steps going up, to the basement of Le Manse, Harry knew. And others descending, to forbidden regions, apparently. It was down there that Humph had got himself in trouble. Just for being there, without having seen anything. But Harry must see -eventually.
(What? But his reason for being here was money, surely? It was to fund his search. The two halves of Harry's mentality - conscious and subconscious, or post-hypnotic - met in momentary conflict, confusion, then cancelled the problem out, solving it with a soft solution: the Necroscope's need to explore this place was just his natural curiosity, that was all.) But right now his need was to be into the Francezci treasure vault.
Yet stil he paused, if only for a second, to fix this co-ordinate indelibly in his metaphysical mind. These steps coming down from above, and others descending steeply into the echoing bowels of the place . . . And three other tunnels joining horizontally ... The place was a labyrinth, just as Humph had said ... They and theirs had been hollowing it out for centuries.
Harry gave his head an angry shake, blinking his eyes rapidly, worriedly in the poor light. But the information had sunk in, buried itself in his secret memory. And now he could get on with the job in hand.
Seconds had passed, that was all. Up above, there'd be a lot of activity by now. But down here all was silence, or near-silence: the soft susurration of ventilation systems, a sighing of air through the tunnels, the muted throb of unseen machines. And the pressured tonnage of the solid rock overhead, of course - with all the additional weight of Le Manse Madonie on top of that - which felt like a sound in its own right: the mute but ever present groaning of stressed strata ...
Two of the three horizontal tunnels were unknown quantities; Humph had never explored them. Harry 'knew' the route that lead upwards into Le Manse, also something of the route leading down ... to whatever. The third horizontal tunnel led straight to the strong-room, to the massive steel doors installed by the dead American some forty-odd years ago. But Harry needn't waste time following the tunnel. He could 'go' directly to the outermost door.
He thought to contact Humph again, to check the co-ordinates, then changed his mind. Not in this place. He wouldn't want to disturb the psychic aether in this place. And so the Necroscope was on his own here; it was as simple as that. He went via the Mobius route to the vault's outer door - and discovered it exactly as Humph had described and pictured it: a hinged, circular, six-foot 'plug' of shining stainless steel, set in a wall of rough-surfaced blued steel whose four unseen edges were sunk deep and concreted into walls, floor and ceiling. The great airlock of a plug was fitted with a combination lock and a massive wheel to slide the hidden bolts. You could only go through that door if you had the lock's combination, or a thermal lance with an unlimited power source, or quite a few well-placed high velocity tank shells. That was it. There was no other way -
- Except one. Harry's way.
To anyone watching it would seem he simply disappeared . . . and reappeared, in the utter darkness on the other side of the door. He breathed dead air, used his flashlight, took two paces to the inner door, then a third pace into another quite invisible door which he conjured over the impervious metal... and so into the treasure vault of the Francezcis, the fabulous loot of centuries, the greedy black 'heart' of Le Manse Madonie.
And in the first thin beam from his flashlight, as he swept the room, or rather the cave - the treasure cave, yes - behind Humph's less than impenetrable doors ...
... The Necroscope had known something of what to expect, but that something was nothing compared to the reality. Wealth?
Monies? The illicit proceeds of ten, twenty, or thirty years of Mob graft and greed, vice and crime, overseen or advised by the Francezcis? Well, in that case they had a hell of a lot of crime on their hands! But deep inside - in a forbidden place within himself, which was as much a sealed vault as this place - Harry knew better, knew it was more than that. Much more.
That some of this unthinkable, some might say obscene spoil was garnered recently was obvious.