Twenty-five feet. That, he estimated, would take him past the basement, as far as the first floor.
The voices were still closer now, and Logan closed the door of the dumbwaiter, sealing himself in. Then, reaching upward, he managed to slither up through the trapdoor in the ceiling. Sitting cross-legged atop the dumbwaiter, injured knee and bullet wound protesting, he closed the trapdoor before any blood could drip onto the floor of the cart.
The voices faded.
He pulled gingerly on the thick rope. It was coarse and slippery from decades of ancient cooking. He examined his palms in disgust. There was no way he could shinny up twenty-five feet of this greasy line — especially with his injured leg.
Maybe there was another way. Placing the flashlight at his feet and angling it upward, he grasped the rope with both hands again, as high up as he could reach. Then he pulled with all his might.
From far above came a faint groaning as the pulley guide protested under the weight. And then — slowly, slowly — the dumbwaiter began to rise.
Pull; secure the rope into position as best he could; take a moment to prepare — and then pull again. He rose five feet, then ten as the dumbwaiter ascended the brick shaft, creaking and groaning quietly. Then he paused to rest. The muscles in his arms and back were twitching with the unaccustomed exertion, and his hands were already growing raw from the coarse rope.
He continued to pull until he could make out, another ten feet above him near the top of the shaft, a door where the food from the kitchen would have been removed from the cart and served to the household. When he finally pulled himself even with the door, Logan was able to loop the line over a hook on the ceiling of the dumbwaiter cart, cleating it in place. He relaxed his grip from the rope, almost gasping aloud in relief.
Quietly, he rose to a kneeling position and pushed on the door. There was a low rattle on the far side and he stopped immediately. Something was in the way. What it was, he couldn’t be sure — but he could not afford to let it tip over. He would have to try sliding it forward, bit by bit.
With exquisite care, he applied pressure to the base of the shaft’s upper door. The rattle from the far side continued, but he could sense from the resistance that it was being pushed out of the way. Several long moments of anxious effort and the little door was open wide enough for him to fit through it.
Beyond lay darkness. Ducking first his head, and then his shoulders, through the opening, he slipped out of the dumbwaiter shaft and rose gingerly to his feet. Feeling his way through the darkness, he pushed the dumbwaiter door closed, then replaced the object in front of it — his fingers told him it was a display table of some kind — back against the wall. And then, muffling his flashlight once again, he switched it on.
The space was familiar to him — he’d entered it once, years before, on the mistaken assumption that it had been a men’s bathroom. It was actually a small gallery across the main hall from the dining room, presently used by waiters and waitresses for storing linens. Logan wiped grease and grime from his hands. He guessed, based on his unpleasant climb, that when the mansion had been owned by Edward Delaveaux, this room had likely been the butler’s and maid’s pantry for receiving and arranging dishes sent up from the kitchen.
Logan slowly approached the door of the small room, opened it a crack, and peered out. Beyond a short side passage, and across the rich carpet of the main corridor, was the entrance to the dining room — and, a few yards beyond it, the sloping staircase that led up to the second floor.
He had to check on Kim. If he was being pursued, then it was entirely possible that she was under threat as well. He stepped out into the hall and began moving toward the staircase.
Almost immediately, he shrank back. One of the three men — the one with the tweed jacket — was standing several yards down the hallway. The man had his back to Logan, and he was speaking into a radio: clearly, the radios had better reception than cell phones within the thick walls of the Lux mansion.
Logan looked from the man to the staircase and back again. Even if he did get past, there was no telling if others were in wait for him upstairs. He would have to find another way to get to Kim.
He looked around in desperate uncertainty. Where to, now? Where…?
And then, even as he asked himself the question, his eye fell upon another door. It lay at the other end of the side passage, and in the indirect light its small panes of glass were unrelieved rectangles of black.
It was an emergency exit, leading outside.
Logan didn’t hesitate. Turning away from the main corridor, he made his way to the door; made sure it was not alarmed; opened it as quietly as he could manage — and then slipped out into the howling storm.
50
Even though he’d driven through the hurricane on his way back to Lux, the redoubled, elemental fury took him by surprise. The wind pressed him against the dressed stone of the mansion’s facade, ballooning his jacket up and away from his shoulders, threatening to pluck the contents from his pockets. Within seconds he was soaked to the skin.
Forcing himself back to the exit, he peered carefully around the doorjamb and through the little panes set into the door. The short corridor beyond was empty; no armed figure was rushing toward him. He had made his escape from the building without arousing notice.
He leaned back against the building. But now what?
He glanced down the gray sweep of lawn toward the ocean. The waves were beating against the rocky coast with a fury he had never before seen; spume and spindrift tumbled angrily upward to mix with the lashing curtains of rain, blending together so completely that it was impossible to tell where sea left off and rain began. The rain, driving straight into his eyes, stung badly and he turned away, shielding his face with his hands.
He glanced to the left. He could barely make out the vast bulk of the East Wing, standing like a Gibraltar against the fury, a few dim lights glowing on its three floors. He could make his way to the edge of the wing, then sneak around it to the parking lot, and…
And what? Might not his car be under surveillance, as well? He’d seen no sign of it upon his arrival — if he had, he’d have been more wary about meeting Laura Benedict in her basement office — but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. These men were pros, and they weren’t just here to send a message…not anymore.
Even if he managed to make it to his car, and get away from his place — what then? What about Kim? As he’d raced through the labyrinthine underground labs of gleaming steel, as he’d waded through the dim chambers and grottos of the ancient subbasement, he’d cursed himself for not thinking first about her safety. Instead of telling her to round up the transmitting devices for safekeeping, he should have ordered her to go someplace, anyplace, where she could hide.
Then again, he thought, Kim was a smart woman. She might have seen the strangers, put two and two together, gone to ground somewhere….
But this thought was immediately answered by another: Pamela Flood had been a smart woman, too….
He drove this from his mind as best he could. There was something else to consider: the Machine itself. If he simply ran away, there would be nothing to stop Laura Benedict and the team of Ironhand enforcers from dismantling and making off with the equipment, under cover of the storm. After all, Lux was all but deserted. True, she’d said she was still days away from completing the work she needed to finish miniaturizing the technology to make it suitable for transport…but after what had just transpired, that impediment wouldn’t stop her. She’d take whatever she could, now, and then disappear.