The Loo Sanction

by Trevanian

  “He didn’t even flinch,” Darling said. “Took the fun out of it for you, didn’t it? I told you he was out. If he dies before Mr. Strange wants, remember that I’m not taking the blame.”

  They left, turning out the lights and locking the door behind them.

  Slowly, Jonathan opened his eyes. He allowed his body’s demand for oxygen to take control of his breathing rate. He felt all right; weak but in control. But he knew that the delightful killer was in there, mixing with his blood. He rose from bed as hastily as his sketchy balance would allow and brought the small sheet with him to the open window. After some fumbling, he tied one end of it to the center post, allowing the seven feet of slack to dangle outside. Then he lay down on the floor and began exercising. Sit-ups until his stomach muscles quivered, then push-ups.

  For more than a minute, he sensed no effect from the dope. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up—and up, and up. He seemed to rise so slowly, so effortlessly. That’s it, he told himself. The exercise was working. He was bringing it on quickly. He decided it was time to get on the mantel. He stood up. But the room was telescoping on him—all the lines rushing into the corners in exaggerated foreshortening.

  “God,” he muttered. “I waited too long! It’s coming too fast!”

  The gas hearth was there, way over on the other side of the room. He put his arms out and leaned toward it, hoping he would reel and fall in that direction. But the crash came from behind. He had staggered backward and hit the wall behind him. The room seemed filled with the rasp of his breathing. He was afraid they would hear it.

  Can’t walk to it. Get down on the floor and crawl. Safer. Beautiful. Beautiful rug. Oh, no! He was alone in an endless sea of floor. He didn’t know which direction to go. He could see the mantelpiece when he looked up, but it kept changing directions, and it didn’t get any nearer.

  He sat on the floor, one foot under him, the other leg stretched out before him, his head hanging down and his chin on his chest, his oral breathing shallow and rapid. He felt weightless. And contented. He was comfortable, and it was too funny—this trying to find a mantel.

  No! He ground his teeth together and forced himself to think. Keep crawling. Find a wall. Then crawl along it. Must lead to the hearth eventually.

  He crawled on. Once he rested with his face in a corner of the room, and the walls felt soft and comfortable against his cheeks. He wanted so much to sleep. But he snapped himself out of it and crawled on. Then his hand touched marble—beautifully grained, somehow luminescent marble. That was the mantelpiece.

  Now climb up on the ledge!

  Too high. Too hard.

  Climb.

  Twice he slipped and fell back to the floor, and it took all his mental strength to resist the desire to stay there and enjoy the ceiling.

  At last he stood on the narrow ledge of the mantel, his back against the wall, his arms cruciform, fingers trying to hold on to the flowers in the wallpaper. He was frightened and his heart pounded. The floor, rippling and blurring, was so far down there.

  Good. The fear was good. It made his pulse race. It would burn off the dope. Now exercise. Isometric tension . . . release. Tension . . . release.

  He had the impression that he could see by means of darkness as other people saw by means of light. And so much darkness was coming in through the open window that he could see details in the room clearly. There were bursting sacs of light behind his eyes. The rug. Beautiful color. It floated up toward him slowly, seductively.

  The pain and shock of the fall brought him briefly to his senses. He was lying facedown on the rug. He couldn’t breathe through his nose. Blood. It didn’t hurt. It made him want to sleep.

  The climb back up was cerebral. His sense of balance was gone, along with his sense of direction. He had to tell himself that tops tend to be above bottoms. He had to think out the fact that leaning out would cause a fall. Eventually he was on the mantel ledge, on his knees. He could not stand. Kneeling, his chest now against the wall, he began the isometric exercises. Tension . . . release. Tension . . . release.

  An infinity of timelessness passed. He needed to sleep. Right now. He rested back on the supporting air.

  This time, he slept through the fall and crash.

  The cold woke him up. He was sweating and cold. His mouth was dry from oral breathing, and his upper lip was stiff. He touched the stiff lip. It was flaky, gritty. The blood from his nose had congealed. He had been out for some time. But he knew from the nausea and the cold that the hallucinatory effects of the drug had passed. He was weak and dizzy, but he could think and he could move. He got to his hands and knees slowly and looked around the room. Dark shadows, a rectangle of gray city smear at the window. The window. He remembered.

  With the help of the bedpost, he got to his feet and reeled to the window. The night air was freezing cold as it flowed over his sweating, naked body. He stood, supporting himself on the casement and sucking in great breaths of damp refreshing air. The sheet was still knotted about the center post.

  Looking down, he could just make out the stone terrace three stories below. A mist of light from a room below spilled out over the wet flagstones. He climbed up onto the sill and stood in the frame. Then he gripped the underledge of the eaves and leaned out. And instantly he was overcome by vertigo, drowning in dizziness. Desperately, he scrambled back. Too soon. He would have to wait until the last moment. Just before they came in. Give his mind a chance to get as clear as it would ever be.

  Leonard and Darling left their dart game with fellow employees and crossed the deserted Art Deco salon, their reflections following them along the wall of mirrors that hid the Aquarium. They took the long curving stairway two steps at a time because they were a little late for the next scheduled injection. Leonard unlocked the door, and Darling switched on the lights.

  “Christ!” Darling ejaculated.

  In a rush they checked the closet, the bathroom, and under the bed. Then Leonard noticed the open window and the sheet knotted around the center post. He slammed his fist against the casement in fury.

  “The Guv won’t half be browned off at this!” Darling said. “He’ll have our arses for it!” He looked down to the terrace below. “Can’t have got far. That sheet didn’t help much. Must of broke both his legs. Come on!”

  They ran from the room, Leonard charging down the staircase to examine the grounds, while Darling ran up the corridor to his room, where he snatched up the revolvers he had liberated from Jonathan’s attaché case.

  Head downward on the steep sloping roof, Jonathan lay tense and still. When he had heard them approaching the door, he had gripped the underedge of the eaves and swung out, tuck-rolling up and over. For a terrible moment, only the lower half of his body was on the slippery roof, his torso and head dangling over. The incline was greater than he had expected, and the sharp overlapping edges of the tiles prevented him from scrambling up. Only his fingertip hold on the underside of the edge prevented him from falling to the terrace below, but the pressure out against his reflexed wrists was agonizing and enervating. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming with the pain as he pressed against his wrists with all his force, his jaw muscles roped and his head shuddering with the effort as he wriggled up against the sawtoothed set of the rough tile edges, gouging skin from his knees and rib cage and abrading his scrotum. His leverage was spent before he could get his chin past the eaves, and his angle on the roof was such that he could maintain his purchase only by keeping the throbbing wrists locked and by spreading his legs, increasing the area of traction to the maximum. Blood rushed to his head, and his racing pulse thrummed with dry lumps in his ears.

  The lights came on in the room below, dimly illuminating the fog around him. He heard Darling say, “Christ!” then there was the sound of a search through the room. Would the sheet mislead them? His lungs needed air, and he opened his mouth wide to breathe, so the intake would make less noise. Some of the dope was still in him, making thought slimy and vision uncertain. The
strength was leaking out of him, draining from his wrists and shoulders.

  He slipped . . . only a couple of inches, but he couldn’t get it back. Now even more weight over the edge. Vertigo. The dim flagstone terrace so far below. No strength. Wrists winced with pain.

  Leonard’s head appeared just below him. The Mute snatched at the dangling sheet, then peered down. Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated with all his force: Don’t look up! Don’t look up! The cold of the wet tiles against his nude body was numbing. Again he slipped two inches! But at that second Leonard banged his fist against the casement in fury, covering the sound. Darling said something from within.

  They ran out of the room.

  A strangled, whimpering groan escaped Jonathan. Getting down would be as dangerous as getting up had been. The pitch of the roof was sharp, and there was a thin coat of greasy dirt on the tiles lubricated by the moisture of the fog. Once he pulled in his legs and let the slip start, there would be no stopping it. With those limp and throbbing wrists, he would have to catch the underedge of the eaves as he slid past and swing back in through the window. If he was off by six inches to either side, he would crash against the building and fall to the flagstone below.

  No use thinking about it. No time. No strength left.

  He let go.

  He was an inch or two off, and as he swung into the room backward, he clipped his head on the center post of the window casement. Dizziness and pain made him reel as he got to his feet, but he drove on, head down, running for the open door.

  As Darling started back down the hall with the big revolvers, he heard the crash in Jonathan’s room and ran toward it. They collided in the doorway, and went down in a jumble in the hall. Jonathan fought blindly and desperately, grappling for Darling’s throat and getting it, both thumbs against the larynx. He could feel that there was little strength left in his grip, so he closed his eyes and bared his teeth, pressing desperately as Darling struggled to bring either revolver to bear on Jonathan’s naked side. He wriggled like a beached fish as Jonathan squeezed for all he was worth, expecting at any moment to hear the roar of a gun and to have his guts blown out by a flattening dumdum. From nowhere, the thought came to Jonathan of Vanessa struggling on her kitchen table. Darling had probably held her down as Leonard had prodded at her. With a final surge of desperate fury, Jonathan drove his thumbs through, and the larynx crumpled like a papier-mâché pin box. Darling gargled and died.

  For a second Jonathan lay there gasping, his forehead on Darling’s silent chest. He got to his knees and picked up the revolvers. Keep moving, he ordered himself. He blinked away the large spots of blindness in the center of his eyes and stumbled on, down the wide curving staircase and across the sterile Art Deco salon. He burst into the exercise room, dropping to the floor with both guns up before him. It was empty. But he could hear them now, shouting outside the house. He cocked back both hammers with his thumbs and struggled to his feet. Dizzy. Nausea.

  He reeled toward the door to the small paneled dining room and kicked it open with the ball of his foot.

  The dope swam in his head, and the scene played out like a dream—a slow-motion ballet. Strange and Grace were dining. She turned toward the opening door, her naked breasts wobbling viscously with the motion. Strange floated to his feet and put out one hand, palm forward as though in a Hindu gesture of blessing. Jonathan raised one gun and fired. The roar reverberated in his head, and even the recoil kick seemed to lift his hand slowly. Like magic, the left side of Strange’s face disappeared and in its place was a splash of red gelatin. Grace clutched the air, her face contorted into a scream of horror, but no sound came. Strange sank away under the table, and she fainted.

  From too slow, things began to go too fast. Jonathan stumbled back into the exercise room, panting and unsteady. He needed to vomit. The sound of running men was closer. He turned on the bank of sun lamps and directed them toward the outer door. “I’m sick!” he whimpered aloud as he fumbled on the round green glasses haphazardly, one eye squeezed closed by the elastic band.

  They burst into the room. Three of them. The broken-toothed one in the lead tried to shield his eyes from the blinding glare, holding his automatic before his face. Jonathan’s first shot blew his arm off at the shoulder, and he spun and fell, spraying the other two with his blood. The next dumdum took the one closest to the door in the small of the back as he scrambled to retreat. His body was lifted into the air and slammed against the wall of exercise bars. He did not fall because his arm got tangled in the bars, but his body jerked convulsively.

  The third man got off a wild shot in the direction of the lights, and one of them imploded above Jonathan’s head, showering him with hot glass. Jonathan’s return shot blew away the man’s leg at the knee. He stood for a second, surprised. Then he fell to the unsupported side.

  The silence rang with the absence of gun roars. The man tangled in the exercise rings slid to the floor, his forehead rattling on each rung. Then it was still.

  “I’m sick!” Jonathan told them again, the words thick and muffled.

  The tide of vertigo rose within him. The back of his throat was bitter with vomit. Mustn’t pass out! Leonard is still out there somewhere! Hold on!

  He tugged the green glasses off and staggered over to the door to the dressing room. Mirrors. An infinity of naked men with guns. Blood caked on their faces; their knees and chests scuffed and bleeding. He opened the center mirror and went into the Aquarium.

  And there was Leonard. He had a Mauser machine pistol and was fitting on the wooden holster/stock, slowly and deliberately, his hooded eyes expressionless. He was on the other side of the one-way glass, standing alone in the empty Art Deco salon, pressed close to the mirrored wall, waiting for Jonathan to emerge through the exercise room door.

  Jonathan’s heart pulsed in his temples. He was so tired, so sick. He only wanted to sleep. The mist of dope in his brain cleared for a moment. Vanessa. Leonard and Vanessa—and kitchen utensils. He set his teeth and crept soundlessly to the mirrored panel before him. He raised both guns, their barrels almost touching the glass, and he waited as Leonard on his side inched forward, waited until Leonard’s huge body had moved directly in front of the barrels. One gun was pointed at Leonard’s neck, the other at his ear.

  The mirror exploded and Leonard’s headless body surfed over the parqueted floor on a hissing tide of shattered glass. It twitched violently, tinkling and grinding in the glass. Then it stopped.

  And Jonathan threw up.

  Covent Garden

  The driver of taxi #68204 threaded through the tangle of narrow lanes above Hampstead High Street in search of a fare. He accepted philosophically the improbability of making a pickup in that quiet district at that time of night, and he decided to return to center city. As he stopped at a deserted intersection, he began to sing “On the Road to Mandalay” under his breath, shifting keys with liberal insouciance. The back door of his cab opened, and a passenger entered.

  “Where to, mate?” the driver asked over his shoulder without turning around.

  “Covent Garden.”

  “Right you are.” The driver pulled away, humming his inadvertent variations on the theme of “Roses of Picardy.” He vaguely wondered what a man with an American accent wanted in Covent Garden at that time of night. “The market?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “What? Oh. Yes. The market will do.”

  The passenger’s voice was faint and confused, and the driver feared that he might have picked up a drunk who would soil the back of his cab. He pulled over to the curb and turned around. “Now, listen, mate. If you’re drunk . . . I’ll be buggered!” The passenger was nude. “’Ere! Wot’s all this!”

  “Go to the market. I’ll give you directions from there.”

  The driver was prepared to put a stop to all this rubbish, when he noticed two very large revolvers on the seat beside the passenger. “The market, is it?” He released the hand brake and drove on. Not singing.
/>   They stopped at the entrance to a narrow, unlit alley in the heart of the Garden district. “This it, mate?”

  “Yes.” The passenger sounded as though he had dropped off during the ride. “Listen, driver, I don’t seem to have any money on me . . .”

  “Oh, that’s all right, mate.”

  “If you’ll just come in with me, I’ll—”

  “No! No, that’s all right. Forget it.”

  The passenger rubbed the back of his neck and his eyes, as though trying to clear his mind. “I . . . ah . . . I know this must seem irregular to you, driver.”

  “No, sir. Not at all.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want to come in for your money?”

  “Oh yes, sir. I’m quite sure. Now, if this is the place you want . . .”

  “Right.” Jonathan climbed painfully out of the cab, taking his revolvers with him, and the taxi sped off.

  The outer workshop of MacTaint’s place was empty, save for the gaunt, wild-eyed painter who looked up crossly as Jonathan’s entrance brought a gust of cold air with it. He muttered angrily under his breath and returned to the magnum opus he had been working on for eleven years: a huge pointillist rendering of the London docks done with a three-hair brush.

  Jonathan strode stiff-legged past him, still unsteady on his feet, and made for the entrance to the back apartment.

  The painter returned to his work. Then, after a minute, he raised his emaciated, Christ-like face and stared into the distance. There had been something odd about that intruder. Something about his dress.

  He steeped sleepily in the deep hot water of the bath, a half-empty tumbler of whiskey dangling loosely from his hand over the edge of the tub. Although the water still stung and located all his abrasions—knees, chest, shoulder, the back of his head where he had cracked it swinging back in through the window—his mind was quite clear. The worst of it was over. All he had to do now was to get the films from within the Marini Horse.