The Labyrinth Makers

pornography that I didn't understand, printed abroad. And a set of unread Dickens.

'But there was this one beautiful book that I adored. To me that was his real book. And it was, wasn't it! He must have bought it to find out just exactly what he'd got his dirty hands on.'

She stopped, and looked at him in anguish.

'Clever David!' she said bitterly. 'You guessed right, didn't you?

And now you've got the one extra little bit of evidence you need from the villain's daughter. But you did try to soften the blow, you really did. And that was kind of you.'

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He pitied her. She must have known subconsciously the moment he had mentioned Troy, and then had blundered on until her conscious mind had picked up its own warning signals. It was a cruel way to come to the truth.

And what made it worse was that he still couldn't blame Steerforth in his heart. It had been just loot to him. But to her it would always be the unforgivable crime because it had betrayed childhood love and admiration, however she tried to rationalise it.

'Never mind,' he said 'We'll set the record straight: we'll get it back.'

VII

The geese awoke Audley from an uneasy, confused dream. Yet he knew as he woke that it had not been a dream really, for he had never been completely asleep. It had come from the no-man's-land between thought and sleep, a mere jumble of the day's undigested experiences.

He remembered that he had been reading Ceram's Gods, Graves and Scholars, which had been the only thing on his shelves which mentioned Schliemann and Troy in any detail. And Ceram's words had fed his tired mind with images–images of the original panic-stricken burial of the treasure, which had been so hasty that the keys were still in the mouldered locks of the boxes; images of the Schliemanns working feverishly and secretly to hack their prize out of the deep trench in the mound at Hissarlik, with the wreckage of dummy4

six later Troys and three thousand years poised above them.

And images of Steerforth working no less feverishly to hide that prize . . .

And then he had thought irrelevantly of the animals in Berlin zoo, caged not far from the treasure, with the Russian shells bursting about them. Had the Berliners eaten their elephants in the end, like the Parisians in 1870?

It was the beginning of a half-nightmare, which switched back to the trench at Hissarlik. But as he looked down into it, it became the wooden staircase in Morrison's shop. No treasure for Morrison . . .

Then his mind registered the shrieking of Mrs Clark's geese.

At first he thought it was morning, until he saw the moonlight streaming in through his open windows. The damned birds had woken him once before in the night, protesting at some prowling cat or fox, and there was no stopping them once they had started.

All one could do was to shut out as much of the noise as possible.

He reached out for the light switch, only to discover that it no longer seemed to work. He fumbled for his spectacles and shuffled towards the window, cursing under his breath.

He stopped dead a yard from the window, shocked totally awake: someone was crossing a moonlit patch of lawn just beyond the cobbles.

He blinked and drew to one side of the window, covering the lower part of his face with the dark sleeve of his pyjamas–white faces showed up even in darkened windows. The figure, moving delicately across the grass, disappeared into the shadow beside the dummy4

barn. Ten seconds passed like an age, and then two more shadows crossed the moonlit patch from the driveway entrance to the safety of the barn's shadow.

The geese still cackled angrily and Audley felt his heart thump against his chest. Three was too many for him. He had no gun in the house–he had never needed or desired a gun. Faith was asleep just down the passage. If mere burglary was the intention–God! He hadn't even put the Panin file in the safe. But if it was burglary he might frighten them off by switching on the lights.

But the light hadn't worked, he remembered with a pang of panic.

And if it wasn't burglary ... he saw Morrison again, in unnaturally sharp focus, at the bottom of the stairs. This sort of thing just doesn't happen! They'd got no reason – but he didn't know what reason they'd got.

I mustn't think–I must act, he told himself savagely. If you can't fight, run away. If you can't run away–hide!

He whipped his dressing gown from the bed, stuffed the torch from his bedside drawer into his pocket and sprinted down the passage.

She was lying on her side, snoring very softly, one white shoulder picked out by the moonlight. He shook the shoulder urgently.

'Faith! Wake up–and be quiet!' he whispered.

She moaned, and then came to life, startled.

Before she could speak he put the palm of his hand to her mouth.

'We've got visitors,' he hissed as clearly and quietly as he was able.

'Three visitors. We're not going to wait to find out what they want . . . we're going to hide . . . if you understand what I'm saying dummy4

— nod.'

She nodded, wide-eyed.