Devil's Workshop

He smoothed his long hair and walked down the hall. He had seen a coin purse on the chimneypiece and he found it again. He weighed it in the palm of his hand before slipping it into his pocket. He picked up the knife from the chair in the parlor and took it with him. He did not say good-bye to Elizabeth. If the homeowner chose to be rude and uncommunicative, Jack could match him. He put the knife in his medical bag on the floor and took a tall hat from the rack by the front door. He quietly snicked back the latch and opened the door, stood for a moment in the stream of sunlight that rushed in to greet him, then stepped outside and pulled the red door almost shut behind him. He took the four steps along the path in the little front garden, swinging his black leather bag by the handle, and went out by the gate. He passed a little girl playing across the lane. She stuck her tongue out at him and he wondered how it would look lined up next to the other tongues he had nailed to the mantel in Elizabeth’s parlor. But he smiled at the ill-mannered little girl and tipped his hat to the old lady he saw peering out the window next door. He walked away down the lane and turned the corner, and was gone.

35

Day put his hands up. It was a universal gesture, an automatic reaction to the gun pointed at him. Adrian March moved backward a step. His foot brushed up against a skull, and it rolled across the ground toward Day, zigzagging as its cheekbones took its weight, first left, then right, then left again. It bumped against the toe of Day’s shoe and he looked down. It was very small, a child’s skull, two front teeth missing and an open hole at the top of the head. Some sort of crushing blow had shattered the bone, exposing the brain and ending a life much too early. Day looked back up at March and took a deep breath. The air was damp and musty.

“I don’t understand, Adrian. What is this?”

March smiled, a wry expression with no amusement in it. He glanced down at the revolver as if surprised to find it in his hand. “This isn’t, uh. . Yes, well.” He took his finger out of the trigger guard and slipped the revolver into the pocket of his jacket. “I’m not going to shoot you, Walter. That was never. . Just didn’t want you to shoot me.”

Day lowered his hands but stayed where he was, his back to the empty alcove in the tunnel wall, the shiny new shackles waiting patiently in the darkness behind him. “Why would I shoot you?”

“Because it’s time I told you a thing or two, and I feel fairly sure you won’t like hearing about some of it. At least, not at first. But I want you to listen to me and weigh what I have to say. Weigh it carefully and consider who it is you’re talking to. You know me well.”

“And you should know that you can talk to me without a gun.”

“You might still try to arrest me,” March said. “That will be harder to do if I have your Colt.”

“Adrian? You know what’s going on down here, don’t you? These catacombs have been made over into a prison of some sort. A dungeon. You had something to do with that.” He kept his voice flat. It wasn’t a question.

Clearly Adrian March was involved in something terrible and dangerous.

“Not just me,” March said. “There are many of us.”

“All morning you’ve tried to stall the manhunt. You didn’t want me to come down here.”

“I did, but I wanted to prepare you for this first. I wish you’d listened to me.”

“Are those shackles for me, then? Are you going to lock me up down here?”

Day had a brief vision of his unborn child as an adult, squatting in a poorhouse somewhere, with no knowledge of his missing father. It was a surprising vision, and it awakened an emotion in Day that he didn’t recognize.