The Cabinet of Curiosities

Smithback’s mind raced through the possibilities for escape. There were none.

“Yes, the corydon is most interesting. As is the mosasaur from the chalk beds of Kansas. And of course the durdag from Tibet is quite unusual, one of only two in the world. I understand it was fashioned from the skull of the fifteenth reincarnation of the Buddha.”

Smithback heard a dry laugh, like the scattering of withered leaves.

“Altogether a most interesting cabinet of curiosities, my dear Mr. Smithback. I’m sorry that so few people have had a chance to see it, and that those so honored find themselves unable to make a return visit.”

There was a silence. And then the voice continued, softly and gently: “I will do you well, Mr. Smithback. No effort will be spared.”

A spasm of fear, unlike anything he had ever known, racked Smithback’s limbs. I will do you well . . . Do you well . . . Smithback realized that he was about to die. In his extremity of terror, he did not immediately notice that Leng had called him by name.

“It will be a memorable experience—more memorable than those who have come before you. I have made great strides, remarkable strides. I have devised a most exacting surgical procedure. You will be awake to the very end. Consciousness, you see, is the key: I now realize that. Painstaking care will be taken, I assure you.”

There was a silence as Smithback struggled to keep his reason about him.

The lips pursed. “I shouldn’t want to keep you waiting. Shall we proceed to the laboratory?”

A lock rattled and the iron door creaked open. The dark figure in the derby hat who approached was now holding a long hypodermic needle. A clear drop trembled at its end. A pair of round, old-fashioned smoked glasses were pushed into his face.

“This is merely an injection to relax your muscles. Succinyl choline. Very similar to curare. It’s a paralyzing agent; you’ll find it tends to render the sort of weakness one feels in dreams. You know what I mean: the danger is coming, you try to escape, but you find yourself unable to move. Have no fear, Mr. Smithback: though you’ll be unable to move, you will remain conscious throughout much of the operation, until the final excision and removal is performed. It will be much more interesting for you that way.”

Smithback struggled as the needle approached.

“You see, it’s a delicate operation. It requires a steady and highly expert hand. We can’t have the patient thrashing about during the procedure. The merest slip of the scalpel and all would be ruined. You might as well dispose of the resource and start afresh.”

Still the needle approached.

“I suggest you take a deep breath now, Mr. Smithback.”

I will do you well . . .

With the strength born of consummate terror, Smithback threw himself from side to side, trying to tear free his chains. He opened his mouth against the heavy tape, trying desperately to scream, feeling the flesh of his lips tearing away from his skin under the effort. He jerked violently, fighting against the manacles, but the figure with the needle kept approaching inexorably—and then he felt the sting of the needle as it slid into his flesh, a sensation of heat spreading through his veins, and then a terrible weakness: the precise weakness Leng had described, that feeling of paralysis that happens in the very worst of dreams, at the very worst possible moment.

But this, Smithback knew, was no dream.

FOUR

POLICE SERGEANT PAUL J. Finester really hated the whole business. It was a terrible, criminal, waste of time. He glanced around at the rows of wooden tables set up in parallel lines across the library carpet; at the frumpy, tweed-wearing, bug-eyed, moth-eaten characters who sat across the tables from the cops. Some looked scared, others outraged. Clearly, none of these museum wimps knew anything: they were just a bunch of scientists with bad teeth and even worse breath. Where did they find these characters? It made him mad to think of his hard- earned tax dollars supporting this stone shitpile. Not just that, but it was already ten P.M., and when he got home his wife was going to kill him. Never mind that it was his job, that he was being paid time and a half, that they had a mortgage on the fancy Cobble Hill apartment she forced him to buy and a baby who cost a fortune in diapers. She was still going to kill him. He would come home, dinner would be a blackened crisp in the oven—where it had been since six o’clock, at 250 degrees—the ball and chain would already be in bed with the light out, but still wide awake, lying there like a ramrod, mad as hell, the baby crying and unattended. The wife wouldn’t say anything when he got into the bed, just turn her back to him, with a huge self-pitying sigh, and—

“Finester?”

Finester turned to see his partner, O’Grady, staring at him.

“You okay, Finester? You look like somebody died.”

Finester sighed. “I wish it was me.”

“Cheese it. We’ve got another.”

There was something in O’Grady’s tone that caused Finester to look across their set of desks. Instead of yet another geek, here was a woman—an unusually pretty woman, in fact—with long copper hair and hazel eyes, trim athletic body. He found himself straightening up, sucking in the gut, flexing the biceps. The woman sat down across from them, and he caught a whiff of her perfume: expensive, nice, very subtle. God, a real looker. He glanced at O’Grady and saw the same transformation. Finester grabbed his clipboard, ran his eye down the interrogation lineup. So this was Nora Kelly. The famous, infamous Nora Kelly. The one who found the third body, who’d been chased in the Archives. He hadn’t expected someone so young. Or so attractive.

O’Grady beat him to the opening. “Dr. Kelly, please make yourself comfortable.” His voice had taken on a silken, honeyed tone. “I am Sergeant O’Grady, and this is Sergeant Finester. Do we have permission to tape-record you?”

“If it’s necessary,” the woman said. Her voice wasn’t quite as sexy as her looks. It was clipped, short, irritated.

“You have the right to a lawyer,” continued O’Grady, his voice still low and soothing, “and you have the right to