Douglas Preston - The Cabinet of Curiosities

He moved his legs and found they were chained as well.

Almost instantly, the numbness fled, and cold reality flooded over him. The memory of the footsteps, the cat-and-mouse in the deserted streets, the smothering hood, returned with stark, pitiless clarity. For a moment, he struggled fiercely, a terrible panic bubbling up in his chest. Then he lay back, trying to master himself. Panic’s not going to solve anything. You have to think.

Where was he?

In a cell of some sort. He’d been taken prisoner. But by whom?

Almost as soon as he asked this question, the answer came: by the copycat killer. By the Surgeon.

The fresh wave of panic that greeted this realization was cut short by a sudden shaft of light — bright, even painful after the enveloping darkness.

He looked around quickly. He was in a small, bare room of rough-hewn stone, chained to a floor of cold, damp concrete. One wall held a door of rusted metal, and the light was streaming in through a small slot in its face. The light suddenly diminished, and a voice sounded in the slot. O’Shaughnessy could see wet red lips moving.

“Please do not discompose yourself,” the voice said soothingly. “All this will be over soon. Struggle is unnecessary.”

The slot rattled shut, and O’Shaughnessy was once again plunged into darkness.

He listened as the retreating steps rang against the stone floor. It was all too clear what was coming next. He’d seen the results at the medical examiner’s office. The Surgeon would come back; he’d come back, and…

Don’t think about that. Think about how to escape.

O’Shaughnessy tried to relax, to concentrate on taking long, slow breaths. Now his police training helped. He felt calmness settle over him. No situation was ever hopeless, and even the most cautious criminals made mistakes.

He’d been stupid, his habitual caution lost in his excitement over finding the ledgers. He’d forgotten Pendergast’s warning of constant danger.

Well, he wouldn’t be stupid any longer.

All this will be over soon, the voice had said. That meant it wouldn’t be long before he’d be coming back. O’Shaughnessy would be ready.

Before the Surgeon could do anything, he’d have to remove the shackles. And that’s when O’Shaughnessy would jump him.

But the Surgeon was clearly no fool. The way he’d shadowed him, ambushed him: that had taken cunning, strong nerves. If O’Shaughnessy merely pretended to be asleep, it wouldn’t be enough.

This was it: do or die. He’d have to make it good.

He took a deep breath, then another. And then, closing his eyes, he smashed the shackles of his arm against his forehead, raking them laterally from left to right.

The blood began to flow almost at once. There was pain, too, but that was good: it kept him sharp, gave him something to think about. Wounds to the forehead tended to bleed a lot; that was good, too.

Now he carefully lay to one side, positioning himself to look as if he’d passed out, scraping his head against the rough wall as he slumped to the floor. The stone felt cold against his cheek; the blood warm as it trickled through his eyelashes, down his nose. It would work. It would work. He didn’t want to go out like Doreen Hollander, torn and stiff on a morgue gurney.

Once again, O’Shaughnessy quelled a rising panic. It would be over soon. The Surgeon would return, he’d hear the footsteps on the stones. The door would open. When the shackles were removed, he’d surprise the man, overwhelm him. He’d escape with his life, collar the copycat killer in the process.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Eyes shut, blood trickling onto the cold damp stone, O’Shaughnessy deliberately turned his thoughts to opera. His breathing grew calmer. And soon, in his mind, the bleak walls of the little cell began to ring with the exquisitely beautiful strains of O Isis Und Osiris, rising effortlessly toward street level and the inviolate sky far above.

PENDERGAST STOOD ON the broad pavement, small brown package beneath one arm, looking thoughtfully up at the brace of lions that guarded the entrance to the New York Public Library. A brief, drenching rain had passed over the city, and the headlights of the buses and taxis shimmered in countless puddles of water. Pendergast raised his eyes from the lions to the facade behind them, long and imposing, heavy Corinthian columns rising toward a vast architrave. It was past nine P.M., and the library had long since closed: the tides of students, researchers, tourists, unpublished poets and scholars that swirled about its portals by day had receded hours before.

He glanced around once more, eyes sweeping the stone plaza and the sidewalk beyond. Then he adjusted the package beneath his arm, and made his way slowly up the broad stairs.

To one side of the massive entrance, a smaller door had been set into the granite face of the library. Pendergast approached it, rapped his knuckles lightly on the bronze. Almost immediately it swung inward, revealing a library guard. He was very tall, with closely cropped blond hair, heavily muscled. A copy of Orlando Furioso was in one meaty hand.

“Good evening, Agent Pendergast,” the guard said. “How are you this evening?”

“Quite well, Frances, thank you,” Pendergast replied. He nodded toward the book. “How are you enjoying Ariosto?”

“Very much. Thanks for the suggestion.”

“I believe I recommended the Bacon translation.”

“Nesmith in the microfiche department has one. The others are on loan.”

“Remind me to send you down a copy.”

“I’ll do that, sir. Thanks.”

Pendergast nodded again and passed on, through the entrance hall and up the marble stairs, hearing nothing but the sound of his own footsteps. At the entrance to Room 315—the Main Reading Room — he paused again. Inside, ranks of long wooden tables lay beneath yellow pools of light. Pendergast entered, gliding toward a vast construction of dark wood that divided the Reading Room into halves. By day, this was the station from which library workers accepted book requests from patrons and sent them down to the subterranean stacks by pneumatic tube. But now, with the fall of night, the receiving station was silent and empty.

Pendergast opened a door at one end of the receiving station, stepped inside, and made his way to a small door, set into a frame beside a long series of dumbwaiters. He opened it and descended the staircase beyond.

Beneath the Main Reading Room were seven levels of stacks. The first six levels were vast cities of shelving, laid out in precise grids that went on, row after row, stack after stack. The ceilings of the stacks were low, and the tall shelves of books claustrophobic. And yet, as he walked in the faint light of the first level — taking in the smell of dust, and mildew, and decomposing paper — Pendergast felt a rare sense of peace. The pain of his stab wound, the heavy burden of the case at hand, seemed to ease. At every turn, every intersection, his mind filled with the memory of some prior perambulation: journeys of discovery, literary expeditions that had frequently ended in investigative epiphanies, abruptly solved cases.

But there was no time now for reminiscing, and Pendergast moved on. Reaching a narrow, even steeper staircase, he descended deeper into the stacks.

At last, Pendergast emerged from the closet-like stairwell onto the seventh level. Unlike the flawlessly catalogued levels above it, this was an endless rat’s nest of mysterious pathways and cul-de-sacs, rarely visited despite some astonishing collections known to be buried here. The air was close and stuffy, as if it had — like the volumes it surrounded — not circulated for decades. Several corridors ran away from the stairwell, framed by bookcases, crossing and recrossing at strange angles.