Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

“Moore,” the Doctor said, “I thought you intimated-”

Mr. Moore held up a hand. “We closed it again to give you the full effect,” he said, going past the rack of preserves to the collection of old, rusty garden tools. “We did everything we could to try to move this thing manually,” he said, indicating the rack. “And you might actually have moved it, Stevie, if you’d picked something other than that old hoe to try to wedge behind it.”

“What do you mean?” I said, not getting the hint.

Mr. Moore pointed at the two tallest of the tools-a shovel and an iron rake-what stood side by side. “Open,” he said, indicating the shovel, “and close,” at which point he touched the rake.

“Moore, we’ve no time for games,” the Doctor said. “What the devil are you talking about?”

By way of an answer Mr. Moore just held up a finger, then grabbed hold of the shovel’s handle. The tool didn’t come away from its resting spot at his touch; instead, it pivoted at a point on the floor, to which it was, it seemed, anchored. As Mr. Moore lowered the thing on that pivot, lo and behold, the rack of preserves began to move, as if by itself: it swung away from the brick dividing wall by the furnace and revealed a three-foot-square hole leading down through the stone floor and into the ground below the building.

“Oh, my God,” Miss Howard whispered, stepping forward toward the hole. The Doctor and I followed, shocked past speech.

“Just big enough for an average adult to negotiate,” Mr. Moore said, picking up one of the Isaacsons’ portable torches what lay nearby. “As is the entire passageway.”

“Passageway?” the Doctor echoed.

“Come on,” Mr. Moore said, taking a few steps down onto an iron ladder what was fixed to the side of a deep shaftway what led downwards from the hole. “I’ll show you.”

With that he disappeared below ground, while the rest of us looked nervously to each other.

“How come I got no big desire to go down there?” I said quietly.

“You’ve been through an awful lot, Stevie,” Miss Howard answered, putting a hand to my arm. “And what’s down there may not be too pleasant.”

“It would be completely understandable if you wished to wait here,” the Doctor agreed.

I shook my head. “It ain’t that. I want to see it, but…” Trying to shake off my severe jitters, I stepped down onto the ladder. “Aw, hell,” I said, “how much worse can this thing get?”

Moving carefully, I followed Mr. Moore’s torch, which appeared to come to a stop about fifteen feet down. “Wait for one second before you come all the way down, Stevie,” he called to me, “so I can get into the side passage. Each of you will have to do the same.”

“The side passage?” I repeated.

“You’ll see when you get here.”

And I did. At the base of the shaftway, the walls of which were rough concrete, was an opening into a narrow tunnel what ran sideways. The thing was just high enough for a person to crouch in, so’s you could kind of scurry along without actually crawling. Mr. Moore guided me into this space when I got down, then did the same for Miss Howard and the Doctor when they arrived. After that, he turned his torch in what I calculated to be the direction of the backyard, revealing that the passageway-what was also concrete-went on for another forty feet. There was a dank smell to it, but it wasn’t nearly as stifling as it should’ve been.

“Is that a draft?” Miss Howard asked, licking her finger and holding it up.

“It becomes almost a breeze,” Mr. Moore answered, his face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern by the light of the torch, “once you get to the other end.”

“But what produces it?” the Doctor asked.

“All part of the surprise, Laszlo,” Mr. Moore answered, starting down the tunnel toward a small glow of light that filled its far end. He cupped his free hand in front of his mouth. “Lucius! You still there?”

“Yes, John,” came Lucius’s whispering reply. “But keep your voice down, dammit!”

We kept scuffling along, crooked over like coal miners, and as we went, a thought occurred to me: “I don’t hear any baby crying,” I said grimly.

“No,” Mr. Moore answered, in that same inscrutable tone of voice he’d used on the roof. “You don’t.”

In another few seconds we’d reached the end of the passageway and arrived at a small wooden doorway. It was cracked open just a bit, and the crack was producing the light we’d seen from the other end. It appeared that this entranceway led into yet another chamber; and as we collected ourselves to go on in, my nerves fluttered worse than ever. Pictures of torture chambers in castle dungeons began to flash through my head: racks, iron maidens, red-hot irons, exposure to filth and rats-who knew what Libby Hatch had used to try to get the unruly kids she kidnapped to behave? I began to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have taken the chance to just wait up top-but once again, I swallowed all such hesitations.

“All right,” Mr. Moore said. “Everyone set?” Nobody said they were, but nobody said they weren’t, either, and Mr. Moore took that as a sign to proceed. “Then follow me.”

He swung the little door open, and we entered the room.

The first thing you noticed about the space was light: bright light, produced not by bare electrical bulbs but by very pleasant little lamps what sat on a pair of wooden night tables and a small chest of drawers what was painted a gentle pink. The walls had been covered with patterned paper what showed little pictures of smiling baby animals against a white ground. The paper reflected the light of the lamps and made the glare, especially as you came out of the dark passageway, all the harsher. As Mr. Moore had said, the draft we’d felt became a kind of breeze once we’d entered the room, one what was actually very refreshing: it was produced, he told us, by electrical fans inside smaller ventilation shafts what led up to the backyard and drew air down from there. On the wall opposite the chest of drawers was a handsome crib with a white lace canopy over its top. In a third wall a window frame had been installed, complete with glass, and behind this some talented person had painted a quiet country scene, one what resembled the rolling hills and open pasture-lands of Saratoga County. There was a handmade carpet on the floor, and a fine oak rocking chair in one corner; and all over the place there were mountains of toys, everything from an expensive musical box to stuffed animals to building blocks.

In fact, if you’d been above ground, it would’ve been a first-class nursery.

“Holy Christ,” I mumbled, too shocked to offer anything else by way of an opinion. My dumbfoundedness was only increased when I looked into the corner and at the rocking chair:

In it was sitting Detective Sergeant Lucius, gently rocking back and forth as he held a content Ana Linares in his arms.

Faced with three stunned faces, the detective sergeant blushed a bit. “I had to change her diaper to get her to stop crying,” he said with some embarrassment. “But it was all right-I’ve had a lot of practice with my sister’s children.”

“Apparently,” the Doctor said, approaching the pair and bending down to put a finger to Ana’s face. “You’ve done very well, Detective Sergeant. My compliments.”

Miss Howard and I gathered around. “She’s all right, then?” Miss Howard asked.

“Well, she’s undernourished, certainly,” Lucius answered. “And slightly colicky. But that was to be expected, I suppose.” His eyes suddenly lit up with interest. “What about Mrs. Hatch?”

“The aborigine got her,” Mr. Moore announced. “The navy boys are fetching her body now. And according to our resident gangland expert, here”-he pointed my way-“we’ve all got to get moving, before the Dusters come back looking for even bigger trouble.”