The Crowning Terror (5 page)

"Sorry."

"Don't be. Now that we've met, Joe, perhaps we can work together."

"On what?" he asked.

She gently patted his cheek. "You don't have to pretend with me, Joe. Aren't we both after the same thing?"

"Yes, I guess we are," Joe said. "Whose side are you on?"

"On my side, darling. Of course." At the sound of a loud buzzer, her smile faded. "I'm afraid I have some other business to take care of, Joe. When I come back, you can fill me in on Hugh Hunt's plans. You won't go away, will you?"

Joe rolled onto his back and smiled bitterly at her. Blowing him a kiss, she left the room, locking the door behind her, and walked down the stairs.

Uncle Hugh's plans? he wondered. What had the woman meant? He sensed that she held the key to this game of spies, and he had until she returned to find that key.

Joe curled up, bringing his knees to his chest, and strained to slip his hands under him. They were bound too tightly to slip easily over his hips. He wriggled, but it was no use. Joe was stronger than his brother, but Frank was the more agile of the two. Joe wished he had that agility now.

He tried to remember how Frank would do it. Relaxation and concentration, that was the key.

He calmed himself, took a deep breath, and held it. Then he let all the air out, tensed his hips and relaxed his arms as much as he could, and jerked his hands forward.

Joe's hands slipped past his hips and slid to his ankles. Digging his fingers behind his heels, he forced off his shoes. His hands easily rounded his heels and toes. At last, his hands were in front of him, where he could use them.

He fumbled at the knots in the ropes binding his ankles and clenched his teeth in silent frustration. His fingers were too numb to feel the knots. If he wanted to escape, he had to free his hands first and get the blood back into them.

Wrapping his arms around his knees and pressing them to his chest, Joe rolled back and forth on his spine, faster and faster, until he lurched forward onto the balls of his feet. Hands in front of him, he toppled forward. His hands struck the floor and broke his fall, and he steadied himself. Now balanced on hands and feet, Joe straightened his legs. Slowly he raised his head and spine until he was standing up.

He heard footsteps and voices on the stairs. Charity was coming back up, and she wasn't alone. He had no time to free himself.

He clumsily hopped across the floor, and his weight smashing up and down made the old wooden floor quiver when he left the Persian rug. The voices and footsteps halted at the crashing, and someone on the stairs shouted his name. Then the footsteps thundered up the stairs—they were running now. Joe knew his only chance was to get to the door before they did.

His eyes fixed on the doorknob and the lock an inch below it. He hopped closer and closer, his hands stretched out.

The knob turned and the door began to open.

With one last, desperate lunge, Joe rammed himself into the door, slamming it shut. Before whoever was on the other side of the door could react, Joe turned the lock.

Fists pounded angrily on the door. "Joe!" Charity called. "Open up! We're not going to hurt you!"

Joe ignored her, scanning the room. He spied a lamp made from a glass tube, an imitation of the old glass-topped candleholders used before electric lights became common. It was beautiful, he thought, but beauty was of no use to him now. He smashed the lamp to the floor, watching the glass shatter into fragments.

"Joe!" Charity cried again, and the pounding at the door grew louder. "Go downstairs and get the key," she said softly to someone on the stairs.

Good, Joe thought. That would buy him time. He crouched and straightened the base of the lamp. A jagged splinter of glass jutted up from it. Quickly he ran the rope around his wrists up and down the edge of the glass. He winced when it brushed his skin, but he ignored the pain. The rope was fraying, loosening.

All at once, it fell away. His hands were free.

He opened and closed his fists, stretching his fingers until a bit of feeling returned. The footsteps were coming back up the stairs, and his time was running out. He grabbed a piece of glass and sawed the rope away from his ankles, then he stood and slipped his loafers on, his fists ready. His movements would be restricted in the tight space of the room, but Joe was ready to go down fighting.

"I can't find it," came a raspy voice from the hall. It was the voice of the boy who had pulled the knife on him in the alley.

"You're useless, Tony," Charity replied. "I'll get it."

Joe glanced around the room, ready to put the extra time to good use. But there were burglar bars on all the windows, and only two doors, one leading to a bedroom and the other leading to the hall. There was no way out.

He looked into the bedroom. An old four-poster bed stood there, and a chest of drawers. But there was little else in the room. The windows were also barred. He looked outside.

The room was four stories up, too far for him to jump even if he could remove the bars. It was one of the houses built for rich San Franciscans in the last century, he realized. Nothing but a den of thieves now, Joe thought.

"Enough!" a harsh voice cried from the stairs. The voice had a thick Chinese accent, and sounded older than Tony.

The crack of splintering wood caught Joe's attention, and he glanced back into the other room. The wood paneling of the door was being broken into small pieces by the heel of someone's hand.

There was one final crack, and the hand moved through the hole in the door, groping for the lock.

The door crashed open.

It was the man who had been in the alley window, and he stepped cautiously into the room. Pieces of the broken lamp and strips of rope littered the floor, but there was no sign of Joe. Charity and Tony appeared in the doorway behind him.

Seeing the damage to the door, Charity's eyes narrowed angrily. "What do you think you're doing, Kwan?"

"Shhh!" the older Chinese man said. He waved a thumb at the bedroom. "He's in there." Stepping sideways, he stepped through the bedroom doorway. His mouth dropped open.

"The Hardy boy is gone," Kwan said sullenly.

"It's not possible," Charity answered. "This section of the house is sealed up tight." She pushed past Kwan and slumped over when she saw a large square of wallpaper cut from the bedroom wall. Joe's glass shard lay abandoned next to the square.

"What is that?" Kwan demanded, pointing at the hole in the wall.

"An old air shaft," she said. "It used to be for ventilation. It was papered over when the building changed to air conditioning."

"Where does it go?"

Charity frowned. "The roof end of the shaft is plugged up. The other end comes out in the basement."

"He's downstairs!" Tony shouted. "Come on!"

Back aching, Joe Hardy dropped from the shaft to the basement floor. So far, so good, he thought. The shaft had been a tight fit, but, bracing his feet against one wall of the shaft and his . back against the opposite wall, he had managed to work his way to the bottom. There was no stampede from above, which he hoped meant they hadn't discovered his escape. He switched on a light and scanned the basement. Shadowy and damp, it contained only a clothes washer and dryer. The rest of the basement was unused, a place to store empty boxes, with no windows.

He dashed up the stairs to the ground floor, spun on his heel, and ran to the front door. It wasn't locked.

The pounding of footsteps greeted him as he stepped back into the entryway. They were coming after him, but it didn't matter. The front door was only a few feet away, and they would never be able to get down three flights of stairs before he made it to the street.

Except, he realized, he hadn't found what he needed to find. What was the woman's connection with his uncle Hugh? He couldn't leave before he found out.

The footsteps sounded louder. They were probably on the third landing. He dashed to the room off the hallway and peeked in. It was a study - Charity's study, he deduced from the purse on the desk. The desk appeared to be as old as all the other furniture in the house, a monstrous carved-oak banker's desk. The footsteps reached the second landing. He had only a moment to decide what to do.

He ran to the front door again and flung it open, then doubled back down the hall. As Tony leaped over the last banister and landed on the rug at the foot of the stairs, Joe ducked into the study and crossed his fingers.

Tony shouted something in Chinese, then said, "He got away." He pointed an accusing finger at Charity. "This is your fault."

Charity glanced at him angrily, and turning to Kwan, she said, "Remind your boy who's employing whom here. And do it on your way out."

"What about this Joe Hardy?" Tony demanded.

"Get out there and find him!" Charity said explosively. "Must I do all your thinking for you? He can't have gotten far. Find him and bring him back. Go!"

Kwan nodded and Tony left, slamming the door behind him. "Your activities have been compromised?"

"I don't think so," Charity replied. "He didn't have time. But let me check."

Joe slipped across the study and behind the desk as Charity backed into the same room. Her attention was focused on Kwan, so she hadn't seen him. He crawled beneath the desk and pressed against the back of it.

Charity walked behind the desk as he pulled his hands out of sight. The center drawer opened, casting its shadow over him. "No," Charity said. "Everything's still here, in order. He didn't touch it."

"Then you will continue?" asked Kwan.

"Of course," she replied with a soft laugh. "One more obstacle isn't going to faze me."

"Of course," Kwan said. Joe heard his steps trail away, and then the front door opened and closed. Kwan had left.

"Of course," Charity repeated after a long pause. Then the drawer slid shut. Joe could see her face as she stepped away from the desk, but she didn't look down. Without another word, she left the study and went back up the stairs.

After a few minutes Joe slid out from under the desk. There was no sound anywhere in the house. He tried the drawer and found it locked. On top of the desk was a pencil holder, and in it a few pens and a letter opener. Joe took the opener and rammed it into the space between the drawer and the desk.

He pushed down, using the opener as a lever. The drawer bolt popped out of the desk, and Joe pulled the drawer open.

Inside the drawer were a dozen photographs of a glass museum case. Inside the glass case was a golden crown.

He took a magnifying glass from the drawer and studied the photos carefully. Below the glass was a small plaque. "Incan Crown," it read. "C. 1350." It went on with a brief explanation of the history of the Inca nation that had conquered much of South America before the arrival of the Spaniards. Then it described the Inca craft of gold working that had resulted in the fine crown made from a single thread of gold braided back and forth on itself. The crown was then decorated with polished stones. Joe could see nothing else on the photographs. He turned them over. On the back of one was a sloppily scrawled note: "Cariyle Museum. Est. val. $100,000." He slipped the photos back into the drawer and closed it, more puzzled now than when he had begun. It was obvious to him that the woman intended to steal the crown, but what did that have to do with his uncle Hugh? Watching for any signs of Charity, Joe crept from the study, down the hall, and out the front door. Kwan and Tony were nowhere to be seen. Quickly Joe checked his map and began to run in the direction of Market Street.

From a second-story window Charity watched and smiled.