that this is not an uncommon reaction to stress.) The room was dim and quiet, except for the soothing buzz of insects. I was on the verge of dozing off when there was a knock at the door. It woke me as effectively as a shout in my ear.
It also woke the occupant of the chair. I heard the rustle of cloth as he shifted position, and then a brusque order. The door opened and the chandelier over the desk blazed. John came in.
He looked as sleek as a well-fed cat—not a hair on his head out of place, not a mark on him. His hands were in the pockets of his khakis, his shirt, open at the throat, was one I’d never seen before—a rather girlish baby- blue-and-white-striped. He stopped a few feet inside the room and tilted his head inquiringly. The man sitting in the chair barked out another baritone order. The door closed.
They played the old “Let the other guy speak first” routine for a short time. John had been playing it longer. The other guy said, “I trust you have been given everything you require?”
It was the first time he had spoken more than a single word. The language was English, the accent well- educated British. I knew I’d heard that voice before, but I couldn’t place it. My head was buzzing as loudly as the flies. He hadn’t been injured. He was shaved and brushed, neat as a pin. But someone had opened the door for him. Someone was outside, in the hall, guarding the door. Not yet, I told myself. Wait.
“Come off it,” John said pleasantly. “There’s no one listening. Shall we proceed to the next stage of negotiations?”
“You’ve nothing to negotiate with.”
From beneath the couch, I could see as John raised an eyebrow. “Then let me put it another way. What are you planning to do next?”
“To you?” The other man laughed. Damn, that laugh was familiar! He went on, “Nothing at all. Don’t tell me you haven’t figured out my plans for you?”
“Oh, that. It was the obvious course.”
“Obvious?” His voice rose. “Most people in my position would have—”
“Now, now,” John said, in the tone he would have used to a peevish child, “don’t get excited. You’ve done very well for an amateur.”
He was trying to bait the other man, for no good reason that I could see, except that he couldn’t resist being cute. Then it dawned on me. I was a little upset, or I would have seen it immediately.
The chair legs let out a screech as the other man pushed back from the table and sprang to his feet. The two of them confronted each other like mirror images—lean and tall, fair-haired, dressed almost identically. I ought to have recognized the voice and the laugh, but the very idea of his being here was too preposterous to accept. Even now I had a hard time believing it.
John’s little game didn’t work. Alan was unarmed, and he knew better than to tackle John with his bare hands. If I had been in his position I’d have been armed to the teeth, but that was Alan’s problem—he had to outdo John on John’s terms, beat him at his own game. Besides, he wasn’t risking bodily harm; he had help right outside the door.
Alan managed to get his breathing and his temper under control. “How kind,” he said, in a fair imitation of John’s drawl. “You can’t admit, can you, that I’ve succeeded where you would have failed? This operation exceeds any and all of your childish games. It will go down in the annals of crime.”
“Is that the only reason you had me brought here?” John asked. His eyes moved fractionally, from Alan’s face to his hands and back. He was calculating the odds. They were against him, and he knew it. “To boast? Should that be the case, I hope you will excuse me.”
I had preprogrammed the call. I only had to press one button. I kept hoping Alan would really lose his temper and start yelling, but I didn’t dare wait any longer. I pushed the button.
“Sit down,” Alan said tightly.
“What would be the point? Unless you want my advice.”
“I don’t need your damned advice! I know precisely what I’m doing. In a few days I’ll walk away with four million pounds in hard cash, and you will be found unharmed and unconfined in company with the stolen mummy of Tutankhamon. Even your trusting friends can’t get you out of this. You haven’t been exactly forthright with them, have you?”
“I daresay several incidents will lend credence to the assumption of my guilt,” John admitted.
Schmidt, Schmidt, where are you? I thought wildly. Now’s the time. He’s here, where he has no business being, and no excuse for being here. I’ve heard his confession. Come on, Schmidt, call in the troops.
I hoped to hear alarms and excursions, gunfire, shouts, explosions. What I got instead was a door bursting open, banging back against the wall. It wasn’t the door to the hall. I stuck my head out from under the couch and saw what I had hoped not to see. Schmidt had come in through the library. Schmidt. Just Schmidt, all alone. He was brandishing what appeared to be, and almost certainly was not, an automatic pistol.
Alan spun round to face Schmidt, John nodded a gracious greeting, and—driven beyond endurance—I yelled, “Bloody hell, Schmidt, what do you think you’re doing? You can’t kill anybody with a toy gun!”
“It is not a toy,” Schmidt yelled back. He proceeded to prove it.
We were yelling because the long-awaited cacophony had finally burst out—gunfire, crashes, yells, and in the case of Schmidt, a fusillade fired back into the library toward several persons who were about to follow him into the study. They ceased to follow and Schmidt slammed the door shut.
“Here,” I said faintly.
John sauntered to me, bent over, and offered me his hand. “Well, well,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
My appearance distracted and alarmed Schmidt. “Is she hurt? Is she safe?”
For a few vital seconds nobody was looking at Alan. A musical clatter drew our attention back to him. If I had had false teeth I would have swallowed them when I saw that he was now brandishing one of the swords that had hung over the mantel. The other one lay on the floor near the fireplace.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” John said, hauling me to my feet. “Put that down, you damned fool.”
“Yes, drop it,” Schmidt ordered. “Or I will fire.”
“No, you won’t,” Alan said breathlessly. “In the first place you are too much of a gentleman to shoot a man armed only with a sword. In the second place, you emptied the clip just now.”
Schmidt let out a string of
“Pick up the other one,” Alan said, baring his teeth. “We’ll see who is the better man.”
“You,” John said hastily. “No question. I give up. I can’t fence.”
“I happen to know that you can. Not as well as I, however. Those reenactments at which you chose to sneer honed my skills. Pick it up or I’ll carve my initials in Vicky.”
I would never have supposed that one blade could hold three people at bay. It can, if the other three haven’t so much as a knife, and if it moves as fast as it did when Alan wielded it.
“Pick it up,” he said again.
“Not much choice, really,” John said, his casual tone at odds with his tight mouth and narrowed eyes. “He’s gone over the edge. All those fantasy games…Oops.”
He ducked just in time, and scooped up the fallen sword. I jumped back as Alan swung in my direction. Schmidt wobbled indecisively, still searching his damned pockets.
“Call for help, Schmidt,” I shouted. “Where is everybody?”
From the continuing sounds of battle, it was evident that “everybody” was fully occupied. Alan’s gang was firing back, from all four sides of the house.
“Just hold him off,” I said to John.
His lips moved soundlessly but eloquently. I didn’t blame him for wanting to call me bad names; it had not been one of my more brilliant suggestions. I knew he could fence a little. I’d seen him do it—with an opponent who was fat, drunk, and essentially incompetent. Alan was none of the above and he was in a state of manic exhilaration. I don’t think he cared any longer about the money or the game. All he cared about was inflicting as much damage as possible, with his own hands, on the man he admired and hated and envied most.
