Superstition

45

The Chinaman was waiting at the door of the apartment as they stepped out of the elevator, their footsteps soundless on the thick carpet. They did not speak until they had entered the hallway of Ward's apartment with its polished wooden floor, and the door was closed behind them.

“What's going on?” Sam asked without preamble.

The manservant spoke quickly in his light voice, rocking slightly from the waist, his hands clasped before his chest.

“Last night I see Mr. Riley when he return-this shortly before eight. He say he go to bed and not to be disturbed. I spend morning visit friends, do shopping, but when I return, still no Mr. Riley. I begin to worry if he sick. Mr. Riley never this late in morning. So I knock on Mr. Riley's door, but there is no’ reply. I open door, find his bed not slept in. This note on it.”

He produced a card bearing a few lines in Ward's neat and uniformly slanting hand. It read:“ Allow Sam Towne and Joanna Cross into my quiet room. Nobody else. W.R.”

Sam looked from the card to the manservant. “His ‘quiet room’?”

“I show you.”

He led them down a corridor and through a double door into a spacious bedroom furnished with the same Eastern influence as the rest of the apartment. Joanna sensed something odd about the place at once, and realized that it had no windows. She glimpsed a tiled and mirrored bathroom through open doors, then followed the manservant to a far door that was virtually invisible in a dark, wood-paneled wall containing built-in drawers and closets.

“Nobody allowed in here ever,” he said. “Mr. Riley even clean this room himself. I leave you now.”

He gave a stiff little bow and retreated the way they had come. Sam turned the door handle. They found themselves in a space about the size of a closet, bare walls and nothing in it except another door on the far side. They exchanged a look, and Sam opened the second door.

A wall of cold air hit them. The room was medium sized, with a floor-to-ceiling window running the whole of the far side and overlooking the park. Three sliding-glass panels had been opened as far as they would go. There was no furniture other than a few bookshelves and several pictures and statues that looked as though they had religious or iconic significance.

In the center of the floor was a mat. Ward Riley sat on it in the classic cross-legged meditation pose. He was barefoot and wore only a simple robe of thin cotton. His eyes were closed and his skin waxy pale.

“Is he dead?” Joanna whispered, falling to her knees and reaching out to touch him. He was ice cold.

There was a slamming sound behind Joanna. She turned to see Sam sliding the windows shut, then he came and knelt on Ward's other side.

“I can see a pulse,” he said, “in his neck, very slow.”

“Thank you for coming, Sam…”

They both jumped as Ward's voice came out of nowhere, filling the room.

“…and Joanna. It is good that you are here, that we are together now.”

They exchanged a look over Ward's head, both unnerved by the familiar yet strangely disembodied voice.

“By the time you hear these words I will have reached a place from which I will neither wish nor be able to return.”

“It's coming from his throat,” she said. “His mouth isn't moving, but the sound is coming from his throat.”

“I want to help you,” Ward's voice continued. “It is too late for you to take the path that I have taken-it involves long preparation. But do not fear the void before you. Enter it as you would the light…”

“Look,” Sam said suddenly. She followed the direction he was pointing in and saw a small sound system on a shelf to Ward's right. A cassette was turning in it. “We must have triggered it when we came in,” he said.

As he spoke she saw what looked like an electronic eye, positioned so that anyone entering the room would break its beam.

“Our world has changed,” the voice continued, “and there is no going back…”

The voice stopped as Sam impatiently yanked a plug from the wall. “Go find that manservant, Joanna. Get some blankets. And have him call Sam's doctor, or emergency, right now.”

She hesitated. She did not know why she hesitated, except it came into her mind that Ward did not want them to do this. He had made his choice, and it was not for them to interfere with it. But she pushed the thought aside as swiftly as it had come. She did not, on the whole, regard the right of self-destruction as inalienable; and what Ward had done looked very much like attempted suicide.

She ran through the apartment calling out, “Hello? Where are you?” because she did not know the manservant's name. There was no sign of him in the hallway or the main reception room where they had sat with Ward the day before. She tried a door that led to guest rooms and extra bathrooms. She called out again, but there was no response.

A couple of doors were visible on the far side of the reception room. She guessed these probably led to the kitchen and domestic quarters-the “butler's pantry” as she supposed it might be called in a building like this. She tried one of them and found herself in a maze of corridors between laundry rooms and storage areas, then she pushed through a swinging door that led into a large and ultramodern kitchen, all-white walls and stainless steel. Still there was no reply when she called out.

Another door brought her into a dining room with a long table and places for about twenty people. It, too, was empty and immaculate, with a barely-ever-used look. The door she pushed open on the far side took her back into the reception room, still as empty as it had been two minutes ago. Another door to her right opened into a corridor that she hadn't noticed before, although it connected with the main hallway, which she could see in the distance to her left. She looked to her right for signs of further hidden rooms and recesses, but as she did so she caught sight of a movement in a mirror on the wall.

She turned to her left just in time to see someone disappearing, evidently in a great hurry, out of the main door of the apartment-someone wearing a raincoat the same color as Sam's.

“Sam!” She called after him, but there was no response. She ran toward the hallway where the door was still open.

As she stepped out into the corridor she saw him disappearing around the far corner-again just a glimpse, running, the light-colored raincoat flying out behind him.

Joanna ran after him. She didn't think about it, didn't even close the door behind her. All she wanted was to know what was happening. What was he running from, or toward? And why?

By the time she reached the corner where she'd seen him, he had disappeared again. The only movement was a door swinging shut. She ran toward it. A sign on it said “Emergency Only.” She pulled it open.

She found herself in a stairwell with an open staircase made of steel that twisted down in sharp one-hundred-eighty-degree turns like a fire escape. She couldn't see Sam, but she could hear the clatter of his feet descending.

Twice she called his name, but there was no response. She supposed he couldn't hear her above the echo coming off the bare, gray-painted walls. She started after him.

Glancing down as she descended, she saw brief flashes of his arm as he grabbed the handrail to swing himself around each turn in the stairs. She tried calling again, but it was futile. In fact, as she continued after him, it seemed increasingly pointless to be chasing him at all: she had no chance of catching him. Yet she wanted desperately to know what had provoked this flight without a word or even apparently a thought for her.

She slowed, beginning to feel foolish for having even tried to follow him. It was obvious that there must be some reason for his behavior, and it was probably to be found upstairs in the apartment rather than down here in this strange limbo of a place. Most likely the manservant had shown up in Ward's room while she was still looking for him. It didn't explain why Sam should make this mad dash out of the building, but there must be some good reason. If there'd been any danger he would certainly have warned her and made sure he took her with him. Of that she was certain. Running after him like this was in itself a kind of betrayal, a refusal to trust him. She should have gone back to Ward and the Chinaman, where she would have learned that Sam was dashing down to a pharmacy, or to some doctor on another floor-needing something so urgently that he couldn't even wait for the elevator. Of course that must be the explanation. She had been silly to react as she had. She should go back up and see what she could do to help.

Yet she had come so far now that she was nearer to the bottom of the stairs than where she had started. Ward was on-what, the fifth, sixth floor? The sensible thing was to keep going down and take the elevator back up. She would do that.

Giving up all thought of catching Sam, she continued on down at her own speed. It occurred to her that she need not go all the way; if she took the emergency door to the next landing-it would be the second or third floor-she could take the elevator back up from there.

The door was set back some way into a deep wall. She was lost in thought, paying little attention to her immediate surroundings, when she turned off the staircase and into it. She reached for the handle, or rather where she thought the handle would be in the dark recess…and touched something soft.

She gave a small cry-of surprise more than alarm. Because she had already registered the color of the coat. Sam's coat.

But as her eyes traveled up to the face she expected to see, her blood turned cold. The man standing there, waiting in the shadows, was Ralph Cazaubon.

“Don't let it end like this,” he said, his voice soft, breaking slightly. “I don't know what's happening to us, Jo. Don't let it end like this.”