The tapestry over there was of a young and very buxom blond woman screeching as she was about to be torn apart by four horses. It sickened Grey to look at it, and for a bent copper penny he’d have torn them all down and tossed a match onto the pile.
Now wasn’t the time.
Instead he and Looks Away approached the tapestry from either side. Grey touched the center of the big fabric and it yielded as if there was nothing behind it.
With a nod to his companion, Grey took a fistful of the brocade edge of the tapestry and gave it a mighty downward jerk. The rings stretched and popped and the material fell heavily to the floor, revealing a short passage behind it. At the end of which was a door made from heavy oak timbers and banded with iron-riveted metal bands.
The door stood slightly open and the light from a lantern glimmered within.
Together, they crept down the hall and on a signal from Grey, Looks Away kicked open the door. They rushed in together, fanning right and left.
There was no one to shoot.
There was nothing alive in that room.
But they both stopped and gaped at what was there.
The room was much bigger than the chamber outside, with walls that stretched back farther than even the light of two lanterns could reach, and rows of stout pillars supporting the roof. Along all of the walls were sturdy pallets made from rough-cut oak, and on these were stacked pieces of metal. Each piece was about seven inches long, not quite four inches wide, and one-and-three-quarter inches thick. Each pallet was piled to shoulder height.
The men stood stunned, utterly unable to speak.
Looks Away finally managed to take a few steps forward, but his feet were clumsy and he staggered, falling against one stack. He set his shotgun down and picked up a single gleaming bar. It was the color of hot honey and it was improbably heavy.
“By the Queen’s lacy garters,” he breathed as he hefted it in his hand. “This is… this is…”
Words failed him and he was unable to finish the sentence.
Grey staggered over to another pile and lifted a plate whose argent sheen was like metal moonlight. “Is this silver?”
“No,” said Looks Away as he picked up a second gold bar, “that’s platinum. As are the next — what is it? Ten? A round dozen? — stacks. I believe the silver is over there.”
“Looks like,” said Grey in a hollow voice, “there has to be a couple of tons of this stuff.”
The Sioux set the heavy bars down with a dull clang and picked up the lantern. He and Grey walked along the rows. Looks Away stopped at a series of pallets of metals Grey did not recognize.
“This is palladium or I’m a Chickasaw.” He moved to another. “And this is ruthenium. They only discovered this in ’44. I met the man who wrote a paper on it. A Baltic German — Karl Ernst Claus. Doctor Saint bought some because of its usefulness in electrical conductivity. And this… God, Grey, this is an entire mound of rhodium. It’s corrosion resistant, but I’ve only ever seen it in small quantities. And there, that bluish metal? That’s osmium. Heaviest damn stuff you’ll ever find, and God save me, but that is iridium over there. A ton of it at least.”
He stepped away to the center of the room and turned in a wide circle.
“By the Queen’s several birthmarks, Grey, this is not merely a fortune — this is perhaps the greatest single fortune I’ve ever even heard of. Millions of dollars. Maybe thousands of millions. Good lord, man, just one wagonload of these bars — any of these bars — and a man could buy himself his own country.”
“So what the hell is it all doing down here?” asked Grey, astounded at what he was seeing and hearing. “I mean, first off, how the hell did Chesterfield acquire all this? What was he going to do with it? And…” He stopped and shook his head. “No, I got nothing. My brain is spinning.”
“Mine, too.” Looks Away came over and touched Grey’s arm. “Listen to me. This isn’t what we came for, but let’s face it, old chap, this is better than anything we could have hoped for. Clearly Chesterfield and his family are dead. Everyone in this damned house is dead.”
“So what?”
“So what is that we have a much simpler solution to our fight with Aleksander Deray than we thought. Look around you. All we have to do is get some of this out of here. Not all. We don’t need to be greedy, but a wagonload or two.”
“And what? I’m not interested in buying myself my own country.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. We can take this back to Paradise Falls and distribute it evenly between the remaining residents. Don’t you see, Grey? We can make them all rich. But we give it to them on the condition that they move the hell away from here. Let Deray have the damned land. It’s falling apart anyway and who wants to stay and fight someone who can raise the sodding dead? No, let’s make everyone rich on the condition that they bugger off out of here. Sound like a plan to you?”
Grey holstered his gun and rubbed a hand over his jaw. The mountains of metal gleamed in the lantern light.
“Or,” said Grey, “we could use this money to hire us a private army and go and reclaim this land from Deray. Walking dead or not, he can’t stop an entire army, and we can hire ten thousand men — and pay them well enough to guarantee their loyalty.”
The Sioux smirked at him. “And that would allow Jenny Pearl to keep her farm and earn you her undying gratitude and affection.”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
They grinned at each other.
“Either way,” began Looks Away, but his words were instantly cut short by a terrible high-pitched scream of unbearable horror.
Not a child’s scream this time.
The shriek that rang through the underground treasure chamber was torn from a woman’s throat.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Veronica!” cried Looks Away.
A second scream tore the air.
“Maybe it’s not her,” growled Grey as they snatched up their weapons and each took a lantern.
“Dear God let it not be so,” said the Sioux as he broke into a run.
Grey was right on his heels.
The path between the stacks of precious metals was narrow and long.
The scream faded to a harsh silence as they ran and thereafter all Grey could hear was the slap of shoe leather and the pants and grunts of their breathing. The rows of precious metals gave out and the walls were bare. The light from their lanterns rolled before them and it seemed as if the long dark of that place was endless. Then they saw the rear wall. It was set with a single iron door and, as before, the door stood partly open. At first Grey saw what he thought was some thick, pale snake lying across the open threshold, but as they drew near he saw that it was an arm.
A man’s arm.
They slowed to a careful walk.
The arm reached out from the other room, fingers splayed, muscles slack.
They moved cautiously now, angling to let their light spill inside while staying outside of the line of any ambush gunplay. As they shifted, Grey saw that the arm was thick and flabby, without apparent muscle and the hand bore no trace of the calluses of manual labor. There was a large emerald ring in a gold setting on the index finger.
“Is that Chesterfield?” he asked quietly.
“No. That was his foreman. I recognize the ring.”
In the lantern light the arm gleamed like a fat slug.
Grey pushed the door open the rest of the way, looking for the owner of that limb. However the arm was all there was. The other end was a ragged stump that lay in a small puddle of blood. It was immediately clear that no blade that had cut the arm from its owner. The wound was savage, raw.