The Cabinet of Curiosities

“Dr. Kelly!” The voices were coming from her left now, away from the door.

She crept forward between the shelves, strained to catch a glimpse of them, but she could see nothing but the beam of a flashlight stabbing through the dark piles of bone.

There was no more time: she had to get out.

She listened closely to the footsteps of the cops. Good: they seemed to still be together. In their joint eagerness to take credit for the collar, they’d been too stupid to leave one to guard the door.

“All right!” she called. “I give up! Sorry, I guess I just lost my head.”

There was a brief flurry of whispers.

“We’re coming!” O’Grady shouted. “Don’t go anywhere!”

She heard them moving in her direction, more quickly now, the flashlight beam wobbling and weaving as they ran. Watching the direction of the beam, she scooted away, keeping low, angling back toward the front of the storage room, moving as quickly and silently as she could.

“Where are you?” she heard a voice cry, fainter now, several aisles away. “Dr. Kelly?”

“She was over there, O’Grady.”

“Damn it, Finester, you know she was much farther—”

In a flash Nora was out the door. She turned, slammed it shut, turned her key in the lock. In another five minutes she was out on Museum Drive.

Panting hard, she slipped her cell phone out of her purse again and dialed.

SEVEN

THE SILVER WRAITH glided noiselessly up to the Seventy-second Street curb. Pendergast slid out and stood for a moment in the shadow of the Dakota, deep in thought, while the car idled.

The interview with his great-aunt had left him with an unfamiliar feeling of dread. Yet it was a dread that had been growing within him since he first heard of the discovery of the charnel pit beneath Catherine Street.

For many years he had kept a silent vigil, scanning the FBI and Interpol services, on the lookout for a specific modus operandi. He’d hoped it would never surface—but always, in the back of his mind, had feared it would.

“Good evening, Mr. Pendergast,” the guard said at his approach, stepping out of the sentry box. An envelope lay in his white-gloved hand. The sight of the envelope sent Pendergast’s dread soaring.

“Thank you, Johnson,” Pendergast replied, without taking the envelope. “Did Sergeant O’Shaughnessy come by, as I mentioned he would?”

“No sir. He hasn’t been by all evening.”

Pendergast grew more pensive, and there was a long moment of silence. “I see. Did you take delivery of this envelope?”

“Yes, sir.”

“From whom, may I ask?”

“A nice, old-fashioned sort of gent, sir.”

“In a derby hat?”

“Precisely, sir.”

Pendergast scanned the crisp copperplate on the front of the envelope: For A. X. L. Pendergast, Esq., D. Phil., The Dakota. Personal and Confidential. The envelope was handmade from a heavy, old-fashioned laid paper, with a deckle edge. It was precisely the sort of paper made by the Pendergast family’s private stationer. Although the envelope was yellow with age, the writing on it was fresh.

Pendergast turned to the guard. “Johnson, may I borrow your gloves?”

The doorman was too well trained to show surprise. Donning the gloves, Pendergast slipped into the halo of light around the sentry box and broke the envelope’s seal with the back of his hand. Very gingerly, he bowed it open, looking inside. There was a single sheet of paper, folded once. In the crease lay a single small, grayish fiber. To the untrained eye, it looked like a bit of fishing line. Pendergast recognized it as a human nerve strand, undoubtedly from the cauda equina at the base of the spinal cord.

There was no writing on the folded sheet. He angled it toward the light, but there was nothing else at all, not even a watermark.

At that moment, his cell phone rang.

Putting the envelope carefully aside, Pendergast plucked his phone from his suit pocket and raised it to his ear.

“Yes?” He spoke in a calm, neutral voice.

“It’s Nora. Listen, Smithback figured out where Leng lives.”

“And?”

“I think he went up there. I think he went into the house.”

The Search

ONE

NORA WATCHED THE Silver Wraith approach her at an alarming speed, weaving through the Central Park West traffic, red light flashing incongruously on its dashboard. The car screeched to a stop alongside her as the rear door flew open.

“Get in!” called Pendergast.

She jumped inside, the sudden acceleration throwing her back against the white leather of the seat.

Pendergast had lowered the center armrest. He looked straight ahead, his face grimmer than Nora had ever seen it. He seemed to see nothing, notice nothing, as the car tore northward, rocking slightly, bounding over potholes and gaping cracks in the asphalt. To Nora’s right, Central Park raced by, the trees a blur.

“I tried reaching Smithback on his cell phone,” Nora said. “He isn’t answering.”

Pendergast did not reply.

“You really believe Leng’s still alive?”

“I know so.”

Nora was silent a moment. Then she had to ask. “Do you think—Do you think he’s got Smithback?”