The Messiah Secret - James Becker [6]
He heaved himself out of the bed, pulled a dressing gown around his thin frame and grabbed his walking stick from the chair beside him. Trying to move as quietly as possible, he made his way along the corridor to the head of the central staircase. There he stopped, staring down towards the ground floor. Somebody had switched on the lights in the grand salon.
Not only did he have burglars, he had cheeky burglars.
Holding the end of his walking stick, so that he could use it as a club if he had to, he crept down the stairs to the hall and walked slowly across to the partially open door of the salon.
He peered through the gap into the room, and almost muttered his displeasure aloud. Somebody – Wendell-Carfax could only see the figure from behind – was sitting in his favourite chair beside the empty fireplace, smoking a cigarette and tapping the ash on to the carpet.
Wendell-Carfax straightened up, changed his grip slightly on his walking stick and opened the door. He raised the stick, fully intending to bring it crashing down on the head of the intruder – and froze. An ugly black automatic pistol was pointing right at him.
‘Sit down,’ the stranger said, his voice little more than a sibilant whisper. He gestured towards the chair in front of him.
He was stockily built, about forty or fifty years of age, and there was an air of confidence, of menace, about him that was frightening in its intensity. He had tanned skin and black hair, and his eyes were so dark they almost seemed to have no pupils. But it wasn’t the man’s face that most arrested Wendell-Carfax’s attention – it was what he was wearing.
‘You’re—’ he began.
‘Be quiet,’ the man said softly, but there was no mistaking the power his words conveyed. ‘You have something I want and I’ve come to collect it.’
‘What is it?’ Wendell-Carfax demanded. ‘And who the hell are you?’
The stranger stood up, and stepped across to where Wendell-Carfax was standing.
The old man raised his walking stick threateningly, but the stranger brushed aside his pitiful weapon and with the fluid power and casual malevolence of a striking snake, he smashed the barrel of his pistol into the older man’s stomach.
Wendell-Carfax folded at the waist, gasping for breath, as a second blow crashed into the back of his neck.
* * *
Consciousness returned slowly and painfully. His stomach and his neck ached, but the greatest pain Oliver Wendell-Carfax was feeling was in his wrists and arms – an aching, tugging sensation. When he looked up, he saw the reason.
His attacker had dragged him out into the hall, looped a thin rope over the banister rail of the main staircase, tied the end of it around his wrists and then hauled him upright, securing the rope around another banister. He was suspended, his toes barely touching the floor, completely helpless. Already he had lost almost all feeling in his hands. But that wasn’t his biggest problem.
In front of him, the stranger sat in one of the chairs he’d obviously brought from the salon. His face was calm and relaxed.
‘Who are you?’ Wendell-Carfax demanded again, his voice made harsh by pain and fear.
The stranger bent down and picked up a leather whip from the floor. It was a handle with about a dozen thongs attached to it, and at the end of each was the glint of steel. He walked across to the suspended figure, stepped slightly behind him and swung the whip at the old man’s back.
The pain was shocking, sudden and overwhelming, a red ribbon of agony that stretched the whole width of Wendell-Carfax’s unprotected back. He howled in pain, his body arcing forwards. He felt a sudden dampness as he lost control of his bladder.
The stranger swung the scourge again, sending a second bolt of pain lancing through the old man’s thin frame. Then he walked back, resumed his seat and waited until Wendell-Carfax