The Cabinet of Curiosities

Pendergast bowed, holding the door open for Nora. She stepped through it, feeling shocked. Down the hall, she halted and spoke to Pendergast. “You totally blindsided me back there. I had no idea what you were up to until we were in Brisbane’s office. I don’t appreciate it.”

Pendergast turned his pale eyes on her. “My methods are unorthodox, but they have one advantage.”

“And what is that?”

“They work.”

“Yeah, but what about my career?”

Pendergast smiled. “May I offer a prediction?”

“For what it’s worth, why not?”

“When this is over, you will have been promoted.”

Nora snorted. “Right. After you blackmailed and humiliated my boss, he’s going to promote me.”

“I’m afraid I don’t suffer petty bureaucrats gladly. A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break. Nevertheless, you will find, Dr. Kelly, that humiliation and blackmail, when used judiciously, can be marvelously effective.”

At the stairwell, Nora paused once again.

“You never answered my question. Why is the FBI concerned with killings that are over a century old?”

“All in good time, Dr. Kelly. For now, let it suffice to say that, on a purely personal level, I find these killings rather—ah—interesting.”

Something in the way Pendergast said “interesting” sent the faintest of shudders through Nora.

Men of Science

ONE

THE MUSEUM’S VAST Central Archives lay deep in the basement, reachable only through several sets of elevators, winding corridors, stairs, and passageways. Nora had never been to the Archives before—she did not, in fact, know anybody who ever had—and as she descended deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Museum, she wondered if perhaps she had made a wrong turn somewhere.

Before accepting the job at the Museum, she had taken one of the tours that threaded their way through its endless galleries. She had heard all the statistics: it was physically the largest museum in the world, consisting of two dozen interco

She stopped, consulted her map, and sighed. A long brick passageway ran straight ahead, illuminated by a string of light bulbs in cages; another ran off from it at right angles. Everything smelled of dust. She needed a landmark, a fixed point to get her bearings. She looked around. A padlocked metal door nearby had a weathered sign: Titanotheres. A door across the hall from it read: Chalicotheres and Tapiroids. She checked the oversized map, finally locating her position with difficulty. She wasn’t lost, after all: it was just ahead and around the corner. Famous last words, she thought, walking forward, hearing the echoing rap of her heels against the concrete floor.

She stopped at a massive set of oaken doors, ancient and scarred, marked Central Archives. She knocked, listening to the rap resound cavernously on the far side. There came a sudden rattle of papers, the sound of a dropped book, a great clearing of phlegm. A high-pitched voice called out, “Just a moment, please!”

There was a slow shuffling, then the sound of numerous locks being unfastened. The door opened, revealing a short, round, elderly man. He had a vastly hooked red nose, and a fringe of long white hair descended from the gleaming dome above it. As he looked up at her, a smile of greeting broke out, dispelling the air of melancholy on his veined face.

“Ah, come in, do come in,” he said. “Don’t let all these locks frighten you. I’m an old man, but I don’t bite. Fortunate senex!”

Nora took a step forward. Dust lay everywhere, even on the worn lapels of the man’s jacket. A lamp with a green shade cast a small pool of light on the old desk, piled high with papers. On one side sat an elderly Royal typewriter, perhaps the only thing in the room not covered in dust. Beyond the desk, Nora could see cast-iron shelves laden with books and boxes stretching back into a gloom as deep as the ocean. In the dimness, it was impossible to judge how far the room extended.

“Are you Reinhart Puck?” Nora asked.

The man set up a vigorous nodding, his cheeks and bow tie flapping in response. “At your service.” He bowed, and for an alarmed moment Nora thought he might reach out to kiss her hand. Instead, there was another loud sound of phlegm being forced against its will somewhere within his windpipes.

“I’m looking for information on—on cabinets of curiosities,” Nora continued, wondering if that was the correct pluralization.

The man, busy re-locking the door, glanced over, his rheumy eyes lighting up. “Ah! You’ve come to the right place. The Museum absorbed most of the old cabinets of early New York. We have all their collections, their papers. Where shall we begin?” He slammed the last bolt home, then rubbed his hands together, smiling, clearly happy to be of service to someone.

“There was a cabinet of curiosities in lower Manhattan known as Shottum’s Cabinet.”

He wrinkled his brow. “Shottum’s . . . Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. Quite popular these days, Shottum’s. But first things first. Please sign the register, and then we can get started.” He motioned her to follow him around the desk, where he produced a leather-bound ledger, so old and rubbed that Nora was tempted to ask for a quill pen. She took the proffered ballpoint, wrote in her name and department.

“Why all the locks and bolts?” she asked, handing back the pen. “I thought all the really valuable stuff, the gold and diamonds and the rest, was kept in the Secure Area.”

“It’s the new administration. Added all this red tape, after the unpleasantness a few years back. It’s not as if we’re all that busy, you know. Just researchers and doctoral candidates, or the occasional wealthy patron with an interest in the history of science.” He returned the register, then shuffled over to a huge bank of old ivory light switches, big as clothes pegs, and snapped a few on. Deep in the vast space there was a flicker, then another, and a dim light appeared. Puck set off toward it at a slow hobble, his feet scraping on the stone floor. Nora followed, glancing up at the dark walls of shelving. She felt as if she were walking through a dark forest toward the distant glow of a welcoming cottage.

“Cabinets of curiosities, one of my favorite subjects. As you no doubt know, Delacourte’s was the first cabinet, established in 1804.” Puck’s voice echoed back over his stooped shoulders. “It was a marvelous collection. A whale eyeball pickled in whiskey, a set of hippo teeth, a mastodon tusk found in a bog in New Jersey. And of course the last dodo egg, of a Rodrigues Solitaire to be exact. The egg was brought back live in a crate, but then after they put it on display it appeared to have hatched, and—Aha, here we are.”

He stopped abruptly, reached up to drag a box down from a high shelf, and opened its lid. Instead of the Shottum’s Cabinet material Nora hoped for, inside was a large eggshell, broken into three pieces. “There’s no provenience on these things, so they didn’t accession them into the main Museum collection. That’s why we’ve got them here.” He pointed reverently at the pieces of shell, licking his lips. “Delacourte’s Cabinet of Natural History. They charged twenty-five cents admission, quite a sum at the time.”

Replacing the box, he slid a thick three-ring binder off an adjoining shelf and began flipping through it. “What would you like to know about the Delacourte Cabinet?”

“It was actually Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities that I was interested in. John Canaday Shottum.” Nora swallowed her impatience. It would clearly be useless to rush Mr. Puck.