The Club Dumas

“You and I. Things have got rather complicated.” Corso snorted, angry. “It’s too early for jokes.” “Don’t be stupid.” She wrinkled her nose with a grave ex­pression. Despite her youth and boyishness, she looked differ­ent, older, and more self-assured. “I’m serious.”

She put her rucksack on the unmade bed. Corso gave it back to her and showed her the door. “Go to hell,” he said.

She didn’t move, just looked at him intently. “Listen.” Her light eyes were very near, like liquid ice, so luminous against her tanned skin. “Do you know who Victor Fargas is?”

Corso caught sight of his own face in the mirror above the chest of drawers, beyond the girl’s shoulder. He was open-mouthed, like an idiot. “Of course I do.”

It had taken him several seconds to answer, and he was still blinking, confused. She waited, not entirely satisfied with his response to her words. It was obvious that her mind was on other things,

“He’s dead,” she said.

She said it neutrally, as if she’d just told him that Fargas had coffee for breakfast or went to the dentist. Corso took a deep breath, trying to take in what she’d just said. “That’s not possible. I was with him last night. He was fine.” “Well, he’s not now. He’s not fine at all.” “How do you know?” “I just do.”

Corso shook his head, suspicious, and went to get a cigarette. En route he saw the flask of Bols, so he took a swig. The gin hitting his empty stomach made him shudder. He waited, forc­ing himself not to look at the girl until he’d inhaled his first puff of smoke. He wasn’t at all happy with the part he was being forced to play this morning. He needed time to think. “The cafe in Madrid, the train, last night, and now this morning here in Sintra...” He counted on the fingers of his left hand, his cigarette in his mouth, his eyes half closed be­cause of the smoke. “That’s a lot of coincidences, don’t you think?”

She  shook  her  head  impatiently.   “I  thought  you  were smarter than that. Who said anything about coincidences?”

“Why are you following me?”

“I like you.”

Corso didn’t feel like laughing. He twisted his mouth. “That’s ridiculous.”

She looked at him for a time, thoughtfully.

“I suppose it is,” she said at last. “You don’t exactly look breathtaking, always in that old coat and those glasses.”

“What is it, then?”

“Find another answer. Anything would do. But now get dressed, will you? We have to go to Fargas’s house.”

“We?”

“You and I. Before the police get there.”

the DEAD leaves crackled beneath their feet as they pushed the iron gate and walked up the path lined with broken statues and empty pedestals. The gray morning light cast no shadows, and above the stone staircase the sundial still showed no time. POSTUMA necat. The last one kills, Corso read again. The girl had followed his gaze.

“Absolutely true,” she said coldly and pushed the door. It was locked.

“Let’s try the back,” suggested Corso.

They went around the house, past the tiled fountain with the chubby stone angel, eyes empty and hands cut off, water still trickling from its mouth into the pond. Surprisingly com­posed, the girl—Irene Adler or whatever her name was—went ahead of Corso in her blue duffel coat, the rucksack on her back. She walked, her long supple legs in jeans, her stubborn head tilted forward with the determined air of someone who knows exactly where she is going. Unlike Corso. He had over­come his doubt and let the girl lead him. He was leaving the questions for later. Clearheaded after a quick shower, carrying in his canvas bag all that was important to him, he could think of nothing now but Victor Fargas’s Nine Doors, book number two.

They got in without difficulty through the French window that led from the garden into the drawing room. On the ceiling, dagger aloft, Abraham was still watching over the books lined up on the floor. The house seemed deserted.

“Where’s Fargas?” asked Corso.

The girl shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“You said he was dead.”

“He is.” After glancing at her surroundings, at the bare walls and the books, she picked up the violin from the sideboard and looked at it curiously. “What I don’t know is where he is.”

“You’re lying.”

She placed the violin under her chin and plucked at the strings before putting it back in its case, unhappy with the sound. Then she looked at Corso.

“Oh ye of little faith.”

She was smiling again, absently. To Corso her composure, incongruously mature, seemed both deep and frivolous. This young lady behaved according to a strange code of conduct, motivated by things that were more complex than her age and appearance let one suppose.

Suddenly, these thoughts—the girl, the strange events, even the supposed corpse of Victor Fargas—all left Corso’s mind. On the threadbare rug that depicted the battle of Arbelas, between books on satanic arts and the occult, there was a gap. The Nine Doors was no longer there.

“Shit,” he said.

He muttered it again as he knelt beside the row of books.