The Cabinet of Curiosities

Makes sense, O’Shaughnessy thought. Replacing the ledgers, he flipped through the stack of newspapers. He found nothing but a fresh cloud of dust.

Moving the candle to one side, and fighting back a rising sense of disappointment, he reached for the bundles of papers. These were all bills and invoices from wholesalers, covering the same period: 1925 to 1942. No doubt they would match the inventory ledgers.

The red plastic volumes were clearly far too recent to be of any interest. That left just the shoe boxes. One more chance. O’Shaughnessy plucked a shoe box from the top of the pile, blew the dust from its lid, opened it.

Inside were old tax returns.

Damn it, O’Shaughnessy thought as he replaced the box. He chose another at random, opened the lid. More returns.

O’Shaughnessy sat back on his haunches, candle in one hand and shoe box in the other. No wonder the antiques dealer left empty-handed, he thought. Oh, well. It was worth a try.

With a sigh, he leaned forward to replace the box. As he did so, he glanced once again at the red plastic folders. It was strange: the man said his father only used the safe for storing things of the grandfather. But plastic was a recent invention, right? Surely later than 1942. Curious, he plucked up one of the volumes and flipped it open.

Within, he saw a dark-ruled page, full of old, handwritten entries. The page was sooty, partially burned, its edges crumbling away into ash.

He glanced around. The proprietor of the shop had moved away, and was rummaging inside a cardboard box.

Eagerly O’Shaughnessy snatched both the plastic volume and its mate from the safe. Then he blew out the candle and stood up.

“Nothing much of interest, I’m afraid.” He held up the volumes with feigned nonchalance. “But as a formality, I’d like to take these down to our office, just for a day or two. With your permission, of course. It’ll save you and me lots of paperwork, court orders, all that kind of thing.”

“Court orders?” the man said, a worried expression coming over his face. “Sure, sure. Keep them as long as you want.”

Outside on the street, O’Shaughnessy paused to brush dust from his shoulders. Rain was threatening, and lights were coming on in the shotgun flats and coffeehouses that lined the street. A peal of distant thunder sounded over the hum of traffic. O’Shaughnessy turned up the collar of his jacket and tucked the volumes carefully under one arm as he hurried off toward Third Avenue.

From the opposite sidewalk, in the shadow of a brownstone staircase, a man watched O’Shaughnessy depart. Now he came forward, derby hat low over a long black coat, cane tapping lightly on the sidewalk, and—after looking carefully left and right—slowly crossed the street, in the direction of New Amsterdam Chemists.

THREE

BILL SMITHBACK LOVED the New York Times newspaper morgue: a tall, cool room with rows of metal shelves groaning under the weight of leather-bound volumes. On this particular morning, the room was completely empty. It was rarely used anymore by other reporters, who preferred to use the digitized, online editions, which went back only twenty-five years. Or, if necessary, the microfilm machines, which were a pain but relatively fast. Still, Smithback found there was nothing more interesting, or so curiously useful, as paging through the old numbers themselves. You often found little strings of information in successive issues—or on adjoining pages—that you would have missed by cranking through reels of microfilm at top speed.

When he proposed to his editor the idea of a story on Leng, the man had grunted noncommittally—a sure sign he liked it. As he was leaving, he heard the bug-eyed monster mutter: “Just make damn sure it’s better than that Fairhaven piece, okay? Something with marrow.”

Well, it would be better than Fairhaven. It had to be.

It was afternoon by the time he settled into the morgue. The librarian brought him the first of the volumes he’d requested, and he opened it with reverence, inhaling the smell of decaying wood pulp, old ink, mold, and dust. The volume was dated January 1881, and he quickly found the article he was looking for: the burning of Shottum’s cabinet. It was a front-page story, with a handsome engraving of the flames. The article mentioned that the eminent Professor John C. Shottum was missing and feared dead. Also missing, the article stated, was a man named Enoch Leng, who was vaguely billed as a boarder at the cabinet and Shottum’s “assistant.” Clearly, the writer knew nothing about Leng.

Smithback paged forward until he found a follow-up story on the fire, reporting that remains believed to be Shottum had been found. No mention was made of Leng.