[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
no cars parked near the main entrance.
Still, it had to be the place, Candy thought. There were no other
buildings nearby, except for a large barn. Candy moved closer. He
found some fresh horse droppings and heard the neighing of horses from
the barn.
He had them. Even if none of the kidnappers were present, he would at
least be able to get the boy. He hoped that was the case. One against
six were bad odds. When he called in the reinforcement officers, they
could take care of the men. The only thing that mannered now was the
child.
He went around behind the barn and waited for someone to come out of
the house. No one did. Either he hadn't been spotted in the tall
unkempt grass, or no one was home. Good. There was a chance. The
house would probably be locked, but he could find a way in.
He just hoped the boy was still alive.
Candy stepped cautiously onto the gravel. He was nearly at the house
when he heard the barn doors swing open and saw two men on Arabian
stallions ride out, screaming a high, keening wail. They charged at
him, drawing long curved swords as their horses raced toward him.
"Police!" he shouted, reaching for his identification.
The men did not stop. Candy felt himself break into a sweat as the
animals pounded closer. He could see their flaring nostrils and the
eyes of the black-clothed horsemen as they swung their curious weapons
in the air above their heads, preparing to strike.
At the last moment, Candy's nerve failed him. He dived to the ground
and rolled just as the horse's hooves came down on the spot where he
had been standing. While the horsemen reined in the animals to come at
him again, Candy saw in an upstairs window of the house the face of a
tall thin man with jet black hair and a beard and recognized him as the
maniac he had arrested four years before and sent to Maplebrook. "You
son of a bitch," he whispered, and the man answered with a slight
inclination of his head. His eyes were smiling.
Candy ran, but there was no place to run. He had only gone a few steps
when the horsemen were on him. The first blow cut deeply into his
throat. Candy felt the searing pain of it, felt his head thrown wildly
back. He was even able to see the unbelievable gush of blood shoot out
of his neck before the second sword smashed against the side of his
head, breaking the thin bone over his right temple.
He crumpled to the ground, dead before his body touched the gravel.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The pain in Arthur's side abated with time. He had been brought back
from the basement to the upstairs sitting room where he had spent the
night; the tall man himself had ordered the boy out of his sight after
Arthur's rejection of him. There he waited, wondering about the
strange phenomenon that he'd witnessed. He had been someone else, had
actually lived as another person once, long ago, and for a time--for
the briefest time, during the nonsensical half-dream that had come upon
him in his imagined pain--he had remembered that faraway life. I was
Arthur of England, he thought. He knew that if it had happened to
anyone else, he would have found the story laughable. Everyone wanted
to be a king, right? Even girls. But his recollection had not been
that of a king; only of a man on the verge of death. He remembered
only the pain and the delirious vision of a vanishing Christ as he felt
the life ebb out of his body. Now he was no longer a king, or even a
man. He was just a scared ten-year-old boy. He wrapped his arms
around his knees to ward off the fear, but the fear only grew. You
could have said yes to him, a voice inside him said. You could have
told him you'd side with him. He would have made you a king, or at
least somebody important-- No. No, he could never have agreed. After
seeing the face in the vision, it was all too clear what Saladin was.
It was better to die. He just wished he wasn't so afraid. "Help me,"
he whispered. Saladin had told him to call on the wizard. That was
Merlin in the stories. "Merlin . . ." He felt foolish. The story
had seemed real in the eerie setting of the basement filled with
treasures, but now . . . "Merlin," he tried again. There was no
answer. He lay his head against his knees. Now I lay me down to
sleep, he thought. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die .
. . Suddenly the frayed cord of a lamp caught his eye.
Holding his breath, he went around the room and turned on all the
lamps, then watched them. They flickered. Old wiring. The house had
been built before the advent of electricity; the wiring had probably
been put in later. He could picture the beautiful Victorian mansion
then, illuminated by the modern miracle of electric lights. He doubted
that it had been replaced since then. All of the fixtures in the place
seemed so old, as if whoever owned the house had not wanted to change
them. A short in one of the circuits might be enough to knock out most
of the electricity in the house. Arthur went quickly into the bathroom
to look for a razor blade, but there was nothing in the medicine
cabinet except for an old glass bottle of moldy aspirin. Working
quickly, muffling the noise with a towel, he rapped the aspirin bottle
against the cabinet sink until it broke. Then he took a shard of the
broken glass back into the parlor. He unplugged one of the old lamps
and cut off its cord, then sliced it lengthwise to separate the two
wires inside and shaved the insulation from them with small, careful
strokes. When he was done, there was an inch and a half of bright,
bare copper showing at the end of each wire. With one eye on the door,
Arthur folded back the ends of the wires to double them up and make
them thicker, then jammed them into the slots of a wall socket. He
dropped the other end of the cord, the end with the plug on it, behind
the small covered table where the lamp sat. The plug was live now, and
touching it would give anyone a nasty shock. Later, when the time was
right, he would push the plug into yet another socket. If he was
correct, the twisted surge of power created would short out the whole
circuit. Maybe the whole building. He hoped so. It was his last
chance. He heard someone at the door and ran across the room back to
the sofa. He hid the piece of glass under a cushion. One of Saladin's
men looked in on him silently, then withdrew at once. Arthur closed
his eyes and waited.
It was 6:55. More than two hours had passed since Hal spoke with
Candy's assistant, and Candy still had not arrived back at the police
van. Hal tracked the inspector as far as the empty house on Abelard
Street. Several of the people who lived on the street told Hal that
they had spoken with the Scotland Yard man earlier, but none of them
knew where Candy might have been heading next. Where had the bastard
gone? In the Bureau, the head of an investigation would be suspended
for taking off without letting anyone know where he was going. But
then, Hal thought more kindly, Candy was probably used to working
alone.
Higgins and Chastain would hardly be the inspector's idea of great
backup. And who else did he have? Constable Nubbit? Hal finally
resigned himself to the knowledge that, in Candy's place, he would have
done the same. There was one more thing he could do without Candy's
assistance. He took out a crude map he had drawn after speaking with
Matilda Grimes. It showed the location of the old house behind the
amusement-park grounds. It was right. From where the house stood, if
the map was accurate, it was close enough to the remains of the castle
for an easy attack through the woods. He drove to the spot where
Higgins and Chastain had found the horses' hoofprints, then walked
through the two-mile stretch of trees and brush. Beyond it was a
rolling meadow shaped like an enormous bowl surrounding the house. The
amusement park would be to the west, he reasoned, behind another
fortification of trees.
There were no people in sight at the house, but two large horses grazed
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]