The Wanderer in Unknown Realms (5 page)

I woke with a start. It was still dark, and only the ticking of a clock disturbed the silence.

But there was no clock in the room.

I sat up. The sound was coming from the other side of the bedroom door, which I had closed—and, yes, I admit it, locked—before going to bed. As I listened, it became clear that it was more a clicking than a ticking. I lit my lamp and gripped the poker, kept close at hand for any such eventuality. I climbed from the bed and padded across the floor as softly as I could. The sound began to increase its tempo until, just as I reached the door, it stopped, and I heard what seemed to be footsteps moving swiftly away. I unlocked the door and pulled it open. Before me stood only the empty hallway, illuminated as far as the stairs by my lamp. Beyond was darkness. I squinted into the gloom but could discern nothing.

I looked at the door. The wood around the lock had been picked away, leaving it splintered and white, as though someone had been trying to expose its workings. I reached down and rubbed a finger against it. A splinter caught on my flesh, causing me to gasp. I took it between my teeth and pulled it loose, then spat it on the floor. A tiny jewel of blood rose from the wound.

From the shadows there came the sound of sniffing.

“Who's there?” I said. “Who are you? Show yourself!”

There was no reply. I moved farther into the hallway. The
darkness retreated a little farther with each step that I advanced, and I was reminded uncomfortably of the bathwater slowly disappearing from the tub until the creature in the water had no option but to expose itself before fleeing. Two steps, four, six, eight, the shadows before me giving way to light, the shadows behind me growing, until, when I reached the stairs, the darkness made its stand. It seemed to me that a deeper blackness was apparent there, and this did not move. It was larger than a man, and slightly hunched. I thought I could discern the shape of its head, although the flickering of the lamp made it difficult to tell, and its form blurred into the shadows at its edges, so that it was at once a part of them and apart from them. Within it were the reflections of unseen stars. It turned, and where its face should have been I had an impression of many sharp angles, as though a plate of black glass had dropped and been frozen in the first moment of its disintegration. I felt blood trickle from the cut in my finger and drop to the floor, and the sniffing commenced again.

I backed away, and as I moved the shadows advanced once again, and the dark entity moved with them. Faster now they came, and my light grew increasingly ineffectual, the darkness encroaching upon its pool of illumination, slowly smothering it from without. Soon it would be but a glimmer behind the glass, and then it would be gone entirely.

I flung the poker into the darkness. I acted without thinking, operating purely on instinct, aiming for that mass of shards and angles. The poker spun once in the air, and the heavy handle struck at the center of the black form. With a sound like a million delicate crystals shattering in unison, the shadows rippled in response to some concussive force. I was thrown backward and struck my head hard against the floor, but before I lost consciousness I thought I saw that deeper blackness collapse in upon itself, and a hole was briefly ripped in the fabric of space and time. Through it I glimpsed unknown constellations and a black sun.

And the face of Lionel Maulding, screaming.

MRS. GISSING
arrived shortly after seven, an older man behind her whom I took, correctly as it turned out, to be Mr. Willox. They found me awake and seated at a table in the library, a cup of tea steaming before me and more in the pot nearby. Mrs. Gissing seemed rather put out by this, as though in venturing to provide for myself I had usurped her natural place in the universe and, more to the point, threatened her livelihood, for if men began to make cups of tea for themselves then soon they might well attempt to cook meals, and do laundry, and next thing poor Mrs. Gissing and her kind would find themselves out on the streets begging for pennies. As if to ensure that this would not come to pass without a struggle, she prepared to bustle her way to the kitchen to make bacon, eggs, and toast, even though I assured her that I was not hungry.

“Did you not sleep well?” she asked.

“No, I did not,” I said, then ventured a question. “Have you ever spent the night in this house, Mrs. Gissing?”

I should, perhaps, have phrased the question a little more delicately, as Mrs. Gissing appeared to feel that her reputation as a widow of good standing was being impugned. After some awkward apologies on my part, she chose to take the question in the spirit in which it was asked, and confessed that she had never spent a night under Mr. Maulding's roof.

“Did he ever complain of noises, or disturbances?” I asked.

“I'm not sure what you mean, sir.”

I wasn't sure what I meant, either. The mind plays odd tricks, often to protect itself from harm, and it had already begun the process of consigning the events of the previous night to that place between what we see and what we dream.

“There was something in my bathtub last night,” I said. “It was a creature of some sort.”

Willox spoke for the first time.

“A rat?” he said. “We've had them, sir. They find ways into old houses like this. I'll lay down some poison.”

“No, it wasn't a rat. To be honest, I'm not sure what it was. It fled down the plug hole as the water level dropped. It was more of a crustacean, I think.”

“A crustacean?”

“Like a crab, or a lobster.”

Mrs. Gissing looked at me as though I were mad, as well she might have done. Willox appeared uncertain, and could well have been considering whether people in London might enjoy a sense of humor different from, and stranger than, his own.

“Who would put a lobster in your bath?” said Mrs. Gissing. “Certainly not I.”

She seemed ready to take umbrage once again, so I assured her that I was not accusing her of being in the habit of putting lobsters in the bathtubs of strange men.

“And then,” I continued, “I was woken by what appeared to be a presence in the house.”

“A . . . presence?” said Willox.

“Yes. I can't describe it any better than that.”

“Are you talking about a ghost, sir?”

“I don't believe in ghosts,” I said. “Did Mr. Maulding believe in ghosts?”

“I can't recall him ever mentioning the subject to me.” He turned to Mrs. Gissing, who shrugged and shook her head.

“I ask because he seems to have recently begun building a library of the occult, which suggests that something might have excited his interest in such matters. He never mentioned disturbances in the house to you?”

“No.”

“Did he appear distressed in recent weeks, or seem tired and anxious to you?”

“No.”

“Do you think I'm mad, Mrs. Gissing?”

For the first time, she smiled. “I couldn't possibly say, sir. But this is a big, old house, and big, old houses are filled with creaks and groans that can seem strange to those who aren't used to them. I'll go and make you that breakfast, sir, and you'll feel better for it.”

“What about you, Mr. Willox?” I said. “Do you doubt my sanity?”

“I don't know you well enough to be certain, sir, but you look sane enough to me. But, like Mrs. Gissing says, it takes time to get used to a strange house, especially one as old as this. Even I sometimes find myself looking over my shoulder when I'm alone in it. It's the way of such places, isn't it? They wear their history heavily.”

I asked him about Mr. Maulding, but he could add nothing to what Mrs. Gissing had told me. He did ask about his wages, and I told him that I'd arrange for Mr. Quayle to make the payments. He seemed satisfied with that, although he might not have been had he known Quayle personally. Quayle rarely paid quickly, and Maulding's financial obligations to his domestic staff would have been very low on Quayle's list of priorities. The fact that he had paid me in advance was a sign of just how anxious he was to ensure Maulding's safe return.

Willox departed to work on the grounds. I heard the sound of bangs and crashes from the kitchen, and the smell of frying bacon began to waft, not unpleasantly, into the library. Surrounded by
these noises and scents, these indicators of normality, I became less and less certain of what I had witnessed the previous night. It was not unnatural. The undisturbed mind will tend to seek the most rational explanation for an occurrence: to do otherwise is to sow the seeds of madness. I had a troubled mind, fractured by experience, but I was not yet ready to surrender entirely to disquiet.

It was about this time that there came a knock on the door. Mrs. Gissing being otherwise occupied, I answered it myself and found the boy from the post office waiting with a telegram for me. I gave him a shilling for his troubles, having nothing smaller, and sent him on his way. I wondered if I could claim the shilling from Quayle as an expense. Perhaps I should have asked for a receipt.

The telegram was from Fawnsley. Its brevity made clear that he was paying by the word and counting every one. There was no greeting, merely an insincere expression of regret that no confirmed address could be found for Dunwidge & Daughter, although he had heard that they operated from somewhere near the King's Road in Chelsea, and a final, terse addition:

TEN THOUSAND POUNDS WITHDRAWN FROM MAULDING FUNDS LAST MONTH STOP NOT APPROVED BY QUAYLE STOP INVESTIGATE STOP

Ten thousand pounds was more than a small fortune. I had found a safe in Maulding's library, but I had no way of accessing its contents. It was possible that the money was still in there, but if Maulding had withdrawn it without going through Quayle, as he was perfectly entitled to do, even if it was not according to his habit, this suggested that the funds were required for some purpose that he did not wish to share with his lawyer, and one with a hint of urgency to it.

In my experience, unusual patterns of spending gave rise to certain speculations about the reason for them. For example, a
gradual seepage of money, slowly rising in quantity and instances of occurrence, might lead one to suspect a gambling problem; larger but more consistent sums suggested a newfound interest in a woman, or a tart. A single significant payment, particularly the kind that a man chose not to share with his lawyer, might be the consequence of an investment opportunity of dubious legality, or an effort to make a problem go away.

But from what I knew of Lionel Maulding, he had no particular interest in gambling or women and therefore was unlikely to be troubled by the problems that might arise from overindulgence in either. No, the ten thousand pounds suggested a purchase of some kind, but Maulding already had one huge house: he didn't need another. Neither was there a sudden proliferation of motorcars or yachts in the immediate vicinity of Bromdun Hall.

So: on what did Lionel Maulding spend his money as a matter of habit?

Lionel Maulding spent his money on books.

What kind of book, or books, would cost a man ten thousand pounds?

A rare book. A
very
rare book.

I ate my breakfast, confirmed the times of trains with Mrs. Gissing, and prepared to return to London.

I HAD
rarely, if ever, darkened the door of Stanford's, mainly because there was nothing in there that I felt qualified to read. I also feared this would be recognized the moment I crossed its threshold, and some officious clerk would appear from behind a counter piled high with works on physics and the nature of the atom, politely steer me back out of the door, and point me in the direction of a newsstand liberally stocked with illustrated weeklies. Instead, a very polite young man with the build of a good front-row rugby player showed me to a seat in a cluttered office and listened as I explained my purpose. I had brought with me some of the receipts for Maulding's recent purchases, but the handwriting on them was abysmal, and those words that I could read meant nothing to me.

The young man, who introduced himself as Richards, could have made a decent career out of the interpretation of ancient Sanskrit if the rugby or science didn't work out, for the errant handwriting gave him not a moment's trouble.

“That's Old Mr. Blair's hand,” he explained. “I've got to know it well over the years.”

“Is Mr. Blair available?” I asked.

His face assumed an awkward expression.

“I'm afraid Old Mr. Blair passed away some weeks ago.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“He was ninety-two.”

“I'm still sorry to hear it.”

“The original Mr. Stanford gave Mr. Blair his job,” Richards explained. “He was the last link to the store's foundation. His handwriting was always terrible, though.”

He returned his attention to the list.

“There's a definite pattern to these purchases,” he said.

“In what way?”