I did not have to wait long for proof of this vow. Hardly had we stepped foot into our digs when the doctor directed me to fetch his instrument case.
“We’ve one small matter to resolve before the night is out,” he informed me. “It involves a modicum of risk and could lead to certain difficulties with the law. You may wait for me here, if you wish.”
The thought of being alone after the day’s gruesome events rendered the suggestion intolerable. The burden of accompanying him on whatever dark errand now beckoned was far more preferable than the burden of a solitary vigil while the high wind sang outside the windows. Upon that final terrifying flight through the malefic wilderness, he had shouldered the burden he’d inherited, but he was not the only one so borne down. I declined the offer.
In short order we were disembarking our taxicab at the Twenty-third Street entrance of the Society’s headquarters. A diminutive figure stepped out of the shadows to greet us.
“You are late, mon ami,” murmured Damien Gravois. His eyes widened at the sight of the bandage around my neck. “There has been an accident?”
“No,” answered the doctor. “Why do you ask?”
The Frenchman shrugged, removed a snuffbox from the pocket of his fashionable short-tailed jacket, and partook of the powdered tobacco with a noisy snort.
“It is all arranged,” Gravois said. “Except the portage charge. I would have paid it myself, but such was my haste to comply with your request that I completely forgot my purse.”
The monstrumologist scowled. He had just completed a lengthy negotiation with our driver over the fare.
“Did you agree upon a price?”
Gravois shook his head. “I merely told him we would make it worth his while. You might know, Pellinore, but I do not know the going rate for body snatching.”
The doctor sighed heavily. “And the weapon? Or did you forget that too?”
Gravois responded with a wry smile. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and removed a pearl-handled switchblade. He pressed the button with his thumb, and the six-inch blade sprang out with a wicked click.
“A Mikov,” he said. “Identical to the one wielded by our Bohemian bodyguard.”
On the second floor of the old opera house, the Society had constructed an operating theater where lectures, demonstrations, and the occasional dissection were conducted upon a small stage specially built for the latter purpose: the floor was concrete and slightly concave, with a drain installed in the center for the conveyance of blood and other bodily fluids. The room itself was bowl-shaped, the seats arranged on steep risers that surrounded the stage on three sides in order to provide the participants unobstructed views of the gruesome proceedings.
Two large metal rolling tables occupied center stage, and upon each lay a body. The two cadavers were of nearly identical proportions, both were male, and both were as na**d as the day they were born. I recognized immediately one of the corpses. It was the eyeless, faceless remains of Augustin Skala.
A burly man heaved himself from a seat in the front row upon our entrance, nervously patting his pockets as if searching for a bit of change. Gravois made the introductions.
“Fredrico, this is my colleague Dr. Warthrop. Warthrop, this is Fredrico—”
“Just Fredrico, please,” the man interrupted. His eyes darted about the theater; he was clearly suffering from a bad case of the jitters. “I brung ’em.” He jerked his head unnecessarily at the stage. “You brung the money?”
Had time not been a crucial factor in his investigation, I am sure the doctor would have indulged in a lengthy negotiation over the orderly’s fee for the illicit removal of two bodies from the Bellevue morgue. Still, Warthrop expressed outrage over the man’s asking price, deeming it exorbitant past all reason; the man had not delivered the crown jewels, after all, but a couple of bodies—and on loan, to boot! It wasn’t as if we expected to keep them. But time was of the essence, so the monstrumologist relented, and the man, once the money was counted and safely ensconced in his pocket, effected his retreat, informing us he had no interest in observing the proceedings; he would wait for us in the hall outside.
We began with Skala. Under the harsh glare of the electrified lighting, the doctor examined first the hollowed-out eye sockets, then the remnants of the face, and then the wound in the chest and the mutilated heart.
“Hmm, as I initially thought, Will Henry,” the doctor murmured. “Nearly identical to the wounds of our friend Monsieur Larose. Note the scoring of the ocular bone and the appearance of denticulated trauma to the heart.”
“Except the face,” I said. “Larose’s face hadn’t been stripped off.”
Warthrop nodded. “The skinning is reversed—with Larose it was the body, with Skala the face, but that could be owing to the factors of location and time. He had to work quickly with this one.”
“But not with Larose,” observed Gravois, who stood a bit to one side, looking somewhat sick to his stomach. “So why leave his face?”
The doctor shook his head. “There may be a pathological factor involved here. A reason that makes sense only to the author.”
“Or Larose was mutilated by someone else and Chanler employs his own interpretation upon the theme,” Gravois replied.
“A possibility,” Warthrop allowed. “But one that raises more questions than it answers. If not John, then who?”
“You know what von Helrung would say,” teased Gravois.
Warthrop snorted. His lip curled up into a derisive snarl. I spoke up to snuff out the fuse of his temper.
“It couldn’t have been Dr. Chanler, sir. Larose left him—that’s what Dr. Chanler said—left him with Jack Fiddler. He couldn’t have been the one who killed Larose.”
“John did say he was abandoned,” admitted my master. “But we do not know if Fiddler had him when Larose was murdered. He may have wandered into the Sucker encampment after the crime.”
He sighed and ran his gore-flecked fingers through his hair. “Well. We can speculate till dawn and still be no closer to the truth. Some answers only John can provide. Let us keep to our purpose, gentlemen!” He stepped over to the other body procured from the Bellevue morgue. “I’ll take that knife now, Gravois.” He pressed the button. The blade whipped from its compartment and glittered wickedly under the bright lights. “How long did von Helrung say that John had? Seven minutes? Damien, keep the time, please. Upon my mark.”