Relic

“My God,” Margo said.

Pendergast holstered his gun. “I got off a second shot at it, but I was having trouble aiming my weapon, and I missed. I came down this way to look for it, but the thing had vanished. It must have gone into the stairwell at the end of the corridor. There’s no other way out from this cul-de-sac.”

“Mr. Pendergast,” Frock said urgently. “Tell me, please: what did it look like?”

“I saw it only briefly,” Pendergast said slowly. “It was low, extremely powerful looking. It walked on all fours, but could rear upright. It was partially covered with hair.” He pursed his lips, nodded. “It was dark. But I’d say whoever made that figurine knew what he was doing.”

In the glow of Pendergast’s light, Margo saw a strange mix of fear, exhilaration, and triumph cross Frock’s face. Then a series of muffled explosions echoed and [352] reechoed above them. There was a brief silence, and then more reports, sharper and louder, boomed nearby.

Pendergast looked upward, listening intently. “D’Agosta!” he said. Drawing his gun and dropping the blueprints, he raced out into the corridor.

Margo ran to the door and shined the flashlight down the hallway. In its thin beam, she could see Pendergast rattling the stairwell door. He knelt to inspect the lock, then, standing, he gave the door a series of savage kicks.

“It’s jammed shut,” he said when he returned. “Those shotgun blasts we heard sounded like they came from inside the stairwell. Some of the shells must have bent the doorframe and damaged the lock. It won’t budge.” He holstered the gun and pulled out his radio. “Lieutenant D’Agosta! Vincent, can you hear me?” He waited a moment, then shook his head and replaced the radio in his jacket pocket.

“So we’re stuck here?” Margo asked.

Pendergast shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve spent the afternoon down in these vaults and tu

“That means we can meet up with the people still upstairs, then escape together!” Margo said.

Pendergast looked grim. “But that also means the beast can find its way back into the subbasement. Personally, I think that while these emergency doors may prevent our own rescue, they won’t hamper the beast’s movement much. I believe it’s been around long enough to find its own secret ways, and that it can move throughout the Museum—or, at least, the lower levels—practically at will.”

[353] Margo nodded. “We think it’s been living in the Museum for years. And we think we know how and why it came here.”

Pendergast looked searchingly at Margo for a long moment. “I need you and Doctor Frock to tell me everything you know about this creature, as quickly as possible,” he said.

As they turned to enter the storeroom, Margo heard a distant drumming, like slow thunder. She froze, listening intently. The thunder seemed to have a voice: crying or shouting, she wasn’t sure which.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“That,” Pendergast said quietly, “is the sound of people in the stairwell, ru

= 51 =

In the faint light filtering in through the barred laboratory window, Wright could barely make out the old filing cabinet. It was damned lucky, he thought, that the lab was inside the perimeter of Cell Two. Not for the first time, he was glad he’d kept this old laboratory when he’d been promoted to Director. It would provide them with a temporary safe haven, a little breathing room. Cell Two was now completely cut off from the rest of the Museum, and they were effectively prisoners. Everything, all the emergency bars, shutters, and security gates, had come down during the loss of power. At least that’s what he’d heard that incompetent police officer, D’Agosta, say.

“Someone is going to pay dearly for this,” Wright muttered to himself. Then they all fell quiet. Now that they had stopped ru

Wright moved gingerly forward, pulling out one [355] file-cabinet drawer after another, fishing behind the folders until at last he found what he was looking for.

“Ruger .357 magnum,” he said, hefting it in his hands. “Great pistol. Excellent stopping power.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to stop whatever killed Ippolito,” said Cuthbert. He was standing near the laboratory door, a still figure framed in black.

“Don’t worry, Ian. One of these speedball bullets would perforate an elephant. I bought this after old Shorter was mugged by a vagrant. Anyway, the creature isn’t coming up here. And if he does, this door is solid oak two inches thick.”

“What about that one?” Cuthbert pointed toward the rear of the office.

“That goes into the Hall of Cretaceous Dinosaurs. It’s just like this one—solid oak.” He tucked the Ruger into his belt. “Those fools, going into the basement like so many lemmings. They should have listened to me.”

He rummaged in the file drawer again and pulled out a flashlight. “Excellent. Haven’t used this in years.”

He snapped it on and a feeble beam shot out, wavering as his hand shook a little.

“Not much juice left in that torch, I’d say,” Cuthbert murmured.

Wright turned it off. “We’ll only use it in an emergency.”

“Please!” Rickman spoke suddenly. “Please leave it on. Just for a minute.” She was sitting on a stool in the center of the room, clenching and unclenching her hands. “Winston, what are we going to do? We must have a plan.”

“First things first,” said Wright. “I need a drink, that’s Plan A. My nerves are shot.” He made his way to the far side of the lab and shone the light in an old cabinet, finally pulling out a bottle. There was a clink of glass.

“Ian?” asked Wright.

“Nothing for me,” Cuthbert replied.

[356] “Lavinia?”

“No, no, I couldn’t.”

Wright came back and sat down at a worktable. He filled the tumbler and drank it off in three gulps. Then he refilled it. Suddenly, the room was full of the warm, peaty scent of single-malt scotch.

“Easy there, Winston,” said Cuthbert.

“We can’t stay here, in the dark,” Rickman said nervously. “There must be an exit somewhere on this floor.”

“I’m telling you, everything’s sealed off,” Wright snapped.

“What about the Dinosaur Hall?” said Rickman, pointing to the rear door.

“Lavinia,” said Wright, “the Dinosaur Hall has only one public entrance, and that’s been sealed by a security door. We’re completely locked in. But you don’t need to worry, because whatever killed Ippolito and the others won’t be after us. It’ll go after the easy kill, the group blundering around in the basement.”

There was a swallowing sound, then the loud snack of glass hitting the table. “I say we stay here for another half-hour, wait it out. Then, we’ll go back down into the exhibition. If they haven’t restored power and unsealed the doors by then, I know of another way out. Through the exhibition.”

“You seem to know all kinds of hiding places,” Cuthbert said.

“This used to be my lab. Once in awhile I still like to come down here, get away from the administrative headaches, be near my dinosaurs again.” He chuckled and drank.

“I see,” said Cuthbert acidly.

“Part of the Superstition exhibition is mounted in what used to be the old Trilobite Alcove. I put in a lot of hours down there many years ago. Anyway, there was a passageway to the Broadway corridor behind one of the old trilobite displays. The door was boarded up years ago to make room for another display case. I’m sure that [357] when they were building Superstition, they just nailed a piece of plywood over it and painted it. We could kick it in, shoot off the lock with this if necessary.”