The Portable Door (1987)

by Tom Holt

  “Doesn’t look like much of this stuff was put here recently. I mean, look at these envelopes full of papers.”

  Sophie looked up. “They’re old envelopes,” she said.

  Paul grinned. “Did you ever collect stamps? No, me neither. But these have got to be pretty old, they’ve got King George and King Edward on them, and Queen Victoria. Worth a bob or two, for all I know. I wonder if anybody’d miss them?”

  Sophie scowled at him. “Don’t you dare,” she said. He shrugged.

  “Well, anyway,” he said, “there’s not many with Queen Elizabeth on, and even those are pretty ancient. When did she come to the throne? Nineteen fifty-something? In fact,” he added quietly, “if there’s anything here that’s more recent than fifty years old, I haven’t spotted it yet. Maybe that old book’ll be more use than we thought.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sophie answered. “We’ve still got to start from scratch, that’s all there is to it.” She closed the book with a snap and put it on a shelf. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll start here, by the door, and work our way round. You can do the writing-down to start with, while I call out. Okay?”

  Paul nodded, and picked up a notebook and pencil, while Sophie broke open the box of yellow stickies. “I’ll start at one,” she said. “All right, here goes.” She took out the envelope at the front of the bottom shelf nearest the door, and opened it. “Item one,” she said. “Envelope of papers—no, don’t bother writing that down. Share certificates,” she announced, “let’s see, seven, eight, nine hundred shares in Whitlow’s Bank, in the name of G.L. Mayer, whoever he is. Was,” she corrected herself. “This certificate’s dated 1901, SO presumably he’s dead by now. Funny,” she added. “You’re supposed to write and tell the company when a shareholder dies, and they send you a new certificate. I know that from helping out in Dad’s office. It makes all sorts of problems with tax and stuff if you don’t.”

  Paul wrinkled his nose. “Maybe they’re just old ones that never got chucked away,” he said.

  “Well, someone ought to write and find out,” she said. “Whitlow’s are still in business, after all, these might be worth lots of money. Anyhow, not our problem.” She put the envelope back. “Item two—”

  “Hang on,” Paul said. “Pencil’s broken.”

  “Just as well I brought two, then,” Sophie sighed. “You’re probably pressing too hard. Ready?”

  Paul nodded. “Item two,” he said.

  “All right. Item two.” She opened the envelope and pulled out a ragged brown sheet of paper. “Looks like a map,” she said.

  Paul grinned. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Pirate treasure, X marks the spot.”

  “Not pirate treasure,” Sophie said quietly, “but you’re not far off. King Solomon’s mines.” Paul looked up. “You what?”

  “That’s what it says here, Map of King Solomon’s mines in funny squiggly handwriting. Looks like it was drawn with a bit of old stick, or something. Smells horrible,” she added. “Anyhow, there isn’t a name or anything. Hold on,” she said, “maybe if we look in that book of yours it’ll be in there.”

  “Could be. How’d that help?”

  Sophie looked at him impatiently. “Because it might say who this belongs to, or what it is. If we just put down Map of King Solomon’s mines, Mr Tanner might think we’re trying to be funny. And I really don’t want to go through this lot and then get sent down here to do it all again properly.”

  Paul pulled a face. “You’re right,” he said; then he remembered what the professor had told him. “That’s very good thinking,” he said. “Just as well you thought of that, or we could’ve been in real trouble.”

  She looked at him oddly. “Yes, well,” she said. “Now, where’s it got to? Right, here we are. Is there anything written on the envelope? According to this, there should be a number or something.”

  Paul checked. “Yes,” he said, “here you go. A-slash-five-seven-two. Does that help?”

  “Hang on.” Sophie riffled through the book. “Got it, yes. A572, treasure map—”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Treasure map,” she repeated, “property of Sir Henry Curtis, deposited 1878. Taken out—can’t read the date, eighteen-something, and there’s another date for when it was put back, can’t make that out either. Anyway, you can put down, map, property of Sir Henry Curtis. How does that sound?”

  “Absolutely fine,” Paul said, with a trifle more enthusiasm than the suggestion warranted. He remembered other parts of the Professor’s lecture, and added, “Yup, that ought to do, I guess.”

  “So glad you approve,” Sophie said. “Item three—you ready, or am I going too fast for you?”

  “No, that’s fine. Item three.”

  Item three turned out to be a thick bundle of letters bound up in blue ribbon, all addressed to the Hon. A. Pointdexter Esq., Ploverleigh, Hants. Sophie didn’t open them. Item four was a small cardboard box containing a little glass jar with some green powder in it. Fortunately, there was a label on it, with a number, and with the help of the book they were able to record it as Chemical sample, Dr A. Jekyll, Harley Street, London. Item five wasn’t in the red book, so they had to do the best they could; it went in their notebook as Scrap of paper in unidentified language.

  “Fat lot of good that’ll do anybody,” Sophie muttered. “Still. What’s this? Right, item six. Another one without a number on it. Fuck.”

  Paul looked up. “What?” he asked.

  “Well,” Sophie said, in a very small voice, “if it’s what I think it is—here, you have a look.”

  Paul looked at it over her shoulder. “It’s a manuscript,” he said. “Handwritten, can’t read the—Hold on, it’s not even in English.”

  “No,” Sophie said, “that’s French. Le jardin du diable, the devil’s garden, un roman de Marcel Proust.” She scowled. “Proust didn’t write a novel called The Devil’s Garden, at least, not that I heard of.”

  “Who’s Marcel Proust?”

  Sophie clicked her tongue. “Just write it down,” she said. “Shit, they’ve got some weird stuff down here. No wonder they keep it locked away. I wonder who it belongs to.”

  Item seven, by contrast, was a contract for the sale and delivery of sixty tons of dried prunes, dated 1907, though it wasn’t numbered or mentioned in the red book. Item eight was an ancient theatre programme, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, dated eighteen ninety-something and with the name Billings pencilled on the front cover. The red book listed it and confirmed that in 1927 it belonged to Henrietta Billings of Kensington, but had no further light to shed on the matter. Item nine was a column of figures, with six indecipherable signatures at the bottom, and a small, rusty key. It was annotated with the number B998, which led them to a red-book entry that said, Schedule of anticipated returns and key, S. Magus & Co., 1899. Item ten was a plain white envelope containing five desiccated cherry stones, no red-book number. Item eleven was a dozen years’ worth of early Edwardian tailors’ bills made out to one Jeremy Castle of Ilkley, Yorks. Item twelve was a single small tooth, no name or number. “Right,” Sophie said, closing number eleven’s envelope and putting it back with a slight shudder, “you take over here and I’ll do the writing. I’ve had enough. Some of this stuff is sick.”

  She wasn’t far wrong, at that. Item nineteen proved to be a dried-up animal’s paw, with skin like parchment, large claws and a few strands of moulting brown fur on the back. Apparently, one Celia Garvin had thought enough of it to want it kept safe in 1919, but Paul couldn’t bring himself to share her enthusiasm. Not all the items were as gruesome as that; number twenty-two was a pencil sketch of some trees, done on the back of an envelope addressed to a French bloke called R. Matisse; Sophie got quite excited about that. Twenty-five turned out to be a tad under a quarter of a million dollars, in Confederate banknotes, while twenty-six was a cutting from a nineteen-thirties newspaper advertising someone or other’s patent bicycle seats. Twenty-nine harked back to the macabre theme: a
n envelope stuffed with hair and nail clippings, but Paul couldn’t see a name or a red-book number anywhere.

  It was item thirty-two that suddenly turned them both silent and thoughtful, looking at each other with the proverbial wild surmise. Again, no name or reference number in the earlier catalogue, but Paul had no trouble at all knowing what to put down in the Property Of column. It was an old photograph, sepia’d and cracked along a fold, with the name of a West End photographer printed in white along the bottom, and the date 1891. The man in the photo was dressed in a top hat and frock coat and he was holding a black lacquered walking stick and a pair of white cotton gloves, but it was unmistakably Professor Van Spee.

  §

  SIX

  No, Sophie said eventually.”

  “Sorry?”

  “No,” she repeated, “you’re wrong. That’s not what’s-his-name, the man who we saw at the interview—”

  “Professor Van Spee?”

  “Him. That’s not him.”

  “Oh. But it looks—”

  “That’s his great-grandfather,” Sophie said firmly, “or someone like that. Just looks like him, that’s all.”

  “A lot like him.”

  “Yes. But it isn’t him.”

  Paul nodded slowly. “That’s all right, then,” he said. “Because if that was him—”

  “Yes. But it isn’t.”

  “Fine.” Paul stuck it back in its envelope. “What should we put in the book for this one, then?”

  Sophie thought for a moment. “Photograph of an old man,” she said, “and leave it at that.”

  Paul nodded. A tiny part of him that was still faintly interested in sucking up to the boss suggested making that photograph of distinguished-looking middle-aged gentleman, but soon found itself shouted down by the other parts of his consciousness who on balance preferred sanity to the distant hope of promotion. He attached the yellow sticky and put the envelope back on the shelf.

  “It’s twenty-five past five,” Sophie announced, with audible relief. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

  “Yes,” Paul said. “Let’s.”

  On the way up the stairs they met Mr Wurmtoter coming down. “Just came to remind you it’s nearly going-home time,” he said brightly.

  “Thanks,” Paul said automatically, while Sophie gave him a carbon-steel stare that he apparently didn’t notice.

  “Wouldn’t do for us to go locking the doors with you two still down there,” Mr Wurmtoter explained, standing aside to let them go past.

  “Absolutely,” Paul said.

  “Nearly happened to me once,” Mr Wurmtoter went on, fingering the claw on its chain round his neck. “Pretty cold down there, you could catch pneumonia.” He frowned, and rubbed his back against the frame of the fire door. “Itch,” he said. “Right where I can’t reach. Gets me in the cold weather.”

  He escorted them into reception, where Mr Tanner was waiting by the door. The key was in the lock—on the inside.

  Paul and Sophie headed for the corridor leading to their office. “Where do you two think you’re going?” Mr Tanner called out.

  “Sorry,” Paul said. “Just going to get our coats.”

  “Oh.” Mr Tanner frowned. “Get a move on, will you? I’ve got better things to do than stand here all day.”

  They scuttled down the corridor without a word and grabbed their coats. On the way back, Paul had an uneasy feeling that someone was following them, but he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by stopping and looking round. Mr Tanner didn’t actually shove them out of the door, but it slammed behind them with a terrific bang.

  “One thing I like about this job,” Paul muttered, as they walked away, “there’s never any bother about getting away on time.”

  They reached the end of the street in silence, then stopped. Paul always went right here; Sophie always went left. Yesterday, she’d snapped, “Bye, then,” before darting away into the crowd, and that had been a quantum leap in sociability over the days before. But this evening they paused, as if waiting for the other to go first.

  “Well,” Sophie said, “I’d better be getting home.”

  “Right,” Paul said. And then: “Or, if you’re not in a tearing hurry, we could—”

  “No, I’d better not.” She gave every indication of being about to move, but didn’t.

  “Oh,” Paul said. “All right.”

  There was another of those confounded moments. “Another time, maybe,” she said.

  “Okay,” Paul said. “Tomorrow?”

  “All right.” She said it without emphasis, as if he’d just asked if he could borrow her pencil sharpener. “Bye.”

  A second later, she was invisible in the going-home-time lemming-run. There was a place on the pavement

  next to him where she’d been standing, and an echo of her voice in his head.

  As simple as that, Paul said to himself. Bloody hell.

  On his way home, Paul stopped at a bank machine and checked his balance. The month’s money had gone in. He was solvent beyond the dreams of avarice (though in his case, avarice was a light sleeper). Well, now, he thought.

  He was still thinking, Well, now, when he reached his door and let himself in. The sword in the stone was still there. That reminded him.

  He pulled off his jacket and tie, flipped the kettle on and flopped down on the bed. It was all fine and splendid thinking, Well, now, as if everything else was just background and mood music; but he’d seen and heard enough concentrated weirdness in one working day to boil his brain, if only it hadn’t been addled to pulp already with all the love stuff. Professor Van Spee, he thought. Yeah, what about that?

  Offhand he could think of two explanations, the second of which was that the professor was an amazingly good judge of character who liked doing the Sherlock Holmes bit, wrapping up absurdly obvious observations in a whole load of flannel, and who looked a lot like his great-grandad. He accepted this version gratefully, like a starving fish who sees a plump worm hanging above him in the water with string coming out of the small of its back. That explained about Professor Van Spee; and if the big weirdness could be got rid of so easily, it followed that all the little weirdnesses, such as the behaviour of Messrs Wurmtoter and Tanner, the vanishing stapler and items nineteen to thirty-one inclusive, had to be explainable too; and if he knew they were explainable, then why should he waste his ingenuity and free time figuring out what the explanations actually were? Just knowing they were there was good enough. No point reinventing the wheel, he told himself.

  Then he remembered that tonight he’d arranged to meet Duncan and Jenny in a pub in Museum Street. He swore. He’d arranged the meeting a month ago, to celebrate the encashment of his first paycheck, and Duncan and Jenny had proved to be the only members of his narrow circle of friends who reckoned they could make it. If he’d remembered earlier, of course, he’d have stayed in town and saved himself two bus fares. As it was, if he was really lucky with the traffic, he might just get there no more than twenty minutes late. Duncan and Jenny would, of course, stay there till he arrived. Pity, he thought; he didn’t feel in the mood for riotous living, somehow.

  §

  Duncan and Jenny, in Paul’s opinion, summed up nearly everything that was wrong with the world. Not individually; he’d known Duncan for close on a decade, they’d built model Spitfires and discussed minutiae of Romulan uniforms together back in the days when womankind was still no more than a dark cloud on the distant horizon, while Jenny was small, lively, clever, pretty and legitimately but not culpably blonde, and played a slick game of nomination whist. It was as a unit, a union of soul and flesh, that they got up Paul’s nose to the point where their heads were all but sticking out of his ears. Duncan had met Jenny two years ago at a New Year’s party, and ever since then they’d been tack-welded together, a fusion of two quite reasonable human beings into a single nauseating entity. Paul had heard any number of horror stories about so-and-so who got himself fixed up and thereafter dis
appeared without trace into a black pit of soft furnishings, mortgages and early-morning feeds but, regrettably, that wasn’t the case where Duncan and Jenny were concerned. Faster than a high-bandwidth download, Jenny had learned to play bar billiards, distinguish real ale from keg, form opinions about TV sci-fi and football, and eat fish and chips standing on the Embankment at half past eleven at night. At first Paul had assumed this was simple protective mimicry or, more likely, the predator merging with the shadows as it stalked her prey down the narrow, dark path that led to a serious talk about relationships and commitment. Two years later, he was forced to the conclusion that Duncan was either blackmailing God or very, very lucky, and the whole set-up was for real. Hence his feelings of profound distaste whenever he spent time with the gestalt. It’s bad enough having to watch a fellow human being enjoying unalloyed, undeserved good fortune. When the lucky bastard is a close personal friend, it’s unbearable.

  “You’re late,” Duncan pointed out, when Paul finally shouldered through the door and flumped down in the seat they’d been saving for him.

  Paul nodded. “Ran into a distorted anti-chronaton nexus outside Tottenham Court Road Tube and got reborn as a Viking chieftain in an alternate universe. Whose round is it?”

  Jenny stood up. “Mine,” she said. She did things like that; it was enough to make one’s teeth ache. “They’ve got Ventcaster Nine-X on, but Duncan reckons it hasn’t had time to settle yet.”

  Paul smiled weakly. “I’ll have a half of lager shandy, please,” he said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Jenny said, and headed for the bar, slipping between the shoulders of the massed drinkers like a golden ferret.

  Paul and Duncan looked at each other. “Well, then,” Duncan said. “What do you reckon to being all grown up, then?”

  Paul shook his head. “It’ll never catch on.”