by Neil Gaiman
“Good-bye,” said Richard. Then he closed the door and locked it. And, for the first time since he had lived there, he attached the security chain.
Mr. Croup, who had cut Richard’s phone line at the first mention of calling the police, was starting to wonder whether he had cut the right cord or not. Twentieth-century telecommunications technology not being his strongest point. He took one of the photocopies from Vandemar, and positioned it on the wall of the stairwell. “Spit!” he said to Vandemar.
Mr. Vandemar hawked a mouthful of phlegm from the back of his throat and spat it neatly onto the back of the handbill. Mr. Croup slapped the handbill hard onto the wall, next to Richard’s door. It stuck immediately and stuck hard.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? it asked.
Mr. Croup turned to Mr. Vandemar. “Do you believe him?”
They turned back down the stairs. “Do I Hell,” said Mr. Vandemar. “I could smell her.”
Richard waited by his front door until he heard the main door slam, several floors below. He started to walk down the hall, back toward the bathroom, when the phone rang loudly, startling him. He sprinted back down the hall and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” said Richard. “Hello?”
No sound came out of the receiver. Instead, there was a click, and Jessica’s voice came out of the answering machine on the table next to the phone. Her voice said, “Richard? This is Jessica. I’m sorry you’re not there, because this would have been our last conversation, and I did so want to tell you this to your face.” The phone, he realized, was completely dead. The receiver trailed a foot or so of cord, and was then neatly cut off.
“You embarrassed me very deeply last night, Richard,” the voice continued. “As far as I’m concerned our engagement is at an end. I have no intention of returning the ring, nor indeed of ever seeing you again. Bye.”
The tape stopped turning, there was another click, and the little red light began to flash.
“Bad news?” asked the girl. She was standing just behind him, in the kitchen part of the apartment, with her arm neatly bandaged. She was getting out tea bags, putting them in mugs. The kettle was boiling.
“Yes,” said Richard. “Very bad.” He walked over to her, handed her the HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? poster. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
She raised an eyebrow. “The photograph’s me.”
“And you are . . . Doreen?”
She shook her head. “I’m Door, Richardrichardmayhewdick. Milk and sugar?”
Richard was feeling utterly out of his league by now. And he said, “Richard. Just Richard. No sugar.” Then he said, “Look, if it isn’t a personal question, what happened to you?”
Door poured the boiling water into the mugs. “You don’t want to know,” she said, simply.
“Oh, well, I’m sorry if I—”
“No. Richard. Honestly, you don’t want to know. It wouldn’t do you any good. You’ve done more than you should have already.”
She removed the tea bags and handed him a mug of tea. He took it from her and realized that he was still carrying around the receiver. “Well. I mean. I couldn’t just have left you there.”
“You could have,” she said. “You didn’t.” She pressed herself up against the wall and peered out of the window. Richard walked over to the window and looked out. Across the street, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar were coming out of the bakery, and HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? was stuck in a place of prominence in its window.
“Are they really your brothers?” he asked.
“Please,” said Door. “Give me a break.”
He sipped his tea and tried to pretend that everything was normal. “So where were you?” he asked. “Just now?”
“I was here,” she said. “Look, with those two still around we have to get a message to . . .” She paused. “To someone who can help. I don’t dare leave here.”
“Well, isn’t there somewhere you could go? Someone that we could call?”
She took the dead receiver from his hand, wire trailing, and shook her head. “My friends aren’t on the phone,” she said. She put it back in its cradle, where it sat, useless and lonely. Then she smiled, fast and wicked. “Breadcrumbs,” she said.
“Sorry?” said Richard.
There was a little window in the back of the bedroom that looked out on an area of roof tiles and gutters. Door stood on Richard’s bed to reach it, opened the window, and sprinkled the breadcrumbs around. “But I don’t understand,” said Richard.
“Of course you don’t,” she agreed. “Now, shush.” There was a flutter of wings, and the purple-gray-green sheen of a pigeon. It pecked at the breadcrumbs, and Door reached out her right hand and picked it up. It looked at her curiously but made no complaint.
They sat down on the bed. Door got Richard to hold the pigeon, while she attached a message to its leg, using a vivid blue rubber band that Richard had previously used to keep his electricity bills all in one place. Richard was not an enthusiastic holder of pigeons, even at the best of times. “I don’t see the point in this,” he explained. “I mean, it’s not a homing pigeon. It’s just a normal London pigeon. The kind that craps on Lord Nelson.”
“That’s right,” said Door. Her cheek was grazed, and her dirty reddish hair was tangled; tangled, but not matted. And her eyes . . . Richard realized that he could not tell what color her eyes were. They were not blue, or green, or brown, or gray; they reminded him of fire opals: there were burning greens and blues, and even reds and yellows that vanished and glinted as she moved. She took the bird from him, gently, held it up, and looked it in the face. It tipped its head on one side and stared back at her with bead-black eyes. “Okay,” she said, and then she made a noise that sounded like the liquid burbling of pigeons. “okay Crrppllrr, you’re looking for the marquis de Carabas. You got that?”
The pigeon burbled liquidly back at her.
“Attagirl. Now, this is important, so you’d better—” The pigeon interrupted her with a rather impatient-sounding burble. “I’m sorry,” said Door. “You know what you’re doing, of course.” She took the bird to the window and let it go.
Richard had watched the whole routine with some amazement. “Do you know, it almost sounded like it understood you?” he said, as the bird shrank in the sky and vanished behind some rooftops.
“How about that,” said Door. “Now. We wait.”
She went over to the bookshelf in the corner of the bedroom, found a copy of Mansfield Park Richard had not previously known that he possessed, and went into the living room.
Richard followed her. She settled herself on his sofa and opened the book.
“So is it short for Doreen?” he asked.
“What?”
“Your name.”
“No. It’s just Door.”
“How do you spell it?”
“D-o-o-r. Like something you walk through to go places.”
“Oh.” He had to say something, so he said, “What kind of a name is Door, then?”
And she looked at him with her odd-colored eyes, and she said, “My name.” Then she went back to Jane Austen.
Richard picked up the remote control and turned on the television. Then he changed the channel. Changed it again. Sighed. Changed it again. “So, what are we waiting for?”
Door turned the page. She didn’t look up. “A reply.”
“What kind of a reply?” Door shrugged. “Oh. Right.” It occurred to Richard then that her skin was very white, now that some of the dirt and blood had been removed. He wondered if she were pale from illness, or from loss of blood, or if she simply didn’t get out much, or was anemic. Maybe she’d been in prison, although she looked a bit too young for that. Perhaps the big man had been telling the truth when he had said she was mad. “Listen, when those men came over . . .”
“Men?” A flash of the opal-colored eyes.
“Croup and, um, Vanderbilt.”
“Vandemar.” She mused for a moment, then nodded. “I suppose you could call them men, ye
s. Two legs, two arms, a head each.”
Richard kept talking. “When they came in here, before. Where were you?”
She licked her finger and turned a page. “I was here.”
“But—” He stopped talking, out of words. There wasn’t anywhere in the apartment that she could have hidden herself. But she hadn’t left the apartment. But—
There was a scratching noise, and a dark shape larger than a mouse scurried out from the mess of videotapes beneath the television. “Jesus!” said Richard, and he threw the remote control at it as hard as he could. It crashed into the videos with a bang. Of the dark shape there was no sign.
“Richard!” said Door.
“It’s okay,” he explained. “I think it was just a rat or something.”
She glared at him. “Of course it was a rat. You’ll have scared it now, poor thing.” She looked around the room, then made a low whistling noise between her front teeth. “Hello?” she called. She knelt on the floor, Mansfield Park abandoned. “Hello?”
She flashed a glance back at Richard. “If you’ve hurt it . . .” she threatened; then, softly, to the room, “I’m sorry, he’s an idiot. Hello?”
“I’m not an idiot,” said Richard.
“Shh,” she said. “Hello?” A pink nose and two small black eyes peered out from under the sofa. The rest of the head followed, and it scrutinized its surroundings suspiciously. It was indeed much too big to be a mouse, Richard was certain of that. “Hi,” said Door, warmly. “Are you okay?” She extended her hand. The animal climbed into it, then ran up her arm, nestling in the crook of it. Door stroked its side with her finger. It was dark brown, with a long pink tail. There was something that looked like a folded piece of paper attached to its side.
“It’s a rat,” said Richard.
“Yes, it is. Are you going to apologize?”
“What?”
“Apologize.”
Maybe he hadn’t heard her properly. Maybe he was the one who was going mad. “To a rat?”
Door said nothing, fairly meaningfully. “I’m sorry,” said Richard, to the rat, with dignity, “if I startled you.”
The rat looked up at Door. “No, he really does mean it,” she said. “He’s not just saying it. So what have you got for me?” She fumbled at the rat’s side, and pulled out a much-folded piece of brown paper, which had been held on with something that looked to Richard like a vivid blue rubber band.
She opened it up: a piece of ragged-edged brown paper, with spidery black handwriting on it. She read it and nodded. “Thank you,” she said, to the rat. “I appreciate all you’ve done.” It scampered down onto the couch, glared up at Richard for a moment, and then was gone in the shadows.
The girl called Door passed the paper to Richard. “Here,” she said. “Read this.”
It was late afternoon in Central London, and, with autumn drawing on, it was getting dark. Richard had taken the Tube to Tottenham Court Road and was now walking west down Oxford Street, holding the piece of paper. Oxford Street was the retail hub of London, and even now the sidewalks were packed with shoppers and tourists.
“It’s a message,” she said, when she gave it to him. “From the marquis de Carabas.”
Richard was sure he had heard the name before. “That’s nice,” he said. “Out of postcards, was he?”
“This is quicker.”
He passed the lights and the noise of the Virgin megastore, and the shop that sold souvenir London police helmets and little red London buses, and the place next door that sold individual slices of pizza, and then he turned right.
“You have to follow the directions written on here. Try not to let anyone follow you.” Then she sighed, and said, “I really shouldn’t involve you this much.”
“If I follow these directions . . . will it get you out of here faster?”
“Yes.”
He turned into Hanway Street. Although he had taken only a few steps from the well-lit bustle of Oxford Street, he might have been in another city: Hanway Street was empty, forsaken; a narrow, dark road, little more than an alleyway, filled with gloomy record shops and closed restaurants, the only light spilling out from the secretive drinking clubs on the upper floors of buildings. He walked along it, feeling apprehensive.
“ ‘ . . . turn right into Hanway Street, left into Hanway Place, then right again into Orme Passage. Stop at the first streetlight you come to . . . ’ Are you sure this is right?”
“Yes.”
He did not remember an Orme Passage, although he had been to Hanway Place before: there was an underground Indian restaurant there his friend Gary liked a lot. As far as Richard could remember, Hanway Place was a dead end. The Mandeer, that was the restaurant. He passed the brightly lit front door, the restaurant’s steps leading invitingly down into the underground, and then he turned left . . .
He had been wrong. There was an Orme Passage. He could see the sign for it, high on the wall.
ORME PASSAGE W1
No wonder he hadn’t noticed it before: it was scarcely more than a narrow alleyway between houses, lit by a sputtering gas-jet. You don’t see many of those anymore, thought Richard, and he held up his instructions to the gaslight, peering at them.
“ ‘Then turn around thrice, widdershins’?”
“Widdershins means counterclockwise, Richard.”
He turned, three times, feeling stupid. “Look, why do I have to do all this, just to see your friend. I mean, all this nonsense . . .”
“It’s not nonsense. Really. Just—humor me on this, okay?” And she had smiled at him.
He stopped turning. Then he walked down the alley to the end. Nothing. No one. Just a metal garbage can, and beside it something that might have been a pile of rags. “Hello?” called Richard. “Is anyone here? I’m Door’s friend. Hello?”
No. There was no one there. Richard was relieved. Now he could go home and explain to the girl that nothing had happened. Then he would call in the appropriate authorities, and they would sort it all out. He crumpled the paper into a tight ball, and tossed it toward the bin.
What Richard had taken for a pile of rags unfolded, expanded, stood up in one fluid motion. A hand caught the crumpled paper in midair.
“Mine, I believe,” said the marquis de Carabas. He wore a huge dandyish black coat that was not quite a frock coat nor exactly a trench coat, and high black boots, and, beneath his coat, raggedy clothes. His eyes burned white in an extremely dark face. And he grinned white teeth, momentarily, as if at a private joke of his own, and bowed to Richard, and said, “De Carabas, at your service, and you are . . . ?”
“Um,” said Richard. “Er. Um.”
“You are Richard Mayhew, the young man who rescued our wounded Door. How is she now?”
“Er. She’s okay. Her arm’s still a bit—”
“Her recovery time will undoubtedly astonish us all. Her family had remarkable recuperative powers. It’s a wonder anyone managed to kill them at all, isn’t it?” The man who called himself the marquis de Carabas walked restlessly up and down the alley. Richard could already tell that he was the type of person who was always in motion, like a great cat.
“Somebody killed Door’s family?” asked Richard.
“We’re not going to get very far if you keep repeating everything I say, now, are we?” said the marquis, who was now standing in front of Richard. “Sit down,” he ordered. Richard looked around the alley for something to sit on. The marquis put a hand on his shoulder and sent him sprawling to the cobblestones. “She knows I don’t come cheap. What exactly is she offering me?”
“Sorry?”
“What’s the deal? She sent you here to negotiate, young man. I’m not cheap, and I never give freebies.”
Richard shrugged, as well as he could shrug from a supine position. “She said to tell you that she wants you to accompany her home—wherever that is—and to fix her up with a bodyguard.”
Even when the marquis was at rest, his eyes never ceased moving. Up, dow
n, around, as if he were looking for something, thinking about something. Adding, subtracting, evaluating. Richard wondered whether the man was quite sane. “And she’s offering me?”
“Well. Nothing.”
The marquis blew on his fingernails and polished them on the lapel of his remarkable coat. Then he turned away. “She’s offering me. Nothing.” He sounded offended.
Richard scrambled back up to his feet. “Well, she didn’t say anything about money. She just said she was going to have to owe you a favor.”
The eyes flashed. “Exactly what kind of favor?”
“A really big one,” said Richard. “She said she was going to have to owe you a really big favor.”
De Carabas grinned to himself, a hungry panther sighting a lost peasant child. Then he turned on Richard. “And you left her alone?” he asked. “With Croup and Vandemar out there? Well, what are you waiting for?” He knelt down and took from his pocket a small metal object, which he pushed into a manhole cover at the edge of the alley and twisted. The manhole cover came up easily; the marquis put away the metal object and took something out of another pocket that reminded Richard a little of a long firework, or a flare. He held it in one hand, ran his other hand along it, and the far end erupted into scarlet flame.
“Can I ask a question?” said Richard.
“Certainly not,” said the marquis. “You don’t ask any questions. You don’t get any answers. You don’t stray from the path. You don’t even think about what’s happening to you right now. Got it?”
“But—”
“Most important of all: no buts,” said de Carabas. “And time is of the essence. Move.” He pointed into the depths revealed by the open manhole cover. Richard moved, clambering down the metal ladder set into the wall beneath the manhole, feeling so far out of his depth that it didn’t even occur to him to question any further.
Richard wondered where they were. This didn’t seem to be a sewer. Perhaps it was a tunnel for telephone cables, or for very small trains. Or for . . . something else. He realized that he did not know very much about what went on beneath the streets of London. He walked nervously, worried that he’d catch his feet in something, that he’d stumble in the darkness and break his ankle. De Carabas strode on ahead, nonchalantly, apparently not caring whether Richard was with him or not. The crimson flame cast huge shadows on the tunnel walls.