Before I could react, the man in the black suit spoke, and Damian climbed into the car; The Master got behind the wheel.
I was on my feet, the shout in my throat strangling as I noticed the stance of the man in the grey suit: The reason his suit-coat had been cut loosely was because it concealed a hand-gun.
I waited until he, too, got inside the motor, and then I sprinted along the grass towards the drive to intercept them. The engine turned over and caught, and the driver put it into gear, spewing gravel behind him with the speed of his start. I ran, but reached the drive too late to catch anything but the last two digits of his number plate.
With no motor-car, not even so much as a bicycle, there was little point in charging after them. Instead, I turned back to the house, used my pick-locks, and slipped inside. Then, I listened.
How is one convinced that a house is empty? From the lack of sound, or vibration? Smell, perhaps, that most subtle of the senses? How is one convinced of a man's innocence-against all fact and rationality-from a man's arms around his child, and five seconds of his face turned to the lamp-light?
The language of bees is not the only great mystery of communication.
Certainly this house felt empty: I caught no vibration of motion, and the only noise was my own heart. I found the telephone, and rang Mycroft: If any man in England could instigate a hunt for a car, it would be he.
I gave him the numbers, description, the information that the man in the front passenger seat had a pistol, and a quick synopsis of what I had discovered that day; then I went to search the house.
A quick survey downstairs confirmed the emptiness of the rooms, all of which except the drawing room were filled with dull, dusty furniture that looked as if no-one had used it for years. The kitchen had a new-looking ice-box and food on its shelves, with the sorts of biscuits and juices that men might stock when catering for a small child.
Upstairs, I went directly to the corner room with the open windows, and stood looking in at where Damian Adler had been hidden for the past five days: two iron bedsteads, wardrobe with a time-speckled mirror, a chest of drawers missing several handles, and an armchair draped with a throw-rug. The carpet on the floor was so worn, one could no longer discern its original pattern, or even colour. Out of place amidst the ancient furniture was a work-table fashioned from a door on trestles, now littered with personal items and art supplies. I recognised Damian's cravat, tossed over the back of an old dining-room chair, and there could be no doubt whose tumble of new brushes and nearly full paint-tubes those were, or who had done those drawings-although some were by the hand of a child, in bright wax crayon. The same child who had been taken from that smaller, still-rumpled bed, whose new-looking teddy bear lay abandoned among the bed-clothes, whose bright red Chinese slipper lay beside my foot-fallen off as she was carried through the door by her fleeing father.
I bent to pick up the slipper, then froze.
Air had brushed my skin, the briefest of touches. The air currents in the house had altered, just for an instant; had I not been standing in the doorway with an open window across from me, I should not have noticed it.
I strained to hear movement from below. Nothing: four minutes, five-and then a faint creak from the direction of the old, dry staircase, instantly stifled.
I eased the knife from my boot scabbard and straightened slowly; he and I both waited for the other to betray ourselves.
I cast a glance at the window: How many creaks in the fifteen feet of floorboard between me and it? How long would it take the big man to sprint up the stairs-or, back down the hallway and out of the front door-and take aim at my fleeing back?
The knife hilt grew warm in my hand, then damp. I moved it briefly to my right hand to wipe my palm, then took it back, my fingers kneading it nervously.
It is such an easy thing, to become prey. Especially for a woman, for whom biology and nurture conspire to encourage a sense of victim-hood. When terror sweeps through the veins, we become rabbits, cowering in a corner with our eyes closed, hoping for invisibility. And a large man with a gun is a truly terrifying thing. I regretted coming, berated myself for not bringing someone with me; stood helpless, waiting for my death to come up the stairs. Bad judgment yet again, to face a gun with nothing but a sweaty-handled throwing knife.
I felt a ghostly slap on the back of my head, and Holmes' voice exhorting me, Use your brain, Russell, it's the only weapon that counts.
With a lurch, my mind dragged itself out of the spin into panic, my eyes casting about wildly for alternatives to a bullet.
Knife, yes, but this was an entire house full of deadly objects, from that neck-tie across the back of the chair to the electric lamp to the sharp pencil by my foot, and all manner of heavy objects with which to pound, pummel, and gouge a nice large target like my stalker. Heavens, if I could get him down, I could smother him with the teddy bear.
A pencil. I looked at the light-switch on the wall beside me, and stooped for the drawing implement, sliding the knife almost absently into its scabbard.
The switch was one of those with double push-plugs, currently in the ON position. I shifted around to face it (thankfully, the floor made no remark) and put my right thumb on the OFF button. Resting the pencil-point in the space between the button and its casing, I took a breath, and in one quick motion pushed the switch and snapped the lead point off in the space, effectively locking it down. The light from the hallway streamed through the door onto the window opposite.
The clamour of pounding feet-up the stairs, not down-covered my own swift steps into the lee of the chest of drawers. The doorway darkened, filled with angry man, who cursed as he fumbled and failed to work the switch. I wrapped my hand around the hair-brush I had grabbed from the chest-top, then tossed it underhand against the meeting-place of the curtains.
He heard the sound and half-saw the motion of the fabric, and leapt across the room to rip away the curtains and thrust his head and shoulders out of the window, gun aimed at the ground below.
I was already in motion, knife in one hand, snatching up Damian's cravat with the other. He heard me coming and nearly managed to extricate himself from the window before I slammed into him, knocking him half out of the room, then jerking the upper window down hard across his spine. He bellowed and shoved back hard. Glass and wood crackled, then went abruptly silent as he became aware of the tip of my knife, pressing into an exquisitely sensitive, and currently exquisitely vulnerable, part of his anatomy.
“Drop the gun,” I said loudly. When he failed to respond, I twitched the knife, and his squeak was followed by a thud from the flower bed below. “Now show me your right hand.”
His body tensed to brace himself against falling, and his right hand waved briefly on the other side of the cracked pane. Good enough. I wound the cravat around his ankles and snugged it into a messy but effective one-handed knot.
It took some doing to get the weight of him out from the window without permitting him freedom of motion, and he nearly had me twice, but finally, with his belt, three neck-ties, and the rope-tie from a dressing gown, I had him trussed. Bleeding, enraged, and trussed.
I walked on uncertain feet over to the light-switch, and managed to unscrew the face-plate and prise out the sliver of lead. I could hear him all the while, struggling against the various bonds.
By the time I got the lights on, the worst of my reaction had sub sided, and I was faced with a conundrum-not, What to do with him? because I knew what I was going to do with him, but-How do I get him to talk?