Chapter Six: Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Champagne
For a few minutes now, Sergius had been standing in the doorway, holding the door open. He'd noticed at some point that it appeared to be a heavy metal door sandwiched between thin layers of wood. Hard to break down, he imagined.
Now he supposed he should let go of it and step into the room to help Batgirl look for clues, or whatever they were supposed to look for. But he wasn't sure what would happen if he let go of the door. He started to say something—and Batgirl glanced at him and then dragged a husky pirate toward him.
You wouldn't think a girl her size would be able to move something in the neighborhood of two hundred pounds of inert thug so quickly, but she didn't appear to find it much of a strain. After they had turned the pirate into a human doorstop, Sergius moved forward a few paces and surveyed the other casualties, letting impressions run through his brain as he tried to make sense of it all.
He finally asked: "That makes fourteen bad guys we've met. Is it just me, or are they all singularly untalkative?"
Batgirl shrugged in a noncommittal sort of way.
Sergius reflected she wasn't the type to seek lengthy conversations with her enemies in any event, but he continued doggedly: "Those first two, you took down before they had time to chat. But your other fights tonight have been longer—yet I didn't hear the four in the kitchen trying to coordinate their attacks or anything, and the same goes for these pirates. With so many of them, I'd think at least one would try to yell out orders for a team effort. Don't pirate crews always have a captain?"
"Everyone's a critic," The Spook complained in the usual booming voice from overhead (he must have the whole house wired like crazy). "I'm the captain, and they already had their sailing orders."
"Actually, I think 'sailing orders' are what some higher authority gives to the captain for his next voyage; not what the captain gives to the crew," Sergius corrected, knowing it wasn't worth arguing about, but laying the "pedantic professional wordsmith" bit on thick, just for the heck of it, while he stared at the profile of an unconscious lady pirate and tried to figure out why it seemed vaguely familiar from this angle.
The Spook didn't bother to respond to that bait, so Sergius was free to ponder in peace and quiet. He had long known his memory for faces was nothing spectacular. Sometimes he even got fooled for a minute when the heroine in a movie or TV show had simply changed the color and style of her hair between scenes.
That triggered a chain of thought—Sergius hunkered beside the lady pirate and tugged gently at the thick black curls. They came easily away from her scalp—a wig. Underneath, the real hair was light brown and a bit wavy. Now he had it—Althea Wyndham, daughter of the senior partner of the law firm of Wyndham, Forrestal, Abrams, and Hefnick. Sergius didn't know her well, but had seen her at a few parties within the last couple of years. He thought her major was chemical engineering.
It beggared the imagination to suppose Mason Wyndham's daughter would need to sign up as a villain's henchwoman in order to make ends meet. And Sergius had never seen, nor heard of, her displaying any tendency toward violence as a matter of temperament. But wasn't The Spook supposed to have an uncanny ability as a hypnotist? News reports said he had escaped the electric chair that way, and once nearly got Batman electrocuted because everyone else in the prison saw a convicted murderer when they looked at him on the night of the scheduled execution.
Was that the explanation for these numerous silent adversaries? Innocent bystanders who'd simply been mesmerized into doing as they were told? Saved you all that trouble of recruiting veteran hardcases who might quarrel over their "proper" shares of the take after a big caper, Sergius supposed. Although there didn't seem much prospect of The Spook making a cash profit on tonight's ridiculous activities, regardless of his payroll expenses or the complete lack thereof . . . then Sergius remembered urban legends about "snuff films" and immediately wished he hadn't.
On the other hand . . . one book he'd read on modern myths and conspiracy theories had asserted that the FBI, after many years of looking, had never yet found a copy of a professionally made, mass-distributed, authentically fatal "snuff film" in any hardened criminal's collection of kinky entertainment. If there really was a thriving industry that used real deaths instead of special effects to give the target audience that ghoulish thrill, then some honest-to-goodness evidence should have turned up by now, right?
He scowled, dismissed those vagrant thoughts, and kept his knowledge of this lady pirate's family background to himself. He didn't know why Althea was here, but it might help, somehow, to keep The Spook from realizing Sergius had recognized her. (Anyway, his current theory was that Batgirl would quickly "see" that Sergius had recognized this girl as an acquaintance without his needing to say so. If she really cared, she could always ask him for details.)
"These pirates aren't going anywhere for awhile, I take it?" he asked Batgirl, and judged that her answering smile meant they'd all be completely out of it for at least a few more hours. On that assumption, he added, "Then let's check out the banquet table over yonder, first. I'm curious." They proceeded across the room, past the shattered chandelier, Batgirl silently insisting on leading the way—presumably in case there were more booby traps, but naturally she didn't explain.
The table was well-stocked with a variety of viands, several of them still steaming faintly in the cool air. There were covers over some of the dishes, a fancy glass lid over the entire punch bowl, and plastic wrap over a couple of platters of crackers, vegetables, fruit slices, and so forth. Sergius decided The Spook had wanted to make sure the flying glass from the falling chandelier would be unable to contaminate the refreshments.
Very considerate, in a perverse sort of way. Sergius imagined the guy muttering to himself: If my "guests" survive the pirates and the chandelier, then at least they won't have to worry about eating bits of glass by accident! After all, serving contaminated victuals would be downright rude!
Sergius suddenly wondered who had cooked the food and laid it out on the table. The vampires? The pirates? Had The Spook himself taken a hand? Or had he taken the risk of hiring a regular caterering firm under a pseudonym, letting them stock the buffet and then paying them off and dismissing them before bringing his prisoners into the house? Sergius shook his head as he decided it didn't really matter right now.
"I imagine you'll be admiring the lavish spread by now," The Spook said with a certain note of feigned modesty in his eerie voice. (Either he couldn't see exactly what they were doing, or he was pretending he couldn't?) "Don't stand on ceremony—feel free to dig in right away! Got to keep up your strength for the rest of the festivities, kids!"
Batgirl and Sergius exchanged glances and shook their heads in perfect unison. Swallow a supervillain's food and drink without a qualm? Neither of them were that gullible. Even if Sergius was getting hungry, now that his nose was enjoying the aromas surrounding the table.
"Sorry," he said, making little effort to sound regretful, "but I hate to eat on an empty stomach." (He hoped the illogic of that would fluster The Spook for a minute.)
Fat chance. "So soak it with alcohol first!" their host recommended. "Choose your poison!"
Batgirl stiffened and glared at the collection of bottles at the right end of the table, just past the punch bowl. Sergius said quickly, "'Choose your poison' is just a funny way of saying 'select one of the available beverages.' He didn't mean those are laced with something lethal."
Batgirl favored Sergius with a very skeptical look, and he added weakly, "Well, he shouldn't have meant it that way!" He wondered why he was even arguing about this. He had already decided not to drink anything; he'd only wanted to improve her grasp of English idiom.
"I'm not thirsty now, but thanks anyway," he added, directing his words toward the ceiling, knowing The Spook wouldn't believe him, but wondering if prolonging this conversation might offer a chance to pick up a few clues of some sort.
The Spook said: "And what about you, young lady? You must burn thousands of calories in a typical night's work! Don't you feel the need to top off your fuel tank again before further exertions, my precious microchiropteran?"
"That last word means a member of the major suborder of bats," Sergius interpeted, a bit smug at being able to say that so confidently. (After becoming acquainted with the man at a dinner party, Sergius had sent one of his novels to Kirk Langstrom as a gift, and Langstrom had reciprocated with a volume from his own collection. Sergius had actually read it cover to cover—gradually, over a period of weeks—and wading through a book bestowed upon you by Dr. Langstrom was a good way to learn more about bats than you could possibly have needed to know.)
Not that Batgirl seemed to care what The Spook was calling her now. Nor was she wasting time gazing longingly at food she wasn't about to eat. Instead, she was already pointing at the door they hadn't used to enter, and looking quizzically at Sergius. The door had a keypad set in the wall at eye level. . . .
"I don't think we want to waste time on that door," Sergius said. "I'm almost positive we've already seen its other side, at the end of the same corridor that runs past the music room where we met." He paused, then raised his voice to address their captor. "So we'd probably be wasting a perfectly good clue if I figured out the next passcode and used it here? Or is that the only lock which will open after we find the clue you left for us in this room?"
"A valid password will work once, the first time you enter it in any keypad you've seen thus far," The Spook said, probably as pleasantly as his eerie tones could manage. "Which door you try next is entirely up to you!"
"Not exactly a planned linear sequence, then," Sergius muttered. "Well, Batgirl, nothing on the table is seizing my attention, so we might as well try frisking the pirates for clues. You start with the girls, please, same as before."
Sergius found it this time. A male pirate's cloak had an interior pocket, and in the pocket was an old paperback edition of Captain Blood, written by Rafael Sabatini. A bestseller in its day. The movie adaptation in the 1930s had been the young Errol Flynn's big breakthrough as a leading man in Hollywood; he only got the title role because none of the established stars were vying for it. After all, how much money could a low-budget pirate movie possibly make? (Tons and tons, as it turned out, when the pirate movie combined Sabatini's plot with Flynn's charisma.)
Inside the book, a loose scrap of paper continued the pirate theme by saying:
Blackbeard was a child to him.
The answer did not instantly spring to mind, but Sergius saw no percentage in just standing here waiting for it to come to him.
"Lead on," he said to Batgirl. "Pick any of the other doors we haven't tried yet. Then I'll take a crack at deducing the passcode, and we shall see what we shall see."
As they moved away from the table, though, he snatched up a still-sealed bottle of champagne. Something from an old Dick Francis novel had popped into his head. . . .
Batgirl watched him grasp it by the neck, apparently realized he wasn't about to open the bottle for a quick drink, shrugged slightly and didn't say a word (per usual). Sergius nursed the hope that The Spook hadn't seen him grab it, though he was probably kidding himself.
Batgirl led him back into the kitchen . . . around into the corridor on that side of the ground floor . . . and finally rapped on the second door on the left-hand side of that corridor. Then she turned and looked at Sergius expectantly as he caught up.
He peered at the paper again. What was Blackbeard's real name? Edward Teach? Yes. Sergius had no idea what the father's Christian name had been, though.
Sergius tried the key combinations which could mean MISTER TEACH, TEACH SENIOR, and other variations—all unsuccessfully—then decided he was being silly. Nerves must be rattled. Not "his child," but "a child to him." Oddly phrased—there could be other shades of meaning. The relationship to some mentor who had become a substitute father-figure, perhaps? Had there been such a man in Blackbeard's younger days? If so, would The Spook really expect Sergius to know about it?
He thought about the movie Blackbeard's Ghost (starring Peter Ustinov in a hilarious performance), but couldn't remember any father-figures being mentioned in the script.
Pirates, privateers, buccaneers. Who were the other big names, real or fictional? Captain Kidd (unfairly maligned), Henry Morgan, Anne Bonney, Sir Francis Drake, The Pirates of Penzance, Terry and the Pirates, Jon Valor (The Black Pirate), Long John Silver and all his friends in Treasure Island. . . .
Then he had it! He keyed 3-5-4-6-8 (for FLINT) and the door clicked open.
"Sorry it took so long," he apologized to Batgirl as she shoved past him in order to check the room. "I finally remembered that when Stevenson was establishing how ruthless his fictional Captain Flint had been, he had someone say: 'Blackbeard was a child to Flint!' Maybe our host is a Treasure Island fan?"
He broke off as he realized he was only speaking to her back whilst she prowled through the room, seeking and not finding any ambushers this time. Had he really expected her to be interested in the details of how he'd deciphered a clue she couldn't even read? It belatedly occurred to him that if she was illiterate in English—and possibly not literate in any language?—then it was horribly possible that she had never read Treasure Island in any form and didn't know what he was talking about. A wave of sympathy overwhelmed him. He knew children in many parts of the world grew up in what an American would consider wretched poverty, but to be deprived of Treasure Island. . . .
But was that why he was here? Because he knew his English literature and she didn't? VARNEY had been odd enough—the sort of thing an English major or career novelist might remember from some old article about the history of vampiric literature in the English-speaking world. Not terribly relevant to conventional detective work, but Sergius had wondered if The Spook was just feeding them a very soft pitch to get the game started without delay.
FLINT, though, was more of the same—a great many Treasure Island buffs could have figured it out eventually, regardless of how much or how little they knew about modern criminology. Sergius had initially expected something closer to a scenario straight out of John Dickson Carr or Agatha Christie. . . . at the back of his mind, he'd been wondering all along when the surprise twist would come. . . .
He collapsed onto a couch which she had already peered behind without finding anything untoward. Now she was behind the draperies across the room. "Batgirl," he said in a strained voice, "he's been lying to us. I don't know why I'm here in the first place, but not for serious detective work—there still hasn't been any! The Spook doesn't care if we might add up to the equivalent of a second-rate Batman—"
Then everything dropped out from under him. If Sergius had been trained for these things, and if he had also possessed lightning reflexes and acrobatic expertise—such as Batgirl obviously enjoyed—then he might have been able to spring away from the couch before it was too late. In reality, of course, couch and passenger plunged down into the basement before he recovered from the shock triggered by that unexpected falling sensation in his belly. And by then the hole above him had closed, of course.
Author's Notes: First I lost the flash drive which contained the rough draft of this chapter, but I found it after a few days. Later, when I was literally a couple of minutes away from uploading the finished product to FanFiction so I could post it, I suddenly had the file get corrupted as I was saving my latest revisions to it. I still don't know how that happened. I eventually was able to use some downloaded software to retrieve most of what I had done in the last few hours before the corruption set in (I had a backup copy from a day or so earlier), but it set me further behind schedule. Now I'll be taking a break from working on this serial, because it's the time of year when I always write a Christmas-themed short story about Cassandra Cain. After I've gotten that out of the way, I'll press onward with this one.
(It helps that I know exactly where I want it all to end up, and in the next couple of chapters, as we switch to Cassandra's point of view again for awhle, you'll start getting a better idea of why The Spook has really gone to such a ridiculous amount of trouble.)