The second door was unlocked, and put us in a chemical laboratory: retorts, tubes, burners and a small still. There was a little round iron stove in the middle of the room. No one was there.
We went out into the hallway and to the third door, not so cheerfully. This cellar looked like a bloomer. We were wasting our time here, when we should have stayed upstairs. I tried the door.
It was firm beyond trembling.
We smacked it with our weight, together, experimentally. It didn’t shake.
“Wait.”
Pat went to the woodpile in the rear and came back with an axe.
He swung the axe against the door, flaking out a hunk of wood. Silvery points of light sparkled in the hole. The other side of the door was an iron or steel plate.
Pat put the axe down and leaned on the helve.
“You write the next prescription,” he said.
I didn’t have anything to suggest, except:
“I’ll camp here. You beat it upstairs, and see if any of your coppers have shown up. This is a Godforsaken hole, but somebody may have sent in an alarm. See if you can find another way into this room—a window, maybe—or manpower enough to get us in through this door.”
Pat turned toward the steps.
A sound stopped him—the clicking of bolts on the other side of the iron-lined door.
A jump put Pat on one side of the frame. A step put me on the other.