The Cabinet of Curiosities

She felt her breath coming in gasps. Now it was doubly hard to count. Pendergast had said to wait ten minutes. Had another minute passed since the shot? She decided to resume the count again at seven minutes, hoping the monotonous, repetitive activity would calm her nerves. It did not.

And then she heard the sound of rapid footsteps ringing against stone. They had an unusual, syncopated cadence, as if someone was descending a staircase. The footfalls quickly grew fainter. Silence returned once again.

At ten minutes, she stopped counting. Time to move.

For a moment, her body refused to respond. It seemed frozen with dread.

What if the man was still out there? What if she found Smithback dead? What if Pendergast was dead, too? Would she be able to run, to resist, to die, rather than be caught herself and face a fate far worse?

Speculation was useless. She would simply follow Pendergast’s orders.

With an immense effort of will, she rose from her crouch, then stepped out of the darkness, easing her way around the open door. The corridor beyond the cell was long and damp, with irregular stone floor and walls, streaked with lime. At the far end was a door that opened into a bright room: the lone source of light, it seemed, in the entire basement. It was in that direction Pendergast had gone; that direction from which the shot had come; that direction from which she’d heard the sound of running feet.

She took a hesitant step forward, and then another, walking on trembling legs toward the brilliant rectangle of light.

FIVE

THE SURGEON COULD hardly believe his eyes. Where Pendergast should have been lying dead in a pool of blood, there was nothing. The man had vanished.

He looked around wildly. It was inconceivable, a physical impossibility . . . And then he noticed that the section of wall Pendergast had been leaning against was now a door, swiveled parallel to the stone face that surrounded it. A door he never knew existed, despite his diligent searches of the house.

The Surgeon waited, stilling his mind with a great effort of will. Deliberation in all things, he had found, was absolutely necessary for success. It had brought him this far, and with it he would prevail now.

He stepped forward, Pendergast’s gun at the ready. On the far side of the opening, a stone staircase led downward into blackness. The FBI agent obviously wanted him to follow, to descend the staircase whose end was hidden around the dark curve of the stone wall. It could easily be a trap. In fact, it could only be a trap.

But the Surgeon realized he had no choice. He had to stop Pendergast. And he had to find out what lay below. He had a gun, and Pendergast was unarmed, perhaps even wounded by the shot. He paused, briefly, to examine the pistol. The Surgeon knew something about weapons, and he recognized this as a Les Baer custom, .45 Government Model. He turned it over in his hands. With the tritium night sights and laser grips, easily a three-thousand-dollar handgun. Pendergast had good taste. Ironic that such a fine weapon would now be used against its owner.

He stepped back from the false wall. Keeping a watchful eye on the stairway, he retrieved a powerful flashlight from a nearby drawer, then darted a regretful glance toward his specimen. The vital signs were beginning to drop now; the operation was clearly spoiled.

He returned to the staircase and shone the flashlight down into the gloom. The imprint of Pendergast’s footsteps was clearly visible in the dust that coated the steps. And there was something else, something besides the footsteps: a drop of blood. And another.

So he had hit Pendergast. Nevertheless, he would have to redouble his caution. Wounded humans, like wounded animals, were always the most dangerous.

He paused at the first step, wondering if he should go after the woman first. Was she still chained to the wall? Or had Pendergast managed to free her, as well? Either way, she posed little danger. The house was a fortress, the basement securely locked. She would be unable to escape. Pendergast remained the more pressing problem. Once he was dead, the remaining resource could be tracked down and forced to take the place of Smithback. He’d made the mistake of listening to Pendergast once. When he found him, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. The man would be dead before he even opened his mouth.

The staircase spiraled down, down, corkscrewing endlessly into the earth. The Surgeon descended slowly, treating each curve as a blind corner behind which Pendergast might be lying in wait. At last he reached the bottom. The stairs debouched into a dark, murky room, heavy with the smell of mildew, damp earth, and—what? Ammonia, salts, benzene, the faint smell of chemicals. There was a flurry of footprints, more drops of blood. Pendergast had stopped here. The Surgeon shone his light on the nearest wall: a row of old brass lanterns, hanging from wooden pegs. One of the pegs was empty.