He checked it behind them. Perfectly smooth wall. He put the shelves back in place against it, and hefted two loads of towels onto the shelves. And then he shut the door.
He crept down to the first floor, and made his way along the hallway towards the darkened front room. The only light came from the conservatory doors. Milky, dim. The rain teemed lightly on the glass dome. A gray mist sealed the glass walls.
Someone was trying the outside knobs one by one of the conservatory’s western French doors.
Another car had pulled up outside, and it sounded as though a truck had come with it. He didn’t want to disturb the draperies, even a little. Quietly, he listened. A woman’s voice this time. And then Galton—talking loudly into his phone.
“… just better get up here right now, Jerry, I mean this is happening here right now at the Nideck place and I don’t see any warrant here, and if somebody is going to break into the Nideck house without a warrant, well, I’m telling you, you ought to get up here right now.”
Silently moving to the desk, he stared at the stream of e-mail subject lines crawling down the screen.
“SOS,” said Celeste over and over again. Billie’s e-mails said, “Warning.” Phil’s e-mail “On the way.” The last one from Grace read: “Flying up with Simon now.” That had been sent two hours ago.
So that’s what Jim meant. They’d landed at the Sonoma County Airport, most likely, and were driving the rest of the way.
And just how long would that take? he wondered.
More cars were arriving out front.
Billie’s last e-mail had been an hour ago: “Tip off; they’re coming to put you away.”
He was furious, yet calculating. What could have triggered this? Had someone seen them early this morning with Stuart in the car? Surely Galton wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone, but how on such a slender bit of evidence could a campaign like this have ever gained steam?
Ambulance. Why was there an ambulance? Had Dr. Cutler gotten custody of Stuart and was she coming to take him to the nuthouse or to jail? That was Dr. Cutler’s voice out there, wasn’t it? And the voice of another woman, a woman speaking with a distinct foreign accent.
He moved out of the library and over the soft Oriental carpets of the great room and stood just inside the door.
The woman with the foreign accent, possibly Russian, was explaining that she had had experience in these things before, and if the officers all cooperated this would go completely smoothly. Things like this usually did. There came a man’s voice underscoring hers with long ominous syllables of the same general meaning. This was Jaska. He could smell Jaska, and he could pick up the scent of the woman. Liar. A deep unwholesome malice.
Reuben felt the spasms beginning; he rested his right hand against his abdomen. He could feel the heat. “Not yet,” he whispered. “Not yet.” The prickly icy feeling was traveling all over the backs of his arms and up his neck. “Not yet.”
It was getting dark already. Sunset would be in a few minutes, and on a wet overcast day like this it would be full dark very soon.
There must have been fifteen men out there now. And more cars were coming up the road. A car was pulling up right opposite the door.
He could make it to the hidden room, no question of that, but what if Galton knew about the hidden room and always had? And if Galton didn’t, if nobody did, how long could the three of them hide inside?
Outside, Dr. Cutler was arguing with the Russian doctor. She did not want Stuart committed. She didn’t even know for certain that Stuart was here, but the Russian doctor said she knew, that she’d been tipped off, that Stuart was most certainly here.
Suddenly his mother’s voice cut through the argument, and he could hear the low rumbling voice of Simon Oliver under her voice.… “Writ of habeas corpus if you so much as attempt to take my son anywhere against his will!”
Never had he been so happy to hear that voice. Phil and Jim were murmuring together right on the other side of the door, calculating the peace officers to be around twenty in number, trying to figure a plan of what to do.
A noise within the house startled him.
The spasms grew stronger. He could feel his pores opening, every hair follicle tingling. With all his will he held back.
The noise was coming from the hallway; it sounded for all the world like someone coming up those bare wooden cellar steps. He heard the creak that he knew to be that door.
Slowly out of the shadows a tall figure materialized before him, and another figure stood to his left. Against the light of the conservatory he could not make out the faces.
“How did you get into my house!” Reuben demanded. He walked boldly towards them, his stomach churning, his skin on fire. “Unless you have a warrant to be in this house, get out.”
“Down, little wolf,” came the soft voice of one of the two figures.
The other who stood nearest the hallway snapped on the light.
It was Felix, and the man beside him was Margon Sperver. Margon Sperver had spoken those words.
Reuben all but cried out in shock.
Both men were dressed in heavy tweed jackets and boots. The scent of rain and earth came from their clothes and their boots; they were windblown and ruddy from the cold.
A wash of relief weakened Reuben. He gasped. Then he put his hands up to make a steeple before his face.
Felix stepped forward out of the light of the hallway.
“I want you to let them in,” he said.
“But there’s so much you don’t know!” Reuben confessed. “There’s this boy here, Stuart—.”
“I know,” said Felix comfortingly. “I know everything.” His face softened with a protective smile. He clamped a firm hand on Reuben’s shoulder. “I am going upstairs to get Stuart now, and bring him down here. Now you light the fires. Turn on the lamps. And as soon as Stuart is ready for them, I want you to let them in.”
Margon was already attending to these things, turning on one lamp after another. And the room was springing to life out of the gloom.
Reuben didn’t think twice about obeying. He felt the spasms loosening, and the sweat flooding his chest under his shirt.
He quickly lighted the oak fire.
Margon moved as if he knew the place. Soon fires were going in the library, and the dining room and the conservatory as well.
Margon’s hair was long, as it had been in the picture, only tied back with a leather thong. There were leather patches on the elbows of his jacket, and his boots looked ancient, heavily creased and crazed over the toes. His face was weathered, but youthful. He appeared to be a man of forty at most.
Finishing with the lamps of the conservatory, he drew up beside Reuben and looked into his eyes. There was an arresting warmth emanating from him, the same kind of warmth Reuben had sensed from Felix when first they met. And there was a hint of good humor in Margon as well.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” said Margon. His voice was easy, smooth. “I wish we could have made all this easier for you. But that wasn’t possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll understand all in time. Now, listen, as soon as Stuart gets here, I want you to step out under the arch, and welcome the doctors inside, and ask that the lawmen remain where they are for the time being. Offer to talk. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes,” said Reuben.
The argument outside was going fast and furious. Grace’s voice rang out over the imbroglio. “Not valid, not valid. You paid for this! Either produce the paramedic who signed it or it’s not valid—.”
Something quickened in Margon’s face. He reached out and placed his hands on Reuben’s shoulders.
“You have it in check?” he asked. There was no hint of judgment, only the simple question.
“Yes,” said Reuben. “I can keep it down.”
“Good,” he said.
“But I don’t know about Stuart.”
“If he starts to ch
ange, we’ll get him out of sight,” he explained. “It is important that he be here. You leave matters to us.”
Stuart appeared, suitably dressed now in polo shirt and jeans. He was clearly alarmed and looked to Reuben silently but desperately. Laura, too, was now dressed in her usual sweater and slacks and took her place resolutely by Reuben’s side.
Felix motioned for Margon to draw back, and the two moved closer to the dining room, signaling to Reuben to go ahead.
He snapped on the switch for the outside lights, turned off the burglar alarm, and opened the door.
It was a sea of wet angry people in glistening raincoats with glistening umbrellas, and a good many more enforcement personnel than he had realized. At once the female Russian doctor—middle-aged, thick-bodied, with a short tight cap of gray hair—advanced, beckoning for Jaska and her squadron of supporters to follow, but Grace barred her way.
Phil came up the steps and slipped into the house, with Jim right behind him.
“If you would all please listen,” said Reuben. He raised his hands for patience and quiet. “I understand how cold it is out here, and I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting.”
Grace was backing up the steps with Simon Oliver and trying to keep the Russian doctors at bay. The scent of malice rose decisively from the two Russians, and Jaska’s cold eyes fixed Reuben harshly, as if they were beams that could somehow paralyze a victim as he pushed relentlessly closer.
The female doctor was powerfully excited by the sight of Reuben, eyeing him arrogantly with small milky-blue eyes.
“Doctors, please,” said Reuben. Grace was now at his elbow. “Do come in, and you too, Dr. Cutler—.” (He hoped and prayed Felix and Margon knew what they were doing, that they were the beings he believed them to be, but suddenly it seemed a slender and fantastical faith!) “We need to talk inside, you and I.” He went on. “And Galton, I’m so sorry to have brought you out in this weather. Galton, maybe you could rustle up some coffee for all these people. You know the kitchen here as well as anybody else. I think we have enough cups for the whole party—.”
Beside him, Laura motioned to Galton and said she’d meet him at the back door.
Galton was amazed, but immediately nodded and started taking orders for sugar and cream.
Grace pushed into the room behind Reuben.
But the two Russian doctors remained on the steps, in spite of the pelting rain. Then the woman said something under her breath and in Russian to Jaska, and Jaska turned and told the men and women peace officers to please be ready, to draw close to the house.
The men were none too sure about following his orders, obviously. And a great many hung back, though a few in uniforms Reuben didn’t recognize came forward and even tried to follow Jaska inside.
“You may come in, Doctor,” said Reuben. “But the men must remain outside.”
Suddenly the sheriff came forward, very much objecting, and Reuben, saying nothing, allowed him into the great room as well.
He shut the door, and faced them—the sheriff, the family, Simon Oliver, the girlish and pretty Dr. Cutler, and the two formidable Russians who appraised him with eyes of stone.
Dr. Cutler suddenly let out a cry. She’d picked Stuart out of the shadows by the fireplace and rushed to him with her arms out.
“I’m all right, Doctor—,” Stuart said. He put his big ungainly arms around her immediately. “I’m sorry, I’m just so sorry. I don’t know what happened to me last night, I just somehow had to get out of there, and I broke the window—.”
His words were drowned out as the female Russian doctor and Grace began to shout at each other, the Russian woman insisting, “This does not have to be difficult, if your son and this boy will simply come!”
There was something grindingly presumptuous and vicious in her tone. Reek of malice.
Simon, looking very wet and very worn out in his usual gray suit, but more than anything outraged and militant, grabbed Reuben’s arm and said, “The fifty-one-fifties are bogus. They had these papers signed by paramedics who aren’t even here! How can we verify these signatures, or that these people even know you two boys?”
Reuben only vaguely knew what a “fifty-one-fifty” was, but he could tell it was a legal paper of commitment.
“Now you can see perfectly well that there is nothing wrong or violent about this young man, both of you,” Simon continued in a quaking voice, “and I warn you, if you dare to attempt to take him or that boy there out of this house by force—.”
With a steely firmness, the Russian doctor turned and introduced herself to Reuben. “Dr. Darya Klopov,” she said in a thick accent, with a slight raise of her white eyebrows, her eyes narrowing as she extended her small naked hand. Her smile was a grimace baring perfect porcelain teeth. The scent of deep resentment came from her, absolute insolence. “I ask only that you trust me, young man, that you trust my knowledge of these extraordinary experiences that you’ve had to endure.”
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Jaska. Another grotesque smile that was not a smile, and another thick accent. “And absolutely no one has to be harmed in this situation, where, you see, we have so many armed men.” His lips drew back menacingly from his teeth as he said the words “armed men.” He turned anxiously to the door as he gestured, seemingly on the verge of opening it and inviting the “armed men” in.
Grace flew at the doctor with a volley of legal threats.
Jim, in his full black suit and Roman collar, had taken up a position directly beside Reuben, and now Phil came round and stood with him as well. Phil, looking professorial with his disheveled gray hair and rumpled shirt and crooked tie, was shaking his head, murmuring, “No, no, this is not going to happen. Absolutely not.”
Reuben could hear Stuart pouring out his heart to Dr. Cutler. “Let me just stay here with Reuben. Reuben’s my friend. If I can just stay here, Dr. Cutler, please, please, please.”
What do I do now?
“You see,” said Dr. Klopov unctuously, “this is a signed order entrusting you to our care.”
“And have you ever even laid eyes on the paramedic who signed this order?” demanded Grace. “They bought these two pieces of paper. They do not understand. They will not get away with this.”
“I can’t come with you,” Reuben said to the doctor.
Jaska turned and opened the door on the icy wind. He called out to the men.
The sheriff at once protested. “I’ll take care of that, Doctor. You just leave those men outside.” He immediately stepped up to the door. “You stay where you are!” he called out. A mild-mannered gray-haired man in his late sixties, he was plainly out of sorts with the whole predicament. He turned to Reuben now and appeared to rather theatrically take a good look at him. “If somebody could just explain to me in plain English why either of these two boys should be committed against their will, I would welcome that explanation because I don’t see the problem here, I really just don’t—.”
“Of course you don’t see it!” fired back Dr. Klopov, pacing in her thick black high heels, as though she needed the sound of them thonking on the oak parquet. “You have no sense of the volatile nature of the illness we’re dealing with, or our knowledge of these dangerous cases—.”
Simon Oliver raised his voice. “Sheriff, you should take those men and go home.”
The door was still open. The voices outside were getting louder. The scent of coffee wafted on the wind. Galton’s voice was mingled with the others, and from what Reuben could see, Laura was out there too in the rain serving the coffee in mugs from a large tray.
And where the hell are Felix and Margon? And what the hell do they expect me to do?
“All right!” declared Reuben. Again, he held up his hands. “I’m not going anywhere.” He closed the front door. “Sheriff, the last time I saw a paramedic was over a month ago. I don’t know who signed this paper. I picked up Stuart last night because the kid was lost and frightened. That’s Stuart’s doctor right there, Dr. Cutler. Granted, I s
hould have called somebody, notified somebody last night, but Stuart’s fine.”
With ugly patronizing facial expressions the doctors were shaking their heads, and pursing their lips, as though this was out of the question. “No, no, no,” said Dr. Jaska. “You are most certainly coming, young man. We have gone to great trouble and expense to see to your care, and you will come. Will you come peacefully or must we—.”
He stopped dead, his face going blank.
Beside him, Dr. Klopov turned pale with shock.
Reuben turned around.
Margon and Felix had come back into the room. They stood to the right side of the great fireplace, and beside them stood yet another of the distinguished gentlemen from the photograph, the gray-haired older-appearing Baron Thibault, the man with the very large eyes and deeply wrinkled face.
The men moved naturally and almost casually closer, as Grace stepped back and out of the way.
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Doctors,” said Baron Thibault in a deep well-assured baritone. “What has it been, exactly, would you say? Almost ten years?”
Dr. Klopov was inching backwards towards the door, and Jaska, who stood beside it, reached out, groping, for the knob.
“Oh, surely you’re not leaving,” Margon said. The voice was pleasant, polite. “But you’ve only just arrived, and as you said, Dr. Jaska, you’ve gone to so much trouble and expense.”
“You know these men?” Grace asked Margon. She gestured to the doctors. “You know what this is about?”
“Stay out of it, Grace,” said Phil.
Margon acknowledged both of them with small nods and an agreeable enough smile.
The doctors were petrified, and in a silent rage. The reek of evil was so seductive. The spasms were churning again in Reuben.
Felix merely watched, his face impassive and faintly sad.
Suddenly a riff of cries broke out beyond the door.
Jaska jumped back. And Klopov too was startled but recovered herself, firing a fierce malevolent look at Margon.
Something immense and heavy thundered against the door. Reuben saw it actually shuddering as the doctors scrambled to get clear of it, and the sheriff let out a shout.