open.
As she stepped out into the corridor she saw him disappearing around the far corner-again just a glimpse, running, the light-colored raincoat flying out behind him.
Joanna ran after him. She didn't think about it, didn't even close the door behind her. All she wanted was to know what was happening. What was he running from, or toward? And why?
By the time she reached the corner where she'd seen him, he had disappeared again. The only movement was a door swinging shut. She ran toward it. A sign on it said “Emergency Only.” She pulled it open.
She found herself in a stairwell with an open staircase made of steel that twisted down in sharp one- hundred-eighty-degree turns like a fire escape. She couldn't see Sam, but she could hear the clatter of his feet descending.
Twice she called his name, but there was no response. She supposed he couldn't hear her above the echo coming off the bare, gray-painted walls. She started after him.
Glancing down as she descended, she saw brief flashes of his arm as he grabbed the handrail to swing himself around each turn in the stairs. She tried calling again, but it was futile. In fact, as she continued after him, it seemed increasingly pointless to be chasing him at all: she had no chance of catching him. Yet she wanted desperately to know what had provoked this flight without a word or even apparently a thought for her.
She slowed, beginning to feel foolish for having even tried to follow him. It was obvious that there must be some reason for his behavior, and it was probably to be found upstairs in the apartment rather than down here in this strange limbo of a place. Most likely the manservant had shown up in Ward's room while she was still looking for him. It didn't explain why Sam should make this mad dash out of the building, but there must be some good reason. If there'd been any danger he would certainly have warned her and made sure he took her with him. Of that she was certain. Running after him like this was in itself a kind of betrayal, a refusal to trust him. She should have gone back to Ward and the Chinaman, where she would have learned that Sam was dashing down to a pharmacy, or to some doctor on another floor-needing something so urgently that he couldn't even wait for the elevator. Of course that must be the explanation. She had been silly to react as she had. She should go back up and see what she could do to help.
Yet she had come so far now that she was nearer to the bottom of the stairs than where she had started. Ward was on-what, the fifth, sixth floor? The sensible thing was to keep going down and take the elevator back up. She would do that.
Giving up all thought of catching Sam, she continued on down at her own speed. It occurred to her that she need not go all the way; if she took the emergency door to the next landing-it would be the second or third floor-she could take the elevator back up from there.
The door was set back some way into a deep wall. She was lost in thought, paying little attention to her immediate surroundings, when she turned off the staircase and into it. She reached for the handle, or rather where she thought the handle would be in the dark recess…and touched something soft.
She gave a small cry-of surprise more than alarm. Because she had already registered the color of the coat. Sam's coat.
But as her eyes traveled up to the face she expected to see, her blood turned cold. The man standing there, waiting in the shadows, was Ralph Cazaubon.
“Don't let it end like this,” he said, his voice soft, breaking slightly. “I don't know what's happening to us, Jo. Don't let it end like this.”
46
Sam stood in the middle of the main reception room. “Joanna?” he called out for the third time. There was no reply.
Puzzled and growing concerned, he returned to the hallway. The door of the apartment still stood open just as it had when he came out to look for her. He was about to step outside when something moved on the edge of his vision. He stopped and looked to his right, but it was only his own reflection, the whiteness of his raincoat caught in a mirror at the far end of a dark corridor off the hallway.
“Mr. Towne, sir…?”
The Chinese manservant appeared from somewhere behind him.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Have you seen “Miss Cross? She was looking for you.”
The manservant frowned. “Miss Cross? No, sir, I no see Miss Cross.”
“I just came out of the bedroom and found the apartment door open. Why would she…?”
He stepped out into the corridor and looked both ways, but there was no sign of her. He came back in.
“Why on earth would she disappear like that?”
The Chinaman bobbed his head to confess that he had no answer. “I'm sure she come back, sir.”
“Let's hope. Meanwhile get some medical help up here, and find me some more blankets-before your employer dies from hypothermia.”
She had tried to scream, but the sound was choked off in her throat by sheer terror.
Ralph Cazaubon made no move. There was nothing overtly threatening about him. On the contrary, there was a sadness in his face, a tenderness even.
All the same she turned and ran for her life. She looked back once to see if he was following, and saw him unhurriedly, almost casually, descending the steps after her.
At the ground floor she wrenched open a door and found herself in a corridor with green-painted brick walls and no way out except by a double door with a push bar across it at the far end. She sprinted toward it, again looking back over her shoulder. Ralph still followed her in the same relaxed fashion, as though confident that there was no way she could escape him.
Praying it would work, she slammed both hands down on the bar. The door sprang outward, and she found herself in a kind of courtyard in the center of the building. She looked around for a way out, and saw a gap that seemed to lead to the street. But there were gates-which was all right, because this was a secure building, and that meant guards.
She ran on, glancing back just once, and being surprised to see that Ralph had not emerged yet. Did he imagine she'd go back in there with him waiting for her?
Or had he really been there at all? Was it possible she'd imagined him? Had he been some kind of illusion, some projection of her mind, like his ancestor Adam Wyatt?
But why was he wearing Sam's coat, or something very like it? Was he becoming somehow confused in her head with Sam Towne? Why should that be? What was happening here? She had gone too far in this peculiar adventure to doubt that there was a pattern in events, a meaning and a purpose, however indiscernible.
The armed guard at the gate accepted her story about getting lost in the building; at least, he looked at her less suspiciously when she said she'd been visiting Ward Riley. He unlocked the gate and told her the best thing was to take a right and right again, then go in the main entrance and take the main elevator back up to Mr. Riley's apartment.
She walked briskly along the sidewalk, keeping close to the building, reassured by the noise and energy of normal street life. She turned right at the corner as she'd been told to…and stopped.
Ralph Cazaubon was standing between her and the entrance, casual, hands in the pockets of his raincoat, watching her.
“Have you got those extra blankets yet?”
Sam stepped out of Ward's bedroom and looked around impatiently for the manservant.
“Right here, sir. Got them right here.” He hurried up the dark corridor where Sam had glimpsed his own reflection earlier. “And paramedics on way.”
“Good. His pulse is a little stronger-we may be just in time.”
He grabbed a couple of the blankets and ran back through Ward's bedroom and on into the meditation room where he had left him. The manservant was right behind him when they got there, and they both stopped.
The room was empty, and one of the windows had been opened.
