But the relief was short-lived. As time passed it became increasingly difficult to block out the closed-in feeling. Mercy found herself prowling the small room the way a zoo animal paced in its cage. The restless movement only seemed to make things worse, yet she could not stay still.
She studied the locking mechanism for a while, but that was futile and she soon gave up on the project. Croft might have been able to deal with the complicated lock system from the inside, but Mercy was a bookseller, not a locksmith.
Gladstone had said this room was not a trap for him but that it would be for anyone else. Mercy shuddered.
When the brief shudder became a more long-lasting shivering sensation, Mercy really began to worry about the state of her mind. It was cool in the vault but not cold. There was nothing wrong with the air, she told herself. Eventually she might need a bathroom, but she would deal with that problem when it cropped up. In the meantime, other than being confined she wasn’t in any great discomfort.
The little lecture didn’t help very much. Mercy kept prowling her cage and time passed. Isobel appeared once, unlocking the outer door and motioning Mercy silently into the downstairs bathroom. Mercy tried a few sarcastic remarks but her captor ignored them.
When they returned to the vault Isobel made Mercy stand to one side while Gladstone stepped inside the metal room and quickly removed a number of books from the shelves.
“I’ll take only the most exquisite volumes,” he told Isobel. “The rest can be replaced.” He left the vault.
Mercy didn’t like the sound of those cryptic words but she didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything useful to be said as far as she could see.
When the door was sealed shut again Mercy’s shivering began to occur more frequently and lasted for longer periods. As the time passed, the free-form anxiety that was preying on her mind grew to swamping proportions. The worst part of all this was not knowing where Croft was or what was happening to him. Hours passed. She dozed at one point but awoke with a start to find her anxiety worse than ever.
She would have given a great deal for even a small measure of Croft’s bottomless well of detached calm.
Throwing herself down into a corner, Mercy hugged her knees and stared straight ahead of her at a shelf of valuable old books. As she had in the helicopter she tried to find an inner point of focus. She needed to get herself under control. Whatever was destined to happen, she would be able to handle it better if she could find some strength and serenity. She needed to find the kind of calm Croft could find when he meditated.
Surely it couldn’t be that hard.
A few more minutes passed. Mercy was not aware of any great tranquilizing sense of serenity descending upon her, but her mind, for some reason known only to itself, began to play with stray thoughts.
Gladstone’s words hounded her. The vault was a trap for others but not for him. What was it Croft had said? Something about Gladstone always leaving an escape route for himself.
The vault locked on the inside. The only logical reason for such a bizarre arrangement was that Gladstone had constructed it with the idea that someday he, himself, might be in there.
And if he had planned for the eventuality of having to lock himself in he would most certainly have provided a way out.
Mercy took a deep breath and got to her feet. With no idea at all of what she was searching for, she started systematically going through the books on the shelves. Carefully she pulled each one off and stacked it on the floor.
She decided to start with the section of shelves Gladstone had not had an opportunity to show her on her previous trip into the vault.
Once or twice the book lover within her paused in wonder. She studied the elegant Latin on one title page and decided she was looking at a work by Thomas Aquinas. Mercy was awed by the precious book in her hand until common sense reminded her the volume was not going to do her much good in her present situation.
It was when she bent down to carefully place the volume beside the others on the floor that she lost her balance slightly and had to reach out to steady herself. She grabbed the upright support on the section of shelving and was startled when it moved a fraction of an inch.
Mercy released it instantly and stepped back. Then, tentatively she tried to move the upright again. This time nothing happened.
Maybe she was starting to hallucinate.
Mercy was giving serious consideration to that possibility when the vault door opened without any warning. The next instant the lights inside the small room were doused with a flick of the switch. Mercy whirled around, biting back a scream, and found herself confronting a solitary dark shadow.
“Croft?”
“Hush,” he said in the softest of whispers, “not a sound, Mercy.”
She went toward him instantly, a vast relief welling up inside her. There were a thousand things she wanted to say, most of them variations on the theme of how glad she was to see him, but she obeyed his instructions and kept silent.
He took her hand and turned to lead her out of the vault room.
They got three paces before the lights went on all around them. Isobel stood in the doorway that opened onto the garden room, the gun in her hand pointed not at Croft, but at Mercy.
“Did you think I would depend only on the electronics? Not a chance. Not when it comes to a man like you, Mr. Falconer. I’ve been waiting for you. Don’t move or I’ll kill your sweet Miss Pennington.”
The warning came too late. Croft was already moving. It happened so fast Mercy didn’t have time to think. She found herself spun around and shoved over the threshold into the vault. Croft was throwing himself in behind her, yanking the door closed behind him.
The heavy steel door clanged shut just as the sound of the gun exploded in the outer room. Croft found the light switch and bent quickly over the inside locking mechanism. “Isobel is going to have to learn that if she wants to make a success of herself in this line of work, she’s going to have to shoot first and brag later.”
“What are you doing?” Mercy demanded.
“Locking us in and Isobel out.” He pushed against a bar and when it didn’t give, he pushed a little harder. The metal bolt moved ponderously into position.
“I hate to point this out, but we’re trapped in here.” Mercy rubbed her shoulder. It was bruised from where she had hit a bookshelf when Croft had tossed her back into the vault. She decided this was not the time to complain about that point. She had another, more serious complaint to lodge. “Croft, you shouldn’t have taken the risk of trying to rescue me. Now we’re both stuck inside this damn vault.”
He turned around to face her, his gaze hooded and enigmatic. “Are you all right?”
She winced at the neutral tone of his voice. She hated it when he talked in that remote, detached manner. “I’m okay. I’m sorry, Croft.”
“What happened?” No accusations, no anger, just curiosity, as if he were a stranger inquiring about how she came to be there.
Croft was working, Mercy realized. When he was working that was the way he was. It was silly and dangerous to expect any sign of emotion from him at this stage of events.
“I got a message from Gladstone and Isobel through Dorrie,” Mercy explained quickly. “The implication was that you’d been captured and were being held until I brought the book. Like an idiot, I took the threat at face value and came running.”
“How did they know you still had the book?”
Mercy frowned. “I don’t know. They hadn’t got hold of you, so they couldn’t possibly have known…I guess it was my fault. When they said they had you I just assumed they knew you hadn’t brought the book. So I, uh, offered to trade it for you.”
“They wanted to get you here so they could use you to get their hands on me.”
“Yes. Ι figured that out on my own eventually.”
“Then they p
lanned to kill us both. Gladstone learned last time not to leave any loose ends.”
“That’s one of the things I admire about you, Croft. You don’t mince words in the crunch.”
“Not much point.”
“I guess not.” She watched him, wishing she could throw herself into his arms but sensing this wasn’t the moment. “What now?”
“Now we wait. It will be easy enough for us to open the vault but we can’t risk it until we know Isobel has gotten tired of sitting out front with her Smith & Wesson.”
“Well, if we’re just going to stand around and chat for a while, there’s something I want to show you.” Mercy put a hand on the shelf upright that had moved earlier. She told herself she would be just as cool and professional about this as he was. “I don’t know if it’s important, but it’s a little unusual and if this doesn’t work, I’ve got something else to tell you. Something about Valley. You’ll never guess—”
“Mr. Falconer. You have accepted my hospitality for the last time.” Erasmus Gladstone’s disembodied voice blared into the small room through a tiny speaker in the ceiling.
Mercy and Croft both looked up at the small grill. Mercy started to say something, but Croft silenced her by the simple expedient of putting his hand over her mouth. When her questioning eyes met his over the edge of his palm he silently shook his head. She nodded her understanding and he dropped his hand.
I know you can hear me, Falconer. I also know you think you are at least temporarily safe from Isobel’s gun. But there was never any intention of killing you with a bullet. Even our local sheriff might feel obliged to investigate thoroughly if you and Miss Pennington were found to have died from bullet wounds inside the vault. Fire is so much cleaner, don’t you think? I’ve had some experience with fire.”
Mercy’s eyes widened as she stared at Croft. He glanced at her and then answered Gladstone.
“Apparently fire wasn’t clean enough last time, Graves. I found you again, didn’t I?”
“Ah. So you do indeed know who I am. I was afraid of that.” There was a wealth of sad satisfaction in Gladstone’s voice. “While I waited for you this evening I gave a great deal of thought to that unfortunate incident on the island. And I had come to the probable conclusion that you might have been involved in that episode. Was it you? If so, you destroyed several million dollars’ worth of free enterprise three years ago. I still don’t understand how you did it. My men reported no sign of an assault force, no evidence of high-speed government chase boats, no helicopters or planes. It would have been impossible for any sizable group to have landed on my island and escape detection.”
“It’s dangerous to think in terms of impossibilities,” Croft said toward the intercom. He motioned to Mercy and mouthed the words, a question about what she was going to show him.
“You’re wrong, Falconer. I think in such terms all the time. I also think about possibilities. And I have analyzed what might have happened that night in the Caribbean. A large group could not have infiltrated my estate. Not without giving themselves away long before they got inside the walls. But it is just barely conceivable that one man might have gotten inside. You were that one man, weren’t you?”
Mercy pointed to the shelf upright and soundlessly explained that it moved. She took hold of it and tried to demonstrate. The upright stayed rigidly in place.
“Falconer?” Gladstone’s voice rang imperiously from the intercom grill. “You were the man who ruined everything for me three years ago, weren’t you? I want to know for certain. I do not like loose ends.”
“Neither do I.” Croft ignored Gladstone’s voice and concentrated on examining the shelving support. “Which way did it move?” he asked softly.
“Left. I stumbled and grabbed for it and it just sort of shifted a bit.” Mercy leaned forward and tried to wriggle the metal upright. “Gladstone told me once that this vault would be a trap for others but not for him. And you said he’d always have an escape route. So I started looking for one. It wasn’t like I had a whole lot else to do during the past few hours.”
Croft nodded. “Logical. After the close call on the island, he’d want to make certain he had his new escape routes well planned. There’s a reason he made it possible to lock this vault from the inside.”
“Falconer! Answer me, damn you.” Gladstone’s voice rose a notch.
“He’s getting upset,” Croft remarked, not bothering to lower his voice this time.
“He obviously has severe emotional problems,” Mercy said in a normal tone, sensing it would infuriate Gladstone to be discussed in clinical terms. “Maybe that’s true of all really evil men. They’re emotionally sick.”
“No,” Croft said with absolute certainty. “Gladstone knows what he’s doing. He’s made conscious choices all the way down the line. That’s why he can’t be forgiven or forgotten. He has to be destroyed.”
Gladstone’s voice roared through the grill. “You will both be dead soon, you know that, don’t you? Locking yourselves in the vault won’t do you any good.”
Croft stroked the upright as if it were a long-stemmed chrysanthemum. His fingertips moved delicately over the surface from top to bottom, probing, prodding and pushing with light pressure. When he reached the bottom section something gave slightly. “I need a little time to figure this out,” he muttered quietly. “We’ll have to keep him talking.”
Mercy nodded, reaching down to lift some of the valuable books off the shelf so Croft would have more room to work.
“You will answer me when I speak to you, Falconer,” Gladstone thundered.
“What makes you think you’ll get away free and clear this time?” Croft asked Gladstone carelessly.
“Last time the fire was an unexpected catastrophe,” Gladstone said eagerly. “But I learned from it. I learned how effective it was. Everyone thought I died in that fire, didn’t they, Falconer? Even you. I almost did die. Anyone else in that situation would have. But I’m not anyone else. I always take the precaution of ensuring myself an escape route. In this case it was old and dangerous and nearly became a death trap for me. I had to go through a wall of flames to reach that island tunnel and when I got there it was already filling with smoke. But I survived and I learned from that, too. You can’t begin to guess how much plastic surgery was required at a discreet private clinic in Switzerland before I could show my hands and face in public. But it was worth it, because when I did, no one recognized me. Ι realized then that there was nothing to stop me from starting over. There was, after all, a nice nest egg waiting for me in my Swiss bank account. I do not leave such things to chance.”
“How many lives did you consign to oblivion to get that nest egg, Gladstone?” Croft changed his grip slightly on the metal upright and pushed more firmly against it.
“One must work with the material at hand,” Gladstone responded. “The beauty of it is that there is always so much raw material available to a man who understands that most people in this world actually prefer to be told what to do. They want all the decisions made by someone else. They crave surrender and need an authority figure. So few people really like to think for themselves, Falconer, have you ever noticed?”
“I’ve noticed.” The upright began to slide to one side.
“Offer such people a new religion, a cult, a sense of being special and apart and elevated from the normal run of humanity and they flock to you begging for direction.”
Mercy watched Croft as she asked, “Was your private artist colony supposed to be the start of another source of slave labor for you, Gladstone? I’ve always thought artists were a fairly independent crowd. What made you think you could manipulate them?”
“You are very astute, Miss Pennington. More so than I would have assumed at this point. You’re quite right. My artist colony was to be the start of a very useful power base. I made the mistake of having my followers too close to me last time. Ult
imately that was a weakness. It enabled one lone man to invade my sanctuary. He was able to use the sheer numbers of people around me as camouflage. This time I deliberately ensured that my naive assistants, as I call them, were kept at a distance. They knew nothing of their real purpose. They had no idea of how useful they were to me. They assumed they were simply transporting their art supplies and luggage to various points around the country and the world. As for controlling them, well, artists may be an independent lot, but they have their weak points, just like everyone else. You saw them and talked to them the other night. They see me as their patron. I fund their creative efforts and most of all I make them feel special, unique, the chosen few standing at the leading edge of the art world.”
“What were you getting in return?” Croft asked as he edged the metal upright several inches to one side. There was a faint clicking sound from behind the bookshelf. He shot a quick glance at Mercy who was crouched beside him.
“I had a rather interesting project developing, Falconer. A project that will now have to be temporarily terminated because of your interference. Thanks to my forethought this time around, however, it can soon be restarted in another location. It involved sending my protégés all over the world in search of artistic inspiration. They loved the travel, of course. It was a tremendous creative influence on them. And here and there in their travels they would make small side trips to see acquaintances of mine, fellow art patrons. Such side trips were favors to me. Paintings were often exchanged within this worldwide community of people who were involved with art.”
“What were these traveling artists really transporting for you, Gladstone?” Croft took his hand away from the metal shelving and shook his head firmly at Mercy when she impatiently started to push against it. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “Not yet. If we open his escape hatch now Gladstone might get a signal telling him the security’s been breached. Wait.”
Mercy stifled a groan but obeyed.
“What do you think my artist friends were doing?” Gladstone sounded genially amused. “Take a guess, Falconer.”
Midnight Jewels Page 33