The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 9.3

He didn't have the key on him, of course, not having expecting to have to let himself out of his own basement when he left for dinner the night before, but Thijis hadn't planned on going that route anyhow. They'd certainly have men in the halls and on the staircase.

No, the only way was straight up, a direction the house's mysterious builders apparently thought quite important: in the middle of the cellar stood a massive rectangular pylon built of brick and stone, which ran straight up through the center of the house. At a glance, it appeared to be a great chimney, the kind that might serve many hearths throughout a big old home. If one circumnavigated it, however, and looked closely in the darkness beneath a stone arch leading to another, similar pylon, one would find a door of iron.

The other stone structure was the true chimney. This was a bolt hole with secret access to every floor in the building, including the roof. Thijis worked the mechanism that opened the door, a small iron stud concealed as a bolt, and peered inside, wishing he had a lantern.

Heavy iron rungs climbed two sides of the shaft. Thijis chose a side and started to climb. The shaft—obviously designed to assist the building's occupants in fighting off or escaping an incursion—was the last and most important reason he'd chosen this building as a home. You can't be too careful in this business, he'd told Dalia at the time, pleased with himself. If your business calls for an escape route from your own house, she'd said, maybe you're in the wrong business.

"Coming in handy now, though. Keep me out of my own house, will you?" he whispered to the darkness. "Fucking gobbers."

Perhaps Dalia had a point.

Unfortunately, the opening to the shaft on the top floor let out into the hallway outside his apartment, an open space far too likely to contain a constable for his liking. No, the roof was the thing, and from there...from there he'd just see.

The shaft ended in the middle of the flat roof, again disguised at the mouth of a chimney. Thijis eased the metal door open, wincing in fear that it would squeak. It didn't.

Poking his head briefly above the lip of the wide chimney, he scanned the roof to find it empty. Releasing a nervous breath, he climbed onto the flagstone patio and hurried to his thrown-together seating area, which was much as he'd left it two nights before. The sound recorder sat untouched, enclosed in its waxed wood case under the rain awning at the edge of the roof. A good sign no one had been up here; the thing was worth a month's pay, and sheriff's men were not always particular about obeying the laws they enforced.

He stopped by the old couch he kept there long enough to inspect the wine bottles strewn around it. Empty. He frowned, and turned to the parapet running behind the awning.

He was just above his flat now, over the east-facing window looking into his work area. He leaned over the edge of the wall and regretted it, the five stories to the ground seeming higher than he remembered. But then, he'd never considered climbing down it before.

This was the part he had to see about. Specifically, he had to see about a way to get from this roof through that window, mostly alive. The window ledge was a good twelve feet down from his position, with nothing between but smooth stone wall and thick old glass. Thijis scratched his head and strongly considered giving up. The problem with thinking three steps ahead of everyone, even when you could manage it, was that you had to keep thinking that far ahead or things caught up. And you filled in this blank with some vague notion of leaping over the parapet and swinging through the window on the end of a drapery, announcing your presence to anyone nearby with a magnificent shattering of glass.