Chapter 18
Forty Tiles
June had found the key at ten to seven.
She had not been looking for it. She had been looking for a pencil. She had gone through the desk drawers one by one, as she had every morning for four days, with the tired thoroughness of a person doing a chore, and in the bottom one on the left, under a stapler and a roll of brown tape and a cardboard box of paper clips gone solid with rust, she had found a ring.
It was a heavy iron ring, as big as a bracelet. There were nineteen keys on it. They were all old, long, black, with square heads, and each had a little paper tag tied to it with string. The tags had gone brown. She laid the ring on the blotter and went through them one at a time, tilting each to the lamp. Vault. Cellar. Judge's chambers. Jury. Archive. She had not got a lock for any of them. The door of her room had a keypad. The window had a plate.
But the last key was small. It was brass. It was no longer than her finger. The tag said, in faded ink, P.A. — MASTER.
She sat looking at it for a long time.
On the wall by the door, under the evacuation map, there was a gray metal box, about the size of a big book. It had a speaker grille, and a push-button marked TALK, and below the button a little round lock, with a slot. She had pressed the button four hundred times. She had pressed it, in the first hours, till her thumb went numb. It had never done anything. It had never so much as clicked.
It's off, she had decided. It's off, because it's locked.
She had thought about that for four days. She had not said it to anybody.
She got up. She went across the room, in her socks, with the key in her fist. The floor was still damp from the sprinklers, and her feet left small dark prints. She did not look at the camera. She stood with her back to it and her shoulders hunched, as if she were doing a thing with her hands that did not matter. She put the little brass key in the slot.
It turned.
There was a soft, deep, mechanical thump, somewhere inside the wall, like a heart starting. A tiny red light came on above the grille. It glowed. And out of the grille, faint, came a sound she had not heard for four days. It was the sound of a large, high, cold room, with a clock ticking in it.
It's the courtroom.
It's all one wire.
She did not press the button. She was not stupid. She stood still with her hand over her mouth and listened, and in the faint far echo of the room she heard the sound of a man breathing. It was an old man. It was slow and shallow and rasping, with a small hiss at the end of each breath, like a leaking tire. It was the sound of someone who had an oxygen tube.
You're the voice, she thought.
You're a person.
You're right there.
She turned and went back to the desk. She took the cat notebook from her sock. She opened it to the last page, where, in pencil, in small tight square letters, she had been drawing for an hour. She had begun with the evacuation map, which hung in its frame by the door. It was the kind they put up in schools. It showed the second floor in black outline, with the exits marked by green arrows. But under the black, in a faint gray, there was another drawing. It was dotted. It was the floor below. It had been printed, she thought, to show where the stairs came down.
It showed a corridor, with a grid.
She had counted the little squares on the dotted corridor. There were forty rows. There were three columns. And down the middle, among the squares, in a line so small that she had mistaken it for a flaw in the print, ran a trail of pinpricks. They went in a long zigzag. They did not step from square to square. They skipped. One, two, over, up. A row, a row, then a leap.
She had looked at it for a very long time.
Then she had taken the paper napkin out of her sock, where she had been keeping it since Monday. It was a little crumpled square of white, with a drawing on it in blue pen, in her own handwriting. A small square. A line two squares up, and one across.
Knight. In case you forget.
She laid it over the pinpricks on the map.
It fitted.
They went down the hall at seven.
It was a long way from the jury room to the head of it. They had not remembered that. They went along a short passage, and through a door, and stood at the end of the corridor looking along it, with the breath going out of them in small white puffs. Daniel stood in front. He had Helen's pin in his pocket and a splint on his ankle. Behind him came Tom, and Frank, and Ivy, in a ragged line.
It was exactly as he remembered.
That was what he could not get past. It was a long cold hall, forty yards, with a high arched ceiling of dark plaster and a row of tall narrow windows, set far up, through which a thin gray dawn was coming. The windows were barred. The walls were the color of old teeth. And the floor was the thing that he had seen every morning of his life for four days, a floor of black and white marble squares, set on the diagonal, polished by a hundred years of feet. It ran away from him, three squares wide, in the half dark, like a long chessboard with the rest cut off.
At the far end, a pair of tall oak doors stood shut. A lamp burned over them. It was green. It was the sort of lamp that is lit over the door of a room in which a thing is happening.
Forty steps, he thought.
It looked a great deal further.
"Good morning," said White.
It came from a speaker over the head of the hall, soft, dry, and slightly out of breath. "For the record, it is seven o'clock. I should like to say a few words about what you are going to do. I will be brief. I know that you are tired." There was a small pause. "The hall is the last thing between you and the court. It is forty tiles in length. I believe that you counted them, Mr. Wells. I counted them myself, a great many times, over thirty years."
"What's wrong with it?" said Frank.
"Nothing."
"You said different."
"I said rather different." The old voice was almost amused. "I will tell you what I can. The floor of this hall is sound in forty places. It is not sound in the others. A weight on one of the others will find that there is not a floor there at all, but a sheet of marble on a frame, and under the frame there is a cellar." A pause. "I think it is about fourteen feet. I have had it measured."
Nobody spoke.
"I will not tell you which. I have always said that I would not deceive you about a cost, and I will not now. But I do not wish to be unfair. The path exists. It is a very clear one. It is, I think, the sort of thing that a person might see, if he had been taught to look." The voice dropped. "I should add that no piece may carry another."
"What's that mean?" said Tom.
"It means that the tiles which will bear a man will not bear two."
They stood at the head of the hall in the thin gray light.
It was absurd. It was a hallway. It was a floor of marble, in a government building. It was a thing he had walked every day, with a plastic badge on his jacket, and he stood and stared at it with his heart going like a drum. He had counted it for four mornings. He knew it had forty tiles in the length. But he could not remember, he found, if any of them had ever been different from the rest.
"Which tile do we start on?" said Ivy.
"I should think you would know."
"I don't."
"Then I should think," said White, "that you will find out."
Nobody moved. Frank cleared his throat. He took a step forward, very slowly, to the edge of the first black square, and stood looking at it with his big gray hands hanging. He put out his foot. He held it in the air, an inch above the marble, for a long time, and then, with a muffled sound, drew it back.
"I can't," he said.
"It's only a floor."
"It's, I can't see a, there isn't a, it all looks the same."
"I know."
"What if I put my foot on the wrong one?"
"Then you will have an interesting fall."
"Dad?"
It was a small voice.
It was so small and so clear, and so entirely out of place, that for a moment none of them knew what it was. It came from above their heads. It came from the same speaker, a dry little rattle in the metal, with a crackle behind it. It was a child's voice, hoarse, breathless, and determined. It said it again.
"Dad? Dad, can you hear me? It's June."
Daniel did not move.
He stood still, with his mouth open, in the middle of the hall. For a moment the whole building seemed to stop. He heard Tom draw in his breath. He heard Ivy, behind him, make a thin sound, like a laugh and a sob together. He raised his face to the ceiling, to a gray speaker the size of a saucer.
"June?"
"It works! Oh, it works! I turned the thing. It was a key. It was in the drawer. I've been, it was, it's the whole building. It's, I can hear you. I can hear everybody." A gasp. "Dad, listen. I haven't got long. He's, I think he's, I don't know if he can cut me off."
"I have not cut you off," said White.
There was a silence.
It was a long one. It was a perfectly extraordinary one. It was the silence of an old man who has just been interrupted by a child in the middle of his own sentence, and has found, to his surprise, that he does not mind.
"I locked the door," said the voice, slowly. "I did not think about the wire."
"I'm really sorry," said June.
"Not at all. It is a very fine piece of play." A dry, small, rasping sound, which might have been a chuckle. "I confess I did not expect it. I should have. I told myself that you were a child who looked at things."
"Can I tell him?"
"I do not forbid it."
"Can I tell him?"
"The court," said White, "has no objection."
June let out a breath.
"Okay. Dad. Listen." She was speaking fast, in a low, clear, urgent voice, the voice she used when she had the board in her head and the clock was running. "I found the map. It's got a dotted floor. It's got the hall, it's got forty rows, and there are dots. It's the safe ones. It's a knight."
"A knight."
"Like on the napkin."
"June, I don't."
"The napkin! The one I gave you! You put it in your pocket!" She was nearly shouting. "It's two forward and one over. That's all it is. It's the knight. You go two rows, and one to the side. You don't go straight. You don't go diagonal. You jump."
He put a hand into his shirt pocket.
It had been there, folded in four, for a week. It had been through a bus ride, and a drugged cup, and a fall into a pit, and a night of sweat. It was soft as cloth. He drew it out with fingers that did not feel like his own and opened it, one fold at a time, and there in the half dark, in blue ink, in a child's square, careful handwriting, was a little square with a line running up from it, two and one.
Knight. In case you forget.
He had not forgotten. He found that he could not see it.
"Dad?"
"I've got it," said Daniel.
"Start in the middle. The middle column. It's the third tile from the, I think you'll be at the, there's a mark. It's a little brass dot in the black tile. It's about this big." She was talking quickly. "That's the start. Then it's two up, and over. Left or right. You can choose. Then two up, and back to the middle. Then two up, and over. It goes side, middle, side, middle. It's twenty jumps. It's, Dad, it's exactly forty."
"Twenty jumps."
"And you do it one at a time. You don't, you don't step on anything in between. You jump." She drew a breath. "I'll count. I'll count every one. I'll tell you which."
"I can't jump."
"What?"
"My ankle."
There was a stricken pause.
"It's, it isn't broken," he said. "It's a sprain. It's strapped. But I can't, June, it's a stride. It's three feet. It's, I'll have to go slow."
"Then go slow."
"It might not."
"Then go slow," said June, fiercely. "It doesn't say you've got to be fast. It's not a, there isn't a clock on it. It's a hall. You can do it as slow as you like." Her voice cracked. "You've got to. I've got to be right. I've done it nine times. I've done it on the map with a ruler. I'm right."
He looked down at the napkin.
There was a mark, a small bright dot on one of the black marble squares at the head of the hall, right in the middle. It was no bigger than a button. It was brass. He had walked over it for four days and never noticed.
"I know you are," he said.
It was the strangest thing he ever did.
He stood on the first tile, which was black, and cold, and firm under his sock, and looked down the length of the hall. It was perfectly silent. His breath hung in front of him. Far away, the green lamp burned above the doors. He heard a small scraping sound, a rustle, and realized that it was his own heart.
"Ready?" said June.
"Yes."
"Okay. Up two. Left one. That's the left side. It's the fourth tile in the second row up."
He did not stop to count. He jumped.
It was not a jump. It was a kind of long awkward lunge, with his bad foot dragging, and his ribs shouting, and a hot red flash across his eyes. He landed on one leg. He stood on it, swaying, with his arms out like a man on a rope, and the marble held. There was a soft, small, scraping sound, from somewhere underneath the floor. A rattle. A pause. And then nothing.
"You're on it," said June. "You're, yes. You did it. That's one."
"One."
"Now two up, and back to the middle."
He went on.
It took him twenty minutes. He did not remember most of it. He remembered the sound of June's voice, saying two, three, now left, now middle, in a high small tireless chant. He remembered the pain, which got worse, and then, curiously, better. He remembered the hall, and the tall barred windows, and the gray light, which slowly grew pale and gold and clear on the black-and-white squares. He remembered that at the ninth jump he fell. His ankle gave. He went forward, with his arms thrown out, on his knees, and his face went down toward the cold marble, and in a split second of perfect clarity he saw the floor, a hand's breadth from his eyes, and the thin dark line between two tiles.
It's a frame.
There's a gap.
"Dad!"
He caught himself. He did it with both hands, and the splint, and his chin. He lay on the tile with his whole weight on one square, which held. The air came out of him with a groan. And in the long silence afterward, he heard the thin, quick, desperate breathing of a child, a hundred feet above his head, saying Dad. Dad. Dad.
"I'm all right," said Daniel.
"Are you?"
"I'm on the tile."
"Is it the right one?"
"I think it is."
"It is. It is. I counted. It's ten."
"Ten," said Daniel, and laughed, helplessly, with his cheek on the marble.
Tom came next.
He went like an elephant on a bridge. He was a very large man, and he did it with a kind of immense, frightened, delicate care, each foot set down and tested before the weight came on it. He did not need June's voice. He had been watching Daniel's feet, and he could count. He went down the hall in a slow stately lurching sequence, side, middle, side, middle, with his arms held out and his lips moving, and at every landing he stopped, and raised his face to the ceiling and said, in a loud shaky voice, "Thank you, miss."
"You're welcome," said June.
Ivy went after him.
She was the lightest, and the quickest, and she did it as if she were crossing a stream. She did not look down. She looked only at the tile ahead. She had taken off her sneakers and tied them round her neck by the laces, and her bare feet were small and white on the black marble. She made twenty jumps without a pause. At the end, she stood on the last tile, panting, with her hair in her eyes, and looked back along the length of the hall.
"Frank," she called.
He was standing at the head of it.
He had been standing there the whole time. He had watched them all, one at a time, with his big gray arms hanging at his sides and a curious, stiff, fixed, listening look on his face. He stood in the pale gold light, at the foot of the first black tile, a short, thickset, iron-haired man in a gray shirt, and he did not move.
"Frank!"
"I'm coming."
"Please."
"I'm, give me a minute."
He stepped onto the brass dot.
It took him a very long time. He did it badly. His hips would not bend. He did the first jump with a groan, and swayed, and the second with a gasp. At the third he stopped, and stood with his head down, wheezing, and a gray bloom on his lips. Daniel, at the far end of the hall, saw it all clearly. He saw the big shoulders heave. He saw one hand go up and press, flat, to the left side of the chest.
"Frank," said Tom, in a low urgent voice. "Frank, take it slow."
"I'm, I'm taking it."
"Sit down. You can sit on the tile. It'll hold you."
"I can't sit, I'm, it's the, it's a long way."
"We'll wait."
"No." He raised his face. It was streaming with sweat. It was the color of putty. But his eyes, in the pale light, were clear, and calm, and they were fixed on a point at the far end of the hall, on a small figure in a gray cardigan with a gold light on her hair. "No. I think I'll, I think I'd like a word with Miss Lowe, if I may."
"Frank, don't talk."
"It's all right, Tom. It's, I've had a, I know what this is." He drew a long, shuddering, whistling breath. "I've had the pains for a week. I didn't want to say."
"You'll make it."
"I shan't."
"Frank."
"I'm the knight," said Frank Ross.
He said it with something very like humor. He had lowered himself, slowly, onto the black marble tile where he stood, and sat with his knees drawn up, upright, with his hands round them, like a boy on a wall. He was gasping. But he was smiling. "I always was. I always, I was the one who jumped over. I, I saw a thing I didn't like, and I jumped over it. And I've, I've been in the air nine years."
"Please," said Ivy.
"Miss Lowe."
"Yes?"
"I owe you a, I owe your father." He swallowed. "I took a sheet off a counter. I put it in a drawer. I took, I took a lineup, and I held a man by the arm. I'm not asking you to forgive it."
"I know."
"I'm only saying it. To you. Where you can hear." His voice was a whisper, but it carried in the empty hall. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about your father. He, I think he was a good man. I'd have liked to play him."
Ivy was crying. She stood on her small bare feet on the last tile, with her sneakers round her neck, and her hand to her mouth, and the tears ran down. She did not speak. She nodded. She nodded, slowly, again and again, like a child.
"That's all right," said Frank.
His hand had gone to his chest.
"It's all right. Go on. It's a, it's a lovely morning." He looked up at the high barred windows, where the sun had come, at last, a bar of pure gold, across the hall, and lay on the black and white squares like a path. "Isn't it? I haven't seen one since Tuesday."
He leaned his head back against nothing.
It was a very small thing. It was a little shift of the shoulders, as of a man who has found a comfortable place, and settled. His hands loosened. His head went slowly back, and to one side, and he sat there, upright, on his square of marble in the middle of the hall, in the light, with his eyes open and his lips a little parted, and did not move again.
Nobody spoke.
It was perhaps a minute before Tom Rudd, at the end of the hall, took off his cap. He held it in both hands, in front of him, as he had once held it before a judge. He bowed his head. And somewhere above them, in the dry old voice of the speaker, someone said, softly, "For the record, it is seven twenty-six."
"Thank you," said Daniel.
"Not at all."
"I'd like it, I'd like it noted."
"It is noted," said White. He sounded very tired. "It is noted that Mr. Ross made a very fine crossing. I would say that it was among the best I have seen."
The doors of the courtroom opened at half past seven.
They did it all at once, with a long deep groan and a rush of cold air, like a mouth. The two tall oak leaves swung inward on their hinges. Behind them was a huge dim room, and a smell of old varnish and dust. A lamp was burning, a green-shaded one, on a desk. And across the room, past the rows of empty benches, past the long brass rail, a small light was moving, on a staircase, slowly, in the gloom.
It was a girl.
She came down the stair one step at a time, with her hand on the banister. She was small, in a sweater with a blue stripe, with a braid over one shoulder, and she was coughing a little. She had a yellow notebook in her hand. She stopped on the bottom step. She looked across the whole breadth of the courtroom, at the three people standing in the doorway, and her face did a thing that he had not seen it do for a week.
It opened.
"Hi, Dad," said June.
He could not answer.
He crossed the floor. He did not remember doing it. There were rows of benches and a rail and a gate that swung. There was a great flat space of dark polished boards. There was a girl in a striped sweater, getting larger, with her arms already out. And then there was nothing at all but a small hard hot body in his arms, and a head against his collarbone, and a smell of smoke and wet wool and pencil shavings, and two thin arms locked round his neck so tight that it hurt.
"I did it," said June, into his shirt.
"You did."
"I got it right."
"You got it right."
"I'm so mad at you."
"I know."
"I'm going to be mad for ages."
"Okay."
"Don't let go."
"I won't," said Daniel. "I won't. I won't."
He held her. He held her, with his face in her hair, in the dim gold light of a courtroom, and he did not hear the door close behind him, or the soft careful scrape of a wheel on the floorboards, somewhere across the room, in the shadow of the bench.
"Good morning, Mr. Wells," said a voice.
It was not from a speaker.
He raised his head.
On the bench, at the far end of the courtroom, under the great plaster seal of the county, in a gloom of dark wood and green baize, there was a wheelchair. It had been turned to face the room. In it sat an old man, very thin, in a black suit, with a white shirt buttoned to the neck, and a thin transparent tube running from his nostrils to a small green tank beside the chair. He had white hair, brushed straight back, and a long narrow face, creased like old paper, and gray eyes, and great thin hands, which lay folded in his lap. On the arm of the chair, beside his elbow, lay a gavel. At his other hand was a small black machine with a long strip of paper curling out of it. It was a court reporter's stenotype.
He did not smile. He looked at them for a long time, the man and the child, as one looks at the last piece of a puzzle that has been missing for years.
"I am Walter Hale," he said. "Thank you for coming. Please be seated."
He raised the gavel. He did not strike it. He held it, lightly, in his thin fingers, as a man holds a pen.
"Now we are all present," said Walter Hale. "I think we may begin."