Chapter 32
CHAMBERS BEGAN TO SPEAK, but Pendergast stopped him.
“But presently, we are almost out of time. There’s a possibility there may be another victim imprisoned in the subcellar—which I believe lies beyond that steel door at the end of the hall—who will have a most unhappy time of it if we don’t rescue him. ”
“Yeah.”
Leaving the lab, Chambers followed Pendergast out into the hall. The fire above them was louder now; it, along with Pendergast’s penlight, provided the only illumination. Chambers took a breath and another. He felt lightheaded. “We might be running out of oxygen,” he said.
“All the more reason to hurry.”
Pendergast had to work on the next door’s lock a bit longer than the others.
It led to yet another stone staircase, descending into what Chambers guessed must once have been some sort of root cellar.
It ended at another blank steel door, which Pendergast once again focused his attention on.
This lock resisted even longer, but finally it swung open.
Beyond was a padded cell. A tall, muscular man lay unconscious on the floor, loosely shackled by his ankles, bleeding from two deep slashes in his right arm.
“What the hell?” Chambers said, staring.
Pendergast drew in his breath sharply. Chambers turned to see the agent staring at the figure. He had never seen the junior agent so completely dumbfounded.
“Proctor!” Pendergast murmured.
“You know this man?”
Pendergast rushed over to the unconscious figure and grasped him in his arms, lifting him into a sitting position. Chambers came over and helped get him upright. He was heavy as hell.
Pendergast looked the man over quickly, examining the wounds in the arm and the blood still seeping from them, ascertaining the man’s condition. “Proctor. Proctor!” He shook the man and slapped his face gently.
The man groaned, and Pendergast smacked him again, harder. The man’s eyes fluttered open.
“Water,” came the faint voice.
Chambers rose and ran up the stairs. He could now feel the air in the subcellar being drawn past him in the updraft of the fire. It occurred to him they wouldn’t burn up down there—they’d suffocate.
In the operating room he filled a bowl with water and carried it back down. Pendergast had already gotten the shackles off the prisoner’s ankles. The man fumbled with the bowl and drank the water down, spilling half of it.
“Stand up,” said Pendergast sternly, still holding the man, guiding him to his feet. “Move.”
The man staggered forward and nearly fell.
Pendergast held him upright. “Straighten up, soldier. Forward, on the double.”
They led the man out of the padded room. The man was slow, confused, and wobbly, but able to move up the staircase to the regular basement.
“Stay here with him,” said Pendergast to Chambers. “Keep him upright. I need to find another way out.”
Pendergast disappeared down the corridor. The air, vibrating strongly now, was thin and hot, and Chambers could feel the lightheadedness growing. The sound of the fire thundered through the walls.
A minute later, Pendergast returned, carrying his muddy suit coat, which he had evidently cut into strips and soaked in water.
The man was breathing hard and Chambers, too, felt a thickness in his head and lungs.
He followed Pendergast and the big man down the hall and into a small storage room to the back, where a half-hidden door was open to a steep, narrow staircase.
They climbed up, stopping to gasp several times for air.
At the top was a landing and a small door, smoke creeping through the cracks.
“That door,” said Chambers, “is just going to put us into the fire.”
“It’s our only choice.” He handed Chambers a wet strip of his jacket and prepared another for the big man—who was still moving like an automaton.
“Breathe through it,” said Pendergast. “Stay low, move fast, and never stop. Ready?”
He threw the door open.
There was a sudden roar and surge of heat so violent it temporarily pushed them back.
Chambers recovered his balance and plunged into the swirling smoke and flame, following the dark form of Pendergast and the big man.
The heat was unbearable, and Chambers could hear his hair crisping.
He ran, staying low, holding his breath and then breathing through the wet cloth.
It felt like his entire body was on fire.
And then, suddenly, they were out of it. He stumbled forward, gasping and coughing. The flames and smoke roared above them, but there was now a layer of fresher air below.
“Don’t stop!” Pendergast cried.
They continued running forward at a crouch. Pendergast kicked open another door; they passed through it and he slammed it shut.
They were finally free of the smoke and flames.
They halted: coughing, bent over, gasping for air.
When Chambers had recovered, he saw they had entered some sort of ancient, decaying library.
The whole house was shaking from the fire, and one wall of books was smoking, the light of the fire peeking through widening cracks.
“No time,” said Pendergast. “Follow me.”
Again they ran. The big man seemed to be rousing himself and moving at a less shambolic rate.
They passed through another door at the far end of the library and unexpectedly found themselves in a rude kind of chapel, with hard benches for pews and a cross and podium at the front for sermons.
Behind the podium, on a kind of improvised altar, stood an elaborate votive candle stand, arranged in an upside-down V, with five candleholders on each side and one at the top center, containing the guttered and dribbling remains of ancient candles.
Above all was an amateurishly painted scroll with the words THE SLUGGARD CRAVES AND GETS NOTHING, BUT THE DESIRES OF THE DILIGENT ARE FULLY SATISFIED.
Chambers stared: there was something strikingly familiar in the V formation, now outlined by the fierce backlighting of the fire through chinks in the decrepit rear wall.
And then the epiphany hit: that formation was the same pattern of the eleven pricks the killer had made in the shoulders of his victims.
He turned and pointed, but Pendergast was already nodding. “Indeed. The source of the killer’s signature.”
A moment later they exited the side door of the chapel, which finally led them outside, into a graveyard behind the house.
Stumbling downhill among the overgrown tombstones, illuminated only by the mounting flames, Chambers finally collapsed in the rank grass, gasping air into his seared lungs, eyes weeping from smoke.
As his vision cleared, he watched as the roof beam of the great mansion broke with a crack like a rifle shot and, with a terrible groan that followed the echoes, surrendered itself to immolation by the whirlwind of fire.