The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist) by Rick Yancey Read Free Book Online

furtherance of human knowledge.”
    “I’m not familiar with the species,” I confessed. “Say he actually did have a living specimen. Would it be worth his asking price?”
    “How can one put a price on something like that? It would be beyond price.”
    “In the furtherance-of-human-knowledge sense or . . . ?”
    “In nearly every sense.” He sighed. “There is a reason it was hunted to extinction, Will Henry.”
    “Ah.”
    “What does that mean, ‘ah’? Why do you say ‘ah’ like that?”
    “I take it to mean a reason beyond the usual one of eradicating a threat to life and limb.”
    He shook his head at me. “Where did I fail? Maeterlinck—if that’s his real name, which I doubt—spoke true about onething: an actual living specimen of T. cerrejonensis would have the potential to make its captor richer than all the robber barons combined.”
    “Really! Then a million is not so outlandish an asking price.”
    He stiffened. “It would be, in all likelihood, the last of its kind.”
    “I see.”
    “Clearly you do not. You know next to nothing about the matter, and I would appreciate it if you dropped it and never brought it up again.”
    “But if there is even a possibility that—”
    “What have I said that you fail to understand? You ask questions when you should be quiet and hold your tongue when you should ask!” He slammed the hefty book closed. The attending wallop was loud as a thunderclap. “I wish my father were alive. If my father were alive, I would apologize to him for failing to understand the Solomon-like wisdom of shipping off a teenager until he’s fully grown! Don’t you have anything better to do?”
    “Yes,” I replied calmly. “I must go to the market before it closes. The larder is completely bare.”
    “I am not hungry,” he snapped with a dismissive wave.
    “Perhaps not. I, however, am famished.”

FOUR
    The Publick House was the finest establishment of its kind in town. With its well-appointed rooms and attentive staff, the inn was a favorite gathering place and stopover point for wealthy travelers on their way east along the Boston Post Road. John Adams had slept there, or so the proprietor claimed.
    Number 13 was located at the end of the first-floor hall, the last room on the left. Maeterlinck’s practiced but entirely genuine smile quickly faded when he realized I had come alone.
    “But where is Dr. Warthrop?”
    “Indisposed,” I replied curtly, stepping past him and into the room. A nice little fire spat and popped in the hearth. A snifter of brandy and a pot of steaming tea rested on the smalltable opposite the bed. The window overlooked the spacious grounds, though the view was hidden by night’s dark curtain. I shrugged out of my overcoat, draped it over the chair between the table and the fire, decided a drink would warm me up and steady my nerves, and poured myself a glass from the snifter.
    “The doctor has given me discretionary authority over the matter,” I said to him. “The issue for him, as I guessed, is not the price of the thing but the thing’s authenticity. You must understand you are not the first so-called broker who has appeared at his door wanting to sell certain oddities of the natural world.” I smiled—warmly, I hoped. “When I was younger, I used to think of the doctor’s subjects as mistakes of nature. But I’ve come to understand they are precisely the opposite. These things he studies—they are nature perfected, not mistakes but masterpieces, the pure form beyond the shadow on Plato’s metaphorical wall. This is excellent brandy, by the way.”
    Maeterlinck was frowning; he was not following me at all. “So Warthrop is willing to reconsider my offer?”
    “He is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
    “Then let us go to him at once!” he cried. “There is something altogether unnerving about this whole business, and I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t have taken it on. The sooner I get rid of