Blue Labyrinth

At that same exact time, at precisely nine fifteen, a livery cab turned in at 891 Riverside Drive, then circled around the drive and came to a stop beneath the mansion’s porte cochere, engine idling.

A minute passed, and then two. The front door opened and Constance Greene stepped out, wearing an ebony-colored pleated dress with ivory accents. A black duffel of ballistic nylon was slung over one shoulder. In the dim glow of moonlight, the formal, even elegant dress acted almost like camouflage.

She leaned in at the driver’s window, whispered something inaudible, opened the rear passenger door, placed the duffel carefully on the seat, and then slid in beside it. The door closed; the cab moved back down the drive; and then it merged with the light evening traffic, heading north.

64

Dr. Horace Stone found himself suddenly awake in the room with his patient. He did not care for nursing duties, but his patient was paying him extremely well and the case was most unusual, if not fascinating. There would be an excellent JAMA article in this — of course, not until after the patient’s demise and postmortem, when they might have at least a better chance of diagnosing this most unusual affliction.

An excellent article indeed.

Now he saw what had awakened him. Pendergast’s eyes had opened and were drilling into him with intensity.

“My phone?”

“Yes, sir.” Stone fetched the phone from the bureau and handed it to him.

He examined it, his face pale. “Nine twenty. Constance — where is she?”

“I believe she just left.”

“You believe?”

“Well,” said Stone, flustered. “I heard her say good-bye to Mrs. Trask, I heard the door shut, and there was a livery cab outside that took her away.”

Stone was shocked when Pendergast rose in his bed. He was clearly coming into the remissive phase of the disease.

“I strongly advise—”

“Be silent,” said Pendergast, pushing back the covers and, with difficulty, rising to his feet. He pulled the IV from his arm. “Step aside.”

“Mr. Pendergast, I simply ca

Pendergast turned his pale, glittering eyes upon Dr. Stone. “If you try to stop me, I will hurt you.”

This naked threat stopped Stone’s retort. The patient was clearly febrile, delusional, perhaps hallucinating. Stone had asked for a nurse and been denied one. He could not handle this on his own. He retreated from the room as Pendergast began changing out of his bedclothes.

“Mrs. Trask?” he called. The house was so blasted large. “Mrs. Trask!”

He heard the housekeeper bustling around downstairs, calling from the bottom of the stairs.

“Yes, Doctor?”

Pendergast appeared in the bedroom doorway, slipping into his black suit, stuffing a sheet of paper into one pocket, and sliding his gun into an inside holster. Dr. Stone stepped aside to let him pass.

“Mr. Pendergast, I repeat, you are in no condition to leave the house!”

Pendergast ignored him and headed down the stairs, moving slowly, like an old man. Dr. Stone followed in pursuit. A frightened Mrs. Trask hovered at the bottom.

“Please get me a car,” Pendergast told the housekeeper.

“Yes, sir.”

“You can’t get him a car!” Stone expostulated. “Look at his condition!”

Mrs. Trask turned to him. “When Mr. Pendergast asks for something, we do not say no.”

Dr. Stone looked from her to Pendergast himself who, despite being obviously debilitated, returned the stare with such an icy look that he was finally silenced. It all happened so quickly. Now Mrs. Trask was hanging up the phone and Pendergast, staggering slightly, made his way to the porte cochere entrance. In a moment he was out the door, and the red taillights of the hired car were turning up the drive.

Stone sat down, breathing hard. He had never quite seen a patient with such steely resolve in the grip of such a fatal illness.

As he reclined in the rear of the car, Pendergast took the piece of paper from his pocket and read it over. It was a note, in Constance’s copperplate hand: the list of chemical compounds and other ingredients. Beside some of these ingredients, locales had been listed.

Pendergast read the list over carefully, first once, then twice. And then he folded the page over on itself, tore it into small pieces, lowered the window of the car, and allowed the pieces to float out into the Manhattan night, one by one.

The cab turned onto the entrance ramp for the West Side Highway, heading for the Manhattan Bridge and, ultimately, Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

65

Shaking his head, the man bent down and plucked something from the back of Frisby’s neck.

“Interesting collection you’ve got down here,” he said, holding up the object, dripping with Frisby’s blood. Margo recognized it as a giant Sumatran buckthorn: six inches long, recurved, razor-sharp — notorious as a weapon in certain parts of Indonesia.

“I’d better introduce myself,” the man said. “I’m Sergeant Slade of the NYPD.” He reached into the pocket of his suit coat and produced an ID, illuminating it with his flashlight.

Margo peered at it. The shield and identification looked real enough. But who was this man, and what was he doing down here? And hadn’t he just… stabbed Frisby? She felt a growing sense of confusion and terror.

“I guess I arrived in the nick of time,” said Slade. “This old curator — you called him Frisby, right? — seemed to be getting off on calling the cops on you. Little did he know the cop was already here. And he was all wrong about the rap they’d have hung on you. Take it from me: you’d have pled down to Class E and received nothing more than community service. In New York City, no jury cares about a few moldy plant specimens stolen from a museum.”

He bent to examine the body of Frisby, gingerly stepping around the spreading pool of blood under the neck as he did so, and then rose again.

“Well, we’d better get on with it,” he said. “Now that I’m here, you don’t have much to worry about. Please give me the bag.” And he held out his hand.

But Margo just stood there, frozen. Frisby was dead. This man had stabbed him — with a buckthorn, no less. This was nothing less than murder. She remembered D’Agosta’s warning and she suddenly understood: cop or no, this man was working for Barbeaux.

Sergeant Slade took a step forward, buckthorn in hand.

“Give me the bag, Dr. Green,” he said.

Margo stepped back.

“Don’t make things more difficult for yourself than they have to be. Give me the bag and you’ll get no more than a slap on the wrist.”

Tightening her hand on the bag, Margo took another step back.

Slade sighed. “You’re forcing my hand,” he said. “If that’s the way you want to play it, I’m afraid what’s in store for you will be far more extreme than community service.” He shifted the thorn into his right hand and gripped it hard, advancing on her. Margo turned and realized she was backed into a cul-de-sac of the botanical collections, with shelving on either side and the vault behind her.

She stared at Sergeant Slade. He may have been short, but he moved with the grace of a lean and powerful man. In addition to the giant thorn in his hand, Margo could see a service belt beneath his suit jacket that held a gun, pepper spray, and cuffs.

She took another step backward and felt her spine contact the metal door of the vault.

“It’ll be quick,” Slade said, with a note in his voice that sounded almost like regret. “I don’t enjoy this — I really don’t.” The hand with the buckthorn rose into striking position and he loomed forward, bracing himself to swipe the weapon across her throat.

66

You may pull over here, if you please.”