Crescent Dawn - Dirk Pitt Book 21

by Clive Cussler; Dirk Cussler

  “April, 1916. Uncle Henry and Emily with Sally at Broome Park.”

  She shoved the photo in Julie’s face. Julie read the inscription, then flipped it over and studied the image with a wrinkled brow.

  “But that’s Emily with her parents. Her mother’s name was Margaret, I believe.”

  Summer looked at her and smiled. “Sally is the doll.”

  By the time the lightbulb clicked on in Julie’s head, Summer was already tearing through the first box of Emily Kitchener’s possessions. In an instant, she pulled out a porcelain-faced blond doll that was dressed in a checkerboard apron. Holding the doll up in the air, Summer compared it to the one in the photograph.

  It was the same doll.

  “He said the Manifest was safeguarded with Sally,” Julie muttered. “And Sally is a doll?”

  The two women studied the doll, whose clothes and extremities were well worn from the attentive play of a young girl nearly a century earlier. With tentative fingers, Summer turned the doll over and pulled off its checkerboard apron and matching calico dress. A heavy seam was visible along the doll’s back, which kept the stuffing inside. Only the stitching was crude and uneven, not matching the workmanship of the rest of the doll.

  “This doesn’t look like the work of an expert seamstress,” Summer noted.

  Julie rummaged through one of the other boxes until producing a tarnished silver dinner knife.

  “You care to perform the surgery?” she asked nervously, handing Summer the knife.

  Summer laid the doll facedown on the shelf and began sawing at the topmost stitch. The dull-edged knife was a poor match for the tough catgut thread, but she eventually cut through the first few stitches. Setting the knife aside, she pulled apart the remaining seam, opening up the back side of the doll. Inside was a compressed mass of cotton wadding.

  “Sorry, Sally,” she said, carefully pulling out the wadding as if the doll were an animate object. Julie peered anxiously over Summer’s shoulder, but slumped when she saw that the doll’s torso was filled with nothing but cotton. She closed her eyes and shook her head as Summer pulled out a large ball of it.

  “Silly idea,” she muttered.

  But Summer wasn’t through. Peering inside the cavity, she felt around with her fingertips.

  “Wait, I think there may be something in here.”

  Julie’s eyes popped open as she watched Summer reach into the doll’s left leg and grab hold of an object. Summer worked it back and forth until pulling out a linen-wrapped tube several inches long. Julie leaned closer as Summer set the object on the shelf and gently unwrapped the linen. Inside was a thick piece of parchment rolled into a scroll. Summer held the top edge down, then carefully unrolled it across the shelf as both women held their breath.

  The parchment proved to be blank. But they soon saw it was protecting a smaller scroll rolled inside. It was a bamboo-colored papyrus leaf with a single column of script running down its center.

  “This . . . this must be the Manifest,” Julie uttered quietly, her eyes locked on the ancient document.

  “It appears to be written in some sort of ancient script,” Summer noted.

  Julie stared at the lettering, finding it familiar. “It appears similar to Greek,” she said, “but it’s nothing that I’ve seen before.”

  “That would most likely be Coptic Greek,” thundered a male voice behind them.

  The women jumped at the unexpected assertion. Spinning their heads toward the door, they were shocked to find Ridley Bannister standing in the entry. He was dressed in a thickly padded black leather jacket and pants favored by dirt-track motorcycle racers. But neither woman noticed his unusual attire. Their attention was focused instead on the snub-nosed revolver he held in his hand, aimed squarely at their chests.

  30

  YOU ARE THE ONE THAT ATTACKED ME IN MY HOTEL room,” Julie blurted, finally recognizing the leather outfit.

  “Attack is rather a harsh description,” Bannister replied casually. “I prefer to think that we were just sharing research information.”

  “Stealing, you mean,” Summer said.

  Bannister shot her a hurt look. “Not at all,” he said. “Strictly borrowing. You’ll find that the diary has found a new home with the rest of Kitchener’s private papers upstairs.”

  “Oh, a penitent thief,” Summer replied sarcastically.

  Bannister ignored the cut.

  “I must say, I am quite impressed with your sleuthing abilities,” he said, eyeing Julie. “The leather diary was a marvelous discovery, though the Earl’s comments were less than startling. But then identifying Sally on top of that. Quite an encore.”

  “We weren’t quite as sloppy as you,” Summer remarked.

  “Yes, well, I had limited time to peruse Emily Kitchener’s possessions. Be that as it may, a job well done. I searched ten years ago myself without such success.” He raised the pistol and motioned with it.

  “Would you ladies be so kind as to move to the rear of this compartment? I’ll be needing to leave with the Manifest.”

  “To borrow?” Julie asked.

  “Not this time, I’m afraid,” Bannister replied with a sharklike smile.

  Julie peered at the scroll before slowly stepping away.

  “Tell us first. What is the significance of the Manifest?” she asked.

  “Until it has been authenticated, no one can say for sure,” Bannister said, creeping over to retrieve the parchment with the papyrus inside. “It’s just an old document that some seem to think could rattle the theological powers that be.” He picked up the scroll with his free hand and gently placed it in an inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Was Kitchener deliberately killed because of it?” Julie asked.

  “I would assume so. But that’s one you’ll have to take up with the Church of England. It’s been nice chatting with you ladies,” he said, backpedaling toward the door, “but I’m afraid I have a plane to catch.”

  He stepped out of the pantry and began closing the door behind him.

  “Please don’t leave us in here,” Julie begged.

  “Not to worry,” Bannister replied. “I’ll be sure and phone Aldrich in a day or so and let him know there’s a pair of lovely lasses locked in his basement. Good-bye.”

  The door slammed shut with a whoosh followed by the sound of the dead bolt sliding home. Then Bannister flicked off the pantry’s lights, plunging it into blackness. He quietly crept upstairs to Aldrich’s quarters, stopping to replace the unloaded Webley pistol in a glass cabinet of Kitchener’s military artifacts, where he had borrowed it minutes before. Waiting until the lobby cleared, he slipped out of the manor unseen and quickly hopped upon his rented motorcycle.

  Three hours later, he called the Lambeth Palace head of security from a phone at Heathrow Airport.

  “Judkins, it’s Bannister.”

  “Bannister,” the security man replied with an acid tongue. “I’ve been waiting for you to report. You’ve tracked this Goodyear woman?”

  “Yes. She and the American have been down at Broome Park digging up Kitchener documents. Still there, as a matter of fact.”

  “Are they going to prove problematic?”

  “Well, they are a bit suspicious and have certainly been barking up the right tree.”

  “But do they have anything damaging to us?” the security man asked impatiently.

  “Oh, no,” Bannister replied, patting his chest pocket with a wide grin. “They have nothing. Nothing at all.”

  31

  THE SEALED PANTRY WAS AS BLACK AS A CAVE. SUMMER placed a hand on the shelf for balance as she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. But without a source of light, there was nothing to see. She remembered her cell phone and pulled it out of her pocket, the device emitting a dull blue glow.

  “No phone signal down here, I’m afraid, but at least we’ve got a night-light,” she said.

  Using the cell phone as a flashlight, she stepped to the doo
r, pushing it first with her shoulder, then applying a few firm kicks with the heel of her foot. The thick door didn’t budge at all, and she knew that even a sumo wrestler wouldn’t have been able to snap off the heavy dead bolt. She eased back over to Julie, flashing the phone toward her to find a scared look on her face.

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Julie said in a shaky voice. “I think I want to scream.”

  “You know, Julie, that’s a good idea. Why don’t we?”

  Summer tilted her head toward the ceiling and let out a loud scream. Julie immediately joined in, yelling repeatedly for help.

  Muffled by the thick pantry door, the screams registered only faintly upstairs. The few guests who detected the faraway cries assumed it was somebody with an iPod cranked too high. The sound didn’t register at all in Aldrich’s aged ears.

  The women took a short break, then tried yelling again. As more minutes ticked by without a response, they resigned themselves to the fact that they couldn’t be heard. The screaming had served as a release, though, helping to expel the anxiety of their imprisonment. Julie, in particular, seemed to regain the composure that she had been close to losing.

  “I guess we might as well get comfortable if we’re going to be in here awhile,” she said, pulling a large box onto the floor and using it as a chair. “Do you think he’ll actually call Aldrich?” she asked somberly.

  “I suspect so,” Summer replied. “He didn’t act like a trained killer, nor seem psychotic to me.” Deep down, she wasn’t so certain.

  “Personally, I’d rather not wait for Aldrich,” she added. “Maybe there’s something in one of these boxes that can help us get out of here.”

  Under the dim glow of her cell phone, she began cracking open some of the other boxes. But it became readily apparent that there was nothing but papers, clothes, and a few odd personal belongings packed away in the former pantry. Soon growing discouraged, she pulled a box down alongside Julie and took a seat.

  “It would seem we have little more than a nice wardrobe to help us escape.”

  “Well, at least we have something to wear in case we get cold,” Julie said. “Now, if only we had something to eat.”

  “I’m afraid the pantry is bare in regards to food,” Summer replied. Then she thought for a moment, contemplating her own words. “Aldrich said that this was built as a secondary pantry, didn’t he?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Julie confirmed. “And thank goodness for the rat-proofing.”

  “Julie, do you know where the main kitchen is located in the manor?”

  The researcher thought for a moment. “I’ve never set foot in it, but it’s located off the main dining hall, along the west side of the residence.”

  Summer visualized the orientation of the estate. “We’re on the west side, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the kitchen would be located roughly above us?”

  “Yes, that would be right. What are you driving at?”

  Summer rose to her feet and circled the room, studying the walls behind the storage boxes with her cell-phone light. She slowly made her way to the rear of the pantry, examining a bank of four wooden cabinet doors now visible behind a stack of boxes. She passed the phone to Julie to hold for her.

  “If you were Kitchener’s chef and you needed a sack of flour from the pantry, would you go lugging it through the house?” she asked, moving the stack of boxes aside. Then she reached up to the top two cabinet doors and tried to open them. But they were sealed shut.

  “They’re faux doors,” Julie said, holding up the light while Summer dug her nails under the doors’ edges to no avail. “Try the bottom doors.”

  Julie shoved a box on the floor aside so that Summer could try the lower doors. Tugging at the edges, she was surprised when both doors flew open effortlessly. Behind them appeared to be an empty black compartment.

  “Move the light in,” Summer requested.

  Julie shoved the cell phone past the doors, illuminating a large tray at the base of the compartment that was affixed to a rear rack. A pulley wheel was visible to one side with a tight loop of rope around it that then ascended past the upper cabinet. Julie turned the cell light upward, revealing a long vertical shaft.

  “It’s a dumbwaiter,” Julie said. “Why, of course. How did you know?”

  Summer shrugged her shoulders. “A lifelong aversion to doing things the hard way, I suppose.”

  She surveyed the shelf for a moment. “It’s a little tight, but I think it will suffice as an elevator. I’m afraid I’m going to have to borrow that light back.”

  “You can’t go up that thing,” Julie said. “You’ll break your neck.”

  “No worries. I think I can just fit.”

  Summer took the cell phone and corkscrewed her long legs into the opening, then wormed the rest of her body in until she sat cross-legged on the tray. A pair of frayed ropes dangled beside the pulley used to hoist the tray, but she dared not test her weight on them. Placing the phone in her lap, she instead surveyed a thin link of bicycle chain that spooled around the actual pulley. She then leaned her head back into the pantry.

  “Wish me luck. Hopefully I’ll meet you at the front door in five minutes,” she told Julie.

  “Do be careful.”

  Summer grabbed the chain with both hands and pulled down hard. The tray immediately rose off its base, and Summer rose up into the chute. Julie quickly grabbed a boxful of clothes and emptied it on the base as a cushion, should Summer lose her grip and fall.

  But the athletic young oceanographer didn’t fall. Summer was able to pull herself up ten feet before her hands and arm muscles began to weaken. She then found she could tilt the tray forward and wedge her feet against one side of the chute while pressing her back against the opposite side. Supporting her weight in this manner, she could temporarily free her hands from the biting edge of the pulley chain. Resting a few minutes, she then pulled herself up several more feet before pausing again.

  She spotted the upper pulley just a few feet above her head and made one more effort to rise to the top. With her hands and arms aching, she muscled herself even with the pulley, scrunching her head beneath the top of the chute. The back side of a cabinet door appeared in front of her, and she quickly pushed on it with her feet. But the door didn’t budge.

  She could feel her arms weakening as she pushed with her feet again, this time detecting a hairline movement to the door. She was positioned too high and close to the pulley to wedge herself against the chute for relief and she could feel her hold on the chain waning. Realizing she was seconds from losing her grip, she pushed herself backward as far as she could, then rocketed forward, jamming her feet against the door with all her might.

  She heard a horrendous crash as the cabinet door burst open, sending a wave of bright light into the cavernous chute. Summer was momentarily blinded by the sudden change in light as she slid through the door, letting go of the chain as her momentum carried her across a smoothly polished surface.

  Her vision clearing, she found herself lying on a large teak buffet. It sat in a small but brightly lit lounge that had been constructed from an original section of the manor’s kitchen. Summer was startled to see a half dozen elderly couples seated around the room having tea. They all silently stared at her as if she was an alien from Ursa Minor.

  Slowly sliding off the buffet and onto her feet, she surveyed the source of the loud crash. Scattered about the floor were spoons, teacups, and saucers from a large formal tea set that had been sent flying when she kicked open the door.

  Summer ruefully brushed herself off, hiding her grease-stained hands as she smiled at the collected gawkers.

  “I do hate to miss teatime,” she said apologetically, then quickly scurried from the room.

  She ran into Aldrich in the hall as he rushed toward the commotion and redirected him to help Julie. Together, they dashed down the stairs and unlocked the pantry door. A relieved Julie smiled at the sight of Summer.
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  “I heard a terrible crash. Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Summer grinned, “but I might owe Aldrich a new tea set.”

  “Poppycock!” the old man grunted. “Now, tell me again who locked you in here.”

  Julie described Bannister and his motorcycle attire.

  “Sounds like that fellow Baker,” Aldrich said. “Checked out this morning.”

  “What do you know of him?” Summer asked.

  “Not much, I’m afraid. Said he was a writer living in London who was down for a golf holiday. But I vaguely remember him visiting before, must be four or five years ago. I recall letting him into the archives. He’s quite knowledgeable about the Earl. In fact, he was the one who also inquired about Emily.”

  Julie and Summer looked at each other knowingly, then Summer stepped back into the pantry.

  “Would you like me to call the police?” Aldrich asked.

  Julie thought for a moment. “No, I don’t suppose that will be necessary. He has what he came looking for, so I don’t think he’ll be bothering us again. Besides, I’m sure he gave you a phony name and address in London.”

  “He’s going to get more than a piece of my mind if he shows up here again,” Aldrich huffed. “You poor dears. Please, come upstairs and have some tea.”

  “Thank you, Aldrich. We’ll be right along.”

  As Aldrich strutted off, Julie sat down on a Queen Anne bench beside some covered furniture and breathed heavily. Summer exited the pantry a second later, noting a paleness in Julie’s face.

  “You all right?” Summer asked.

  “Yes. Didn’t want to admit it, but I am a bit claustrophobic. I don’t care to experience that feeling again anytime soon.”

  Summer turned and closed the heavy door behind her.

  “No need for either of us to set foot in there again,” she said. “Where’s Aldrich?”

  “He went upstairs to make us some tea.”

  “I hope he can find some cups.”

  Julie shook her head with a disappointed grimace.