"Can't you see he's in agony?"

Chapter 36 The opening of the oak box was delayed by hours. The excavators, working with the caution of archeologists, chipped up the floor as carefully as possible, unwilling to destroy anything of potential significance.

Meanwhile, Hunter's tormented body had to be removed. It was carried out through the pantry wall by Thomas, Whiteside, and Hammond.

Whiteside telephoned a British doctor in Manhattan, one always on standby to treat emergencies of local agents in the field, emergencies which wouldn't be met with snooping questions.

An ambulance was brought to the corner of Eighty-eighth Street and Park Avenue where, after a painfully circuitous route through dark underground sewer corridors, Hammond guided the injured man up to the street through a manhole.

The ma.s.sive body of Hunter, now useless, like a big crippled bear who'd been wounded by riflemen, was eased into the back of the ambulance. He had one arm across his face, in the effort of trying not to yield to the torment of his shattered bones. He writhed slightly, moaned though he tried not to, and bordered on a merciful unconsciousness which Thomas, watching him, wished would descend.

Whiteside looked to Hammond and Thomas, then glanced back toward the house.

"I should go with him Whiteside said. He also knew he should stay, finish the Sandler inquiry as best he could.

"I'll keep you informed," said Thomas.

"You can trust me' "I'd like to come back," he said.

Hammond grimaced slightly.

"We won't be there in another two hours," said Thomas.

"I'll contact YOU."

Whiteside looked at the groaning Hunter. He glanced back to Thomas and offered his hand.

"All right" he conceded.

"I don't know how much use an old man is in this, anyway.- "I'll never take an old man for granted again'" said Thomas. He offered his hand.

Whiteside accepted. He then hopped into the back of the ambulance.

Thomas's last vision of him was as he was placing his arm on Hunter's shoulder, as if to comfort his fallen a.s.sociate.

"He's almost sentimental, know that?" said Hammond with distrust as the ambulance pulled away.

"There's something about him . . " He caught himself and changed the thought.

"Good thinking, anyway," he said.

"About what?"

"Telling him we'll be gone in two hours," said Hammond.

"I suspect," said Thomas, "that we will be. You'll see when we dig the nails out of that box."

Still, the securing of the buried box was an arduous procedure.

A false top had been installed across it, solid beams which pinned it beneath the floor.

The dock dragged. The hours were unyielding.

Hammond remained in the underground mausoleum, watching his workmen slash and chip with their hammers, wedges, and chisels. Thomas and Leslie waited upstairs now, talking in the semidarkness. They held flashlights, carefully pointed away from the windows.

On the top floor the counterfeit had been inspected by Hammond. Yet now it lay ignored, an item of secondary importance.

Thomas and Leslie were in a ground-floor sitting room when they heard Hammond's footsteps on the stairs, walking up from the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Come on down," Hammond said, though urging was hardly necessary.

"I wouldn't want to miss this if I were you" When they returned through the bas.e.m.e.nt, down the creaking stairs, among the dust-laden furniture and down into the altar room for the Andys, Thomas sensed a strange disquiet in his soul.

The sense that something vile or revelatory was on the brink. He'd never opened a buried box before.

Yet he had an instinct. He sensed what to expect.

When they walked into the room, there were great chunks of concrete stacked beside the altar. Great huge blocks which the two excavators had chipped away. Thomas looked at it.

"Don't worry," said Hammond.

"We recognize the principle of private property. When this is all over, we'll seal up everything like new! He paused and a sly grin crept across the leins of his face.

"Unless we find something we need to keep, of course' ' The huge oak box, discolored with age, was broken free from the concrete. From somewhere one of the excavators produced a slim iron bar with a prying device on one end. Using the hammer, hitting the end of the bar for leverage, he broke the wood and pulled the nails from the top of the box.

"Put the lights on it " said Hammond. Leslie and Thomas shone their lamps downward, onto the wooden top of the box. The two excavators reached to different ends of the lid and forced it up. A nauseating, foul stench wafted upward.

At first there was a creak. Then a crack, and the men seemed to fumble for a second, off balance when the lid came free.

They lifted.

Up it came, and they slid it away onto the concrete to the left of them. The lanterns, and every eye in the room, were directed downward into the contents.

Two dead empty eyes, undisturbed for years, stared upward absently.

The five living souls present gazed into the vacant expression of a skeleton, of one whose life had departed years earlier. Fully clad in a man's suit, the suit which he'd worn when death had come to him.

Thomas felt like throwing up. Hammond looked equally sickened. The men with the hammers and chisels looked upon the discovery with horror.

Leslie, perhaps steadiest of all, studied the skeleton as if to discern its ident.i.ty. Then she, too, averted her eyes, looking toward the sealed canine tombs.

But the man in the box would not go away. He would have to be dealt with. No one spoke immediately.

Thomas squelched the nauseating feeling in his stomach. He was transfixed by the sight before him; it was so unreal and so unlike any thing he'd ever encountered that, like a crowd jockeying for position around a b.l.o.o.d.y traffic accident, a morbid streak of curiosity within him was riveted to the coffin. The hollow eyes of the skull transfixed him. The a.s.semblage of teeth, perfectly preserved, seemed to form a ghastly smile.

But the real touch of surrealism was the disintegrating suit on the decaying body, the suit which the owner had worn to his own execution.

Perhaps Thomas sensed an affinity for the man who wore three-piece suits to work. He looked at it carefully, as if he'd seen it before.

Something made him lean down, even though repelled by the odor.

Something instinctively drew him to the corpse.

Hammond watched Daniels's reaction, as if perceiving something.