I wanted to keep going until I got to two hundred, maybe two thousand, but I made myself walk through the opening and set my right foot down on the first step. Tom had been right—the wood was so soft it was almost furry. I felt the grain through my sock. I grabbed the rail and went down the next two steps without making any noise at all. I padded down another three steps, then another two, and my head finally passed beneath the level of the floor.
Someone was sweeping the beam of a flashlight over the floor behind the furnace. I saw the circle of light leap to the right of the big furnace and then travel slowly along the floor until it disappeared behind it. A few seconds later, it reappeared to the left of the furnace and moved another five or six feet toward the wall of the dressing rooms. Then it skittered over the floor, looping and circling on the cement until it steadied again a few feet further from the furnace and began making another long steady sweep across the floor. Fee was standing behind the furnace and facing in my direction, looking for something. I thought I knew what it was.
I moved slowly down the last five steps. He would not be able to see me even if he moved around the furnace—all he could see was what fell into the beam of his flashlight. I came down onto the cement and began walking carefully toward the place where I remembered seeing the brick pillar. The man with the flashlight backed up and swung the light wildly over the floor between the furnace and the dressing rooms. I stopped moving, and the elongated circle of light swooped over the furnace, throwing the pipes and conduits above it into stark black silhouette, streaked across the wall near the stairs, and came to rest on the floor to the left of the furnace. The man backed up again, and I took a few more quiet steps toward the invisible pillar.
Judging from the direction he'd been moving, Tom must have been hidden in the rear of the basement, probably behind the crate of marquee letters. He would wait until I identified the man with the flashlight before he made his move. Maybe he would wait until Fee said something incriminating. I hoped he wouldn't wait until Fee started shooting.
Another quiet step, then another, took me to the spot where I had seen the pillar. I felt the air in front of me, but not the pillar. I took a third step forward. The beam of light was making big sideways sweeps over the territory to the right of the furnace as Fee began a more systematic search. I moved sideways without bothering to check the air with my hands and bumped right into the pillar. It didn't make any more noise than an auto wreck. The light stopped moving. I pressed up against the side of the pillar, drenched in sweat.
'Who's there?' The voice sounded much calmer than I was.
I felt around for the back of the pillar and stepped behind it, hoping that Tom Pasmore would come forward out of the darkness.
'Who are you?'
I put my hand on the little holster clipped to my belt. The man with the flashlight moved to the left side of the furnace— the beam of light flared across the basement and flattened on the back wall. His footsteps clicked against the cement. Then he stopped moving and turned off his light.
'I'm a police officer,' he said. 'I am armed and prepared to shoot. I want to know who you are and what you're doing here.'
This wasn't right—he wasn't acting guilty. Fee would have switched off his flashlight the instant he realized that someone else was in the basement. He wasn't even protecting himself by moving away.
'Say something.'
In my panic, I couldn't remember the voices of either of the two men who could have been Fee Bandolier. Rough chunks of mortar pushed into my side. Wishing that I was anywhere else but in this basement, I grasped a thick chunk of mortar, broke it off the pillar, and tossed it toward the stairs. The mortar hit the concrete and shattered.
'Oh, come on,' the man said. 'That only works in the movies.'
He took another step, but I could not tell where.
'Let me tell you what's going on,' he said. 'You came here to meet a man who knew all about you—he called a bunch of detectives, me, Monroe, and I don't know who else. Either he called you, too, or you heard people talking about it.' He was moving noiselessly around as he talked, his voice seeming to come from first one side of the furnace, then, in what seemed an impossibly short time, the other. He sounded perfectly calm.
'You know me—you can take a shot at me, but you won't hit me. And then I'll take you down.'
There was a long silence, and then he spoke again, from somewhere off to the right. 'What troubles me about this is, you're not acting like a cop. Who the hell are you?'
I wasn't acting like a cop, and he wasn't acting like Fee Bandolier.
The pillar was still between us. It was a good, sturdy pillar. Not a bullet in the world could go through it. And if he didn't shoot, we were in the basement for the same reason.
'Sergeant Hogan?' I said.
Sudden light flooded over me from somewhere behind my right shoulder, and my shadow loomed against the wall like a giant. My stomach plummeted toward my knees, but no gunshot resounded, neither from the man with the light nor from Tom. I wanted to duck around the pillar, but I made myself turn into the glare.
'I thought we got rid of you, Underhill.' He sounded angry and amused at the same time. 'Are you trying to get yourself killed?'
'You surprised me,' I said.
'It's mutual.' He turned the light off me. I put my hand back on the holster as the beam swept across the floor toward the source of his voice. The circle of the beam diminished as it sped toward him and then flattened out against his chest and jumped up to illuminate Michael Hogan's handsome, weathered face. He blinked under the light, and then turned the flashlight back on me, aiming the beam at my chest, so that I could see. 'What are you doing here?'
'The same as you,' I said. 'I wanted to see if I could find the papers that used to be in those boxes. When I saw that they were gone, I was looking for anything that might have fallen out.'
He sighed, and the beam dropped to the floor. 'How did you know where the papers would be?'
'Just before Paul Fontaine died, he said 'Bell.' It took me a couple of weeks to understand that he was trying to say Beldame Oriental.'
'You're the lunatic who made the calls?'
'I didn't know anything about that until you told me,' I said. 'What did he say?'
'How did you get in here?'
'John Ransom's father owned a hotel. He has lots of skeleton keys.'
'Then how did you manage to reattach the chain from the inside?'
'I came in the front,' I said. 'About fifteen minutes before you showed up. I didn't think I'd see anyone else in here.'
'You were down here when I came in?'
'That's right.'
'I guess I'm lucky you didn't shoot me.'
'With what?'
'Well, you picked a hell of a night to go exploring.'
'I guess you're not Fielding Bandolier, are you?'
The light jumped into my face again, blinding me. I held up my hand to block it. 'Did Ransom come down here with you? Is he somewhere in the theater?'
A jolt of terror went through me like cold electricity. I kept my hand up over my face. 'I'm alone. I don't think John cares anymore.'
'Okay.' The light dropped to my waist, and I lowered my hand. 'I'm sick of the subject of Fielding Bandolier. I don't want to hear anything more about him, from you or anyone else.'
'So you knew about the theater because of the telephone call?'
'Knew what?' He waited, and when I did not answer, he said, 'The caller asked me to meet him here. I thought that was unusual, to put it mildly, so I checked up on the ownership. I gather you've heard of Elvee Holdings.'
'Didn't you get confirmation from Hubbel, the head of Bachelor's old draft board?'
'We never talked to Hubbel. McCandless said he was going to organize that, and then he called it off.'
