Clive Cussler - Lost City

"Not all," Austin said with a forced grin. "Saves me the trouble of doing it myself."

"Splendid. Let's go inside then. The guests will be arriving soon." Emil ushered them back into the chateau and up the wide staircase in the veranda to the second floor and showed them to adjoining guest rooms. Austin's room was actually a suite with bedroom, bath and sitting area, decorated in Baroque, heavy on the scarlet plush and gilt, like a Victorian brothel.

His costume was laid out on the canopied bed. The costume fit well except for snugness around his broad shoulders. After glancing at himself in a full-length mirror, he knocked on the door connecting his suite to Skye's. The door opened partway and Skye poked her head through. She broke into laughter when she saw Austin wearing the black-and-white-checked costume and belled cap of a court jester.

"Madame Fauchard has more of a sense of humor than I gave her credit for," she said.

"My teachers always said I was the class clown. Let's see how you look."

Skye stepped into Austin's room and spun around slowly like a fashion model on a runway. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black leotard that showed off every curve and mound of her figure. Her feet and hands were encased in furry slippers and gloves. Decorating her hair was a headband that had a pair of large pointed ears attached to it.

"What do you think?" she said, pirouetting once more.

Austin looked at Skye with an unabashed male appreciation that was just short of lust. "I believe you're what my grandfather used to call 'the cat's meow." "

There was a light knock at the door. It was the bullet-head servant Marcel. He leered at Skye like a lion eyeing a tasty wildebeest, then his small eyes took in Austin's costume and his lips curled in a smile of unmistakable contempt.

"The guests are arriving," Marcel said in a voice like gravel sliding off a shovel. "Madame Fauchard would like you to follow me to the armory for cocktails and dinner." His gangsterish intonation was strangely at odds with his butler's formality.

Austin and his feline companion donned their black velvet masks and followed the burly servant down to the first floor and through the maze of corridors. They could hear voices and laughter long before they stepped into the armory. About two dozen men and women dressed in fantastic costumes milled around a bar that had been set up in front of a display of spiked maces. Servants who looked like clones of Marcel threaded their way through the crowd carrying trays of caviar and champagne. A string quartet dressed as rodents was playing background music.

Austin snatched two flutes of bubbly from a passing tray and offered one to Skye. Then they found a vantage point under the lances of the mounted knight display where they could sip their champagne

and watch the crowd. The guests were equally divided between men and women, although it was hard to tell because of the variety of costumes.

Austin was trying to figure out the party's theme when a portly black bird approached, weaving like a ship in a heavy sea. The bird wobbled on its yellow legs and leaned forward, its shiny black beak dangerously close to Austin's eye, and drunkenly intoned in a slurred British accent, "Once upon a midnight dreary ... damn, how does the rest of it go?"

Nothing harder to understand than an upper-class Brit with a snootful of booze, Austin thought. He picked up the rest of the verse, "while I pondered, weak and weary ..."

The bird clapped its wings together, and then plucked a champagne glass from a passing tray. The long beak got in the way when he tried to drink so he pushed it up onto his forehead. The florid, jowly face hidden behind the beak reminded Austin of cartoons he had seen of the English symbol, John Bull.

"Always a pleasure to meet a lit' rate gen'lman," the bird said. Austin introduced Skye and himself. The bird extended a winged hand. "I'm called "Nevermore," for the purposes of tonight's festivities, but I go by the name of Cavendish when I'm not running around as Poe's morose bird. Lord Cavendish, which shows you the sorry state of our once proud empire when an old sot like me is made a knight. Pardon, I see my glass is empty. Never more, old chap." He belched loudly and staggered off in pursuit of another glass of champagne.

Edgar Allan Poe. Of course.

Cavendish was a rather drunken Raven. Skye personified The Blac\ Cat. Austin was the jester from The Cask of Amontillado.

Austin studied his fellow guests. He saw a corpselike woman wearing a soiled and bloodied white shroud. The Fall of the House of Usher. Another woman wore a garment covered with miniature

chimes. The Bells. An ape was leaning against the bar, guzzling a martini. The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The ape was talking to an oversized beetle with a death's-head on his carapace. The Gold-Bug. Madame Fauchard not only had a sense of humor, Austin thought, she had an appreciation for the grotesque.

The music stopped and the room went silent. A figure stood in the doorway, about to enter the armory. Cavendish, who had returned with drink in hand, murmured, "Dear God!" He merged back with the other guests as if seeking the protection of the crowd.

All eyes were fixed on the tall woman who looked as if she had been exhumed from a grave. Blood splattered her long shroud and her gaunt white corpse's face. The lips were withered and the eyes set deep into skeletal sockets. There were gasps as she stepped into the room. She paused once again and stared into the eyes of each guest. Then she made her way across the floor as if she were floating on a cushion of air. She stopped in front of a giant ebony clock and clapped her hands. **

"Welcome to the Masque of the Red Death," she said in the clear voice of Racine Fauchard. "Please continue your celebration, my friends. Remember" her voice gaining a melodramatic quiver "life is fleeting when the Red Death stalks the land."

The wrinkled lips widened in a hideous smile. Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd and the quartet resumed its playing. Servants who had been frozen in midstride continued on their rounds. Austin expected Madame Fauchard to greet her guests, but to his surprise the apparition came his way and removed the grisly mask to reveal her normal cameo features.

"You look quite handsome in your belled cap and tights, Monsieur Austin," she said, a seductive inflection in her tone.

"Thank you, Madame Fauchard. And I've never met a more charming plague."

Madame Fauchard cocked her head coquettishly. "You have a

courtier's way with words." She turned to Skye. "And you make a lovely black cat, Mademoiselle Bouchet."

"Merci, Madame Fauchard," Skye said with a thin smile. "I'll try not to eat the string quartet, as much as I love mice."

Madame Fauchard studied Skye with the envy an aging beauty reserves for a younger woman. "They are rats, actually. I wish we had been able to give you more of a choice of costumes. But you don't mind playing the fool, do you, Mr. Austin?"

"Not at all. Court jesters once advised kings. Better to play the fool than to be one."

Madame Fauchard laughed gaily and glanced toward the doorway. "Bien, I see that Prince Prospero has arrived."

A masked figure dressed in tights and tunic of purple velvet, trimmed with gold, and a mask to match was making his way toward them. He removed his velvet cap with a flourish and bowed before Madame Fauchard.

"A lovely entrance, Mother. Our guests were properly terrified." "As they should be. I will pay my respects to the others after I talk to Mr. Austin."

Emil bowed again, this time to Skye, and took his leave. "You have interesting friends," Austin said, scanning the crowd. "Are these people your neighbors?"

"To the contrary. These are the remnants of the great arms families of the world. Immense wealth is represented in this room, all of it built on a foundation of death and destruction. Their ancestors fashioned the spear- and arrowheads that killed hundreds of thousands, built the cannon that devastated Europe in the last century and manufactured the bombs that leveled entire cities. You should be honored to be in such august company."