The Vandemark Mummy (20 page)

Phineas stood at the foot of the steps, looking at the locked doors. He could have hit himself in the head with the flashlight.

He hadn't thought.

He should have called his father, who had a key.

He never thought ahead, thought things out.

And now what could he do?

Just what the thief had done. The big windows to the reading room had stone ledges at their bottoms. He'd break a pane of glass and unhook the window. The thief hadn't had to break it, but he would. He'd tell Mrs. Batchelor, and he just about knew what she'd say, and he was sorry but—

By then, he'd jammed the flashlight into the waist of his jeans and was shoving through the bushes. The ledge was about shoulder height, and stuck out a good six inches, wide enough to stand on, once he'd—with both hands, his sneaker toes clambering at the bricks for purchase—gotten up so his weight rested on his hands on the ledge. He worked a knee up, and onto it, until he was kneeling on it.

With one hand on the bricks that framed the window, as if he could actually hold on, he used the other to pull the long flashlight out of his jeans. Gently, he thought,
but even if he fell over backward the bushes would cushion him. Think, he told himself, and because he thought he remembered that the windows lifted up, like the tall windows in old-fashioned school rooms, with catches at the center. He hung the flashlight over his right shoulder, and swung it forward.

Nothing happened. He tipped his head back, looked at the pane of glass he was aiming for, and swung again, an overhead smash.

A cracking sound, and he swung again. It would make a mess on the floor, but he had sneakers on, he'd be okay. He put the flashlight back into his jeans.

He reached in and stretched his hand up. His hand reached in through the broken pane, reached in, and up again, and twisted until his fingers could feel along the top of the window. His fingers found the latch, and figured out how to slip it open.

Phineas pushed up at the top of the broken pane, carefully, using the back of his forearm. Sharpness moved against his skin, but didn't penetrate. The window rose a little.

He pulled his arm back and slid his foot into the narrow opening at the bottom. Gently, he bent his knee to lift his foot to lift the window.

It slid smoothly up. Well made, he thought, and well maintained. Not nearly as hard to move as you'd think from its size it might be. He bent his left knee, letting his left hand run down the bricks, and got first his right leg, then his left, and then, sliding down over the low shelves under the windows, his whole body into the reading room.

It was creepy, the big empty room filled with books and magazines and newspapers, but he didn't need the flashlight to cross it and get out through the big doors. It was the emptiness that made it creepy, the sense of the whole empty building, around and above and below him. It was an ominous silence, a dangerous, hostile silence. A waiting silence. He could hear himself breathing.

His breath came faster, shorter.

Stop, Phineas said to himself. Think. Keys, he told himself, thinking about what it was he wanted to do. He crossed in front of the checkout desk and entered the librarian's office. If the door had been locked, he'd have had to break another window—but the door wasn't locked. Mrs. Batchelor's desk was a flat clear surface, with a tall wooden chair behind it. Phineas pulled out the central drawer and aimed his flashlight into it. Paper clips, marking pens, thumbtacks, piles of library cards—he closed the drawer.

He felt like James Bond, working silently in the solitary darkness, flicking his light on when he needed it, then off for secrecy. He felt like he knew what he was doing. The top right drawer had stationery with the college emblem on top of each sheet. Phineas opened the top left drawer next. He was willing to bet keys would be kept in a top drawer. It was the kind of thing Bond would know. The light flicked on and there they were, three keys on a ring. Phineas grabbed them and turned off the flashlight.

Because he didn't know who might see him, he didn't want to be seen.

He closed the drawer, then left the office, pulling the door closed behind him. Nobody would ever know he'd been there.

Except for fingerprints, he reminded himself. It wasn't as if he ought to be feeling so awfully smart.

Yeah, but it wasn't as if he was a real thief, anyway. He was just seeing what it felt to feel like one.

Phineas unlocked the door to the stairway, and went through. The heavy metal door swung closed behind him, latching itself. The darkness in the stairway was as thick as fog. Phineas was almost surprised to see that the beam of light from the flashlight wasn't murky. Flashlight shining on the steps, keys in his right hand, he went on down.

At the foot of the stairs, one hand on the cool railing, Phineas stopped again. He needed to think. If you knew you made mistakes because you didn't think ahead, then you ought to plan for that. He didn't know exactly how many rooms there were, down here in the cellars. He didn't know what the map of the corridors looked like. He knew how to get from the parking lot entrance to the collection room, room 015, and that was all he knew.

But Althea wouldn't be in the collection room. He was willing to bet on that. In the collection room she'd be found right away, practically. If Althea was down here, and he had a feeling she was, it wasn't so that she could be found right away.

How come he thought that? How come he was so sure of it? It wasn't James Bond he was thinking like, it was the criminal. How come he was thinking like a criminal?

His feet had brought him to the parking lot entrance,
which put him at one far corner of the rectangular cellar. Trying to think.

First find Althea, he told himself, then you can pay attention to your criminal talents. He heard his own voice whispering the words.

He knew why he was whispering to himself. It was because it was so creepy, so dark and silent, with only the flashlight beam lighting his way. All he could see was the area of light, on the linoleum floor and flowing up onto cinder block walls painted white. Every nerve cell on the outside of his body was quivering. He felt as if all of his nerves had rushed to the edges of his body and were waiting there, alert for trouble.

Fear, he thought, this must be fear. Serious fear.

He hadn't ever imagined that fear would feel like this, making it hard to think about anything else. Live and learn. He heard his own voice saying that, and he tried to laugh.

The flashlight lit a doorway. He was just standing in front of a door, staring at it. Like all the other doors, this one was flat and painted white. Only a handle, with a key slot at its center, told you it was a door. Phineas stiffened his shoulders and pulled them forward, to loosen the muscles across his back. He blew out a breath of air, in a whooshing sound. He'd been holding his breath too.

“Okay,” he said, not even whispering. The darkness swallowed up his voice. He shouldn't have spoken out loud.

The question was how to find her. What he had
thought was that he would go to the cellars and find her. He hadn't really thought. His trouble was that his natural inclination was to go for a service ace, whomp, and take the point. But this game wasn't tennis and couldn't be played that way.

In the mazelike corridors he'd get lost, disoriented. Down here he had no sense of direction. All the corridors looked the same, all the floors looked the same, there was no landmark. But there was, he realized, a series of numbers. All the rooms were numbered. Numbers never duplicated themselves. Numbers were always different. Numbers wouldn't get him lost. All he'd have to do is remember which ones he'd counted.

Phineas didn't know if he could do that. This was like a game of Grandmother's Trunk, but it wasn't a game.

He didn't even know how many rooms there were, except there were more than fifteen—since the collection room was number 015. “So start with oh-oh-one,” he whispered to himself. “Jerk.”

To his left lay 001, the number painted beside the door, and he got started. He took the three keys, and his first try was the right one. The door opened. Phineas followed his flashlight into a boxlike room.

He used the beam of light the way he'd use his eyes, really looking for something. At floor level, he lit the entire edge of the room, all four sides. Then he did the same thing at shoulder level. This looked like an office, with a desk in the middle and a couple of chairs, and bookshelves. An empty office.

He stepped back to the door, and then had an idea.
“Althea?” he asked the empty room. He listened, to the count of twenty, for any sound at all. There was no sound.

Rooms 001 through 004 all seemed to be offices. Some of the bookcases had books lined up in them. None of the rooms had Althea in them. Neither was she in any of the stalls of room 005, a bathroom.

Room 006 was at the corner, and his flashlight showed a huge square thing that made him jump. Not because he was afraid, but because he was expecting a desk and chairs. He went up to it, silently on sneakered feet. A furnace. He examined all around it, anywhere a fifteen-year-old girl might be hidden. Nobody.

The numbers went back and forth, and so did Phineas, like a sentry pacing his guard area, except that at the end of each line of march he moved forward a little. Followin the numbers, 007, cross a corridor, 008, 009, cross a corridor, 010, corridor, 011 against the parking lot wall again. All rooms empty of Althea, and some of them just empty rooms—he traversed the underground width of the library.

Rooms 012 and 013 were side by side, because 012 was in fact a broom closet. Cross a corridor to 014. Cross a corridor to bypass 015 since he didn't have a key that would let him into that room anyway. Rooms 016 and 017 were the opposite wall again, and both were small rooms, lined on two walls with filing cabinets. College records, he was willing to bet.

Phineas got the drill down: key in the door—018, 019—flashlight at floor level—020—then flashlight at shoulder level—021. Room 022 was hidden behind the
staircase, narrow shelves stacked with paper towels and toilet paper, probably a hundred-year supply of toilet paper. Big whoopee. When the light was at shoulder level, he studied the walls carefully, in case there were closets—023, 024, 025.

He had to double back a corridor, turn right, then right at the next turning to find 026. Why couldn't they have numbered the rooms down the length of each corridor? It would have made his job easier.

The last step of the drill was calling her name. “Althea?” Each time he had to say it out loud it got harder to say it out loud. Rooms 027, 028, 029, 030. He said her name, and waited, to the count of twenty, his ears listening hard. The walls were thick, too thick for his voice to carry beyond the one room he was searching. If there had been any way for a mouse to get into this concrete rabbit warren, he'd have heard it move—so intently did he listen.

But he didn't hear anything, not the slightest movement, and certainly not a relieved and grateful voice saying his name, “Phineas?”

His flashlight found 032. Wrong. The beam went on to the corridor's end. Maybe he was at 032, maybe he'd miscounted, maybe—with everything the same—he'd gotten lost in the numbers. He turned right, walked up a few paces to another blank wall, and moved the flashlight until the light showed a number painted on the wall beside a door: 031.

“All
right
,” Phineas said, relieved. His voice sounded normal. He was feeling almost normal, now, so accustomed was he to the drill. He was relieved to have
found 031 so easily, because keeping track of the number he was on, and the count of twenty in each room, was about all his brain was up to, what with the worry, and the silence, and the solitude, and not finding her. He unlocked the door to 031, let the flashlight go around at floor level, and saw stacks of folding chairs folded up. He had no idea how long he'd been down here. Not only did he not know what direction he was moving in, with the darkness closing in behind him constantly as he followed the light; he had also lost his sense of time.

Locking the door of 031 behind him, Phineas had a moment of panic. Had he done the complete drill? He thought so, but he wasn't sure. He was just going doggedly along, by now—however long it had been—no longer expecting to find her. It was like playing the last points of a lost set, just returning as best you could whatever your victorious opponent sent at you across the net, just not giving up.

He plodded back along his own path to 032. So he'd been wrong, even though he'd been sure. He wasn't really surprised—033, 034. He'd had no reason—035, 036. It was an idea. A guess. Just a feeling.

Phineas had half a mind to give up now, and stop wasting his time. Probably, if he found his way out again—he'd use the parking lot door to leave by—he'd get home to find out that Althea was there, probably tucked into her bed asleep, with the light on. But there was no reason—037, a corner room, some kind of office with phones this time, and a bulletin board; the sports
department office as it turned out, a pile of lacrosse sticks against a wall rising out of a nest of helmets and pads; he didn't know they played lacrosse up here—There was no reason not to finish what he'd started. That way—he locked the door behind him—at least he could say for sure where she wasn't.

In case he got through here and went home and his father was there and they still didn't know where Althea was. Besides, he had to be almost through with the job. He traced his way back past 036 and 035, along the narrow corridor between 029 across from 034, and 030 across from 033, then turned left to find 039. Don't get sloppy, he reminded himself, turning the key in the lock. He had to be near the end—“Althea?” and a count of twenty slowly in his head, listening as hard as he could even though he didn't any longer expect to hear anything. It was when you were near the end of things, tennis matches, tests, that you tended to get sloppy—040—because the end was in sight. Because, with the end in sight, you started hurrying toward it, and that was when you made your careless errors. Like, trying a put-away shot that wasn't a sure thing. He locked the door of 041 behind him.