Cold sweat was beading Harry's forehead now and he was beginning to look sick. 'But that's just the point,' he said. 'I don't think he is dead!'
'You don't - ?' Dr Sakellarakis's jaw fell open. 'But I know this thing for sure! The gentleman, he is certain dead!'
'Undead!' Harry was swaying now.
Sandra's eyes flew wide. So this was really it. But Harry had been caught off guard; he was shocked, saying too much. 'It's ... an English expression!' she quickly cut in. 'Undead: not dead but merely departed. Old friends simply... pass on. That's what he meant. Ken's not dead but in the hands of God.'
Or the devil! Harry thought. But he was steadier now and glad that she'd come to his rescue.
Darcy's mind was also working overtime. 'It's Layard's religion,' he said, 'which requires that he's burned -cremated - within a day of his dying. Harry only wants to be sure it will be the way he would want it.'
'Ah!' Manolis Papastamos still wasn't sure, but he thought that at least he was beginning to understand. Then I have to apologize. I am sorry, Harry.'
'That's OK,' said Harry. 'Can we see Trevor Jordan now?'
'We'll go right now,' Papastamos nodded. "The asylum is in the Old Town, inside the old Crusader walls. It's off Pythagoras Street. The nuns run it.'
They used the taxi again and reached their destination in a little over twenty minutes. By now the sun was setting and a cool breeze off the sea brought relief from the heat of the day. During the journey Darcy asked Papastamos: 'Incidentally, can you fix us up with somewhere to stay? A decent hotel?'
'Better than that,' said the other. 'The tourist season is just starting; many of the villas are still empty; I found you a place as soon as I knew you were coming. After you have seen poor Trevor, then I take you there.'
At the asylum they had to wait until a Sister of Rhodos could be spared from her duties to take them to Jordan's cell. He was strait jacketed, seated in a deep, high-sided leather chair with his feet inches off the ground. In this position he could do himself no harm, but in any case he seemed asleep. With Papastamos to translate, the Sister explained that they were administering a mild sedative at regular intervals. It wasn't that Jordan was violent, more that he seemed desperately afraid of something.
'Tell her she can leave us with him,' Harry told the Greek. 'We won't stay long, and we know the way out.' And when Papastamos had complied and the Sister left: 'And you, too, Manolis, if you please.'
'Eh?'
Darcy laid a hand on his arm. 'Be a good fellow, Manolis, and wait for us outside,' he told him. 'Believe me, we know what we're doing.'
The other shrugged, however sourly, and left.
Darcy and Harry looked at Sandra. 'Do you feel up to it?' Darcy said.
She was nervous, but: 'It should be easy,' she answered at last. 'We're two of a kind. I've had plenty of practice with Trevor and know the way in.' But it was as if she spoke more to convince herself than anyone else. And as she took up a position behind Jordan, with her hands on the back of his chair, so the last rays of the sun began to fade in the tiny, high, recessed stained-glass windows of the cell.
Sandra closed her eyes and the silence grew. Jordan sat locked in his chair; his chest rising and falling, his eyelids fluttering as he dreamed or thought whatever thoughts they were that troubled him; his left hand fluttering a little, too, where it was strapped down by his thigh. Harry and Darcy stood watching, aware now of the gathering dusk, the fading light...
And without warning Sandra was in!
She looked, saw, gave a strangled little cry and stumbled back away from Jordan's chair until she crashed into the wall. Jordan's eyes snapped open. They were terrified! His head swivelled left and right and he saw the two espers standing before him - and just for a moment, he knew them!
'Darcy! Harry!' he croaked.
And as simply and suddenly as that Harry knew who had come to him in his dreams at Bonnyrig to beg his help!
But in the next moment Jordan's white face began to twitch and shake in dreadful spasms of effort and agony. He tried to say something butwas denied the chance. The shuddering stopped, his fevered eyes closed and his head lolled, and he slumped down again. But even as he returned to his monstrous dreams, so he managed one last word:
'Ha-Ha-Haarrryr
They rushed to Sandra where she stood half-fainting against the wall. And when she stopped gasping for air and was able to hold them off:
'What was it?' Harry asked her. 'Did you see?'
'I saw,' she nodded, swallowing rapidly. 'He's not mad, Harry, just trapped.'
Trapped?'
'In his own mind, yes. Like some innocent, cringing, terrified victim locked in a dungeon.'
'A victim of what?' Darcy wanted to know, slack-jawed as he gaped at her trembling in Harry's arms.
'Oh God! Oh God!' she whispered, her trembling threatening to shake Harry, too, as her eyes went fearfully back to Trevor Jordan lolling there unconscious in his chair. And Darcy felt his blood stiffen to ice in the haunted light of her eyes, as finally she answered: 'Of the monster who's in there with him! Of that Thing who's in there right now, talking to him, questioning him... about us!'
8
Undead!
Night was already drawing in, the early-break tourists promenading in their evening finery, and the town's lights beginning to come on as the taxi sped the three to their villa. But in the front of the car with the driver, Manolis Papastamos was very quiet. Darcy supposed that the Greek felt out of things and probably considered he'd been snubbed, and he wondered how best to make up for it. There was still a lot Papastamos could do for them; indeed, without his co-operation they might find the going very difficult.
The villa stood in its own high-walled gardens of lemon, almond and olive trees, overlooking the sea on the Akti Canari promenade towards the airport. It was square and flat-roofed, had shuttered windows, squealing wrought-iron gates and a pebbled path to the main door, where a dim lamp glowed under the roof of a pine porch. The lamp had already attracted a cloud of moths, and they in their turn had lured several small green geckoes, which scattered across the wall as Papastamos turned the key gratingly in the door. And while the stubble-jawed, chain smoking taxi driver patiently waited, so the Greek police-man showed his three very odd foreign visitors around the place.
It wasn't the best but it was private and gave easy access to the town; there were cooking facilities but the three would be well advised to eat at any one of the half-dozen excellent tavernas which stood within a stone's throw; and there was a telephone, which came with a typed list of useful local numbers kept clean in a plastic folder. Downstairs were two bedrooms, both equipped with two single beds, bedside tables, reading lamps and built-in wardrobes. There was also a spacious sitting- or reading-room, with glass doors to a patio under a striped, wind-down canvas awning. And lastly a small toilet and bathroom; no bath as such but a tiled shower recess and all the rest of the amenities. Upstairs didn't matter.
When Papastamos was through he automatically assumed he wouldn't be needed any more that night; but when he went back out to the taxi Darcy followed him, saying, 'Manolis, we really don't know how to thank you. I mean, how do we pay for all of this? Oh, we can pay -of course we can - but you'll have to tell us how, and how much, and... et cetera.'
The other shrugged. 'It's on the Greek government.'
'That's very kind,' Darcy said. 'We really would have been lost without you. Especially at a time like this, with so much on our minds. For Layard and Jordan, they really are - or were - two of our very closest friends.'