A confused look replaced von Till’s arrogant mask. “I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“Mean hell,” snarled Pitt. “Either you’re taking me for a complete fool or else you’re acting like one. I don’t think I should be telling you about the attack on Brady Field, but rather you should be telling me.”
He lingered over the words, enjoying the situation.
Von Till was on his feet in an instant, his oval face contorted with anger. “You have probed too far and too deep. Major Pitt, into areas that don’t concern you. I shall take no more of your absurd implications.
I must ask you to leave my villa.”
A look of contempt crossed Pitt’s face. “Whatever's fair,” he said turning to the stairway.
Von Till glared at him bitterly. “No need to return through the study, Major,” he said pointing to a small doorway that clung to the far wall of the balcony. “This corridor will lead you to the front entrance.”
“I’d like to see Teri before I leave.”
“I see no reason to prolong your presence.” Von Till blew a contemptuous cloud of smoke toward Pitt’s face, driving home the angered words. “I also demand that you never see or talk to my niece again.”
Pitt’s hand clenched into fists. “And if I do?’
Von Till smiled menacingly. “I will not threaten you, Major. If you persist in exercising aggressive stupidity, I shall merely punish Teri.”
“You rotten shit-eating kraut,” Pitt snarled, fighting down a surging urge to kick von Till in the crotch. “I don’t know what the hell your little conspiracy amounts to, but I can definitely go on record as stating that I’ll take great personal pleasure in screwing it up. And I can begin by telling you that the attack on Brady Field failed to achieve its intention. The National Underwater Marine Agency’s ship is staying right where it’s anchored until its scientific research activities are completed.”
Von Till’s hands trembled but his face remained impassive. “Thank you, Major. That is a bit of information I did not expect quite so soon.
At last, the old kraut is dropping his guard, Pitt thought. There could be no doubt about it now, it was von Till who had plotted to get rid of the First Attempt. But why? The question still remained unanswered. Pitt tried a shot in the dark. “You’re wasting your time, von Till. The divers on the First Attempt have already discovered the sunken treasure. They’re in the act of raising it now.”
Von Till broke out in a broad smile, and Pitt knew immediately the lie was a mistake.
“A very poor attempt, Major. You could not be more wrong.”
He drew the Luger from under his armpit and pointed the dark blue barrel at Pitt’s neck. Then he opened the corridor door. “If you please?” he said, beckoning with the gun toward the threshold.
Pitt took a quick glance through the darkened doorway. The corridor beyond was dimly lighted with candles and seemed completely deserted. He hesitated. “Please express my thanks to Teri for the excellent dinner.”
“I shall pass on your compliment”
“And thank you, Herr von Till,” Pitt said sarcastically, “for your hospitality.”
Von Till smirked, clicked his heels and bowed. “It was my pleasure” He placed a hand on the head of the dog, whose lip curled, showing a prodigious white fang.
The door’s archway was low and Pitt had to stoop to enter the tunnel-like entrance. He took a few cautious steps.
“Major Pitt!”
“Yes,” Pitt replied, turning and facing the fat shadow at the entryway.
There was a sadistic anticipation in von Till’s voice. “it is a pity you will not be able to witness the next flight of the yellow Albatros.”
Before Pitt could answer the door slammed shut and a heavy bolt dropped into its catch like a thunderclap and echoed ominously toward the unseen reaches of the dim corridor.
7
A spasm of anger swept over Pitt. He was half tempted to slam his fist against the door, but one look at the heavy planking changed his mind. Turning again to the corridor, he found it still empty. He shivered unconsciously. He had no illusions as to what lay ahead. It was certain now that von Till never meant for him to leave the villa alive. He remembered the knife and felt a tinge of assurance as he slipped it out of his sock. The flickering yellow light from the candles, mounted in rusted metal holders high on the walls.
Glinted dully on the blade and made the tiny pointed knife look woefully inadequate for the job of self- defense. Only one comforting thought ran through Pitt’s mind: However small, the knife was better than nothing.
Suddenly a blast of heavy, chilling air blew through the corridor like an invisible hand and snuffed out the candles, leaving Pitt standing in a sea of suffocating blackness.
His senses strained to penetrate the gloom, but could detect no sound, no glimmer of light.
“Now the fun begins,” he murmured, bracing his body for the unknown.
Pitt’s spirits touched zero and he could feel the first terror striking symptoms of panic edging rapidly into his mind. He remembered reading somewhere that nothing is more horrifying or uncomprehending to the human mind than total darkness. To not know or be able to perceive what lies beyond one’s sight or touch, acts on the brain like a short circuit in a computer it runs amok. What the brain cannot see, it creates, usually some nightmarish event that is grossly exaggerated or embellished like a delusion of being bitten by a shark or run over by a locomotive while locked in a closet Recalling the semi-amusing phraseology, he grinned in the darkness and the first probes of panic slowly reversed into a sensation of logic calm.
His next thought was to use the Zippo to relight the candles. But if someone or something were awaiting in the ambush further down the corridor, he reasoned, it would be best to remain in pitch darkness and keep them at the same disadvantage. Stooping, he quickly unlaced his shoes, discarding them, and began inching along the cool wall. The corridor led him past several wooden doors, each barred by large bands of iron. He was in the midst of testing one of the doors when he paused, listening intently.
There was a sound somewhere ahead in the blackness. It was indefinable and inexplicable, but quite audible. It could have been a moan or a growl; Pitt didn’t know which. Then the sound faded and died into nothingness.
Determined now that a real menace was waiting, some creature of the dark, that was physical, could make noises and probably reason, spurred Pitt’s sense of caution. He lay down on the corridor floor and crept ahead without sound, his ears listening and his sensitive fingertips feeling out the way. The floor was smooth and unyielding, and In spots it was damp. He crawled on through an oily slime that soiled his uniform, soaking into the material and causing it to stick to his skin. He mentally cursed his uncomfortable predicament as he crept onward.
After what seemed like hours, Pitt imagined he had dragged his stomach over at least two miles of cement, but his rational mind knew it was close to eighty feet. The musty smell of antiquity lay on the floor and reminded him of the interior of an old steamer trunk that once belonged to his grandfather. He remembered hiding in its dark cubicle and pretending he was a stowaway on a ship bound for the mysterious orient. It’s strange, he thought incongruously, how smells can bring back dormant and forgotten memories.
Abruptly, the feel of the floor and walls changed from smooth concrete to rough, jointed masonry. The passageway left the more modern construction behind and became old and hand hewn.
Pitt’s hand felt the wall stop and branch to the right. A gentle touch of air on his cheeks told him he had come to cross-passage. He froze and listened.
There it was again… The sound was halting and furtive. This time it was a clicking noise, like the kind long nailed animals make on a hard surfaced floor.
Pitt shivered uncontrollably and broke out in a cold sweat. He pressed his body flat into the damp cobbled ground, knife pointed in the direction of the approaching sound.
The clicking became louder. Then it stopped and a torturous silence set in.
Pitt tried to contain his breathing to hear better; all his ears could detect was his own heartbeat Something was out there, not ten feet away. He compared himself with a blind man who was being stalked down a back-street alley. The eerie, spine-chilling atmosphere of the surroundings numbed his thinking with a sense of hopelessness.
