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Gray shifted through the pile of papers. “Besides studying the bodies, Crawfurd had employed a biologist to help him investigate a stick of coral. Look at this.”
Gray slipped out a page. It showed a naturalist’s sketch of a branch of coral and a microscopic study of its hard skeleton.
Seichan grimaced. “That coral almost looks like a finger.”
Gray conceded the point. “You could be right. From the pathology findings, Crawfurd believed the bodies were mineralized in the same manner as the coral.” He pulled out a sheet and read from it: “The bones of the deceased appear to have been dissolved away and reformed into a new crystalline pattern throughout the surrounding tissues. Thus casting the flesh into an unnaturally brittle texture.”
Zhuang frowned with distaste. “Is that possible?”
Gray shrugged. “I can’t discount it. Considering what the researchers at the Titan Project discovered in the Tonga Trench—a huge coral forest—it could be significant.”
“What else did Stoepker or Crawfurd write about all of this?” Seichan asked.
“That’s just it. The story ends there. To me, it feels as if it had been purposefully edited. Stoepker’s account seems incomplete. And Crawfurd draws no further conclusions.”
Zhuang waved to the pages. “What about all those drawings?”
“I don’t know. It’s as if they were left as clues to the rest of the tale. If Stamford had been worried that someone like Farquhar might expose his secret, he might have taken some of the pages and hidden them elsewhere.”
“Didn’t want to keep all his eggs in one basket,” Seichan said.
“Maybe. But if so, I keep going around in circles.”
Guan-yin joined in. “What do the drawings show?”
Gray shifted a page into view. “This one just shows a detailed sketch of some island and some indigenous people living there.”
Seichan frowned at the drawing. “Maybe it was added by mistake. Someone’s travelogue that got mixed in over the centuries.”
“I might have thought that, too, except for one detail.”
Gray slid out the other sketch, which showed a thatched hut, probably on the same island.
“Why do you think it’s significant?” Guan-yin asked.
Gray tapped the bottom left edge of the sketch. A figure in colonial clothes sat there, smoking a pipe, and appeared to be consulting with the natives.
“I think this could be Crawfurd,” Gray said. “I can’t be certain, but to me, it looks like someone from this story went to that island to talk to an indigenous tribe living out there. And these drawings are a record of that encounter.”
“But what does it mean?” Zhuang asked. “Why would the doctor go out there?”
“Maybe in search of that cure,” Gray said. “The account does hint at some discovery of an elixir.”
Seichan scowled. “That island... it could be anywhere.”
“True. But the last drawing in the portfolio makes even less sense.”
He pulled out another sketch. This one was far cruder, nearly childish in nature. It depicted a fire-breathing snake and what appeared to be a rainbow.
“According to the account, this was discovered among Stoepker’s handwritten papers in the steel box found with his body,” Gray said. “It comes with no provenance or explanation. Or least not in the pages secured in Singapore. Maybe there’s more of an account in the part of the story that remains missing.”
“Why did Stoepker include it?” Zhuang asked. “There must be a reason.”
“If I had to guess, it was not drawn by Stoepker, but by his passenger aboard the tender.”
“The Aboriginal kid,” Seichan said.
Gray sighed. “Matthew, the cabin boy of the doomedTenebrae. He and Stoepker were found roughly sixteen days after their ship departed Jakarta. I wager the course of the illness took a long time to incapacitate them. During that time, Stoepker wrote his account. Maybe Matthew did the same, drawing the snake and rainbow before he died.”
