The Forgotten Room

49

He plummeted downward through inky darkness. And then, quite suddenly, he hit something hard and unyielding. White light exploded in his head, and he lost consciousness.

He came to slowly, laboriously, like a swimmer struggling to reach the surface. It seemed to take forever. One after another, his senses returned. The first thing he became aware of was pain — his back, right knee, and head were throbbing, all at different, nauseating cadences. Next was sight. He could make out a smear of light — no, two smears of light — against the blackness that surrounded him.

Next: sound. He could hear whispers, different voices, speaking from somewhere above him, near the lights.

He blinked, blinked again, tried to sit up. A stab of pain went through his knee, and he bit down on his lip to avoid crying out. His sight was clearing a little, and he could now tell that the smears of light were actually flashlight beams. They were lancing here and there, probing down from the ruins of the ventilation duct.

Logan realized that, however it seemed to him, he must have been unconscious only a few seconds. His pursuers were still in the corridor above, crouching in the mouth of the ventilation duct, searching for him. He’d fallen into some kind of subbasement.

He tried once again to rise, and only now became aware that he was lying in six inches of cold, brackish water. It must be groundwater, he realized, leaching in from the saturated soil around the mansion’s foundation: a result of the torrential downpour. This time he was successful in forcing himself into a sitting position.

He waited, breathing heavily, for the pain to recede and full alertness to return. The flashlight beams were still moving around, but he had apparently fallen into a small cul-de-sac whose walls shielded him from the lights.

More whispered conversation. As he watched, one of the men — glasses winking in the flashlight beams — began crawling gingerly out onto the broken ductwork. It immediately bent under his weight and he turned, dropping into a prone position, spreading his weight across the base of the duct. The duct groaned in protest and — grasping at its broken corners — the man worked his way down the steel until he was dangling from its lower edge. Light from a flashlight reflected off his glasses. Another few seconds and he would drop to the floor of the subbasement.

Logan realized he had to move. As quietly as he could, using the stonework of the cul-de-sac for support, he rose to a standing position. His head throbbed, and the world rocked around him, but he clung fast to the wall.

He waited a moment for the grogginess and the worst of the pain to pass. He didn’t dare turn on his flashlight — assuming it hadn’t been broken in the fall — but a second man was still crouching in the entrance of the ventilation duct, illuminating his companion’s descent with his flashlight, and the faint glow of the reflected beam allowed Logan to make out his surroundings. He was in what looked like a catacomb: walls of ancient stonework and masonry; low ceilings, interrupted at intervals by Romanesque arches; thick columns — the Solomonic spiral columns found throughout the mansion — punctuating the dim spaces. Cobwebs were everywhere, and Logan could hear the faint squeaking of vermin. The close air stank of mildew and efflorescence. The place looked as if nobody had penetrated its recesses for a hundred years.

A faint splash a dozen feet away alerted Logan to the fact that the first of his pursuers had dropped into the subbasement. As the man turned to help the other descend, Logan — feeling his way along the damp stone — moved away as quickly and silently as he could.

As he waded through the frigid water, the reflection of the flashlight beams behind him grew fainter, but he could nevertheless see that the subbasement ran away into a warren of separate chambers. Ahead and to his right, a black hole yawned, reeking like the breath of a charnel house, but he nevertheless made for its dubious protection, favoring his right knee, one hand sliding along the stone wall for support.

A second splash — another pursuer had slipped down into the subbasement — and Logan limped away more quickly. Ducking beneath an arch and rounding a corner, he found himself in pitch-darkness. Now he would have to try his own flashlight. Feeling for it in the black, humid space, he drew it out and — shielding its beam while at the same time crossing his fingers — he switched it on.

Nothing.

With a curse, he gave it a savage shake. Now it emitted a faint beam, disclosing a branching tunnel ahead.

The whispers behind him grew louder. Committing his surroundings to memory, Logan snapped off the light and moved forward in darkness. One step, two... then his foot snagged on something and he fell heavily into the water.

In a moment he was back on his feet, his knee protesting violently. There were cries behind him; stripes of flashlight beams licked across on the stonework; feet plashed in his direction. And now Logan began to flee, heedless of the noise he made. One hand held out before him, flicking his flashlight on every few seconds just long enough to see what lay ahead, he half ran, half staggered through a bewildering labyrinth of corridors, storerooms, and low-ceilinged vaults. His pursuers, apparently having separated but now alerted to his presence, exchanged shouts: there was more splashing; a few brief flickers of light; then the dull sigh of silenced bullets, followed by ricochets off stone. The men were firing blindly into the dark — nevertheless, the bullets whined by awfully close.

Suddenly, there was a sharp pain in his leg, just above the injured knee. Logan gave an instinctual grunt and spun around, staggering out of the path of additional shots. Then he stood in the darkness, gasping for breath, waiting. He heard voices again: first louder, then growing quiet, apparently retreating in another direction. And then, silence. For the time being, at least, it seemed they had lost him in the rabbit warren that made up the subbasement.

But not before winging him — or worse — with a bullet.

Logan shone his light downward, inspecting the wound. The bullet had grazed the meaty part of his outer thigh, tearing a hole through his trouser leg, through which blood was already seeping. With black water eddying around his ankles, he knew his pursuers would have no way of following a blood trail — but nevertheless he’d have to stanch the flow before he grew any weaker. Removing his jacket, he tore off one cotton shirtsleeve, then wrapped it around the injured leg, tying it off tightly. He slipped into the jacket again, then pressed onward, a little more slowly now given the double injury to his leg.

He stumbled into what had apparently been a wine cellar. On both sides, tiers of age-darkened wood rose, arrays of semicircles carved along their lengths. They were all empty. Thick cobwebs hung from them like strands of rope.

Beyond the wine cellar was a stone passage with empty storerooms on each side, apparently — based on the layout of the shelving — once used as pantries or larders. At the end of the passage, a low arch led into a room so large that Logan’s faint beam could not reach the far wall. This was clearly the mansion’s original kitchen: banks of stoves ran along one side, and in a side wall was a huge fireplace in which sat a cast-iron soup pot, hanging above a tripod by a rusted chain.

Logan paused for a moment, listening. But there was no longer any sound of splashing footsteps from behind.

He stepped forward painfully through the chill, ankle-deep water. A large oaken table stood in the middle of the room, covered with long-disused kitchenware: heavy chef’s cleavers, mallets for tenderizing meat, a jumbled riot of wooden spoons. Logan picked up a filleting knife, slid it carefully into the waistband of his pants, then continued on.

At last he reached the far wall. He had been hoping to find a passage out, or even a stairway leading back up to the basement level, but there was nothing save a large, odd-looking metal cupboard that was flush with the wall. He did a slow revolution, shining his flashlight in all directions, but it was clear that the only passage out of the kitchen was the one he had entered through. His heart sank.

As he completed the revolution, his beam returned to the cupboard on the wall before him. As he played his light over it, he realized it didn’t look quite like any cupboard he’d seen before. Grasping the lone handle and pulling it toward him, he recognized it for what it was: the door of a dumbwaiter.

He shone the beam inside. It illuminated a boxlike wooden frame, perhaps three feet by four, that hung freely within a brick shaft like the flue of a vast chimney. Several empty plates sat on the floor of the dumbwaiter’s cart, heavy with dust, and he removed these quietly and slipped them into the water at his feet.

A heavy rope hung in front of the dumbwaiter, between its wooden frame and the brickwork of the shaft. Grasping it with one hand, he pulled.

Nothing happened.

Putting the flashlight between his teeth, he took hold of the rope with both hands and pulled harder. This time, the wooden cart rose a little.

Logan glanced over his shoulder. He could hear the voices again: closer now than they had been for some time.

He looked back at the dumbwaiter. He could just fit inside. But how, from inside it, could he get sufficient leverage to raise it up the shaft?

In the dumbwaiter’s ceiling was a trapdoor. Logan glanced down at the improvised tourniquet, satisfied himself that the wound was not bleeding too badly. Ducking his way into the small compartment, his injured leg protesting in pain, he pushed this trapdoor open and looked upward, shining his light to get his bearings. He could see that the shaft rose perhaps twenty-five feet to a roof of brick, where it ended in a grooved pulley around which the rope had been secured.

Twenty-five feet. That, he estimated, would take him past the basement, as far as the first floor.

The voices were still closer now, and Logan closed the door of the dumbwaiter, sealing himself in. Then, reaching upward, he managed to slither up through the trapdoor in the ceiling. Sitting cross-legged atop the dumbwaiter, injured knee and bullet wound protesting, he closed the trapdoor before any blood could drip onto the floor of the cart.

The voices faded.

He pulled gingerly on the thick rope. It was coarse and slippery from decades of ancient cooking. He examined his palms in disgust. There was no way he could shinny up twenty-five feet of this greasy line — especially with his injured leg.

Maybe there was another way. Placing the flashlight at his feet and angling it upward, he grasped the rope with both hands again, as high up as he could reach. Then he pulled with all his might.

From far above came a faint groaning as the pulley guide protested under the weight. And then — slowly, slowly — the dumbwaiter began to rise.

Pull; secure the rope into position as best he could; take a moment to prepare — and then pull again. He rose five feet, then ten as the dumbwaiter ascended the brick shaft, creaking and groaning quietly. Then he paused to rest. The muscles in his arms and back were twitching with the unaccustomed exertion, and his hands were already growing raw from the coarse rope.

He continued to pull until he could make out, another ten feet above him near the top of the shaft, a door where the food from the kitchen would have been removed from the cart and served to the household. When he finally pulled himself even with the door, Logan was able to loop the line over a hook on the ceiling of the dumbwaiter cart, cleating it in place. He relaxed his grip from the rope, almost gasping aloud in relief.

Quietly, he rose to a kneeling position and pushed on the door. There was a low rattle on the far side and he stopped immediately. Something was in the way. What it was, he couldn’t be sure — but he could not afford to let it tip over. He would have to try sliding it forward, bit by bit.

With exquisite care, he applied pressure to the base of the shaft’s upper door. The rattle from the far side continued, but he could sense from the resistance that it was being pushed out of the way. Several long moments of anxious effort and the little door was open wide enough for him to fit through it.

Beyond lay darkness. Ducking first his head, and then his shoulders, through the opening, he slipped out of the dumbwaiter shaft and rose gingerly to his feet. Feeling his way through the darkness, he pushed the dumbwaiter door closed, then replaced the object in front of it — his fingers told him it was a display table of some kind — back against the wall. And then, muffling his flashlight once again, he switched it on.

The space was familiar to him — he’d entered it once, years before, on the mistaken assumption that it had been a men’s bathroom. It was actually a small gallery across the main hall from the dining room, presently used by waiters and waitresses for storing linens. Logan wiped grease and grime from his hands. He guessed, based on his unpleasant climb, that when the mansion had been owned by Edward Delaveaux, this room had likely been the butler’s and maid’s pantry for receiving and arranging dishes sent up from the kitchen.

Logan slowly approached the door of the small room, opened it a crack, and peered out. Beyond a short side passage, and across the rich carpet of the main corridor, was the entrance to the dining room — and, a few yards beyond it, the sloping staircase that led up to the second floor.

He had to check on Kim. If he was being pursued, then it was entirely possible that she was under threat as well. He stepped out into the hall and began moving toward the staircase.

Almost immediately, he shrank back. One of the three men — the one with the tweed jacket — was standing several yards down the hallway. The man had his back to Logan, and he was speaking into a radio: clearly, the radios had better reception than cell phones within the thick walls of the Lux mansion.

Logan looked from the man to the staircase and back again. Even if he did get past, there was no telling if others were in wait for him upstairs. He would have to find another way to get to Kim.

He looked around in desperate uncertainty. Where to, now? Where...?

And then, even as he asked himself the question, his eye fell upon another door. It lay at the other end of the side passage, and in the indirect light its small panes of glass were unrelieved rectangles of black.

It was an emergency exit, leading outside.

Logan didn’t hesitate. Turning away from the main corridor, he made his way to the door; made sure it was not alarmed; opened it as quietly as he could manage — and then slipped out into the howling storm.