The Sins Of The Wolf Part 39

"No, of course not stolen ones. Seditious-blasphemous-most probably p.o.r.nographic."

"Oh-oh I see."

"No you don't. But possibly you understand."

She did not quibble. "Is that worth killing over?"

"If it was graphic enough, and there was enough of it," he replied. "It could be worth a lot of money."

Two gentlemen crossed the street ahead of them, one swinging a cane.

"You mean they could sell it for a lot." She could be equally pedantic. "It's worth nothing."

He pulled a face. "Didn't think you'd know what it was."

"I've been an army nurse," she said tardy.

"Oh." For a moment he was confused, off balance. He did not wish to think of her as being aware of such things, much less to have seen them. It offended him. Women, especially decent women, should never have to see the obscenities of the darkest human imagination. Unconsciously he increased his speed, almost knocking into a man and woman. The man glared at him and muttered something.

Hester was obliged to break into a trot to keep up.

"Are we going to look for it?" she asked, gasping. "Please slow a little. I cannot speak or listen at this rate."

He obeyed abruptly and she shot a couple of paces past him.

"I am," he answered. "You're not."

"Yes I am." It was a single, contradictory, pigheaded statement. There was no question or pleading in it.

"No you are not. It may be dangerous...."

"Why should it? They said there would be no one there tomorrow, and there certainly won't be today. They'd never break the Sabbath."

"I'm going tonight, while it's dark."

"Of course we are. It would be absurd to go in the daylight; anyone might see us."

"You're not coming!"

Now they were stopped and causing an obstruction on the footpath.

"Yes I am. You'll need help. If it really is a secret room, it won't be all that easy to find. We may have to knock for hollow places, or move-"

"All right!" he said. "But you must do as you're told."

"Naturally."

He snorted, and once again set off at a rapid pace.

It was a little before eleven, and pitch-dark except for the lantern which Hester held, when she and Monk finally stood in the huge print room and began their task. To avoid unnecessary noise they had had to break in. It had taken some time, but Monk possessed skills in that field which startled Hester, though he offered no account of how he had come by them. Possibly he did not recall himself.

For over an hour they searched, slowly and methodically, but the building was very solidly and plainly built. It was simply a barnlike structure, similar to the warehouses on either side of it, for the purpose of printing books. There was no ornament or carving, no alcoves, mantels, sets of shelves or anything else which could mask an opening.

"He was drunk," Monk said in disgust. "He just loathed Hamish so much he was trying to make trouble, anything he could think of, no matter how absurd."

"We haven't been searching very long yet," she argued.

He gave her a withering look, which was exaggerated by the yellow glare of the lantern and the black cavern above them.

"Well, do you have a better idea?" she demanded. "Do you just want to go back to London and never know who killed Mary?"

Wordlessly he turned back to reexamine the wall.

"It's straight along the line of the ab.u.t.ting wall onto the next warehouse," he said half an hour later. "There isn't any s.p.a.ce for a secret compartment, let alone an entire room."

"What if it's in the roof?" she said desperately. "Or the cellar?"

"Then there'll be stairs to it-and there aren't."

"Then it must be here. We just haven't found it."

"Your logic is typical," he said tartly. "We haven't found it, so it must be here."

"That's not what I said. You have it backwards."

He raised his eyebrows. "It must be here because we haven't found it? That is a deductive improvement?"

She took the lantern and left him standing in the dark. There was nothing to lose by searching a little longer. This was the last chance. Tomorrow they would leave, and either Baird McIvor would face trial, and maybe be hanged, or else live with another "not proven" verdict over his head. Either way, she would never be sure who had killed Mary. She needed to know, not just for herself but because Mary's wry, intelligent face was still as sharp in her mind as when she had gone to sleep that night on the train to London, thinking how very much she liked her.

She did not find it by accident, but by methodical, furious banging and thumping. A heavy panel of the wall slid away and opened up a narrow door. The room itself must originally have been part of the next-door warehouse and not the Farraline building at all. Its very existence was concealed because a floor plan would have shown no discrepancy. One would have had to have the plans of both buildings and compare them.

"I've got it!" she cried out exultantly.

"Don't shout," he whispered from just behind her, making her start and nearly drop the lamp.

"Don't do that!" she said as she led the way into the hole ahead.

With the lantern high and as far in front as she could hold it, the entire room was visible as soon as they were inside. It was windowless, about twelve feet by ten feet large, low-ceilinged, and there was a single air vent in the far corner leading to the outside. It was at least half filled with printing presses, ink, stacks of paper, and guillotine cutters. More s.p.a.ce was taken by a table like an easel and a rack of fine etching and engraving tools and acid. Over the table was a bracket for a large, unshaded gas lamp. When lit it must have shed a brilliant light.

"What is it?" Hester said in bewilderment. "There aren't any books here."

"I think we have just found the source of the Farraline wealth," he said in awe, almost under his breath.

"But there aren't any books. Unless they shipped them all out?"

"Not books, my love-money! This is where they print money!"

Hester felt a shiver run through her, not only for the meaning of what he had said but also for the way in which he had addressed her.

"You mean f-forged money?" she stammered.

"Oh yes, forged...very forged. But they must do it d.a.m.nably well, to have got away with it for so long." He moved forward and bent over the presses to examine them more closely, taking the light from her. "Lots of it," he went on. "Here are several pound notes, five pounds, ten pounds, twenty. Look, all the different banks in Scotland-the Royal, the Clydesdale, the Linen Bank. And here's the Bank of England. And these look like German, and here's French. Very eclectic tastes, but by heaven they're good!"

She peered over his shoulder, staring at the metal plates.

"How do you know they've been doing it for a long time? It could have been just recently, couldn't it?"

"The family wealth goes back a long way," he answered. "Well into Hamish's time-I'll wager he was the original engraver. Remember what that woman said in church? And Deirdra said something about his being a good copyist." He picked up a note and examined it carefully. "This one is current. Look at the signature on it."

"But if they've got new notes as well, who's the artist now? It's not the sort of thing you can go out and hire."

"Of course it isn't. I'll lay any odds you like that it's Quinlan. No wonder he's so d.a.m.ned arrogant. He knows they can't do without him, and they know it too. He has them over a barrel. Poor little Eilish. I expect she was his price."

"That's unspeakable!" she said in horror. "n.o.body would ..." Then she stopped. What she had been going to say was absurd, and she knew it. Women had been given in marriage to suit the ambitions or the convenience of their families since time immemorial, and for worse reasons than this. At least she was still at home, and partic.i.p.ated in the wealth. And Quinlan was roughly her own age, and not uncomely, or drunken, diseased or otherwise repellent. And it was even possible he had cared for her originally, before she betrayed him by falling in love, however unwillingly, with Baird. Or was that Oonagh's attempt at self-protection, to marry her exquisite younger sister to a man who would possess her and brook no disloyalty?

Poor Oonagh-she had failed. Their acts might be without blemish, but no one could govern their dreams.

Monk laid the notes back gently, exactly as he had found them.

"Do you suppose Mary knew?" Hester asked in a whisper. "I...I hope not. I hate to think of her being party to this. I know it is not as evil as really hurting people...it's only greedy, but ..."

He looked at her, his face bleak, the lean planes of his cheeks and brow harsh in the lamp's glow, his nose exaggerated.

"It's a filthy crime," he said between his teeth. "You sound as if there is no victim, because you aren't thinking. What would you do if half your money was worth nothing and you didn't know which half? How would you live? Who could you trust?"

"But ..." There were no words, and she stopped.

"People would be afraid to sell," he went on savagely. "You might trade, but who with? Who wants what you have to offer and can give you what you need? Ever since man acquired goods and leisure, specialized his skills and learned to cooperate one with another for everyone's benefit, we have used a common means of exchange-money. In fact, ever since we began anything one could call civilization and learned that we are more than a collection of individuals, each for himself, and formed the concept of community, money has been pivotal. Pollute that, and you strike at the root of all society."

She stared at him, comprehension of the magnitude of it dawning inside her, of the totality of the damage.

"And words," he went on, his face burning with the fierceness of his emotion. "Words are our means of communication, that which raises man above the beasts. We can think, we have concepts, we can write and pa.s.s our beliefs from one land to another, one generation to the next. Pollute our relationships with flattery and manipulation, our language with lies, propaganda, self-serving use of images, the prost.i.tution of words and meaning, and we can no longer reach each other. We become isolated. Nothing is real. We drown in a mora.s.s of the sham, the expedient. Deceit, corruption and betrayal...they are the sins of the wolf." He stopped abruptly, staring at her as if he had only just that moment really seen her.

"The wolf?" she urged. "What do you mean? What wolf?"

"The lowest circle of h.e.l.l," he answered slowly, rolling the words as though one by one. "The last pit of all. Dante. The three great circles of h.e.l.l. The leopard, the lion and! the wolf."

"Do you remember where you read that, who taught it you?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

He waited so long she thought he had not heard her.

"No ..." He winced. "No, I don't. I'm trying...but it's just out of reach. I didn't even know I knew it at all until I started to think about forgery. I ..." He shrugged very slightly and turned away. "We've learned all we need to here. This could be the reason Mary was killed. If she learned about it somehow, they'd have to keep her silent."

"Who? Which one?"

"G.o.d knows. Perhaps Quinlan. Maybe she knew about it anyway. That's for the police to discover. Come on. We can't find out anything more here." He picked up the lantern and went back towards the way they had come in. It took him a moment or two to find the door because it had swung closed again. "d.a.m.n," he said irritably. "I could have sworn I left it open."

"You did," Hester said from close behind him. "If it swung shut on its own, it must be weighted. That means we can open it from here somehow."

"Of course we can open it from here," he said. "But how? Hold the lantern up." He ran his fingers over the wall experimentally, covering every inch. It took him something less than three minutes to find the catch. It was not (concealed, simply in an awkward place. "Ah ..." he said with satisfaction, pulling it hard. But it did not move. He pulled again.

"Is it stuck?" she asked with a frown.

He tried it three times before he accepted the truth. "No. I think it is locked."

"It can't be! If it locks just by closing, how did Quinlan get out? He can't have worked in here without being able to get out if he wished to!"

He turned around slowly, looking at her with the kind of candor they had so often shared. "I don't think it did lock itself. I think we have been locked in deliberately. Someone realized we took Hector at his word, and waited here to see if we would come. This is too precious and secret to allow us to blunder into and repeat."

"But the workers don't come back until Tuesday. Quinlan said it was closed because of the gas lines," she said with mounting realization of what it meant. The room was small, windowless, effectively sealed but for the air vent. Tuesday was at least thirty hours away. She went over to the vent and stretched up her hand to it. There was no breath of air, no chill. It had been blocked-of course. There was no need to add the rest.

"I know," he said quietly. "It looks as if the Farralines win in the end. I'm sorry."

She looked around with sudden fury. "Well, can't we at least destroy this machine that prints the money? Can't we smash the plates or something?"

He smiled, then he started to laugh, quietly and with genuine amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Bravo! Yes, by all means, let's ruin them. That'll be something accomplished."

"It'll make them very angry," she said thoughtfully. "They might be enraged and kill us."

"My dear girl, if we are not already suffocated to death, they'll kill us anyway. We know enough to hang them...we just don't know which ones."

She took a deep breath to steady herself. Although she had already realized it, it was different to hear him say so.

"Yes-yes, of course they will. Well, let us at least min their plates. They could still be evidence, in the event the police find them. Anyway, as you say, forgery is very evil; it is a pollution, a corruption of our means of exchange with one another. We ought to end this much of it." And And without waiting for him to follow, she went over and lifted up one of the plates, then froze. without waiting for him to follow, she went over and lifted up one of the plates, then froze.

"What is it?" he said immediately.

"Don't let's break them," she said with a tingle of quite genuine pleasure. "Let's just mar them, so little they don't realize it, but enough that when they have printed all the money, unless they look at it very carefully, they will still pa.s.s it. But the first person who does look at it will know it is wrong. That would be more effective, wouldn't it? And And a better revenge ..." a better revenge ..."

"Excellent! Let's find the engraving tools and the acid. Be careful you don't get any of it on your skin. And not on your dress, in case they notice it."

They set about it with determination, working side by side, erasing here and there, making little blotching marks, but always discreetly, until they had in some way marred every single plate. It took them until after two in the morning, and the lamp was burning low. And now that there was nothing more to do, they were also growing increasingly aware of the cold. Without thinking, they automatically sat close together on some boxes of paper, huddled in the corner, and above the colder floor level. There were no drafts; the room was effectively sealed. And after their concentration on the plates had gone, they were also aware that the air was getting stale. A great deal of the s.p.a.ce was already taken up with boxes and machinery.

"I can't believe Mary knew about this," Hester said again, her mind still hurt by the thought, teased by memories of the woman she had known, or thought she had known, on the London train. "I really don't think she would have lived off forgery all those years."

"Perhaps she viewed it as you did," Monk replied, staring into the little pool of light the lantern made. "A victimless crime, just a little greed."

She did not reply for several minutes. He had not met Mary, and she did not know how to convey the sense of honesty she had felt in her.

"Do you suppose they all did?" she said at length.

"No," he said immediately, then apparently realized the logical position in which he had placed himself. "All right, perhaps she didn't. If she did, then all this"-he inclined his head towards the presses-"was no reason to kill her. If she didn't, how do you suppose she found out? She wouldn't have come down here looking for this room. If she knew, why did she not call the police? Why go off to London? It was urgent, but hardly an emergency. There was certainly time to attend to this first." He shook his head. "But would Mary have exposed her own family to scandal, ruin and imprisonment? Wouldn't she just have demanded they stop? That would be reason to kill her?"

"If I were a forger," she replied, "I'd have said, 'Yes, Mother,' and moved it somewhere else. It would be infinitely safer than killing her."

He did not reply, but lapsed into thought.