Pendergast holstered his gun. “I got off a second shot at it, but I was having trouble aiming my weapon, and I missed. I came down this way to look for it, but the thing had vanished. It must have gone into the stairwell at the end of the corridor. There’s no other way out from this cul-de-sac.”
“Mr. Pendergast,” Frock said urgently. “Tell me, please: what did it look like?”
“I saw it only briefly,” Pendergast said slowly. “It was low, extremely powerful looking. It walked on all fours, but could rear upright. It was partially covered with hair.” He pursed his lips, nodded. “It was dark. But I’d say whoever made that figurine knew what he was doing.”
In the glow of Pendergast’s light, Margo saw a strange mix of fear, exhilaration, and triumph cross Frock’s face. Then a series of muffled explosions echoed and reechoed above them. There was a brief silence, and then more reports, sharper and louder, boomed nearby.
Pendergast looked upward, listening intently. “D’Agosta!” he said. Drawing his gun and dropping the blueprints, he raced out into the corridor.
Margo ran to the door and shined the flashlight down the hallway. In its thin beam, she could see Pendergast rattling the stairwell door. He knelt to inspect the lock, then, standing, he gave the door a series of savage kicks.
“It’s jammed shut,” he said when he returned. “Those shotgun blasts we heard sounded like they came from inside the stairwell. Some of the shells must have bent the doorframe and damaged the lock. It won’t budge.” He holstered the gun and pulled out his radio. “Lieutenant D’Agosta! Vincent, can you hear me?” He waited a moment, then shook his head and replaced the radio in his jacket pocket.
“So we’re stuck here?” Margo asked.
Pendergast shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve spent the afternoon down in these vaults and tunnels, trying to determine how the beast was able to elude our searches. These blueprints were drafted well before the turn of the century, and they are complicated and contradictory, but they seem to show a route out of the Museum through the subbasement. With everything sealed off, there’s no other feasible way out for us. And there are several ways to access the subbasement from this section of the Museum.”
“That means we can meet up with the people still upstairs, then escape together!” Margo said.
Pendergast looked grim. “But that also means the beast can find its way back into the subbasement. Personally, I think that while these emergency doors may prevent our own rescue, they won’t hamper the beast’s movement much. I believe it’s been around long enough to find its own secret ways, and that it can move throughout the Museum—or, at least, the lower levels—practically at will.”
Margo nodded. “We think it’s been living in the Museum for years. And we think we know how and why it came here.”
Pendergast looked searchingly at Margo for a long moment. “I need you and Doctor Frock to tell me everything you know about this creature, as quickly as possible,” he said.
As they turned to enter the storeroom, Margo heard a distant drumming, like slow thunder. She froze, listening intently. The thunder seemed to have a voice: crying or shouting, she wasn’t sure which.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“That,” Pendergast said quietly, “is the sound of people in the stairwell, running for their lives.”
= 51 =
In the faint light filtering in through the barred laboratory window, Wright could barely make out the old filing cabinet. It was damned lucky, he thought, that the lab was inside the perimeter of Cell Two. Not for the first time, he was glad he’d kept this old laboratory when he’d been promoted to Director. It would provide them with a temporary safe haven, a little breathing room. Cell Two was now completely cut off from the rest of the Museum, and they were effectively prisoners. Everything, all the emergency bars, shutters, and security gates, had come down during the loss of power. At least that’s what he’d heard that incompetent police officer, D’Agosta, say.
“Someone is going to pay dearly for this,” Wright muttered to himself. Then they all fell quiet. Now that they had stopped running, the enormity of the disaster began to sink in.
Wright moved gingerly forward, pulling out one file-cabinet drawer after another, fishing behind the folders until at last he found what he was looking for.
“Ruger .357 magnum,” he said, hefting it in his hands. “Great pistol. Excellent stopping power.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to stop whatever killed Ippolito,” said Cuthbert. He was standing near the laboratory door, a still figure framed in black.
“Don’t worry, Ian. One of these speedball bullets would perforate an elephant. I bought this after old Shorter was mugged by a vagrant. Anyway, the creature isn’t coming up here. And if he does, this door is solid oak two inches thick.”
“What about that one?” Cuthbert pointed toward the rear of the office.