Chapter 6 - THE DEAD LOCK
The darkness in the lower cellar was absolute, thick as wet velvet, pressing against Clara’s eyeballs until phantom spots of red and blue light danced across her vision. She kept her left hand pressed against the damp brick wall, using the rough, moss-covered mortar to guide her steps as she sprinted through the labyrinthine passage.
Tap... tap...
The metallic strikes against the vault door were becoming irregular, separated by long, agonizing gaps of silence.
"I'm here, Adam!" Clara shouted, her voice breaking on the damp air. "I'm coming! Keep tapping!"
Her toes struck something heavy on the floor—a discarded wooden wine crate. She stumbled forward, her knees slamming violently into the sharp gravel floor. Pain exploded up her legs, but she ignored it, pushing herself up instantly, her left hand clutching the slick, blood-covered brass key against her chest.
Ten yards ahead, the brick tunnel opened into a circular chamber constructed of dark, hand-hewn granite blocks.
Mounted in the center of the granite wall was the East Vault door.
It was a terrifying relic of 19th-century engineering—a six-foot-tall slab of solid English oak, four inches thick, bound in crisscrossing bands of black wrought iron, fitted with a massive central locking mechanism made of cast brass and steel.
Clara threw herself against the heavy oak panel. The wood was ice-cold to the touch.
"Adam!" she pressed her face against the seam where the wood met the granite frame. "Adam! It's Clara! Can you hear me?"
From behind the heavy oak came a raspy, agonizing wheeze—the sound of a child gasping for oxygen through a constricted, swollen windpipe.
"Clara..." a small, frail voice whimpered, barely audible through the lead lining. "I... I can't... find the air... my inhaler... is gone..."
"Listen to me, Adam!" Clara commanded, her fingers frantically tracing the cold iron plate around the keyhole. "I have the key! I'm going to open it right now! Stand back from the door!"
She raised her left hand to insert the heavy brass key into the lock.
Her heart dropped into her stomach.
The keyhole was jammed.
Julian had not simply locked the door. Before leaving the cellar, he had snapped off the tip of a steel screwdriver inside the keyway, plugging the internal tumblers with jagged metal. The teeth of the antique brass key could only penetrate an inch before striking the unyielding steel obstruction.
"No... no, no, no!" Clara screamed, jamming the key into the slot again and again, her bloody fingers slipping on the brass bow. The key wouldn't turn. The tumblers were frozen solid.
Behind her, at the far end of the long brick tunnel, came the heavy, rhythmic thud of iron-soled boots descending the stone stairs.
"She went down the east corridor!" a man's voice roared—the head security officer. "Check the vault chamber! Shoot on sight!"
The yellow beams of high-powered tactical flashlights began to cut through the darkness of the brick passage, sweeping across the vaulted ceiling like hunting searchlights.
Clara backed against the heavy oak vault door, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. She had no weapon. She had no light. The brass key was useless, the security guards were thirty yards away with loaded handguns, and inside the sealed room behind her, her brother was taking his final, shallow gasps of toxic air.
She looked down at her right hand.
The heavy wedge of shattered glass she had driven into Julian’s hand was still gripped tightly in her palm, her knuckles white, her skin coated in sticky, half-dried blood.
Beside the granite vault frame stood an ancient copper gas lamp pipe—a remnant of the mansion's original 1890 lighting system, long disconnected from the main gas line, but still protruding six inches from the brickwork, its heavy brass valve rusty and corroded.
Clara didn't hesitate. She didn't think about survival. She thought only of the child dying behind the oak.
She raised the heavy glass wedge with both hands and slammed it downward onto the corroded brass gas pipe with all the force left in her body.
CRACK.
A spark ignited in the dark as tempered glass struck ancient brass.
A heavy, whistling hiss exploded from the broken pipe—not natural gas, but pressurized air from the forgotten 19th-century pneumatic communication tubes that ran throughout the mansion's foundations.
The high-pressure air stream roared into the damp chamber, smelling of rust and eighty years of stagnant dust.
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Clara grabbed the end of the broken copper pipe, jammed her fingers around the metal edge, and bent the soft metal tubing directly toward the narrow keyhole of the vault door.
"Adam!" Clara screamed over the roar of escaping air. "Put your mouth against the keyhole inside! PUT YOUR MOUTH TO THE KEYHOLE!"
