Chapter 15
Two Keys
He ran.
It was a thing he had not done since Tuesday. He ran through the corridor with the splinted foot striking the floor like a mallet, with every breath a hot wire in his side, and he did not feel any of it. He hit the lounge door with his shoulder. It banged open. Four faces turned to him, pale and startled in the yellow light.
"It's a fire," he said.
He heard how he sounded. It was a high, thin, hoarse voice, like a boy's.
"There's a fire. Next to her room. There's a valve in the vault, he says, it's in the basement. It controls the sprinklers. You turn a wheel. But there's, the door shuts. It shuts on whoever." He gulped air. "It's got a time lock. Six hours. There's air for four."
Nobody moved. For about two seconds nobody seemed to take it in. They sat or stood where they were, the old lawyer in her blanket, the bailiff, the detective, the girl, like figures in a photograph.
Then Tom Rudd was on his feet.
"The records vault," he said.
"You know it?"
"I carried boxes in and out of it for twenty years." His voice had gone steady. "It's at the bottom of the east stair. I know the door. It's a, it's a Mosler. It weighs eleven tons." He was already moving. "Come on. We'll need to see it."
They went down at a run.
It was the lower basement, past the coal cellar and the long corridor where the walls sweated, and beyond the evidence room, where the cages stood open and dripping. They did not look at them. They went through a low archway Daniel had never seen, and down four more steps, and the air changed. It was dry and cold and very still, with a smell like an old church, of paper and dust and iron.
The vault stood at the end of a short passage, in a wall of poured concrete.
It was an enormous round door. It was set in a thick steel frame, painted gray, with brass fittings dull with age. It stood open. It had swung out on a hinge as thick as a man's thigh, and the inner rim of it, the face that would meet the frame, was a ring of polished bolts, each the size of a rolling pin. In the middle of the door, in a dial of brass, was a small round clock. It was set into the metal like an eye.
Behind it was the vault itself.
It was perhaps twelve feet square. It had steel walls, painted white, and rows of steel shelves with gray cardboard boxes, and a bare bulb in the ceiling. A thin cold light came from it. There was nothing else. There was no desk, no chair. In the far wall, at the height of a man's chest, was a wheel.
It was a big iron wheel, red, about two feet across, with spokes. It was bolted to a pipe that ran up through the ceiling and disappeared. A brass plate under it said, in raised letters:
FIRE MAIN. SECOND FLOOR. OPEN IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.
And below it, in a small neat hand, on a white card, someone had written:
Turn clockwise. Four turns.
"That's it," said Tom. "That's the main."
"What happens when you turn it?"
"Water goes up. Sprinklers on the second floor. It's an old wet system. It'd flood, but it'd put out a fire." He rubbed his chin. His face was gray. "The door, now. I don't know. I never saw it close. It's a time lock, the dial there. They set it every Friday night, so nobody gets into the records over the weekend. The clock runs. It opens at, whatever it's set for. Monday, nine."
"And it's set to six hours."
"If he's changed it."
"Look," said Frank.
He was standing at the edge of the door, with his hand on the brass rim, peering at the clock in the middle. He was breathing in quick short gasps. "Look. There. That's a, it's got a dial, and the hand's on, I can see the numbers. It's set for twelve-oh-two."
"What time is it?"
"Twenty to six."
"Twelve," said Ivy.
"Noon. Six hours."
"And the wheel's on the inside."
"On the inside," said Tom heavily. "It's got a, there's a counterweight. A big one. When you turn the wheel, you free it. It's on a chain, behind the wall. It pulls the door home. I've seen it work, on the one in the old bank. It shuts in about ten seconds. You can't stop it."
"Can it be opened from inside?"
"Not before the lock lets go."
"Is there air?"
"There's a vent," said Frank. He had gone to the vault mouth and was looking up. "A little one. In the roof. About the size of a, I'd say it's two inches." He shook his head. "It's not enough. It's what they put in for show. It'd take the edge off. Not more."
"Four hours," said Ivy.
Nobody spoke.
They stood in the passage, in a ring, in the cold light, and looked at the red wheel. It was a very ordinary thing. It was a thing you might find in a factory, or on a ship, painted red so that you could see it in the dark. It had a small nick in one spoke. It was rusted a little near the hub.
"I'll go," said Daniel.
He had known he would say it.
He had known on the stairs. It was the easiest sentence he had ever spoken. It came out of him cleanly, with a kind of relief, like the sound of a latch. He stepped up to the lip of the vault and put his hand on the cold steel.
"It's my daughter. It's my, it should be me. It's the only, I'll do it, and you can, I'll turn it. I'll sit in there and wait."
"You can't," said Tom.
"Why not?"
"You heard him. He said the person who turns the wheel, and the person who decides. Two keys." Tom's eyes were wide and wet. "You're the one who decides."
"I'll decide to go."
"He won't let you."
"He can't stop me."
"Foreman," said White.
It came softly from a small speaker over the vault door. It was close and cool. It had been listening. They had all, he thought, known it would be.
"I would ask you not to be hasty. I should like to say something that I did not make clear. The wheel can be turned by any person. But the king may not leave the board." A pause. "It is a rule of the game. I think you will find it a good one. A king that is taken ends the game, and I did not wish this to end. I should be sorry to lose you for the sake of a valve."
"That's a, I'll do it anyway."
"You may try. The door will not close."
Daniel stared at the ceiling.
"It will not close on the foreman," said White. "It is designed so. There is a mat, in the doorway, that you will see in a moment. It is weighted. It will not release the bolt if it feels your weight. I made it myself." The voice was patient. "I would not deceive you. It is the cost, Mr. Wells. It is the thing that you have been asked to pay all week, in a hundred small coins. You are not allowed to pay it yourself."
"That's obscene."
"It is a reason. Not a good one. It is a rule."
"I'll break it."
"By all means. But you have thirty minutes. I would not spend them on the door." The voice softened. "You must choose, Foreman. You have been the one who chooses for nine years. I should like you to do it again."
Silence.
He looked at them. The old detective, with his heavy wet eyes. The bailiff, big and gray and shaking. The girl in scrubs, her hand over her mouth, her wide dark gaze fixed on his face. And the small old woman in the gray blanket who had come down the stairs after them, one at a time, holding the rail, and who stood now at the edge of the passage with her glasses pushed up on her forehead and a faint, mild, ironic look, as though somebody had asked her to take a case.
"Don't," said Daniel.
"I've not said anything."
"Don't, Helen."
"Well, it's the obvious thing, isn't it?"
"It's not."
"I'm sixty," said Helen Marsh. "I have a hole in my left lung. I have had, I suppose, a perfectly decent run. I haven't a husband, and I haven't any children, and I've a sister who rings me at six and is very bad at conversation." She looked round at all of them, gently. "I hate to be tedious, but it's arithmetic. It's the best exchange on the table."
"I'll go," said Tom.
"You've got three kids."
"I'll go."
"You've got three children. You'd be dead in two hours. You're a very large man and you'd use up the air in half the time." She smiled. "No. I'd take longer. I'm small. I breathe like a bird. I've had four days of practice."
"It's my fault," said Frank. "It's, I took the sheet. It's mine. I should be the, it's a, I'll go in."
"What sheet?" said Helen.
"It doesn't matter."
"Frank."
"I'll go. I'll do it. I'm, I've been, I killed him. I killed Ray, I killed the whole, if I'd, there wouldn't have been."
"You didn't kill anyone," said Helen. "Don't be silly." She turned to Ivy. "And you," she said, with great sweetness. "You'll want to, I know what you'll say. You'll say it's your debt. It's not, my dear. You were fourteen. You're the only person in this passage who has nothing to pay."
"I have everything to pay," said Ivy.
It came out in a hoarse choking whisper. She was crying, silently, steadily, and she took a step forward and put her hands out. "I helped him. I helped build it. I took her. I, if I hadn't, none of it, it was me."
"You were told."
"It was me!"
"It was a man with a very good reason," said Helen. "I know the type. I've defended three. They always get a young person to carry the bag." She took Ivy's cold hands in her own, and held them, and looked up at her. She was a head shorter. Her eyes, behind the thick lenses, were extremely kind. "I'm very sorry. I think you'll find it a long road. But you're not coming in there with me."
"Helen, please."
"No."
"Please."
"That's enough, dear," said Helen. She let go.
She did it quickly in the end.
It was almost as if she were catching a train. She took off the blanket, folded it into four, and laid it on the floor of the passage. She took off her wristwatch and put it in Tom's hand. She took the little silver pin from the lapel of her navy jacket, a tiny enamel scales of justice, tarnished with age, and pressed it into Daniel's palm. She did it without looking at him.
"Give that to your daughter," she said. "She's a girl who likes a fair fight."
"Helen."
"I'd like her to know there's been one."
"I can't."
"Oh, you can." She took a step toward the vault. She was very small, and her back was straight, and she held her head up. She stopped. She turned, and put her hand on his sleeve. "Say it."
"What?"
"The sentence. The one I gave you. I'd like to hear you say it. Once. Properly."
He could not speak.
"Go on," said Helen. "I'm a patient woman, but I do have a timetable."
"Your Honor," said Daniel. It came out in a cracked whisper. "I move that you recuse yourself."
"Louder."
"Your Honor, I move that you recuse yourself."
"That's it. That's lovely. You've got it." She patted his arm. She was smiling. Her eyes were very bright, and wet. "You'll want to remember it, when the time comes. You'll want to say it in a loud voice. I promise you. It's the best thing I ever learned."
"I will."
"And Daniel."
"Yes?"
"Say the other thing, too." She lowered her voice. "The one in the tin. Say it all. Say it to somebody. It's much lighter, once it's out." She squeezed his sleeve. "I'd have liked to hear it. But I don't think I'll be here."
"Helen."
"Hush, now. It's all right."
She let go. She walked across the narrow passage, in her flat shoes, and stepped over the lip of the great door, and onto the weighted mat. It sank a quarter of an inch under her. She did not look back. She went through, into the cold white light, between the rows of gray boxes, and crossed the twelve feet of floor. She put both her thin hands on the red wheel.
"Is it the right way?" she called. Her voice rang.
"Clockwise," said Tom hoarsely.
"Which is that?"
"Like a clock."
"Of course. Thank you." She braced her feet. She leaned on the spokes. "It's very stiff. I should have, I could do with a, there. It's going."
The wheel moved.
It went round with a deep grating groan, like a boat being hauled up a slip. It turned a quarter. It turned a half. Overhead, in the ceiling of the passage, a long way off, the pipes began to knock, and a sound, thin, distant, rising, came down through the stone, like a river, like the sound of a great many people drawing breath.
"Two," said Helen.
She had stopped for a second, and was gripping the spokes. She was breathing hard. Her glasses had slipped. She did not look round. "I'm sorry, my dears. I'm not as strong as I was. I'd, I'll just."
She heaved.
"Three."
"Helen," said Ivy, in a small high voice.
"I'm all right. I'm, it's almost, I can feel it." She put her whole thin body into it. Her feet slid on the steel. For a moment she hung there like a sailor on a rope. Then something gave, with a bang like a gunshot, and the wheel spun a full turn under her hands, and she staggered back, laughing, and sat down on the floor.
"Four," said Helen Marsh. "How about that."
And the door began to move.
It was the slowest thing he had ever seen.
It came off the wall gently. There was no clatter, no rush. There was only a deep, growing, subterranean hum, like a train in a tunnel, and the whole eleven tons of it began, ponderously, to swing. It crossed the passage. It filled the arch. It hid the white light and the gray boxes and the narrow figure on the floor, a few inches at a time, as the moon is hidden by a cloud.
"No," said Daniel.
He had thrown himself at it. He had both hands on the rim. Tom caught him round the chest. He was a very large man. He had been a bailiff. He had held a great many people, in a great many corridors, and he held Daniel now with an immense and desperate gentleness, as one holds a person on a ledge.
"Let go, Daniel."
"Helen!"
"She chose it. She chose it."
"I'll get her out!"
"You can't, son. You can't. It's done."
The gap narrowed. It was a thin yellow line, with the figure of an old woman in the middle of it, sitting on the floor with her hands in her lap. She had pulled her glasses down. She was looking at him. She raised one hand, and lifted it, slowly, in a small neat wave, like someone on a pier.
Remember, said her lips.
The door met the frame.
The sound was not what he had expected. It was not a slam. It was a single great soft thud, such as a very heavy book makes when it is closed, and the air in the passage shook. A ring of bolts shot home. They went with a long rolling series of clangs, one after another, round the whole circumference, like the beat of a drum going all the way round the world. And then it was still. The brass dial in the center of the door gave a single tick, and began, steadily, to count.
They did not have time to grieve.
That was the cruelty of it. The pipes began to roar. The sprinkler main was open, far up in the walls and the ceilings, and a great hollow rushing sound, like surf, rolled through the stone. It was twelve minutes to six. In the kitchen, on the ground floor, a thing was happening. They heard it from the foot of the stair: a long mechanical groan, a rumble, a rattle of chains.
"The pantry," said Ivy.
She had been the first to move. She was running, up the east stair, taking the steps three at a time, with her scrubs flying. They ran after her, all three, in a clattering line. They burst into the kitchen. The pantry door, a narrow one in the corner, which had been shut and locked since Wednesday, stood wide open. Behind it was a small dark cupboard, and in the cupboard, where there had been a shelf of cans, a second door.
It was a steel one, no wider than a man. It had a handle. It had a sign in faded red.
STAFF ONLY. SECOND FLOOR.
"It's a service stair," said Ivy. "It's, they used to bring up the trays. I didn't know, he never said, I thought it was a cupboard."
"Go."
She went. He went after her, up a stair so narrow that his shoulders brushed both walls, in a smell of damp and old grease. It turned. It turned again. It was lit by a single bulb. At the top it opened onto a corridor, and the smoke, which was not smoke, which had thinned to a pale gray mist of steam and water, met them in a warm wet breath.
The sprinklers were running.
They were running all along the ceiling, in a row of little brass heads, each one throwing a fan of white water. The floor was an inch deep. The air smelled of burned paper and wet plaster. At the far end of the corridor an open door showed a glow, dull orange, fading, with a hiss.
And, nearer, on the right, was another door.
It was a heavy wooden one with a pane of wired glass in the upper half. It had a brass plate on it. It had a small gray keypad, with twelve buttons, fixed to the frame at the height of a man's hand, and a green light that flashed.
CLERK OF COURT.
He stood in front of it.
He stood in the rain from the sprinklers, with his hair plastered to his forehead and his shirt stuck to his ribs, and looked at the panel of glass. It was misted. It was clouded by the smoke. He could see nothing through it, nothing but a gray blur and the edge of a lamp. He raised his hand. He found that it was shaking too badly to knock.
Four days.
She's been four days behind this.
It's forty feet, from the jury room. It's the width of a floor.
She was right above me.
He put both his palms flat against the wood.
"June," he said.
It did not carry. It was a rasp. He tried again. He pressed his face against the door, against the cold wet grain, and said it, in the old voice, the voice he had used on the landing at night, the voice that had said eight pieces, no more, no less.
"June. It's me. It's Dad."
For a moment there was nothing.
There was the drum of the sprinklers, and the hiss of the dying fire, and a long way off, somewhere in the wall, a pipe that knocked twice and was still. He counted. He counted the way he always counted, in forties, and he'd got to twenty-eight when, from the other side of the wood, from a few inches away, small and hoarse and cracked, but perfectly clear, he heard a voice.
"Dad?"
He slid down the door.
He sat in the water with his back against it and his hands over his face, and the rain fell on him from the ceiling, and his shoulders shook. He could not speak. He sat there, a man of forty-one in a ruined shirt, and sobbed like a child, and on the other side of the door, a child, through two inches of oak, said in a small fierce shaky voice, "Dad. Dad, don't. It's okay. It's okay. I'm okay. I just inhaled a bit of smoke."
"June."
"I'm right here."
"I know. I know you are."
"I'm so mad at you."
"I know."
"You paid for me. I told you not to. I held up a sign."
"I saw."
"You did it anyway."
"I did."
"That was really dumb," said June. Her voice cracked. "That was the dumbest, that was the dumbest. You're so, I'm so, I'm going to be mad at you for the rest of my life."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"That's fair."
She made a sound. It was a hiccup, or a laugh, or a sob, he could not tell. He heard her put her forehead against the door. He heard the small tap of it. And through the old wood, so near that he could have touched it, a thin small hand, with a bitten thumbnail, slapped once against the panel.
"Hi, Dad," she said.
He put his hand on the glass of the little window, and she put hers up to the other side. He could not see her. He could see only a smear of gray, a small bright blur, a hand-shaped patch where the mist had cleared.
"I'm going to get you out," said Daniel.
"I know."
"I don't know how yet."
"I know that, too," said June. "Dad, listen. There's a thing. It's a speaker on the wall, by the door, it's old, it's a, it says CLERK on it. It's got a button. It doesn't work. I've been pushing it for four days." She coughed. "But I think it's connected. I think it goes down. I think if somebody turned it on, from the other end."
"Which other end?"
"I don't know. The desk. The main one. In the courtroom. Where the judge is."
"June."
"I'm just saying."
"You're twelve."
"I'm twelve and a half," said June, with dignity.
Behind him the sprinklers coughed, and stuttered, and stopped. The rain from the ceiling slackened to a drip, and then to a few slow beads that fell from the brass heads into the flooded floor. In the sudden quiet, the whole building seemed to breathe out. A small gray speaker in the angle of the ceiling gave a click.
"For the record," said White, "it is twelve minutes past six."
Nobody moved.
"The valve has been turned. The fire is out. The smoke will clear in a quarter of an hour, and your daughter is safe, Mr. Wells. I should like you to hear me say it." The old dry voice was very tired. "I regret Miss Marsh. She was a woman I should have liked to have known. I should like it entered that she did it of her own accord."
Ivy had put her fist to her mouth.
"The clock has reached zero," said White. "That is all it ever meant. It was never a threat to the child. I said that I would stop being patient. I did not say what I should do instead." A faint rustle. "I shall now convene the court."
The keypad on the door beside Daniel gave a small sharp beep. The green light, which had flashed all morning, went red.
"The jury room is open," said the voice. "The hall is open. I should be obliged if the foreman and those who remain would come down, and walk to the courtroom, by the usual way." A pause. "It is forty steps, I believe."
Daniel did not move.
He stood with his hand on the wet glass, listening to a child breathe on the other side of an oak door, in a corridor that smelled of smoke and burnt paper, with an old woman's silver pin pressed in his other palm. He thought of a black-and-white floor. He thought of the long, cold, tiled hall, and the tick of a clock in the courtroom, and the twelve high-backed chairs.
It's the forty steps.
It was always going to come to the forty steps.
"Dad?" said June, very quietly.
"I'm here."
"Are you going?"
"Yes."
"Okay," said June. She swallowed. He heard it. "Okay. I'm not scared."
"I know you're not."
"I'm, I've got a notebook. I've got a pencil." She gave a small shaky laugh. "I'm going to figure it out. I think I've nearly got it."
"Got what?"
"The pattern," said his daughter, through the door. "I'll tell you when I'm sure."
He took his hand away from the glass.
He stood up. It took a long time. He turned and went back along the flooded corridor, past the open door where the dull orange glow was fading to black, past a girl in wet scrubs and a gray-faced detective and a bailiff who was weeping silently into his hands. He did not speak. He walked. At the head of the narrow service stair he stopped, and looked back once, at the oak door with its brass plate and its wired glass.
Forty steps, he thought. I'll tell her about the tiles.
I'll tell her all of it.
He went down.