Chapter 28

Byron Newton-Plancke had inherited his father’s vast chain of pharmacies, and the wealth that went along with it. A portion of the family estate, sprawled across twenty lavish acres just a few miles outside of Boston, was a dedicated museum of natural history, and boasted the largest private collection of fossilized and biological relics in the world. On rare days, the museum was open to the general public. For the most part, however, Plancke kept the doors barred to everyone but special patrons and invited guests.

Cordelia learned all this from the No Trespassing sign hung neatly from the heavy iron padlock on the gates.

Thanks to Professor Natter, they had paid for a hansom cab to take them out to the estate, surprised to find that the driver knew the way without any address.

“You’ve got crowds going just to get a peek of him through a window four hundred yards away,” he said. “And bigwigs, too, kinda names you only see in the paper. Governors and deans and book writers and all kinds of swanks. Well. I guess they want to get in good now, just in case he does become president. . . .” The driver leaned over to spit from his perch. “I hope he doesn’t, though. Saw him once or twice. Somethin’ the matter with his eyes. Never seem to be lookin’ in the same direction.”

It was just after eight o’clock in the morning when they arrived, and brittle cold. Cordelia was sorry to see the old man and his carriage go, rattling and bumping back down the road. She couldn’t help but feel that they were being abandoned at the end of the world, although the idea was absurd. Several reporters had beaten them there and tried to argue, unsuccessfully, with the patrolling guards for admittance. Cordelia gestured the others into the dense trees just across the road, where they would have a clear view of the gates.

“No press on the premises today.” Only one of the guards spoke. The other three remained in the guardhouse, blank and indistinguishable as enormous knobs of clay. “No exceptions.”

Undeterred, the reporters began to fire off questions.

“Is it true that the governor has been invited to tour?”

“Is it true that he has the endorsement of the police commissioner?”

“Is it true he has another book in the works?”

“The book’s finished,” the guard corrected him. “Mr. Newton-Plancke is expecting his publisher today, in fact. Now clear off, or I’ll have you hauled in for harassment.”

The Newton-Plancke estate was patched with snow, and above the swell of the winter gardens, the mansion spread vastly across the hill. A scud of clouds bustled busily across the blue sky.

A beautiful day. A beautiful place.

But Cordelia couldn’t shake the impression of something dark and evil waiting for them just beyond the gates. She could feel it, like the squelch of sewage beneath a boot. The monsters seemed to feel it too. Icky kept squirming in Elizabeth’s arms, and Cabal’s fur stood up on his spine. The dragon, already too big now for Cordelia’s pocket, had settled on her shoulder, and every so often hissed an agitation of smoke.

Stay calm, Cordelia told herself. She had gone up against ghouls and flesh-eating chupacabras; she had once taken a piggyback ride on a werewolf, whose breath had still smelled of blood.

She could do this. They could do it.

They had to.

“How will we get in?” Elizabeth whispered.

“The guard said that Plancke is expecting his publisher today,” Cordelia said. Somewhere in that beautiful prison of stone and marble, a terrible plot had taken root, spreading poisonous ideas about monsters and men. “I say we go along for the ride.”

Breakfast was a bag of old pretzels, bartered from a baker selling down by the docks for one of Elizabeth’s hairpins, which she no longer needed. It was very cold in the trees, especially when the wind picked up. But the overhanging evergreens kept them nicely concealed.

Around noon, they heard the rattle of an approaching carriage, and a muffled shout from the guardhouse. Cordelia stood up quickly, trying to stamp the feeling back into her toes. She knew from the size of the coach, and the sleekness of the horses pulling it, that this must be Plancke’s visitor from the publishing house.

“Come on,” she said, as the driver slowed outside the gates. “Now’s our chance.”

As the guards busied themselves with the padlock, and heaving open the heavy iron gates, Cordelia, Gregory, and Elizabeth—each of them holding tight to one of the monsters—sprinted the short distance to the carriage and ducked beneath the rear boot just before the driver cracked his whip to urge the horses forward again. Clinging tight to the leather thoroughbraces that girded the underside of the carriage, squeezed together between the enormous hammered wheels, they scuttled forward with the motion of the horses, passing straight through the gates and leaving the guardhouse behind.

Soon the drive twisted sharply around a stand of thick fir trees, taking them out of view of the guardhouse. At a silent gesture from Cordelia, all three of them released their hold on the thoroughbraces and let the carriage roll on without them up the hill to the main entrance. They ducked into the trees, being careful to avoid the crunchy bits of snow that might betray their presence, scouting for a secondary entrance.

The shadow of the mansion soon engulfed them, and they were close enough to see the coach release its sole passenger—a plump little man who looked exactly like an overgrown baby, stuffed into a two-small suit and given a cigar for a pacifier.

Suddenly, Elizabeth hissed in a breath. “That’s him,” she said. “Newton-Plancke. Coming down the stairs.”

A shiver of dread moved down Cordelia’s spine. Newton-Plancke’s face looked vaguely familiar—she had, she thought, seen him before in the newspapers her father occasionally used for the pixies’ bedding—although from a distance it was difficult to make out more than the impression of a normal man, pulled like a length of taffy into the longest, thinnest person Cordelia had ever seen. His face was long. His nose was long. His mouth was long, and played drooping support to a long mustache and an even longer beard. His neck and arms and fingers were long. His legs, too. She was reminded, as he jogged down the stairs to greet his visitor, of the jointed appendages of a spider.

Plancke exchanged a few words with the new arrival and disappeared inside. A moment later, Cordelia saw the lights come on in what she assumed was a drawing room. They must have settled down in the part of the estate that served as Plancke’s private residence, because signs at the top of the drive pointed museum visitors to the wing on the opposite side of the building.

“Let’s see if we can find a way in through the museum,” she said. “That’s where he’ll be showing the monsters, anyway.”

Luckily, the estate was stippled with trees and greenhouses, miniature follies and fountains, and statues dedicated to the achievements of previous Newton-Planckes (most of them invented, Cordelia was sure), so they had no shortage of hiding places as they made their way across the estate.

“I didn’t know that Roger Newton-Plancke patented the steam engine,” Elizabeth whispered, as they ducked behind an enormous statue of yet another long and evil-looking ancestor squeezing a miniature train in one triumphant fist.

“That’s because he didn’t,” Cordelia whispered back. “Any more than Elliot Newton-Plancke invented the sock. Now come on.”

To their relief, there were no guards posted at the entrance of the museum, although another sign indicated its closure to the public.

But the doors were, unsurprisingly, locked.

“What now?” Elizabeth said, with a huff of frustration that flushed her freckles green.

Cordelia shook her head. The lower windows were barred, and she saw no way up to the upper floors. Icky could climb, of course. . . . But what would he do once he got inside, if he got inside? He would likely follow the smell of food to the kitchens, or get hysterical and knock down some priceless exhibit.

Gregory was bent double, puzzling over the lock. “This one’s fiddly for picking,” he muttered. “Too bad we don’t have a torch. . . .” Then he straightened up suddenly, eyes flashing. “That’s it. That’s how we get in. We’ll torch the lock. Flimsy bit of metal like that, shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.”

“But we don’t have a torch,” Elizabeth said testily. “You said so yourself.”

He gave her a smirk that Elizabeth herself couldn’t have beaten. “True. But we got a dragon.” And he plucked the dragon from Cordelia’s shoulder, gave him a tickle, and neatly ducked the trajectory of fire.

The lock was melted, and the doors opened within seconds.

Just like that, Gregory, Cordelia, and Elizabeth were inside Byron Newton-Plancke’s Museum of Natural and Unnatural History.