His fingers slipped and Golden One darted away.
“Give it up!” shouted the earl, kicking aside the wreckage. “I’m not going to let you get away.”
Silence.And then the faint creak of the flooring betrayed a stealthy step, moving for the far side of the room. Lowell knew the layout of the building by heart and must have an escape route in mind.
Ducking low, Wrexford used a row of nail barrels as cover to cut ahead to another aisle. A flicker of moonlight showed Lowell lifting a trapdoor in the floor.
Snakes were by their very nature drawn to dark holes.
Shooting to his feet, he hurdled the barrels and sprinted for the opening, only to have the hatch fall shut while he was still several strides away. Be damned with Lowell’s serpentine tricks. Fatigue gave way to a grim resolve to play the mongoose.
Wrexford wrenched it open and grabbed hold of the iron ladder. He heard the scrabbling of a slip and a curse float up from the void. Golden One’s endurance was flagging. Fear quickly sucked away bluster and bravado, leaving only the bare bones of what a man was made of.
Glancing down, the earl saw a faint square of hazy light below his feet.
A thump signaled that Lowell had dropped down through the opening. Wrexford gritted his teeth and let go of the rung.One . . . two . . .at three heartbeats his feet hit the floor and he threw himself into a defensive roll, just as Lowell heaved an open bottle of turpentine at his face. It shattered on the floor, the caustic liquid spraying harmlessly over the planking.
Wrexford realized he was back in the art storage room. Crawling quickly around the paint cans, he rose to block the door just as Lowell rounded a jumble of easels.
“There’s no escape, Golden One.”
Lowell drew in a ragged gulp of air and retreated a step. He had grabbed an artist’s penknife and for several moments they moved warily, mirroring each other’s movements through the slanting shadows of the storage shelves. The only sound was the scuff of leather sliding over wood.
Or was that a whisper of panic seeping into Lowell’s breathing?
Wrexford made no move to attack, letting fear weaken the other man’s resolve. He merely made sure that Lowell couldn’t bolt for the door. But was Golden One heading for the windows? Unlikely, as he didn’t know the gate was unlocked. Or was there another hatchway?
The answer came crashing down an instant later. In a last grasp at escaping, Lowell grabbed a bookshelf and tipped it over to block the way between them. Spinning around he raced for the far corner of the room, where, sure enough, another trapdoor was inset into the floor.
The laboratory.The roundabout dance had been all about circling back to the laboratory. From there, Lowell would have a carefully mapped out route for eluding pursuit.
Ah, but the best-laid plans of mice and men. . . Having spent time in Scotland, Lowell ought to be familiar with the poet Robert Burns and his wry observation of chance and luck.
The earl reached the hatchway just as Lowell half stepped, half slid down the first rungs of the ladder. He peered into the gloom, watching the man miss a handhold and nearly lose his balance. The ladder passed through an opening in the ceiling below, and beyond that he could see the flicker of the laboratory’s lamps.
“Golden One,” he called, “your dream has turned to lead. I’ll chase you to the very pits of hell to keep you from getting away.”
Lowell looked up, a wild light in his eyes. He tried to hurry his descent, but his foot slipped and he lost his grip.
A plummeting scream was followed by a thud as he hit the metallic counter of his worktable. There was an instant of utter calm and then a horrificboom!ripped through the silence. Flames erupted, sending up a cloud of black smoke.
“Qui gladio ferit, gladio perit,” murmured Wrexford as he stared down into the hellfire conflagration. The flask in Lowell’s coat must have contained a large sample of the mercury fulminate—which was stable unless hit with a sharp impact.
“If you live by the sword, you must be prepared to die by the sword.”
A blast of heat forced him back from the opening, and with a crackling bang, another explosion sounded within the bowels of the building. The fire was rapidly spreading through Lowell’s arsenal of chemicals. The laboratory would soon be a raging inferno.
Perhaps the scientific laws of the universe were governed by an elegant symmetry after all. Unfathomable as of yet to mortal man.
But that, mused Wrexford, was infinitely intriguing to one who was curious about how the world worked.
As for how the human mind worked . . .
Another searing flash, bringing with it an upswirl of a whirling dervish of gold sparks that singed his skin. A reminder that time was an elemental force in science.
This particular experiment had run its course.
Drawing his coat up over his nose, Wrexford fought his way through the billowing smoke. Heat scalded through his boots. The fire below was already crackling against the floorboards. The aged wood would soon burst into flames.
