Page 113 of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

More to the point: what shouldhedo?

Pendergast’s dire warning about alerting Constance or no, one thing was clear: he had to get inside. He couldn’t let that brute roam free.

Yet he couldn’t just go pound on the front door and demand to be let in. That was lunacy—and besides, raising the alarm like that would let Munck know they were on to him. He could do a lot of damage in the household before D’Agosta could even talk his way inside.

For that matter, the bastard could be doing a lot of damagenow.

There was only one option: to get into the house the same way Munck had.

He looked up at the iron bars, topped with curved spikes. He was out of shape and approaching the far end of middle age, with a tire around his middle and no climbing experience. But he immediately shed his heavy coat, feeling the sudden, bracing cold—which if nothing else, energized him—grabbed two wrought iron bars, and hoisted himself up. Thank God the bars were spaced just wide enough so he could wedge his hobnailed boots between them.

One hoist, two, three, boots slipping a little, four…and then he was high enough to grasp the curve of one of the iron spikes. Pulling himself up, he grabbed the adjoining spike. Scrabbling with his boots, the hobnails digging into the iron, he hauled himself up with a groan of effort, his face hovering just below the tips of the spikes, pitted with rust and pointing downward. Facinghim.

What now?

Without giving himself time either to rest or think, he braced his feet and pushed off, swinging his body out and up, landing hard atop the recurved spikes. One leg didn’t quite clear the spikes, and a point tore through his pants and scored a gash along his thigh. But at least he was lying on top. Looking down twelve feet. It seemed more like a thousand.

He paused, breathing hard. Then, keeping himself balanced, he swung his legs over the spikes, and—gripping maniacally at the bars—scrabbled with his feet until he managed to wedge them once again between the bars, this time on the other side. He began working his way back down, releasing first one hand, then one foot, allowing his body to slide a little each time. But just as he was getting the rhythm, one of his boots slipped out of position; a hand slid down the rusty bar, filling the meat of his palm with sharp flakes of iron. He lost purchase with the other boot—and he fell.

A split second of terror and then he hit the ground, rolling instinctively. He ended up lying on his side, the wind knocked from his lungs, desperately trying to suck in air. Christ, did he break something? Or, more likely, everything?

After a minute he struggled to his knees, then hauled himself to his feet, using the nearby bars as a crutch. He moved his limbs gingerly, one at a time. Nothing broken. Just half a dozen hematomas.

He reminded himself that the longer he delayed, the more time Munck had to spend in the house.

He walked beneath the open window. From his position, with the ground floor sloping gently into a rise of land, the second floor might as well have been the penthouse. Motherfucker, was he really going to climb that?

Naturally, the mansion didn’t have the nice, low, nine-foot ceilings of twenty-first-century apartments. This would make the second-story climb even longer.

He noticed a series of decorative stone lintels, or whatever the hell they were called. Above each of them, the rear wall of the house was built of pudding-stone blocks that afforded a number of small, protruding horizontal ledges.

He stared upward for a moment in clean, cold fear. Then he said savagely to himself:Get your fat ass moving.

He grabbed a lintel with both hands, raised one leg to put a boot on it, and hoisted himself up. Then he repeated this with another lintel: another hand, another foot, pulling himself up to the next decorative ledge. As long as he kept his hobnailed boots sideways, he seemed to get a pretty good purchase. But already the muscles of his arms and legs were protesting from the effort.

Unconsciously, he glanced down and felt the sudden choke of panic.It’s only ten feet, he told himself.It’s going to get worse. Keep going, and don’t look down.But hehadto look down, if only to make sure of the placement of his boots—and each time, as he ascended farther and farther from the ground, the sight seized his gut with terror.

Reaching the main ledge of the first floor, he stopped to rest, holding gratefully on to a window bar as he caught his breath. He went on; there was no time to waste. He started up the next story, using a lintel first as a handhold, a foothold, and then he climbed a section where only the rough projecting stones and sloppy mortar offered purchase. Trying not to think of how small these improvised ledges were, he pulled himself up, found a fresh purchase, then pulled himself up yet again, keeping his eyes fixed on the second-floor window above.

And then he stopped. What now? The final five feet were smoother, the stone blocks offering little opportunity for a grab or a hoist. He felt his thigh muscles burning, and both arms were trembling with the effort of simply holding himself in place. He had to keep going—or he’d run out of muscle power and fall. Instinctively, he glanced down.

Shit.Big mistake.

He would have to edge sideways a bit. To his right, there was a ring driven into the stone, an artifact from when the builders had used a pulley to finish the surfacing of the house. But it was almost out of reach—he’d have to edge sideways from his already precarious perch. Without giving himself time to think better of the idea, he stretched, mustered the strength for a tiny hop, and managed to grasp it.

Now his legs were fully extended, thigh muscles screaming.

He grabbed a projecting stone, got his foot on the ring, pushed up, and finally grasped the lower edge of the open window. He groped blindly at the sloping sill and, reaching in farther, managed to get a good hold on the wooden casement. He got his other hand on it, then raised one boot to a piece of projecting mortar. He put his weight on it, slowly, then released his other foot. The mortar broke off, his boot slipped—and suddenly he found himself dangling by his hands, feet scrabbling wildly for a purchase, heart in his throat. With a surge of panic, he chinned up with brute force, hauling himself over the threshold with his arms, and fell headfirst into the darkened room. He lay on the floor, gasping for breath, his heart pounding like a tom-tom, his muscles jerking, his palms and fingers and knees scraped and stinging.

He gave himself sixty seconds to recover, no more. A quick look around showed the room was empty. He pulled the revolver from his pocket and rotated the barrel—a six-shot Colt .45, fully loaded—and then got to his feet and tiptoed painfully to the door.

He could hear no sound. He eased the door open and looked out—and was stunned to see a man crumpled on the floor, his head resting at an unnatural angle, blood dripping down the wall and soaking the carpet.

Munck had already been at work.Dear God, what if…

And now a door closer to him opened and a cloaked figure emerged—Munck—and he was holding the little girl by her neck. He looked over, saw D’Agosta—and raised a six-inch knife to her throat.

She was gagged, her eyes wide.

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