The first thing that struck Lindsay was the sudden way the scents of the room—books and paper and leather and wood—hit him. As though the thick door had muffled them from him before. The second thing, which happened as soon as Lindsay stepped forward, crossing the threshold, was that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and an immediate sense of almost overwhelming panic rose up in him. He wheeled around to face Cruikshank again, the candle flame nearly going out from the swiftness of his turn.
“Is something wrong?” Cruikshank asked. His eyes gleamed strangely.
“It feels like—”
Like a dungeon.
He didn’t want to say the betraying words. Recovering his composure with some effort, he said, instead, “It feels rather closed-in.”
Cruikshank nodded, and pointed into the room. “Ye’ll see that there’s no window. The rear wall is an interior wall and there’s another wee corridor behind it. The window to the exterior wall of the house is on that corridor. A window is weak point, ye see, and ye cannae have that in a strongroom.”
Lindsay looked where Cruikshank was pointing, but still couldn’t bring himself to step inside—his wolf was determinedly shying from the prospect. Playing for a little more time, he gave his attention to the door, saying, “I see this is very stout—are the walls also reinforced?”
“Now ye’re askin’,” Cruikshank said, wagging a finger at Lindsay in mock admonishment, but he seemed pleased by the question, and brushed past Lindsay, shuffling into the room with a stiff sort of geriatric alacrity that spoke of his eagerness. Lindsay followed him cautiously, holding up the candle to light his host’s way.
“It’s all about the walls with a strongroom,” Cruikshank said turning back to face Lindsay. He patted the wall nearest him. “Underneath the pretty wallpaper and plasterwork, these walls are not mere brick and timber, Mr. Somerville, but stone and iron. As solid as ye’ll get anywhere.”
Now that he knew, Lindsay could account for his strange reaction, and for his sudden conviction that this was like a dungeon. He remembered all too well the heavy clamour of imprisoning stone and iron all around him from those long-ago days in Duncan’s keep. No wonder his wolf was so distressed.
“How very fascinating,” he said, forcing himself to follow Cruikshank further into the room. He was calming now, his instinctive reaction to the cell-like chamber gradually receding as Cruikshank continued with his explanation of how the strongroom had been constructed. Even so, a lingering sense of unease troubled him.
“Let me light a few more candles,” Cruikshank said. “Or ye’ll no’ be able to see a thing.” He borrowed a flame from Lindsay’s candle with a taper and used it to light a branch of candles on his desk and another pair in a wall sconce above.
The desk was the same one he’d seen in Cruikshank’s old rooms—the chairs too—all dark, uncomfortable wood, unrelieved by so much as a single cushion. The rest of the room was entirely taken up by Cruikshank’s “collection.” Three of the room’s four walls were shelved, practically from top to and bottom, and every inch of every shelf was crammed with a bewildering array of objects.
There had to be twenty times the number of things in here than there had been in Cruikshank’s old study. Books and boxes and jars and porcelain and packets of papers, all crowded in, higgledy-piggledy fashion, as though fighting for a space of their own.
You’d have thought Cruikshank would’ve taken a bit more care to display his favourite things, Lindsay thought, given the evident pride he took in them, and in the room he’d had specially built for them. But no, they were stuffed onto the shelves quite as carelessly as in the old study, as though Cruikshank was not particularly concerned with what anyone else thought of his collection.
Looking around the strongroom, Lindsay felt sure that was it—Cruikshankdidn’tcare, because this was for him alone. Not a connoisseur’s collection to be admired by all, but a miser’s hoard to be enjoyed in private.
Which rather made him wonder, Why had Cruikshank seemed so keen for Lindsay to see the room?
“I’ll be interested to hear what ye think.”
Possibly, it had been no more than idle politeness, yet Lindsay had detected something in Cruikshank—some kind of interest in Lindsay’s reaction.
“Your collection is sizeable,” Lindsay said, eyeing Cruikshank as the old man slowly lowered himself into the hard chair behind his desk. In a moment, Cruikshank would invite Lindsay to sit too and he didn’t want to. His beast urged him to stay close to the door, which he’d been sure to leave ajar. He strolled to the nearest shelf, pretending an interest in the spines of a row of books on the shelf closest to him, which, much like everything else in the room, appeared to have no particular logic to their arrangement.
Gerardo, the Unfortunate Spaniard
Miscellaneous Tracts, Historical, Chronological, Moral, &c.
Letters, Containing an Account of Travelling through Switzerland and Italy.
“I have many interesting items, Mr. Somerville,” Cruikshank called from behind his desk, “but ye’re here to look at one in particular, are ye not? So, do ye have that fifty guineas we agreed upon?”
Lindsay turned back to his host. “I do,” he confirmed, moving reluctantly towards the desk. Reaching into the inside pocket of his coat, he withdrew the banker’s draft he’d brought and set it on the polished wood. Cruikshank’s eyes gleamed as he unfolded the heavy paper and read it.
“And you have the papers to show me?” Lindsay prompted.
“I do,” Cruikshank confirmed, folding the draft back up. “The first packet o’ them, as we agreed.”
“Excellent.”
Cruikshank drew out his key ring again, using a small key to open a drawer in his desk from which he withdrew a slim packet of yellowed papers. Placing the bank draft inside the drawer, he locked it again before setting the packet on the desk.
“These papers are quite fragile, so please be careful, Mr. Somerville.”
