Текст книги "The Cabinet of Curiosities"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

She turned abruptly as the sound of a second shot echoed up from the dark staircase. It sounded faint, muffled, as if coming from deep underground.

For a moment she stood motionless, lanced by fear. What had happened? Had Pendergast shot—or been shot?

Then she turned back toward Smithback’s inert form. Only one man was going to come up that staircase: Pendergast, or the other. When the time came, she’d deal with it. Right now, her responsibility lay with Smithback. And she wasn’t going to leave him.

She glanced back at the vitals: blood pressure down to 70 over 35; the heart rate slowing too, now, down to 80 beats per minute. At first, this latter development sent relief coursing through her. But then another thought struck, and she raised her palm to Smithback’s forehead. It was growing as cold as his limbs had been.

Bradycardia,she thought, as panic replaced the transitory feeling of relief. When blood loss is persistent, and there are no more areas for the body to shut down, the patient decompensates. The critical areas start to go. The heart slows. And then stops for good.

Hand still on Smithback’s forehead, Nora turned her frantic gaze back to the EKG. It looked strangely diminished, the spikes smaller, the frequency slower. The pulse was now 50 beats per minute.

She dropped her hands to Smithback’s shoulders, shook him roughly. “Bill!” she cried. “Bill, damn it, come on! Please!”

The peeping of the EKG grew erratic. Slowed.

There was nothing more she could do.

She stared at the monitors for a moment, a horrible feeling of powerlessness stealing over her. And then she closed her eyes and let her head sink onto Smithback’s shoulder: bare, motionless, cold as a marble tomb.

NINE

PENDERGAST STUMBLED PAST the long tables of the old laboratory. Another spasm of pain wracked his gut and he paused momentarily, mentally willing it to pass. Despite the severity of his wounds, he had so far managed to keep one corner of his mind clear, sharp, free of distraction. He tried to focus on that corner through the thickening fog of pain; tried to observe and understand what lay around him.

Titration and distillation apparatuses, beakers and retorts, burners; a vast thicket of glassware and metal. And yet, despite the extent of the equipment, there seemed to be few clues to the project Leng had been working on. Chemistry was chemistry, and you used the same tools and equipment, regardless of what chemicals you were synthesizing or isolating. There were a larger number of hoods and vintage glove boxes than Pendergast expected, implying that Leng had been handling poisons or radioactive substances in his laboratory. But even this merely corroborated what he had already surmised.

The only surprise had been the state of the laboratory. There was no mass spectrometer, no X-ray diffraction equipment, no electrophoresis apparatus, and certainly no DNA sequencer. No computers, nothing that seemed to contain any integrated circuits. There was nothing to reflect the revolution in biochemistry technology that had occurred since the 1960s. Judging by the age of the equipment and its neglected condition, it looked, in fact, as if all work in the lab had ceased around fifty years before.

But that made no sense. Leng would certainly have availed himself of the latest scientific developments, the most modern equipment, to help him in his quest. And, until very recently, the man had been alive.

Could Leng have finished his project? If so, where was it? Whatwas it? Was it somewhere in this vast basement? Or had he given up?

The flicker of Fairhaven’s light was licking closer now, and Pendergast ceased speculating and forced himself onward. There was a door in the far wall, and he dragged himself toward it through an overwhelming wash of pain. If this was Leng’s laboratory, there would be no more than one, perhaps two, final workrooms beyond. He felt an almost overpowering wave of dizziness. He had reached the point where he could barely walk. The endgame had arrived.

And still he didn’t know.

Pendergast pushed the door ajar, took five steps into the next room. He uncloaked the lantern and tried to raise it to get his bearings, examine the room’s contents, make one final attempt at resolving the mystery.

And then his legs buckled beneath him.

As he fell, the lantern crashed to the floor, rolling away, its light flickering crazily across the walls. And along the walls, a hundred edges of sharpened steel reflected the light back toward him.

TEN

THE SURGEON SHONE the light hungrily around the chamber as the echoes of the second shot died away. The beam illuminated moth-eaten clothing, ancient wooden display cases, motes of disturbed dust hanging in the air. He was certain he had hit Pendergast again.

The first shot, the gut shot, had been the more severe. It would be painful, debilitating, a wound that would grow steadily worse. The last kind of wound you wanted when you were trying to escape. The second shot had hit a limb—an arm, no doubt, given that the FBI agent could still walk. Exceedingly painful, and with luck it might have nicked the basilic vein, adding to Pendergast’s loss of blood.

He stopped where Pendergast had fallen. There was a small spray of blood against a nearby cabinet, and a heavier smear where the agent had obviously rolled across the ground. He stepped back, glancing around with a feeling of contempt. It was another of Leng’s absurd collections. The man had been a neurotic collector, and the basement was of a piece with the rest of the house. There would be no arcanum here, no philosopher’s stone. Pendergast had obviously been trying to throw him off balance with that talk of Leng’s ultimate purpose. What purpose could be more grand than the prolongation of the human life span? And if this ridiculous collection of umbrellas and walking sticks and wigs was an example of Leng’s ultimate project, then it merely corroborated how unfit he was for his own discovery. Perhaps with the long, cloistered years had come madness. Although Leng had seemed quite sane when he’d first confronted him, six months before—as much as one could tell anything from such a silent, ascetic fellow—appearances meant nothing. One never knew what went on inside a man’s head. But in the end, it made no difference. Clearly, the discovery was destined for him.Leng was only a vessel to bring this stupendous advancement across the years. Like John the Baptist, he had merely paved the way. The elixir was Fairhaven’s destiny. God had placed it in his path. He would be Leng, as Leng should have been—perhaps wouldhave been, had it not been for his weaknesses, his fatal flaws.

Once he had achieved success, he, Fairhaven, would not hole up like a recluse in this house to let the years roll endlessly by. Once the transformation was complete—once he had perfected the elixir, absorbed all Leng had to give into himself—he would emerge, like a butterfly from a pupa. He would put his long life to wonderful use: travel, love, learning, pleasure, exotic experiences. Money would never be a problem.

The Surgeon forced himself to put aside these reflections and once again take up Pendergast’s irregular path. The footprints were growing smudged at the heels: the man was dragging his feet along the ground. Of course, Pendergast could be faking the gravity of his wound, but Fairhaven sensed he wasn’t. One couldn’t fake that heavy loss of blood. And the man couldn’t fake that he had been hit—not once, but twice.

Following the trail of blood, he crept through the archway in the far wall and entered the next room. His flashlight revealed what looked like an ancient laboratory: long tables set up with all manner of strange glassware, racked into fantastic shapes, tubes and coils and retorts mounting almost to the ceiling of undressed rock. It was old and dusty, the test tubes caked with rust-colored deposits. Leng clearly hadn’t used the place in years. On the nearest table, one of the racks had rusted through, causing glassware to fall and shatter into pieces on the dark woodwork.

Pendergast’s ragged steps went straight through this lab, without stopping, to a door on the far side. Fairhaven followed more quickly now, gun raised, steady pressure on the trigger. It’s time,he thought to himself as he approached the door. Time to finish this.

ELEVEN

AS HE ENTERED the room, Fairhaven immediately saw Pendergast: on his knees, head drooping, in a widening pool of blood. There was to be no more hiding, no more evading, no more clever dissembling.

The man reminded Fairhaven of the way an animal died when gut-shot. It didn’t instantly keel over dead. Instead, it happened in stages. First, the animal stood there, shocked, trembling slightly. Then it slowly kneeled, holding the position for a minute or more, as if praying. Then its rear legs collapsed into a sitting position. And there it might remain for several minutes before suddenly rolling onto its side. The slow-motion ballet always ended with a spasm, that violent jerk of the legs at the moment of death.

Pendergast was in the second stage. He could survive as much as a few more hours—helpless as a baby, of course. But he wasn’t going to live that long. The chase had been diverting, but pressing business remained upstairs. Smithback was spoiled by now, but the girl was waiting.

The Surgeon approached Pendergast, gun hand extended, allowing himself to briefly savor the triumph. The clever, the diabolically cunning Special Agent Pendergast lay before him: stuporous, unresisting. Then he stepped back to give himself room for the final shot and, without much curiosity, raised his light to illuminate the room. He wouldn’t want to spoil anything with his bullet, on the remote chance this room contained anything useful.

He was amazed at what he saw. Yet another bizarre collection of Leng’s. Only this one was different. This was all weapons and armor. Swords, daggers, crossbows and bolts, harquebuses, lances, arrows, maces were mixed higgledy-piggledy with more modern guns, rifles, blackjacks, grenades, and rocket launchers. There were also medieval suits of armor, iron helmets, chain-mail, Crimean, Spanish-American, and World War I army helmets; early bulletproof vests and stacks of ammunition—a veritable arsenal, dating from Roman times to the early twentieth century.

The Surgeon shook his head. The irony was incredible. If Pendergast had been able to get here a few minutes earlier, in better condition, he could have armed himself with enough firepower to fight off a battalion. The contest might have gone very differently. But as it was, he’d spent too much time browsing the earlier collections. He’d arrived here a little too late. Now he lay there in his own blood, half dead, lantern near his feet. Fairhaven barked a laugh, his voice ringing off the vaults, and raised the gun.

The sound of laughter seemed to rouse the agent, who looked up at him, eyes glassy. “All I ask is that you make it quick,” he said.

Don’t let him speak,the voice said. Just kill him.

Fairhaven aimed the gun, placing Pendergast’s head squarely before the center dot of the tritium sights. A solid hit with a hollow-point bullet would effectively decapitate the FBI agent. It would be about as quick as you could get. His finger tightened on the trigger.

And then something occurred to him.

Quickwas a lot more than Pendergast deserved. The man had caused him a lot of grief. Pendergast had dogged his trail; ruined his latest specimen; brought him anxiety and suffering at the very moment of triumph.

As he stood over the agent, he felt a hatred rise within him; the hatred he had felt for the other one, Leng, who had looked so similar. The hatred he had felt for the trustees and professors of his medical school, who had refused to share his vision. Hatred for the pettiness and small-mindedness that kept people like him from achieving their true greatness.

So Pendergast wanted it quick? Not with this arsenal at his disposal.

He walked over to Pendergast and once again searched the unresisting man carefully, recoiling a little from the warm sticky blood that soaked his side. Nothing. The man had not been able to slip a weapon from the surrounding walls. In fact, he could see that Pendergast’s faltering footsteps led directly to the center of the room, where he had collapsed. But it would do to be careful. Pendergast, even in this pathetic state, was dangerous. If he tried to talk, it would be best to just shoot him. Words, in the mouth of this man, were subtle and pernicious.

He looked around again, more carefully this time. There was every weapon imaginable on the walls. He had read histories of some of them, studied others in museums. The choice would prove amusing.

The word funcame to mind.

Always keeping Pendergast in his field of vision, Fairhaven shone his light around, finally selecting a bejeweled sword. He plucked it from the wall, hefted it, turned it around in the beam of the flashlight. It would have served his purpose, except it was rather heavy, and the blade was so rusty it looked as if it wouldn’t cut butter. Besides, the handle was sticky and unpleasant. He hung it back up on the shelf, wiping his hands on his surgical cloth.

Pendergast was still sitting, watching him with pale, cloudy eyes. Fairhaven grinned. “Got any preferences?”

There was no reply, but Fairhaven could see a look of profound distress cross the agent’s face.

“That’s right, Agent Pendergast. ‘Quick’ is no longer in the cards.”

A slight, terrified widening of the eyes was Pendergast’s only response. It was enough. The Surgeon felt a swell of satisfaction.

He moved along the collections, picked up a dagger with a handle of gold and silver, turned it over, laid it down. Next to it was a helmet shaped like a man’s head, with spikes inside that you could screw closed, driving the spikes bit by bit through the skull. Too primitive, too messy. Hanging on the wall nearby was an oversized leather funnel. He’d heard of this: the torturer would jam it into the victim’s mouth, then pour water down the victim’s throat until the poor wretch either drowned or exploded. Exotic, but too time-consuming. Nearby was a large wheel on which people could be broken—too much trouble. A cat-o’-nine tails, studded with iron hooks. He hefted it, lashed it overhead, laid it back down, again wiping his hands. The stuff was filthy. All this junk had probably been hanging around in Leng’s dingy subbasement for more than a century.

There had to be something here that would be suitable for his needs. And then his eye fell on an executioner’s axe.

“What do you know?” said Fairhaven, his smile broadening. “Perhaps you’ll get your wish, after all.”

He plucked the axe from its mounting hooks and gave it a few swings. The wooden shaft was almost five feet long, fitted with several rows of dull brass nails. It was heavy, but well balanced and sharp as a razor. It made a whistling noise as it cut through the air. Sitting below the axe was the second part of the executioner’s outfit: a tree stump, well worn and covered with a dark patina. A semicircle had been hollowed from it, clearly intended to receive the neck. It had been well used, as many chop marks attested. He set down the axe, rolled the block over to Pendergast, tipped it flat, positioned the block in front of the agent.

Suddenly, Pendergast resisted, struggling feebly, and the Surgeon gave him a brutal kick in the side. Pendergast went rigid with pain, then abruptly fell limp. The Surgeon had a brief, unpleasant sensation of déjà vu, remembering how he had pushed Leng just a little too hard and ended up with a corpse. But no: Pendergast was still conscious. His eyes, though clouded with pain, remained open. He would be present and conscious when the axe fell. He knew what was coming. That was important to the Surgeon: very important.

And now another thought occurred to him. He recalled how, when Anne Boleyn was to be put to death, she’d sent for a French executioner, skilled in the art of decapitating with a sword. It was a cleaner, quicker, surer death than an axe. She had knelt, head erect, with no unseemly block. And she had tipped the man well.

The Surgeon hefted the axe in his hands. It seemed heavy, heavier than it had before. But surely he could swing it true. It would be an interesting challenge to do without the block.

He shoved the block away with his foot. Pendergast was already kneeling as if he had arranged himself in position, hands limp at his sides, head drooping, helpless and resigned.

“Your struggles cost you that quick death you asked for,” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll have it off in—oh—no more than two or three strokes. Either way, you’re about to experience something I’ve always wondered about. After the head goes rolling off, how long does the body remain conscious? Do you see the world spinning around as your head falls into the basket of sawdust? When the executioner raised the heads in Tower Yard, crying out ‘Behold the head of a traitor!,’ the eyes and lips continued to move. Did they actually seetheir own headless corpse?”

He gave the axe a practice swing. Why was it so heavy? And yet he was enjoying drawing out this moment. “Did you know that Charlotte Corday, who was guillotined for assassinating Marat during the French Revolution, blushed after the assistant executioner slapped her severed head before the assembled crowd? Or how about the pirate captain who was caught and sentenced to death? They lined up his men in a row. And they told him that after he was beheaded, whichever men he managed to walk past would be reprieved. So they cut off his head as he stood, and wouldn’t you know it, but that headless captain began to walk along the row of men, one step at a time. The executioner was so upset that he wouldn’t have any more victims that he stuck out his foot and tripped the captain.”

With this the Surgeon roared with laughter. Pendergast did not join in.

“Ah well,” Fairhaven said. “I guess I’ll never know how long consciousness lasts after one has lost one’s head. But youwill. Shortly.”

He raised the axe over his right shoulder, like a bat, and took careful aim.

“Give my regards to your great-grand-uncle,” he said, as he tensed his muscles to deliver the stroke.

TWELVE

NORA PILLOWED HER head on Smithback’s shoulder, tears seeping through her closed eyelids. She felt weak with despair. She had done all she could—and yet, all she could was not enough.

And then, through the fog of grief, she realized something: the beeping of the EKG had steadied.

She quickly raised her head, glanced at the monitors. Blood pressure had stabilized, and the pulse had risen slightly, to 60 beats per minute.

She stood in the chill room, trembling. In the end, the saline solution had made the crucial difference. Thank you. Thank you.

Smithback was still alive. But he was far from out of the woods. If she didn’t further replenish his fluid volume, he’d slip into shock.

The saline bag was empty. She glanced around the room, spotted a small refrigerator, opened it. Inside were half a dozen liter bags of similar solution, feeder lines wrapped around them. She pulled one out, detached the old line from the catheter, removed the empty bag from the IV rack and tossed it aside, then hung the new bag and attached its line. She watched the fluid dribble rapidly down the clear tube. Throughout, Smithback’s vital signs remained weak but stable. With any luck, he’d make it—if she could get him out of here and to a hospital.

She examined the gurney. It was on wheels, but detachable. There were straps. If she could find a way out of the basement, she just might be able to drag the gurney up a flight of stairs. It was worth a try.

She searched through the nearby cabinets, pulled out half a dozen green surgical sheets, and covered Smithback with them. She plucked a medical light from one of the cabinets, slipped it into her pocket. She gave another glance at the monitors at the head of the operating table, another look into the dark opening that led down into darkness. It was from there that the sound of the second shot had come. But the way out of the house lay up, not down. She hated to leave Smithback, if only for a moment, but it was vital he get real medical attention as soon as possible.

She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and, crossing the room, stepped through the doorway into the stone corridor beyond.

It was the work of five minutes to explore the basement, a warren of narrow passages and small damp rooms, all of the same undressed stone. The passages were low and dark, and she lost her way more than once. She found the crashed elevator—and, tragically, the corpse of O’Shaughnessy—but the elevator was inoperable, and there was no way up the shaft. Ultimately, she found a massive iron door, banded and riveted, which clearly led upstairs. It was locked. Pendergast,she thought, might be able to pick the lock—but then Pendergast wasn’t here.

At last she returned to the operating room, chilled and despondent. If there was another way out of the basement, it was too well hidden for her to find. They were locked in.

She approached the unconscious Smithback and caressed his brown hair. Once again, her eye fell on the opening in the wall that gave onto a descending staircase. It was pitch black, silent. She realized it had been silent for what seemed a long time, ever since the second shot. What could have happened?she wondered. Could Pendergast . . .

“Nora?”

Smithback’s voice was barely a whisper. She glanced down quickly. His eyes were open, his pale face tight with pain.

“Bill!” she cried, grabbing his hands. “Thank God.”

“This is getting old,” he murmured.

At first, she thought he was delirious. “What?”

“Getting hurt, waking up to find you ministering to me. The same thing happened in Utah, remember? Once was enough.” He tried to smile, but his face contorted in agony.

“Bill, don’t talk,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here. I’ll find a—”

But—mercifully—he had already slipped back into unconsciousness.

She glanced at the vitals and felt a huge rush of relief. They had improved—slightly. The saline bag continued to deliver critical fluid.

And then she heard the scream.

It came up from the dark stairs, faint and muffled. Nevertheless it was the most frightening, bone-chilling sound she had ever heard. It started at a high, tearing pitch: shrill, inhuman. It remained at a piercing high for what seemed at least a minute, then began wavering, ululating, before dropping into a gasping, slobbering growl. And then there was the distant clang of metal against stone.

And then, silence once again.

She stared at the opening in the wall, mind racing through the possibilities. What had happened? Was Pendergast dead? His opponent? Were they bothdead?

If Pendergast was hurt, she had to help him. He’d be able to pick the lock on the iron door, or find some other way for them to get Smithback out of this hell-hole. On the other hand—if the Surgeon was still alive, and Pendergast dead—she’d have to face him sooner or later anyway. It might as well be sooner: and on her own terms. She was damned if she was going to wait up here, a sitting duck, for the Surgeon to return and pick her off—and then finish the job on Smithback.

She plucked a large-bladed scalpel from the surgical stand. Then—holding the light in one hand and the scalpel in the other—she approached the doorway that led down into the subbasement.

The narrow stone panel, swung to one side, had been perfectly disguised to look part of the wall. Beyond was a pool of blackness. Shining the beam ahead of her, she began descending, slowly and silently.

Reaching the last turn at the bottom, she turned off the light and waited, heart beating rapidly, wondering what to do. If she shone her light around, it might betray her presence, give the Surgeon—if he was waiting out there in the darkness—a perfect target. But with the light off, she simply could not proceed.

The light was a risk she’d have to take. She snapped it back on, stepped out of the stairwell, then gasped involuntarily.

She was in a long, narrow room, crowded floor to ceiling with bottles. Her powerful beam, lancing through the endless rows, cast myriad glittering colors about the room, making her feel as if she was somehow inside a window of stained glass.

More collections. What could all this mean?

But there was no time to pause, no time to wonder. Two sets of footprints led on into the darkness ahead. And there was blood on the dusty floor.

She moved through the room as quickly as she could, beneath an archway and into another room filled with more bottles. The trail of footsteps continued on. At the end of this room was another archway, covered by a fringed tapestry.

She turned off her light and advanced toward it. There she waited, in the pitch black, listening. There was no sound. With infinite care, she drew back the tapestry and peered into the darkness. She could see nothing. The room beyond seemed empty, but there was no way to be sure: she would simply have to take a chance. She took a deep breath, switched on her light.

The beam illuminated a larger room, filled with wooden display cases. She hurried ahead, sidestepping from case to case, to an archway in the far wall that led on into a series of smaller vaults. She ducked into the nearest and turned off her light again, listening for any sound that might indicate that her presence had been noticed. Nothing. Turning on the light again, she moved forward, into a room whose cases were filled with frogs and lizards, snakes and roaches, spiders of infinite shapes and colors. Was there no end to Leng’s cabinet?

At the far end of the room, before another low archway that led into further darkness, she again crouched, turning off her light to listen for any noises that might be coming from the room beyond.

It was then she heard the sound.

It came to her faintly, echoing and distorted by its passage through intervening stone. Remote as it was, it instantly chilled her blood: a low, gibbering moan, rising and falling in a fiendish cadence.

She waited a moment, flesh crawling. For a moment, her muscles tensed for an involuntary retreat. But then, with a supreme effort, she steeled herself. Whatever lay beyond, she would have to confront it sooner or later. Pendergast might need her help.

She gathered up her courage, switched on her light, and sprinted forward. She ran past more rooms full of glass-fronted cases; through a chamber that seemed to contain old clothing; and then into an ancient laboratory, full of tubes and coils, dust-heavy machines festooned with dials and rusted switches. Here, between the lab tables, she pulled up abruptly, pausing to listen again.

There was another sound, much closer now, perhaps as close as the next room. It was the sound of something walking– shambling—toward her.

Almost without thinking, she threw herself beneath the nearest table, switching off her light.

Another sound came, hideously alien and yet unmistakably human. It started as a low chatter, a tattoo of rattling teeth, punctuated with a few gasps as if for breath. Then came a high keening, at the highest edge of audibility. Abruptly, the noise stopped. And then Nora heard, in the silence, the footsteps approach once again.

She remained hidden behind the table, immobilized by fear, as the shuffling drew closer in the pitch black. All of a sudden, the darkness was ripped apart by a terrible shriek. This was immediately followed by a coughing, retching sound and the splatter of fluid on stone. The echoes of the shriek died out slowly, ringing on through the stone chambers behind her.

Nora struggled to calm her pounding heart. Despite the unearthly sound, the thing that was approaching her was human. It hadto be, she hadto remember that. And if it was human, who could it be but Pendergast or the Surgeon? Nora felt it hadto be the Surgeon. Perhaps he had been wounded by Pendergast. Or perhaps he was utterly insane.

She had one advantage: he didn’t seem to know she was there. She could ambush him, kill him with the scalpel. If she could summon the courage.

She crouched behind the lab table, scalpel in one trembling hand and light in the other, waiting in the enfolding dark. The shambling seemed to have stopped. A minute, an eternity, of silence ticked by. Then she heard the unsteady footsteps resume. He was now in the room with her.

The footsteps were irregular, punctuated by frequent pauses. Another minute went by in which there was no movement; then, half a dozen jerky footsteps. And now she could hear breathing. Except it wasn’t normal breathing, but a gasping, sucking sound, as if air were being drawn down through a wet hole.

There was a sudden explosion of noise as the person stumbled into a huge apparatus, bringing it to the ground with a massive crash of glass. The sound echoed and reechoed through the stone vaults.

Maintain,Nora said to herself. Maintain.If it’s the Surgeon, Pendergast must have wounded him badly. But then, where was Pendergast? Why wasn’t he pursuing?

The noises seemed to be less than twenty feet away now. She heard a scrabbling, a muttering and panting, and the tinkling of something shedding broken glass: he was getting up from his fall. There was a shuffling thump, and another. Still he was coming, moving with excruciating slowness. And all the time came that breathing:stertorous, with a wet gurgle like air drawn through a leaky snorkel. Nothing Nora had ever heard in her life was quite so unnerving as the sound of that breathing.

Ten feet.Nora gripped the scalpel tighter as adrenaline coursed through her. She would turn on her light and lunge forward. Surprise would give her the advantage, especially if he was wounded.

There was a loud wet snoring sound, another heavy footfall; a gasp, the spastic stamp of a foot; silence; then the dragging of a limb. He was almost upon her. She crouched, tensing all her muscles, ready to blind the man with her light and strike a fatal blow.