We breathe a sigh of relief as they leave the room. I swing my legs out and wince at a sharp stab of muscle cramp.
“Come on, now’s our chance!” Tyler says.
Over by the sofa, they’ve left a document folder. “This is what they were looking at!” Tyler whispers. He grabs it and makes for the door.
“Wait!”
Tyler stops.
“I know that guy,” I say. “I recognize the voice. It’s Blue Nissan—the one who chased me, the one who tried to drown me.”
“What? You’re kidding!”
“No. It’s him all right. And he said his father’s name was Martineau. That’s one of the names he uses. And also ‘Simon Madison.’”
Tyler blows air softly through pursed lips. “Dude! We’d better get out of here fast.”
“Yeah, except …”
I look at the printer and the camera.
“We have to take the printouts. We have to get rid of what’s on that camera. Otherwise, whatever this stuff is, Madison will have it too.”
I pick up the camera, fiddle around for a few seconds until I work out how to erase its memory chip. We wait impatiently at the printer and grab each page as glossy paper feeds out. It’s agonizingly slow. I grab every page and stash each one in the document folder with the originals.
There are footsteps on the creaky stairs.
“The window!” Tyler whispers.
I open the window, throw the folder clear of the house. We launch ourselves through the window, one by one. Tyler goes first, clinging to the timbers and ivy.
“Watch out!” I say, landing practically on top of him.
“Ow!” he hisses. I slide over him, grab the next timber and then a fistful of creeping ivy. It’s not the most stylish stunt ever, but we make it to the ground in seconds. Meanwhile back in the room, we can hear the door opening, and exclamations of surprise from the niece. By the time they’ve spotted the open window, I’ve picked up the document folder from the gravel path and we’re scooting around the back of the house. As I dip behind the corner, I turn and poke my head out just in time to see Madison leaning out of the window, his eyes hunting us out.
His face is silhouetted by the light in the room behind, but I can plainly see the shadow of a Batman mask pushed behind his head.
And for a split second we stare at each other, Batman to Batman.
I turn to Tyler. “The fields. Let’s move!”
Between puffs for breath, Tyler asks, “Think he saw us?”
“Yep. No doubt.”
The only question is, did he recognize me? A sinking feeling tells me that even if he didn’t, he’s smart enough to put two and two together.
We easily clear the low hedge at the back of the yard, and land in a soft, swampy field beyond. It’s so dark we can’t see more than about thirty yards ahead. Beyond that, the light from the Thompson house peters out.
We run flat out for five minutes, putting at least three fields between us and the house. Finally we collapse in a heap, totally spent. But the document folder is safely clutched in my fist.
When I look back, I see and hear nothing. The darkness may have saved us—that’s if Madison chased us at all. But a sneaking suspicion tells me that he didn’t—for one really good reason.
Why bother—when he already knows where I live?
7
After we run over those fields, the costumes are muddy, so we peel them off, bag them, and leave them in front of the shop, with a ten-pound note for the dry-cleaning. After the cost of the return bus tickets, that’s our last cash too. So we ride the bus home, wishing we’d had time to eat at the party.
We don’t care. We have Thompson’s document folder and Madison doesn’t. It contains three sheets of paper on which someone has copied a bunch of Mayan hieroglyphs and two more pages as well, where I can see some writing in English. In the dim lights of the bus, we pore over the pages.
The first page I kind of recognize. The second two are packed more densely with glyphs. The fourth page is handwritten in English—a copy of a diary entry. The final page in the folder contains both English writing and Mayan glyphs. It looks as though someone has tried to translate a bunch of them.
Here’s what the diary entry says:
May 12, 1965
Met this morning by appointment with a certain Señor Aureliano Garcia of the Yucatan, Mexico. Not a gentleman with whom I have any previous acquaintance; nonetheless, he supplied impeccable references from the National Institute of Anthropology in Mexico.
Our correspondence over the past few weeks concerned an object which came into my possession many years ago. The artifact in question was part of a consignment purchased at auction from the contents of a house in Vienna in 1951. There was an unfortunate incident involving its opening, and I have been reluctant to have any further dealings with the item.