The Doomsday Affair by Harry Whittington

Author:Harry Whittington [Whittington, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Interlude in Bedlam

I

SOLO CLIMBED the long, dark, free-swinging staircase upward from the stygian darkness of the pit. He was tired. He did not know how long he had been climbing or how far he had yet to go. Moonlight filtered through a small opening incredibly far above him, and it glittered faintly on the metal steps, and the only thought his aching brain could contain was that he must keep climbing until he somehow reached that lighted escape hatch.

He released the bamboo railing long enough to paw at the sweat on his face, at the pressure behind his eyeballs. He almost fell. He clutched out wildly, grabbing the rickety railing, clinging to it, while the round hole of light bounced like the white ball in a beer commercial.

He jerked open his collar and loosened his tie, feeling suffocated and as if he were enclosed in a debilitating heat compartment. He didn’t know where he was, and he tried to think how he had got here.

He stumbled. The attempt to think only started the wild little man with his sledge hammer again banging at the backs of his eyeballs. He gave up trying to think, and concentrated on climbing. It was so far upward to that lighted round hole, and yet somehow he had to make it before he strangled in the heat, or suffocated from lack of oxygen.

He breathed through his mouth, gasping, his head tilted back and his gaze fixed on that ragged opening with the wan moonlight beyond it. It looked wonderfully cool up there in the open, if he could only make it before he fell again or drowned in his own sweat.

Solo gave an agonizing yawn, stunned with fatigue. He didn’t see how he could take one more step upward, and yet the alternative was to tumble back into the bottomless dark. He shuddered, clinging to the railing that swayed precariously. Suddenly he heard something that made his heart miss a beat. He stiffened, listening.

There was a faint whispering laugh from the light above him. A man’s voice said, “Welcome back to life, Mr. Solo. And welcome, also, to Broadmoor Rest.”

II

SOLO’S EYES jerked open. The movement almost took off his skull.

Solo turned his head, and the pain washed down through him. He saw that he was on a round, kingsized bed in a beige-tinted room with doors opening off into other rooms of a suite, uniformly decorated and painted.

There was movement behind him. He jerked his head around, instinctively tensing his body. His instincts brought him only searing pain, and a red haze that danced before his eyes like fireflies. The haze faded, cleared, and behind it he saw Samuel Su Yan. The Chinese-American, smiling faintly with that mismatched face that looked as if it had been designed by a committee, sat casually on a chair next to the bed. He had a small brown box in his lap.

Solo pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to subdue the agony of his drug-hangover headache.

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