Borrower of the Night vbm-1 Page 18

  ‘Du Gott allmächtig!’

  ‘In short, what the maid gave us was a description of a midnight rendezvous. The count, as we know, was still in Würzburg. So the Black Man must have been – ’

  ‘Nicolas the steward,’ said Tony, with a groan. ‘Oh, my big swollen empty head!’

  ‘It had to be Nicolas. The Black Man was wearing travelling costume, hence he was not living in the Schloss. Yet he must have been familiar with the place or he couldn’t have entered it and reached the countess’s room without being challenged. Who but the trusted steward would know the secret passages and hidden stairs? And – this is the most ironic thing, I think – Konstanze couldn’t defend herself from the witchcraft charge by telling the truth. Adultery was a serious crime in those days. And there was the little matter of the arsenic.’

  ‘My God, yes,’ said Tony soberly. ‘She had to kill Burckhardt; sooner or later he was bound to learn about her and Nicolas. He must have found out the night he killed the steward. Then he went after his cheating wife . . . he was trapped, all right. By the time she came to trial, maybe she didn’t care any longer. Her lover was dead . . .’

  ‘You’re a hopeless romantic,’ I said scathingly. ‘I can’t see our witch-poisoner-murderess wasting away for any man. The witches took drugs, you know; that was how they got their hallucinations of satanic orgies and visits to the Sabbath. The kindest thing you can hope for Konstanze is that she died believing – that in the fire she felt the embrace of her true lord and lover.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ I added, clutching at Tony. ‘I keep hearing things out there in the dark, rustling the bushes. Let’s go in.’

  ‘But wait,’ said Blankenhagen methodically. ‘We have not finished our deductions. You have solved a mystery which no one so much as suspected for hundreds of years; but you have not yet solved the mystery that brought you here. This story is fascinating, but I fail to see its usefulness.’

  I wished he hadn’t raised the point. Because, of course, our chemical experiment had not only solved a crime, it had solved the secondary mystery too. Now I knew what had happened to the shrine. There was only one place where it could be. And Tony, whose mind works the way mine does, saw the truth at once.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ he exclaimed, bounding to his feet.

  He almost was. Something streaked past his arm, chunked into the tree behind him, and hung there quivering.

  I snatched at it – Count Burckhardt’s dagger, which I had last seen lying among the dried ribs of the steward.

  Tony was staring incredulously at his left arm. His shirt was slit as neatly as if by scissors, and a thin dark trickle darkened the white cloth.

  ‘That son of a gun tried to kill me!’

  ‘What an ungrateful ghost,’ I said. ‘Here we are trying to clear Burckhardt’s name, and he throws knives at us. He’s a practical ghost, though. He must have sharpened this thing recently.’

  ‘Burckhardt, hell. Stop trying to distract me with spooks, Vicky, I’m already way ahead of you. Blankenhagen was in the crypt alone with the bones and the dagger for a good ten minutes. Hey – ’

  Blankenhagen was already gone, presumably in pursuit of the knife thrower. With a few well-chosen words, Tony took off after him.

  I followed. I wasn’t anxious to stay in that haunted garden alone. As I ran, I wasn’t sure whom Tony was chasing; he surely didn’t think the doctor could throw a knife like a boomerang. Too many people had had access to the steward’s belongings – including the cloaked grave robber.

  I reached the Hall in time to see Tony disappearing through the door which led to the cellars. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was relieved to see that Tony had had sense enough to bring a flashlight. By its glow I found the two men in the kitchen. Tony had apparently decided to keep his suspicions of the doctor to himself. The conference sounded reasonably amicable.

  ‘I lost him when he descended here,’ said Blankenhagen. ‘Where do these doors go? I do not know this place.’

  ‘That’s a dead end.’ Tony indicated the passage leading to the dungeons. ‘I assume our quarry knows that;. he knows this place too damned well. He must have gone the other way.’

  The trail was easy to follow – too easy, though this didn’t occur to us till it was too late. One of the storeroom doors swung invitingly open. The room was empty. The only break in the walls was a ventilation slit too narrow to permit egress of a lizard, much less a man.

  Tony swept the floor with his flashlight. One of the paving stones was out of line by a full inch.

  Tony handed me the flashlight. Dropping to his knees, he tried to get the fingers of his right hand into the crack between the stones. Meanwhile, Blankenhagen picked up the crowbar which was lying conveniently in a corner and inserted its edge into the crack. He grunted as he put his weight behind the tool; and the stone flew up with a jaunty swing that threw Blankenhagen over on his back and almost decapitated Tony.

  ‘Balanced,’ said Tony, feeling his chin as if surprised to find it still there.

  ‘Wait,’ said Blankenhagen, getting to his feet as Tony prepared to lower himself into the hole. ‘Should we not go for help?’

  ‘And let this guy get away?’ Tony was getting suspicious again. ‘You go first, Doc.’

  Blankenhagen shrugged, but complied. There was a streak of romanticism under that stolid exterior of his; by now he was as reluctant to abandon the chase as Tony was.

  Tony lay flat, shining his light down into the hole.

  ‘Vorsicht!’ The doctor’s voice came hollowly up. ‘Careful when you descend. The stairs are of wood, and shaky.’

  Tony turned around and prepared to follow. He glanced up at me. I could see his face; it wore a broad grin.

  ‘Go call the cops, Vicky,’ he said, and started down.

  From where I stand now – and even from where I was to be standing an hour later – I can see that this might have been the smartest thing to do. But at the time I had a number of objections to the idea. I was pretty sure of Blankenhagen, but I wasn’t ready to risk Tony’s neck on anything less than a hundred-per cent certainty. If I left the two of them alone down there . . .

  Also, Tony had the light. I was still thinking in percentages, and there was a fifty-fifty chance that the clearly defined trail was a decoy. I had no desire to meet the knifethrower in the dark cellar as I groped my way towards my room. I squatted by the opening, trying to make up my mind what to do.

  I didn’t have to make the choice. Matters were taken out of my hands.

  Blankenhagen had reached the bottom of the shaft. I could hear him cautioning Tony, who was partway down. Tony had the light directed downwards so he could pick his footing on the rickety stairs. It was very dark up there where I was. It got even darker. Somebody dropped a sack over my head, picked me up and – while I was still stiff with surprise – dropped me down the shaft feet first like a clothes-pin into a bottle.

  I fell on Tony and swept him neatly off the staircase, which promptly collapsed. Blankenhagen, down below, had no chance to move. We both landed on him, as did the splintered pieces of the staircase. Oddly enough, I remember the noise as being the most hellish thing of all. In that narrow space the echoes of crashes and screams and yells and thuds were magnified into a roaring chaos.

  Being on top, I came out best. I didn’t even lose consciousness. I had my lumps; a strategic section of my anatomy had bounced off the wall as I fell, and my whole lower surface was full of splinters. But compared to the two men I was in good shape.

  They were both out cold. I discovered that by feel; for all practical purposes I was blind. Tony’s flashlight had gone with him. There was no light from up above. Nor was there any flow of air.

  That realization stopped my humanitarian activities for a second or two. I should have suspeced it; if someone had put me down the shaft it was because he wanted me there, and naturally he would make sure I stayed there.

  The stone up above had been closed and
, no doubt, secured in some fashion.

  I went back to my fumbling. There were arms and legs all over the place, and at first I couldn’t figure out which belonged to whom. Then I found Tony’s face, which my hands know as well as my eyes. He mumbled something when I touched his cheek. I was so relieved I might have cried, if I’d had the time. Instead I located his pockets and found what I was hoping to find – two packets of matches.

  I lit one of the matches. While it burned I made a quick examination.

  Tony was semi-conscious and cursing. That was good. Blankenhagen, on whose chest Tony’s head was pillowed, had a broken arm. It wasn’t hard to diagnose, since I could see the bone sticking out. Both men were dirty and torn and bloody.

  The match burned my fingers. I blew it out and went on examining in the dark. Blankenhagen’s face was a bloody mess, but after running my fingers over his head I decided his skull had not been fractured.

  At that point Tony woke up completely, and we had a rather emotional session for a minute or two. I lit another match, then, while Tony confirmed my diagnosis of the doctor’s injuries.

  ‘I don’t dare move him,’ he said, as the match flickered out. ‘Something else could be broken.’

  ‘See if we can wake him up. Maybe he can diagnose himself.’

  We worked over the unconscious man until I started to get scared. Finally he stirred.

  ‘Don’t move yet, Blankenhagen,’ Tony ordered. ‘You’ve got a broken arm and God knows what else. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes . . . What has happened?’

  ‘The stairs gave way,’ I said. ‘And the trapdoor above is closed.’

  The silence that followed this cheering summary was so prolonged that I began to think I had overestimated Blankenhagen’s stamina and shocked him back into unconsciousness. Finally he said, in a gloomy voice, ‘You are here too? I wish you were not.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘I will see what is wrong with me,’ said Blankenhagen.

  ‘I’m glad somebody around here is a doctor,’ said Tony.

  I offered to light a match, but Blankenhagen refused. Maybe he didn’t want to see the damage. I didn’t enjoy the following minutes; I could tell by Blankenhagen’s grunts and gasps whenever he found a new bruise.

  ‘Nothing has been broken,’ he announced, ‘except the arm. You cannot go for help?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘We haven’t explored yet. But I have a feeling the guy who tricked us in here isn’t going to leave an exit open.’

  ‘Perhaps you would care to look?’ Blankenhagen suggested. I didn’t blame him for sounding sarcastic.

  ‘Okay,’ said Tony meekly. He stood up; and then sat down again, clutching his head.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Blankenhagen, feeling his weight descend. ‘I did not think . . . You are injured. If you will come here, I will try – ’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so damned noble,’ said Tony grumpily. ‘I’m all right. I just had a thought. Maybe some of this wood might make a torch. We’d have an easier time with a little light.’

  ‘Without oil or petrol,’ Blankenhagen began.

  I interrupted him with a hoot of triumph. ‘I have some oil. I got it so I could oil the locks.’

  I fished the almost forgotten can out of my coat pocket and gave it to Tony. He wasted several matches experimenting, but finally a chunk of wood consented to burn.

  We looked first at the shaft. One look was enough.

  A few stairs remained, at the very top. The lowest tread was five feet above my upstretched fingertips.

  Tony turned the light into the passage that led out of the shaft. It was faced with stones cemented together. We could see only a few feet of its length; it turned a corner not far from us.

  Tony started down the passage, but he had taken only a couple of steps when he swayed dizzily and fell back against the wall. I grabbed the torch from his hand.

  ‘Sit down till you get your strength back,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a look.’

  He didn’t argue. He looked sick.

  The roof of the passage was so low that I had to stoop. I went on around the corner, but I didn’t go far. Just behind the bend, the passage ended. It was not the original end. A mass of loose stones and dirt had spilled down from the roof, filling the tunnel from top to bottom. To me, it looked like a very recent cave-in.

  Chapter Eleven

  I HAD NOT EXPECTED to find an open door with an EXIT sign beside it; but I hadn’t anticipated anything quite as bad as this. My hands were shaking as I wedged my torch into a crack in the wall and started digging. It didn’t take long to verify my pessimistic suspicions. The dirt and rubble continued for some distance. For all I knew, the rest of the tunnel might be filled. And I was here, in a neat airless trap, with two injured men.

  I gave vent to my emotions briefly, but I did it without noise. Then I wiped my face on the sleeve of my coat and went back to the wounded.

  Tony, squatting with his back up against the tunnel wall, looked a little better. I had put on a cheery smile, but it didn’t deceive him.

  ‘No way out?’

  ‘It doesn’t look good.’ I handed him the torch and knelt down by Blankenhagen, whose eyes were closed. ‘Doctor. If you can tell me what to do as I go along, I’ll try to fix your arm.’

  ‘I will tell you first,’ said Blankenhagen, without opening his eyes. ‘I am about to lose consciousness.’

  And he did, too, as soon as I put my clumsy paws on his arm. Tony offered to take over, but I clamped my lower lip between my teeth and elbowed him away. Like mine, his knowledge was purely theoretical, derived from far-off memories of Scout manuals and Red Cross training. I did the job, with strips torn from my blouse and pieces of wood from the stairs; but I was covered with perspiration by the time I was through.

  After a while, Blankenhagen opened one eye.

  ‘Finished?’ he inquired warily.

  ‘Finished is right.’ I was sitting on the floor next to Tony.

  ‘Then speak,’ ordered Blankenhagen, prone but positive. ‘What is our position?’

  I told them. Neither of them liked it very much.

  ‘Seems to me,’ I concluded, ‘that our best bet is to try to dig through the earth fall. Even if I could climb the shaft – which I can’t – we can be sure that trapdoor is closed for good. The stone is a foot thick, and it’s down in the cellars, where no one ever comes. But if the dirt is just a localized fall, we can dig through it. Maybe.’

  ‘I can climb the shaft,’ said Tony, squinting up at it. ‘It’s a simple chimney job. But I agree with your other conclusions. I could hang up there yelling till I sprouted mushrooms before anyone would hear me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you could climb,’ I said, distracted.

  ‘I have many talents you don’t know about.’ Tony tried to leer, but didn’t do a very good job of it. ‘How far underground do you suppose we are?’

  ‘You mean we might try to dig out through the ceiling of the tunnel? We must be twenty or thirty feet down; the land rises behind the Schloss. What would we do with the dirt? There’s enough of it out there in the tunnel right now.’

  ‘But,’ said Blankenhagen, ‘if you dig through, and find the exit at the other end is also blocked?’

  ‘Let’s not cross bridges till we come to them,’ I said. ‘However, I don’t think our friend would have created a landslide if the exit at the other end were easy to close.’

  ‘It was deliberate, you believe?’

  ‘The dirt hasn’t been there long. And the rest of this is deliberate. I can assure you I didn’t dive feet first down that shaft on purpose. I’ll bet the stairs were partially sawed through, too.’

  ‘Someone flung you down?’ exclaimed Blankenhagen, as if the idea had just occurred to him. ‘You saw who it was?’

  ‘I saw nothing. I still don’t know who has been behind all the skulduggery. I suspect two people – ’

  ‘One of whom,’ said Tony, ‘could be you, Blankenha
gen.’

  Blankenhagen surveyed his battered form in meaningful silence. Tony shook his head.

  ‘That part could have been an accident – the stairs, I mean. You could have rapped me on the head and left me here if the stairs hadn’t collapsed.’

  ‘That’s silly,’ I said impatiently. ‘My money is still on the countess and Miss Burton. Good Lord, they are the only two left. And this argument isn’t getting us out of here.’

  ‘And,’ said Blankenhagen, ‘we may not have so much time.’

  He didn’t have that much time. My surgery had been crude, and we had no antiseptic. A couple of days down here in his condition and he wouldn’t care about getting out. But that was not what he meant. The air in the tunnel had always been close and dry. Now, it seemed to me, it was already perceptibly warmer.

  With Tony’s help, Blankenhagen managed to drag himself along the tunnel to where the dirt blocked the way, but when he tried to dig he collapsed.

  ‘I told you so,’ I said, helping Tony drag him out of the way. ‘I’ll start digging. I am, if you will pardon the expression, in better shape than either of you. And put out that torch, it’s just using air. This is going to be mostly by touch anyhow.’

  Then began a period of time which is the worst memory of a not wholly pleasant summer. I started with great energy, sending out a spray of dirt like a burrowing puppy. Despite my boast I wasn’t feeling all that hot; I hadn’t had any sleep and my bruises ached. But there is no incentive quite as persuasive as the fear of dying of asphyxiation.

  It was slow, heartbreaking work. The dirt slid down from above almost as fast as I dug it out. Finally Iwent back and got some boards from the fallen staircase to shore up my miniature tunnel. It helped some.

  When Tony tugged at my ankles, I let him pull me out and take my place. Utterly exhausted, I curled up on the stone floor and, incredibly, fell asleep.

  I slept uneasily, dreaming there was a steel band around my chest. I awoke with a gasp to find Tony shaking me.

  ‘The air is pretty bad, Vicky. We’ve got to get through soon, or we’ll never make it. If you clear away the dirt I push out . . .’