The Cabinet of Curiosities

Pendergast waited. Nora had the distinct feeling that he expected more. Feeling her annoyance returning, she moved toward the window to examine the skull in the bright morning light. And then, as she stared, she felt a sudden sick feeling wash over her.

“What is it?” Pendergast asked sharply, instantly aware of the change, his wiry frame rising from the chair with the intensity of a spring.

“These faint scratches at the very base of the occipital bone . . .” She reached for the loup that always hung around her neck and fitted it to her eye. Turning the skull upside down, she examined it more closely.

“Go on.”

“They were made by a knife. It’s as if someone were removing tissue.”

“What kind of tissue?”

She felt a flood of relief as she realized what it was.

“These are the kind of marks you would expect to see caused by a scalpel, during a postmortem. This child was autopsied. The marks were made while exposing the upper part of the spinal cord, or perhaps the medulla oblongata.”

She placed the skull on the table. “But I’m an archaeologist, Mr. Pendergast. You’d do better to use the expertise of someone else. We have a physical anthropologist on staff, Dr. Weidenreich.”

Pendergast picked the skull up, sealing it in a Ziploc bag. It disappeared into the folds of his suit without a trace, like a magician’s trick. “It is precisely your archaeological expertise I need. And now,” he continued briskly, replacing the telephone and unlocking the door in swift economical movements, “I need you to accompany me downtown.”

“Downtown? You mean, like headquarters?”

Pendergast shook his head.

Nora hesitated. “I can’t just leave the Museum. I’ve got work to do.”

“We won’t be long, Dr. Kelly. Time is of the essence.”

“What’s this all about?”

But he was already out of her office, striding on swift silent feet down the long corridor. She followed, unable to think of what else to do, as the agent led the tortuous back way down a series of staircases, through Birds of the World, Africa, and Pleistocene Mammals, arriving at last in the echoing Great Rotunda.

“You know the Museum pretty well,” she said as she struggled to keep up.

“Yes.”

Then they were out the bronze doors and descending the vast sweep of marble stairs to Museum Drive. Agent Pendergast stopped at the base and turned in the bright fall light. His eyes were now white, with only a hint of color. As he moved, she suddenly had the impression of great physical power beneath the narrow suit. “Are you familiar with the New York Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act?” he asked.

“Of course.” It was the law that stopped digging or construction in the city if anything of archaeological value was uncovered, until it could be excavated and documented.

“A rather interesting site was uncovered in lower Manhattan. You’ll be the supervising archaeologist.”

“Me? I don’t have the experience or authority—”

“Fear not, Dr. Kelly. I’m afraid we’ll find your tenure all too brief.”

She shook her head. “But why me?”

“You’ve had some experience in this, ah, particular kind of site.”

“And just what kind of site is that?”

“A charnel.”

She stared.

“And now,” he said, gesturing toward a ’59 Silver Wraith idling at the curb, “we must be on our way. After you, please.”FOUR

NORA STEPPED OUT of the Rolls-Royce, feeling uncomfortably conspicuous. Pendergast closed the door behind her, looking serenely indifferent to the incongruity of the elegant vehicle parked amid the dust and noise of a large construction site.

They crossed the street, pausing at a high chain-link fence. Beyond, the rich afternoon light illuminated the skeletal foundations of a row of old buildings. Several large Dumpsters full of bricks lined the perimeter. Two police cars were parked along the curb and Nora could see uniformed cops standing before a hole in a brick retaining wall. Nearby stood a knot of businessmen in suits. The construction site was framed by forlorn tenements that winked back at them through empty windows.

“The Moegen-Fairhaven Group are building a sixty-five-story residential tower on this site,” said Pendergast. “Yesterday, about four o’clock, they broke through that brick wall, there. A worker found the skull I showed you in a barrow inside. Along with many, many more bones.”

Nora glanced in the indicated direction. “What was on the site before?”

“A block of tenements built in the late 1890s. The tunnel, however, appears to predate them.”

Nora could see that the excavator had exposed a clear profile. The old retaining wall lay beneath the nineteenth-century footings, and the hole near its base was clearly part of an earlier structure. Some ancient timbers, burned and rotten, had been piled to one side.