The Cabinet of Curiosities

Pendergast looked at him curiously. “That’s correct.”

“Hutchinson-Guilford syndrome?” Nora asked. “Never heard of it.”

“Also known as progeria. After a normal birth, children begin to age extremely rapidly. Height is stunted. Hair turns gray and then falls out, leaving prominent veins. There are usually no eyebrows or eyelashes, and the eyes grow too large for the skull. The skin turns brown and wrinkled. The long bones become decalcified. Basically, by adolescence the child has the body of an old man. They become susceptible to atherosclerosis, strokes, heart attacks. The last is what killed Arthur Fairhaven, when he was sixteen.

“His brother saw mortality compressed into five or six years of horror. He never got over it. We’re all afraid of death, but for Anthony Fairhaven the fear became an obsession. He attended medical school, but after two years was forced to leave for certain unauthorized experiments he’d undertaken; I’m still looking into their exact nature. So by default he went into the family business of real estate. But health remained an obsession with him. He experimented with health foods, diets, vitamins and supplements, German spas, Finnish smoke saunas. Taking hope from the Christian promise of eternal life, he became intensely religious—but when his prayers were slow in being answered he began hedging his bets, supplementing his religious fervor with an equally profound and misplaced fervor for science, medicine, and natural history. He became a huge benefactor to several obscure research institutes, as well as to Columbia Medical School, the Smithsonian, and of course the New York Museum of Natural History. And he founded the Little Arthur Clinic, which in fact has done important work on rare diseases of children.

“We cannot be sure, exactly, when he first learned of Leng. He spent a lot of time digging around in the Museum Archives, following up some line of research or other. At some point, he came across information about Leng in the Museum’s Archives. Whatever he found gave him two critical pieces of information: the nature of Leng’s experiments, and the location of his first lab. Here was this man who claimed to have succeeded in extending his life. You can imagine how Fairhaven must have reacted. He had to find out what this man had done, and if he had really succeeded. Of course, this is why Puck had to die: he alone knew of Fairhaven’s visits to the Archives. He alone knew what Fairhaven had been examining. This wasn’t a problem until we found the Shottum letter: but then it became essential to remove Puck. Even a casual mention by Puck of Fairhaven’s visits would have linked him directly to Leng. It would have made him suspect number one. By luring you down there, Dr. Kelly, Fairhaven figured he could kill two birds with one stone. You had proven yourself unusually dangerous and effective.

“But I get ahead of myself. After Fairhaven discovered Leng’s work, he next wondered if Leng had succeeded— in other words, if Leng was still alive. So he began to track him down. When I myself started to hunt for Leng’s whereabouts, I often had the sense someone had walked the trail before me in the not too distant past.

“Ultimately, Fairhaven discovered where Leng had once lived. He came to this house. Imagine his exultation when he found my great-grand-uncle still alive—when he realized that Leng had, in fact, succeeded in his attempt to prolong life. Leng had the very secret that Fairhaven so desperately wanted.

“Fairhaven tried to make Leng divulge his secret. As we know, Leng had abandoned his ultimate project. And I now know why. Studying the papers in his laboratory, I realized that Leng’s work stopped abruptly around the first of March 1954. I wondered a long time about the significance of that date. And then I understood. That was the date of Castle Bravo.”

“Castle Bravo?” Nora echoed.

“The first dry thermonuclear bomb, exploded at Bikini. It ‘ran away’ to fifteen megatons, and the fireball expanded to four miles in diameter. Leng was convinced that, with the invention of the thermonuclear bomb, the human race was destined to kill itself anyway, and far more efficiently than he ever could. The march of technology had solved his problem for him. So he gave up his search for the ultimate poison. He could grow old and die in peace, knowing it was only a matter of time before his dream of curing the earth of its human plague came true.

“So, by the time Fairhaven found him, Leng had not taken the elixir for many years—since March 1954, in fact. He had grown old. Perhaps he almost wanted to die. At any rate, he refused, even under brutal torture, to reveal his formula. Fairhaven pushed too hard and killed him.

“But there was still another chance for Fairhaven. There was still Leng’s old lab, where crucial information— both in the form of human remains, and especially in the form of Leng’s journal—might be found. And Fairhaven knew where the lab was: underneath Shottum’s Cabinet. Of course, the lot was now covered by apartment buildings. But Fairhaven was in the perfect position to buy the land and tear down the buildings, all in the name of urban renewal. Construction workers I’ve spoken to mentioned that Fairhaven was conspicuously present at the site while the foundation was being dug. He was the second man to enter the charnel pit, after the worker who originally found the bones had fled. No doubt he found Leng’s notebook in there. Later, he was able to study the effects taken from the tunnel at his leisure. Including the bones—and that, no doubt, is why the marks on both the old corpses and the new were so similar.

“Now, Fairhaven had Leng’s notebooks. He began trying to replicate Leng’s experiments, hoping to retrace the path Leng had taken. But of course, his attempts were amateurish, with no real understanding of Leng’s true work.”

As Pendergast’s narrative ceased, the old house settled into a profound silence.

“I can’t believe it,” Smithback said at last. “When I interviewed him, Fairhaven seemed so confident, so calm. So . . . so sane.”

“Madness wears many disguises,” Pendergast replied. “Fairhaven’s obsession was deep, too deep and abiding to show itself openly. And one can reach the gates of hell just as easily by short steps as by large. Fairhaven seemed to think that the formula for longevity had always been destined for him. Having taken in Leng’s life essence, he now began to believe that he was Leng—Leng as he should have been. He took on Leng’s persona, his manner of dress. And the copycat killings began. But a different sort of copycat killing than the police ever imagined. Killings, by the way, that had nothing to do with your article, Mr. Smithback.”

“Why did he try to kill you?” Smithback asked. “It was such a risk. I never understood that.”

“Fairhaven was a man who thought far, far ahead. That was why he was so successful in business—and, of course, one reason why he was so frightened of death. When I succeeded in finding Mary Greene’s address, he realized it was only a matter of time before I found Leng’s. Whether I believed Leng was alive or dead didn’t matter—he knew I would come to Leng’s house, and then all his efforts would be ruined. It would expose the connection between the modern-day killer known as the Surgeon and the old killer named Leng. It was the same with Nora. She was hot on the trail; she’d been to visit McFadden’s daughter; she had the archaeological expertise I lacked. Clearly, it was only a matter of time before we figured out where Leng lived. We couldn’t be allowed to proceed.”

“And O’Shaughnessy? Why kill him?”