The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [206]
I have spoken before of my growing doubts over this business of Leng. You know, of course, the reasons I allowed him to take rooms on the third floor of the Cabinet. His talks at the Lyceum proved the depth of his scientific and medical knowledge. In taxonomy and chemistry he has few, if any, peers. The notion that enlightening, perhaps even forward-reaching, experiments would be taking place beneath my own roof was a pleasant one. And, on a practical note, the additional hard currency offered by his rent was not unwelcome.
At first, my trust in the man seemed fully justified. His curatorial work at the Cabinet proved excellent. Although he kept highly irregular hours, he was unfailingly polite, if a little reserved. He paid his rent money promptly, and even offered medical advice during the bouts of grippe that plagued me throughout the winters of ’73 and ’74.
It is hard to date with any precision my first glimmerings of suspicion. Perhaps it began with what, in my perception, was a growing sense of secretiveness about the man’s affairs. Although he had promised early on to share the formal results of his experiments, except for an initial joint inspection when the lease was signed I was never invited to see his chambers. As the years passed, he seemed to grow more and more absorbed in his own studies, and I was forced to take on much of the curatorial duties for the Cabinet myself.
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