“Him? Why him?” Studying me.
“He’s from T. cerrejonensis’s stomping grounds. He even may have been the one who found the nest.”
He crossed his long legs, folded his hands around his upraised knee, and tilted back his chin. I was reminded of Competello the moment before I shot him.
“Right before I shot him, Francesco told me he had kept his promises. That struck me as odd. What promises was he talking about?”
“The one promise to provide security before the congress and the second to help us locate what had been stolen from us.”
“That’s what I would have assumed, too, if a few hours before you had not said, ‘Everything was perfect, down to this latest instance.’ How could anything in this latest instance be characterized as perfect? Everything went wrong practically from the beginning. Unless there was no theft, no lost treasure, and Competello’s promise was to deliver up to you manufactured evidence of the creature’s demise, to convince the world that it was dead.”
He was rocking back and forth in the chair; his body moved, but his eyes remained locked on mine. “I believe you saw what was in that box with your own eyes.”
I smiled. “There is no measurable difference, at this stage in its development, between T. cerrejonensis and a common constrictor. Or so you’ve told me. That is how you planned to have your cake and eat it too. Who in all of monstrumology would question the word of the first among equals, the great Pellinore Warthrop? And besides, it wouldn’t be a complete fraud. The creature does exist, after all.”
“Hmm. Isn’t it more likely that Competello is the fraud? That he sacrificed some poor animal so he might pursue the prize without fear of some meddling scientist?”
If I’d had the strength, I would have leapt from the bed and choked the life out of him. The galling arrogance of the man!
“It was you! I shouted. “It was you from the beginning! You—or someone you knew—who hired the broker to bring the egg to New Jerusalem. It was you who scraped the dregs of Five Points for the poor suckers to ‘steal’ it for you, and you who conscripted Competello’s men to witness the so-called crime! You didn’t go to Elizabeth Street to ask him to help find what you had lost—you never lost it! You went to make sure he was still going to keep the second part of the bargain. And for your trouble you were kidnapped and held hostage, until I butted my head in and ruined your perfect plan.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. I was winded, out of breath and out of patience. And he had said I had betrayed him!
“Well,” he said at last. “That is very interesting, Will Henry. And quite ludicrous.”
“Where is it, Warthrop? Back in the Monstrumarium? That’s my guess. Safest place, at least while you’re here. Gives you time to make arrangements for a more permanent home for it.”
“Your theory of the case is entertaining, but terribly flawed. I was shot in the leg by my own coconspirator? Why would he do that?”
“That’s the other thing!” I cried. “Thank you, sir, for reminding me! I should have seen it then—you saw it almost immediately—that Pellinore Warthrop would never give up something so important so easily. ‘Give it to him!’ ” I laughed. “You did want me to give it to him—you had hired him, after all, to take it!”
“Enough!” he cried, uncoiling from the chair and lunging toward me. “It is one thing to insult my honor, sir—quite another to cross the line into insulting my intelligence! I suppose it assuages your guilt to lay the blame upon my shoulders—to transfer the blood, as it were, onto my hands. It was you who snuck into the Monstrumarium with Lilly Bates that night! It was you who murdered two men in cold blood over the sum of ten thousand dollars! It was you who brought about the death of my dearest and only friend! It was you who in some warped sense of justice executed a king to inaugurate a war!” He took a long, shuddering breath. His voice died away nearly to nothing. “And it was you who sacrificed upon the altar of your selfish need . . .”
The monstrumologist turned away. He left the rest of it—and all of it—unfinished for another time.
“Now see what you’ve done,” he muttered at the door. “You’ve upset me again, at the worst possible time—again. Tomorrow I must preside over the opening session, and I am weary and distracted beyond words. When we get back to New Jerusalem—”
“I’m not going back to New Jerusalem!” I shouted at him. He raised his hand, allowed it to fall to his side: a gesture of resignation.
“As you wish,” he said. There was nothing left in his voice. No anger, no sorrow, no silly sentimental thing at all. “I have saved you from yourself for the last time.”
TWO
He closed the door behind him. The creak of the floorboards faded. He did not return to his room; I could tell that. Probably went to brood in the sitting room, in the dark, his natural habitat. I seethed, my nausea and light-headedness forgotten. I didn’t think I was right; I knew it. He had lied to me, the one who had called lying the worst kind of buffoonery. And worse: He had twisted the facts to justify endangering Lilly and all the inadvertent carnage that followed. If I’d known the truth, Competello and his men would be alive, von Helrung, too. His deception was the monster here, not me. No, not that—the lie was merely the progeny of his colossal ego and his willingness to place an abomination above human life. I’d always thought him vain and arrogant and without normal human emotion. I’d never considered, though, that he might be evil.
The floorboards creaked again. He had gone into his room. A minute passed, then five, and now the creaks were softer, as if he were tiptoeing down the hall. I threw back the covers and stumbled to the armoire to find some clothes. The room teetered; I nearly fell. I had not eaten in days.
I knew where he was going—or thought I did. And if he didn’t go there, I would while he was gone. I was sure I knew where he had hidden it. I would find it and chop off its foul head and stuff it into his lying mouth.
The only thing I could not understand was why he wouldn’t confess. What did it matter now?
“Evil man,” I muttered. “Evil!”
The night was freezing cold. In my haste I’d forgotten my coat. I jammed my bare hands into my trouser pockets and trotted along with my shoulders hunched, and the city lights pushed back against the sky, dimming the stars. My vision was cloudy, my thoughts muddled. No matter the hour, the streets are never truly deserted in the city. There are the white-coated sanitation workers and the seamen wandering in drunken clumps looking for an open bar and the pickpockets and whores who prey on them and the occasional homeless restless wanderer digging through trash barrels and the lonely patrolman walking his beat.