looked different. And then he realized that the door from which he’d entered the hallway must have closed. He breathed a sigh of relief: a gust of wind had come through the broken window and pushed the door shut.

He continued down the sweeping marble staircase, hand clutching the banister. At the bottom he paused, screwing up his eyes, peering into the even more pronounced darkness. The smell of rot and decay seemed stronger here.

His eyes focused on an object in the center of the hall. One of the sheets had become so decayed that it had already fallen from the object it covered. In the darkness it looked strange, misshapen. Smithback took a step forward, peering intently — and suddenly he realized what it was: the mounted specimen of a small carnivorous dinosaur. But this dinosaur was extraordinarily well preserved, with fossilized flesh still clinging to the bones, some fossilized internal organs, even huge swaths of fossilized skin. And covering the skin were the unmistakable outlines of feathers.

Smithback stood, dumbstruck. It was an astounding specimen, of incalculable value to science. Recent scientists had theorized that some dinosaurs, even T. Rex, might have had a covering of feathers. Here was the proof. He glanced down: a brass label read Unknown coeloraptor from Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada.

Smithback turned his attention to the cabinets, his eye falling on a series of human skulls. He moved closer. The little brass label below them read: Hominidae series from Swartkopje Cave, South Africa. Smithback could hardly believe his eyes. He knew enough about hominid fossils to know they were exceedingly rare. These dozen skulls were some of the most complete he had ever seen. They would revolutionize hominid studies.

His eye caught a gleam from the next cabinet. He stepped up to it. It was crowded with gemstones, and his eye landed on a large, green cut stone the size of a robin’s egg. The label below read Diamond, flawless specimen from Novotney Terra, Siberia, 216 carats, believed to be the only green diamond in existence. Next to it, in an especially large case, were immense star rubies, sapphires, and more exotic stones with names he could hardly pronounce, winking in the dim recesses — gemstones equal to the finest ones at the New York Museum. They seemed to have been given star billing among the other exhibits. On a nearby shelf lay a series of gold crystals, perfectly beautiful, lacy as frost, one as large as a grapefruit. Below lay rows of tektites, mostly black misshapen things, but some with a beautiful deep green or violet coloring.

Smithback took a step back, his mind wrestling with the richness and variety of the display. To think all this has stood here, in this ruined house, for a hundred years… He turned away and, on impulse, reached out and twitched off the sheet from a small specimen behind him. The sheet dissolved, and a strange stuffed animal greeted his eye: a large, tapirlike mammal with a huge muzzle, powerful forelegs, bulbous head, and curving tusks. It was like nothing he had ever seen before; a freak. He bent down to make out the dim label: Only known specimen of the Tusked Megalopedus, described by Pliny, thought to be fantastical until this specimen was shot in the Belgian Congo by the English explorer Col. Sir Henry F. Moreton, in 1869.

Good lord, thought Smithback: could it be true? A large mammal, completely unknown to science? Or was it a fake? Suddenly the thought occurred to him: could all these be fakes? But as he looked around, he realized they were not. Leng would not have collected fakes, and even in the dim light he could see that these were real. These were real. And if the rest of the collections in the house were like this, they constituted possibly the greatest natural history collection in the world. This was no mere cabinet of curiosities. It was too dark to take notes, but Smithback knew he wouldn’t need notes: what he had seen had been imprinted upon his mind forever.

Only once in a lifetime was a reporter given such a story.

He jerked away another sheet, and was greeted by the massive, rearing fossil skeleton of a short-faced cave bear, caught in a silent roar, its black teeth like daggers. The engraved brass label on the oak mounting stand indicated it had been pulled from the Kutz Canyon Tar Pits, in New Mexico.

He whispered through the reception hall on his stockinged feet, pulling off additional sheets, exposing a whole row of Pleistocene mammals — each one a magnificent specimen as fine or finer than any in a museum — ending with a series of Neanderthal skeletons, perfectly preserved, some with weapons, tools, and one sporting some sort of necklace made out of teeth.

Glancing to one side, he noticed a marble archway leading into a room beyond. In its center of the room was a huge, pitted meteorite, at least eight feet in diameter, surrounded by rows upon rows of additional cabinets.

It was ruby in color.

This was almost beyond belief.

He looked away, turning his attention to the objects ranged about mahogany shelves on a nearby wall. There were bizarre masks, flint spearpoints, a skull inlaid with turquoise, bejeweled knives, toads in jars, thousands of butterflies under glass: everything arranged with the utmost attention to systematics and classification.

He noticed that the light fixtures weren’t electric. They were gas, each with a little pipe leading up into a mantle, covered by a cut-glass shade. It was incredible. It had to be Leng’s house, just as he had left it. It was as if he had walked out of the house, boarded it up, and left…

Smithback paused, his excitement suddenly abating. Obviously, the house hadn’t remained like this, untouched, since Leng’s death. There must be a caretaker who came regularly. Somebody had put tin over the windows and draped the collections. The feeling that the house was not empty, that someone was still there, swept over him again.

The silence; the watchful exhibits and grotesque specimens; the overpowering darkness that lay in the corners of the room — and, most of all, the rising stench of rot — brought a growing unease that would not be denied. He shuddered involuntarily. What was he doing? There was already enough here for a Pulitzer. He had the story: now, be smart and get the hell out.

He turned and swiftly climbed the stairs, passing the chimpanzee and the paintings — and then he paused. All the doors along the hall were closed, and it seemed even darker than it had a few minutes before. He realized he had forgotten which door he had come through. It was near the end of the hall, that much he remembered. He approached the most likely, tried the handle, and to his surprise found it locked. Must have guessed wrong, he thought, moving to the next.

That, too, was locked.

With a rising sense of alarm he tried the door on the other side. It was locked, as well. So was the next, and the next. With a chill prickling his spine, he tried the rest — all, every one, securely locked.

Smithback stood in the dark hallway, trying to control the sudden panic that threatened to paralyze his limbs.

He was locked in.

FOUR

CUSTER’S UNMARKED CRUISER pulled up with a satisfying squeal of rubber before the Museum’s security entrance, five squad cars skidding up around him, sirens wailing, light bars throwing red and white stripes across the Romanesque Revival facade. He rolled out of the squad car and strode decisively up the stone steps, a sea of blue in his wake.

At the impromptu meeting with his top detectives, and then in the ride uptown to the Museum, the theory that had hit him like a thunderclap became a firm, unshakable conviction. Surprise and speed is the way to go in this case, he thought as he looked up at the huge pile of granite. Hit ’em hard and fast, leave them reeling — that was what his instructor at the Police Academy had always said. It was good advice. The commissioner wanted action. And it was action, in the form of Captain Sherwood Custer, that he was going to get.

A Museum security guard stood at the doorway, the police lights reflecting off his glasses. He looked bewildered. Several other guards were coming up behind him, staring down the steps, looking equally perplexed. A few tourists were approaching up Museum Drive, cameras dangling, guidebooks in hand. They stopped when they saw the cluster of police cars. After a brief parley, the group turned around and headed back toward a nearby subway entrance.

Custer didn’t bother to show the grunt his badge. “Captain Custer, Seventh Precinct,” he rapped out. “Brevetted to Homicide.”

The guard swallowed painfully. “Yes, Captain?”

“Is the Museum’s security chief in?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get him down here. Right away.”

The guards scurried around, and within five minutes a tall man in a tan suit, black hair combed back with a little too much grease, arrived. He’s an unsavory-looking fellow, Custer thought; but then, so many people in private security were. Not good enough to join the real force.

The man held out his hand and Custer took it reluctantly. “Jack Manetti, director of security. What can I do for you, officers?”

Without a word, Custer displayed the embossed, signed, and notarized bench warrant he’d managed to get issued in close to record time. The security director took it, read it over, handed it back to Custer.

“This is highly unusual. May I ask what’s happened?”

“We’ll get to the specifics shortly,” Custer replied. “For now, this warrant should be all you need to know. My men will need unlimited access to the Museum. I’m going to require an interrogation room set up for the questioning of selected staff. We’ll work as quickly as we can, and everything will go smoothly — provided we get cooperation from the Museum.” He paused, thrust his hands behind his back, looked around imperiously. “You realize, of course, that we have the authority to impound any items that, in our judgment, are germane to the case.” He wasn’t sure what the word germane meant, but the judge had used it in the warrant, and it sounded good.

“But that’s impossible, it’s almost closing time. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“Justice doesn’t wait, Mr. Manetti. I want a complete list of Museum staff. We’ll single out the individuals we want to question. If certain staff members have gone home early, they’ll need to be called back in. I’m sorry, but the Museum will just have to be inconvenienced.”

“But this is unheard of. I’m going to have to check with the Museum’s director—”

“You do that. In fact, let’s go see him in person. I want to make sure we’re clear, clear as crystal, on all points of order, so that once our investigations are underway we will not be inconvenienced or delayed. Understood?”

Manetti nodded, displeasure contracting his face. Good, thought Custer: the more upset and flustered everyone became, the quicker he’d be able to flush out the killer. Keep them guessing, don’t give them time to think. He felt exhilarated.

He turned. “Lieutenant Detective Cannell, take three officers and have these gentlemen show you to the staff entrance. I want everyone leaving the premises to be ID’d and checked against personnel records. Get phone numbers, cell numbers, and addresses. I want everyone available to be called back at a moment’s notice, if necessary.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant Detective Piles, you come with me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Custer turned a stern eye back on Manetti. “Show us the way to Dr. Collopy’s office. We have business to discuss.”

“Follow me,” said the security director, even more unhappily.

Custer motioned to the rest of his men, and they followed him through great echoing halls, up several floors in a giant elevator, and along yet more halls filled with displays — Christ, this place had more than its share of weird shit — until at last they reached a grand paneled door leading to an even grander paneled office. The door was half open, and beyond sat a small woman at a desk. She rose at their approach.

“We’re here to see Dr. Collopy,” said Custer, looking around, wondering why a secretary had such a fancy office.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman said. “Dr. Collopy’s not here.”

“He’s not?” Custer and Manetti said in chorus.

The secretary shook her head, looking flustered. “He hasn’t been back since lunch. Said he had some important business to take care of.”

“But lunch was hours ago,” Custer said. “Isn’t there some way he can be reached?”

“There’s his private cell phone,” the secretary said.

“Dial it.” Custer turned to Manetti. “And you, call around to some of the other top brass. See if they know where this Collopy is.”

Manetti moved off to another desk, picked up a phone. The large office fell silent, save for the beep of numbers being dialed. Custer looked around. The space was paneled in very dark wood, and it was chock-full of bleak oil paintings and forbidding-looking displays parked behind glass-fronted cabinets. Christ, it was like a house of horrors.

“The cell phone’s turned off, sir,” the secretary said.

Custer shook his head. “Isn’t there any other number you can call? His house, for example?”

The secretary and Manetti exchanged looks. “We aren’t supposed to call there,” she said, looking even more flustered.

“I don’t care what you’re supposed to do. This is urgent police business. Call his house.”

The secretary unlocked a desk drawer, rummaged through a file of index cards, plucked one out. She looked at it a moment, shielding it from Custer’s and Manetti’s view. Then she replaced the card, locked the drawer, and dialed a number.

“Nobody’s picking up,” she said after a moment.

“Keep ringing.”

Half a minute went by. Finally, the secretary replaced the phone in its cradle. “There’s no answer.”

Custer rolled his eyes. “All right, listen. We can’t waste any more time. We have good reason to believe that the key to the serial killer known as the Surgeon — perhaps even the killer himself — will be found here in the Museum. Time is of the essence. I’m going to personally supervise a thorough search of the Archives. Lieutenant Detective Piles will be in charge of questioning certain staff members.”

Manetti was silent.

“With the Museum’s cooperation, I think we can get through this by midnight, if not sooner. We’ll need a room for interrogation. We will require power for our recording machinery, a sound engineer, and an electrician. I will require identification from everyone, and access to personnel files on an ongoing basis.”

“Just which staff members are you going to question?” Manetti asked.

“We will determine that from the files.”

“We have two thousand five hundred employees.”

This temporarily floored Custer. Twenty-five hundred people to run a museum? What a welfare program. He took a breath, carefully recomposing his features. “We will deal with that. As a start, we’ll need to interview, let’s see… night watchmen who might have noticed any unusual comings or goings. And that archaeologist who excavated those skeletons, found the others down on Doyers Street, and—”

“Nora Kelly.”

“Right.”

“The police have already spoken with her, I believe.”

“So we’ll be speaking with her again. And we’ll want to talk to the head of security — that’s you — about your security arrangements, in the Archives and elsewhere. I want to question everyone connected with the Archives and the discovery of, ah, Mr. Puck’s body. How’s that for a start?” He gave a quick, artificial smile.

There was a silence.

“Now, direct me to the Archives, please.”

For a moment, Manetti just stared at him, as if the situation was beyond his powers of comprehension.

“Direct me to the Archives, Mr. Manetti, and make it now, if you please.”

Manetti blinked. “Very well, Captain. If you’ll follow me.”

As they walked down the storied halls, cops and administrators in tow, Custer felt a huge swelling of excitement at his newly found self-confidence. He’d finally discovered his true calling. Homicide was where he should have been all along. It was obvious he was a natural; he had a knack for the work. His being put in charge of this case had not been a fluke. It had been destiny.

FIVE

SMITHBACK STOOD IN the dark hall, struggling to control his fright. It was fright that was his problem here, not locked doors. Clearly, at least one of them must be unlocked: he had just come through it.

As deliberately as he could, he went down the hall once again, trying all the doors, shaking harder this time, even at the cost of making some noise, pushing at the jambs, making sure they weren’t simply stuck. But no, it wasn’t his imagination. They were all securely locked.

Had somebody locked the door behind him? But that was impossible: the room had been empty. A gust of wind had closed it. He shook his head, searching unsuccessfully for amusement in his own paranoia.

The doors, he decided, must lock automatically when shut. Maybe that was a feature of old houses like this. No problem: he would find another way out of the house. Downstairs, through the reception hall and out a first floor window or door. Perhaps out the porte-cochère door, which had every appearance of being functional — in fact it was probably the very door used by the custodian. Relief coursed through him at this thought. It would be easier; it would save him the trouble of having to climb back down that outside wall.

All he had to do was find his way to it through the dark house.

He stood in the hall, waiting for his heartbeat to slow. The place was so quiet, so unusually quiet, that he found his ears alert for the faintest sound. The silence, he told himself, was a good sign. No custodian was around. He probably came only once a week, at most; or maybe only once a year, given all the dust in the place. Smithback had all the time in the world.

Feeling a little sheepish, he made his way back to the head of the stairs and peered down. The carriage door, it seemed to him, should be to the left, somewhere off the reception hall. He descended the stairs and paused warily at the bottom, peering again at the strange, endless displays. Still, no sound. The place was clearly deserted.

He remembered Pendergast’s theory. What if Leng really had succeeded…?

Smithback forced himself to laugh out loud. What the hell was he thinking about? Nobody could live 150 years. The darkness, the silence, the mysterious collections were getting to him.

He paused, taking stock. A passage ran off from the hall to the left, in what he thought was the right direction. It lay in complete darkness, yet it seemed the most promising. He should have thought to bring a damn flashlight. No matter: he would try that first.

Stepping carefully, avoiding the display cases and sheeted objects, he walked across the hall and into the side passage. His pupils refused to dilate further and the corridor remained pitch black, the darkness an almost palpable presence around him. He fumbled in his pocket, found the box of matches he’d picked up at the Blarney Stone. He lit one, the scraping and flaring of the match unpleasantly loud in the still air.

The flickering light revealed a passage leading into another large room, also crammed with wooden cabinets. He took a few steps forward until the matchlight died away. Then he went on as far as he dared into the blackness, felt around with his hand, found the doorframe of the room, drew himself forward again. Once he was inside, he lit another match.

Here was a different kind of collection: rows and rows of specimens in jars of formaldehyde. He caught a quick glimpse of rows of gigantic, staring eyeballs in jars — whale eyeballs? Trying not to waste the light, he hurried forward, stumbling over a large glass jeroboam on a marble pedestal, filled with what looked like a huge floating bag. As he got back on his feet and lit another match, he caught a glimpse of the label: Mammoth stomach, containing its last meal, from the icefields of Siberia…

He went quickly on, passing as fast as he could between the rows of cabinets, until he arrived at a single wooden door, battered and scarred. There was a sudden sharp pain as the match burned his fingers. Cursing, he dropped it, then lit another. In the renewed flare of light, he opened the door. It led into a huge kitchen, tiled in white and black. There was a deep stone fireplace set into one wall. The rest of the room was dominated by a huge iron stove, a row of ovens, and several long tables set with soapstone sinks. Dozens of pots of greenish copper were suspended from ceiling hooks. Everything looked decayed, covered with a thick layer of dust, cobwebs, and mouse droppings. It was a dead end.

The house was huge. The matches wouldn’t last forever. What would he do when they ran out?

Get a grip, Smithback, he told himself. Clearly, no one had cooked in this kitchen in a hundred years. Nobody lived in the house. What was he worrying about?

Relying on memory, without lighting any more matches, he backtracked into the large room, feeling his way along the glass-fronted cases. At one point he felt his shoulder brush against something. A second later, there was a tremendous crash at his feet, and the sudden biting stench of formaldehyde. He waited, nerves taut, for the echoes to abate. He prepared to light a match, thought better of it — was formaldehyde flammable? Better not experiment now. He took a step, and his stockinged foot grazed something large, wet, and yielding. The specimen in the jar. He gingerly stepped around it.

There had been other doors set into the passageway beyond. He would try them one at a time. But first, he paused to remove his socks, which were sodden with formaldehyde. Then, stepping into the passageway, he ventured another match. He could see four doors, two on the left wall, two on the right.

He opened the closest, found an ancient, zinc-lined bathroom. Sitting in the middle of the tiled floor was the grinning skull of an allosaurus. The second door fronted a large closet full of stuffed birds; the third, yet another closet, this one full of stuffed lizards. The fourth opened into a scullery, its walls pocked and scarred, ravaged by traceries of mildew.

The match went out and Smithback stood in the enfolding darkness. He could hear the sound of his own stertorous breathing. He felt in the matchbook, counted with his fingers: six left. He fought back — less successfully this time — the scrabbling panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He’d been in tough situations before, tougher than this. It’s an empty house. Just find your way out.

He made his way back to the reception hall and its shrouded collections. Being able to see again, no matter how faintly, calmed him a little — there was something utterly terrifying about absolute darkness. He looked around again at the astounding collections, but all he could feel now was a rising dread. The foul smell was stronger here: the sickly-sweet odor of decay, of something that by all rights belonged under several feet of earth…

Smithback took a series of deep, calming breaths. The thick layers of undisturbed dust on the floor proved the place was deserted; that even the caretaker, if there was one, hardly ever came.

He glanced around again, eyes wide against the faint light. On the far side of the hall, a shadowy archway led into what looked like a large room. He walked across the hall, bare feet padding on the parquet floor, and passed beneath the archway. The walls of the room beyond were paneled in dark wood, rising to a coffered ceiling. This room, too, was filled with displays: some shrouded, others raised on plinths or armatures. But the displays themselves were utterly different from what he had seen before. He stepped forward, looking around, bafflement mixing with the sharp sense of trepidation. There were large steamer trunks, some with glass sides, bound in heavy leather straps; galvanized containers like antique milk cans, their lids studded with heavy bolts; an oddly shaped, oversized wooden box, with copper-lined circles cut out of its top and sides; a coffin-shaped crate, pierced by half a dozen swords. On the walls hung ropes, strings of moldering kerchiefs tied end-to-end; straitjackets, manacles, chains, cuffs of various sizes. It was an inexplicable, eerie display, made the more unsettling by its lack of relation to what he had seen before.

Smithback crept on into the center of the room, keeping away from the dark corners. The front of the house, he figured, would be straight ahead. The other side of the house had proven a dead end; surely he would have better luck this way. If need be, he would batter down the front door.

At the far end of the room, another passageway led off into darkness. He stepped gingerly into it, feeling his way along one wall, sliding his feet forward with small, tentative steps. In the faintest of light he could see the hall ended in another room, much smaller and more intimate than the ones he had passed through before. The specimens were fewer here — just a few cabinets filled with seashells and some mounted dolphin skeletons. It seemed to have once been a drawing room or parlor of some kind. Or perhaps — and at the thought, fresh hope surged within him — an entryway?

The only illumination came from a single pinprick of light in the far wall, which sent a pencil-thin beam of light through the dusty air. A tiny hole in one of the boarded windows. With a huge sense of relief he quickly crossed the room and began feeling along the wall with his fingers. There was a heavy oak door here. The hope that was rising within him grew stronger. His fingers fell on a marble doorknob, oversized and terribly cold in his hands. He grasped it eagerly, turned.

The knob refused to budge.

With desperate strength, he tried again. No luck.

He stepped back and, with a groan of despair, felt along the edge of the door with his hands, searching for a deadbolt, lock, anything. An overwhelming sense of fear returned.

Heedless of the noise now, he threw himself against the door, once, twice, rushing at it with all his weight, trying desperately to break it down. The hollow thumps echoed through the room and down the hall. When the door still refused to budge, he stopped and leaned against it with a gasp of panic.

As the last echoes died away, something stirred from within the well of blackness in a far corner of the room. A voice, low and dry as mummy dust, spoke.

“My dear fellow, leaving so soon? You’ve only just got here.”

SIX

CUSTER BURST THROUGH the door to the Archives and planted himself in the middle of the entryway, hands on his hips. He could hear the patter of heavy-shod feet as his officers fanned out behind him. Fast and furious, he reminded himself. Don’t give ’em time to think. He observed — with more than a little satisfaction — the consternation of the two staff members who had leapt up at the sight of a dozen uniformed officers bearing down on them.

“This area is to be searched,” Custer barked out. Noyes, stepping forward out of Custer’s shadow, held up the warrant in a superfluous gesture. Custer noted, with approval, that Noyes was glaring almost as balefully at the archivists as he was himself.

“But, Captain,” he heard Manetti protest, “the place has already been searched. Right after the body of Puck was found, the NYPD had forensics teams, dogs, fingerprint sweepers, photographers, and—”

“I’ve seen the report, Manetti. But that was then. This is now. We have new evidence, important evidence.” Custer looked around impatiently. “Let’s get some light in here, for chrissakes!”

One of the staff jumped and, passing his hand over a vast cluster of ancient-looking switches, turned on a bank of lights within.

“Is that the best you can do? It’s as dark as a tomb in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right.” Custer turned to his detectives. “You know what to do. Work row by row, shelf by shelf. Leave no stone unturned.”

There was a pause.

“Well? Get to it, gentlemen!”

The men exchanged brief, uncertain glances. But without a questioning word they dutifully fanned out into the stacks. In a moment they were gone, like water absorbed into a sponge, leaving Manetti and Custer and the two frightened staffers alone by the reference desk. The sound of thumping, banging, and rattling began to echo back down the stacks as Custer’s men started to pull things off the shelves. It was a satisfying sound, the sound of progress.

“Have a seat, Manetti,” said Custer, unable now to keep condescension completely out of his voice. “Let’s talk.”

Manetti looked around, saw no available chairs, and remained standing.

“Okay.” Custer removed a leather-covered notebook and gold pen — purchased in Macy’s just after the commissioner gave him the new assignment — and prepared to take notes. “So, what we got here in these Archives? A bunch of papers? Newspapers? Old takeout menus? What?”

Manetti sighed. “The Archives contain documents, as well as specimens not considered important enough for the main collections. These materials are available to historians and others with a professional interest. It’s a low-security area.”

“Low security is right,” Custer replied. “Low enough to get this man Puck’s ass hoisted on a goddamned petrified antler. So where’s the valuable stuff kept?”

“What’s not in the general collection is kept in the Secure Area, a location with a separate security system.”

“What about signing in to these Archives, and all that?”

“There’s a logbook.”

“Where’s the book?”

Manetti nodded at a massive volume on the desk. “It was photocopied for the police after Puck’s death.”

“And what does it record?”

“Everybody who enters or leaves the Archives area. But the police already noticed that some of the most recent pages were razored out—”

“Everybody? Staff as well as visiting researchers?”

“Everybody. But—”

Custer turned to Noyes, then pointed at the book. “Bag it.”

Manetti looked at him quickly. “That’s Museum property.”

“It was. Now it’s evidence.”

“But you’ve already taken all the important evidence, like the typewriter those notes were written on, and the—”

“When we’re done here, you’ll get a receipt for everything.” If you ask nicely, Custer thought to himself. “So, what we got here?” he repeated.

“Dead files, mostly, from other Museum departments. Papers of historical value, memos, letters, reports. Everything but the personnel files and some departmental files. The Museum saves everything, naturally, as a public institution.”

“What about that letter found here? The one reported in the papers, describing those killings. How was that found?”

“You’ll have to ask Special Agent Pendergast, who found it along with Nora Kelly. He found it hidden in some kind of box. Made out of an elephant’s foot, I believe.”

That Nora Kelly again. Custer made a mental note to question her himself once he was done here. She’d be his prime suspect, if he thought her capable of hoisting a heavyset man onto a dinosaur horn. Maybe she had accomplices.

Custer jotted some notes. “Has anything been moved in or out of here in the past month?”

“There may have been some routine additions to the collection. I believe that once a month or so they send dead files down here.” Manetti paused. “And, after the discovery of the letter, it and all related documents were sent upstairs for curating. Along with other material.”

Custer nodded. “And Collopy ordered that, did he not?”

“Actually, I believe it was done at the order of the Museum’s vice president and general counsel, Roger Brisbane.”

Brisbane: he’d heard that name before, too. Custer made another note. “And what, exactly, did the related documents consist of?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mr. Brisbane.”

Custer turned to the two museum employees behind the desk. “This guy, Brisbane. You see him down here a lot?”

“Quite a bit, recently,” said one.

“What’s he been doing?”

The man shrugged. “Just asking a lot of questions, that’s all.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Questions about Nora Kelly, that FBI guy… He wanted to know what they’d been looking at, where they went, that kind of thing. And some journalist. He wanted to know if a journalist had been in here. I can’t remember the name.”

“Smithbrick?”

“No, but something like that.”

Custer picked up his notebook, flipped through it. There it was. “William Smithback, Junior.”

“That’s it.”

Custer nodded. “How about this Agent Pendergast? Any of you see him?”

The two exchanged glances. “Just once,” the first man said.

“Nora Kelly?”

“Yup,” said the same man: a young fellow with hair so short he looked almost bald.

Custer turned toward him. “Did you know Puck?”

The man nodded.

“Your name?”

“Oscar. Oscar Gibbs. I was his assistant.”

“Gibbs, did Puck have any enemies?”

Custer noticed the two men exchanging another glance, more significant this time.

“Well…” Gibbs hesitated, then began again. “Once, Brisbane came down here and really lit into Mr. Puck. Screaming and yelling, threatening to bury him, to have him fired.”

“Is that right? Why?”

“Something about Mr. Puck leaking damaging information, failing to respect the Museum’s intellectual property rights. Things like that. I think he was mad because Human Resources hadn’t backed up his recommendation to fire Mr. Puck. Said he wasn’t through with him, not by a long shot. That’s really all I remember.”

“When was this, exactly?”

Gibbs thought a moment. “Let’s see. That would have been the thirteenth. No, the twelfth. October twelfth.”

Custer picked up his notebook again and made another notation, longer this time. He heard a shattering crash from the bowels of the Archives; a shout; then a protracted ripping noise. He felt a warm feeling of satisfaction. There would be no more letters hidden in elephants’ feet when he was done. He turned his attention back to Gibbs.

“Any other enemies?”

“No. To tell you the truth, Mr. Puck was one of the nicest people in the whole Museum. It was a big shock to see Brisbane come down on him like that.”

This Brisbane’s not a popular guy, thought Custer. He turned to Noyes. “Get this man Brisbane for me, will you? I want to talk to him.”

Noyes moved toward the front desk just as the Archives door burst open. Custer turned to see a man dressed in a tuxedo, his black tie askew, brilliantined hair hanging across his outraged face.

“What the hell is going on here?” the man shouted in Custer’s direction. “You just can’t come bursting in here like this, turning the place upside down. Let me see your warrant!”

Noyes began fumbling for the warrant, but Custer stayed him with a single hand. It was remarkable, really, how steady his hand felt, how calm and collected he was during all this, the turning point of his entire career. “And who might you be?” he asked in his coolest voice.

“Roger C. Brisbane III. First vice president and general counsel of the Museum.”

Custer nodded. “Ah, Mr. Brisbane. You’re just the man I wanted to see.”

SEVEN

SMITHBACK FROZE, STARING into the pool of darkness that lay at the far corner of the room. “Who is that?” he finally managed to croak.

There was no response.

“Are you the caretaker?” He gave a strained laugh. “Can you believe it? I’ve locked myself in.”

Again, silence.

Perhaps the voice had been his imagination. God knows, he’d seen enough in this house to cure him of ever wanting to watch another horror movie.

He tried again. “Well, all I can say is, I’m glad you happened by. If you could help me find my way to the door—”

The sentence was choked off by an involuntary spasm of fright.

A figure had stepped out into the dim light. It was muffled in a long dark coat, features in deep shadow under a derby hat. In one upraised hand was a heavy, old-fashioned scalpel. The razor edge gleamed faintly as the man turned it slowly, almost lovingly, between slender fingers. In the other hand, a hypodermic syringe winked and glimmered.

“An unexpected pleasure to see you here,” the figure said in a low, dry voice as he caressed the scalpel. “But convenient. In fact, you’ve arrived just in time.”

Some primitive instinct of self-preservation, stronger even than the horror that had seized him, spurred Smithback into action. He spun and ran. But it was so dark, and the figure moved so blindingly fast…

Later — he didn’t know how much later — Smithback woke up. There was a torpor, and a strange, languorous kind of confusion. He’d had a dream, a terrible dream, he remembered; but it was over now and everything was fine, he would wake to a beautiful fall morning, the hideous fragmented memories of the nightmare melting away into his subconscious. He’d rise, dress, have his usual breakfast of red flannel hash at his favorite Greek coffeeshop, and slowly take on once again, as he did every morning, his mundane, workaday life.

But as his mind gradually grew more alert, he realized that the broken memories, the horrible hinted fragments, were not evaporating. He had somehow been caught. In the dark. In Leng’s house.

Leng’s house…

He shook his head. It throbbed violently at the movement.

The man in the derby hat was the Surgeon. In Leng’s house.

Suddenly, Smithback was struck dumb by shock and fear. Of all the terrible thoughts that darted through his mind at that terrible moment, one stood out from the rest: Pendergast was right. Pendergast was right all along.

Enoch Leng was still alive.

It was Leng himself who was the Surgeon.

And Smithback had walked right into his house.

That noise he was hearing, that hideous gasping, was his own hyperventilation, the suck of air through tape covering his mouth. He forced himself to slow down, to take stock. There was a strong smell of mold around him, and it was pitch black. The air was cold, damp. The pain in his head increased. Smithback moved his arm toward his forehead, felt it stop abruptly — felt the tug of an iron cuff around his wrist, heard the clank of a chain. What the hell was this?

His heart began to race, faster and faster, as one by one the holes in his memory filled: the endless echoing rooms, the voice from the darkness, the man stepping out of the shadows… the glittering scalpel. Oh, God, was it really Leng? After 130 years? Leng?

He tried to stand in automatic groggy panic but fell back again immediately, to a chorus of clinks and clatterings. He was stark naked, chained to the ground by his arms and legs, his mouth sealed with heavy tape.

This couldn’t be happening. Oh, Jesus, this was insane.

He hadn’t told anyone he was coming up here. Nobody knew where he was. Nobody even knew he was missing. If only he’d told someone, the pool secretary, O’Shaughnessy, his great-grandfather, his half-sister, anyone…

He lay back, head pounding, hyperventilating again, heart battering in his rib cage.

He had been drugged and chained by the man in black — the man in the derby hat. That much was clear. The same man who tried to kill Pendergast, no doubt; the same man, probably, who had killed Puck and the others. The Surgeon. He was in the dungeon of the Surgeon.

The Surgeon. Professor Enoch Leng.

The sound of a footfall brought him to full alertness. There was a scraping noise, then a painfully bright rectangle of light appeared in the wall of darkness ahead. In the reflected light, Smithback could see he was in a small basement room with a cement floor, stone walls and an iron door. He felt a surge of hope, even gratitude.

A pair of moist lips appeared at the iron opening. They moved.

“Please do not discompose yourself,” came the voice. “All this will be over soon. Struggle is unnecessary.”

There was something almost familiar in that voice, and yet inexpressibly strange and terrible, like the whispered tones of nightmare.

The slot slid shut, leaving Smithback in darkness once more.

All those Dreadful