The Isle of Blood

“Adolphus? Oh, no. He dislikes human beings as a general principle; he expects to be disappointed by them. Not an unwise position to take, Will Henry.”

“Is that why he’s so mean?”

“Adolphus isn’t mean, Will Henry. Adolphus merely speaks plainly. The old should speak plainly; it is their prerogative.”

Our knock upon the door of the von Helrung brownstone on Fifth Avenue was answered by the great man himself, who threw his short, thick arms around my master without preamble. The snow flitted and fussed about them with confounding complexity, a fitting metaphor for their complicated relationship.

Von Helrung was more than Pellinore Warthrop’s former teacher in the dark arts of monstrumology; he was friend, surrogate father, and sometimes rival. Three months before, the conflict between them over the future of monstrumology had nearly torn their friendship asunder. If von Helrung had been a less forgiving man, the two might never have spoken again, but the master loved his pupil as a father his son. I will not say Warthrop loved him—that is a very insubstantial limb upon which to venture, indeed!—but he was fond of von Helrung, and my master had lost so much already. Discounting me (and I think the doctor probably would have), the old monstrumologist was the only friend Warthrop had left.

“Pellinore, mein Freund, how wonderful to see you again! And here is William, too—dear, brave Will Henry!” He pulled me into his chest and proceeded to crush the air from my lungs. Leaning over, he whispered into my ear, “Every day I pray for you, and God in his mercy must hear. But what is this?” He had noticed my bandaged handp>

“An accident,” Warthrop said tersely.

“Dr. Warthrop chopped off my finger with a butcher knife.”

Von Helrung’s brow knotted up in confusion. “By accident?”

“No,” I answered. “That part was on purpose.”

The old man turned to my master, who shook his head impatiently and said, “May we go inside, von Helrung? We are quite cold and careworn, and I’d rather not talk about such things on your front stoop.”

Von Helrung ushered us into the well-appointed parlor, marvelously cluttered in the Victorian style, cupboards and cabinets groaning with oddities and knickknacks, overstuffed chairs and settees and sofas, and a mantel the surface of which could not be seen for all the bric-a-brac. The doctor’s tea was ready, and for me von Helrung had thoughtfully arranged for a glass of Mr. Pemberton’s delightful concoction, that remarkable confection of fizzy delight called Coca-Cola. I particularly enjoyed the first sip, that tickling sensation upon the tip of my nose.

Von Helrung settled into his wingback chair, clipped off the end of a Havana cigar, and rolled it back and forth over his wide tongue.

“I shall guess the circumstances of young Will’s ‘accident.’” His expression was stern; he clearly was not pleased with my master for allowing such a calamity to happen. His bright blue eyes shone beneath his bushy white eyebrows. “The child was allowed to handle your special delivery from Dr. John Kearns.”

“Not precisely,” replied the doctor. “The child was ‘handled’ by the one who handled it.”

He then proceeded with the story from the beginning, the midnight call of Wymond Kendall and the astonishing gift he’d borne from England. Von Helrung did not interrupt him, though occasionally he injected an ach! or winced in revulsion or grew misty-eyed with wonder and pity.

“Pwdre ser— the rot of stars!” he said softly at the conclusion of the doctor’s tale. “So the stories are true. I never quite believed them, for I did not wish to believe them. That the Creator of all things could create such a thing! Is it not unbearable, Pellinore, even for us, who devote our lives to this work, the import of its existence? What kind of God is this? Is he mad or is he malicious?”

“I like to refrain from burdening myself with questions that cannot be answered, Meister Abram. Perhaps he is neither mad nor malicious but adores all his creatures equally—or is indifferent to all equally.”

“And you do not find either possibility appalling?”

“They are only appalling in the context of human arrogance. Now you are going to argue that we were given dominion over the earth and all its creatures, as if that sets us apart from the very creation to which we belong. Tell that to Wymond Kendall!”

The monstrumologist returned to the reason for our visit. He found philosophical discussions like this distasteful—not precisely beneath him, but useless in the sense that the unanswerable was a waste of his time.

“What have you learned about Jack Kearns?” he asked.

Von Helrung shook his head. “Vanished, Pellinore. His flat abandoned, his offices at the hospital cleaned out. He is gone, and no one seems to know where he might have fled.”

Now Warthrop was the one shaking his head. “Impossible. He must have told someone.”