The Simeon Chamber (29 page)

“What are you talking about?”

Thirty seconds later Johnson finally understood why Jennifer Davies and the other lawyer were so intent in their quest for the Drake journal.

And now that he knew the secret he was equally determined to have it.

“I know it’s not here in the castle. Hearst never received it, did he?” asked Johnson. “If he had, it would have been reported in the papers.

That means you have it, or you know who does.”

“No. I don’t have it.”

“But you know where it is, don’t you?”

Symington was trapped, caught like a board in a vise between the lawyer in the basement and now this.

For an instant he wondered why after all the years the book had become so important that it should threaten his security twice in the same day.

Then, as if to satisfy the self-fulfilling prophecy of his interrogator, he answered, “Yes, I know who has it.” It would at least buy him the time he needed to empty the chamber and disappear.

“Well?”

“A lawyer by the name of Samuel Bogardus.

I delivered it to him earlier today.”

With Symington’s words Johnson deftly fingered the small button on the handle of his ornate cane.

The heavyset woman sauntered through the pantry door in pink slacks and a dark sweater. She moved with some grace for her size, holding a pair of dark glasses in one hand and clutching her purse in the other. The rooms were immense and institutional, more suited to a large hotel or restaurant than a private home. But Hearst liked to entertain and he did so in a grand style, as was evidenced by the mammoth kitchen that serviced La Casa Grande. 1

She moved around the stainless steel table toward the appliances on the opposite wall, her gaze caught by a single item. The antiquated Frigidaire refrigerator with its large wood-paneled door and top-mounted motor was identical to the one her mother had had when she was a child, only bigger. The shape of the door, the texture of the wood, the glossy enamel paint and antique handle, each transported her to childhood memories, and for a moment she mused as if the icebox itself would contain her mother’s pecan pie.

The illusion was broken when the woman saw the thin red stream running down the panel below the main door. It pooled in a small puddle on the floor in front of the refrigerator.

She reached out and tentatively tugged on the handle of the refrigerator door. To her surprise the old bolt slid smoothly from its casing in the lock. Then, without warning, as if she’d unleashed some grisly genie from behind the sealed door, it shot open, pushing her against the table in the center of the room. The body of a man bathed in blood tumbled from the refrigerator and sprawled onto the floor at her feet. His eyes were open, his legs thrashing. Terror filled every crease of the woman’s face. Her heart pounded like a bass drum, her eyes wide with fright, her jaw hanging open and quivering as if afflicted by palsy. The woman stammered, trying to speak, then struggling to fill her lungs with air she emitted a mind-piercing scream.

Members of the tour party who’d begun to leave the pantry and enter the kitchen stood motionless, frozen in place by the hysteria of the woman who now backed slowly away from the refrigerator, both hands pressed tightly against her mouth and her gaze fixed on the floor. Cautiously, in halting steps, the other tourists moved toward the kitchen and around the array of appliances and tables to see what had happened.

With the first scream Sam and Jennifer rushed headlong toward the stairs that led up to the kitchen. Sam bolted up the steps two at a time and threw open the door. As he entered the kitchen he was confronted with the faces of a dozen dazed tourists, their eyes fixed on the floor.

Bogardus moved around the stainless steel table and suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. His 363

breathing stopped for an instant as he stared down into the twisted face of Arthur Symington.

Blood streamed from a wound in the old man’s abdomen and pulsated onto the floor in spasmodic surges, while a trickle ran from the corner of his mouth. Bogardus quickly pulled off his jacket and moved next to the body, placing the coat over the abdominal wound and applying pressure.

The guide looked over. “Are you a doctor?” she asked.

“No.”

“I’m gonna call for an ambulance. Can you stay with him?”

Sam nodded without looking at the woman.

“I won’t be long.” The guide ran from the kitchen.

Jennifer moved around the table and for the first time saw Symington lying in the pool of blood. She squelched a slight scream with both hands and turned away.

There was a buzz of voices from the gaggle of tourists who were now chattering among themselves. An older woman moved in to console the heavyset lady in the pink pants. Several of the women teamed up and led her from the kitchen back toward the pantry.

Sam knew that the ambulance was a futile gesture. Its intended cargo would be cold before it arrived. Arthur Symington was dying. His eyes were open wide, staring directly at Sam, and his lips quivered. The complexion of his face had begun to drain as the blood in his body coursed toward the wound in his abdomen. Between hisses of agony Symington tried to speak.

There was nothing he could do for the old man.

Sam leaned over the body and placed his lips against Symington’s ear as if to calm him.

“Where’s the journal?” Sam spoke under his breath.

Symington’s chest rose. “The chamber.”

“What chamber? Where is it?” Bogardus carried on the conversation at close quarters, against the side of Symington’s head.

“The Simeon chamber.”

Sam pressed his head against the old man’s ear again and whispered, then placed his own ear against Symington’s lips. As the breath carrying his words was expelled, the prostrate body went limp.

His legs ceased their aimless movement. 365

Bogardus raised his head and looked down into the vacant trance of death fixed in the eyes of Arthur Symington. Sam slowly stood and looked at the small group of tourists. Their chatter had stopped, hushed by the obvious stillness of death that lay before them on the floor.

He rose and moved to Jennifer, who’d slowly backed out of the kitchen in an unconscious retreat from the lifeless form on the floor. She now stood near the doorway to the pantry. He gripped her shoulder to steady her and whispered into her ear. “Let’s get the hell out of here before the police arrive.”

The old lady peered through the rotting and bleached planks of the wooden fence. She had returned to the garden after putting two pies in the oven just in time to see the white sedan roll up the driveway and park in front of Arthur Symington’s house.

“Like a damn freeway today,” she muttered under her breath. An elegantly dressed man wearing an expensive overcoat exited from the driver’s side of the car. He was carrying a long metal object that seemed incongruous until he gripped it by the handle and dropped the tip to the ground. It was a walking cane. The man walked up the path to the front door of the house and paused. He did not knock on the door but instead pulled a pair of dark gloves from the pocket of his tapered suit coat. He made a casual turn, taking in the sights in all directions, and stood with his back to the door of the house as he tugged the tight-fitting gloves onto each hand. The old lady was about to rise and offer assistance when the man lifted the handle of the cane from his forearm where it hung and pressed something along the side of the handle. There was a sharp click and a slender metal blade sprung from the tip of the cane. It was long and stiletto-like, with a needle-sharp point.

The woman froze in place and pressed one eye closer to the crack in the fence. The man now had his back to her and was holding the cane near the tip with both hands, levering it back and forth in the jamb of the door. She could hear the splinter of wood. Suddenly the door opened. The man paused for a second and turned, looking over his shoulder as if to see if anyone was watching. The woman moved slowly to one side of the opening in the fence to ensure her concealment. She waited 367

several seconds. When she looked back the man was gone and the door was again closed.

The old lady moved in a half-crouch away from the fence and toward the path leading to her house thirty yards away. She was puzzled. The man did not look like a burglar. He was too well dressed. But there was no doubt that he had broken into the house. It was a matter for the sheriff.

Inside Arthur Symington’s house George Johnson moved quickly to a back room. It was cluttered with papers and books, the model of a scholar’s warren. An ancient rolltop desk stood against one wall, the entire writing surface covered with open books, scraps of paper and clippings from magazines and newspapers. Many of the books were oversized, containing glossy lithographs of paintings and tapestries. Against the opposite wall the legs of a flimsy card table bent under the weight of more volumes and loose papers.

He sweat profusely under the long coat, but it was necessary to cover the blood that stained a portion of his suit jacket. It was a long shot. But he more than anyone knew that Arthur Symington had a reputation for deceit. It was something in the old man’s eyes as the blade penetrated that told George Johnson that Symington’s final words had been a lie.

He quickly rifled through the books, throwing them onto the floor as he finished examining each.

He cleared the table, sweeping the last scrap of paper to the floor with his hand, and turned his attention to the desk. He pulled out the drawers one by one, dumping the contents of each into a pile on the table and quickly pawing through the items. In disgust he ran his arm through the last pile and sent most of the items on the table careening to the floor. There was no sign of the journal in Symington’s study.

For an instant his eyes fixed on a large black-and-white framed photograph hanging askew on the wall over the desk. Much younger and with dark hair, Arthur Symington was dressed in a khaki shirt and pants, kneeling on the ground. He cradled a furry creature against his chest.

It was an unusual outfit and an uncharacteristic pose for Hearst’s pretentious art consultant.

Behind the figure in the picture was an ancient wheelbarrow with steel-rim wheels and a Ford Model-A flatbed truck loaded with 369

kegs of nails and other construction materials.

Off to the side were forms of freshly poured concrete with steel reinforcing bars protruding from the gray stew. The tail of the spider monkey nestled against Symington’s chest, wrapped serpentlike around the man’s arm.

Johnson turned and surveyed the room one last time. Perhaps the lawyer had the journal after all, or if he didn’t, he knew where it was.

He had just turned off the dusty dirt road leading from Arthur Symington’s and had gone about a quarter of a mile down the country road when George Johnson passed a sheriff’s patrol car traveling at high speed in the opposite direction, with its overhead lightbar flashing amber, red and blue. The patrol car used no siren. The man watched cautiously in his rearview mirror as the sheriff’s vehicle disappeared in the distance behind him.

By six in the evening Nick was able to relax at last. He had caught up with Sam and Jennifer at the inn and to his surprise Bogardus was not angry to see him. In fact the lawyer welcomed him with open arms, asking why he had not brought Carns along. It seemed Sam needed volunteers for some planned-but-z-yet-unstated venture, and Nick began to have second thoughts about his trip. Without pausing to ask questions he told Bogardus that Carns was in jail. A quick phone call to a friend at the city lock-up and Sam discovered that Jake Carns had been released on his own recognizance at noon that day.

They had dinner, Nick polishing off a healthy cut of prime rib. He nibbled on the last piece of French bread as Sam ate and Jennifer picked around the edges of her plate.

She had no appetite after the events of the day.

The twisted face of Arthur Symington, his bloodied body sprawled on the floor of the castle, was etched in her mind. It would be a long time, if ever, before she would forget it.

“I don’t know, Sam. I’m beginning to think Jennifer’s right. Maybe we should just turn the whole thing over to Fletcher and let the cops take care of it.”

Nick waited for her echo of support, but it never came. 1

“The two of you will have to decide what to do.” Her tone was glacial. It matched the ice in her eyes. Without explanation she had detached herself from the events of the last twenty-four hours.

“Excuse me.” She rose from the table and headed for the ladies room.

“What happened between the two of you?” Nick looked over at Sam.

“It’s just a case of nerves, I think.

She’ll be all right in the morning.”

“After seeing Symington get skewered like a roast on a spit, I guess I can understand it,” said Nick. “But maybe she was right. Maybe this is a matter for the police.”

Bogardus ignored the suggestion. Nick asked the waiter for a menu to review the dessert selection.

Sam couldn’t help but notice how Nick’s proposal for police intervention had suddenly lost its appeal for Jennifer. Two days before she had advocated the same thing. Why all of a sudden had she changed her mind? What was she up to?

He shelved his concerns for the moment and took the opportunity to talk in private with Nick.

“There’s something you two don’t know,” said Sam. “Before he died Symington told me where to find the journal.”

A manufacturer of rubber masks could have patented the expression on Jorgensen’s face.

His fork was frozen in space halfway from the plate to his mouth. He dropped it back into the dish.

“From Jennifer’s description I thought you were playing good samaritan down there on the floor, sacrificing your jacket to save the old man,”

said Nick.

“I’m afraid I was not entirely altruistic.”

“Well, I’m waiting. Where is it—the journal?”

“It’s going to require another trip to the castle.”

“It’s up there?”

“That’s what the old man said before he died. And I’m going to need help to get it.” 11