So he had hit Pendergast. Nevertheless, he would have to redouble his caution. Wounded humans, like wounded animals, were always the most dangerous.
He paused at the first step, wondering if he should go after the woman first. Was she still chained to the wall? Or had Pendergast managed to free her, as well? Either way, she posed little danger. The house was a fortress, the basement securely locked. She would be unable to escape. Pendergast remained the more pressing problem. Once he was dead, the remaining resource could be tracked down and forced to take the place of Smithback. He’d made the mistake of listening to Pendergast once. When he found him, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. The man would be dead before he even opened his mouth.
The staircase spiraled down, down, corkscrewing endlessly into the earth. The Surgeon descended slowly, treating each curve as a blind corner behind which Pendergast might be lying in wait. At last he reached the bottom. The stairs debouched into a dark, murky room, heavy with the smell of mildew, damp earth, and—what? Ammonia, salts, benzene, the faint smell of chemicals. There was a flurry of footprints, more drops of blood. Pendergast had stopped here. The Surgeon shone his light on the nearest wall: a row of old brass lanterns, hanging from wooden pegs. One of the pegs was empty.
He took a step to one side, then—using the stone pillar of the staircase as cover—lifted his heavy flashlight and shone it into the gloom.
An astonishing sight met his eye. A wall of jewels seemed to wink back at him: a thousand, ten thousand glittering reflections in myriad colors, like the reflective surface of a fly’s eye under intense magnification. Suppressing his surprise, he moved forward cautiously, gun at the ready.
He found himself in a narrow stone chamber, pillars rising toward a low, arched ceiling. The walls were lined with countless glass bottles of identical shape and size. They were stored on oaken shelving that rose from floor to ceiling, row upon row upon row, crowded densely together, shut up behind rippled glass. He had never seen so many bottles in his life. It looked, in fact, like a museum of liquids.
His breath came faster. Here it was: Leng’s final laboratory. No doubt this was the place where he had perfected the arcanum, his formula for life prolongation. This place must hold the secret for which he had unsuccessfully tortured Leng. He remembered his feeling of disappointment, almost despair, when he’d discovered that Leng’s heart had stopped beating—when he realized he had pushed a little too hard. No matter now: the formula was right here, under his nose, just as Pendergast had said.
But then he remembered what else Pendergast had said: something about Leng working on something completely different. That was absurd, clearly a red herring. What could be bigger than the prolongation of the human life span? What else could this huge collection of chemicals be for, if not that?
He shook these speculations from his mind. Once Pendergast was dealt with and the girl harvested, there would be plenty of time for exploration.
He raked the ground with his light. There was more blood, along with a ragged set of footprints that headed straight through the corridor of bottles. He had to be careful, exceedingly careful. The last thing he wanted to do was begin shooting up these rows of precious liquids, destroying the very treasure he had strived so hard to find. He raised his arm, aimed the handgun, applied pressure to the grip. A small red dot appeared on the far wall. Excellent. Although the laser would not be sighted in precisely, it would nevertheless leave little margin for error.
Releasing his pressure on the laser grip, the Surgeon moved cautiously through the vast apothecary. Each bottle, he could see now, had been meticulously labeled in a spidery script, with both a name and a chemical formula. At the far end, he ducked beneath a low archway into an identical narrow room. The bottles in the next room were full of solid chemicals—chunks of minerals, glittering crystals, ground powders, metal shavings.
It seemed that the arcanum, the formula, was far more complicated than he had envisioned. Why else would Leng need all these chemicals?
He continued following Pendergast’s trail. The footsteps were no longer a single-minded beeline past the endless rows of glass. Instead, the Surgeon began to notice quick detours in the footsteps toward a particular cabinet or other, almost as if the man was looking for something.