The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist) (22 page)

“I am neither.” And I remembered his wound. I hadn’t noticed him walking with a limp, but that would not be unusual. The monstrumologist took grim pleasure in hiding his pain.

“I think it would be a good idea if Mr. Faulk remained in the lobby until we hear back from Dr. Walker,” I suggested.

The doctor started to say something, then nodded curtly. “Would that be a difficulty, Mr. Faulk?” Slipping him a twenty.

“No difficulty at all, Dr. Warthrop,” murmured the faithful Mr. Faulk. “Down here? Might be better to wait with you in the room.”

“No, no, not necessary.” There seemed to be something about the big man that unnerved Warthrop. Not me. I quite enjoyed his company.

Mr. Faulk shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ll ring your room if anyone comes making inquiries.” He turned to me. “More blue then red, Mr. Henry?”

“Completely,” I answered. “No red at all.”

In the elevator my master leaned against the wall and
closed his eyes. “As I recall, there was quite a bit of red, ‘Mr. Henry.’ ”

“Mr. Faulk was referring to a conversation we had regarding the nature of love.”

One eye came open. “You were discussing love with Mr. Faulk? How extraordinary.”

“He’s a very wise man.”

“Hmm. Well, that ‘very wise man’ is wanted in three states for the crime of first-degree murder.”

“And he walks a free man. That proves he’s wise.”

He snorted. “That isn’t wisdom; that’s luck.”

“Of the two, I’d much rather have the latter.”

Once in our rooms, he proceeded to barricade us in, pushing the large dresser against the door, checking the locks on our windows eight stories above the street, then drawing the heavy curtains. He fell upon the sofa, gasping for air.

“I should check the dressing,” I said, indicating his outstretched leg.

“You should count yourself lucky I don’t throw you out on the street.”

“There is still one thing I don’t understand.”

“Just one?”

“Why such a small ransom? You must not have told Competello the true value of the prize.”

“Why would I tell a criminal overlord
that
?”

“Well, what did you tell him?”

“First I told him I was sorry that one of his own had
been killed in the performance of an invaluable service to the advancement of human knowledge—namely, keeping an eye on the Monstrumarium pending the official presentation to the Society—and that it was my intent to make full recompense to the poor man’s family. Then I told him who was responsible. . . .”

“But that is something we don’t know—and why I thought you went to him in the first place.”

“We know they were Irish—part of an organized criminal enterprise or not, undoubtedly they were Irish, and there is no love lost between the Sicilians and the Irish. Before you arrived to seal our death warrants, I had extracted a pledge from him to aid us in our quest.”

“I thought it might be Walker.”

“You thought
what
might be Walker?”

“The one behind it all. The only thing he is more ravenous about than money is destroying you.”

He shook his head, waved his hand, rolled his eyes. “Hire two-bit hoodlums to snatch a specimen to which he himself had ready access? Even Sir Hiram isn’t that stupid.”

“Your reasoning rules out every monstrumologist as a suspect.”

He nodded. “Which leaves Maeterlinck and this mysterious client of his.”

“It’s not Maeterlinck. He’s in Europe.”

“As you’ve told me, though how you might know that . . .”

“Perhaps this client had a change of heart and decided
to steal back his former property.” I hurried on. “He could have assumed where you would place it for safekeeping. Not a monstrumologist, since all monstrumologists have access to the Monstrumarium. But an outsider who is well-versed in our practices.”

“I would agree with you, Will Henry, except for the inconvenient fact that your premise is nonsensical. You and his agent agree upon a price, the transaction is consummated, and then he steals something he easily could have kept? As Maeterlinck himself said, there are men who would pay a king’s ransom for the prize—yet he did not offer it to them when he had the chance. In other words, why all the bother? The
only
hypothesis that fits the facts is the broker was cheated in some way: that you stole it rather than purchased it, and the offended party has taken back what is rightfully his.”

His accusation hung in the air. I had no doubt he took my silence as a confession, for he went on: “You have been with me for nearly six years. At times I think you understand this dark and dirty business better than I, but understanding that leads to arrogance and a willful disregard for simple human decency . . .”

“I do not think you should lecture me about arrogance or simple human decency.”

“I think I will lecture you about anything that suits me!” He slammed his open palm upon the cushions. “I don’t know why I waste my time with you. The more I try to teach you, the more you take from me the wrong lessons!”

“Really? What lessons would those be? What exactly are you trying to teach me, Dr. Warthrop? You are angry with me for killing those men—”

“No, I am angry with you for costing me my reputation and for jeopardizing the most spectacular find in biology in two generations!”

“You should be angry with yourself—and with Dr. von Helrung—for lying to me.”

“
I
have lied?” He threw back his head and laughed.

“By omission, yes! If you had told me who that man was in the Monstrumarium, had shared with me your arrangement with the Camorra that resulted in his death . . .”

“Why would anyone share that with
you
?”

“Because I am . . .” I stuttered to a stop, face burning, hands clenched at my sides.

“Yes. Tell me,” he said softly. “What are you?”

I wet my lips. My mouth was bone-dry. What was I? “Misinformed,” I said finally.

He seemed to think it a wondrous witticism. He was still laughing when the telephone rang. I made a move to answer it and he waved me away. His chuckles died abruptly as he listened to the party on the other end of the line.

“Yes, please, have him bring it up at once,” he said, and hung up. “Help me move this dresser, Will. We have a delivery.”

A moment later there was a soft rap upon the door. Warthrop, leaving nothing to chance, drew out his revolver and shouted, “Who is it?”

“Faulk.”

He threw back the bolt and opened the door. Mr. Faulk stepped inside holding a hat-size box. The doctor motioned for him to set it on the table by the windows and locked the door.

“Who?” Warthrop demanded, dropping the gun back into his pocket and examining the box without touching it. His agitation was palpable.

“Didn’t give his name, but he’s an old friend from earlier this evening,” Mr. Faulk answered. “Short, swarthy, ill-smelling.”

“Competello’s courier,” I said.

Warthrop waved his hand at me without turning.

“ ‘A present for the goodly Dr. Warthrop,’ was the message,” Mr. Faulk said.

“Stand back—against the far wall, please,” the monstrumologist instructed us. “I suspect I know what this ‘present’ is, but one cannot be too careful.”

“That’s my motto, Doctor,” Mr. Faulk replied. He edged toward the other side of the room and urged me to follow. Warthrop rubbed his hands together vigorously, then cupped them to his mouth and blew hard. He placed his index finger on the edge of the lid and gingerly exerted upward pressure. Mr. Faulk and I held our breaths, our bodies tense.

The lid fell back—and then the monstrumologist fell too, bringing up his hands to hide his face, his voice rising in an unearthly cry of anguish, the same cry I had heard years
before from the summit of a manure block, where he had found the faceless corpse of his beloved among the stinking refuse. He spun round, colliding with the coffee table, lost his balance or perhaps his will to remain upright, and fell to his knees with a keening wail. Mr. Faulk and I rushed forward, he to Warthrop and I to the box.

A tangled mass of feathery white hair seemed to float above the blood-speckled forehead and prominent nose and age-mottled cheeks and bright blue eyes, the brightest blue I had ever seen, staring into oblivion with an expression of horror pure all the way down to the bottom: the severed head of Dr. Abram von Helrung, full lips stretched wide around the thing they had stuffed into his mouth, the thing with the lidless amber eyes that had captured me first in the basement when it broke through its shell, and I the corrupted, crowning achievement of evolution dumbstruck by the purity of its being, its godless, sinless, conscienceless perfection, now staring sightlessly back at me, dead yellow eye and dead blue eye sucking me under to be crushed in the airless, lightless depths.

From behind me the monstrumologist screamed, “What have you done?”

I did not know whether he spoke to von Helrung or to me. It may have been both. It may have been neither.

“What in God’s name have you done?”

Nothing, nothing, nothing, in God’s name, nothing.

FOUR

Abram was dead, and Pellinore was inconsolable. I’d never seen him so broken and helpless, borne down by what he had called “the dark tide.” He wailed and railed, cried and cursed; even Mr. Faulk sensed that it could not continue indefinitely: Either Warthrop would best the spell or the spell would best him. I bore a special responsibility, not because I felt in any way responsible for von Helrung’s death—no, fate had decreed me his sole caretaker, the lone guardian of the Warthropian animus. It had taken me years to understand this. He didn’t need me to sustain his body. He could hire a cook to feed him, a tailor to clothe him, a washerwoman to keep those clothes clean, a valet to wait upon him hand and foot. What he could not afford, though he possessed the wealth of Midas, the one
indispensable
service that only I
could provide, was the care and feeding of his soul, the nurture of his towering intellect, and the incessant stroking of his pitiful, mewling, insufferable ego, the
I am!
squeal to the silent, inexorable
Am I
?

I understood my duty in that hour. Understood it with greater clarity than I had in Aden, on Socotra, or even on Elizabeth Street. I understood all too well.
What are you?
he had asked. It was a disingenuous question. He knew very well what I was, what I had always been without either of us understanding it, much less acknowledging it. And what did it matter if we did? Would it have changed anything?

There is no place where it begins. No place where it ends.

I called down to the desk and ordered up a pot of tea. I mixed a healthy dosage of sleeping draft into his cup and pressed the cup into his hands.
Drink, Doctor. Drink.
After a few moments he allowed me to lead him to his room, where he threw himself upon the bed and curled into a ball, and I was reminded of his father, whom he had found in the same position years before, naked as the day he was born, dead. I closed the door and returned to the sitting room, where Mr. Faulk was waiting for me. He was contemplating the head, his massive brow furrowed in existential concentration. He, too, understood his duty in that hour.

“It’s a shame, Mr. Henry. I always liked the old man.”

“The last of his kind,” I said, not without some irony. “He must have changed his mind and gone to see Competello himself. I only hope he brought Walker with him and
that
that
head is bobbing somewhere in the East River.”

I threw myself upon the sofa and closed my eyes. I pressed my fingertips hard against the lids until red roses blossomed in the darkness.

“Slate clean now,” Mr. Faulk said.

“I suppose that is so,” I acknowledged. “From Competello’s perspective. But true recompense demands that
my
head be in that box, Mr. Faulk.”

“All in all, better it’s still on your shoulders, Mr. Henry.”

I opened my eyes. “On Elizabeth Street, between Hester and Grand, there is a little restaurant; I cannot remember the name.”

He was nodding. “I think I know the place.”

“Good. Start there. If the padrone isn’t there, someone will be who knows where you can find him.” I fished one of Warthrop’s cards from my pocket—I always carried a supply with me—and handed it to him. “Tell him the doctor requests a meeting.”

“When?” Mr. Faulk asked.

“Nine o’clock.”

“Here?”

I shook my head. “He won’t come here. It must be a public place—or at least a crowded one.” I gave him the address.

“The doctor?”

“I gave him enough drug to knock out a horse.”

“He shouldn’t be left alone,” he said. “I know a man, a very trustworthy fellow.”

“All right. But two would be better. One outside the door and one downstairs in the lobby.”

He nodded, and again his eyes were drawn to the box.

“What’s he got in his mouth?”

“The cause of it all. I don’t know what brings Warthrop more torment—the death of his best friend, the death of that thing, or the death of something not quite so corporeal.”