Chapter 5
I freeze in place, completely at a loss as to what to do other than wait and see whom the footsteps belong to. With luck, it’s someone who can help me, or at least explain what the hell is going on.
If not…there is a window, letting in what looks to be late-afternoon light. I don’t care for the idea of jumping out and risking a broken leg or worse, but maybe I can at least draw attention to myself by yelling.
The footsteps pause before the door. My heart climbs to my throat as someone quietly tries the handle…and finds it unlocked.
It swings open and Adrian Evans steps through, a pistol in his hand.
I’m torn between relief that it isn’t Myers or Hart standing there, and the shock of the pistol, even if it is currently pointed at the floor. I put my hands up automatically: “Don’t shoot!”
Evans’s handsome face turns flinty. “This is for my protection—you don’t think I’m stupid enough to track you without some way of defending myself, do you?”
Track me? Defend himself?
“I’m a pacifist,” I protest. I’d had enough of killing in the war, enough of violence enacted by my own hands and others’. “What’s going on? Where am I? Why are you tracking me? The date on the newspaper—”
“Drop the pretense, Mr. Caine,” he says, a look of distaste in his clear brown eyes. “You know why I’m here.”
“I really don’t.” I’m trying his patience, I can tell, but I don’t know what else to do. “Please, just—”
“The Key of Mithras.” He takes a step forward, and I step back from the anger rolling off of him. “You’ve led me on a merry chase, Caine, but it ends here. My employer would prefer not to get the police involved, but at this point that’s entirely up to you.”
The police—maybe they could help. “Yes! Please, call the police. I-I need help.”
His gun comes up, aimed just to one side of me, and I freeze a second time in as many minutes. “What game are you playing?”
“No game!” My hands had started to lower, but I stick them back up again.
“Please, just listen to me! I don’t have any idea what’s going on.
The last thing I remember, I was at Hart’s Leap, it was May 18 of 1926, and that butler, Myers, injected me with some sort of sedative.
And now I’m here, and the date on the paper… is this…is this some sort of prank?”
It’s a feeble hope, and it dies when I see the look in his eyes. “No prank.” But he lowers the gun and frowns a bit as he looks me over. “Are you trying to pretend you’ve lost your memory?”
“Pretend? No. Memory…no, that’s impossible. I can’t have just forgotten over a year. Can I?”
I don’t know why I’m asking a man with a gun for reassurance. But to my surprise, he lets the weapon drop all the way to his side. “Are you claiming you don’t remember who I am?”
“Not at all—we shook hands.” I definitely recall that much. “Mr. Adrian Evans—you were at Hart’s Leap inquiring about a painting, I think? For a selective employer. Oh, and you drive a Studebaker.”
His lips purse. “I’m not sure whether I should call the police or an asylum.”
Could this loss of memory be some new phase of my shell shock? Maybe I should surrender myself to an asylum.
What I really want to do is go home. Back to my apartment in Greenwich, where I can draw all the curtains and drapes and curl up in the darkness.
My apartment—Greenwich—New York—James. I need to call James. He’ll help me.
“I need a telephone,” I say aloud. “I have to call my partner at the bookshop. James Olden.”
Evans gives me a quizzical look. “You quit your job and sold your share in the business.”
I tense. I’d never leave Forgotten Folios, not so long as the shop was open and running.
Which means Evans is lying to me. This is all some sort of bizarre set up, perhaps enacted at the behest of the peculiar Mr. Hart.
His mansion was where I’d met Evans, after all—their encounter was some strange act set up just for me.
Evans, the offer of a drink, the secret room, the attack by Myers, waking up here with the date on the newspaper helpfully circled…
This is all some trick born from a rich man’s twisted mind. I’ve been drugged, brought to this location, presented with a fake newspaper, then assaulted with wild accusations and lies before I could get my bearings. None of this is real.
But my hair…
Part of the fakery. Why anyone would go to such lengths to torment me…
But no, it was meant to have been James in this predicament, not me.
He must have inadvertently crossed Zebulon Hart without even realizing it.
Perhaps it had been something as simple as outbidding him at a book auction.
And Hart, with enough money to get creative with his vindictiveness, had constructed this scenario.
“I’m going to the police,” I tell Evans. “And I suggest you go with me and confess your part in all this…chicanery. Aid me now, and I’ll make it clear that Mr. Hart is the motivating force, and you’re just an employee who doesn’t know anything.”
He stares at me in confusion. “You think I’m in Mr. Hart’s employ?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” If he’s going to keep up the act, to hell with him.
Certain now he won’t shoot me, I go to the window, hoping to get my bearings. The panes are too dirty to see out of, so I heave it open, letting in a breath of cold air seasoned with salt.
Nothing is familiar—the building I’m in appears to be part of a warren of old, crumbling structures that had no doubt been grand a century ago.
Now houses have become tenements, tough men with secretive expressions loiter in front of brick warehouses with boarded-up windows, and lines of laundry crisscross the alleyways.
No matter—someone will be able to direct me to the nearest police station. And if Evans tries to prevent me from leaving, I’ll yell out the open window until either help comes or—more likely—Evans loses his nerve and flees before the authorities arrive.
I turn my back on the window to tell him I’m leaving, and feel the slightest stirring of my hair, before the all-too-familiar sound of a gunshot rings out.