The driver took each step at the same dense pace with which he had ascended. When I reached the landing outside the Mantakis's bedroom door, I heard Mrs. Mantakis gibbering on and on about something, and the very sound of her voice drained the energy out of me. I leaned, exhausted, against the wall for a moment and closed my eyes.
"Your honor," said the driver.
I instantly awoke and somehow we had gotten outside the hotel. The moon was bright, and I was startled that the weather had turned warm and the snow seemed to have all melted.
"But how could this be?" I asked.
"The Master is waiting," he said, holding open the door of the coach.
I nodded once and got in.
As we drove down the main street of town, I wondered where he could be taking me. I had a million questions, but soon I realized that the whole episode must be the result of the beauty, working its magic on me. "It's not real," I said to myself. When we passed the church and headed across the field to the boundary of the wilderness, I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I hoped that if I could fall asleep and wake up, I would be back in my room at the Hotel de Skree, or better yet, back in the Well-Built City.
I must have fallen asleep, because I was awakened by the jolt of the carriage coming to an abrupt stop. "Persistent hallucination," I whispered. Looking out the window was like looking into a pool of ink. I could not make out the merest glimmer of light. Suddenly, the door of the coach swung open and there was the driver, holding a lit torch in his hand. The flame from it blew and sputtered in the warm wind, and the way it lit his inadequate face made him appear now more sinister than stupid.
"Where in Harrow's hindquarters are we, my good man?" I asked, stepping out into the night. I slid my left hand into the pocket of my overcoat and put my fingers around the derringer. My right hand followed suit with the opposite pocket and found the handle of my scalpel.
"The entrance to the mines of Mount Gronus," he responded. "Follow me, your honor."
We walked a few paces up a dirt path to the timber-lined opening of the main shaft. "Are you quite certain the Master is here?" I asked.
He said nothing but plunged into the deeper darkness and forged unhurriedly ahead. I scrabbled to keep up with him, the whole time my mind turning over the possible questions the Master would ask me. "No matter how bad it gets," I told myself, "if you know what is good for you, you won't mention Aria."
We walked for a long time through pitch black. It is true, he had the torch, but what could it light? For every few yards of night it burned away, there were oceans more that would flood in. This darkness everywhere had me constantly on the verge of screaming. I have no idea how I was able to continue, but continue I did. We seemed to be traveling down to the heart of nothing when all of a sudden, we turned to the right and stepped into a small cavern that was lit as brightly as day by some luminescent source I could not detect. Sitting in a high-backed chair situated in front of a garden of waist-high stalagmites, legs demurely crossed, smoking a long thin cigarette, was Drachton Below. Curled up at his feet with its back to me was a very large doglike creature covered with long silver hair.
"Cley, good to see you," he said and blew a stem-thin trail of smoke from his lips. He wore burgundy silk pants and a lime green jacket. The pale skin of his hairless chest almost reflected the brilliant light that was everywhere.
"Master," I said, bowing slightly.
"And how is the investigation going?" he asked, inspecting the back of his right hand.
"Splendidly," I said.
"Really ..." he replied.
"But are you real?" I asked. "I recently took the beauty, and I am in a jillywix as to the corporeality of this meeting."
"What do you mean by real?" he said and laughed.
"Are you here?"
"Not only am I here, but, look, I've brought along an old friend of yours." With this, he nudged the creature lying at his feet with the sole of his sandal. "Up," he commanded. It growled slightly, kicked its back legs spasmodically once, and then began to rise. I was astonished when it did not come to rest on four legs, but continued till it was standing on two like a dog convinced it is human.
"Wait . . ." I said, because something about it began to appear familiar to me. Then it turned and I saw the lupine face of Greta Sykes, the Latrobian werewolf. "Not this," I said, taking in her form. She was larger than when I had first tracked her down, and there were two rows of metal bolts that pierced both scalp and skull at the crown of her head. Her incisors and claws still appeared as sharp, but now beneath the thick coat I could detect the human breasts of a young woman. Trapped in her eyes was a look of great suffering and sorrow.
"Your little werewolf. I've done some work on her, messed around with the brain and added some new pain centers. She doesn't change into a little girl anymore; now she is an effective agent."
"Your genius astounds me," I stammered.
"Down," he told her, and she lowered herself to the floor, curling up at his feet once again. "Cley, your genius had better astound me at the completion of this case. I want that white fruit."
"I am about to enact the Twelfth Maneuver," I said.
He laughed at me. "Whatever," he said, waving his hand. "If you fail, I will have Miss Sykes here perform the Last Maneuver on you and the rest of that tedious town."
"As you wish, Master," I said.
"And what is this I hear about a certain young lady who is serving as your assistant?"
"Just a secretary, sir. There are a lot of bodies to read down there. I need someone to help me keep track."
"You're a sly one, Cley," he said. "I don't care what you do with her. I want the fruit. The Weil-Built City needs me to live forever."
"But of course," I said.
"Now," he said, turning his profile to me and placing the much-diminished cigarette in his mouth, "take that surrogate penis out of your coat pocket and let's see some of the old scientific exactitude."
"Am I to shoot?" I asked.
"No, you are to stand there till the end of time. I'm not giving medals for stupid questions this week. You'd better get to it," he said speaking out of the smiling side of his mouth.
I pulled out the gun and raised my arm to aim. The derringer swerved and dipped at the behest of the beauty, my fear, and the increasingly pungent odor of Greta Sykes. "What if I were to miss," I thought as I closed one eye for clearer vision. That thought exploded in my mind a moment before the gun went off, its report ricocheting off the blue walls of the cavern.
I came awake suddenly, sitting straight up. Across the room from me there was a neat hole in the center of Arden's mirror and a sleet storm of shattered glass on the floor in front of it. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. The bright day outside my window revealed an end to the snowstorm. I threw the derringer on the floor and took out a cigarette. There was the sound of rustling a floor below, and then I heard Mantakis hurrying up the stairs. His pounding at the door thickened my headache and spiked my eyes.
"Your honor," he called, "did I hear a gun go off?"
"A little experiment, Mantakis," I said.
"An experiment?" he asked.
'To see if you were awake," I said.
"I am," he said.
"What is the time?"
"Your honor, it is nine-fifty."
"Draw me a bath and bring me a steaming bowl of that excrement that passes for sustenance here."
"The wife has made a cremat goulash that is a testament to her abilities," he said.