As he slid the key into the lock, he realized that his heart was beating like an Iroquois’ drum. What might be inside? A document from Professor Fell? Something that might point to his whereabouts? If so, it was written on stone.
He turned the key. There was a small polite click as befitted a gentleman’s lock, and Matthew lifted the lid.
It may be that Fell is on the cusp of creating what we think he desires, Greathouse had told him. A criminal empire that spans the continents. All the smaller sharks—deadly enough in their own oceans—have gathered around the big shark, and so they have swum even here…
Matthew was looking at a black leather drawstring bag. It was the solitary occupant of the box. The drawstring’s knot was secured with a paper seal, and upon it was something stamped in red.
The big shark, Matthew thought. Perhaps Greathouse’s marine metaphor had been close, but was incorrect. Stamped upon the paper seal in red wax was the stylized shape of an octopus, its eight tentacles stretched out wide as if to seize the world.
Matthew thought that Greathouse might be very interested in seeing this. He lifted the heavy bag out to set it on the table, and heard the unmistakable clinking of coins.
He put it down and just stared at it for a moment. To open it, he must of course break the seal. Was he ready to do that? He didn’t know. Something about it frightened him, down to the level where nightmares take shape. Better to let Greathouse break the seal, and be done with it.
But he didn’t return it to the box, nor did he do anything but run the back of his hand across his mouth for his lips suddenly felt parched.
He knew he had to decide, and the decision was important. He felt the time ticking away. The distance between this house and his own life in New York had never seemed greater.
He feared not only breaking the seal, but opening the bag. He listened, in the silence. Was there no one to tell him what to do? No good advice on what was the right and what was the wrong? Where were the voices of Magistrates Woodward and Powers when he needed them? Not there. Only silence. But then again, it was just paper, wasn’t it? Just the shape of an octopus delivered from a wax impression? And look how long this had sat here in its box. No one was coming for it; it had been forgotten.
He didn’t need Greathouse, he told himself. After all, he was a full partner in the Herrald Agency, and he had the letter of congratulations from Katherine Herrald and a magnifying glass to prove it.
Without giving himself further time to ponder, he tore the seal. The wax octopus cracked and opened for him. Then he untied the drawstring and peered into the bag, his eyes widening as sunlight from the library’s windows touched all that gold and nearly blinded him.
He picked out one of the coins and examined it more closely. On the obverse it bore the double heads of William and Mary, and on the reverse a crowned shield of arms. The date was 1692. Matthew weighed the coin in the palm of his hand. He had seen two of these coins in his entire life, both of them recovered from the robbery of a fur merchant when he’d been clerking for Nathaniel Powers. It was a five-guinea piece, worth a few shillings over five pounds, and was the most valuable coin minted by the realm. The bag held…how many? It was hard to count, with all that shine. He upended the bag over the table, spilled out sixteen coins, and realized that he was looking at the sum of more than eighty pounds.
“My God,” he heard himself say, in a stunned whisper.
For stunned he was. It was a fortune. An amount of money even expert craftsmen might not see in the span of a year. A young lawyer would not make that much per annum, and certainly not a young problem-solver.
And here it was, lying right before him.
Matthew felt light-headed. He looked around at the library’s debris, and then back at the shelf where the lockbox had been hidden in plain sight. Emergency money, he thought. That was what Lawrence Evans, Chapel’s henchman, had been returning to the house to get when he was struck down by Dippen Nack’s billyclub. Emergency money, in a black leather bag with what might be the seal of an underworld bank or possibly Professor Fell’s own personal mark.
Chapel’s estate, but Fell’s enterprise.
Eighty pounds. Who should it be taken to? Lillehorne? Oh, certainly! The high constable and his wife would make short work of even such a large amount. He was already insufferable enough without being enriched from Matthew’s risk, and indeed Matthew felt he’d taken a risk just to come back here. What about Greathouse, then? Oh, yes; Greathouse would take the lion’s share for himself and the agency, and throw him a pittance. There was all that nonsense about Zed being bought from van Kowenhoven and made into a bodyguard, which Matthew definitely did not need.
Who, then, should take possession of this money?
He who needed it the most, Matthew thought. He who had found it. The process of discovery had been well-met, this day. And richly deserved, too. It would take him a long time to spend it all, if he was careful. But the question next to deal with was how to spend even one coin without attracting suspicion, for these were not seen beyond the lofty heights of Golden Hill.
His hands were actually trembling as he returned the coins to the bag. He pulled the drawstring tight and knotted it. Then he picked up the torn paper seal with its imprint of an octopus, crumpled it in a fist, and dropped it among the black ashes and broken bindings in the fireplace. For a moment he felt nearly delirious, and had to steady himself with a hand to the wall.
A few books were chosen, almost at random, from his pile of candidates. Enough to give equal weight for Dante, one saddlebag to another.
But once outside and after the books were stowed away, Matthew balked at giving up the money just yet. He still had the question that had brought him here to begin with, and he realized that once he rode through that gate he might not be back, books or no. The time was getting on into afternoon, the sun shining fiercely through the trees. He didn’t wish to leave the money with Dante, in case anyone else rode in. Carrying the moneybag with him, he started walking along the driveway in the direction of the vineyard, and specifically toward the place where he’d last seen Chapel stretched out, beaten and battered, in the dust.
He’d been pondering for awhile the assumption that Chapel had been trying to get to the stable. Why would that have necessarily been so? With all that was going on, how did Chapel think he would have time to put a saddle and bridle on a horse? But if Chapel was not going to the stable along this driveway, then where was he heading? The vineyard? The woods?
Matthew had decided to find the place where Chapel had been laid out on the ground, and enter the woods at that location. As he marked the spot where he recalled Chapel to have been and left the driveway there for the red glow of the forest, he realized he had to get his mind fixed on his purpose, for his thoughts were wandering into daydreams like beautiful paintings in golden frames.
He walked amid the trees and thicket. All this area had been gone over before, of course. But he wondered if somewhere in this woods there might be a place the searchers had not found. A shelter, somehow disguised as surely as a book could be a lockbox. An emergency hiding-place, if one was ever needed. Then, when the danger had gone, the occupants could emerge and either slip out by way of the gate or—more improbably due to Dahlgren’s broken wrist—climb over the wall.
It was a shot in the dark, but Matthew was determined to at least take aim.
Walking through the woods was peaceful this time, as before it had been a race for life for both himself and Berry. He saw nothing but trees and low brush, the ground gently rising and falling. He started even kicking aside leaves and looking for trapdoors in the earth itself, to no avail.
There was a gully ahead. Matthew recalled he and Berry running along its edge. He stopped now and peered down into it. The thing was about ten feet deep at its bottom and walled with sharp-edged boulders. He thought what might have happened if either he or Berry had fallen in; a broken ankle would’ve been the least of it.
As Matthew sta
red into the abyss, he wondered if the searchers had also feared for their bones, and so had not made the descent.
But there was nothing down there except rocks. It was a perfectly ordinary gully, as might be found in any woods.
He continued walking along the edge, but now his daydreams and the moneybag were thrust out of his mind completely. He was focused on the gully, and specifically on how one might get down into it without falling on the rocks.
It was getting deeper as it progressed across the forest. Twelve or fifteen feet to the bottom, Matthew thought. In places shadow filled up the gully like a black pond. And, then, not too far ahead, he saw what might have served as steps in the rock. His imagination? Possibly, but he could definitely get down to the bottom here. Grasping the moneybag tightly, he demonstrated in another moment that one could negotiate the steps using only one hand to hold balance against the boulders.
He continued along the bottom, which was also covered with rocks. And perhaps twenty yards further on, as the gully took a turn to the right, he drew a sharp breath as he discovered in the wall beside him an opening about five feet tall and wide enough for a man to squeeze into sideways.
A cave, he realized, as he let the breath go.
He crouched down and looked in. How far back it went, he had no idea. There was nothing but dark in there. Yet…he felt the movement of air on his face. What portion of the cave’s floor he could see was hard-packed clay, littered with leaves.
He held his free arm through the opening, feeling the air moving across his fingertips. Coming from within the cave.
Not a cave, he thought. A tunnel.
No light. Snakes were about, possibly. Could be a nest of them in there. He asked himself what Greathouse would do in this situation. Retire, and never know the truth? Or blunder ahead, like a great fool?
Well, snakes couldn’t bite through his boots. Unless he stepped in a hole and fell down, and then they could get at his face. He would walk as cautiously as if upon the roof of City Hall, blindfolded. He paused just a moment, herding his courage before it came to its senses and galloped away. Then he gritted his teeth, pushed himself through and was immediately able to stand, if at a crouch. He was glad he still gripped the moneybag; it could give something a good clout, if need be. It came to him, with enough force to almost buckle his knees: I am rich. He felt his mouth twist in a grin, though his heart was beating hard and the sweat of fear was upon his neck. He fervently hoped to live through the next few minutes to enjoy his wealth. Using one hand and an elbow to gauge the walls, Matthew started his progress into the unknown.
Six
A PITY about Matthew Corbett. Dead at such a young age,” said Hudson Greathouse. He shrugged. “I really didn’t know him very well. Had only worked with him since July. So what more can I say, other than that he poked his curiosity into one dark hole too many.”
The wagon, pulled by two sway-backed horses that seemed to move only with the slow but dignified agony of age, had just left the stable in Westerwicke. The town stood along the Philadelphia Pike, some thirty miles from New York; it was a small but well-groomed place, with two churches, houses of wood and brick and beyond them farmfields and orchards carved from the New Jersey forests. A farmer selling pumpkins from a cart waved, and Greathouse waved back.
“Yes,” Greathouse said, looking up at the clouds that sailed like huge white ships across the morning sky, “too bad about Matthew, that his life was cut so short due to the fact he had neither sense nor bodyguard to protect him.” He cut his gaze sideways, at the driver. “Would that have been a good enough speech at your funeral?”
“I have already admitted,” Matthew spoke up, as he flicked the reins to urge a little more speed to horses that only hung their heads lower as if to beg for mercy, “that I should not have gone in that tunnel alone.” He felt heat in his cheeks. “How long are you going to play this tune?”
“Until you realize you’re not ready to go off risking your life foolishly. And for what? To prove a point? That you’re so much smarter than everyone else?”
“It’s awfully early for this.” In fact, it was not much after six o’clock. Matthew was tired and cranky and wished he were anywhere on earth but sitting in this wagon beside Greathouse. By God, he’d even take the tunnel again. At least it had been quiet in there. He now knew the real meaning of torture; it was having to share a room with Greathouse at The Constant Friend tavern, as had been done last night in Westerwicke because the other two rooms were taken, and not being able to get to sleep before a snoring began that started like a cannon’s boom and ended like a cat’s squall. Long past midnight, when at last Matthew did slumber, Greathouse gave out a holler that almost made Matthew jump out of bed fearing for his life, but not even the subsequent angry knocking on the wall of the next room’s occupant brought Greathouse up from his netherworld. More galling, the great one would not let this incident of the tunnel go. Danger this, and danger that, and what might have happened if it had not been a tunnel that led under the estate to the river, but instead to a cave where he could have gotten lost in the dark and been wandering until he had a beard down to his boots. What then, Mr. Corbett? Do speak a little louder, I can’t hear you.
“You’re right,” said Greathouse after a brief reflection, which served only to make Matthew expect another volley was being loaded. “It is early. Have a drink.” He passed over a leather flask of brandy, at which he’d already been nipping since the first threads of sunrise. Matthew took it and swallowed enough to make his eyes swim and his throat burn, and then he returned it to its owner. Greathouse corked it and slid it under the plank seat, next to the pistol. “Maybe I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same. But I’m me, and I have experience at such things. Didn’t you think to tie a rope to something to find your way back by?”
“It would have been a very long rope.” Very long indeed. The tunnel, a natural feature of the Chapel estate, had been in Matthew’s estimation almost a quarter-mile long. At one point it had descended at an alarming angle but by then Matthew could see light ahead. It had emerged from the riverside cliffs among boulders, and a path could be negotiated to the nearest woods. He surmised that not all the members of Chapel’s little party had been privvy to knowing about the escape route, but that was how those particular four had gotten out.
“I don’t think I’m so much smarter than everyone else,” Matthew answered, to one of Greathouse’s more stinging barbs.
“Sure you do. It’s part of your charm. Oh, my back aches! That bed should’ve been arrested for attempted murder.”
“You seemed to be sleeping well enough, for the most part.”
“An illusion. I had a particularly bad dream.”
“Really? Did you happen to be dreaming about a war between cannons and cats?”
“What?” Greathouse scowled. “No. It’s this damned job. I don’t like it.”
“You were dreaming about the job?”
“No. I had a dream about…now, this sounds ridiculous, I know.” Greathouse hesitated, reached for the flask again and held it at the ready. “I had a dream about that damned tooth.”
“The tooth,” Matthew repeated.
“You know. McCaggers’ tooth. What he showed us. All that jabber about God and Job and monsters and…” The cork was pulled out and another swig of brandy went down Greathouse’s throat. “All that,” he said, when he’d finished.
Matthew waited, certain there would be more. He flicked the reins again, but it didn’t speed the old horses a single hoof. Still, their destination was not very far ahead. The doctors, Ramsendell and Hulzen, would be expecting them at the Publick Hospital.
“I dreamed,” Greathouse said, after taking a long breath as if to get his brain started again, “that I saw the monster the tooth came from. It was as big as a house, Matthew. No, bigger. As big as Trinity Church, or City Hall. Bigger yet. Its skin looked to be like black iron, still smoking from the bellows furnace. Its head was as big as a coach, and it l
ooked at me, Matthew. Right at me. It was hungry, and it was coming for me, and I started to run.” A crazed grin erupted across his face. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
Matthew made a noise, but kept his eyes on the road as long as Greathouse looked at him.
“It came for me,” Greathouse went on. “Like…a terrible wind. Or a force of nature. I was running across a field…where there were dead men lying. Or…pieces of men. There was nowhere to hide, and I knew the monster was going to get me. I knew it, and there was nothing I could do. It was going to get me, with those teeth. A mouthful of them, Matthew. By the hundreds. It was so huge, and so fast. It was coming up behind me, and I felt its breath on my neck…and then…”
Greathouse said nothing else. At last, Matthew asked, “You died?”
“I must have woken up. I don’t remember. Maybe I did die, in the dream. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what I do know.” He started to take another drink and then thought better of it, for there was the job to be done today. “I had almost forgotten what fear is. Not being frightened, that’s one thing. I mean, fear. What you know you don’t have a chance against. That’s what I felt, in the dream. And all because of that damned tooth.”
“Your eel pie last night might have something to do with it. I told you it didn’t smell very fresh.”
“Wasn’t that. All right, maybe a little. My stomach did pitch and tumble a bit. But it’s this job, too. If the money wasn’t so good, I would’ve told Lillehorne to find someone else. Surely a couple of constables would have done just as well.”
“The doctors asked for us specifically,” Matthew reminded him. “And who else would’ve come? Dippen Nack? Giles Wintergarten? I don’t think so.”