“The question,” Dorian said, pacing the length of the small apartment, “is how we prove that the Lost Gargoyle of Paris is a fake. My original plan was simply to steal the fraudulent illustration myself, then hide in plain sight in stone form on the side of the building. Yet someone beat me to it.”
“You would have destroyed it before being certain it was fake? Since we still don’t know if our theory is correct.”
He shrugged. “This was the moral thing to do. If it was fake, then such false information should not have been allowed to cloud the memory of Viollet-le-Duc. If it was a true illustration by Victor Hugo, it would have been too great a magnet for evil alchemists. Either way, the world is better off without it.”
“I don’t know how the thief stole it from the museum,” I said, “but I have a way for us to figure out how someone planted their fake in the ruins of the cathedral in the first place.”
“You do?”
“I didn’t go as far as I could have gone in the catacombs, because I was by myself. I went as far as the backward alchemy lab, because that’s what I thought I needed to know. But the tunnel went further.”
“I suppose it is not so terrible to have been conceived by a celebrated author,” Dorian said as we crept through the tunnels that night, “instead of an architectural genius. After all, Victor Hugo’s book is the reason the cathedral before us exists today. Yet…”
“Yet?” I shone my flashlight from the damp wall to Dorian’s gray face. The air was dank and the shadows harsh.
“Yet he is celebrated for writing books. Not artwork. Viollet-le-Duc’s hand stretched beyond imagination and drew perfectly realized forms.”
“It’s entirely possible Victor Hugo made his sketch afterward,” I said. “There wasn’t anything referencing dates in the exhibit.”
“Ah! This is a brilliant deduction. I am surprised you thought of it first. Yes. The novel touched the bosom of French citizens in the 1830s, inspiring all ranks of society, including my father and his architect friend. Did you know Viollet-le-Duc himself drew illustrations in an 1870s edition of Notre-Dame de Paris?”
I stooped and ducked under a low section of the tunnel. We were venturing deeper into a section of the catacombs where even the cataphiles feared to tread. There was no graffiti on these walls. No abandoned plastic water bottles on the ground.
“You forget you’re not the only one in this room who was alive then,” I said, wishing I’d brought some myrrh to make the rancid scent less unpleasant.
Dorian chuckled. “Yes, this is what must have happened. Victor Hugo made many drunken drawings, he would not have remembered the timing nor dated them. His true talent was pulling people into the romantic Paris of days gone by. A Paris when times were simpler. A time when common people could structure the rhythm of their lives around the sonorous sound of the bells of Notre Dame chiming. A time when —”
“A time that never existed,” I cut in. “The 1480s weren’t that great, you know.”
“Even you, Alchemist, were not alive so many centuries ago. It was long before you were born. How do you know—”
“From what we know of history, you’d travel back to the Middle Ages if you could?”
He shuddered. Then gasped. “We have arrived?”
“Yes. You can feel it too?”
“Oui.”
“The backward alchemy lab.” I whispered even though nobody could hear us.
“The lair of those lazy, lazy men.”
“And women,” I corrected.
A few steps beyond the secret abandoned underground alchemy lab, it was impossible to tell that such a room existed at all. If we hadn’t known where it was, we never would have found it. Without my map, we couldn’t have dared venture even further. As it was, after a few feet, the tunnel became so narrow we could barely fit.
I stopped and Dorian crashed into me.
“Are you too large to fit?” he asked, shaking out his wings. “I can continue without you. My physique is made for these rugged catacombs, n’est-ce pas?”
“That’s not why I stopped. Look.” I shone my flashlight on the ground.
“Footprints,” Dorian whispered.
“Someone else has been here.” I stepped forward, following the path of our phantom.
We walked in silence for only a few seconds before I stopped again. This time, Dorian was right. I could no longer fit into the small space.
We retreated until there was enough space for us to switch places. Dorian nodded gravely at me, tucked his wings securely behind his back, and stepped forward into the dark, narrow crevasse.
I kept my flashlight trained on the little gargoyle, holding my breath. How far would the tunnel stretch? And how could a person have fit in the narrow slice of tunnel? Had the footprints been those of a rebellious child playing games in the catacombs? What other possible explanation could there be?
“A dead end,” Dorian called a few moments later, tapping his claws against the multicolored limestone deposits.
From my spot several yards away, I shone my flashlight along the dusty ground, now marred by Dorian’s claw prints, to the back of his wings, and onward…
“No,” I said. As above, so below. “It’s not a dead end. Look up.”
Nearly invisible in the stone ceiling above were four cracks. Only they weren’t cracks. They were too even. This was a door.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“Seeing where the door leads. Do not worry, mon amie.” He grinned as he scooped up two hearty stones from the ground. “These will serve to keep the trap door open.”
He scrambled up the wall and pushed. I didn’t hear a sound, and could barely see what was happening, but I felt it. The air smelled thickly of smoke. A woody, earthy scent. Damp.
Dorian was inside the crypt of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Our phantom footprints had entered the cathedral from underground.