I spoke to the chief. “You got the place covered?”
“Yeah. There's a dozen men around.”
“Good.”
I led them to the temple's basement door. I saw a man standing by the front of the temple; one of the chief's men. We left one of our detectives at the back door.
“Grab anybody that tries to come in,” I told him.
“Okay.”
We went into the basement. I punched on the flashlight. We went across to the other door. I nudged Grayson. “Here she is,” I whispered. I flashed the light on the spot where I'd left her. All I could see was the brick wall and the cement floor. Brother, my heart stood still, as the song says.
Grayson said: “What the hell is this?”
I swung the flashlight around the basement. On the other side I caught a movement. I went that way. She was moving with her face to the brick wall, feeling it with her hand; looking, I guess, for a place to get out.
“Penelope!” Grayson called.
“Shut up,” I said.
We went over to her. Grayson took her arm rind turned her around. Her eyes didn't look quite so bad. There was a trace of surprise in them. “Where...?” she began.
Grayson said “Penelope, don't you know me?”
We left a detective with her. I led the chief and Grayson and the three other dicks to the inside door and up the stairs. I opened the upper door. The first room looked just as I'd left it, candles still burning in front of the cross.
“Come on,” I whispered.
We tiptoed across the room to the door. The Princess was lying on the litter in front of the altar, the white cloth in a pile at her feet. I couldn't see the tall man. We went over to the a tar. I heard Grayson's breath rush through his nose, the Princess's left breast was smeared with blood. “That's where Penelope would have been,” I told Grayson.
I looked for the gold dagger, but it wasn't on the altar. The others were staring down at the Princess. “God! What a babe!” one of the detectives whispered. I saw bloody handprints on her thighs.
A deep voice said: “Who desecrates my temple?”
The tall man was coming towards the altar from a corner of the room. He had the dagger in his hand and his eyes were a bright blue, almost as though they were lit up from the inside. He came slowly, his long legs stiff, as though he wasn't used to walking. His face, below the wild eyes, was grim.
“Jesus God!” Chief Piper said. “It's Solomon!”
The man kept on coming. He raised the dagger, holding it in his clenched fist. I saw blood on the blade. Chief Piper screamed, the way a rabbit does when it's being killed, and turned and ran. I felt like running, too. Solomon took two more slow steps and then four of us cut loose at him. The flash of powder blinded me; the reports echoed crazily, hurt my cars. Solomon staggered, as though someone had pushed him, and then, hunched over, ran towards his coffin. We all fired at him, making a noise like a tommy-gun going full blast, but he reached the coffin and fell headlong inside. I guess that was where he wanted to be. We stood with our guns, looking at the coffin.
Chief Piper came back from where he had run to, his face chalk white, his eyes too big for his head. He asked: “Is he dead, boys?”
We walked over to the coffin, keeping the pistols in our hands. Solomon lay on his side. Blood made the robe red in a dozen places, and there was a mess of blood where the lower part of his jaw had been shot away. The gold knife was still in his fist.
I said: “Dead as a mackerel.”
The stink was terrible. I looked around the coffin, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. It reminded me again of the Kansas City stockyards.
“What the hell was his idea?” the chief said. “Living in a temple for five years. In a coffin.”
One of the detectives began to nose around the altar. I got the white cloth and threw it over the Princess. Grayson went downstairs to Penelope. There was a sound of voices outside the temple, and I went to the door and peeked out. About thirty Elders and Brothers had gathered by the steps, but the chief's men were keeping them back. I suppose they had heard the shooting. The cop by the altar called me, and I went back.
“What is it?”
He put his shoulder against the wall back of the altar and a door swung open. I went in behind him and the chief. Our flashlights showed a small room with a couple of tiny windows near the ceiling. There was a bed, a chair, a bookcase with some books and a dresser. In the dresser the detective found some black robes, sandals, and a rifle with a silencer.
“Remember a guy named Johnson?” I asked the chief.
“The one who was murdered?”
I nodded. “There's the gun that killed him.”
We went out into the big room again, the cop carrying the silenced rifle. The chief said: “I think you got some explaining to do.”
“Not here,” I said. “Bodies always give me goose pimples.”
After we'd left Penelope at St Ann's Hospital, we went to an all-night bar. Over a whisky and a steak sandwich I made things as clear as I thought I ought. I told Grayson and the chief I'd found from the records that
