The Forgotten Room

Quietly, he rose to a kneeling position and pushed on the door. There was a low rattle on the far side and he stopped immediately. Something was in the way. What it was, he couldn’t be sure — but he could not afford to let it tip over. He would have to try sliding it forward, bit by bit.

With exquisite care, he applied pressure to the base of the shaft’s upper door. The rattle from the far side continued, but he could sense from the resistance that it was being pushed out of the way. Several long moments of anxious effort and the little door was open wide enough for him to fit through it.

Beyond lay darkness. Ducking first his head, and then his shoulders, through the opening, he slipped out of the dumbwaiter shaft and rose gingerly to his feet. Feeling his way through the darkness, he pushed the dumbwaiter door closed, then replaced the object in front of it — his fingers told him it was a display table of some kind — back against the wall. And then, muffling his flashlight once again, he switched it on.

The space was familiar to him — he’d entered it once, years before, on the mistaken assumption that it had been a men’s bathroom. It was actually a small gallery across the main hall from the dining room, presently used by waiters and waitresses for storing linens. Logan wiped grease and grime from his hands. He guessed, based on his unpleasant climb, that when the mansion had been owned by Edward Delaveaux, this room had likely been the butler’s and maid’s pantry for receiving and arranging dishes sent up from the kitchen.

Logan slowly approached the door of the small room, opened it a crack, and peered out. Beyond a short side passage, and across the rich carpet of the main corridor, was the entrance to the dining room — and, a few yards beyond it, the sloping staircase that led up to the second floor.

He had to check on Kim. If he was being pursued, then it was entirely possible that she was under threat as well. He stepped out into the hall and began moving toward the staircase.

Almost immediately, he shrank back. One of the three men — the one with the tweed jacket — was standing several yards down the hallway. The man had his back to Logan, and he was speaking into a radio: clearly, the radios had better reception than cell phones within the thick walls of the Lux mansion.

Logan looked from the man to the staircase and back again. Even if he did get past, there was no telling if others were in wait for him upstairs. He would have to find another way to get to Kim.

He looked around in desperate uncertainty. Where to, now? Where…?

And then, even as he asked himself the question, his eye fell upon another door. It lay at the other end of the side passage, and in the indirect light its small panes of glass were unrelieved rectangles of black.

It was an emergency exit, leading outside.

Logan didn’t hesitate. Turning away from the main corridor, he made his way to the door; made sure it was not alarmed; opened it as quietly as he could manage — and then slipped out into the howling storm.

50

Even though he’d driven through the hurricane on his way back to Lux, the redoubled, elemental fury took him by surprise. The wind pressed him against the dressed stone of the mansion’s facade, ballooning his jacket up and away from his shoulders, threatening to pluck the contents from his pockets. Within seconds he was soaked to the skin.

Forcing himself back to the exit, he peered carefully around the doorjamb and through the little panes set into the door. The short corridor beyond was empty; no armed figure was rushing toward him. He had made his escape from the building without arousing notice.

He leaned back against the building. But now what?

He glanced down the gray sweep of lawn toward the ocean. The waves were beating against the rocky coast with a fury he had never before seen; spume and spindrift tumbled angrily upward to mix with the lashing curtains of rain, blending together so completely that it was impossible to tell where sea left off and rain began. The rain, driving straight into his eyes, stung badly and he turned away, shielding his face with his hands.

He glanced to the left. He could barely make out the vast bulk of the East Wing, standing like a Gibraltar against the fury, a few dim lights glowing on its three floors. He could make his way to the edge of the wing, then sneak around it to the parking lot, and…

And what? Might not his car be under surveillance, as well? He’d seen no sign of it upon his arrival — if he had, he’d have been more wary about meeting Laura Benedict in her basement office — but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. These men were pros, and they weren’t just here to send a message…not anymore.

Even if he managed to make it to his car, and get away from his place — what then? What about Kim? As he’d raced through the labyrinthine underground labs of gleaming steel, as he’d waded through the dim chambers and grottos of the ancient subbasement, he’d cursed himself for not thinking first about her safety. Instead of telling her to round up the transmitting devices for safekeeping, he should have ordered her to go someplace, anyplace, where she could hide.

Then again, he thought, Kim was a smart woman. She might have seen the strangers, put two and two together, gone to ground somewhere….

But this thought was immediately answered by another: Pamela Flood had been a smart woman, too….

He drove this from his mind as best he could. There was something else to consider: the Machine itself. If he simply ran away, there would be nothing to stop Laura Benedict and the team of Ironhand enforcers from dismantling and making off with the equipment, under cover of the storm. After all, Lux was all but deserted. True, she’d said she was still days away from completing the work she needed to finish miniaturizing the technology to make it suitable for transport…but after what had just transpired, that impediment wouldn’t stop her. She’d take whatever she could, now, and then disappear.

As he stood there, in the black shadow of the vast facade, the words he’d spoken to Benedict in her laboratory came back to him. This device of yours is…unthinkable. To drive somebody, perhaps an entire army, insane…There are reasons chemical weapons were outlawed. Just how long do you think it will take for the technology to be leaked — and the same diabolical ordnance used against our own men and women?

The device had to be destroyed. She still needed it if she was to complete her work — she’d said as much. But what could he do? He was unarmed, facing a trained squad of killers. As he stood there in the shelter of the mansion’s south wall, he patted at his pockets, even though he knew the gesture was futile. A flashlight. A kitchen knife. A digital recorder. A cell phone…

As his hand closed over this last item, the vaguest outlines of a plan began to come together. And as it did, his heart began to accelerate once again. He took a deep breath, then another, looking around to make sure the coast was clear. But there was only him and the howling storm.

Logan pushed himself away from the protective wall and forced himself out into the wrath of the elements. Turning his back to the East Wing, he began plodding forward. The hurricane was like an animal force, trying its best to spin him around, force him back, prevent him from staggering on. He took one step at a time, laboring against the appalling force of nature. As he did so, the shriek of the storm intensified, as if outraged by his attempts to defy it. His injured leg, and the blow to his head, throbbed and protested with the effort. Once, his feet slipped from under him and he fell face forward into the sodden grass. It was so thick with water that, for a crazy moment, he felt as if he was lying at the lip of a lake. It would have been easy, so very easy, just to close his eyes and drift into unconsciousness. Instead he forced himself to his feet once again, but was almost immediately knocked down once more by the hurricane. The howling of the banshee wind rang painfully in his ears. Against all reason, the tempest was still escalating.