The woman rose from the bed and walked to the dresser. Lookinginto the mirror, she fitted the false teeth into her mouth and once more wasthe most beautiful woman in the world.
But she was also the most horrifying woman he had ever seen. Hewas shakingas much as she had been in her orgasm, and he was sick.
At that moment, the door that opened onto the hallway movedinward. Childe felt as cold as if he had been dipped into an opening inpolar ice.
The pale-skinned, scarlet-dipped, black-haired head of Doloresdel Osorojohad appeared around the doorway.
The woman, who must have seen Dolores in the mirror, grayed. Hermouth dropped open; saliva and the spermy fluid dribbled out. Her eyesbecame huge. Her hands flew up--like birds again--to cover her breasts. Then shescreamed so loudly that Childe could hear her, and she whirled and ran towardsthe door. She had snatched up the bottle by the neck so swiftly that Childe was notaware of it until she was halfway across the room. She was terrified. No doubtabout that. But she was also courageous. She was attacking the cause of herterror.
Dolores smiled, and a white arm came around the door and pointedat the woman.
The woman stopped, the bottle raised above her head, and shequivered.
Then Childe saw that Dolores was not pointing at the woman. Shewas pointingpast her. At him.
At the mirror behind which he stood, rather. The woman whirledand looked at it and then, bewildered, looked around. Again, she whirled, and thistime she shouted something in an unidentifiable language at the woman. Thewoman smiled once more, withdrew her arm, and then her head. The door closed.
Shaking, the woman walked slowly to the door, slowly opened it, and slowlylooked through the doorway into the hall. If she saw anything, shedid not care to pursue it, because she closed the door. She emptied the bottlethen and returned to the dresser, where she pulled up a chair and sat down onit and then put her head on her arms on the table. After a while, the pinkishglow returnedto her skin. She sat up again. Her eyes were bright with tears, andher face seemed to have gotten about ten years older. She leaned close to themirror to look at it, grimaced, got up, and went through the other door, whichChilde presumed led to a bathroom or to a room which led to a bathroom.
Her reaction to Dolores certainly was not the baron's, who hadseemed blase. The sight of the supposed ghost had terrified her.
If Dolores were a hoax, one of which the woman would surely beaware, whyshould she react so?
Childe had a more-than-uneasy feeling that Dolores del Osorojowas not a woman hired to play ghost.
It was, however, possible that the woman was terrified for otherreasons.
He had no time to find out what. He used the flashlight in quickstabs to determine if there was an entrance to her room, but he could findnone. He went on then and came across another panel which opened to another one-waymirror. This showed him a small living room done in Spanish colonial style. Except forthe telephone on a table, it could have been a room in the houseshortly afterit was built. There was nobody in it.
The corridor turned past the room. Along the wall was a hingedpanel largeenough to give entrance to the other side. There was also a peepholebehind a small sliding panel. He put his eye to it but could see only adarkened room. At the periphery of his vision was a lightening of the darkness, as iflight wereleaking through a barely opened door or a keyhole. A voice was comingfrom somewhere far-off. It was in a strange language, and it seemed to becarrying ona monologue or a telephone conversation.
Beyond this room the corridor became two, the legs of a Y. Hewent down each for a short distance and found that two entrance panels existed onoppositewalls of one leg and an entrance panel and peephole on opposite wallsof the other. If, at another time, he could locate a triangular-shaped room, he would know where these passageways were.
He looked through the peephole but could see nothing.
He went back the passageway and up the other leg to the panel andopenedthis. His hand, thrust through the opening, felt a heavy cloth. Heslid throughcarefully so that he would not push the cloth. It could be a draperyheavyenough to keep light on the other side from shining through. Ifanybody were inthat room, he must not see the drapery move.
Squatting, his shoulder to the wall and squeezing his shouldersso that he would not disturb the cloth, he duck-walked until he had come to thejuncture oftwo walls. Here the edges of the draperies met. He turned and pulledthe edgesapart and looked through with one eye.
The room was dark. He rose and stepped through and turned hisflashlight on. The beam swept across a movie camera on a dolly and then stopped on aY-shapedtable.
He was in the room, or one much like it, in which Colben andBudler had spent their--presumably--last few hours.
There was a bed in one corner, a number of movie cameras, somedevices the use of which he did not know, and a large ashtray of some dark-greenmaterial. In the center of its roughly circular dish stood a long thin statue. It looked like a nude man in the process of turning into a wolf, or vice versa. The bodyup to the chest was human; from there on it was hairy and the armshad become legs and the face had wolf-like ears and was caught in metamorphosis. There were about thirty cigarette stubs in the dish. Some had lipstick marks. One had a streak of dried blood, or it looked like dried blood, around thefilter.
Childe turned on the lights and with his tiny Japanese cameratook twentyshots. He had what he needed now, and he should get out. But he didnot know whether or not Sybil was in this house.
And there might be other, even more impressive, evidence to getthe policehere.
He turned off the lights and crawled out of the panel into thepassageway. He had a choice of routes then and decided to take the right leg of the Y. This led to another hall--the horizontal bar of a T. He turned right againand came to a stairway. The treads were of a glassy substance; it would havebeen easy toslip on them if he had not been wearing sneakers. He walked down sixsteps, andthen his feet slid out from under him and he fell heavily on hisback.
He struck a smooth slab and shot downward as if on a chutey-chutewhich, ina sense, he was on. He put out his hands against the walls to brakehimself but the walls, which had not seemed vitreous, were. The flashlight showedhim a trapdoor opening at the bottom of the steps--these had straightenedout to fall against each other and form a smooth surface--and then he slidthrough the darkopening. He struck heavily but was unhurt. The trapdoor closed abovehim. The flashlight showed him the padded ceiling, walls, and floor of a roomseven feet high, six broad, ten wide. There were no apparent doors or windows.
He smelled nothing nor heard anything, but gas must have been letinto the room. He fell asleep before he knew what was happening.
CHAPTER 14
He did not know how long he had been there. When he awoke, hisflashlight, his wristwatch, his revolver, and his camera were missing. His headached, andhis mouth was as dry as if he were waking up after a three-day drunk. The gasmust have had a very relaxing effect, because he had wet his shortsand pants. Or else he had wet them when the steps had dropped out from under himand he had begun his slide. He had needed to piss before the trap caught him.
Five lights came on. Four were from floor lamps set in thecorners, and onewas from an iron wall-lamp shaped like a torch and set at forty-fivedegrees tothe wall.
He was not in the padded chamber. He was lying on a huge fourpostered bedwith scarlet sheets and bedspread and a scarlet black-edged canopy. The room was not one he had seen before. It was large; its black walls were hungwith scarlet yellow-trimmed drapes and two sets of crossed rapiers. The floor wasdark-glossybrown hardwood with a few crimson starfish-shaped thick-fibered rugs. There were some slender wrought-iron chairs with high skeletal backs and crimsoncushions on the seats and a tall dresser of dense-grained brown wood.