The Sorcerer's House (31 page)

Dear Millie:

If memory serves, I told you in my last that I had promised a reporter (Cathy Ruth) that I would investigate the cellar in her company. A friend called while I was at dinner to tell me that she had arrived and was wandering through my house. I reacted to that as I suppose you or George or anyone else would; I might very well have given her permission to wander through my house, but I had given no such permission. Toby, a friend of my manservant's, was trying to find and expel her. All this resulted, I am very sorry to say, in our losing your husband. Let me explain.

Concerned by Cathy's disappearance, Doris Griffin returned to my home with me. The friend who had called me was not to be found.
Nor was Toby. Nor was Cathy. After talking it over, Doris and I agreed that the most likely explanation was that Cathy had set out to explore the cellar on her own, and that Toby had tracked her there.

The cellar doors at the back of the house stood wide, which we took as confirming our conclusion. I changed into rough clothes, and loaned Doris an old shirt and a pair of Dockers. She had worn high heels to dinner, but there was nothing either of us could do about that; my shoes would have been far too large. After loading both my pistols, I offered her one. She declined, so I thrust them both into my belt.

Not long after Doris and I had changed, we encountered my manservant and apprised him of the situation. He was greatly perturbed and wished to accompany us, although he is lame and limps along with a crutch. I ordered him to remain upstairs near the telephone instead. I would have my cellular telephone and would call the house's landline number should we require assistance.

"Oh, Bax!" you will say. "Can't you see that these elaborate precautions were absurd?"

If I were there with you, Millie--and I have often wished I were--I would talk in just the same way. I am here, instead; and I have been dealing with this wonderful (often frightening) house for weeks. My precautions were not excessive, as you shall see. They were insufficient.

Our flashlights soon found the washer and dryer my manservant had caused to be installed in the cellar. They are in a small room near the door.

There was a wall behind us and another to our left; otherwise that cellar seemed a vast cavern. Here and there stood tables and shelves, some empty or nearly so, others heaped with all sorts of objects veiled in dust.

There were cobwebs everywhere, and most were filthy with dust. I will try not to write too much about them, but they were a constant irritant to which we never grew accustomed. They got onto our faces and into our hair. They clung to our clothes and our hands. From time to time, our flashlights revealed hairy spiders as large as saucers; they fled the light.

Far ahead (indeed it sounded impossibly far) I heard the excited
yapping of a small dog. Once something held my jeans near the ankle and tried to pull me back.

Doris screamed and dropped her flashlight. I turned mine on her. A rat that looked larger than her head was clutching her hair. I clubbed it with my own flashlight, and it dropped to the floor and scuttled away.

She clung to me and wept. I embraced her and did everything I could think of to comfort her. I know that you do not care for Doris, Millie, and know, too, that she is no paragon. Yet I do not believe I have ever pitied anyone except myself quite as much as I pitied her then.

When at last she was a little calmer, she said, "Get me out, Bax. Please! Just get me out of here."

I tried. Or as I ought to say, we tried, for Doris picked up her fallen flashlight and helped me look for the long flight of wooden steps by which we had descended into that fearful cellar.

At last, she thought she had found it. I knew that she had not. I recalled the wall behind those we had come down, and I saw that there was no wall there; but they led up, plainly back to the ground floor, and that seemed to me all that we could hope for and more. To confess the truth, I scarcely noticed that the frantic yapping of the small dog seemed nearer as we mounted the high, uneven steps. (I must explain here, Millie, that I supposed the dog we heard to be my manservant's little terrier, which proved to be the case.)

We had nearly reached the top when I heard a woman scream; it was not Doris, but someone on the other side of the door at the top of the stairs.

"That's her, Bax!" Doris shouted. "It's got to be!"

She was at once wrong and right.

The door was locked. I shook the knob, tried to kick it open, and flung myself against it with all my strength; it gave not a hair's width.

"Shoot it!" Doris urged me. "Shoot the (expletive deleted) lock!"

I told her that shooting locks worked on television and in films, but nowhere else unless the shooter had a powerful shotgun.

"Try, damn it! Try!"

I did, and the echoes that my shot woke in that cellar are something I shall never forget.

"Push it! Push hard!"

The bullet had shattered the wood near the lock. I threw myself against the door once more, and it gave.

In the candlelit room beyond the doorway, a muscular dwarf of surpassing ugliness grappled a half-naked woman larger, darker, and substantially heavier than Cathy Ruth. I drew my other pistol and shouted for him to stop.

He dropped her, planted one foot upon her, kicked at the frantically barking dog, and grinned at Doris. He had the largest mouth, and the largest teeth, I have ever seen; below the waist, I shall not describe him. "Welcome, my lovely lady. Oh, you are
so
welcome. Come here."

She shrank back, clinging to me.

"Quorn will break you. Quorn will teach you to answer the lightest touch of his whip. You'll like it, too. Yes, you will! You'll kiss the lash, I promise. You'll see."

I wanted to say, "I believe your name was Quilp when last I heard of you," but I did not. Instead, I pointed toward his collar. "That's steel from the look of it, and there's still a bit of chain hanging from it. Haven't I seen you before?"

"You see the maggots in your own eyes, fool."

"I don't think so. Not long ago, you were chained to Ieuan's door."

He cursed Ieuan roundly, ending with: "He's the only son of snot I've ever seen filthier than you are."

"You're quite correct." I leveled my other pistol. "I am filthy. So is Doris, but we'll bathe and change clothes and be clean. Your filth is within you. If it were gone, you'd collapse."

Behind him, a woman gasped, "Please, Mr. Dunn! Oh, please!"

"Think I'm afeared of your popgun, fool?"

I pulled back the cock. "You had better be."

"They call me Ironskin." He advanced, still grinning, and I pulled the trigger. The priming powder flared in the pan, but the pistol did not fire.

The fat woman on the floor shrieked, "Shoot! Shoot!" and the dwarf stopped to laugh.

It enraged me, Millie, as few things in my life ever have. I dropped
the useless pistol into my pocket, and pointed both index fingers at him as though I held modern revolvers. I intended to shout, but perhaps I screamed--I cannot be sure.
"Get out of here, you devil! This is my house! Out! I don't want you here!"
With much, much more in the same vein.

The blood drained from his face, leaving it a dirty gray. He backed away. "Sorry, sir! I meaned no harm! No harm at all!" He took a few more steps backward, knuckling his forehead, and fled. I ought to have been amazed, but I was raging and there was no room for it.

Behind me, Doris gasped, "Bax! What the hell. . . ?"

We helped the fat woman to rise. I expected tears, but she looked every bit as warlike as I felt. "Do you know me, Mr. Dunn?"

I shook my head. "I haven't had the pleasure."

"We've met, Mr. Dunn, but it was in the spirit world. I am Madame Orizia."

"Of course! I apologize. I should have known you at once."

"You saved me from that beast, Mr. Dunn. I could not be angry even if you deserved it. To prove my gratitude, I will charge no fee. None! I must ask you to compensate my travel costs, however. My straitened circumstances require it."

"They're not refundable," I said.

"Precisely." She was asking my indulgence.

Doris said, "I'm Doris Griffin," and the two women shook hands.

Madame Orizia managed a rather savage smile. "Let us hope we meet again under more pleasing circumstances."

"I'm in real estate, and I've been told over and over that this house is haunted. I never believed it." Doris turned to me. "Could we have the boy next time, Bax? The one who drops things? I think I'd like him better."

"I'm sure you would." I sighed. "I'd rather have his brother. His brother had that fellow chained up, though he seems to have broken his chain." I was shaking, and tried to relax.

We found Cathy Ruth at the back of the room, securely bound with scraps of rope and strips of rag. The big camp knife I had bought as I would have bought cufflinks proved its worth again; I might have used
it earlier to threaten the dwarf, but that thought had never crossed my mind.

Cathy whispered to Doris, and Doris said, "He raped her. We've got to get her to a hospital."

I agreed. An unbroken door promised an exit from the room. I was leading the three women toward it when it was thrown wide by Winker. Cathy screamed, Doris cursed, and Madame Orizia grunted.

Winker knelt, bowed her head, and held out a pillow of scarlet silk upon which rested an ancient sword. "This is for you."

Madame Orizia gasped and gripped my arm. "Is that a spirit?"

I was too unsettled to be polite. "Of course not!"

Winker looked up. "It is a blade of spirit, Bax-san. It's the Fox Sword. I present it to you. Accept it, please."

I did and she rose, tucking the pillow beneath her arm. "This is a new reign. There's a new emperor now."

"What emperor?" I wanted to draw the sword and examine it, but good manners prevented me.

Winker ignored my question. "Once in each reign we present the Fox Sword to a hero-friend."

It made me stammer, Millie. I will not write all the stammering, but stammer I did. "I'm your friend, Winker--God knows I'm your friend, but--"

Doris told me loudly, "And a hero!"

Madame Orizia whispered, "You may not refuse the gift. Who is this geisha?"

Winker's eyes twinkled. "This was the weapon of the Great Fox when the Kami were young. The weapon of many a hero."

Cathy said, "Oh, God! He got my camera."

I put the other pistol into another pocket, and Winker helped me position the long Japanese sword we put through my belt, edge up.

We might readily have become lost in the house if Winker had not hurried us back to the familiar butler's pantry, and from there to the living room and out through the reception room and across the porch onto the dark front lawn.

Doris said, "I'm going to drive Cathy to the hospital. Okay?"

I nodded and thanked her.

"Then I'm going home for a stiff drink." She paused. "A shower. And bed. I'll phone you in the morning."

Madame Orizia pointed. "That is my car, which I have rented at the airport. If you could kindly lend me--lend m-m-me . . ."

I put my arm around her shaking shoulders. I was filthy and she was naked, and we must have looked like fools, which is what the dwarf had called me; but it did not feel foolish at the time.

The old man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. "We must procure some covering for the lady, sir."

I nodded, and he called, "Toby!"

It brought my footman, who proved to be short, wiry, and very erect. I said, "Thank you, Toby. I appreciate your help, and I'm sure Madame Orizia here does, too."

A fresh car pulled into the driveway, blocking Doris, who had just bundled Cathy into hers. She yelled, "What the (expletive deleted) is this?"

"It's George," I told her. "It's my brother George." I had recognized him, thanks to the interior lights that came on in his car when he got out. I tried to hug him, which he would not permit.

"Who the hell are all these women, Bax?"

Doris yelled, "We've met already and I'd rather not do it again. Move your goddam car so I can take this girl to the emergency room." When he ignored her, she backed up until her bumper banged his and made a U-turn on my front lawn, driving over it to Riverpath Road.

Tightly buttoned into one of my shirts, Madame Orizia would clearly have liked to present George with her card. "You are the husband of Mrs. Dunn. I am her psychic. You may require a psychic, George Dunn."

He stared at her, then looked around at the dark lawn and darker house. "There was a Jap girl here, too. What happened to her?"

"I am staying at the Hilton," Madame Orizia told him. "You, also, are staying at the Hilton. Should you desire to consult me, you can ask the hotel operator to connect us. Should I be gone--"

"Balls! Why the hell should I need a psychic?"

"Because you are this man's brother. Because you stand here, before this house of his."

I said I would ask George to move his car so she could get out.