"It"s not," Isoud said, "you cheated."
"I did not cheat," Guy said. "A shank is part of the works of a lock, ask anybody. If you like, I"ll call the warder. He should know about locks if anybody does."
"I"m not playing with you any more.
"Good."
A rat nuzzled affectionately up to Guy"s hand and was both shocked and profoundly disillusioned when the hand tried to swat him. He retreated into a distant part of the cell and, since rodents can"t cry, started to gnaw at a splinter of wood.
"Of course," Guy said suddenly, "it could be that we"ve been missing something important here.
"Oh yes?" said the voice eagerly. "Do tell."
Guy reached inside his jacket and felt for something. To his great relief it was still there. "All we have to do in order to get out of here," he said, "is to open the door, right?"
"That would help, certainly," the voice agreed. "But, and far be it from me to play devil"s advocate or anything, isn"t that going to be
"Not," Guy said, "if I shoot the lock off."
"Gosh!" The voice sounded impressed. "Can you do that?" it asked.
Guy drew his revolver and screwed up his eyes. There was just enough light to see that it was loaded. "Don"t see why not," he said. "Stay well back, everyone."
He advanced to the door, felt for the lock, placed the muzzle next to it, and fired. The noise, which was ear-splitting in the confines of the cell, slowly died away. From the other side of the door came the sound of someone saying, "Look, do you mind?" in a querulous tone. Guy tried the door. It was solid. There was a bullet-hole clean through the wood about an inch above the lockplate.
The peephole in the door slid back, filling the cell (or so it seemed) with a beam of blinding light.
"See that?" said the warder.
"Pardon?"
"That"s a brand new hat, that is," the warder went on. "And now look at it."
Guy blushed. "Sorry," he said.
"Bloke can"t pull up a chair and take forty winks in this place without getting holes in his hat," the warder grumbled. "What"s the world coming to, that"s what I want to know."
"It was an accident," Guy said. "Honest."
"Oh yes?" The warder didn"t sound impressed.
"It was," Guy insisted. "I was trying to, er, shoot off the lock, and I must have ..." He closed his eyes and tried to swallow the shame. "Missed."
There was a long silence.
"Missed."
"Must have."
"I see."
"Good."
"I was," the warder went on, "going to come in there and take that thing off you as an offensive weapon. Still, seeing as how you can"t even hit a lock, I don"t think I"ll bother." The peephole cover slid back, flooding the cell with darkness, and Guy put his revolver back in its holster. More than anything else in the world, he realised, he hated hats.
Blondel opened his eyes and looked round. To his relief, he found that he wasn"t there any more.
Lying next to him, however, were a large number of rec.u.mbent bodies; about thirty of them. They looked as if they"d been in a fight.
One of them groaned and lifted its head slightly. The effort proved too great, however, and it sagged back.
"h.e.l.lo," Blondel said, "what happened to you?"
The soldier looked up and instinctively reached for something at his side. Blondel put his foot on it and smiled.
"Not now," he said. "What happened?"
"It was those other blokes," the soldier said.
"What other blokes?"
"The ones who came down the corridor a few minutes after we got here," the soldier replied. "We were just about to take you into custody when they got here and started arguing the toss. Said it was their collar and why didn"t we back off. Well, we weren"t standing for that. There"s a reward."
"Oh yes?"
"Too right." The soldier grinned. "We showed them all right," he said, and fainted.
Blondel sighed. It was at times like this that he wondered why he bothered. He had this strong suspicion that all he really had to do was wait quietly and everybody would beat the springs out of everybody else without him having to lift a finger.
He stood up and counted the bodies. It came to an odd number. Not so good.
In the distance, he could hear the sound of running feet.
"Listen," he said out loud, and pointed towards the direction the sound was coming from. "You go that way, right?" Then he picked up his feet and ran the other way.
He hadn"t gone far when he stopped. Not voluntarily; there was this door in the way.
Blondel picked himself up off the ground, rubbed his nose and looked at the door warily. Something told him that whatever there was on the other side wasn"t going to be friendly. It had that sort of look about it.
Behind him he could hear footsteps, getting closer. They sounded like the footsteps of heavily armed men who have just had a fight with themselves and are dying to vent their embarra.s.sment on an unarmed and vulnerable third party.
On the other hand, it was perhaps the least prepossessing door he"d ever seen, in quite possibly a uniquely wide experience of the subject. Not only did it have the words No Entry written on it, but also the word Honestly.
Behind him, Blondel could hear voices. They seemed to be discussing, in a breathless but enthusiastic way, who was going to have the privilege of mutilating which part of him.
When is a door not a door?
When it"s a jar.