Eric Collinson was there, wild-eyed, white-faced, and frantic.
“Where’s Gaby?” he gasped.
“God damn you,” I said and hit him in the face with the gun.
He drooped, bending forward, stopped himself with hands on the vestibule’s opposite walls, hung there a moment, and slowly pulled himself upright again. Blood leaked from a corner of his mouth.
“Where’s Gaby?” he repeated doggedly.
“Where’d you leave her?”
“Here. I was taking her away. She asked me to. She sent me out first to see if anybody was in the street. Then the door closed.”
“You’re a smart boy,” I grumbled. “She tricked you, still trying to save you from that lousy curse. Why in hell couldn’t you do what I told you? But come on; we’ll have to find her.”
She wasn’t in any of the reception rooms off the lobby. We left the lights on in them and hurried down the main corridor.
A small figure in white pajamas sprang out of a doorway and fastened itself on me, tangling itself in my legs, all but upsetting me. Unintelligible words came out of it. I pulled it loose from me and saw that it was the boy Manuel. Tears wet his panic-stricken face and crying ruined all the words he was trying to speak.
“Take it easy, son,” I said. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
I understood, “Don’t let him kill her.”
“Who kill who?” I asked. “And take your time.”
He didn’t take his time, but I managed to hear “father” and “mama.”
“Your father’s trying to kill your mother?” I asked, since that seemed the most likely combination.
His head went up and down.
“Where?” I asked.
He fluttered a hand at the iron door ahead. I started towards it, and stopped.
“Listen, son,” I bargained. “I’d like to help your mother, but I’ve got to know where Miss Leggett is first. Do you know where she is?”
“In there with them,” he cried. “Oh, hurry, do hurry!”
“Right. Come on, Collinson,” and we raced for the iron door.
The door was closed, but not locked. I yanked it open. The altar was glaring white, crystal, and silver in an immense beam of blue-white light that slanted down from an edge of the roof.
At one end of the altar Gabrielle crouched, her face turned up into the beam of light. Her face was ghastly white and expressionless in the harsh light. Aaronia Haldorn lay on the altar step where Riese had lain. There was a dark bruise on her forehead. Her hands and feet were tied with broad white bands of cloth, her arms tied to her body. Most of her clothes had been torn off.
Joseph, white-robed, stood in front of the altar, and of his wife. He stood with both arms held high and wide-spread, his back and neck bent so that his bearded face was lifted to the sky. In his right hand he held an ordinary horn-handled carving knife, with a long curved blade. He was talking to the sky, but his back was to us, and we couldn’t hear his words. As we came through the door, he lowered his arms and bent over his wife. We were still a good thirty feet from him. I bellowed:
“Joseph!”
He straightened again, turning, and when the knife came into view I saw that it was still clean, shiny.
“Who calls Joseph, a name that is no more?” he asked, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that, standing there–for I had halted ten feet from him, with Collinson beside me–looking at him, listening to his voice, I didn’t begin to feel that perhaps, after all, nothing very terrible had been about to happen. “There is no Joseph,” he went on, not waiting for an answer to his question. “You may now know, as the world shall soon know, that he who went among you as Joseph was not Joseph, but God Himself. Now that you know, go.”
I should have said, “Bunk,” and jumped him. To any other man, I would have. To this one I didn’t. I said: “I’ll have to take Miss Leggett and Mrs. Haldorn with me,” and said it indecisively, almost apologetically.