“Don’t know what’s inside the door.” They had been waiting patiently, watching the change of guard, seeing that there was an exchange of words with someone within the ville. But if it was a password, they had no way of learning it.
“Go like we said.” The Armorer straightened, pulling down his fedora to shadow the whiteness of his face.
Ryan was at his side. “Yeah.”
He led the way along the wall, keeping close to it, dropping to hands and knees every time the sec man reached the far end of his beat and turned toward them.
Luckily the moon was only a fingernail of fresh-minted silver, partly shrouded by a bank of cloud, covering the ville in an impenetrable veil of darkness.
The sentry was a young man, married only three days earlier to one of the maids who worked in the big kitchens of the ville. He wasn’t due off the night shift until three in the morning, which seemed an eternity away. Knowing that his Molly was sleeping in a warm bed, less than fifty yards from where he was on patrol, only made it worse.
The walk-fifteen paces out and fifteen paces back again-had become a mindless routine. His attention had drifted away to the warm body in the warm bed.
He was so locked into the thoughts of his young wife that he was totally confused by the dark figure that rose from the undergrowth near his feet. There was only one person that he could think it might be.
“Molly?” he whispered.
Within a heartbeat he knew that he’d made a lethally stupe mistake.
The figure was a tall and powerful man, who was holding a long, bladed knife to his throat, the needle point pricking the skin so that a small worm of warm blood inched down his neck, under the collar.
“Not a sound,” the voice whispered.
There were two of them, one shorter, with the watery moonlight glinting off a pair of spectacles.
Then he knew who they were-the one-eyed leader of the outlanders and his heavily armed companion. There had been talk in the ville that Joaquin had brought in three of the gang as prisoners-the old man, the white-haired boy and the young woman, the one they said was a true doomie.
“Is there a password?” The man’s mouth was so close that the guard could feel it tickle the hairs in his ears. “Tell me quiet as a mouse fart.”
“Just have to say my name.”
“What is it?”
“Jerry McCaffrey. Only been married three days. Please don’t-” The words were cut off by a gasp as the steel was pushed a little deeper into his flesh, turning the worm of blood into a steady trickle.
“Don’t talk less we ask you. How many behind the door? Truth!”
“One. Just one.” He was trying to get up onto the tips of his toes to stretch away from the questing knife.
“We’re going in,” Ryan said.
“Sure. Sure.”
BARON SHARPE STOOD about ten feet away from Ryan and J.B., on his way back from showing his “guests” around the more private part of his collection.
It hadn’t been a very successful visit.
They had gone through the mutie animals, fish and reptiles, pausing in front of the large glass window opening onto the expanse of desert where the hidden monster called Rupert lived in its own mysterious seclusion.
Sharpe had tapped on the glass, but nothing stirred. “One day I’ll find out what Rupert is really like,” he said.
Emma’s fingers had tightened on Jak’s hand, but she had remained silent.
The door through to the rear of the private zoo was opened by Joaquin, who left it unbolted as they passed through.
“By the Three Kennedys! But that’s a foul and noisome stench,” Doc muttered, gripping the lion’s-head hilt of his sword stick.
It was a sorry and dismal place, smaller than they had expected.
The dozen or so iron cages held only four occupants. Once the visitors were inside the section, the baron seemed to slide off into one of his withdrawn depressions, hardly bothering to talk about his prizes. , A small woman, less than four feet in height, showed all the classic characteristics of the stickies. Sharpe poked at the bars with a broom handle, making her show her hands with the circles of suckers on palms and fingers. But the mutie hardly stirred, returning to a pile of straw in a corner where she lay and coughed.