The Cabinet of Curiosities (12 page)

I had always believed Leng to be rather sensitive about his work. You will no doubt recall the early and somewhat eccentric talk on Bodily Humours he presented to the Lyceum. It was not well received—some members even had the ill breeding to titter on one or two occasions during the lecture—and henceforth Leng never returned to the subject. His future talks were all models of traditional scholarship. So at first, I ascribed his hesitancy to discuss personal work to this same innate circumspection. However, as time went on, I began to realize that what I had thought to be professional shyness was, in fact, active
concealment.

One spring evening earlier this year, I had occasion to stay on very late at the Cabinet, finishing work on an accumulation of documents and preparing the exhibition space for my latest acquisition, the double-brained child, of which we have previously spoken. This latter task proved far more engrossing than the tiresome paperwork, and I was rather surprised to hear the city bell toll midnight.

It was in the moments following, as I stood, listening to the echoes of the bell die away, that I became aware of another sound. It came from over my head: a kind of heavy shuffling, as if of a man bearing some heavy burden. I cannot tell you why precisely, McFadden, but there was something in that sound that sent a thrill of dread coursing through me. I listened more intently. The sound died away slowly, the footsteps retreating into a more distant room.

Of course there was nothing for me to do. In the morning, as I reflected on the event, I realized the culprit was undoubtedly my own tired nerves. Unless some more sinister meaning should prove to be attached to the footsteps—which seemed a remote possibility—there was no cause for approaching Leng on the matter. I ascribed my alarm to my own perverse state of mind at the time. I had succeeded in creating a rather sensational backdrop for displaying the double-brained child, and no doubt this, along with the late hour, had roused the more morbid aspects of my imagination. I resolved to put the matter behind me.

It chanced that some few weeks later—the fifth of July, last week, to be precise—another event took place to which I most earnestly commend your attention. The circumstances were similar: I remained late at the Cabinet, preparing my upcoming paper for the Lyceum journal. As you know, writing for learned bodies such as the Lyceum is difficult for me, and I have fallen into certain routines which ease the process somewhat. My old teakwood writing desk, the fine vellum paper upon which this note is now being written, the fuchsia-colored ink made by M. Dupin in Paris—these are the petty niceties which make composition less onerous. This evening, inspiration came rather more easily than usual, however, and around half past ten I found it necessary to sharpen some new pens before work could continue. I turned away from my desk briefly to effect this. When I returned I found, to my utmost astonishment, that the page on which I had been at work had been soiled with some small number of inkstains.

I am most fastidious with a pen, and was at a loss to explain how this came about. It was only when I took up my blotter to clear away the stains that I realized they differed slightly in color from the fuchsia of my pen, being a somewhat lighter shade. And when I blotted them aside, I realized they were of a thicker, more viscous, consistency than my French ink.

Imagine my horror, then, when a
fresh
drop landed upon my wrist as I was in the act of lifting the blotter from the paper.

Immediately, I lifted my eyes to the ceiling above my head. What devilment was this? A small but widening crimson stain was leaching between the floorboards of Leng’s chambers overhead.

It was the work of a moment to mount the stairs and pound upon his door. I cannot describe precisely the sequence of thoughts that ran through my mind—foremost among them, however, was fear that the Doctor had fallen victim to foul play. There had been rumors circulating through the neighborhood of a certain vicious and predatory murderer, but one pays little heed to the gossip of the lower classes, and alas, death is a frequent visitor to the Five Points.

Leng answered my frantic summons in due course, sounding a trifle winded. An accident, he said through the door: he had cut his arm rather severely during an experimental procedure. He declined my offers of assistance, and said he had already done the necessary suturing himself. He regretted the incident, but refused to open the door. At last I went away, riven by perplexity and doubt.

The morning following, Leng appeared at my doorstep. He had never called on me at my residence before, and I was surprised to see him. I observed that one arm had been bandaged. He apologized profusely for the inconvenience of the previous night. I invited him inside, but he would not stay. With another apology, he took his leave.

I watched with unsettled heart as he descended the walk and stepped into an omnibus. I pray you will do the honor of understanding me when I say that Leng’s visit, coming upon the heels of such strange events at the Cabinet, had precisely the opposite effect to which he had intended. I felt now more sure than ever that, whatever it was he was about, it would not stand up to scrutiny in the honest light of day.

I fear I can write no more this evening. I will hide this letter inside the elephant’s-foot box that, along with a group of curiosities, is being forwarded to you at the Museum in two days’ time. God willing, I will find the fortitude to return to this and conclude it on the morrow.

July 13, 1881

I must now summon the strength of will to complete my narrative.

In the aftermath of Leng’s visit, I found myself in the grip of a terrific internal struggle. A sense of scientific idealism, coupled perhaps with prudence, argued that I should take the man’s explanation at its face value. Yet another inner voice argued that it was beholden on me, as a gentleman and a man of honor, to learn the truth for myself.

At last I resolved to discover the nature of the man’s experiments. If they proved benign, I could be accused of inquisitiveness—nothing more.

Perhaps you will consider me the victim of unmanly feelings in this matter. I can only say that those vile crimson drops now seemed as imprinted upon my brain as they had been upon my wrist and my writing-paper. There was something about Leng—about the manner in which he had looked at me, there upon my doorstep—that made me feel almost a stranger in my own home. There was some manner of chill speculativeness behind those indifferent-looking eyes that froze my blood. I could no longer tolerate having the man under my roof without knowing the full breadth of his work.

By some personal caprice unfathomable to me, Leng had recently begun donating his medical services to a few local Houses of Industry. As a result, he was invariably absent from his chambers during the latter part of the afternoon. It was on Monday last, July 11, that I saw him through the front windows of the Cabinet. He was crossing the avenue, clearly on his way to the workhouses.

I knew this was no accident: fate had afforded me this opportunity.

It was with some trepidation that I ascended to the third floor. Leng had changed the lock on the door leading into his room, but I retained a skeleton key which turned the wards and unshot the bolt. I let the door fall open before me, then stepped inside.

Leng had decorated the front room into the semblance of a parlor. I was struck by his choice of decoration: gaudy sporting prints were on the walls, and the tables were aclutter with tabloids and penny-dreadfuls. Leng had always struck me as a man of elegance and refinement; yet this room seemed to reflect the tastes of uncultured youth. It was the sort of dive a pool-room tramp or a girl of low breeding would find inviting. There was a pall of dust over everything, as if Leng had spent little time in the parlor of late.

A heavy brocade curtain had been hung over the doorway leading into the rear rooms. I lifted it aside with the end of my walking stick. I thought I had been prepared for almost anything, but what I found was, perhaps, what I least expected.

The rooms were almost entirely empty. There were at least half a dozen large tables, here and there, whose scarred surfaces bore mute testimony to hours of experimental labor. But they were devoid of furnishing. There was a strong ammoniac smell in the air of these rooms that almost choked me. In one drawer I found several blunt scalpels. All the other drawers I examined were empty, save for dust mites and spiders.

After much searching, I located the spot in the floorboards through which the blood had seeped a few nights before. It seemed to have been etched clean with acid; aqua regia, judging by the odor. I glanced around at the walls then, and noticed other patches, some large, others small, that also seemed to indicate recent cleaning.

I must confess to feeling rather a fool at that moment. There was nothing here to excite alarm; nothing that would rouse the faintest trace of suspicion in even the most perspicacious policeman. And yet the sense of dread refused to wholly leave me. There was something about the oddly decorated parlor, the smell of chemicals, the meticulously cleaned walls and floor, that troubled one. Why were these hidden back rooms clean, while the parlor had been allowed to gather dust?

It was at that moment I remembered the basement.

Years before, Leng had asked, in an offhand way, if he could use the old coal tunnel in the basement for storing excess laboratory equipment. The tunnel had fallen into disuse a few years earlier, with the installation of a new boiler, and I had no need of it myself. I had given him the key and promptly forgotten the matter.

My feelings on descending the cellar stairway behind the Cabinet can scarcely be described. On one occasion I halted, wondering if I should summon an escort. But once again, sane reasoning prevailed. There was no sign of foul play. No—the only thing for it was to proceed myself.

Leng had affixed a padlock to the coal cellar door. Seeing this, I was momentarily overcome by a sense of relief. I had done my utmost; there was nothing else but mount the stairs. I even went so far as to turn around and take the first step. Then I stopped. The same impulse that had brought me this far would not let me leave until I had seen this bad business through.

I raised my foot to kick in the door. Then I hesitated. If I could contrive to remove the lock with a pair of bolt cutters, I reasoned, Leng would think it the work of a sneak-thief.

It was the work of five minutes to retrieve the necessary implement and cut through the hasp of the lock. I dropped it to the ground, then pushed the door wide, allowing the afternoon light to stream down the stairway behind me.

Immediately upon entering, I was overwhelmed with far different sensations than those that had gripped me on the third floor. Whatever work had ceased in Leng’s chambers was, clearly, still active here.

Once again, it was the odor I noticed first. As before, there was a smell of caustic reagents, perhaps mixed with formaldehyde or ether. But these were masked by something much richer and more powerful. It was a scent I recognized from passing the hog butcheries on Pearl and Water Streets: it was the smell of a slaughterhouse.

The light filtering down the rear stairs made it unnecessary for me to ignite the gas lamps. Here, too, were numerous tables: but these tables were covered with a complicated sprawl of medical instruments, surgical apparatus, beakers, and retorts. One table contained perhaps three score small vials of light amber liquid, carefully numbered and tagged. A vast array of chemicals were arranged in cabinets against the walls. Sawdust had been scattered across the floor. It was damp in places; scuffing it with the toe of my boot, I discovered that it had been thrown down to absorb a rather large quantity of blood.

I knew now that my apprehensions were not entirely without merit. And yet, I told myself, there was still nothing to raise alarm here: dissections were, after all, a cornerstone of science.

On the closest table was a thick sheaf of carefully jotted notes, gathered into a leather-bound journal. They were penned in Leng’s distinctive hand. I turned to these with relief. At last, I would learn what it was Leng had been working towards. Surely some noble scientific purpose would emerge from these pages, to give the lie to my fears.

The journal did no such thing.

You know, old friend, that I am a man of science. I have never been what you might call a God-fearing fellow. But I feared God that day—or rather, I feared his wrath, that such unholy deeds—deeds worthy of Moloch himself—had been committed beneath my roof.

Leng’s journal spelt it out in unwavering, diabolical detail. It was perhaps the clearest, most methodical set of scientific notes it has been my eternal misfortune to come across. There is no kind of explanatory gloss I can place upon his experiments; nothing, in fact, I can do but spell it all out as plainly and succinctly as I can.

For the last eight years, Leng has been working to perfect a method of prolonging human life. His own life, by evidence of the notations and recordings in the journal. But—before God,Tinbury—he was using
other human beings
as material. His victims seemed made up almost entirely of young adults. Again and again, his journal mentioned dissections of human craniums and spinal columns, the latter on which he seems to have focused his depraved attentions. The most recent entries centered particularly on the cauda equina, the ganglion of nerves at the base of the spine.

I read for ten, then twenty minutes, frozen with fascination and horror. Then I dropped the abhorrent document back onto the table and stepped away. Perhaps I
was
a little mad at that point, after all; because I still contrived to find logic in all of this. Body-snatching the recent dead from graveyards is an unfortunate but necessary practice in the medical climate of our day, I told myself. Cadavers for medical research remain in critically short supply, and there is no way to supply the need without resorting to grave-robbing. Even the most respectable surgeons need resort to it, I told myself. And even though Leng’s attempts at artificially prolonging life were clearly beyond the pale, it was still possible he might unintentionally achieve other breakthroughs that would have beneficial effects…