A For Anything

12

Dick was half undressed, and more than half drowsy, when there came a cautious rapping at the door. Rather than wake up one of the servants, he went to answer it himself. "Yes? Who is it?"

But no answer came, and the Judas window was empty. Dick heard a faint rustling at his feet, and looked down in time to see a white envelope sliding under the door.

He bent and picked it up. The envelope was blank; inside was a single sheet of paper. He stooped under the nearest light to unfold and read it:

Dear Enemy:

Seeing you today reminded me how anxious I am to renew our acquaintance. The grille, which some wag removed from the Trout Brook, before our first meeting, has since been welded in place, so I'm afraid I can't offer to drown you there. In fact, it would be awkward if I were to leave your corpse anywhere in Eagles. I suggest, therefore, that we meet for a game of follow-the-leader outside Eagles. If you use the maintenance exit at the north end of the Upper Promenade within the next half hour, you will find me waiting on the roofs. Bring warm clothing and climbing gear. I trust you as a man of your honor to burn this note beforehand, and not to tell anyone.

Sincerely, A Friend

P.S. If you don't happen to feel well enough to come, I'll understand perfectly; I wouldn't dream of calling you a coward the next time we meet.

Dick crumpled the paper. His hands were cold; his heart was thumping with anger and apprehension. Coward, was he? Keel was the coward, ducking a fair fight for a crazy thing like this. Probably he wouldn't even be there himself; it was ridiculous ... even in daylight, the thought of those dizzy heights was unpleasant; it would be twice as bad at night, in the cold, with that wind rushing up the mountain.

He turned. No, he'd be a fool to walk into such a trap. Besides, it was late, and he was tired, and not completely sober ... .

Reluctantly, he halted. That was all true, but it didn't make any difference: of course he'd have to go.

He picked up the wadded paper where he had dropped it, and burned it in an ashtray. It went up with a mocking whoosh, as if it had been soaked in some inflammable solution. Nerves jangling, Dick went back to his wardrobe to dress. He chose the warmest clothes he could find, heavy riding pants, a fleece-lined sweat shirt, loose and comfortable, worn over a turtle-necked jersey. He hesitated between warm gloves and thin ones; finally chose the latter. It would be bad to have numb fingers, but worse, probably, to have a clumsy grip. He put on a pair of his Army riding boots; they were strong, but as flexible as chamois. He clipped his stick to the belt, but removed the elbow chains. As an afterthought, he filled a small flask with brandy and stuffed it into his pocket. He cast a glance around the apartment, at the warm bed waiting and the rich disarray of the wardrobe. Then he slipped out into the corridor.

The Upper Promenade was deserted under the stars. Dick found the maintenance door, an unobtrusive gray-painted square of metal, under the ornamental scrollwork on the north wall. It had a stout latch, hanging open.

He slid the door open against its spring and cautiously put

His head out. It was a bright, cold night, the blue of gun-metal. High in the starred dome hung a crazy, three-quarter moon, and here below, all things were flooded with an eerie whiteness: roofs, copings, cupolas, and the upper slopes of the mountain itself, all silent and bare in the night.

A few yards away, standing at ease on the ribbed metal roof, was Keel. His breath puffed white. Under the shelf of his brow, his eyes glittered.

Dick moved forward, letting the door close behind him. The wind was chill on his face; the stars in their vast dome seemed to crackle with cold. He looked around. Beyond the bulk of the Promenade, from which he had just emerged, Eagles showed itself as a forest of peaked roofs, domes and minarets. Every window was a dark eye; only the Tower itself, looming like a mirage beyond the sea of roofs, sprayed yellow light from its peak.

The wind howled steadily, beyond the short roof on which they stood. Keel's voice rang hollow: "Well met by moonlight!"

Dick kept advancing until he was only a few paces from Keel. The blond man was dressed much like himself, in leather jacket and whipcord trousers with high laced boots. With the moon behind him, his face was in shadow, lit only by the faint reflection that came from the polished roof. Behind a puff of vapor, his teeth gleamed. "I thought I had suggested that we come without weapons?"

Dick pointed to the long-handled pickaxe that protruded over Keel's shoulder. "What about that?"

Keel glanced toward it. "Climbing equipment ... very useful, but let's start even." He unslung the axe, together with the coil of light rope that was clipped at his shoulder, and flung them together toward the edge of the roof. They fell into silence.

Dick shrugged and removed his stick. It clattered briefly on the roof, then a gust took it and he saw it whirling end over end, receding into the void, before it dipped downward again and was lost.

Keel was waiting with an ironic smile. "Ready, then? Let's go." He turned his back and started off diagonally across the roof. At a corner of the Promenade there was a steel ladder. Keel grasped the rungs and clambered quickly up. Dick watched him a moment, then followed. The rungs were icy cold in his hands, and he wished he had chosen the other gloves. Keel's white, foreshortened form was silhouetted a moment against the sky, then it disappeared. Dick climbed, with the wind fluttering and pawing at his back.

At the top of the ladder, he found himself facing an unsuspected slant of metal roof, rising steeply to a peak high over his head. Keel stood up there, in silver and black, waiting.

The ladder continued in widely spaced steel rungs up the slope of the roof. There was nothing for it but to keep on climbing. As he ascended, Keel made him a mocking salute and moved on out of sight again.

The peak of the roof turned out to be one end of a long ridge that ran straight away into the distance and then made a sharp turn, ending in a blocky tower. Tower and roofs were washed in clear white; below them, everything was one inky gulf of shadow, without a gleam to tell its depth.

The ridge itself was flattened, forming a sort of catwalk perhaps eight inches across. On this precarious perch, a few dozen yards away, Keel was standing with his arms akimbo, waiting.

By stretching upward from the last rung, it was possible to plant one foot on the ridge, and then, raising the other, to bring yourself up in an awkward, crouching position. With the cold wind whipping unpredictably against one side and then the other, it was all he could do to steady himself with hands and feet; but shame drove him upright. He stood, with his heart thundering, fighting for balance.

There was a long moment when he was certain he would fall; then that passed, and he could stand without windmilling his arms. The distant figure of Keel made him another ironic salute, and, turning, made off toward the bend in the ridge ...

He followed, planting one cautious foot after the other, in an unreal stillness. Except for the wind, and Keel's distant figure moving, there was not a stir of life anywhere in the world; they had left all that down below. The thought of the warm, lighted, busy corridors gave Dick a curious pang: how many times had he walked by down there, without ever suspecting the existence of this lonely world a few yards overhead?

His moon-shadow glided along ahead of him. He could make out the Little Bear, low over the rooftops, and a little higher, the Big Bear, upside down. The Milky Way sprawled hi a gigantic arch high above; he hardly dared glance at it, for fear of losing his balance. Imperceptibly, as the minutes went by, he was growing light-headed from the height and the cold, and the theatrical white glare of the rooftops. Up the low tower he went, following Keel, and down the other side into a bewildering maze of roofs and walls. They climbed ladders sometimes, and sometimes scaled crowstep gables where the pitch of the roof was too steep to walk. Dick's ears were singing with the cold, his fingers and toes numb with it, but he followed wherever Keel led; his sense of danger was muted, almost inaudible, like a familiar sound droning away somewhere in the distance.

After a long time they paused to rest, each astride the ridge of a steep roof; Keel turned and they sat facing each other, a dozen yards apart. All around them was the sky and the silent sea of rooftops.

Keel's breath puffed frostily over his head, and his eyes glittered. From somewhere he produced a leather-covered flask, raised it in salute. Remembering, Dick took out his own flask and unscrewed the top. They drank together. The brandy was cold and smooth down his throat, spreading fiery inside his body.

He saw Keel's teeth glitter. "Sorry you came?"

"No!" he called; and hi a strange way it was true.

Keel nodded and turned, holding himself precariously with his hands on one slope of the roof while his legs dangled down the other. Then he was hitching himself forward again, and Dick followed.

Now their way was along cornices, clinging by fingertips while the wind lashed them from below; along copings, so weathered that they could not stand but must embrace the frigid stone with legs and arms; down rabbeted quoins and along the gutters of roofs, inching, spread-eagled.

The moon was high when they reached what might have been the end of the world: a steep curb roof, slanting down almost vertically to a curious, wide ledge nearly twenty feet below. Beyond that and on either side there was a chasm which even the rays of the high moon did not fill; it went down and down, and ended only in black shadow.

Standing at a wary distance from Keel, Dick glanced at him uneasily. This was a dead end; there was no way to go on from here. But Keel was turning his back on the gulf, lowering himself carefully until he hung by his hands from the cornice, his body flattened along the

lower slope. His face shone pale, upturned in the moonlight. Then he was gone with a sliding rush, and peering down, Dick saw him safe on the ledge below.

For the first time since the beginning of the adventure, Dick felt foreboding strike his heart. Were they going down into that endless moonlit canyon -- over the ledge and down?

"Afraid?" Keel called up softly.

Dick set his jaw. He turned and gripped the curb as Keel had done, then let himself down. The smooth leads were clammy and cold against his body. He swallowed hard; he couldn't see anything below him, and it was hard to make his hands let go. But there was no turning back; his fingers relaxed, then gripped frantically as the slope rushed upward. His feet struck the ledge with a jar. He came upright, dizzy and shaken.

Keel was standing a short distance away, staring across emptiness to the closed and shuttered building opposite. Directly across from him, there was a little iron balcony which Dick had not noticed before. It looked deceptively close. It was set a little lower than the level on which they were standing. But the two buildings, as well as Dick could judge, were at least fifteen feet apart.

"This is where the tackle would have helped," said Keel, without turning his head. Dick saw what he meant. There was a projecting cornice above the balcony; if you could catch a hook on that, you could swing across quite easily. But without a rope, it was out of the question. It was fifteen feet or more -- a standing jump, in heavy clothes, and with that chasm under you. You would have to jump headforemost, as if into a pool; it would take more nerve than most men had.

Keel was removing his gloves, with jerky motions. He wiped his palms on his jacket; Dick saw that there were beads of sweat on his forehead. He stepped back until his heels met the base of the, roof. He steadied himself with his hands on the leads, and looked across at Dick. His face was strained; there was something like appeal in his eyes.

Dick watched, unable to speak.

Keel straightened, swung his arms, and stepped forward to the front of the ledge.

"Keel, don't!" said Dick suddenly, with his heart at his throat.

Keel shook his head and stepped back again. He took a deep, painful breath and let it out. He breathed in again, held it, with his eyes still fixed on the balcony across. "Shut up," he said suddenly. "Oh, God." His eyes closed; his teeth showed in a grimace.

"Keel, listen -- we'll bang on the roofs -- attract somebody's attention."

"Never," said Keel. He breathed deep again, hesitated, then with a curious grunt he started forward. His foot struck the front of the ledge: he launched himself out in a hard, flat dive.

Watching, Dick felt the blood drain from his head. The other man seemed to hang in midair, arms Outstretched. Then Keel's hands struck and clutched at the iron bars. They slipped; Keel's body went reeling under and hit the wall with a thud. There was a moment when he seemed to be hanging there, unsupported, half in shadow below the balcony. Dick heard a gasping cry, and then Keel was falling, silently, past stage after stage of the moonlit masonry wall, dwindling: the darkness swallowed him silently up, and then, after another long moment, there was a distant slapping sound that echoed and died away.