The Vampire Affair - McDaniel David - Страница 21

"Ah," said Napoleon. "Signs of civilization."

"We may be getting close to the inhabited parts of the castle," Illya murmured. "Let's cut back to one light."

He cut his off, and the darkness moved a little closer.

Eventually the passage grew inexplicably narrower, and then they turned a tight corner and the walls fell away on either side and disappeared. Suddenly they were in a room—a room of unguessable extent. Napoleon's flash found heavy carved beams ten or fifteen feet overhead, and a wall perhaps thirty feet away to their left. The rest was darkness.

He cast the light behind them for a moment, and saw they had come out of a narrow doorway between two great pairs of wooden trestles on which rested barrels of something—probably wine. Dust was heavy on the barrels, and so deep on the floor that it muffled their footsteps. No one had come that way for more years than he would care to contemplate.

Illya flicked his light on, and send it off into the darkness of the wine cellar. "Well," he whispered, "we're inside. Now what?"

"I guess we just keep looking," said Napoleon.

"What for?"

"I'll let you know when I see it."

They stayed close to the wall, and worked their way along to another door, oak-beamed and barred. It opened into another passage, which led to a flight of stone steps—leading down.

At the bottom of the stairs they found themselves in another room. The room was small, but as their lights traversed the walls, Napoleon felt his neck prickle. They were lined with plaques, each bearing a name and two dates. Some of them had small portraits engraved upon them.

Illya spoke first. "Is this what we were looking for?"

Napoleon shook his head slowly. "I don't think so. There's nothing here of vital interest to us. There probably isn't even another way out." He scanned his light around the walls, slowly. The spot of light slid over the tarnished squares of metal to the far wall, and traversed it slowly. Then it stopped on something large and black. Instantly Illya's light swung to join it.

Twenty yards away across the floor a black drapery hung from the low ceiling. It spread as it fell, and formed a canopy around a stone dais. And on the dais rested a black coffin. Though dust was thick through the rest of the room, not a speck marred the dull surface of that sinister box—it looked as though it were polished daily.

On the side of the coffin a large medallion bore the Stobolzny arms, which Napoleon recognized from his researches. The spotlights centered on it and stopped. Even from this distance they could see that the lid of the coffin was slightly ajar.

"That one looks opened," said Napoleon carefully.

"That's right," said Illya. "It looks open."

Each glanced at the other, and neither said anything else for a long moment.

Finally Napoleon said, "Well! Let's...let's go take a look at it."

Illya considered this. "You take a look at it," he said. "I'll guard the door."

Napoleon managed a slight smile, and started hesitantly towards the coffin. It seemed to be quite a distance from Illya and the other light, but he walked boldly the twenty-five paces across the musty, silent, dust-shrouded tomb to the low stone dais where it lay.

At last he stood beside it.

"Illya..."

"Yes?" Illya's voice seemed distant, and more muffled than sixty feet should have accounted for.

"It is open." He ran his light slowly over the lid, and stopped it on the plaque. "It says Voivode Tsepesh Drakula-Stobolzny -- 1671...Uh...there's no date of death here."

"Remember, Napoleon, his body was never found."

"I remember." He paused. "I wonder who used this coffin?"

"Why don't you look and see?" Illya suggested.

Napoleon glanced over his shoulder. His partner was still close to the door. He turned back towards the coffin, and the faintest of smiles might have danced momentarily across his lips. "All right," he said. "I will."

The lid was loose, and he shifted his flashlight to a more convenient grip. He slipped his fingertips under the edge of the lid and lifted. There was a blood-chilling groan from the concealed hinges and the ponderous slab of wood swung back and thumped down on a rest with a deep BOOM which echoed through the chamber for many seconds.

Napoleon had jumped back automatically as the lid had come up in his grip, as easily as if it had been counterbalanced. But as nothing burst out of the dark recesses of the coffin at him, he quickly recovered his balance. He lifted the light to shine over the edge and peered hesitantly in.

"Well?" said Illya impatiently.

"The coffin is empty," said Napoleon slowly, looking into the box. The red satin lining was as bright as if new, but there were smudges of something at the foot end—they looked like dried mud—and stains of something brown and slightly crusted near the head end. While he was looking, Napoleon kept speaking.

"Not exactly empty," he said slowly. "There's a layer of dirt in the bottom of the casket, and what looks like the impression of a body in it...."

He glanced over his shoulder to see the effect this was having on Illya, and continued: "Wait a minute...here's a piece of paper, with something written on it." He pretended to pick something out of the empty coffin. "It says...Out to Lunch??"

Illya grimaced in exasperation. "Napoleon," he said very patiently, "is there anything there or isn't there?"

Napoleon smiled briefly. "No, not really. I just thought we were being awfully serious about this. After all, here we are, two grown men skulking about in somebody's cellar, as nervous as little boys playing in a haunted house. I decided it was time to break the mood."

Illya was silent for a moment, as Napoleon came back across the vault towards him. Then he glanced at the coffin. "Aren't you going to close the lid again? We wouldn't want anyone to know we'd been here."

Napoleon took an automatic step back towards the coffin, then turned to Illya. "I just finished saying there's nothing..."

"Somebody has been dusting it," said Illya mildly, and Napoleon stopped in mid-sentence. His face changed as he thought about that, then without another word he walked quietly back across the chamber, reached over the coffin, pulled the lid towards him, and let it down gently. Then he came back to the door.

"Now are you happy?"

"Deliriously. Now can we return to looking for a way out of here?"

Napoleon was reluctant. "Our original purpose in this little invasion of privacy was to find out if someone was using this castle for something, or someone was staying here, or something."

"Well, we've found out."

"What?"

"Something," said Illya. "Now let's go. It's well after midnight, and..."

A sharp and strangely familiar whistling note sounded within the chamber, and echoed from the heavy stone walls. It was several seconds before they recognized it, and Napoleon reached for his communicator. It seemed so out of place in this dark medieval chamber that he stared at it for a few seconds as if he'd never seen it before. Then he pulled up the antenna and said, "Solo here."

"Good morning, Mr. Solo," said the familiar voice of Alexander Waverly. "I hoped you would still be up at this hour. I've been looking for an interim report from you. What have you accomplished so far?"