Von Till smirked, clicked his heels and bowed. "It was my pleasure." He placed a hand on the head of the dog, whose lip curled, showing a prodigious white fang.
The door's archway was low and Pitt had to stoop to enter the tunnel-like entrance. He took a few cautious steps.
"Major Pitt!"
"Yes," Pitt replied, turning and facing the fat shadow at the entryway.
There was a sadistic anticipation in von Till's voice. "It is a pity you will not be able to witness the next flight of the yellow Albatros."
Before Pitt could answer the door slammed shut and a heavy bolt dropped into its catch like a thunderclap and echoed ominously toward the unseen reaches of the dim corridor.
7
7
A spasm of anger swept over Pitt. He was half tempted to slam his fist against the door, but one look at the heavy planking changed his mind. Turning again to the corridor, he found it still empty. He shivered unconsciously. He had no illusions as to what lay ahead. It was certain now that von Till never meant for him to leave the villa alive. He remembered the knife and felt a tinge of assurance as he slipped it out of his sock. The flickering yellow light from the candles, mounted in rusted metal holders high on the walls, glinted dully on the blade and made the tiny pointed knife look woefully inadequate for the job of self-defense. Only one comforting thought ran through Pitt's mind: however small, the knife was better than nothing.
Suddenly a blast of heavy, chilling air blew through the corridor like an invisible hand and snuffed out the candles, leaving Pitt standing in a sea of suffocating blackness.
His senses strained to penetrate the gloom, but could detect no sound, no glimmer of light.
"Now the fun begins," he murmured, bracing his body for the unknown.
Pitt's spirits touched zero and he could feel the first terror-striking symptoms of panic edging rapidly into his mind. He remembered reading somewhere that nothing is more horrifying or uncomprehending to the human mind than total darkness. To not know or be able to perceive what lies beyond one's sight or touch acts on the brain like a short circuit in a computer; it runs amok. What the brain cannot see, it creates, usually some nightmarish event that is grossly exaggerated or embellished like a delusion of being bitten by a shark or run over by a locomotive while locked in a closet. Recalling the semi-amusing phraseology, he grinned in the darkness and the first probes of panic slowly reversed into a sensation of calm logic.