mean, this was a place where, without the lamps, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. And it felt dosed-in. Nobody was going to stay long.
“Then we heard Endine.”
“We didn’t know at first it was him. Just a sing-song whine somewhere below us.
“He was sitting hunched up on a landing, his hands wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth. He was bone white and his eyes looked crazy and his hair was matted with blood. There were books stacked in neat piles. Maybe forty or more. One pile was knocked over.
“The captain tried to talk to him, but it was like we weren’t there. He just kept swaying and making this dying sound in his throat.
“The staircase broke away just below the landing. I looked down into a chamber but saw no one, although there were more books down there, scattered around. They’d strung up a line to climb down. I called out a few names but the only thing that came back was echoes.
“The captain joined me. “He got hit in the head’s all,” he said. “Other than that, I don’t see anything wrong with him.”
“He leaned out over the stairwell to look down into the lower chamber, breathed my name, and delivered an expletive. There was a body down there.
“The lower chamber was a pretty good drop, maybe twenty-five feet. There were knots in the line to make climbing easier. I held the lamp while the captain went down, and then I joined him. It was Shay.
“The body was wet. It was crumpled up and had a washed-out look. But there was nothing to indicate what had killed him.”
“No wounds?” asked Chaka.
“A couple of bruises. That’s all.
“The walls were damp. There were even some puddles. I should mention, there were four exits from the chamber. There was a long, high corridor leading off opposite sides at right angles to the passageway with the shafts. And a fourth short passage led to an underground lake.
“The tall corridor was lined with doors and they were all open. Except one. We looked in the rooms. They were all there, everybody, some in one place, some in another.” Knobby sat staring at a point in space somewhere over her shoulder.
“They were all dead?”
“Yes.”
“How? What killed them?”
“I don’t know. They were just like Shay.”
“What did Endine say?”
“Not much of anything. He never made sense, that I heard of. The captain didn’t think he ever really came out of the delirium. We brought him back here and tried to turn him over to the surgery. But we heard he was out and gone the same night we brought him in. Just took off.” Knobby sucked in air and refilled his cup again.
“Did you look in the room that wasn’t open?”
“We tried. But the door wouldn’t give. On the other hand, to be honest, we didn’t try hard.” He looked at his wine. “This stuff’s not strong enough. Anyway, I heard rumors later he was seen west of Brockett. But I never heard any more about him. Till now.”
“And you never found out what happened?”
“No. We told the story around. People laughed. Blamed us. Some thought we were trying to hide something. Some even thought we murdered the whole bunch. But it was a demon. I mean, how do you kill a half-dozen people without leaving a mark on them?”
“What happened to the bodies?”
“We buried them. We brought the bodies out and buried them.” He looked carefully at her. “With honors,” he added.
“Thank you.”
The waiter came with a fresh carafe and filled both cups. “Could they have been drowned?”
Knobby shook his head. “Hard to see how.”
“You talked about tides. And you said there’s an underground lake.”
“No tide is going to come up so fast that you can’t get away from it.”
Chaka felt a chill edging down her back. Her food lay half finished on her plate. “What about the books?” she asked. “What happened to them? The ones on the landing—?”
“We took them back to the Mindar. The captain thought they were probably valuable, so we took everything.”
“Did you happen to notice what they were?”
“I’m not good at reading, Chaka,” he said. “I’m not sure. The captain mentioned some titles. War and Peace was one of them. And Don Somebody-or-Other. Bleak House. Something called Commentaries on the Constitution.” He made a face as if thinking about it required a major effort. “That’s all I can remember. It mean anything to you?”
“A little. What happened to them? After you got back to the Mindar?”
“Vic threw them overboard.”
“Who? Who threw them overboard?”
“Endine. He came out on deck one day and chucked them all into the water. Every last one of them.”
Chaka’s spirits sank. “You’re not serious.”
“After all the trouble we went to. I could have tossed him into the water. But yes, that’s exactly what happened. He brought them out on deck in piles. And he threw them over the side. One by one.”
Chaka stared at him. “You’re sure? You saw this happen yourself?”
“Yes, I’m sure. We all stood there and watched him.”
She listened to people talking around them. Someone’s father was threatening to cut off an inheritance. “He didn’t destroy them all,” Chaka said. “He got back home with a Mark Twain.”
Knobby shrugged. “Well. All I know is he got rid of a lot of them.”
“You said the bodies, all except Shay’s, were found in the rooms? Not in the corridor?”
“Yes. The rooms. They were big rooms. Bigger than this place. And two stories high.”
“What was in them? The rooms?”
“Just books. And some Roadmaker junk. Lot of those gray boxes you find everywhere.”
“Books?” She came alive. “Where are they now?”
“Where are what?”
“The books. The other stuff.”
“Still there, I suppose.”
“You left it?” Chaka couldn’t believe her good fortune.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we? They wouldn’t have been worth anything to anybody. They were in pretty bad shape.”
“Why?”
“It was damp down there. Wet. Everything was soaked.”
Chaka squeezed her cup until Knobby gently disengaged her hand. “Easy,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“You said before the books were okay,” said Chaka.
“I said the books on the staircase were okay.”
“All right. Thanks, Knobby.” She passed him a gold coin. “We’re going to lease a boat and go bade up there.”
He was careful to keep the coin concealed as he slipped it into his pocket. “I don’t think you’ll be able to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody’ll go. The place is haunted and everybody knows it.”
“Okay. But if I’m able to get a boat, would you show us where this door in the cliff is?”
“I already told you, I won’t go near it.”
“There are two more of those,” she said, looking at his pocket.
“Doesn’t matter. Listen, in case you think I’m just a damned fool, a storm blew up on the way back and we
