Chapter 38

As Erika disengaged the five steel lock bolts from the second vaultlike door, she wondered if any of the first four Erikas had discovered this secret passageway. She liked to think that if they had found it, they had not done so on their first day in the mansion.

Although she had tripped the hidden switch in the library by accident, she had begun to construe her discovery as the consequence of a lively and admirable curiosity, per Mr. Samuel Johnson, quoted previously. She wished to believe that hers was a livelier and more admirable curiosity than that of any of her predecessors.

She blushed at this immodest desire, but she felt it anyway. She so wanted to be a good wife, and not fail as they had done.

If another Erika had found the passageway, she might not have been bold enough to enter it. Or if she had entered it, she might have hesitated to open even the first of the two steel doors, let alone the second.

Erika Five felt adventurous, like Nancy Drew or — even better — like Nora Charles, the wife of Nick Charles, the detective in Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, another book to which she could cleverly refer without risking her life by reading it.

Having drawn the last of the five bolts, she hesitated, savoring her suspense and excitement.

Beyond doubt, whatever lay on the farther side of this portal was of tremendous importance to Victor, perhaps of such significance that it would explain him in complete detail and reveal the truest nature of his heart. In the next hour or two, she might learn more about her brilliant but enigmatic husband than in a year of living with him.

She hoped to find a journal of his most tender secrets, his hopes, his considered observations on life and love. In truth, it was unrealistic to suppose that two steel doors and an electrocution tunnel had been installed merely to ensure that his diary could be kept somewhere more secure than a nightstand drawer.

Nevertheless, she wished intensely that she would discover just such a handwritten, heartfelt account of his life, so she could know him, know him to the core, the better to serve him. She was a little surprised — but pleasantly so — to find that she seemed to be such a romantic.

The fact that the dead bolts were on the outside of these doors had not been lost on her. She made the obvious inference: that the intent had been to imprison something.

Erika was not fearless, but neither could anyone fairly call her a coward. Like all of the New Race, she possessed great strength, agility, cunning, and a fierce animal confidence in her physical prowess.

Anyway, she lived every minute by the sufferance of her maker. If ever she were to hear, spoken in Victor’s voice, the order to terminate herself, she would unhesitatingly obey, as she had been programmed.

William, the butler, had received such instructions on the phone and, even in his distracted condition, had done as ordered. Just as he could turn off pain — as could they all in a time of crisis — so could he shut down all autonomic nerve functions when thus commanded. In an instant, William had stopped his own heartbeat and respiration, and died.

This was not a trick he could have used to commit suicide. Only the word-perfect ritual instruction, delivered in his master’s voice, could pull that trigger.

When your existence depended entirely on such sufferance, when your life hung by a gossamer filament that could be cut by the simple scissors of a few sharp words, you couldn’t work up much dread about what might be contained behind two bolted steel doors.

Erika opened the second door, and lamps brightened automatically in the space beyond. She crossed the threshold and found herself in a cozy Victorian drawing room.

Windowless, the twenty-foot-square space had a polished mahogany floor, an antique Persian carpet, William Morris wallpaper, and a coffered mahogany ceiling. The ebonized-walnut fireplace featured William de Morgan tiles around the firebox.

Bracketed by a pair of lamps in fringed shades of Shantung silk, an overstuffed chesterfield with decorative pillows in Japan-themed fabrics offered Victor a place to lie down if he wished, not to nap (she imagined) but to relax and to let his brilliant mind spin out new schemes unique to his genius.

In a wingback chair with footstool, he could contemplate while upright, if he chose, under a floor lamp with a beaded shade.

Sherlock Holmes would have been at home in such a room, or H.G. Wells, or G.K. Chesterton.

The focal point, from either the plump sofa or the chair, was an immense glass case: nine feet long, five feet wide, and more than three feet deep.

As much as possible, this object had been crafted to complement the Victorian decor. It stood upon a series of bronze ball-in-claw feet. The six panes of glass were beveled at the edges to charm the light, and were held in an ornate ormolu frame of beautifully chased bronze. It appeared to be a giant jewel box.

A semiopaque reddish-gold substance filled the case, and defied the eye to define it. One moment this material seemed to be a liquid through which circulated subtle currents; yet just a moment later it seemed instead to be a dense vapor, perhaps a gas, lazily billowing along the glass.

Mysterious, this object drew Erika just as the lustrous eyes of Dracula drew Mina Harker toward her potential doom in a novel that was not likely to be a source for literary allusions suitable to the average formal dinner party in the Garden District but that was in her downloaded repertoire nonetheless.

Being refractive, the fluid or vapor absorbed the lamplight and glowed warmly. This internal luminosity revealed a dark shape suspended in the center of the case.

Erika could not see even the vaguest details of the encased object, but for some reason she thought of a scarab petrified in ancient resin.

As she approached the case, the shadow at its core seemed to twitch, but most likely she had imagined that movement.

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