The Cabinet of Curiosities

“Do it for Mary Greene, if not for me.”

Nora rose to leave.

“And Dr. Kelly?”

“Yes?”

“Smithback isn’t such a bad fellow. I know from experience that he’s a reliable man in a pinch. It would ease my mind if, while all this is going on, you two worked together—”

Nora shook her head. “No way.”

Pendergast held up his hand with a certain impatience. “Do it for your own safety. And now, I need to get back to my work. I look forward to hearing back from you tomorrow.”

His tone was peremptory. Nora left, feeling annoyed. Yet again Pendergast had dragged her back into the case, and now he wanted to burden her with that ass Smithback. Well, forget Smithback. He’d just love to get his hands on part two of the story. Him and his Pulitzer. She’d go to Peekskill, all right. But she’d go by herself.

NINE

THE BASEMENT ROOM was small and silent. In its simplicity it resembled a monk’s cell. Only a narrow-legged wooden table and stiff, uncomfortable chair broke the monotony of the uneven stone floor, the damp unfinished walls. A black light in the ceiling threw a spectral blue pall over the four items upon the table: a scarred and rotting leather notebook; a lacquer fountain pen; a tan-colored length of India-rubber; and a hypodermic syringe.

The figure in the chair glanced at each of the carefully aligned items in turn. Then, very slowly, he reached for the hypodermic. The needle glowed with strange enchantment in the ultraviolet light, and the serum inside the glass tube seemed almost to smoke.

He stared at the serum, turning it this way and that, fascinated by its eddies, its countless miniature whorls. This

was what the ancients had been searching for: the Philosopher’s Stone, the Holy Grail, the one true name of God. Much sacrifice had been made to get it—on his part, on the part of the long stream of resources who had donated their lives to its refinement. But any amount of sacrifice was acceptable. Here before him was a universe of life, encased in a prison of glass. His life. And to think it all started with a single material: the neuronal membrane of the cauda equina, the divergent sheaf of spinal ganglia with the longest nerve roots of all. To bathe all the cells of the body with the essence of neurons, the cells that did not die: such a simple concept, yet so damnably complicated in development.

The process of synthesis and refinement was tortuous. And yet he took great pleasure in it, just as he did in the ritual he was about to perform. Creating the final reduction, moving from step to step to step, had become a religious experience for him. It was like the countless Gnostic keys the believer must perform before true prayer can begin. Or the harpsichordist who works his way through the twenty-nine Goldberg Variations before arriving at the final, pure, unadorned truth Bach intended.

The pleasure of these reflections was troubled briefly by the thought of those who would stop him, if they could: who would seek him out, follow the carefully obscured trail to this room, put a halt to his noble work. The most troublesome one had already been punished for his presumption—though not as fully punished as intended. Still, there would be other methods, other opportunities.

Placing the hypodermic gently aside, he reached for the leather-bound journal, turned over the front cover. Abruptly, a new smell was introduced into the room: must, rot, decomposition. He was always struck by the irony of how a volume that, over the years, had itself grown so decayed managed to contain the secret that banished decay.

He turned the pages, slowly, lovingly, examining the early years of painstaking work and research. At last, he reached the end, where the notations were still new and fresh. He unscrewed the fountain pen and laid it by the last entry, ready to record his new observations.

He would have liked to linger further but did not dare: the serum required a specific temperature and was not stable beyond a brief interval. He scanned the tabletop with a sigh of something almost like regret. Though of course it was not regret, because in the wake of the injection would come nullification of corporeal poisons and oxidants and the arresting of the aging process—in short, that which had evaded the best minds for three dozen centuries.

More quickly now, he picked up the rubber strap, tied it off above the elbow of his right arm, tapped the rising vein with the side of a fingernail, placed the needle against the antecubital fossa, slid it home.

And closed his eyes.

TEN