The glimpses he got now of the helmet which was his quarry were few and brief, but enough to enable him to gain ground. It had reached the shell of standing walls at the corner of the caldarium. Clearly he saw it glimmer between two broken blocks of masonry, beyond the low rim of the laconicum. Then it vanished. He approached cautiously, and stood by the edge of the shaft in braced silence, preferring to keep his bearings in relation to this potential hazard, while he waited with straining ears and roving eyes for a new lead.
Cloud blew away from the moon’s face for a moment, and a spilled pool of light glazed the tops of the broken walls and blackened the shadows; and there suddenly was the helmeted head burning in the brief gleam. As he fixed his eyes upon it, the figure turned, darkness from the shoulders down, bright above, and stood confronting him, and he caught one glimpse of a frozen, splendid, golden face with empty black eye-sockets, under the bronze peak of the helmet.
It was a rapid displacement of air behind him, rather than a sound, that suddenly raised the short hairs on his neck, and caused him to swing round on his heel, too late to save himself. He caught a chaotic glimpse of a looming shape and a raised arm, a violent shifting of shadows and deeper shadows. Then the contours of earth and the complexities of starlight whirled and dissolved about him, as the stone that should have struck him squarely at the base of the skull crashed obliquely against his temple. An arm took him about the thighs and heaved him from the ground; and in some remaining corner of consciousness he knew what was happening to him, and could not utter a sound or lift a finger to fend it off.
He fell, cold, dank air rushing upwards past his face for what seemed an age, and dropped heavily upon some uneven and loosely shifting stuff that rolled at the impact, and bore him helplessly with it.
The breath was knocked out of him, but he never let go of that last glimmer of consciousness. Something rebounded from the wall of the shaft above him, with a heavy thud and a faint ring of metal, and scraped the opposite wall. The light, the only light, was the faint circle of sky now beginning to glow almost with the radiance of day by contrast with this incredible, dead blackness where he was. In the confused panic of shock he prised himself upwards to run, and struck his head sickeningly against an arched ceiling. All over his body the delayed protests of pain began, outraged and insistent. They helped him, too. They made him aware that he was alive, and acutely aware of other things in the same instant: that he was down the shaft of the laconicum, that the wooden cover had been removed in advance to facilitate his disposal, and that the second object tipped down after him must be his suitcase.
He put his head down in his arms for a moment, feeling horribly sick; and before he had gathered his damaged faculties, the thump and reverberation of falling earth and stones began in the shaft, and disturbed dust silted down over him acridly, choking him. He dragged himself frantically forward as stones began to fall about his legs, and holding by the rough bricks of the floor, found the solid wall ahead of him, and groped left-handed along it into the mouth of an open flue.
The rain of stones went on, heavier fragments now, broken masses from the very masonry of Aurae Phiala, or more likely the rim of the laconicum itself, hurled down to lodge awkwardly in the loose rubble, and pile up until they began to climb the walls.
Then he knew that someone was deliberately filling in the shaft. For a long time there followed a staccato rattle of loose brick and tile, and after that there was already so much matter between him and the outer air that the continuing softer fall of earth over all made only a slight, dull sound, receding until he could hardly distinguish it.
The circle of starlight was quenched. Nothing broke the solid perfection of the dark. He was buried alive in the hypocaust, ten feet beneath the innocent green surface of Aurae Phiala.
CHAPTER TEN
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For a moment he lay flattened over his folded arms, and let himself sag into a self-pitying fury of bruises and concussion. It was more endurable when he closed his eyes; the darkness was no darker, and infinitely more acceptable, as though he had created it, and could again disperse it. And after a few minutes his mind began to work again inside his aching head, with particular, indignant energy. Because somebody had done a thorough job on getting rid of him—somebody? Paviour! Who else?—and circumstances and his own carelessness had played into the enemy’s hands. His departure was already accounted for, nobody was going to be starting a hue and cry after him. His suitcase, his clothes, his camera, everything that might have afforded a clue to his whereabouts, lay here under the earth with him. All except the car; and since whoever had followed him and struck him down had brought the suitcase to dispose of along with the body, it didn’t need much guessing to decide what was now happening to the Aston Martin. A mobile clue that can be removed from the scene of the crime at seventy miles an hour is no problem. He’d known many a car vanish utterly inside a new paint job and forged plates, within a few hours. By the time someone, somewhere, grew uneasy about his non-appearance, he would be dead. He was meant to be dead already. Only that one lucky movement had saved him.
A movement made a shade too slowly and a fraction of a second too late to show him anything more than a looming shadow, a man-shaped cloud toppling upon him, and a descending arm, before the night exploded in his face. The shadow never had a face. But who but Paviour knew how beautifully his tracks were already covered? Who else had just engineered his elimination from the scene, taking advantage of Lesley’s sickness, perhaps even sending her after him deliberately, to ease him out of Aurae Phiala without trace? It couldn’t be anyone else!
Or could it? There were two of them, he reminded himself, one to bait the trap for me, and one to spring it. Supposing they—whoever they were—had been out in the night on their own furtive occasions, and had to freeze into cover within earshot of that scarifying interview? If they had wanted to get rid of him, and hardly dared to take the risk earlier, what an opportunity!
If he kept his senses, if he let his memory do its own work, there ought to be some detail, even in so brief a glimpse, that would resume recognisable identity. In time he would know his murderer. But time was all too limited unless he gave all his mind to his first and most desperate duty, which was to survive. For after all, he thought savagely, maybe I have got one advantage he doesn’t know about: I’m alive! Let’s see if there’s any other asset around. Yes, I’ve still got a watch with a luminous dial, one little bright eye in all this dark, and it’s still going. There may not be any day or night, but there’ll still be hours. For God’s sake, don’t forget to wind it! And there’s the suitcase. If I can find it. If it isn’t buried ten feet deep under all that lumber. But no, it hit the wall and rebounded, and slid down this side. It’s not far. What is there in there that might be useful? There’s a pocket torch, though it won’t run for long unless I’m sparing with it. And leather gloves. I’ve got no eyes now but my fingers, and they don’t see much in gloves, but I can carry the things, and if I have to dig…
That brought him to the real point; for there was no sense in studying how to help himself until he had a possibility in mind. And there was not the slightest possibility of digging his way vertically upwards through that settling mass of earth and stones in the shaft. Try it, if you want to know how peppercorns feel in a peppermill! No way out there. And no way out anywhere else…