§ § § - February 7, 1981
Due time was shortly after lunch, when Roarke went through a few books while Leslie was sorting mail and Tattoo was out on some errands. "Well, it's still true that Claude Duncan has no grandson," Roarke finally remarked, slapping a book shut.
Leslie looked up, instantly eager. "Tell me about it!"
He grinned briefly at her enthusiasm. "Claude Duncan never married. Quite likely, if Becky Lee had lived, he would have married her. However, she died at a rather young age, leaving behind Vicky Lee's father and grandfather; it is said in most sources that she left them for Claude Duncan, although apparently under duress. They had starred together in just three films, all of them produced within the year their affair lasted. Then she died; and, after her passing, Claude Duncan retreated here to the island and begged me for sanctuary. But he had an ulterior motive." His gaze lost focus. "He told me up-front that he had made a pact with the Greek god Pan that would allow him to live forever. Becky Lee had willingly died to help him keep his end of the bargain he had struck; but in order to elude questions from the authorities, he needed to leave the country. So I granted him sanctuary here, and he built the chateau in what was then one of the most remote parts of the island."
"You mean…you knew he was responsible for Becky Lee's death?" Leslie exclaimed, aghast. At his nod, she reared back. "Why'd you let him stay, then?"
Roarke focused on her again. "The pact called for two sacrifices to fulfill Duncan's side of the bargain he made with Pan. In return, he would remain young and vibrant and alive for all eternity. The second sacrifice was due fifty years to the day after the death of Becky Lee—and this weekend marks that anniversary."
"Okay, but why did you let him live here?" Leslie persisted.
"Because I had hopes that, when that fiftieth anniversary arrived, I would be able to thwart Duncan's plans somehow. To that end, I confined him to the chateau and forbade him to venture outside its walls for any reason whatsoever. In return, I agreed to relinquish any power over him. You see, it was my hope that the simple lack of a second victim would be all it took to do that, but Vicky Lee defied my warnings and came here anyway. Now it will take a direct confrontation between me and Duncan to stop the final fulfillment of the pact." He frowned, tossed a glance at the grandfather clock and made to arise. "I'll have to try one more time to remove Miss Lee from Duncan's clutches. If I can't…"
Leslie decided not to ask what would happen in that event. "Can I go?"
"No, you should remain here for your own safety. You have plenty of mail to go through at any rate." He smiled at her. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
He took a rover and drove out to the Enclave, thinking carefully all the way there, plotting alternatives in the likely event that Duncan would refuse to release Vicky. By the time he pulled to a stop some distance from the gate, he had made a few decisions and was ready to confront Claude Duncan.
He got out of the car and waited at the gate till Duncan appeared from behind a shelter that housed the statue Leslie had seen that morning. Duncan's attention was on his footsteps, so Roarke had to call out. "Duncan! I have come for Miss Lee."
The youthful man behind the gate stopped and stared at him, almost sneering. "She came here of her own free will, Roarke. And now that she is here, she stays."
Roarke never broke his own steady, sharp glare. "I offer you redemption in return for Miss Lee's life."
Though Duncan's expression never changed, the light of mockery seemed to fill his eyes. He strolled confidently toward the statue of Pan. "I need no redemption. The god Pan will preserve me forever."
"If you harm Miss Lee," Roarke warned, "you will be giving yourself over to evil totally and eternally."
"I already belong to Pan, body and soul," Duncan shot back. "I gave him Becky."
"Becky Lee was a voluntary victim, corrupted by your evilness. Her granddaughter will not submit herself voluntarily, and she is innocent!"
"Then that is her worry, Roarke—and yours!" Duncan turned to the statue and gazed at it; Roarke, too, stared at the statue, watching tendrils of smoke drifting around it and a red light flickering around it, as if generated from within by some living thing. The statue almost seemed to be returning Roarke's glare; the smoke and flickering died away after a moment or two, as though it had merely been daring Roarke to engage in a real battle.
"When you confined me within these walls and limited my powers to this chateau, you forfeited your own powers over me," Duncan told Roarke, glaring.
"That was our pact," agreed Roarke, "but I remind you that it ends at midnight."
"By that time, Vicky will be dead—and I will be beyond your reach, forever," Duncan announced, as if certain of a victory.
Roarke's glare grew more savage. "To take Miss Lee, you must destroy me first." And with that, he departed, leaving Duncan there with his statue.
As he drove back toward home, he could just imagine what Leslie would say when she learned of this. He had committed himself to a confrontation, but it was plain enough that Vicky Lee wouldn't get out of this fantasy without his intervention. He decided to see to it that Tattoo stayed with Leslie until he himself returned from the chateau that night.
Supper was ready by the time he reached the main house, and over the meal he informed Leslie and Tattoo of what he had to do. Tattoo frowned; Leslie glanced at him, then asked, "So is Pan as bad as Mephistopheles?"
Roarke, caught by surprise, stared at her and then grinned in spite of himself. It was obvious that his confrontation with his oldest adversary the previous fall had branded itself onto her memory, never to be erased. "Well," he said, realizing she expected an answer, "I won't have to engage in a contest of wits, let's put it that way. However, facing and defeating Pan carries its own dangers, so there are certainly risks."
"So he's less dangerous?" Leslie pressed him.
"It depends," said Roarke, "on what you define as dangerous, and what degree of peril you place on your various definitions. If you find being banished to Mephistopheles' realm for eternity more dangerous than being destroyed by Pan, then one might say that the former is in fact worse than the latter."
"What he's saying," Tattoo put in with a gleam in his eye, "is, is it worse to go to hell, or to just get killed?"
Leslie glared at him, threw Roarke a disgruntled look and muttered, "Honestly, sometimes I think you two just hate to take me seriously."
They both laughed, and Tattoo patted her arm a few times. "The boss can handle it," he said. "You shouldn't worry so much."
"There are always risks inherent in any such undertaking," Roarke said. "But the procedure involved in battling Pan is more straightforward and, shall we say, less cerebral than dealing with Mephistopheles; and Pan and I are not mortal enemies."
"So once he beats Pan, we won't have to worry about him anymore," Tattoo concluded confidently, and Leslie grinned.
"Good. One less creepy entity to bug us all the time," she said, which made the men laugh again. Leslie and Tattoo had some dessert while Roarke retreated into his study to do a little bit more research, and then Tattoo headed out to the luau to make routine rounds while Leslie prepared outgoing mail to be sent the following day.
Then Roarke noted the time, at around nine, and arose. "I believe it would be a good time to make a check on the Scoggins-MacAllister fantasy," he remarked. "Would you care to come along, Leslie?"
"Sure," she agreed, and Roarke drove them out to the waterfall, where he parked the rover and led her into the nearby jungle, following one of the trails that had been marked on the map he'd split between the two clans. Leslie noticed Roarke himself didn't seem to need a map and thought, Well, are you really surprised? She grinned to herself and made sure to stick close behind him; she didn't have his extensive knowledge of the island.
After about forty minutes of steady walking, Leslie finally dared venture to ask, "How far is it really to the still, Mr. Roarke?"
He glanced at her over his shoulder and smiled. "If you are familiar with the area, or if you have the full map, getting from the waterfall to the still involves about three hours of walking. Because each clan has only half the map, and because neither will cooperate with the other, it will thus take all of them several times that long."
"I guess they just can't stand to break up a good feud," Leslie wisecracked, and he chuckled, beckoning her along.
Another fifteen minutes or so later, they could hear shouting somewhere not too far ahead of them; Roarke frowned, pausing, then shook his head. "Someone may be in danger," he said. "Stay close by me."
She all but grabbed the back of his suit jacket as she picked her way along in his wake; they rounded several twists, climbed over a couple of fallen trees and even a boulder at one point, and then came around a last curve to find Norris Scoggins dangling upside down from a noose snare anchored in the top of a nearby young tree, and R.J. trussed up on the ground, squirming and hollering. "Mr. Roarke!" they both shouted in relief.
Leslie gaped. "Holy cow, what happened to you guys?"
"Otis and Amos MacAllister, that's what!" yelled R.J. "Can you help us?"
"Leslie, quickly," Roarke said, gesturing at R.J., and he knelt to work loose a knot that was large and lumpy, but ultimately not very complicated. He then pulled R.J. to his feet and Leslie rapidly unwound the rope from around him, amid R.J.'s profuse thanks. R.J. and Roarke then pulled at the tree, not much more than a sapling really, and managed to bend it far enough toward the ground so that Norris was able to sit right-side up, grab the loop ensnaring his ankles, and work his feet out of it. R.J. helped his uncle get to his feet, checking that he was okay.
Norris grinned appreciatively. "Boy, am I glad to see you, Mr. Roarke. Lucky for us you happened along."
"Most fortunate, yes," Roarke agreed, glancing at Leslie. She understood; they could just as easily have followed the path assigned to the MacAllisters.
"Otis and Amos got the map," R.J. commented a little apathetically, his face a curious parody of sorrow. "I guess they must've found the still by now."
Roarke and Leslie were both amazed. "Well, considering what is at stake, Mr. Scoggins," Roarke remarked, "the possibility doesn't seem to overexcite you in the least!"
"Y'know, I been noticin' that too, Mr. Roarke," Norris said, turning to his nephew and scowling. "Sometimes I worry that the wear 'n' tear o' propagation just plain thinned out the Scoggins blood too much!" At that Roarke turned aside to hide a grin.
R.J. finally reacted for real. "Don't you worry none about my blood!" he snapped.
"Well, I do, boy, I do," Norris retorted and turned back to Roarke. "What happens now, Mr. Roarke, are we beat?"
Roarke smiled reassuringly. "Oh no—not at all, no. Even with the map, it will be morning before your adversaries can reach the mountain, no. And, in consideration of the unfair tactics employed by them—" he indicated the limply dangling noose in the tree— "I will point out a shortcut, which will give you an equal opportunity to still win the contest."
Norris lit up. "Balls o' fire, didja hear that, boy?" he exclaimed, while R.J. looked distinctly annoyed. Oblivious, Norris turned back to Roarke. "Point the way, Mr. Roarke. Ol' Bobby Joe got himself lost, but soon as we find him, we'll be on our way. Just point it out!"
Leslie grinned at his enthusiasm, but couldn't help peering at R.J. and wondering why he seemed so upset by the idea of catching up with the MacAllisters. She pondered the problem while Roarke explained, "Just follow that trail, Mr. Scoggins. I have a feeling you'll find your nephew ahead of you somewhere. I wish the both of you good luck in your quest."
Norris beamed his thanks, then turned just in time to see R.J. take a step towards the supplies lying on the ground nearby. "Fergit the gear, boy, come on!" He grabbed R.J.'s hand and towed him along down the path Roarke had pointed out.
Roarke watched them go, a wry little smile on his features that faded out as the two vanished into the dense overgrowth. Leslie cleared her throat to get his attention, and he turned quizzically to her. "Something on your mind?"
"Did you see the way R.J. looked when you told him and his uncle about the shortcut?" Leslie asked. "I thought for a minute he was going to actually get mad!"
"Indeed," Roarke said, the wry smile returning.
"I wonder why," she mumbled, thinking back. "I mean…I can't imagine any other reason for him doing that except that he's got a thing for Ruthanne MacAllister, but I don't quite get it." She peered at Roarke. "Do people actually fall so much in love that they're willing to desert their families over it?"
"Frequently," Roarke assured her. "It has happened over and over again throughout the millennia. And in this case, it should provide a very interesting twist to the outcome of this little contest." He winked at her. "It's getting quite late, and you need your sleep; we'd best get back as quickly as we can."
Tattoo had come back from the luau when they got back, so Roarke sent Leslie to bed and asked Tattoo to remain till he returned. He took the drive to the Enclave slowly, as there was plenty of time to kill; he had to think about things in any case. A memory came back to him as he let the rover coast along the Ring Road—one from nearly fifty years back, at the time when Claude Duncan had first come to the island. He'd had no entourage; it was just Duncan himself, with eight or ten steamer trunks, crate after crate of ornate furniture to be stored till the chateau was complete, and dozens and dozens of knickknacks, doodads and tchotchkes in every possible size. Among these had been a painting that had been very carefully wrapped in an old bedsheet; Roarke had been at what was now the ferry dock at the time, on some business, while most of the young men from the fishing village had been unloading Duncan's belongings in a never-ending stream. Somehow he had noticed that painting going by, swaying on the shoulders of a kid who couldn't have been more than about fourteen years old; as the boy stumbled along, hunchbacked by the painting's weight, the coverings fell aside and Roarke saw the subject. It was a portrait of Claude Duncan, already looking taut and grim with age, glaring out of the painting with his arms crossed defiantly over his chest. He was wearing an elegant tuxedo, but looked like something right out of hell.
Roarke had never forgotten that painting, and even then he had known immediately who the subject was and why it looked like that. He had thought, at the time, that it was The Portrait of Dorian Gray come to life; and now, as he guided the coasting car along the curves of the Ring Road, he knew that painting was the key to this whole thing. He had to smile. Maybe Pan and Duncan had been inspired by that story, who knew? In which case, it should be simple enough to bring this whole sorry mess to an end.
He had to pay more attention to his driving when he reached the Enclave's access lane, for it sloped somewhat steeply up the side of the large hill that formed this part of the island. He switched his high beams on as soon as he turned down the lane that led to the chateau, and applied a little speed, since the lane was pin-straight and his watch told him that midnight was less than ten minutes away.
He pulled the car to a stop in front of the gate and surveyed the area; it was nearly impossible to see, for the moon was hidden and the jungle very effectively shaded the chateau from any pesky ray of light that might dare venture in. Once more he looked at his watch; there were literally seconds till midnight.
Peering overhead, he drew in a deep breath and raised one hand; the entire world around him stilled. There was no sound, no motion at all; it was like standing in the middle of a photograph. He nodded once to himself and closed his eyes, and an instant later he was standing in a gloomy, windowless room in the interior of the Duncan chateau, surrounded by walls hung with deep red draperies, punctuated by columns, idols, statues, braziers and sconces. Almost everything was hewn from stone. On one wall ticked an elegant gold clock with a heavy, ornate pendulum that swung back and forth at a wide angle. It was in the midst of chiming midnight when he stilled it.
Beside a table with a thick marble top stood a tuxedoed man and a dark-haired young woman dressed in purple; he had her by one arm and was clearly preparing to drive a knife into her. She, too, was motionless. "Duncan," Roarke said.
Duncan turned and gaped. "Roarke!" When Roarke made no move but merely stared at him, he said, "You're too late. You can't enter the pentacle."
"The pact ended at midnight, Duncan," Roarke reminded him. "We are now frozen in an instant of time between the death of the old day and the birth of the new. Look at the clock." He pointed to it, and Duncan took in the way the pendulum hovered to one side, caught just as it was about to swing back the other way. Neither man seemed to notice that, despite the complete stillness of everything else in the room, the fires in the sconces and braziers crackled merrily on.
"A trick," Duncan said, glaring. "Pan will renew my covenant!"
But Roarke had heard the note of desperation in his voice, and smiled ever so slightly. "No. No, he cannot. Not until the new day has begun."
They hovered a moment, Duncan's wariness growing; then Roarke sauntered down the few steps into the room. "There is always a way, Duncan." He reached a brazier and removed a brand from it. "Throughout human history, fire has been the great cleanser." He crossed the room at leisure, brand at the ready. "Consuming the waste matters of plague and pestilence…devouring corruption…" Perhaps that touched a chord with Duncan, for he dodged aside as if shying from a blow. "…purifying the tainted earth and cauterizing the wounds of the world." He paused beside the painting he remembered from so long ago; it looked more frightful and repulsive than ever. A sense of satisfaction leaped to life within him as he aimed for it with the brand.
"No, Roarke, no!" cried Duncan desperately. Roarke paused, withdrew the brand for a moment and took in the horrified expression on Duncan's face. It was the look of a man who knew his life was about to end.
"Let the flames cleanse you too," Roarke urged gently. "Let them take you to your rest." He waited, but Duncan could only stare, helpless to move; at last he turned back to the painting and seared it with the brand.
"No," moaned Duncan, pure panic on his face. "No, no…" He gasped, his breath increasingly labored, while the paint on the canvas buckled and began to melt, slowly dripping off the easel. Roarke turned back to watch, taking care to keep the brand pressed firmly against the canvas; Duncan threw both hands over his face and trembled against the wall.
Slowly, the image on the painting became that of the real Claude Duncan; though his face was hidden, his hands showed the effects of age, the ravages of the last fifty years spotting them, gnarling them, leaving them weaker. All the disfiguration that had been held at bay came back in a gradual but perceptible rush, till the man against the wall began to slump and the hands slowly fell away from the face, revealing a grisly skull barely concealed by rotting green flesh. Then the whole apparition faded from sight, as if it had never been, leaving behind the elegant tuxedo Duncan had been wearing, now crumpled on the floor.
The canvas itself finally caught fire and began to burn, and Roarke lowered the brand, turning his back on the easel and taking in the room. He narrowed his eyes carefully at the clock; the pendulum resumed swinging and the chiming continued. Sound and motion returned in a surprisingly noisy rush. He replaced the brand in its brazier, then walked over to Vicky Lee, who jerked into motion, blinked and looked around.
Without a word, he braced her shoulder and turned her around to lead her out of the room and back to the bungalow she had never actually set foot in that weekend. At the door, however, they heard a rush of fire behind them and saw that the main brazier in the middle of the room had become a bonfire. Behind this, they could make out the unmistakable image of a man and a woman, holding each other as if posing for a movie poster, dressed in the elegance of some sixty years before.
"Thank you, Mr. Roarke," Claude Duncan's voice came to them as from a distance, echoing. "Thank you for freeing me at last. Ah, Becky…my love…my love." The fire reared even higher and the two ghostly figures faded from view.
"Mr. Roarke…did you see? Did you hear?" breathed Vicky in wonder.
"Yes, Miss Lee. The real Claude Duncan and your grandmother, together at last, forever." He smiled faintly. "What the flames destroyed was not a man, but only an evil dream, a shadow of reality." She glanced at him, then smiled; and they left the room together.