Lord Darcy Investigates Read online

  The four men looked at the sketch plan.

  They were still looking fruitlessly when Lord Darcy returned some minutes later. The smile on his face was beatific.

  “Ah, Your Highness! You will be pleased to know that your worries are over! All is well! I predict—” He raised a forefinger histrionically. “I predict that very soon a man you have not seen for some time will appear in this very house, coming from the legendary direction of Hell itself, bearing with him that which you seek. He and his minions will come from the darkness into the light. I have spoken!”

  The Duke stared at him. “How do you know all this?”

  “Aha! I have heard voices, though I could not see the speakers,” Lord Darcy said mysteriously.

  “What’s the matter with you, Darcy?” the Prince asked warily.

  Lord Darcy spread his arms and bowed. “I am like the weather, Highness. When the weather is brisk, I am brisk; when the weather is cool, I am cool; when the weather is blustery, I am blustery. Have you noticed how balmy it is out tonight?”

  “All right, my lord; you know something. What is it?” the Lord High Admiral said in quarterdeck tones.

  “Indeed I do,” Lord Darcy said, regaining some of his wonted composure. “Take a good look at that sketch plan, I beg you. And remember that Torquin the Locksman has stated unequivocally that Lord Vauxhall went through each and every one of the sixteen doors in this house—we’re not counting bathroom doors—once and only once. Do I state the facts, my good Torquin?”

  “Yea, my lord; ye do.”

  “Then the facts lead inescapably to one conclusion, which, in turn, leads us to the most likely place for the treaty to be. Don’t you see?”

  They didn’t, none of them, for a minute or so.

  Then Lord Darcy said quietly: “How did he get into the house?”

  Torquin the Locksman looked at him in astonishment. “Through one of the outside doors, o’ course. He had all the keys.”

  But Master Sean burst out with: “Good heavens, yes! Parity, me lord. Parity!”

  “Exactly, me dear Sean! Parity!” Lord Darcy said.

  “I don’t get it,” the Lord High Admiral said flatly. “What’s ‘parity’?”

  “The ability to make pairs, yer lordship,” said Master Sean. “In other words, is a number odd or even? The number of doors coming into this house is four—that’s even. If he went through all four of those doors once and only once—it don’t matter at all where he went between times—he’d have ended up back outside the house.”

  “In-out-in-out,” said Prince Richard. “Why, of course he would! Then how—” He stopped and looked back at the paper.

  “Would you give me a sheet of blank paper and a pencil?” Lord Darcy asked in a low aside to Torquin. The small man produced them from his bag.

  “Is the route he took supposed to be of importance?” the Lord High Admiral asked.

  “Not the route, no,” Lord Darcy said. He had put the paper on the mantelpiece and was sketching rapidly. “There must be ten thousand different routes he could have taken and still gone through every door exactly once. No, the route’s not important.”

  “Parity, again,” said Master Sean. “It holds true for any room with an even number of doors. I see what his lordship is driving at.”

  “Certainly you do,” Lord Darcy said. “Once I saw that he couldn’t have entered from any of the outside doors, I knew that there had to be a secret entrance to this house. It fits in well with Vauxhall’s romantic nature. And when I saw what the end-points of his route through this house were, I knew where to look for the hidden entrance. So I excused myself, and went to look. I didn’t want to raise any false hopes in the rest of you, so I checked to make sure the treaty was there.”

  “You said you were going to the head,” said the Lord High Admiral.

  “I did not. I merely inquired after the plumbing. Your inferences were your own. At any rate, I checked, and I heard voices from—”

  A voice from within the house said: “Halloo! Is someone up there?”

  “Come along,” Lord Darcy said. “That will be Chief Donal with good news. I left the treaty for him to find.” They all went through the dining room to the service pantry. Chief Donal and two of his sergeants were climbing out of the little wine cellar.

  The Chief Master-at-Arms was holding a heavy leather diplomatic case in his hands and a broad smile on his face. “We found it, Your Highness! There you are!” He had never looked less grim.

  The Duke took the case and inspected its contents. “That’s it, all right, Chief Donal. Congratulations. And thank you. Where was it?”

  “Well, we got to looking for secret panels, Your Highness, since the first search of the house didn’t yield anything. We found this old tunnel behind a dummy wine rack in the wine cellar. There used to be an old castle up on that hill, centuries ago, and the manor house was built on its foundations. This tunnel must have been an escape route for times of siege; it ended up down here, in what was woods, then. Lord Vauxhall must have deliberately built this house on top of the old tunnel exit. We followed it and came out here. The case, there, was on the floor of the tunnel, just behind another dummy wine rack that acted as a door.”

  “Well, thank you again, Chief Donal,” the Prince said. “You can go call off your men now. We’ve got what we were looking for.”

  They all went back out to the receiving room again, and, after the Armsmen had left, Prince Richard speared Lord Darcy with an accusing eye. “ ‘A man I haven’t seen in some time,’ ” he quasi-quoted.

  “A couple of hours, at least,” Lord Darcy said tranquilly.

  “May I ask what is on the piece of paper you were so assiduously working on?”

  “Certainly, Your Highness. Here. As you see, it is merely one of the possible routes Vauxhall could have taken. There are thousands of possibilities, but every one of them has to either start in this room and end in the service pantry or vice versa. They are the only two rooms with an odd number of doors. Since he died in this room, he had to start his tour in the service pantry. And the only other way into that room had to be through the wine cellar.”

  “Simple, when you know how,” the Duke said. “It’s getting very late. I still have to tell Coronel Danvers to call off his dragoons. Let’s shut off the lights and—if you would be so good, Journeyman Torquin—lock up those four outside doors.”

  “And the ones to the green room, Your Highness,” the small man said firmly. “Lord Vauxhall wouldn’t want no gard’ner prowlin’ through the house.”

  “Of course.”

  The doors were locked and the lights put out.

  As Lord Darcy turned the last gascock in the front room, he looked at the spot before the fireplace where Lord Vauxhall had died.

  “Obit surfeit vanitatis,” he said softly.

  And the darkness came.

  The Napoli Express

  1

  His Royal Highness, Prince Richard, Duke of Normandy, seated on the edge of his bed in the Ducal Palace at Rouen, had taken off one boot and started on the other when a discreet rap came at the door.

  “Yes? What is it?” There was the sound of both weariness and irritation in his voice.

  “Sir Leonard, Highness. I’m afraid it’s important.”

  Sir Leonard was the Duke’s private secretary and general factotum. If he said something was important, it was. Nevertheless—

  “Come in, then, but damn it, man, it’s five o’clock in the morning! I’ve had a hard day and no sleep.”

  Sir Leonard knew all that, so he ignored it. He came through the door and stopped. “There is a Commander Dhuglas downstairs, Highness, with a letter from His Majesty. It is marked Most Urgent.”

  “Oh. Well, let’s see it.”

  “The Commander was instructed to deliver it into your hands only, Highness.”

  “Bother,” said His Highness without rancor, and put his boot back on.

  By the time he got downstairs to the ro
om where Commander Dhuglas was waiting, Prince Richard no longer looked either tired or disheveled. He was every inch a tall, blond, handsome Plantagenet, member of a proud family that had ruled the Anglo-French Empire for over eight centuries.

  Commander Dhuglas, a spare man with graying hair, bowed when the Duke entered. “Your Highness.”

  “Good morning, Commander. I understand you have a letter from His Majesty.”

  “I do, Your Highness.” The Naval officer handed over a large ornately-sealed envelope. “I am to wait for an answer, Your Highness.”

  His Highness took the letter and waved toward a nearby chair. “Sit down, Commander, while I see what this is all about.”

  He himself took another chair, broke the seal of the envelope and took out the letter.

  At the top was the embossed seal of the Royal Arms, and, below that:

  My dear Richard,

  There has been a slight change in plans. Due to unforeseen events at this end, the package you have prepared for export must go by sea instead of overland. The bearer of this letter, Commander Edwy Dhuglas, will take it and your courier to their destination aboard the vessel he commands, the White Dolphin. She’s the fastest ship in the Navy, and will make the trip in plenty of time.

  All my best,

  Your loving brother,

  John

  Prince Richard stared at the words. The “package” to which His Majesty referred was a freshly-negotiated and signed Naval treaty between Kyril, the Emperor at Constantinople, and King John. If the treaty could be gotten to Athens in time, Kyril would take steps immediately to close the Sea of Marmara against certain Polish “merchant” vessels—actually disguised light cruisers—which King Casimir’s Navy was building in Odessa. If those ships got out, Casimir of Poland would have Naval forces in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic for the first time in forty years. The treaty with the Scandinavians, at the end of the 1939 war, had stopped the Poles from getting out of the Baltic, but the treaty with the Greeks at that time had had holes in it.

  The present treaty closed those holes, but Kyril would not act until the signed treaty was in his hands. There were three of the disguised cruisers in the Black Sea now; once they got past the Dardanelles, it would be too late. They had to be trapped in the Sea of Marmara, and that meant the treaty had to be in Athens within days.

  Plans had been laid, timetables set and mathematically calculated to get that treaty there with all possible haste.

  And now, His Imperial Majesty, John IV, by the Grace of God King of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland; Emperor of the Romans and Germans; Premier Chief of the Moqtessumid Clan; Son of the Sun; Lord and Protector of the Western Continents of New England and New France; Defender of the Faith, had changed those plans. He had every right to do so, of course; there was no question of that. But—

  Prince Richard looked at his wristwatch and then at Commander Dhuglas. “I am afraid this message from the King my brother is a little late, Commander. The item to which he refers should be leaving Paris on the Napoli Express in five minutes.”

  2

  The long, bright red cars of the Napoli Express seemed almost eager to get into motion; the two ten-inch-wide stripes along their length—one white and one blue—almost gave the impression that they were already in motion. Far down the track ahead, nearly outside the South Paris Station, the huge engine steamed with a distant hissing.

  As usual, the Express was loaded nearly full. She only made the run from Paris to Naples twice a week, and she usually had all the passengers she could handle—plus a standby waiting list.

  The trouble with being a standby is that when a reservation is cancelled at the last moment, the standbys, in order of precedence, have to take the accommodations offered or give them up to the next in line.

  The poshest compartments on the Napoli Express are the eight double compartments on the last car of the train, the Observation Car, which is separated from the rest of the train by the dining car. All sixteen places had been reserved, but three of them had been cancelled at the last moment. Two of them had been filled by standbys who rather reluctantly parted with the extra fare required, but the sixteenth place remained empty. None of the other standbys could afford it.

  The passengers were filing aboard. One of them—a short, stout, dark-haired, well-dressed Irishman carrying a symbol-decorated carpetbag in one hand and a suitcase in the other, and bearing papers which identified him as Seamus Kilpadraeg, Master Sorcerer—watched the other passengers carefully without seeming to do so. The man just ahead of him in line was a wide-shouldered, thick-set man with graying hair who announced himself as Sir Stanley Galbraith. He climbed aboard and did not look back as Master Seamus identified himself, put down his suitcase, surrendered his ticket and took back his stub.

  The man behind him, the last in line, was a tall, lean gentleman with brown hair and a full, bushy brown beard. Master Seamus had previously watched him hurrying across the station toward the train. He carried a suitcase in one hand and a silver-headed walking stick in the other, and walked with a slight limp. The sorcerer heard him give his name to the ticket officer as Goodman John Peabody.

  Master Seamus knew that the limp was phony and that the walking stick concealed a sword, but he said nothing and did not look back as he picked up his suitcase and boarded the train.

  The small lounge at the rear of the car already contained some five or six passengers. The rest were presumably in their compartments. His own compartment, according to his ticket, was Number Two, towards the front of the car. He headed toward it, suitcase in one hand, carpetbag in the other. He looked again at the ticket: Number Two Upper. The lower bed was now a day couch, the upper had been folded up into the wall and locked into place, but there were two lockers under the lower bed marked “Upper” and “Lower.” The one marked “Upper” still had a key in its lock; the other did not, which meant that the man who shared his compartment had already put his luggage in, locked it and taken the key. Master Seamus stowed his own gear away, locked the locker and pocketed the key. Having nothing better to do, he went back to the lounge.

  The bushy-bearded man named Peabody was seated by himself over in one corner reading the Paris Standard. After one glance, the sorcerer ignored him, found himself a seat, and looked casually around at the others.

  They seemed a mixed lot, some tall, some short, some middle-aged, some not much over thirty. The youngest-appearing was a blond, pink-faced fellow who was standing by the bar as if impatiently awaiting a drink, although he must have known that liquor would not be served until the train was well under way.

  The oldest-appearing was a white-haired gentleman in priest’s garb; he had a small white mustache and beard, and smooth-shaven cheeks. He was quietly reading his breviary through a pair of gold-rimmed half-glasses.

  Between those two, there seemed to be a sampling of every decade. There were only nine men in the lounge, including the sorcerer. Five others, for one reason or another, remained in their compartments. The last one almost didn’t make it.

  He was a plump man—not really fat, but definitely overweight—who came puffing up just as the ticket officer was about to close the door. He clutched his suitcase in one hand and his hat in the other. His sandy hair had been tousled by the warm spring wind.

  “Quinte,” he gasped. “Jason Quinte.” He handed over his ticket, retaining the stub.

  The ticket officer said, “Glad you made it, sir. That’s all, then.” And he closed the door.

  Two minutes later, the train began to move.

  3

  Five minutes out of the station, a man in a bright red-and-blue uniform came into the car and asked those who were in their staterooms to please assemble in the after lounge. “The Trainmaster will be here in a moment,” he informed everyone.

  In due time, the Trainmaster made his appearance in the lounge. He was a man of medium height, with a fierce-looking black mustache, and when he doffed his hat, he revealed a vast expanse of bal
d head fringed by black hair. His red-and-blue uniform was distinguished from the other by four broad white stripes on each sleeve.

  “Gentlemen,” he said with a slight bow, “I am Edmund Norton, your Trainmaster. I see by the passenger manifest that all of you are going straight through to Napoli. The timetable is printed on the little cards inside the doors of your compartments, and another one—” he gestured “—is posted over there behind the bar. Our first stop will be Lyon, where we will arrive at 12:15 this afternoon, and there will be an hour stopover. There is an excellent restaurant at the station for your lunch. We arrive at Marsaille at 6:24 and will leave at 7:20. There will be a light supper served in the dining car at nine.

  “At approximately half an hour after midnight, we will cross the border from the Duchy of Provence to the Duchy of Liguria. The train will stop for ten minutes, but you need not bother yourselves with that, as no one will be allowed either on or off the train. We will arrive at Genova at 3:31 in the morning, and leave at 4:30. Breakfast will be served from 8 to 9 in the morning, and we arrive in Rome at four minutes before noon. We leave Rome at one o’clock, which will give you an hour for lunch. And we arrive at Napoli at 3:26 in the afternoon. The total time for the trip will be 34 hours and 14 minutes.

  “For your convenience, the dining car will be open this morning at six. It is the next car ahead, toward the front of the train.

  “Goodman Fred will take care of all of your needs, but feel free to call on me for anything at any time.” Goodman Fred made a short bow.

  “I must remind you, gentlemen, that smoking is not permitted in the compartments, in the corridor or in the lounge. Those of you who wish to smoke may use the observation platform at the rear of the car.

  “If there are any questions, I will be glad to answer them at this time.”

  There were no questions. The Trainmaster bowed again. “Thank you, gentlemen. I hope you will all enjoy your trip.” He replaced his hat, turned and left.

  There were four tables reserved in the rear of the dining car for the occupants of the observation car. Master Sorcerer Seamus Kilpadraeg got into the dining car early, and one by one, three other men sat down with him at the table.