The Black Stallion Mystery (17 page)

Alec walked up and down the wide corridors, knowing he had found what he’d sought, the emergency stables which Barjas ben Ishak had built so many centuries ago. But they held no horses now, only unused furniture and appliances.

He stopped before one of the round, massive pillars that supported the cellar roof. Was the unused fireplace in the small, bare room directly above this? It might be. The great pillar probably helped support the chimney as well as the cellar roof. But he still smelled only clamminess in the cellars. Where had the odor of liniment come from? Outside?

Returning to the main floor, he bolted the cellar door again and stole softly down the hall. There was no sound of anyone moving through the big house, and he no longer felt, as he had below, that someone was watching him. He wanted to find out if the bottle of liniment was in the tack room where he had left it. Also, he could make certain the Black was safe. But even if he had had the key to the front door he couldn’t have slipped the heavy bolts without awakening the household.

From outside came the rumble of thunder. From a window Alec could see that the sky was heavily clouded, the full moon emerging occasionally to spread a milky-white glow over the darkened gardens. It was now close to four o’clock by the stableyard clock and dawn would be breaking before very long. If he planned to search further, he decided, he’d better do it now under the cover of darkness.

He opened the window and, leaning out, saw that there was a ledge under the window that went all the way to a corner of the house (where he knew the kitchen area to be), and beyond it.

It was wide enough for a good foothold. He wouldn’t have any trouble reaching the corner and from there he’d be able to drop into the stream. He’d made dives from such a height plenty of times. But why do it? Why even get wet? What had he to gain if he found the bottle of leg liniment missing from the tack room? What would it prove? Only that someone else was using it. But where? And was the Black safe in his stall?

He raised the window higher. His hands groped along the outer wall until he’d found a good hold, then he pulled himself onto the ledge and began inching toward his objective.

If, as he believed, Ziyadah was stabled
here
and not running free in the mountains, another piece in this whole crazy jigsaw fell into place. But who tended Ziyadah? Who opened and closed the big gate, sending him into the mountains?

And what about Angel González and María? What part did they play in this? Had they really returned to make certain he and Henry were all right? Or were they in some way connected with last night’s appearance of Ziyadah?

The moon came out and Alec stopped moving, afraid that he might be seen in its light. Somewhere a dog barked. Alec could hear the splashing of the fountains below.

There was only one question he needed to have
answered: If Ziyadah was here, where was he stabled? If not in the cellars, could he be somewhere in the barns themselves?

A heavy cloud shrouded the moon and Alec went on. Reaching the corner of the building, he looked down. He knew that the water below was dark and deep, but this was no time to hesitate or turn back. He sat down on the ledge, pushed himself clear of the building and dropped.

A moment later he pulled himself out of the stream, having learned abruptly that the water was extremely cold in addition to being deep. He favored his right ankle, which he had twisted upon hitting the water. The injury wasn’t serious but it slowed him down.

Shivering, he skirted the stableyard and climbed the knoll to the stallion barn. To add to his discomfort it started to rain. As he bent his head into the dark and sluicing downpour he slipped on the wet grass, hurting his ankle even more.

The Black heard him and snorted. “Go back to sleep, black horse,” Alec said outside the closed door. “I’m the only one who would have picked such a night to go swimming. But I’m glad you’re safe. I was worried.”

His teeth chattering, Alec went to the cabinet in the tack room where he had left the liniment. The bottle was there, just where he had put it, and the level was the same. He took it down and then, still feeling cold and miserable, went into the stall that had once belonged to Ziyadah. He sat down in the deep, clean straw.

“You dream too much,” he told himself. “Worse still, you let your imagination run wild. There is no Ziyadah hidden here. He runs free in the mountains. You chased him yourself, so you should know. Tomorrow you’ll pay for all this, for you can’t get back in the house without waking everybody up.”

The rain whirling outside seemed to make his head spin, and it occurred to him that perhaps he had hurt his ankle even more than he had thought. Taking off his shoe and sock, he rubbed on some of the liniment in the belief that what had helped the Black’s leg would help his. His eyes and nose smarted from the strong fumes, and he was reminded again of the cellar stables.

Now if he had been old Barjas ben Ishak and had been building this place, what provision would he have made for his most prized stallion in case of an unexpected raid?

Alec had no ready answer to this question. And just then the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. The moon came out briefly and the dogs began barking again. In the fields the crickets chirred and the wind howled. The liniment felt good on Alec’s bare foot. He shoved it into the straw and covered it completely for added warmth and comfort. Then he took off his other wet shoe and sock and stuck that foot into the straw too, wishing he could remove his wet clothes as well. Why not, if he got old Nazar’s blanket from the chair outside? He started to get up, his bare feet pressing deep into the bottom of the straw. Cold metal brushed against his right foot and, thinking it something that had been dropped there, he bent down to pick it up. But he couldn’t budge it. Leaning over for a closer look, he discovered that it was a large ring, made of gold and
fastened to the floor. He pulled it again, wondering why it was there.

Suddenly a soft hum filled the stall, as if some mechanism had started. Then with a faint grinding of gears the straw floor dropped, taking Alec down slowly. The last thing he saw as he descended was the ghostly light of the moon coming through the stall door.

The long drop and the darkness all around gave Alec the feeling he had been descending for an eternity. The faint hum seemed to have become a hideous roar of grinding, chattering iron teeth and wheels. Slowly, heavily the lift went down, down … and if Alec had had a chance to do it over again he never would have touched the gold ring without first having gone for Henry.

Suddenly a dim light penetrated the darkness and only then did Alec realize that the lift mechanism wasn’t making as much noise as he had thought. Instead, it was turning smoothly, almost softly, and he could smell the heavy oil that lubricated it. Finally the vibrations ceased altogether and the lift came to a stop.

Alec saw a small, bare bulb burning on a rocky wall outside the lift. There was a narrow opening in the wall and the air coming from it was clammy. The opening led to a passageway and Alec had no doubt that many horses had passed through it.

The way was pitch-dark and he had no desire to travel it without a light. Yet he stepped from the straw floor into the opening and stared into the blackness. It was as silent as a grave. Turning back, he noticed for the first time that there were two switches set in the wall next to the electric light bulb. One or the other must operate the lift. He pulled the top one. But instead of the whir of a motor, there was a sudden lighting of bare bulbs every thirty feet or so along the passageway. Quickly Alec turned the lights off, afraid that already he had warned someone of his presence. For many minutes he listened but there were no footsteps on the stone, no sound of any breathing but his own.

When he was certain no one was coming, he pulled the lower switch. The faint hum of a working mechanism started again and the straw floor began to rise. He stopped it, even though common sense told him to take it to the surface at once and let Henry know what he had discovered.

He stared into the dark passageway, breathing the air that smelled of old earth and stone. Carried on the damp air too was the odor of liniment … and it was not from the liniment on his ankle. Slowly, ever so slowly, he made up his mind, listening only to a reckless inner voice that told him to find out what lay at the end of the tunnel. He threw the switch that lit the passageway and went forward quickly, his bare feet making no noise on the stone floor.

He walked beneath the dim white lights, finding it far more difficult to accept this tunnel-like passage than the lift that had brought him down. Such raising and lowering mechanisms had been in use long before the
time of Barjas ben Ishak. In fact, the Romans had used such lifts, cranked by men, to raise wild animals to the arena from underground pens! But here in the bowels of the rock the ancient stone floor of the tunnel was smooth beneath his feet and on the walls were sculptured figures of horses. Alec had no doubt that this underground shaft had been hand-hewn by many hundreds of men over a long period of time. It was no work of nature. For further proof he had only to look at the arched roof and the cylindrical borings that ran upwards for ventilation.

The strong odor of liniment floated toward him, carried from the distant regions of the tunnel. He hurried along, sometimes breaking into a half-run as one might do when going home late on a semi-lighted street and feeling very much alone. Finally he came to a heavy wooden door. It was wide open!

But if the open door was inviting the darkness beyond was not. Alec looked in but could see nothing. He had gone far enough, he told himself. He should go back and get Henry.

But might not Ziyadah’s stall be on the other side? Or had Abd-al-Rahman’s quest of the golden stallion been just a ruse to acquire the Black?

Alec turned away from the door, his thoughts in a turmoil. Then he saw a switch on the wall. If he pulled it, would it light the room on the other side of the doorway? Would he see Ziyadah,
the sire of the Black?
He could feel his heart pounding like a hammer. He pulled the switch.

The lights in the tunnel went out and he stood motionless in complete darkness. He could easily have
thrown the switch back on again but he didn’t. Instead he waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the lack of light. After a few minutes he was able to detect a faint glow on the other side of the door. The skin on his throat tightened as, contrary to his better judgment, he slipped through the doorway.

It was not a room which he had entered but a long and wide corridor, at the end of which burned the remains of a dying fire. This was the glow he had seen. He went toward it slowly, one step at a time, feeling his way cautiously. Unlike the passage he had just left the walls here were of smooth mortar. He believed that he was somewhere beneath the cellars he had searched only a short while ago. Barjas ben Ishak, it was clear, had not been content with his cellar stables any more than he had been with those outside the house. So he had built these secret chambers to which he could take his most highly prized stallions whenever danger threatened.

Alec had taken thirty-one steps down the corridor, counting as he went along. Then his hand touched wood instead of stone. He stopped and ran his fingers over the surface. It was a paneled door, probably made of oak. Suddenly Alec froze. There was a horse on the other side of the door!

The odor of leg liniment was very strong and Alec had heard the horse start up in the straw, rustling it and coming over to the door. Alec touched an iron bolt and there was a welcome nicker on the other side. How he wished he had a light so he could see what he was doing! He ran his fingers over the bolt, searching for a switch. Then he went on in the darkness until he came
to the stone wall again. After some groping he found the protruding switch and pulled it.

A light went on in the stall but not in the corridor. It shone through high iron bars that rose from the top of the wooden door to the ceiling. Alec pulled himself up onto the bars and looked inside.

Standing beneath a protected light bulb was a stallion who could be no other than
Ziyadah!
He was as still as finely polished marble, his eyes on the door. Then he heard the sharp intake of Alec’s breath and, turning swiftly, jumped to the side of his stall.

Ziyadah’s eyes, widely set apart like the Black’s, were a light brown, almost as golden as his coat. They glowed, and when he rolled them crescents of white eyeball showed for an instant. He snorted at Alec, his nostrils flaring. There was no doubt he had been expecting someone else.

He jumped again, angrily tossing his small head. His hoofs barely touched the straw as he leaped from one side of the stall to the other. At the moment it was not hard for Alec to believe that the horse the natives called “Firetail” could literally walk the sky.

Finally the stallion swept over to the far corner of his big stall.

“Whoever you’re for, you’re for him alone,” Alec said. “Is it Abd-al-Rahman?”

Ziyadah pranced up and down and in the shadows his hoofs glowed, sending a thousand shafts of light about the stall. Alec gasped. So this was the answer to the constant rain of sparks that came from his flying hoofs! There was nothing ghostly about them.
His hoofs were encased in a rubber sheath which was covered with sequins
of many colors!
They sparkled brilliantly in the play of light. They would also leave no tracks.

Who was responsible for this sham?

Alec looked down the darkened corridor. The fire still burned faintly. If he made no noise … if he was very, very careful, he might find out … providing the person he was seeking was there by the fire and asleep.

He lowered himself to the stone floor and turned off the stall light. He took one step forward and then another. He had come too far to turn back, to go for Henry. Now that he was so close to finding the answer to his question nothing could have stopped him from going on.