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I SPENT THE REST OF the afternoon giving Marsford’s bedroom a thorough search. I rapped drawer bottoms until my knuckles ached. I gave several silverfish coronaries by flashing light into the cracks in the wood where they lived. I rattled furniture until the nails squeaked in protest, and I especially examined the Chinese bed inch by inch. Everything seemed to be rock solid. Since handmade items like the built-in cabinets had the best potential for trick hiding places, I went over each of them two and sometimes three times feeling the joints and generally poking around. The craftsmanship was as impressive as the finished pieces were beautiful. When I finally quit, I felt I had done everything possible to find any concealed treasure short of ripping the paneling apart. Marsford never would have planned for the destruction of such magnificent woodwork anyway.
The Englishman, Bandy, had become my Number One candidate for chief instigator. Going by the conversation I overheard, I felt fairly confident neither he nor his confederate had searched Marsford’s bedroom ahead of me. For the first time I allowed myself to believe I was closing ground with my competition.
However, I still needed something tangible for Calvique to act upon or else the pragmatic policeman would apologize me out of his office.
About six o’clock I made my security rounds in daylight, checking for signs of tampering everywhere I went. At eleven I followed the same route again, making an obvious show of my flashlight for anyone who might be watching.
Both efforts netted zilch, which both pleased and worried me. I withdrew to my room and wished I could relax with a cigarette and a brandy. But the cigarette wasn’t worth it, and I couldn’t afford to dull my senses.
At one in the morning I put on my darkest clothes and tennis shoes and hoped my mother hadn’t fed me all those carrots in vain. The flashlight was only for after I reached my destination, or for a weapon if I didn’t make it that far.
By the light of a quarter moon, the courtyard shadows appeared solid, and solid objects seemed transparent while the rustling treetops and gentle Mediterranean waves played games with my hearing. I stood in the chateau’s cloister training my senses until something live rubbed against my ankle.
Forget about stealth. It was the black cat, Coquin, of course, pleased to discover a friend at such a strange hour. I ushered him firmly on his way, but he protested so loudly anyone half awake now knew my location. When nothing else stirred after a few minutes, I resumed breathing.
I began to feel my way toward the farthest front corner of the chateau. More light might have kept me from walking into a column or stubbing my toe on a granite step, but the flashlight had to wait. The Roman tower was dangerous enough at noon; in the dark it would be deadly. I knew I was there when I reached the white sign Henri used to keep me away.
The tower’s crumbling stairs began at the left-hand edge of the tower’s base and rose several feet to a centered doorway. I had seen that a narrow landing continued around to the right where it met the top edge of the stone wall bordering part of the garden.
Checking the steps with my hands, I found them to be surprisingly solid, so solid that I questioned Henri’s frantic appeal to stay away.
Even the wooden door proved to be no problem. The latch lifted quietly and the hinge operated as if recently oiled, amazing for a building eleven hundred years old. My suspicion that a hideout within the chateau walls would serve the searchers well seemed to be valid. That it was forbidden to everyone else made the tower ideal.
A hand karate-chopped my neck then shoved me inside. Rather than landing on a floor, I seemed to fall for an eternity. When my chest finally encountered something solid, air exploded from my lungs. The pain snuffed me out like a candle.
When I awoke, I thought I was being stabbed. I reached out to stop the sadistic bastard but grasped only air. The pain was my own labored breathing, each lungful a troubled hiss, a fight to throw off the imaginary railroad tie on my chest. My right side seemed to be a puffy, wet mass of damaged flesh. Even in the dark my left hand could feel blood oozing from the wound in time with my heartbeat.
I had no energy to spare for anger or fear. My head throbbed, but my mind seemed to work okay. My right shoulder hurt like hell but that was nothing compared to my right side, which was impossible to ignore. Moving my right arm produced another thrill of pain, but bending that elbow prompted little more than a wince. You could say arms and legs felt mighty sorry for my chest, but if I didn’t suffocate to death, they would be happy to forget the whole thing.
Since my left arm had the most range and the least discomfort, I used it for reconnaissance.
The floor under me was a combination of powdery dust and rocks, and one of the tower walls was only a foot away. My lungs and ribs wanted to hold still until the pain stopped, but the rest of me opted to live. That meant getting myself out of the pit. Right now. Morning would be too late.
Merely rising to my elbow was dizzying, and it took several minutes to gather enough breath to heave my body up further. Even then, the pain nearly buckled my arm out from under me. Drawing in an excruciating quantity of air, I shoved myself up. Grunts and cries of pain echoed through the hollow tower until my back rested on the wall at last. At the time, I thought I’d just accomplished the most difficult thing I had ever done.
The exertion shortened my breath even more. I realized my right lung was either collapsed or full of blood. For the first time since Nam, I thought I might die.
Then I decided that was ludicrous. Who lives through a war and then suffocates in a filthy Roman ruin on the French Riviera? It just wasn’t right. I refused to let it happen.
That decided, exhausted, delirious Richard Quinn backed off and cold, calculating Richard Quinn took over. He assessed my resources and limitations and set about getting the job done.
An inventory of my pockets produced exactly four matches in the pack left over from the day I quit smoking. When I lit the first, a rat squeaked and ran for a hole in the wall. My brief appraisal of the floor confirmed it to be exactly what it felt like–dust and rocks with no flashlight or fuel in sight.
The second flame revealed blood on a jutting, jagged rock, the one that had caused my worst injury. It appeared to have broken off from the now crumbling interior stairway. Through the tear in my shirt I also glimpsed the foamy mixture of air and blood oozing from my wound.
Above me, the door was a distant ten feet away. I used the third match to study the stairs leading out, a route only to be crept up on hands and knees. But, of course, hands and knees were it for me anyway.
With the fourth match I lit the matchbook then tossed it toward the center of the rugged room.
The building might have been a cave for all it contained. Pigeon and bat droppings dotted the filthy floor except for an area in the center that had been recently trampled. I thought I could make out a rectangular impression about the size of the tin box I’d examined less than twenty-four hours ago, but the matchbook’s flame was dim, and I couldn’t be sure.
During its last flicker, I did notice a small, dust-covered slip of paper which blended almost totally with the floor. With a painful stretch I picked it up and shoved it into my pants pocket for later.
Then I turned my attention to more urgent matters.
The climb to the door was a nightmare of agony. Cold sweat chilled me until I was unable to stop shivering. Fatigue urged me to quit. I was remotely conscious of keeping my wound away from the filth by resting only on my left side, but in reality the pain was deterrent enough.
At the top the door swung wide on its oiled hinges and displayed the gray-blue sky of dawn. I inched my way down half the steps until my arms buckled under me and I rolled the rest of the way down like a dead cowboy in a B-western.
Pascaline’s scream woke me up, but not for long.