Opposite the General hung the only portrait of a young man, the General’s son, a Marine lieutenant who hadn’t developed the family scowl. I didn’t recall his name, but did remember him getting killed in the islands while I was in. He’d been the old man’s only male offspring. There wouldn’t be any more portraits to put up on those dark-paneled walls.
The hall ended in a wall of leaded glass that rose the hallway’s two storey height, a mosaic of scenes from myth and legend, all bloodthirstily executed: heroes slaying dragons, felling giants, posturing atop heaps of elvish corpses while awaiting another charge. All stuff of antiquity, when we humans didn’t get along with the other races.
The doors through that partition were normal size, also filled with glass artwork from the same school. The butler, or whatever he was, had left them ajar. I took that as an invitation.
The hall beyond could have been swiped from a cathedral. It was as big as a parade ground and four storeys high, all stone, mostly swirly browns from butterscotch to rust folded into cream. The walls were decorated with trophies presumably won by Stantnors in battle. There were enough weapons and banners to outfit a battalion.
The floor was a checkerboard of white marble and green serpentine. In its middle stood a fountain, a hero on a rearing stallion sticking a lance into the heart of a ferocious dragon that looked suspiciously like one of the bigger flying thunder-lizards. Both of them looked like they’d rather be somewhere else. Couldn’t say I blamed them. Neither one was going to get out alive. The hero was about one second short of sliding off the horse’s behind right into the dragon’s claws. The sculptor had said a lot that, undoubtedly, no one understood. I told them, “You two want to scrap over a virgin, you should work a deal.”
I headed for the fountain, heels clicking, the walls throwing back echoes. I turned around a few times, taking in the sights. Hallways ran off into the wings. Stairs went up to balconies in front of each of the upper floors. There were lots of polished round brown pillars and legions of echoes. The place couldn’t be a home. Only thing I’d ever seen like it was a museum. You had to wonder what went on inside the head of a guy who would want to build a place like that to live.
It was damned near as cold in there as it was outside. I shivered, checked out the fountain up close. It wasn’t going, or at least I’d have had its chuckles for company. Seemed a pity. The sound would have improved the atmosphere. Maybe they only turned it on when they were entertaining.
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the idea of being rich. I guess most people do. But if this was the way the rich had to live, I thought maybe I could settle for less.
My trade has taken me into any number of large homes and every one seemed to have a certain coldness at its heart. The nicest I’d hit belonged to Chodo Contague, TunFaire’s emperor of the underworld. He’s a grotesque, a real blackheart, but his place at least fakes the life and warmth. And his decorator has his priorities straight. Once when I was there the house was littered with naked lovelies. That’s what I call home furnishings! That’s a lot more cheerful than a bargeload of instruments of war.
I dropped my duffel bag, put a foot up on the fountain surround, and rested my elbows on my knee. “You boys go ahead with what you’re doing. I’ll try not to disturb.” Hero and dragon were both too preoccupied to notice.
I looked around. Where the hell was everybody? A place that size ought to have a battalion for staff. I’d seen livelier museums at midnight. Well . . .
All was not lost. In fact, things had started to look up.
I’d spotted a face. It was looking at me around a pillar supporting the balconies to my left. The west wing. It was female and gorgeous and too far away to tell much else, but that was all I needed to get my blood moving again. The woman attached was as timid as a dryad. She ducked out of sight an instant after our eyes met.
The part of me that is weak wondered if I’d see more of her. I hoped so. I could get lost in a face like that.
She did a little flit into the nearest hallway. I got just a glimpse but wanted her to come back. She was worth a second look, and maybe a third and a fourth, a long-haired, slim blonde in something white and gauzy, gathered at the waist by a red girdle. Around twenty, give or take a few, and sleek enough to put a big, goofy grin on my face.
I’d keep an eye out for that one.
Unless she was a ghost. She’d gone without making a sound. Whatever, she was going to haunt me till I got a closer look.
Was the place haunted? It was spooky enough, in its cold way . . . I realized it was me. Might not bother someone else. I looked around and heard the clash of steel and the moans of those who had died to furnish all those emblems of Stantnor glory. I was packing my own haunts in and letting the place become a mirror.
I tried to shake a darkening mood. A place like that turns you somber.
The guy from the front door marched in after the girl disappeared, his heels clicking. He came to a perfect military halt six feet away. I gave him the once-over. He stood five-foot-eight, maybe a hundred seventy pounds, in his fifties but looking younger. His hair was wavy black, slicked with some kind of grease that couldn’t beat the curl. If he had any gray, he hid it well, and he still had all the hair he’d had when he was twenty. His eyes were cold little beads. You could get ice burns there. He’d kill you and not even wonder if he was making orphans.
“The General will see you now, sir.” He turned and marched away.
I followed. I caught myself marching in step, skipped to get out. In a minute I was back in step. I gave it up.
They’d pounded it in good. The flesh remembered and couldn’t hear the rebellion in the mind.
“You have a name?” I asked.
“Dellwood, sir.”
“What were you before you got out?”
“I was attached to the General’s staff, sir.”
Which meant absolutely nothing. “Lifer?” Dumb question, Garrett. I could bet the family farm, I was the only nonlifer in the place, excepting the girl—maybe. The General wouldn’t surround himself with the lesser breeds called civilians.
“Thirty-two years, sir.” He asked no questions himself. Not into small talk and chitchat? No. He didn’t care. I was one of them.
“Maybe I should have come to the tradesman’s entrance.”
He grunted.
“Tough.” The General had my respect for what he’d accomplished, not for who he’d been born.
Dellwood had twenty years on me but I was the guy doing the puffing when we hit the fourth floor. About six wise remarks ran through my alleged brain but I didn’t have wind enough to share them. Dellwood gave me an unreadable look, probably veiled contempt for soft civilians. I puffed awhile, then to distract him said, “I saw a woman while I was waiting. Watching me. Timid as a mouse.”
“That would be Miss Jennifer, sir. The General’s daughter.” He looked like he thought he’d made a mistake volunteering that much. He didn’t say anything else. One of those guys who wouldn’t tell you what he thought you didn’t need to know if you burned his toes off. Was the whole staff struck from the same dies? Then why did Peters need me? They could handle anything.
Dellwood marched to an oaken door that spanned half the corridor on the top floor of the west wing. He pushed the door inward, announced, “Mr. Mike Sexton, sir.”
A wall of heat smacked me as I pushed past Dellwood.
I’d come with no preconceptions but I was still surprised. General Stantnor preferred spartan surroundings. Other than the room’s size, there was nothing to hint that he was hip deep in geld.
There were no carpets, a few straightbacked wooden chairs, the ubiquitous military hardware, two writing desks nose to nose, the bigger one presumably for the General and the other for whoever actually wrote. The place was almost a mausoleum. The heat came off a bonfire raging in a fireplace designed for roasting oxen. Another gink without joints in his spine was tossing in logs from a nearby mountain. He looked at me, looked
at the old man behind the big desk. The old man nodded. The fireman marched out, maybe to kill time practicing close order drill with Dellwood.
Having surveyed the setting I zeroed in on its centerpiece.
I could see why Black Pete was suspicious. There wasn’t much left of General Stantnor. He didn’t look anything like the guy in the picture downstairs. He looked like he might weigh about as much as a mummy, though most of him was buried under comforters. Ten years ago he’d been my height and thirty pounds heavier.
His skin had a yellowish cast and was mildly translucent. His pupils were milky with cataracts. His hair had fallen out in clumps. Only a few patches remained, not just gray or white but with a bluish hue of death. He had liver spots but those had faded, too. His lips had no color left but a poisonous gray-blue.
I don’t know how well he could see through those cataracts, but his gaze was strong and steady. He didn’t shake.
“Mike Sexton, sir. Sergeant Peters asked me to see you.”
“Grab a chair. Pull it up there facing me. I don’t like to look up when I talk to someone.” There was power in his voice, though I don’t know where he found the energy. I’d figured him for a graverobber’s whisper. I settled opposite him. He said, “For the moment I’m confident we’re not being overheard, Mr. Garrett. Yes. I know who you are. Peters provided me with a full report before I approved bringing you in.” He kept staring as though he could overcome those cataracts through sheer will. “But we’ll pursue the Mike Sexton fiction in future. Assuming we come to terms now.”
I was close enough to smell him, and it wasn’t a good smell. I was surprised the whole room didn’t reek. They must have brought him in from somewhere else. “Peters didn’t say what you needed, sir. He just called in an old marker to get me out here.” I glanced at the fireplace. They would be baking bread in here soon.
“It takes a great deal of heat to keep me going, Mr. Garrett. My apologies for your discomfort. I’ll try to keep this brief. I’m a little like a thunder-lizard. I generate no heat of my own.”
I waited for him to continue. And sweated a lot.
“I have Peters’s word that you were a good Marine.” No doubt that counted for a lot around here. “He vouches for your character then. But men change. What have you become?”
“A free-lance thug instead of a drafted one, General. Which you need or I wouldn’t be here.”
He made a noise that might have been laughter. “Ah. I’d heard you have a sharp tongue, Mr. Garrett. I should be the impatient one, not you. I have so little time left. Yes. Peters vouches for you today, as well. And you do get mentioned in some circles as being reliable, though headstrong and inclined to carry out your assignments according to your own lights. They say you have a sentimental streak. That shouldn’t trouble us here. They say you have a weakness for women. I think you’ll find my daughter more trouble than she’s worth. They say you tend to be judgmental of the vices and peccadillos of my class.”
I wondered if he knew how often I change my underwear. Why did he need an investigator? Let him use whoever had investigated me.
Again that sorry laugh. “I can guess what you’re thinking. Everything I know is public knowledge. Your reputation runs before you.” Something that might have been a smile in better times. “You’ve managed to do a fair amount of good over the years, Mr. Garrett. But you stepped on a lot of toes doing it.”
“I’m just a clumsy kid, General. I’ll grow out of it.”
“I doubt it. You don’t seem intimidated by me.”
“I’m not.” I wasn’t. I’d met too many guys who really were intimidating. I had calluses on that organ.
“You would have been ten years ago.”
“Different circumstances.”
“Indeed. Good. I need a man who won’t be intimidated. Especially by me. Because I fear that if you do your job right, you may uncover truths I won’t want to face. Truths so brutal I may tell you to back off. You won’t do that?”
He had me baffled. “I’m confused.”
“The normal state of the world, Mr. Garrett. I mean, when I hire you, if I hire you, if you agree to take this job, your commitment will be to follow it through to the end. Disregarding anything I tell you later. I’ll see that you’re paid up front so you aren’t tempted to bend in order to collect your fee.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“I pride myself on my ability to meet the truth head-on. In this case I want to arrange it so I have no choice, however much I squirm and ache. Can you understand that?”
“Yes.” Only in the most literal sense. I didn’t understand why. We all spend a lot of time fooling ourselves, and his class were masters at that—though he’d always had a reputation for having both feet firmly planted in reality. He’d disobeyed or refused orders more than once because they had originated in wishful thinking by superiors who hadn’t come within five hundred miles of the fighting. Each time events had saved him embarrassment by proving him right.
He didn’t have a lot of friends.
“Before I make any commitment, I have to know what I’m supposed to do.”
“There is a thief in my house, Mr. Garrett.”
He stopped because of some kind of spasm. I thought he was having a heart attack. I jumped up and headed for the door.
“Wait,” he croaked. “It will pass.”
I paused midway between my chair and the door, saw the spasm fade. In a moment he was back to normal. I perched myself on my chair again.
“A thief in my house. Yet there is no one here I haven’t known for thirty years, no one I haven’t trusted with my life many times.”
That had to be a weird feeling, knowing you could trust guys with your life but not with your things.
I got a glimmer of why he needed an outsider. A bad apple amongst old comrades. They might cover up, refuse to see the truth, or . . . Who knows? Marines don’t think like people.
“I follow. Go ahead.”
“My infirmity came upon me soon after I returned home. It’s a progressive consumption, apparently. But slow. I seldom get out of my quarters now. But I’ve noticed, this past year, that some things, some of which have been in the family for centuries, have disappeared. Never large, flashy things that would be obvious to any eye. Just trinkets, sometimes more valuable as mementoes than intrinsically. Yet the sum should add to a fair amount by now.”
“I see.” I glanced at the fire. It was time to turn me over so I wouldn’t be underdone on one side.
“Bear with me a few minutes more, Mr. Garrett.”
“Yes sir. Any strangers in the house recently? Any regular visitors?”
“A handful. People off the Hill. Not the sort who would pilfer.”
I didn’t say so but in my thinking the worst of all criminals come off the Hill. Our nobility would steal the coppers off dead men’s eyes. But the General had a point. They wouldn’t steal with their own hands. They’d have somebody do it for them.
“You have an inventory of what’s missing?”
“Would that be useful?”
“Maybe. Somebody steals something, they want to sell it to get money. Right? I know some of the retailers whose wholesalers are people with sticky fingers. Do you want the stuff back or do you just want to know who’s kyping it?”
“The latter step first, Mr. Garrett. Then we’ll consider recovery.” Sudden as a lightning bolt he suffered another spasm. I felt helpless, unable to do anything for him. That was not a good sensation.
He came back but this time he was weaker.
“I’ll have to close this out quickly, Mr. Garrett. I’ll need to rest. Or the next attack may be the last.” He smiled. There were teeth missing behind the smile. “Another reason to make sure you get your fee up front. My heirs might not see fit to pay you.”
I wanted to say something reassuring, like he’d outlive me, but that seemed too cynically a load of manure. I kept my mouth shut. I can do that sometimes, though usually at the wrong time
.
“I’d like to get to know you better, Mr. Garrett, but nature has its own priorities. I’ll hire you if you’ll have me for a client. Will you find me my thief? On the terms I stated?”
“No punches pulled? No backing off?”
“Exactly.”
“Yes sir.” I had to force it out. I really was getting lazy. “I’m on it now.”
“Good. Good. Dellwood should be outside. Tell him I want Peters.”
I got up. “Will do, General.” I backed toward the door. Even in his present state the old man retained some of the magnetism that had made him a charismatic commander. I didn’t want to pity him. I really wanted to help him. I wanted to find the villain Black Pete said was trying to kill him.
3
The cool in the hallway felt like high winter in the Arctic. For a second I worried about frostbite.
The General was right about Dellwood. He was there, waiting. The way he did it suggested he’d been scrupulous about not getting so close he might overhear anything. Though I doubted explosions could be heard through that door. I decided I could like the guy in spite of the stick up his spine.
“The General says he wants to see Peters.”
“Very good, sir. I’d better attend to that. If you’ll return to the fountain and wait?”
“Sure. But hold on. What’s wrong with him? He had a couple of pretty fierce attacks while I was in there.”
That stopped him dead. He looked at me, emotion leaking through for once. He loved that old man and he was worried. “Bad spasms, sir?”
“They looked that way to me. But I’m no doc. He cut the interview short because he was afraid another one would be too much for him.”
“I’d better check on him before I do anything else.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked again.
“I don’t know, sir. We’ve tried bringing physicians in, but he throws them out when he finds out what they are. He has a morbid fear of doctors. From what they’ve said, I understand that a physician’s care might not do any good. They haven’t done anything but scratch their heads and say they don’t understand it.”