And even as he was kneeling, Sir Michael lifted his head. And Sophia screamed again.

The old man’s face was the face of a dead man, the skin gray and thin as parchment. One side of it was smeared with gore. And his eyes bulged at them, round and white.

And his voice rasped faintly, “Get her out. They’re in the house.”

Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

But Storm was all energy now, beyond thought, his body white-hot with an electric fever. He was on his feet again, looking quickly over the book-lined walls, over the blood-streaked chair, the bloodstained desk blotter. There was the empty box, the silver lighter, the scattered cigars. And he was making sense of things without words, without thinking, connections leaping into his mind at every second. The crypt out by the ruin, the iron door into darkness, the way it led down beyond the end of the house, the way the phantom in the mist had vanished into it …

Sophia knelt by her father. She had pulled a cushion from a chair, was working it under his head to lift his face out of the blood.

“Lock the door,” said Storm. “Call the cops.”

He seized the silver lighter from the desktop.

“Richard?” Sophia said.

“Call an ambulance.”

He was out of the room, out in the corridor, the excitement in him like fire.

He moved to the arras, faced the hydra-headed dragon.

Tick-tick.

“Oh yeah,” he said.

He felt the rough fabric of the tapestry in his hand. He yanked down. The dragon collapsed before him. The arras collapsed to the floor. A paneled wall was behind it. Storm hit it with the heel of his palm.

There was a click. With a whining screak, the wall swung towards him on a hidden hinge. The blackness was all beyond it.

Storm nearly laughed aloud. Incredible! he thought wildly. An arras; a secret door; a haunted house! England! What a country!

“Richard, the phone …!” Sophia cried out.

But Storm, unheeding, charged into the dark.

26

Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

The lighter flared, the flame rose high. Black shadows sprung up on every side of him. Black shapes arched and reared and danced under the fluttering light. The little hidden chamber was cluttered with old furniture and junk. Storm turned here and there quickly as the flame made first one object, then another, seem to stir around him. The fabric head of a horse, the glass eyes of a teddy bear stared at him from the corners.

He edged forward over naked floorboards. He could feel them give and sag under his weight. A single bulking thing stood in the center of the room before him. He held the lighter up for a better view, but the metal of it grew hot in his hand, seared his thumb. He saw the ancient wooden cradle for an instant, then shut the lighter’s top. The flame went out.