despite that everything was bright, hot, dazzling sunlight, and that sweat (good old honest-to-goodness, physical sweat now, as well as a trace of the other sort) rivered his back, still he shivered. Until: 'I ... I'm sorry,' he finally gasped. 'I suppose I should have been expecting you. I mean, I was expecting someone. But this silence, this dead silence, is sort of unnerving.'
And that was it, the second extraordinary thing: the fact that with the exception of this one dead voice, the Great Majority were 'dead silent.' Oh, they were here, but they weren't saying anything.
Nor will they, said the one lone voice in Harry's metaphysical mind. You're forgetting something, Harry: that what the dead did in life, they continue to do in death. Isn't that how it goes?
'Why, yes, but - '
- But this is Sicily, said the as yet unknown other, as if that were explanation enough. Ifs a place apart, Harry. It has its own special code.
And indeed the Necroscope did understand. 'A code of silence?'
That's right, he sensed the other's incorporeal nod. Ifs a code they adhere to. And never more so than here.
'Here?' Harry knew what the answer was going to be in the selfsame moment he framed the question.
Right here, yes, said the dead voice. In this very place. In the shadow of Le Manse Madonie ...
HUMPH, AND OTHERS. IN THE VAULTS BENEATH.
III
HUMPH, AND OTHERS. IN THE VAULTS BENEATH.
'Who are you?' Harry would have liked a proper introduction, but it seemed that in this place he wasn't going to get one.
Who was I, do you mean? The other was open about it; he'd obviously had plenty of time to get used to the idea; he wasn't one of the recently dead, but more properly a long-time member of the Great Majority. / was J. Humphrey Jackson Jr - 'Humph' to my friends. An American, yeah. As for what I did: / used to build safes.
'Safes?'
That's right. For banks, for rich folks, and sometimes for thieves who were worried that someone might try to steal it all back. I designed and installed safes, strong-rooms, vaults. Big steel piggy-banks for little greedy piggies.
'Well, I'm very glad to meet you, Humph,' Harry told him. 'Especially since no one else around here seems interested!'
Oh, they're interested for sure! Humph told him. But talk about close-mouthed? Cliques, Harry, a whole bunch of cliques, clans, families. Why, they talk to each other all the time - or rather, they whisper! But if you're an outsider ... forget it.
'But ... in death, too? I would have thought silence was the last thing they'd want.'
Wel, you don't know much about the history of this island, do you? (Humph gave an incorporeal snort). Ifs a bloody place, Necroscope. Me, I sort of found out the hard way - and so could you. That's why I spoke up. See, I was beginning to fall into their ways. I mean, there are people here I can speak to, sure, but recently I've been as tight-assed as the rest of them! Then I sensed you'd come on the scene; you could only be the Necroscope because you were warm and I could hear you thinking - and what you were thinking about: Le Manse Madonie.
'That's why you spoke to me?'
Mainly, yes ... The dead man's thoughts were suddenly hard, cold.
His was an uneasy spirit; in life, he'd either left something undone, or there had been a great injustice. Giving him a chance to organize his thoughts, Harry said:
'You sound pretty close, Humph. I mean, is there a cemetery close by? Where's your grave? I could come and talk to you there. It seems only right.'
Grave? Step to the other side of the road, Harry. And look down.t
Harry crossed the narrow road and came to a halt at a knee-high metal safety barrier that didn't look any too safe.
That wasn't there in 1938, Humph told him. No black-top on the road, either. Just a potholed track. An easy place to take a dive into the next world, if you were a careless driver- or if someone figured your time was up...
'You crossed the wrong people?' The Necroscope took a cautious step over the barrier, one leg only, and looked down. Two or three hundred feet of thin air to a scree-strewn slope that went down to the next loop of road.
That's where I ended up in my burned-out wreck, Humph told him. Right there on that stretch of road. Mercifuly, I didn't feel