Page 69 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
“I am sorry to hear that.”
He giggled. It was perhaps the most disturbing sound I had ever heard a human make. “Do not be sorry for me. I am a traitor. I accused myself and tried myself and convicted myself. I am a spy. An agent for reactionary powers. And I will see myself hang for it.”
“I am not certain that you are in a fit state to make such a judgement.”
“The dreadful king whispers in my dreams. The shadows of my thoughts lengthen. How can I serve the people if I cannot trust even my own mind?”
The door opened, and he was taken away. The door opened, and I was taken away. I had been here for three days. Castaigne had been here for two days. He was a prisoner, a guard. I was a prisoner. I was a guard. I was Castaigne and I wore a yellow robe and a pale mask.
I sat in a cold chair, a bright light shining in my face. The silhouette opposite me was a hooded woman in a pallid mask.
“If Castaigne is not the traitor, who is?”
Focus, man. Keep to what you know. Tell them so you can tell yourself it is the only way to stay whole. “He told me that he was.”
“These lies help no one.”
“That may be, but I know what I saw.” I did not know what I saw. “He was in my cell, only moments ago. He said that he had confessed, that he had been tried and convicted.”
The lady sat quite motionless. “If that were the case, why would we still be interrogating you?”
“I do not know, but...” They are trying to break you. This is not supposed to make sense. You will never force it to make sense. Still I could not answer her.
“Why are you really here?” she asked, her tone unexpectedly gentle.
“I’m... I’m not sure I remember.”
The guards took me back to my cell. I slept and I woke. Now I ate. Now I did not eat. I lay on the floor while the ceiling crawled and distorted above me.
“Whatever you do,” whispered a voice I had half forgotten, “don’t wake up.”
“But I’m not asleep.”
“Stop being tiresome, Wyndham.”
The malign influence of that place still pressed into my head like thick yellow fog, but my companion’s instantly recognisable tone brought me a good deal of the way back to myself. “Ms. Haas?”
“Yes. Now listen very carefully if you don’t want to spend the restof your short life watching your mind and spirit fracture under the unbearable weight of inexorable cosmic truths.”
The prospect was not appealing. “If you have a means to free me from this place, I would be most grateful.”
“Really, Captain. What do you think I’ve been doing for the past week? I can help you escape, but to do so I have had to invoke some quite explicitly unspeakable powers. Rather nostalgic, but terribly dangerous. In a moment, things are going to get very loud and very messy. I will need you to go through the door, keep moving, and when I tell you to do something, do it immediately and without question. Open your eyes when you hear the gunshots.”
I heard gunshots and opened my eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The Tatters of the King
Rising, I sawthe door to my cell stood open. Beyond it, the hallway was deserted, and behind me I heard a sound like the tearing of cloth.
“What are you waiting for?” Ms. Haas’s voice appeared to emanate from somewhere beside me, but she was not there when I looked. “Go.”
I followed her instruction. The corridors of that tower were a maze of dead ends and blind passages, through which I wandered with no further direction from my companion. Disjointed laughter caught my attention and, in the absence of a clear alternative, I moved towards it. I found Mr. Castaigne in the wreckage of one of the interrogation rooms, crouched over the body of a slender man in a grey suit who I recognised as also being Mr. Castaigne.
“Dash it all, man,” I exclaimed as I drew closer, “what have you done?”
He looked up at me, with an expression like a wounded fox. “It was him. It was him all along.”
