The creature withdrew to its lair below. There was a brown shimmer and a flail of tentacles, and it was gone.
“It usually eats horsemeat, lamb or beef,” George explained, altogether too helpfully. “It does seem to like entrails and brains.” He stared across the platform at Matthew, who had retreated to its far edge. “You’re very pale, sir,” he observed.
Matthew nodded, dazed; he was thinking that never in his worst fever-dream had Doctor Gentry ever thought that not only would his head be sawed off, but that his brain would be a sea-monster’s delicacy.
George picked up the leather bag as if it carried a disease. “I need to tell you, sir,” he said, “that your lady friend is currently in hiding at the house of Jerrell Falco.”
Matthew blinked. “What?”
“Your lady friend,” the servant repeated. “Her name is Berry, I believe?”
“Berry. Yes.” Matthew wondered if he were still asleep and dreaming this by way of a bad oyster; yes, of course, it had to be that.
“At Captain Falco’s house. His wife, Saffron, is my daughter. I was told to tell you, and as I learned you were coming here this morning I waited for you.”
Matthew rubbed the lumps on his forehead with the fingers of his right hand. Surely he’d been injured more severely than he’d first imagined.
“I have a map for you.” George reached into his jacket and brought out a folded piece of rough-edged paper. He offered it to Matthew, who stood dumbly staring at it. “Please, sir,” said the servant. “Take it and put it away. If anyone finds that and learns I’ve brought it for you, I hate to think what would happen to poor George.” He cast a disturbed glance over the octopus enclosure. “It shows you how to reach Falco’s house from here. Please, sir…put it away, and show no one.”
Matthew put the paper into his own jacket. “Thank you,” he managed to say.
“I hope it will help you,” George answered, with a dignified half-bow. He picked up the leather bag, now headless. “If you’ll follow me up the steps, then?”
Behind the locked door of his room, Matthew studied the map and consigned it to memory before he burned it over a candle and then scattered the ashes from his balcony into the sea. Falco’s house was not far from the forbidden road that led to the fort. What in the name of all the demons of Solomon’s Key was Berry doing over there? He had to find a way to get to her, and that was the problem. And finding Zed, too, would be a problem. The largest problem looming upon him now, however, was that he was running out of time.
Don’t fail me, Professor Fell had said.
This whole affair seemed to Matthew like an exercise in failure. He still had the rooms of Cesar Sabroso and Adam Wilson to search through, but the conference of criminals was nearing its end and all he had to show for his explorations so far was an inkling—a instinctual guess, as the professor might put it—that Smythe and Wilson were companions in some form of communication beyond Fell’s knowledge. Likely, Matthew surmised, of debauchery and garbage-pit mischief. But there was nothing to indicate that either one was a traitor.
So where to go from here?
Minx Cutter would be waiting for him at eight o’clock at the stable. Something to show him, where the whales played. If she could get him a horse, fine. If not, he was certainly not walking that distance. Not in the daylight, at least. But when night came, perhaps that would be the time to go Berry-hunting. If he could get out of this castle without being seen by anyone.
Promptly at eight o’clock, Matthew approached the stable and found Minx standing outside on the road there with two horses—Esmerelda and Athena once more—saddled and ready. She was dressed in her brown breeches, her riding boots and a black waistcoat over a pale blue blouse. He didn’t quite know what to say to her—may I ask if you happened to visit my room last night past midnight?—so he said nothing. If he expected her to suddenly gush forth about the encounter, he was sadly disappointed. She swung herself up astride Esmeralda and watched him approach with a blank stare as she held Athena’s reins.
“Good morning,” he told her. Was his voice a shade shaky? Yes, it was. Her stare was formidable, and there was something accusing in it. “How did you get me the horse?”
“I said I needed two horses. One for myself and one for my riding companion. I wasn’t asked whom, and I didn’t volunteer the information. Are you ready?”
He answered by taking the reins and getting up into Athena’s saddle.
“Your nose is better today?” she asked as they started off.
“It’s not quite as swollen. I can breathe a little more through it.”
“And you had a restful sleep?”
Matthew wasn’t sure what he’d heard in that question. “I did sleep, yes,” he said.
“Good. I want you to be sharp this morning.”
Sharp was not exactly what he was feeling, but he decided not to contest the statement. He followed Minx away from the stable and the castle and out onto the road that led to Templeton, as the sun grew warmer and the sky more blue and brightly-colored birds flew in circles over Fell’s paradise.
When they reached the cliffs where Minx had brought him on the first day, the whales were already surfacing amid the waves, spouting white foam into the air and jostling each other with playful but gentle abandon.
Minx dismounted and walked to the edge, where she stood watching the parade of leviathans. Matthew also got off his horse and joined her, and together they stood under the hot glaring sun as the beasts dove and surfaced again, flapping their tails like the banners of huge gray ships.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Minx remarked, with no emotion.
“Yes, they are,” Matthew answered, warily.
She turned toward him. Her gold-touched eyes in the strong and beautiful face seemed to be on fire.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He did not wait for a second invitation. Truly, then, this was who had visited him last night. He stepped forward and kissed her, and she held his kiss and pushed her body against his, and then he felt the knife under his chin pressing into his throat and when she drew her face away the fire in her eyes had grown into a blaze.
“You’re a very good kisser, Matthew,” she told him, “but you’re no Nathan Spade.”
He might have stammered something. For sure he swallowed hard, though the blade was right there ready to carve his Adam’s apple. He felt the sweat fairly leap from his pores.
“No Nathan Spade,” she repeated. “And exactly why are you here, pretending to be him?”
Did he dare to clear his throat, with that sticker so poised? No, he did not. “I think,” he said with a Herculean effort that might have impressed even Hudson Greathouse, “that you’re mistaken. I am—”
“Matthew Corbett,” Minx interrupted. “You see, I knew Nathan Spade. I was in love with Nathan Spade. And, as I say…you are no Nathan Spade.”
Somehow, from his deepest recesses, he found the courage to compose himself against the blade. I want you to be sharp this morning, she’d told him. Indeed he sharpened himself, in that instant. With a faint smile he said, “Not even a little bit?”
“Not even,” she replied, “the littlest bit of your littlest finger.”
“Ow,” he answered. “That hurts.”
“The knife?”
“No. The sentiment.” He was aware of the sheer drop to the playground of the whales. “Did you bring me here to show me how efficiently you might kill me and dispose of the body?”