The Club Dumas

Milady gestured vaguely. “They’re smart.” A quick look at La Ponte. “One of them, anyway.”

Rochefort nodded. His eyes half-closed, he seemed to be an­alyzing the situation. “This complicates things,” he said. He took off his hat and threw it on the bed.

Liana Taillefer smoothed down her skirt and stood up with a sigh of agreement. Corso half turned toward her, tense and hesitant. Then Rochefort took his hand out of his coat pocket, and Corso deduced that the man was left-handed. The discovery didn’t do him much good—the left hand held a snub-nosed revolver, small and dark blue, almost black. Meanwhile, Liana Taillefer went over to La Ponte and took the Dumas manuscript from his hands.

“Now call me a whore again.” She was so close, she could have spat in his face. “If you have the guts.”

La Ponte didn’t. He was a born survivor. His intrepid-harpooner act was reserved for moments of alcohol-induced eu­phoria. “I was just passing through,” he said placatingly, wanting to wash his hands of the whole business.

“What would I do without you, Flavio?” said Corso, resigned. La Ponte looked injured. “You’re being unfair,” he said, and went and stood by the girl, which must have seemed to him the safest place in the room. “From a certain point of view, this is your adventure, Corso. And what’s death to a guy like you? Nothing. A formality. Anyway, you’re getting paid a fortune. And life is basically unpleasant.” Looking down the barrel of Rochefort’s revolver, he put his arm around the girl’s shoulder and gave a melancholy sigh. “I hope nothing happens to you. But if it does, it’ll be harder for us: we have to go on living.” “Traitor.”

La Ponte looked saddened. “My friend, I’ll ignore that last remark. You’re overwrought.”

“Of course I’m overwrought, you sewer rat.”

“I’ll ignore that too.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“I get the message, old buddy. Friendship is made up of little touches like that.”

“Nice to see you’ve kept your team spirit,” said Milady caustically.

Corso was thinking fast, even though there was nothing he could do. No amount of thinking could get the gun out of Rochefort’s hand, although it wasn’t pointing at anyone in par­ticular. Rochefort seemed rather halfhearted, as if just showing the gun was all that was needed to get the desired effect. But however intense Corso’s desire to settle a few scores with the man with the scar, he didn’t possess the technical skill to do so. With La Ponte not in the running, the girl was his only hope of shifting the balance of power. But unless she was an extremely accomplished actress, he couldn’t hope for anything on that flank. Irene Adler had shaken herself free of La Ponte’s arm and sat down on the window ledge, from where she ob­served them all with inexplicable indifference. She seemed de­termined to stay out of it.

Liana Taillefer went over to Rochefort, holding the Dumas manuscript, delighted to have retrieved it so quickly. Corso found it strange that she showed no similar interest in The Nine Doors, which still lay inside the canvas bag at the foot of the bed.

“What do we do now?” he heard her whisper to Rochefort. To Corso’s surprise, Rochefort looked unsure. He moved the revolver from side to side, as if he not knowing where to point it. Exchanging a long and meaningful look with Milady, he took his right hand out of his pocket and passed it over his face, hesitant. “We can’t leave them here,” he said. “We can’t take them with us either,” she said. He nodded slowly. Judging by his renewed grip on the re­volver, his indecision vanished. Corso felt his abdominal mus­cles tense as Rochefort aimed the gun at him. He tried to make some sort of syntactically coherent protest, but all he managed was an indistinct, guttural sound.

“You’re not going to kill him, are you?” asked La Ponte.

“Flavio,” Corso managed to say in spite of the dryness in his mouth. “If I get out of this, I swear I’ll smash your face in. Completely.”

“I was just trying to help.”

“Better help your mother get off the streets.”

“OK, OK, I’ll shut up.”