“I am seeking a Dr. Abram von Helrung,” he growled in a thick Scandinavian accent.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Riis. He’s expecting you. Right this way, sir.”
“Ah, Riis! Good, good, now you are here. Thank you!” Von Helrung pumped his guest’s hand vigorously and quickly introduced the Dane to the rest of the hunting party. They knew Riis, of course, if only by reputation. For ten years Riis had been unrelenting in his demands for social reform, his calls heard but largely ignored until 1890, with the publication of his book, How the Other Half Lives, a scathing indictment in words and pictures of the evils of tenement life. The book exposed the open dirty secret of New York’s slums in the midst of Gilded Age excess and rocked the city to its self-satisfied core. Like those whose wretched lives he’d immortalized in his work, Riis was an immigrant, a journalist by trade, who maintained an office for the New-York Tribune directly across the street from police headquarters on Mulberry Street, where I had just recently enjoyed—and still suffered from—Chief Inspector Byrnes’s particular brand of hospitality.
Riis was immediately drawn to the clippings hanging on the wall.
“Blackwood!” he muttered, reading the byline. “Algernon Henry Blackwood. And now my editors are asking me to cover it. Do you know what I tell them? ‘Ask Blackwood! Blackwood knows everything!’ That’s what I tell them.”
Von Helrung smiled easily, placed a convivial hand upon his guest’s arm, and turned to the others. “I have given Mr. Riis full confidence in our little trouble. He knows all that you know and can be trusted completely.”
Riis grunted. “Well, I can’t say I put much stock in this monstrumology business. Seems to me like an excuse for grown men to act like boys hunting frogs in the forest, but this latest business concerns me very much.” He nodded at the map. “Von Helrung’s theory makes good sense, regardless of what may be behind it, man or monster. I will do all that I can, but I am unclear as to what that might be. What do you wish me to do?”
“We need a man who knows the territory,” explained von Helrung. “Better than anyone else, better even than the thing we hunt. You have been there. For years you have wandered every side street and alleyway; we have not. You’ve been in their homes, their churches and synagogues, their speakeasies and penny beer dives and opium dens. They will not speak to us—or to the police—but they will speak to you. They trust you. And it is that very trust that will save them from the beast.”
Riis stared at him for a moment. Then he looked at the other monstrumologists, who were nodding gravely. For a moment I actually thought he might burst out laughing. But he did not. He turned back to von Helrung and said, “When do we start?”
“We must wait for tomorrow. Though my heart breaks for those who will surely perish this night, it would be foolhardy to hunt it now. We must attack in the daylight hours, for the night belongs to the beast.”
I returned upstairs after the hunting party—or cabal, depending upon one’s perspective—had left for the night. I crept past the doctor’s room, lest I wake him and be forced to answer questions I’d rather not until absolutely necessary. The hour was late and I was more tired than I ever remembered being, even during that interminable march in the wilderness. My prayer for a peaceful night with only a downy pillow and feather mattress for companionship was to be denied, however. He called to me the moment I passed his door.
“Did you call, sir?” I asked, hovering, quite purposefully, with one foot remaining in the hall.
“I thought I heard voices downstairs.”
I cocked my head, pretending to listen. “I don’t hear anything, sir.”
“Not now, Will Henry. Earlier. Why do you insist on treating me this way? I’m not entirely imbecilic, you know.”
“No, sir. I was confused, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, stop it. Come in here and close that door. . . . Now tell me what von Helrung’s been up to while I’ve been trapped in this room—the walls of which, by the way, close in by the minute.”
I told him everything. He listened without comment or question, until I concluded with von Helrung’s closing remarks: We pray for the dead, but our duty is to the living. We are no match for it—no mortal man is—but with courage and fortitude, life may conquer death, and all this loss, this unbearable sorrow, will not have been in vain. We cannot bring peace to John. He is past all peace; he is beyond all redemption. Remember that when the test comes! It knows nothing but the hunger. But we know more. Nothing but the hunger drives it. But more than that drives us. We are more than what is reflected in the Yellow Eye. Remember that always! In the hours to come we may fall into temptation. We may come ourselves to envy the dead, for they are past all suffering, while our suffering, like Judas’s in the pit, goes on and on. And if it should take you, if it should call your name upon the high wind, do not despair. Do not give in to fear as John did. His fate reflects the wages of fear! Have pity upon it as you rip out its heart. It is nothing less than the wreckage of God’s temple, forlorn and abandoned, the final, fleeting echo of Adam’s sin.
Wearily the monstrumologist said, “Well, there you have it. He is nothing but marvelously consistent in his madness. ‘The wreckage of God’s temple!’ I’m not surprised about Gravois—he’s always been a little bootlicker. Von Helrung could tell him that the sun rose in the west and that little men lived like monkeys in the hairs of his nose, and Gravois would believe him, or say that he did. Dobrogeanu is no surprise either. He and von Helrung cut their monstrumological teeth together; they are quite close. Torrance is somewhat of a surprise. He always struck me as levelheaded, a fine scientist when he wasn’t chasing skirts, but he did study under von Helrung for a time. It could be he’s giving his old master the benefit of the doubt. But the presence of Pelt is a bit of a shock. It was Pelt, after all, who alerted me to von Helrung’s ridiculous proposal in the first place.”
He sighed. “We shall see, won’t we, Will Henry? God bless Henry Blackwood anyway! You must remind me to thank him when all this is finished. I still owe him the tale of our journey through the wilderness.”
“Are you going to join them in the hunt?” I asked.
“What choice do I have? I am his only hope now. If the police find him, I’m not so sure they’ll be interested in holding him over for trial. If von Helrung—Well, he’s made it clear what he intends to do, hasn’t he? The irony of the situation is not lost upon you, I hope.”