Not Less Than Gods (20 page)

“Might we go sightseeing afterward?” Bell-Fairfax inquired casually.

“If you like,” said Ludbridge, immersed once more in the report.

“Thank you, sir.” Bell-Fairfax smiled, and Pengrove winked broadly at Hobson and turned both thumbs up.

They returned at a late hour, quite pleased with themselves, and met Mr. Polemis coming down the stairs from their room. He looked grave, but bowed slightly to them as they passed.

Ludbridge was sitting on his bed fully clothed, smoking a cigar. He glanced up at them as they entered.

“All accounted for, I see. No duels fought, eh?”

“No, sir,” said Bell-Fairfax.

“Which is not to say we did not strive mightily,” said Pengrove, striking an objectionable pose. Hobson, grinning, flung himself down on his bed.

Ludbridge stubbed out his cigar in a saucer. “Full marks on the report, Hobson. Certain persons are profoundly grateful for the timely warning. Bell-Fairfax, we’ll be obliged to go for a walk tomorrow evening. I’d turn in and get a decent night’s sleep, were I you.”

It was past nine the next evening when they set out, walking once again along the Cadde-i Kebir. They stopped in briefly at a bar and had a brandy each. In contrast to the Corsican across the way, the publican who ran this place barely noticed them, so quiet they were and seated so far back in the shadows. They had dressed in dark nondescript clothing and Bell-Fairfax carried Ludbridge’s satchel, which was if anything heavier than it had been when they had gone out in the boat.

Braced, they walked on again. Bell-Fairfax looked nervously at the
policeman standing sentry at the corner, for the street had been deserted on the previous occasion. Ludbridge, however, nodded to the man in silence, and received a silent nod in reply.

The side street was empty of any other waking soul. When they reached the door next to the blue one, Ludbridge put out his hand for the satchel. Opening it, he drew out the goggles and handed one pair to Bell-Fairfax. With an uneasy glance up the street at the policeman, who seemed to be paying them no attention, Bell-Fairfax donned the goggles. Ludbridge took out his case of lock picks and a moment later they were inside.

The empty room to the right now seemed lit with green phosphorescence, with red blobs along the baseboard where bold rats watched the intruders. Ludbridge pointed up the stairs and held his finger before his lips.

They climbed slowly, carefully, to the landing, and paused there to briefly inspect the planted transmitter. It was still in place. Ludbridge pointed upward again. They climbed on, up to the second landing, and rats scrambled out of their way like running coals. Walk as cautiously as they might, they could not walk in perfect silence; the upper steps groaned and creaked under their combined weight. “Damn,” whispered Ludbridge.

Onward, upward, and when they gained the third landing Ludbridge looked around. He spotted the ladder that led to a trap door in the ceiling.

“Out this way, I expect.” He gave an experimental tug on one of the rungs and then climbed to the trap door. After a moment’s brief inspection, he held out his hand.

“Oil, please.”

Bell-Fairfax rummaged in the satchel and brought out the penetrating oil. Ludbridge applied it to the trap’s hinges and, handing the vial back, pushed upward. Rather than opening smoothly, the whole affair tore loose from its hinges and broke into three or four rusted fragments, which Ludbridge pushed out of the way as well as he was able. Above him, stars glowed in a green sky, and cold air flowed down against his
face, astonishingly fresh and sweet after the acrid musk of the abandoned house.

He pulled himself up and through, and reached down for the satchel. Bell-Fairfax passed it up and followed him up the ladder, inhaling in a long gasp when he emerged into the night. Ludbridge got cautiously to his feet. He walked to the low edge of wall that marked where the roof of the house next door began. Stepping over, he surveyed the premises. No trap door here; only a chimney.

As quietly as he might, he went to it and peered down into its black depths, which appeared as a green well with a flare of scarlet far down. A gust of warm air rose upward from it. The chimney was not a comfortingly solid brick one in the English fashion, but a circular thing of stuccoed stone, too narrow for a man of his girth; he doubted whether even Bell-Fairfax would fit.

Sighing, Ludbridge turned and lowered himself to lie flat, in order to peer over the edge of the roof at the rear wall of the house. Far below was the green gloom of an alley, fortunately deserted. There were three sets of windows going down the wall, two to a floor, and all of them shuttered.

Ludbridge sat up, nodding to himself. He turned to Bell-Fairfax, who was just sitting down beside him.

“Bit awkward, but it can be managed. How’s your head for heights?” he whispered.

“They don’t frighten me, sir.”

“Good. We’ll go down and in. Have to see how the shutters fasten. Where’s the bag?”

Bell-Fairfax offered it. Ludbridge withdrew a coil of mountaineering rope and, rising and walking to the chimney, fastened the rope around its base. He gave it a good tug to test it; then backed away a few paces. “Watch,” he told Bell-Fairfax, and fastened the other end of the rope around himself. “Like this.” Bell-Fairfax nodded.

Ludbridge rummaged in the satchel until he found what he wanted. It resembled a pistol with a leather strap-loop at one end. He slid the loop around his wrist and, taking hold of the rope, sat down on the
roof’s edge. “You’ll lower the satchel after me. Then you’ll come down yourself.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ludbridge turned and lowered himself, dangling a moment in the air before letting himself down as far as the nearest window. He braced his feet against the windowsill. Bell-Fairfax peered over the edge to watch.

Ludbridge rotated the object on the leather strap into his hand, and turned a dial on its side. Then he pressed the part corresponding to a barrel along the inner frame of the shutter, and drew it back and forth slowly. He heard the faint rattle of a catch. A moment’s experimentation with the device—it was an old field tool called a Variable Magnet—and Ludbridge worked out where the catch must be. Turning the knob to increase the magnetic pull, he heard the
click
that meant the magnet had taken firm hold of the catch through the wood of the frame. Ludbridge worked it upward and suddenly the right-hand shutter swung open an inch.

Stepping from side to side, Ludbridge opened the shutters. There was no glass beyond them; instead Ludbridge saw a wooden lattice. A cursory examination revealed that it was only held in place with four glazier’s pins. He turned the dial once more, increasing the magnet’s pull to the maximum setting, and easily drew the four pins from the old wood. Before the lattice could go crashing inward he caught it on a crooked finger. Lowering it, he peered inside and saw an apparently empty room.

The next bit was tricky, for Ludbridge had to crouch on the windowsill as he leaned inward and set the lattice on the floor. Then he eased himself in over the sill and set the Variable Magnet on the floor beside the lattice. He was sweating as he straightened up and untied the rope.
I’m getting past this
, he thought to himself, as he tossed the end of the rope out the window.
I hope the boy’s a quick study.

The rope was swiftly drawn up and a moment later lowered again, with the satchel tied to its end. Ludbridge caught it, untied it and sent the rope back up. Bell-Fairfax descended awkwardly. The frame of the
window creaked with his weight. Ludbridge, meanwhile, had pulled a Collier’s revolver from the satchel.

“Get the oil again,” he whispered. Bell-Fairfax fetched it from the satchel. Ludbridge gestured at the door. Bell-Fairfax oiled the hinges and lock, and a moment later stood to the side and turned the knob. The door opened in near silence. Ludbridge, holding the gun to his shoulder, stepped through quickly.

He stood on an empty landing. Before him, a staircase descended. No rats here, no smell of decay; he caught the scent of food recently prepared. Cigarette smoke, too. Leaning forward, Ludbridge peered over the railing but saw no lights.

With infinite slowness they went down the stairs. Halfway down, one of the treads creaked under their weight, and they froze and waited motionless for what seemed an hour before going on. They reached the next landing at last, where a door stood open.

Weapon ready, Ludbridge sprang into the room.

He muttered an oath. There was a narrow bed against the wall, a chair, a washstand. The bed was empty, the blanket thrown back to reveal the crimson glow of residual warmth. On the floor were a saucer, in which a cigarette smoldered still, a white-hot point of light sending up a lazy trail of coiling smoke, and the faint red thermal track of naked footprints leaving the room, unnoticed until now. Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax stared at them in horror a moment, before following them out and across the landing. The prints led down the stairs to the next landing, glowing more brightly red in the malachite darkness as they progressed.

“He must have heard us,” whispered Bell-Fairfax. Ludbridge motioned for him to be silent, and slipped past him and down the stairs, following the trail as quickly as he might. Bell-Fairfax followed close behind. Brighter, brighter, the footprints were red as spectral blood now, descending and still descending.

The tracks led them to the ground floor. Here was the front door, firmly bolted; Ludbridge breathed a sigh of relief to note the tracks did not lead to the door. Nor did they lead to the dark kitchen, where a pan
of coals still fluttered with waves of white heat across its scarlet surface. They led into a room to the right, where there was a divan, chairs, a table with papers spread out on it . . . all these things Ludbridge glimpsed before registering that the tracks led to a small door at the rear of the room. He grinned. Hiding in a closet?

He went across to the door. “Get ready to drag the beggar out,” he murmured to Bell-Fairfax, before pulling the door open. Without benefit of oil the door opened soundlessly, revealing . . . yet another flight of dark steps descending, marked by brilliant red footprints.
At least he’s trapped in the cellar
, thought Ludbridge, and angled around to look over the stair-rail.

He saw a bloodred figure on the floor, crouched, working intently at the catches of a trap door. It was the Greek, Arvanitis.

Ludbridge jumped the rail, knocking Arvanitis to one side as he did so. Arvanitis sprang at him. He saw a blade scything up toward his face and dodged, but it grazed his scalp and the fist behind it struck his temple.

The green and scarlet world vanished for a moment, in blinding stars that flashed before Ludbridge’s eyes. He dropped the revolver and grabbed his opponent’s wrists, as thunder seemed to echo from the cellar walls. They grappled there a moment, straining, grunting, before Arvanitis was abruptly jerked away from him and hauled backward.

Bell-Fairfax had grabbed Arvanitis from behind and was simply holding him up. The man shouted and gnashed his teeth, attempting to slash backward with his knife. “Oh, hush, can’t you?” said Ludbridge wearily, and struck the blade from his hand.

“Shoot him!”

“Rather hard to do that just now without hitting you too, and I’d have the devil of a time explaining,” said Ludbridge. He picked up the revolver, reversed it in his hand and hit Arvanitis hard with the butt. Arvanitis stopped screaming and sagged, limp. “At last.” Ludbridge stepped back and looked around for the knife. He found it. “Let’s take him back to his bed.”

Bell-Fairfax backed up the stairs, dragging the unconscious body
of the Greek. Ludbridge trudged after them, though he was obliged to stop, panting for breath, at the first landing. He felt the trickle of blood down the side of his face, as the scalp wound bled.

They got to the bedroom at last. “Put him in his bed and hold him down,” said Ludbridge, for Arvanitis had begun to moan and struggle feebly. Bell-Fairfax obeyed. Ludbridge raised the barrel of the revolver and forced the man’s mouth open with it. As Arvanitis opened startled eyes, Ludbridge shot him.

“And that’s done, thank God,” said Ludbridge, in a toneless voice, as Arvanitis trembled and was still. “Put the blanket back over him.”

Bell-Fairfax obeyed without a word. Ludbridge took a dead hand and placed it on Arvanitis’s chest, and pressed the revolver into it. He dropped the knife on the floor beside the saucer. They walked out of the room and Ludbridge sat down on the staircase, sagging forward as he held his hand to the gash on his scalp. “Go up and look in the satchel,” he told Bell-Fairfax. “There’s a medical kit in a compartment in the side. Tin box painted white. Bring it down, won’t you, and I can clean myself up.”

“Yes, sir.” Bell-Fairfax fled up the stairs. When he brought back the kit he attempted to open it himself, but Ludbridge took it away from him.

“No. You go down to the front room and collect all the papers from that table. Fold them up and bring them back.”

By the time Bell-Fairfax returned with the papers, Ludbridge was squinting in pain from the styptic solution he had dabbed on his scalp, but his head was clearer. Having cleaned himself up and wadded the bloody flannels into his pocket, he got to his feet once more.

“Let’s get out,” he said.

At the window he packed the papers in the bag, with the medical kit and the Variable Magnet, less the pushpins. “Now,” he said, “we’re going to do something tricky. Going to leave his friends a sealed house. I’m going up to the roof. You’ll pass the bag up to me. Then you’ll secure yourself on the rope and climb out, and here’s the nasty fiddly bit: you’ll put that latticework back in place and shove the pushpins back in on the inside,
from the outside
.” He gave them to Bell-Fairfax. “Think you can do it?”

Bell-Fairfax’s goggles made it hard to read his expression, but Ludbridge thought he went pale. However, “Yes, sir,” was all he said.

Once up on the roof with the satchel, Ludbridge stretched out and stared up at the stars. He ran over the events of the last hour in his mind, making notes for the inevitable report, and had not got as far as he had thought he might before Bell-Fairfax hauled himself over the edge of the roof.