That left the big man with one final chore — determining who was going with him, that is, besides Gregory and yours truly. In retrospect, the decision to take Kelto shouldn't have been any surprise. He was probably the only one who really knew anything concrete about the apelike disciples of Sate. The four of us, given the nature of most caves, were probably all that could be really effective, but I would have felt a helluva lot better if the entire Seventh Fleet had been thrown in for our back-up.
It was at that point that B.C. announced she was going with us. I started to protest, but Madden was quick to accept her offer.
It was a little before four when we loaded the last of the supplies in Madden's four-by-four and headed back for the Widow Austin's place. Outside the steamy windows of Madden's truck was a gray world that I was growing to hate.
It took us all of 30 minutes to get out to the old house and get the supplies transported from the road up to the porch. While Madden and Gregory went around to the rear of the house to assess the inlet, I captured B.C. and cajoled her into helping me search the house one last time. With any luck at all, I figured we could find some other way of getting to the caves besides scaling over that ledge and risking a drop into a pit we knew nothing about. All I wanted was a few minutes to see what we could find.
Elaborate hypotheses are the bane of academics. I wasn't one, but I'd been hanging around too many salty old scholars for too long a time. In plain and simple terms, I reasoned there had to be an entrance to the caves through the Widow Austin's house. Somewhere in that ramshackle old structure there had to be an entrance. It was the only thing that made sense in this scenario of insanity.
My reasoning went something like this. It was one thing for the apelike creatures to use an inlet entrance. After all, they had already demonstrated both the strength and agility to handle just about any kind of obstacle. On the other hand, the Emissary, if he was what Kelto suspected him of being, one of the locals, would have the same trouble negotiating the inlet cave entrances that we were going to have. It just made sense that the Emissary and the rest of the true believers had an access that was a little more suited to mere mortals.
My conclusion to this rather simpleminded hypothesis was that somewhere there was an entrance to the labyrinth and that entrance was somewhere in the old lady's house. The trick was going to be finding the damn thing — and fast.
It boiled down to a race. If I could find what I was looking for before Big Jake was ready to go over the side and dangle on the end of a thin nylon line, the risk of scaling down into the pit could be at least partially minimized.
Brenda and I launched our search in the old woman's cluttered living room. Glenna Austin was still holding her silent, if lifeless sentinel, and B.C. thoughtfully draped a dusty old throw over the woman's rigid body. Not that it made all that much difference, but for some reason I was a little more comfortable poking through her belongings just knowing that those dull black eyes weren't fixed on my every move.
There were four rooms on the main floor — a sitting room, a kitchen, a bedroom, a pantry-like affair that was piled high with an assortment of rubble, debris and just plain dirt. Our hurried and clumsy approach to the search didn't even give the rats time to hide. Twice B.C. screamed when she uncovered nests of squealing, yellow-eyed creatures that chattered ominously when we invaded their shadowy domain.
The flooring under all of the rooms was badly warped and sounded hollow. There was the oppressive stench of mildew and decay in each of the rooms. At the far end of the kitchen, there was a narrow, coarse, boarded set of near vertical stairs that ascended into a loft whose access door had been nailed shut.
We spent a good 20 minutes tapping walls, moving rickety old pieces of furniture and found absolutely nothing — at least nothing that resembled a trap door that would lead us down to the network of caves that I knew had to be laced through the hill under the old house. As a last resort, we kicked aside the debris in the makeshift pantry and inspected it. All to no avail. In the end, B.C. stood in the middle of the tiny room with a look of "what's next?" on her troubled face.
I went back into the sitting room and stared at the shrouded figure of Glenna Austin. "Damn it, B.C., I'd have bet my last dime we would have found a trap door somewhere in all this mess. Nothing else makes sense. There has to be one."
"If this whole thing was being directed by Alfred Hitchcock, he'd have the old lady's rocking chair sitting on it," B.C. sighed, "or something like that."
Bingo!
A little light came on. The night I barged into Glenna's happy home only to find the crusty old girl waving a shotgun under my flaring nostrils, the rocking chair had been on the opposite side of the room. I had felt something was different about the room, and now I realized what it was. Why would the old girl move her rocker? After all, it was fairly obvious Glenna Austin wasn't a member of the homemaker of the month club.
There was only one way to find out.
"Help me move her," I snapped.
"What on earth for?" Brenda protested.
"Because that rocking chair sitting on top of that threadbare braided oval rug is sitting directly on top of the trap door that leads down to the caves."
"You've been watching too many late shows," B.C. said, sneering.
"Never mind; help me move her."
Between the two of us, we managed, with an admirable degree of dignity, to scoot Glenna and her chair over a few feet and clear the rug. I jerked back the rug, and B.C. let out with an annoying little giggle.
"I have to admit," she said nervously, "I wish it had been there."
"Damn, it's got to be here," I protested. "It can't be that complicated. It's a simple house."
The uneasy smile faded from B.C.'s face. "Madden may be right. Maybe the only way into those caves is back there in the side walls of that inlet."
I sighed, picked up my flashlight, went out the front door and around to the rear of the old house. Madden and Gregory had completed most of the rigging. The requisitioned gear had been brought around to the back, and Kelto had carefully repacked the more critical items into two bulky backpacks.
Madden's plan had been further refined. He would go down first and find the cave that led back into the side of the hill, then Officer Gregory would follow. Kelto and yours truly would go down on the second wave. B.C. would come last.
While Madden tested the lines, I gave the old house one long, last E.G. Wages visual search. It was a drill in futility. The fog and darkness were doing their best to conceal whatever minor concession the old place was willing to make.
Madden was systematically laced into the makeshift harness. Brenda helped Gregory loop the lines through the D rings and snapped the gear at both locations on the tool belt. The lines were laced back through the fore and aft pulleys, and the knotted end, along with the gloves, were handed to me.
"You're the dead man on the first descent," Gregory said evenly.
"Can't you find something else to call it?" I said dryly.
Gregory looked at me with a blank expression. Another futile attempt at dark humor for naught.
I wrapped the line around my waist twice, knotted it, curled my hands into the leather gloves and backed away from the precipice. Madden was already lying on his stomach, inching his feet cautiously out over the edge.