“I’ll cope. I’m resourceful.”
“Sure you will.” Simon kissed her, quickly but with real affection. They had been working together and occasionally sleeping together for a year now, and sometimes he thought that something permanent had grown between them and then again he didn’t know. He turned away, then back. “Here, you’ll need the flashlight. Almost forgot.”
“Can you grope your way out?”
“No problem.” And he was on his way; in moments at the top of the uppermost stair, down which he felt his way on his soft-soled shoes.
The first part of the trip out was uneventful. It was as if every foot of the way had already been engraved upon his memory. But when he had got as far as the branching tunnel in the base of the wall he was surprised to see that light was filtering upward very faintly from the branch. Probably just the penlight in his hand had been enough to mask it when they were on the way up. Simon paused, watching. The light was possessed by a tiny flicker, as if its source were flame. Before he left Margie alone in the tunnel system, he ought to check this out.
Down a short turning stair in the branch tunnel, and he came to what surprised him, a real door. It was made of crude wood that seemed to fit with the rest of the decor, and was swung partly ajar, out into a sizable stone room with stone-flagged floor. In the room a torch in a wrought-iron wall scone burned dimly, making the illumination that had drawn Simon here. Against the wall not far from the torch there stood on two legs a metal object that Simon at first took for a suit of armor. It took him a few moments’ staring in the dim light to realize that it was some kind of iron maiden, a complex instrument of torture.
At best the old man had had a bizarre sense of humor. Whatever this sub-basement was being used for now, the open door, the torch, meant that it was certainly being used for something, and that what Simon had thought were the secret passageways were known. He would have to go back and get Margie and get out. But first he was going to try to find out exactly what…
When he peered cautiously round the edge of the door, the whole room, or almost all of it, was visible. Besides the iron maiden, other peculiar instruments stood about in it. Most notably a bed-like rack, with great spoked wheels made to give leverage for disjointing the victim’s limbs. And the rack was occupied…
Simon stepped back, closed eyes and rubbed them, mumbled something halfway between a prayer and a curse, then stepped forward and looked again. The rack was occupied by the naked body of an old man, gray-whiskered, paunchy, whose wrists and ankles were bound to the machine by the provided heavy straps, and who looked as if he were not dead but certainly unconscious.
Moving without conscious volition, Simon pushed the door open farther and stepped out into the room. Eyes fixed on the rack and its occupant, he moved forward slowly. He’d been working up to an hallucination like this one all afternoon, and now it was here, and he was almost glad, knowing that it couldn’t possibly be real.
The old man was quite motionless except for gentle, faintly snoring breathing. A small rope of saliva trailed from one corner of his mouth. The leather strap holding one of his arms felt like a taut strap when Simon touched it, and the old man’s forearm, puffed slightly by the tight bond, certainly felt like flesh. But this couldn’t be—
Simon started to take a step backward, and without warning a strangling grip clamped on him from behind. His neck was caught, one arm pinioned. He could no longer breathe and his head was going to burst and he knew that in a moment more he would be dead.
SIX
In Chicago pawnshops they had looked at enough samurai swords, at least imitation ones, to have conquered China; enough Nazi bayonets, most of which Joe Keogh thought had never been farther east than Gary or anyway New England, to have repelled the Russians. With Charley Snider he had seen bolos, Bowie knives, trench knives, stilettos, sabers, machetes, and cutlasses. They had confiscated illegal switchblades, that no claim of being a bona fide collector could save. They had looked at razors and cleavers and spearheads and God knew what, had handled today every variety of pigsticker that either Joe or Charley had ever heard of, in the process coming upon a few types that were new to both of them. And they had failed to find, or at least failed to identify, what they were looking for. Of course two men, or ten men, could not have covered all the pawnshops in a single day, and there was tomorrow to look forward to. Right now the men were deep in the basement of central headquarters, rummaging with fading hope through the last few days’ take of confiscated goodies. Along with enough blades to furnish a field of grass, there were blackjacks here, zip guns, and, once more, God knew what.
Charley was squinting doubtfully at an odd kind of homemade brass knuckle outfit. A small length of chain had been riveted onto it. Charley had been detailed to work full time with Joe today because of a report that a black man exactly fitting the description of Carados, the west coast murderer, had been seen in conversation with a bum known as Feathers in a tavern just a block off Skid Row; and Feathers was now nowhere to be found; and Joe had allowed it to be known informally that his informant might just possibly be able to provide some lead.
“I guess,” said Charley, trying the quaint artifact on his right fist, “if you don’t get ‘im with the punch you maybe take an eye out with the swinging end.”
“I guess,” agreed Joe. With a faint groan he straightened up from the table full of treasures he had been turning over; when he got home to Kate he was going to request a backrub.
“So now,” Charley sighed, “looks like you can tell your boy when he calls again that we came up empty trying to find this special blade he talkin’ ‘bout. What exactly was this cutter supposed to tell us when we did find it?”
During the day’s labors Joe had already managed to put off this question a couple of times. Of course it would have to be answered sooner or later, and he had been giving some thought to how. He tried now the best answer he had so far been able to come up with: “If we found it, and could describe it exactly to him—add details beyond what he already knows about it—then he thought it would help him, maybe, to put his finger on the guys we want.” Joe had to admit to himself that his best answer sounded purely terrible.
Charley took his time considering. “Well,” he said at last, “I guess this cat has really come through for you a time or two in the past.”
“Yeah. He has.”
“For Carados,” said Charley, “I’ll go to a lot of trouble. I’ll even take a chance on making an utter damn fool of myself and wasting a lot of time. When’s your guy supposed to call you again?”
“Tonight, I hope. He wasn’t sure.” Last night, when Talisman had called Joe at home, to give him the first detailed information about the sword, Joe had been able to hear the subway trains roaring in the background. And it had been midnight. Joe wouldn’t have cared to hang around a subway station at that hour, not without Charley Snider and maybe a small squad of marines.
His caller of course had not been distracted by any personal concerns. After describing the sword he was trying to find, Talisman had told Joe of the existence of an imported castle, a European building reconstructed out on the Sauk River, that really ought to be investigated. “The man I began by looking for is there, you see, as well as the truly remarkable man of whom I spoke.
“The oddity.”
“Yes. And I can sense now that there is a woman to match.” For a moment Talisman’s voice seemed to hold nothing but deep masculine appreciation.
Joe protested. “The Sauk River’s really way out of my territory, as you know. If I call the sheriff out there, or the state police, I can’t just tell them to look for a vampire.”