“Sure,” I said, nice and confident. I hoped it would, anyhow. “You’ll do okay. If you weren’t all right, Leon wouldn’t have kept you around all this time. He’d have drummed you out of the family.”
“Yes,” she said with a shy smile. “He would, wouldn’t he?”
I followed the silent servant up one flight and into a long hall, paneled in rich hardwoods, with the fittings starting at one end of the hall in polished antique brass and ending at the other in silver — the latter being Russian turn-of-the-century objects, lanterns made for gas operation and converted. Underfoot were Persian carpets; overhead was more paneling.
It was the walls — decked out the way they were, you couldn’t call them bulkheads — that really made the impression. Stuck in precisely fitted niches were a series of matched paintings that looked somehow familiar in style but not in subject matter: I looked at the brass plaques underneath the pictures — a set of depictions in a classically severe style of famous massacres and slaughters — and whistled. If Komaroff were to die intestate I’d have bet Spain would have mortgaged Morocco to buy them — and to build, a special Goya museum to house them. In between the paintings were tapestries equally priceless: one, not noticeably different from its neighbors, gave you what purported to be an eyewitness view of the Battle of Crecy. Another was the Battle of Agincourt, by a man who claimed to have watched it. And, true to the code Komaroff seemed to run by, when we passed a covert guard booth on the way, the man inside it looked out from the filigreed walls of a confessional booth from the days of Torquemada, four hundred years ago.
Komaroff’s man stopped me at the saloon and announced me through an antique speaking tube connected to the starboard door. He heard some reply I couldn’t make out; then he left me alone in the big room.
Here the decor was strictly business. No paintings. No wall hangings. Just weapons.
It seemed, as a matter of fact, to be a kind of museum of weapons — picking out not the various stages of a given gun, but the great breakthrough weapons that, over the course of history, changed warfare. In opposite corners were a Maxim gun and a Gatling, sitting majestically on the decking.
The walls were a beautifully arranged hodgepodge, until you started to get the pattern. Here was a fossilized antelope humerus, marked “Olduvai Gorge” and indexed according to the latest of Dr. Leakey’s datings. There beside it were a stone battle-ax; a Bronze Age Greek short-sword (if I could believe the legend, from the original Schliemann dig at Troy); an iron mace; a suit of armor; a crossbow; an English longbow; a Sharps rifle; a Colt’s Pacemaker...
The other side was more of the same, only specializing in elegant forms. Here were a pair of matched Toledo dueling swords; another pair of Heidelburg Schlaeger; a pair of flawless flintlock dueling pistols; a pair of sai, like the one I’d taken from the assassin in Hong Kong, and a pair of those efficient mock-Bowies Will Lockwood had wielded with such deadly efficiency against three men at a time. So that was the “butterfly knife” Basil Morse had warned me about. And for good reason, I decided.
“Mr. Archer...”
The soft voice behind me startled me out of my reverie. I turned and when I saw who had called my name I said to myself no, baby, no way. You are never going to convince me that this is Alexandra Komarova.
But she didn’t try. The girl in the golden chains said “This way, Mr. Archer.” She averted her eyes. Her head was held down in a slave-like attitude. And the more I thought about it, looking at her, the more I thought that was exactly what she had to be: a slave.
She was dressed in little golden chains, starting from a gold collar around her neck and working down. That collar was connected to tiny chains; these connected to the bound, manacled hands she held so pitiably before her; the manacles connected to the long chains that reached the hobbling bands around her slim ankles.
Other than the chains and manacles, she was totally naked.
As she turned to lead me inside the huge teak door, I could see her back was a mass of fresh scars from a recent whipping.
My mouth pursed to whistle softly, but it was so dry I couldn’t make a sound. I followed the strange girl with the strange, whipped-dog demeanor inside the room. Her soft soles made no sound on the teak flooring.
A voice said: “You may go now.” Not “Thank you, you may go now.” Just “You may go now.” You don’t thank chattels. Pets. Slaves.
I looked around.
I picked her out of a nest of silk cushions. She was, I decided, pretty enough. That much I had already made out from the two long-distance glimpses Td got of her in street clothes. Now she wore a transparent blouse and pants, her nipples gleaming through the gauze with the gold paint she’d put on them. Gold flashed from rings on her fingers and toes, from a jewel in her bellybutton and a diamond gleaming in one pierced nostril.
Her voice was languid, full of drugs. “Ah, Mr. Archer. Come over here and let me have a look at you...”
Chapter Twenty-One
The questions started out being about astrological lore, and at first I thought I had trouble coming, because they sounded like knowledgeable questions. Gradually, though, I came to the conclusion that whatever it was that she was on, opium, acid or whatever, it was calling the tune. She’d listen to the first two words or so of whatever answer I managed to think up, for tone, and then her mind would start wandering.
While I answered, I had a good, long look at her. The lady was handsome enough; if you’re rich enough you can always hire someone to keep the body in presentable shape if it had anything to start with, and she’d started out okay. The face, too, was pretty enough, in the way Mediterranean women are pretty — dark, eyes almost black, strong nose — but that face and that body were inhabited by something creepy and crawly out of some science fiction movie.
My mind was running fast. I knew my limitations. There are very few things I will not do for AXE. I’m still playing it by ear. But if it meant making love to this stoned-out sea monster... I was casting about madly for ideas. There was one possibility.
“Say,” I said, “I’m a little tense, uptight, you know. Would it be possible to come up with a little something to put in the coffee? Something nice and kicky? Or maybe a nice soothing downer?” I gave her my Harry Archer smile.
Her jeweled hand touched mine; it was cold. Wow, I thought, you sure don’t need any more of anything. “Certainly,” her blurred husky voice said, thick with downers already. “Here. Try a little of this.” And her other hand handed me a little vial. “Nice,” she said. “Very nice.” Her hand, with its gilt nails, lingered on mine a moment. I shuddered; she brought chills. Her deep voice whispered, “Laudanum.”
“Mmmmm,” I said. I kept her eyes on mine, smiling my fortune-teller smile, as I cracked the little vial and poured enough of the stuff into one cup to knock out an elephant Laudanum? Just what the doctor ordered. I reached down and picked up the other cup — hers — and raised it to my lips, keeping her gaze locked. I made a nice appreciative face... and swallowed.
For God’s sake, I thought. She’s already doped her own coffee. The switch hadn’t done me a damn bit of good. I put the coffee down with a faltering hand. The room was swimming. “Hey,” I said, “that’s strong stuff.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” she said. Her face went out of focus. The lights near the ceiling were going round and round. “Here, darling, why don’t you get a little more comfortable.” She reached over and untied my tie.