Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994
- Автор: Bashover Albert, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1994
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994». Краткое содержание книги:
“This way,” he said again, gesturing this time for them to go first so he could watch them — always he kept an eye on them now, since yesterday’s dancing. Lighting a torch, he followed them down the narrow twisted stairs.
“Pietro, that smell,” Melantha began, but stopped when she realized the deacon could hear, too. She sniffed again. The smell she had noticed before was stronger. Coming from one of the tunnels beneath them.
“The temple catacombs, my lady,” Gant answered for Pietro. Another title, spoken contemptuously just as with Pietro’s ‘dancing master.’ “The air may be somewhat stale. After all, we are under the ground here. And mind your skirts as well; it may be dusty.”
The two had already turned, however, when they’d reached the bottom of the narrow staircase. “Gant, your torch,” Pietro called. “Bring it here, quickly.”
“What?” Gant said. He thrust his torch forward, revealing the bricks of a huge, empty cistern set in the floor, within which was a domelike brass hemisphere topped with a conduit that led to the ceiling.
“What is it?” Melantha asked.
“The organ ‘bellows,’ ” Pietro answered. “Except that it isn’t a bellows at all. I’ve only seen one other like this — before we met, Melantha, when I was still learning and traveled through many lands — and it, like this, was in half-ruined condition. You see those pistons?” He pointed upward next to the great pipe at two narrow rods that also led through the floor above them. “Those we can fix — I dare say we’ll find their tops, covered perhaps with centuries of dirt, somewhere between the chest above us and the temple altar. They’re used to pump air down...”
“But what is it, dancing master?” Gant broke in. “It’s been here as long as I, or anyone, can remember. Just like the organ — just like the temple itself, for that matter. Back to when the city was first built, and even before that.”
“I daresay,” Pietro answered. “The one I saw was ancient as well. It’s called a hydraulikon — a ‘water organ.’ The weight of water presses the air that’s forced into the dome — that, not a bellows, provides the wind. In fact, it stores wind — it can even be played when the person working the pump is resting. But before it can do that, the cistern must be filled with water.”
“Pietro,” Melantha called. “Over on this side. There’s some kind of channel.” She pointed to a tunnel that led from the cistern’s chamber — one tunnel of many but this the only one that slanted gently upward and had in its floor a deep, narrow groove.
Gant pushed ahead of her, blocking its entrance. “No, my lady,” he said, his hand clutching the knife at his belt. “You may not have your leave of this passage.”
“But we must, Gant,” Pietro answered. “If, as I suspect, it leads to the river outside your city, then we must use it to fill the cistern. Do you understand? Whether you threaten to kill us or not, if there is no water, I can’t play your organ.”
Gant hesitated, then finally, slowly, lowered his hand. “Very well, then, but you may have just one look. From that you can tell me what needs to be done — perhaps I’ll have soldiers attend to the work then. And just you alone, dancing master. The lady will first be secured to a pillar...”
Pietro shook his head. “No,” he said. “Melantha accompanies us. Remember, she is my assistant in this. She may have some idea that I would not think of.”
Gant hesitated again, then shrugged. “I go first then,” he finally said. “And you’ll stay close to me, your hands at your sides.” He led them upward, into a gradually freshening breeze, until at last Melantha saw sunlight.
“Pietro!” she said. She couldn’t help herself. “Look. Through the gate. The river. The forest!”
“A water gate, yes,” Pietro answered. “And, Gant, you are right not to trust us too much here, as I as well long to be in that forest. Nevertheless, the gate must be opened. The rubble that blocks the channel must be cleared.”
“It will be done,” Gant said. “But now we go back down.”
He turned and faced them, forcing them before him, out of the tunnel’s breeze, into the cellar’s smells. Into the chamber of the cistern, with its other tunnels, then up the narrow stairs into the temple. When Gant had left them alone to fetch his soldiers to clear the water passage, Melantha kissed Pietro. Softly. Furtively.
“Pietro,” she whispered when she had finished. “What of the other thing?”
“What?” he answered.
“This morning you told Gant there were two things missing. The first was a wind source for the organ. That you have now found. But what was the other?”
Pietro took her to where some of the organ’s larger pipes lay on the floor. He kicked one, then stepped back as part of it crumbled.
“You see?” he said. “These pipes — the large flue pipes — are made of wood. Unlike the smaller metal pipes we tested yesterday, they have rotted over the years. Now, with the cistern being filled, when the time comes, I will be able at least to play something. But to make music...”
Melantha nodded. “For music, you need bass. To hold the rhythm. And that means big pipes—” she glanced toward the one Pietro had kicked “—even bigger than these, if you could obtain them. Is that right, my husband?”
Pietro gazed pensively down at the stone of the temple floor. “Yes,” he finally said. “Bigger, even, than these wooden pipes — if I could obtain them.”
“Pietro,” Melantha whispered several days later, “I know what that smell is.”
“What?” Pietro whispered back, preoccupied as he always was these days. The two had been working under the temple, watching as the final trickle of water from the now-guarded tunnel filled the cistern to its brim. Other work, also, was under way on the cistern itself and its linkages up through the temple floor. And other tunnels, too, had now gained Pietro’s attention.
“The smell,” she repeated. She glanced around her to make sure neither Gant nor any of his soldiers stood near enough to hear what she was saying. “You hardly notice it now, of course. It permeates everything down here. But I think I know why it seems familiar to me.”
“Ah,” her husband said. He glanced around, too, and then, just in case, gestured up toward the pipe and the pistons, as if they were still discussing the work.
“It’s hen’s-bane,” Melantha said. “I’m almost sure now. Yet there’s still a difference...”
“Hen’s-bane?” Pietro asked. “You mean the plant with the pale yellow flowers? It’s poison, isn’t it?”
Melantha nodded. “In large enough quantities, yes, it can kill. Powdered, though, in tiny doses, it has its uses — I’ve used it, for instance, in easing childbirth. Or for a man who has trouble sleeping, the smallest pinch, burned like incense in the lamp he keeps at his bedside, will assure he has pleasant dreams. But there are other kinds...”
She stopped at a gesture of Pietro’s hand, then turned to see a soldier emerge from one of the smaller tunnels that made up the temple’s cellar. “I’ve measured the passage as you told me,” the soldier said. “I’ve marked off the distance.”
“You’re sure?” Pietro asked. “You’re sure that you’ve measured the exact distance?”
The soldier nodded. “Already I have my men bricking it up at the spot where I marked it. And Balin’s men are hard at work in the tunnels you showed them. But may I ask what all this is for?”
Pietro shook his head. It was no secret, Melantha realized — after all, to obtain Gant’s cooperation, her husband had to tell him what he had in mind. And even then Gant had insisted that only certain of the tunnels could be explored, even if only the water tunnel actually had two soldiers assigned to stand at its entrance. From that she realized the other passages offered no chance for their escaping, but simply led more deeply under the temple. And yet, like her husband, she also felt it best not to say any more than was needed to Gant or his people.