The Cabinet of Curiosities

He felt the bullet strike his right elbow, a sledgehammer blow that knocked him off his feet. He lay on the ground for a moment, as the laser licked through the dusty air. Then he rolled to his feet and limped forward, ducking from case to case as he crossed the room.

He had allowed himself to become distracted by the strange collection; he had neglected to listen for Fairhaven’s approach. Once again, he had failed. With this thought came the realization that, for the first time, he was about to lose.

He took another step forward, cradling his shattered elbow. The bullet seemed to have passed above the medial supracondlar ridge and exited near the coronoid process of the ulna. It would aggravate the blood loss, render him incapable of resistance. He must get to the next room. Each room had its own clues, and perhaps the next would reveal Leng’s secret. But as he moved a wave of dizziness hit him, followed by a stab of nausea. He swayed, steadied himself.

Using the reflected light of Fairhaven’s searching beam, he ducked beneath an archway into the next room. The exertion of the fall, the shock of the second bullet, had drained the last of his energy, and the heavy curtain of unconsciousness drew ever closer. He leaned back against the inside wall, breathing hard, eyes wide against the darkness.

The flashlight beam stabbed abruptly through the archway, then flicked away again. In its brief illumination, Pendergast saw the glitter of glass; rows of beakers and retorts; columnar distillation setups rising like city spires above long worktables.

He had penetrated Enoch Leng’s secret lab.

EIGHT

NORA STOOD OVER the metal table, her gaze moving from the monitoring machines to Smithback’s pallid form, then back again. She had removed the retractors, cleaned and dressed the wound as best she could. The bleeding had finally stopped. But the damage was already done. The blood pressure machine continued to sound its dire warning. She glanced toward the saline bag: it was almost empty, but the catheter was small, and even at maximum volume it would be difficult to replenish lost fluids quickly enough.

She turned abruptly as the sound of a second shot echoed up from the dark staircase. It sounded faint, muffled, as if coming from deep underground.

For a moment she stood motionless, lanced by fear. What had happened? Had Pendergast shot—or been shot?

Then she turned back toward Smithback’s inert form. Only one man was going to come up that staircase: Pendergast, or the other. When the time came, she’d deal with it. Right now, her responsibility lay with Smithback. And she wasn’t going to leave him.

She glanced back at the vitals: blood pressure down to 70 over 35; the heart rate slowing too, now, down to 80 beats per minute. At first, this latter development sent relief coursing through her. But then another thought struck, and she raised her palm to Smithback’s forehead. It was growing as cold as his limbs had been.

Bradycardia, she thought, as panic replaced the transitory feeling of relief. When blood loss is persistent, and there are no more areas for the body to shut down, the patient decompensates. The critical areas start to go. The heart slows. And then stops for good.

Hand still on Smithback’s forehead, Nora turned her frantic gaze back to the EKG. It looked strangely diminished, the spikes smaller, the frequency slower. The pulse was now 50 beats per minute.

She dropped her hands to Smithback’s shoulders, shook him roughly. “Bill!” she cried. “Bill, damn it, come on! Please!”

The peeping of the EKG grew erratic. Slowed.

There was nothing more she could do.

She stared at the monitors for a moment, a horrible feeling of powerlessness stealing over her. And then she closed her eyes and let her head sink onto Smithback’s shoulder: bare, motionless, cold as a marble tomb.

NINE

PENDERGAST STUMBLED PAST the long tables of the old laboratory. Another spasm of pain wracked his gut and he paused momentarily, mentally willing it to pass. Despite the severity of his wounds, he had so far managed to keep one corner of his mind clear, sharp, free of distraction. He tried to focus on that corner through the thickening fog of pain; tried to observe and understand what lay around him.

Titration and distillation apparatuses, beakers and retorts, burners; a vast thicket of glassware and metal. And yet, despite the extent of the equipment, there seemed to be few clues to the project Leng had been working on. Chemistry was chemistry, and you used the same tools and equipment, regardless of what chemicals you were synthesizing or isolating. There were a larger number of hoods and vintage glove boxes than Pendergast expected, implying that Leng had been handling poisons or radioactive substances in his laboratory. But even this merely corroborated what he had already surmised.