The Einstein Prophecy

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Lucas heard the gentle knock on his study door and said, “Come in,” he expected a student to pop in with a late paper. Even that brief an interruption was more than he wanted — his thoughts were entirely consumed with the imminent unveiling of the ossuary. He should have been back in the conservation wing, making a final inspection of the sealed box and compiling his last-minute notes.

But instead of a student, a plump young woman, with a cloth coat thrown over a waitress’s pink uniform, opened the door.

“I’m sorry, but are you Professor Athan?” she asked, as if he weren’t what she expected to see, either.

“Yes.”

“I’m Polly Gregg. Wally’s daughter. Would it be okay if I talked to you for a minute?”

Suppressing the urge to put her off until a more opportune time, Lucas welcomed her in and gestured to the chair opposite his cluttered desk. He swept from its seat an invitation from President Dobbs, addressed to all junior faculty, that recommended in no uncertain terms that they turn out “as a sign of their support for the college” at the opening football game. Lucas prayed that Polly wasn’t there to tell him that the poor man had succumbed to his wounds. He had more than enough blood on his hands and his conscience, already.

“My dad told me about you. Said you were a war hero.”

“Hardly,” Lucas said. “How is your dad doing?”

Polly glanced down at her lap. “Not so good,” she said. “Not so good at all, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know why he was working so late. Why was he? Why did this happen?” It all came out in a rush as she looked up, her brown eyes welling with tears. “When he called me to tell me not to wait up for him, he said he had the willies. My dad worked in the museum all the time — why would he have had the willies?”

Lucas felt the sharp, stabbing cold around his glass eye. He had the willies himself when he was around that box. But all he could do was shake his head.

“I stopped in at the hospital,” he said, “to see him, but they wouldn’t allow anyone but family.”

Polly looked lost and helpless. “It’s pretty bad,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And I don’t understand a word that his doctor says to me. It’s like he purposely uses big words just to confuse me.”

“I’m sure not.”

“I’m sure he does.” She dug a wad of tissues out of her coat pocket. “I’m just a waitress, and my dad’s a janitor, so we must be stupid, right?” She leaned forward to drop her used tissues in the wastebasket beside his desk, then, perhaps considering it impolite, stuck them back in her pocket instead. “My dad drinks a lot. I’ll admit it. But he never hit me or anything, he just cried a lot after my mother left, and sometimes forgot to put any food in the icebox. He tried his best, though.” She looked up at Lucas. “And I don’t want him to die.”

“Why don’t I come with you?” Lucas said, standing. “To the hospital. Right now.” He needed to do something with this sliver of time before the opening of the ossuary, and maybe this was it. Making a quick calculation in his head, he was certain he’d still be able to make it back to the museum on time. “I might be able to help.” Grabbing his coat off the peg on the door, he took Polly by her elbow and guided her out of the building. She looked at him with unconcealed gratitude.

At the hospital, they sat on a stiff wooden bench in the waiting area until a nurse summoned them down the hall. In Wally’s room, a doctor — Crowley, according to his name tag — was making notes on a clipboard. He glanced up at Lucas over the rim of his wire specs. “And you are?”

“A friend of the family.”

The bed was shrouded by what looked like mosquito netting, and it was only when the doctor lifted it that Lucas could see why Polly had been so horrified.

Wally was almost unrecognizable. His head, propped on the pillow, looked like a jack-o’-lantern, and his breathing was stertorous. His eyes and lips were just slits in his head, and only patches of his hair remained. His skin had turned as firm and bumpy as an orange peel. For a moment, superimposed over the scene, all Lucas saw was the corpse in the iron mine, its swollen skull lying facedown in the dirt. Wally could be his twin.

“The bacterium strain is proving more resistant than expected,” Crowley said. “The drug regimen has worked miracles in some cases, but not in this one.”

Lucas cleared his throat, the vision dispersing as instantaneously as it had come. “What drug is that?” he asked, as much for Polly’s benefit as his own.

“Penicillin,” Crowley said.

Penicillin had only been mass manufactured in recent years, and Lucas knew that almost all of the supply had been reserved for the military. Reputed to be a godsend — millions of doses had been stockpiled in advance of the Normandy invasion — it had saved many lives from infection and disease already.

“We’re also dealing with the ramifications of necrotizing fasciitis,” the doctor said. Polly threw a pleading glance at Lucas.

“What exactly is that?” he asked.

“A polymicrobial infection that can be transmitted, as it undoubtedly was in this instance, from some trauma to the dermis. A bite from a carrier — a rat, bat, dog, even an insect — can introduce it.”

“But what does it do, once it’s been introduced?”

“In layman’s terms,” Crowley said with the air of certain lofty professors he’d had at Columbia, “it eats flesh.”

Lucas had never heard of such a disease. But now he had seen two examples of it — one sprawled on the ground in Alsace-Lorraine, and one lying in a bed in New Jersey. Had the dead man in the mine also been bitten by an infected animal?

“Patients who suffer from diabetes, circulatory issues, or problems with alcohol are most susceptible.” Crowley went on. “As you may or may not know, Mr. Gregg had all three of the conditions which favor erysipelas.”

“Favor what?” Polly asked, twisting her hands.

“Erysipelas. Since the Middle Ages, when it was a scourge in Western Europe, it has been more commonly known as ignis sacer, or holy fire.”

When even Lucas remained blank, he added, “It also went by the name of Saint Anthony’s fire. Perhaps you have heard it called by that name.”

By that name, Lucas had.

“John Stuart Mill died of it,” the doctor added.

“Here?” Polly said with terror in her voice.

“In London, in the previous century. We’ll continue to do all that we can for Mr. Gregg, but if you’ll excuse me”—Crowley flipped the chart on his clipboard—“I have to complete my rounds now.”

“Actually, Doctor,” Lucas couldn’t resist saying, as the doctor paused impatiently at the door, “Mill was born in London, but he didn’t die there. He died in France.”

Then he draped a consoling arm around Polly, and they both turned their attention to her father. As Lucas’s thoughts raced ahead, trying to put together the shards of the puzzle he found himself confronted by, Polly reached out to take her father’s hand. Bandages concealed what Lucas could only surmise were partially amputated fingertips. She was just about to make contact when the head nurse, her hat as white and crisp as cardboard, bustled in.

“No, no, no,” she admonished her, brushing Polly’s hand aside and lowering the netting around the bed again. “No touching. You’ll both have to go now. Visiting hours were over at five-thirty.”