I am there, and you are with me, and the boy in the tattered hat and the man in the stained white coat and the thing in the jar and the immortal chrysalis, ever cracking open, ever on the brink of birth.
His eyes are my eyes, the boy crouching under the table in the hat two sizes too small: wide, uncomprehending, beseeching, terrified. This is the end of the long dark tunnel, and I must not suffer him to face the faceless singularity; I am the breakwater to spare him the surge of the dark tide. It doesn’t have to be, the thing scratching in the jar and the man in the stained white coat saying You must become accustomed to such things.
I can save the boy beneath the table; I can save him from the amber eye; it is within my power.
Raising the gun to the level of his eyes. Do you know who I am?
“No!” Warthrop cried, and he knocked my arm into the air the moment I squeezed the trigger. The bullet punched into the ceiling and a hunk of plaster crashed onto the table, knocking over the bottle, and the wine gushed out like the blood of Christ from the thrust of the Roman spear. The monstrumologist seized my wrist, yanked the gun from my hand, slung me around, and shoved me toward the doorway.
A door slammed behind us. Hoarse shouts, a gunshot, and then we were in the hallway and then skittering along the cobblestoned alley worn slick by the tread of ten thousand feet, Warthrop’s hand like a vise around my forearm, avoiding Elizabeth Street, zigzagging through the narrow arteries bisecting the tenements, old men sitting at round tables playing cards and sipping grappa and boys pitching pennies against sooty walls and far-off laughter and the face of a beautiful girl in a third-story window, and Warthrop’s breath heavy in my ear: “You have done it now, you fool.”
The tenements’ bowels disgorged us onto Houston, where he waved down a cab, flung open the door, and shoved me across the seat. He shouted our destination at the driver and then fell back as the cab lurched forward. He held the gun in his lap for several blocks, staring out the window and muttering under his breath while I struggled to catch mine.
“Saved you,” I gasped.
He whirled upon me and snarled, “What did you say?”
“You said I’ve done it, and that’s what I did.”
“Saved me? Is that what you think?”
He was shaking with fury. His fist rose, froze before my face for an agonizing moment, then slammed into his own thigh. “You very well may have just signed my death warrant.”
TWO
Abram von Helrung handed me the glass of port and lowered himself into the divan beside me. He smelled of cigar smoke and that odd musty odor of the very old. I could hear his breath rattling deep in his barrel chest.
“There you are, dear Will,” he murmured. “There, there.” Patting my leg.
“What the devil are you doing, von Helrung?” Warthrop demanded. He was standing by the windows overlooking Fifth Avenue. He had not budged from the spot since we’d arrived. His hand fidgeted in the pocket that held his revolver.
“Now, Pellinore,” his old master scolded gently. “Will Henry is just a boy . . .”
The monstrumologist laughed harshly. “That ‘boy’ just murdered two men in cold blood! More to the point, he has declared war upon the Camorra, which will not limit itself to retribution upon him—or me, or even you, Meister Abram. Those men were not lowly foot soldiers; they were Competello’s nephews, his youngest sister’s sons, and we may expect wholesale slaughter!”
“Oh, no, no, mein Freund. No, let us not lose ourselves in wild talk of war and retribution. He is a reasonable man, as we are, all of us, reasonable men. We will talk to Competello, explain to him—”
“Oh, yes, I am sure he will understand how ten thousand dollars justified the execution of his family!”
“Dr. von Helrung told me he owed you a favor,” I said, keeping my voice under control. It was not easy. “It made no sense that he would kidnap you—”
“Shut up, you imbecilic hotheaded snot!” the monstrumologist yelled. “It makes no sense to betray the code of the Black Hand.”
“Which is exactly why I betrayed it!”
Warthrop’s mouth came open, snapped closed, and then opened again: “I may just kill you myself and save them the trouble.”
“Well, did Competello owe you a debt or not?” I asked.
“Pellinore,” von Helrung said softly but urgently. “We must tell him.”
“Tell me what?”
“What good will it do now?” Warthrop asked, ignoring me.
“So he may understand.”
“You give him too much credit, von Helrung,” the doctor said bitterly. He turned back to the window.
Von Helrung said, “The debt was repaid, Will, the slate wiped clean, and so Competello had no obligation to keep.”
I shook my head. I did not understand. Perhaps Warthrop was right: The old monstrumologist was giving me too much credit.
“The man who was shot in the Monstrumarium, he was a watchman and an ally, not a thief,” von Helrung explained.
“He was . . . ? What are you saying, Meister Abram? He was a Camorrista?”
“Oh, dear God!” Warthrop cried out, his back still to us.
“Pellinore and I thought it wise to post men about the headquarters, just to keep an eye on things until the presentation before the congress. It was I who suggested calling in Competello’s chit to perform the service. The Irishmen were spied breaking in, the poor soul followed them down and was ambushed from behind, and then . . . well, you know the rest. The prize was snatched from our grasp.”
“No,” Warthrop said firmly. “It was handed over by a certain mentally challenged apprentice possessing all the subtlety of a three-toed sloth!”
“I will endure no more of these uselessly cruel remarks,” von Helrung said sharply. He wagged his finger at the doctor.
“Very well; I shall stick to only the useful ones.”
“The murder of that man in the Monstrumarium wasn’t Dr. Warthrop’s fault,” I said. “So why was Dr. Warthrop kidnapped?” I, the three-toed sloth, was trying to think it through.
“Because kidnapping me had nothing to do with it!” The monstrumologist couldn’t help himself. “Do you begin to understand the terrible burden under which I labor, von Helrung?”
Von Helrung patted the terrible burden’s leg. “Pellinore went to Competello to offer his condolences—and to ask for help, as I explained yesterday, Will. My old pupil ignored my advice that a sleeping dog is best left undisturbed and it was in bad form to ask a favor from one who had just repaid one in blood. Competello took offense, as I warned you he would,” von Helrung said to Warthrop, glaring at him beneath his bushy white brows. He turned back to me. “You know the rest. He made Pellinore his ‘guest,’ pending payment for his generous ‘hospitality.’ Not for the money so much, I think, but to make a point.”