Authors: Andre Norton
There was dismissal in her voice, and Quinn bowed. Then she smiled at him, not the faint grimace she had shown earlier, but with a warmth which lit up her face.
“I shall lay a command upon you, jongeling. One which your Queen Bess would have used in her time. When you have finished this part of your picture you will return to me with the full tale of your adventures. I have little interest in the world as it is today — but your story promises to be exciting. And — since I have contributed a small part of it — I wish to know the ending.”
“I will be back,” he promised.
Even after he had said a formal good-bye and was at the door she called after him once more.
“See that you
do
return, Mijnheer Anders. I am an old woman, and I do not desire to have one of my few remaining pleasures spoiled because a jongeling was silly enough not to take care — ”
Back in Maastricht Quinn made a phone call, and when Dokter Roos answered he was ready with the
question he had been impatient to ask for the past hour.
“Is it in your power, Mijnheer Dokter, to discover whether during the war there was a Nazi garrison or any soldiers on duty near Odocar’s Tower?”
“That will take me an hour or two, Mijnheer Anders. But it is easy to find out. You are perhaps planning to visit the Tower?”
“Sometime. Though I have been told that it is now almost a total ruin.”
“Above ground, yes, that is true. The tower itself is in a most dangerous condition, and, I believe, it is now forbidden to tourists. But the dungeons still exist, and one can well study the general outline of the keep. The hunting box there was burned to the ground in 1943, and there is nothing left of that but the cellar holes — ”
“Greetings.” Maartens came in just as Quinn put down the phone. “You have returned in one piece, I see. How was the Tante Matilda — she did not have you served up in brown gravy?”
“She has identified your Tubac — ”
“What!” Maartens jerked up from his back-of-the-neck lounging in the chair.
“Tubac, by the evidence of that dragon you found, is no other than a certain Wulfanger — a master goldsmith once employed by the House of Norreys. The Freule Matilda has the brooch which was made from that design you found.”
“Master goldsmith — but why — who would want a master goldsmith?”
Quinn shed his coat and started to the bathroom to wash. He looked at his reflection in the shaving mirror. It was the same commonplace and undistinguished face he had always seen there. But why did he have that odd sensation of not exactly — fear — but — more apprehension? As if
he
were one of the Freule’s cut outs being
moved against his will into someone’s pattern. Here was Maartens with his mysterious organization, his interest in Tubac. Then there was Kane and his quest for the counterfeiter, and Dokter Roos and his ‘Jachtmeester’. And — there was Stark who had not completed what he had begun and left his job as a legacy. Four threads, all tangling about him — Quinn Anders — in one way or another. He sloshed water over his face and tried to think.
“A master goldsmith,” he mumbled through the towel as he came back into the bedroom, “could be forced to counterfeit art treasures for the black market. He would be a good tool in certain hands. Those Vermeers you were hunting down sold well, didn’t they?”
“There seems to be a story in this — ” answered Joris slowly.
“Maybe. Whether you can ever tell it is another matter. But I think that I am getting in almost too deeply, Maartens. And — ”
“With you now it is a matter of whom to trust?” asked the Netherlander. “That you must decide for yourself. I know whose man you are and that sign
I
do trust — ”
Quinn turned. With his eyes upon Maartens’ face he told the story of the Bishop’s Menie in a rush of bald words.
Joris sat chewing his thumbnail with an air of concentration, and Quinn felt as if he were now confronting a calculating machine — that each of his words was falling into place somewhere in the Netherlander’s orderly mind. When he was through maybe Maartens would have a neat solution, and the American knew that he wanted such a solution — wanted it badly.
“A puzzle,” was Maartens’ first comment. “But some pieces have already begun to fit together as they should. Yes, I think that you are right about Tubac — he is Wulfanger. But the false knight — such a work of art
would require many days to fashion, and it must be very exact or the counterfeit would not have been so excellent. If he made the false knight, he must have begun work almost immediately after his disappearance. Or did he make it before he disappeared?
“There is also the matter of the piece carried by the Nazi who escaped to the western zone — was it one of several he had had? But his story of how he found it sounds probable. A visit to Sternsberg territory is indicated — ”
“But — ”
“But if you go there you will lead Wasburg and maybe others? Yes, that is true. However, there is something you do not know. Odocar’s Tower stands close to the border. And one may cross that border without doing so openly.”
“You mean through the St. Pietersberg Caverns?”
“Just so. And I would suggest that we try it speedily.”
“We?”
“Do you think,” Maartens answered him, “that I am going to allow such a story as this one may be to slip through my fingers?”
“You may never be able to write it — ”
“That can be decided later. And besides if you go through the caverns you can do so only with one who knows the road or who has — as you say — ‘the proper connections’!”
“How long will it take you — ”
“To contact my disreputable acquaintances? Shall we take the trip tomorrow? And you might find your Mijnheer Kane and brief him on today’s events. I shall call you when all is ready.”
But Kane was missing. A guarded question of the porter revealed that the American had left for the day and was not expected back until the following evening. Quinn hesitated. He did not want to leave a note. The
answer might be Dokter Roos. But a call to the Dokter found him out. So Quinn scrawled his information on a sheet from his notebook, put it in a plain envelope, and mailed it. It would be delivered sometime the following day to Kane here at the hotel and would not be tampered with as a note might be.
He was in bed that night when his phone finally rang.
“Tomorrow — five-thirty.” Maartens’ voice sounded thin and tinny. “We may have company. Wasburg is preparing to make the same trip.”
Wasburg. Quinn’s head was on the pillow, but he had never felt less sleepy in his life — Wasburg bound for the caverns. He was sure that the Eurasian’s ultimate destination was Odocar’s ruined tower.
12
THE SIGN OF THE BLACK MAN
It was still only gray-light at the window when Maartens arrived the next morning. He brought with him a bundle of clothing, and he himself was wearing the seaman's jersey and the patched dungarees he had favored while on the
Polite Policeman.
“Rouse yourself,” he greeted Quinn. “This is no time to laze in bed — ”
Quinn rubbed the smart out of his eyes and indulged in a series of jaw cracking yawns.
“It can’t be time yet — ”
“It is five of the clock and cold enough to frost you white. But we’d better be on the move. In the first place our friend Wasburg is getting ready to go, and I don't want him to get to the caverns too long before us — ”
Quinn shed his pajamas on the way to the bathroom. A moment later the bundle of clothing soared in past him, coming apart in the air so worn khaki slacks draped themselves around his shoulders.
“Put those on. We may have to do some crawling before we are through today.”
When Quinn came out he found the Netherlander prowling about the room as if he were too impatient to sit down. On the bed lay a buckled knapsack.
“Supplies?” asked the American.
“Something of the sort.”
Quinn got out a flashlight, the pencil gun, and his small first-aid kit, all of which could be carried on his person. He shivered and chose to pull his raincoat over the darned and spotted jersey Maartens had brought him.
“Do we go without breakfast?” he asked a little plaintively as they walked through the lobby.
“I have food in the car — ”
Quinn, still thinking wistfully of hot coffee and warm rolls, followed Maartens to the battered little car which had brought them to Maastricht. But once behind the wheel Joris did not start out of the city. Instead he drove sedately around the block and parked, with the motor running, before the blank front of an old warehouse.
“What — ?” began the American when a sharp dig in his ribs shut him up.
A taxi came down the street, threading among the bicycles ridden by people on their way to work. It stopped half a block away, and its driver went into a building. He emerged a few minutes later with Wasburg. The taxi drove off, passing them. Joris pulled out after it.
“We’d do better on bikes,” commented Quinn. “Cars are so few here that he’ll catch on that he’s being tailed — ”
“Perhaps. On the other hand there is a lot of traffic on the St. Pietersberg road even this early and once we make the highway we shall not be so conspicuous — ”
He stopped almost in mid-word. And Quinn’s hands balled into fists. Another car pulled out of a side street and swung in between them and the taxi. A car which showed no desire to catch up or pass Wasburg’s. Another
toiler — ! But who — ?
Joris cut speed, dropped back — a half block, a full block. The taxi and its black follower proceeded in a stately parade.
“Friend of yours?” Quinn hoped that that was true.
“No.” Joris’ answer was curt.
They were driving through the suburbs of the city now, almost on the road which ran two and a half miles on to St. Pietersberg. Free of the bicycle swarms the taxi picked up speed, but its spurt was matched by the black car. Joris ventured to draw closer. He took his left hand from the wheel and pulled open a pocket on the door. A moment later he held a Luger.
“Kidnapping ahead?” suggested Quinn.
“That may be what they plan. I do not like the looks of this at all.”
That, thought Quinn, was a prize understatement. He located the pencil gun and wondered if Joris had any more arms concealed about the car. A machine gun or a couple of grenades would be a help. He wished that he had not lived so sheltered a life and knew a little more about firearms.
But the black car made no effort to force the taxi off the road, and the procession of three continued in the same order across the countryside until Quinn's excitement faded and he felt more the pangs of hunger than before-the-battle jitters.
As the high rises of the limestone cliffs came into view the black car suddenly slackened speed, and Joris had to brake to a standstill to avoid catching up with it. The taxi drew ahead and vanished. The black car was at the side of the road, and a man got out to look under the hood.
Joris made several blistering comments under his breath. There was no place here to get off the road out of sight of the car ahead. And for him to fake a break-down also would be entirely too suspicious. He dared not even
keep to his present crawling pace for the same reason. But ahead the hood was being snapped down again, the driver got back in and started up at a speed which sent the earth spinning out from the car wheels.
“Wanted to let the taxi get a good start, but didn’t want us to pass them — ” deduced Quinn aloud.
“Right. And there is the entrance to the caverns.”
Before they reached the parking place the taxi passed them, the driver alone in it, bound back to Maastricht. Wasburg must have already entered the caverns. Joris drove in to park beside the now empty black car. Then he went over to the guides’ office. He returned scowling and kicking at pebbles.
“Well?”
“It is not well at all.” The Netherlander opened the car door. “But we can eat while we wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Guides! It is the fault of my own thickheadedness.” Joris unscrewed the top of a thermos bottle. “Wasburg had a guide who met him and took him right on in. It turns out that one of the men in the black car — there were three of them —
was
a guide. There isn't another to be had for an hour when the regular crew come on duty. And we are not allowed to enter alone. So we'll just have to wait! I should have arranged for one yesterday.”
“But how are we going to get across into Belgium if a guide goes with us?” Quinn wanted to know.
“There are markings on the wall — I know how to find the trail from a point inside. But we have to take a cave runner to get us that far and then we'll have to give him the slip and try it alone. But I do not like the thought of Wasburg in there and those three others after him — ”
Quinn’s sandwich suddenly lost all taste, and he chewed and swallowed large dry chunks. An hour before they could start — and so much could happen in an hour!
“If they want to get him they’ll have to wait until they
are in some distance,” Joris continued as if he read the other’s thoughts. “The main galleries are too public. But a cave runner who knows his work could get him off into a side pocket where he would never be found — ”
“Murder!”
Joris swallowed as if he found the food as hard to manage as Quinn had. “I do not know. But this would be an excellent place to hide a body. There are supposed to be about twenty-three thousand galleries, and many are very dangerous. Rock falls can entomb one alive. Some of the deeper passages are flooded.”
Quinn put down the remaining part of his cheese sandwich. He had lost his interest in food.
“You were wishing a guide for the caverns, Mijnheeren?”
The man who came up to their car was small and thin, and his face in the full light of the rising sun seemed oddly white. He was a hairy man with a thick growth of dark fuzz low on his forehead, sprouting again in bushy tufts over his eyes until they were as well hidden as if protected by hedging. On the back of the hand which rested now on the window of the car was a wiry black mat.
He wore the worn and discarded fatigues of an American soldier, stained on the knees and along the forearms as if he had crawled and wriggled through damp earth not too long ago.
“You are in search of a guide?” he asked again.
“You are not one of the official ones,” Joris countered.
The little man grinned and shrugged. “I have not the presence — the proper looks to inspire trust in tourists — or so the officials have frankly told me. But I have run the caves since I was a boy. Ask old puffy neck sitting like a judge there — ” He waved his hand toward the entrance. “He must, if he tells the truth at all, admit that Hans Loo knows even the bat trails inside. But if it is a proud strutter in a fine uniform you are waiting for —
well, wait for him, Mijnheer —” He turned away.
“Wait!” Joris got out of the car. “If the guard will vouch for you, you have customers.”
He caught the small man with a firm grip on his upper arm and propelled him toward the entrance. Quinn picked up the knapsack, locked the car, and followed. He was only halfway to the entrance when Joris emerged and waved him to hurry.
“It is all correct,” Maartens said. “Loo is an expert and reliable. Also,” he dropped his voice as the American fell in step with him, “I now know in which direction Was-burg was headed. He asked to visit the cave where the female bats raise their young — the bat nursery. It is quite famous. So,” he turned to the waiting Loo who had reappeared equipped with a powerful torch and a coil of rope, “we would visit the bat nursery, my friend.”
“As you wish, Mijnheeren. You will follow me at all times, please, and do not stray. It is very dangerous to lose one’s way.” He waited to see them both nod in agreement before he padded away into a weird lost world which, Quinn decided, could overawe those who invaded it.
Underfoot the soft chalky dust, faintly damp, which Joris called ‘marl’, muffled footfalls so that one moved zombie-fashion down corridors carved out of the living stone. In endless rows on either side were ranks of squared pillars rising to support a ceiling which was forty, perhaps even fifty feet above their heads. The massive pillars of shadowy stone suggested an Egyptian temple where the timeless silence could not be shattered by any sound made by relatively ineffectual mankind.
When the guide pointed out the scrawls left by Romans, or those of the centuries-ago explorers who followed after them, Quinn began to realize that he walked where time moved no clock hands. Material taken from these walls had built Roman villas and temples to Mars
and Mitra which had been wrecked in turn by Goths and Huns. Then men had come again to haul forth the stone for Christian churches and castles —
“Men once said” — the small guide’s voice floated back to them, oddly muffled and deadened —”that the Devil roamed here at his will. The Black Man held his feasts for the Riders of the Goats in lower passages. If you wish I can show you, Mijnheeren, one of the black crosses which were made to summon him out to give a man luck. This place is old — very old!”
He drew his hand along the wall beside which he walked almost lovingly. “It was once on the bottom of a sea — so the professors say. And that is maybe the truth for in the walls are shells, and they once found hereabouts the bones of fish monsters. Now — they still take from here the marl and the building blocks. And in other parts mushrooms are grown. During the war there was also made a place of safety for use in air raids. For five thousand years have these caverns served man in one way or another. And that is a long time, Mijnheeren, a long time.”
They passed from corridor to corridor, all alike, forming such a network of exactly similar passages that Quinn was quite lost within five minutes of their leaving the entrance. But the guide was perfectly certain of the path.
“How can you tell the right way?” asked the American at last.
Hans Loo laughed. “It becomes with us who run the caves like another sense, Mijnheer. Sometimes we travel even without this.” He twisted the torch so that the spear of light went from floor to roof and back in one yellow-white sweep. “We have our markings which others might not notice — the trace of an old cart trail on the floor, the scar of saw and chisel on the wall or arch. We start as boys. Sometimes we get lost. We fight the dark and the fear. There are men, Mijnheeren, who cannot withstand
that fear. They come in, and when the dark closes about them, tighter, tighter, tighter, they are ridden by terror — they must get out or they will go mad! I have seen that happen. I myself have led out by the hand men who were sick and shaking.
“But if you have not the fear you haunt the grottos and the corridors. You learn the ways as if they were those of your own home. You explore by yourself, always trying to find again old forgotten passages where men have not walked for centuries. In time, cave running becomes your life!”
Quinn looked at his watch. They had been traveling almost a half hour. The dank chill of the place seeped through his coat, and he wondered how Joris could stand it with only a thin jacket over his jersey. Then Maartens caught his wrist and, having so attracted his attention, pointed to a scrap of white paper on the floor. Hardly pausing as he passed it the Netherlander stooped and scooped up a crumpled cigarette package.
Quinn could see nothing out of the ordinary about the find. But to his surprise Joris tucked it away in his jacket pocket. Surely such a tourist memento could be found anywhere about the caverns. Then the American remembered he had
not
seen trash lying about. Could Joris believe that had been dropped on purpose?
Their muffled journey continued. The gloom, the unending lines of massive pillars, the cold and silence began to nibble at Quinn’s nerves. He thought he was able now to sympathize with those men who could not take the caverns, who had had to be led out shaking. Man’s oldest and most common fear — not that of the dark itself, but of what might lie in wait there — above to see — to hunt — was nursed by the atmosphere of these ways. A man lost here, alone, without light, blundering through an unending maze — Quinn gave himself a mental shake. This was no time to indulge his imagination.
He’d better think about what might happen when they caught up with Wasburg. How many men were ahead of them now?
Wasburg and his guide — two. And the three men from the black car. But were those two parties together now? Two against five — not very good odds. They couldn't expect Loo to aid in their quarrel. There was a telltale bulge under Joris’ jacket, though. He still carried the Luger.
“Is this section well known?” Maartens asked suddenly.
“Not so well, Mijnheer. Most tourists do not care for the bats — The ladies, now — few of them will go near the bat caves. We have men of science who come from time to time to study the creatures. They band some of them on the legs with metal rings — to learn how far the bat will travel. I do not know — ” He shrugged. “The bats, they are most strange and odd. Some years ago I saw one which was pure white — like a ghost it flew. I tried to capture it for I thought that I might be able to sell it to one of the scientists or to a zoo. But I could not. For two years I saw it come and go, always in the same cave. And then it came no more. Perhaps it died — or went to roost elsewhere. I told one of those who band the bats of it. And he was much excited — asking me to watch for another. Well, I have done so ever since — maybe five seasons now — that is why I know the path to the bat nursery so well. But never have I seen another white one.”