The Isle of Blood

“But this is Will Henry, Adolphus,” replied Warthrop in a loud but respectful tone. “You remember Will Henry.”

“Impossible!” shouted Adolphus. “You can’t be a member until you’re eighteen. I know that much, Pellinore Warthrop!”

“He is my assistant,” protested the monstrumologist.

“You watch your language with me, Doctor! He’ll have to leave immediately.” He shook the head of his cane at me. “Immediately!”

Warthrop placed a hand on my shoulder and said in a voice only slightly softer than a shout, “Iehind the Will Henry, Adolphus! You remember—last November. You saved his life!”

“Oh, I remember very well!” cried the old Welshman. “He’s the reason we have the rule!” He wagged a gnarled finger at my face. “Poking around in places where children shouldn’t poke, weren’t you, little man?”

The doctor’s fingers squeezed the back of my neck, and I, as if his puppet, nodded quickly in response.

“I will keep him under the strictest supervision,” promised the doctor. “He shan’t stray an inch from my sight.”

Before Professor Ainesworth could protest further, Warthrop placed the black valise on the desk. Adolphus grunted, popped the clasps, pried open the top, and peered inside.

“Well, well,” he said. “Well, well, well, well!”

“Yes, Adolphus” returned the doctor. “Nidus ex—”

“Oh-ho, do you really think so, Dr. Warthrop?” interrupted the curator, clicking his teeth. He shoved his gnarled hands into a pair of gloves and reached inside the bag. The doctor stiffened reflexively, perhaps apprehensive that the arthritic hands might damage his precious cargo.

Adolphus pushed the empty bag aside with his forearm and gingerly lowered the gruesome nest onto the desktop. He produced a large magnifying glass from his coat pocket and proceeded to inspect the thing up close.

“I have already thoroughly examined the specimen for—,” began the doctor, before Ainesworth cut him off.

“Have you now! Hmmmm. Yes. Have you? Hmmmmmmmm.”

His eye, magnified comically large by the glass, roamed over the specimen. His false teeth clicked—a nervous habit. Adolphus was quite proud of his dentures and somewhat emotionally—as well as biologically—attached to them. They’d been fashioned from the teeth of his son, Alfred Ainesworth, who had been a colonel in the Union army. He’d fallen in the battle of Antietam, and his teeth had been rescued after his death and sent to Adolphus, who thenceforward proudly—and literally—sported a hero’s smile.

“Of course, I would not have brought it to you for safekeeping were I not unequivocally certain of its authenticity,” said the monstrumologist. “There is no one else in whom I place more trust or hold in higher admir—”

“Please, please, Dr. Warthrop. Your incessant chattering is giving me a headache.”

I cringed, waiting for the explosion. But none came. Beside me Warthrop was smiling as benignly as Buddha, completely unfazed. No one in my experience had ever talked to my master with such impertinence, with such condescension and disdain—in short, the way he usually spoke to me. Many times I had witnessed eruptions that would rival Krakatoa in their ferocity over the smallest slight, the most trivial of untoward looks, so I expected “the full Warthrop,” as it were.

The curator pinched a bit of the sticky resin between his gloved thumb and forefinger and tugged it free. He rolled it into a tiny ball and snifft, bringing it dangerously close to the end of his nose.

“Not bad,” he opined. “Not bad—very close. More—what is the word?—pungent than the Lakshadweep nidus, but that is to be expected.… But what is this? There are fingerprints here!” He looked across the desk at Warthrop. “Someone has touched it with his bare hands!” Then his gaze shifted to the bandaging on my left hand. “Well, of course! I might have guessed.”

“I didn’t touch it,” I protested.

“Then, what happened to your finger?” He turned to the monstrumologist. “I am surprised and disappointed, Dr. Warthrop. Of all who desire to apprentice under you, and I know there are many, you choose a liar and a sneak.”

“I did not choose him,” the doctor replied, brutally honest as always.

“You should send him away to an orphanage. He’s no good to you or himself. He’ll get both of you killed one day.”

“I shall take my chances,” Warthrop returned with a wan smile. He nodded to the nidus between them; it was not an easy task, keeping Professor Ainesworth on track. “You’ll note it is nearly identical in every aspect—well, except, perhaps, the smell, which of course I had no means to compare to the Lakshadweep nidus.”

“Do you know he tried to bribe me!” the old man barked suddenly with a shake of his cane.

Startled, the monstrumologist asked, “Who? Who tried to—”

“Mr. P. T. Barnum! That old blackguard offered me seventeen thousand dollars for it—just to borrow it for six months, so he could put it on display right alongside Tom Thumb and the Feejee Mermaid!”

“The Lakshadweep nidus?”