She stopped dead when she heard soft footsteps only a few yards away. There was a steady hissing sound, as if from a pair of bellows being blown.
“Oh God, there’s someone here!” Sara froze where she was and clung to Steven. They waited in silence until the footsteps and the hissing sound died away. The bookseller signed to her to stay quiet, then drew her into the back right-hand corner of the smoke-filled room. His expression was tense but concentrated. Sara heaved a sigh of relief; Steven seemed to have overcome his strange trauma.
Suddenly there was a scraping sound, this time from the other side of the room. Sara still held the little treasure chest, clutching it to her breast like a talisman. Her heart thudded; she expected to hear the “pop” of the silencer at any moment, followed by unbearable pain. The smoke around them was still so thick that she couldn’t see more than a pace in front of her. With difficulty, she fought down her urge to cough. Any sound now, however slight, might give them away.
She was about to steal along beside the wall with Steven, hoping to find one of the two passages at some point, when a figure emerged from the vapor ahead of them.
The figure looked like a giant out of a fairy tale, and this giant was in a very, very bad mood.
The strange figure was more than six feet tall. He wore jeans, a black leather coat, and a close-fitting pullover. In one hand he held a long, slim pistol with a silencer; in the other a flashlight the length of his forearm. The worst thing, however, was his head. His face was covered by a black gas mask, which gave him the look of a monstrous fly.
“Hello, Sara,” Lancelot said. His voice came through the gas mask in a curiously muted hiss. “Not very nice to Papa, were you? But now you have all the time in the world to make up for it.”
STEVEN FOUGHT WITH all his might against his rising faintness. Once again, parts of his childhood took shape before his eyes.
When he saw the giant striding toward him through the smoke, he thought at first he was seeing the firefighter in the gas mask who had carried him away from the ivy-covered teahouse on that dreadful evening. His parents’ screams had died away, and Steven had opened the pagoda door a little way to glance out at the fire, now lighting up the whole street like a hundred searchlights. The party guests were still standing around the large garden in dinner jackets and evening dresses, staring at the burning villa. Many of them were shedding tears; others held handkerchiefs over their mouths to protect themselves from flying ash.
All my fault . . . Mom and Dad will be very cross . . .
Steven had finally been given away by his whimpering. The gigantic firefighter had found him in the teahouse, picked him up like a kitten, and carried him through the smoke and outside.
But when he saw the black pistol in the giant’s hand, Steven knew that he was facing not good but the depths of evil. This must be the man who had lain in wait for Sara at Linderhof; now the bookseller could understand why she had called him the worst nightmare of her life.
And you are my nightmare, too, although you don’t know why . . .
Beside him, Sara screamed, while the tall stranger calmly trained his gun on the bookseller.
“Good evening, Herr Lukas,” he growled. The smoke was beginning to clear, and the man pushed his gas mask up. He had a scar on his face and wore a black-colored eye patch. “I have a score to settle with your girlfriend,” he went on in a deep, sonorous voice. “I suggest you go to sleep for a while now, and then the two of us will be taking a little journey.” He smiled and ran the muzzle of his pistol over his lips, which were moist with sweat. “Sara will be staying here, I’m afraid. She has been a very, very naughty girl. Goodnight now, Herr Lukas.”
Without any warning, the giant swung the pistol and struck Steven a blow over the temple. The bookseller staggered, everything went black before his eyes, and he collapsed.
Surprisingly, he did not entirely lose consciousness; the blow had not been quite hard enough for that. From the floor, Steven saw the dead leader of the Cowled Men lying in front of him, covered in blood. He watched, despairingly, as the giant marched through the drifting smoke toward Sara. There was a fire in her eyes that Steven had never seen there before.
“One more step, you great castrated ox,” she hissed, “and I’ll scratch your other eye out.”
“I hardly think so,” the giant said. “This time I’m better prepared.” He pointed with the pistol to the body of the steersman of the Cowled Men. “I suppose you don’t want to end up like that. So put that damn box down on the floor very slowly, understand?”
Sara nodded and bent to put the treasure chest with the book in it down. At first Steven was surprised to see the art detective comply so quickly, but then he saw how Sara’s eyes were feverishly moving over the floor.