The first thing Diana Steel noticed was the headache: a miserable throbbing that began at the base of her skull and seemed to radiate like a savage web up her neck, across her scalp, right down into her eyeballs.
The second thing she noticed was the smell: beer. Stale and pungent, it seemed to permeate the air. It was almost as though she had been stuffed into an old beer barrel.
Diana debated whether to force her eyes open. After all, she was obviously suffering from the hangover to end all hangovers, what with the pounding in her head, and her seeming inability to move her limbs, and the darkness… odd, though, she had no memory of actually drinking anything. For that matter, she had no memory of even meeting Tweed in the pub.
Reflexively, she tried to stretch her legs and stand, when her feet collided with what felt like a floor made of thick, spongy wood. Finally, she opened her eyes to a blackness nearly as complete as when they'd been closed.
She had been stuffed into an old beer barrel.
The rest of the physical sensations seemed to arrive together: the thin hemp cutting into the skin of her wrists; the monstrous ache in her arms and legs, her limbs pretzeled beneath her; the foul taste of the rag that had been jammed in her mouth, held in place with a strip of cloth that had been tied between her teeth.
Amazing how fast your head can clear when your life's in danger; clear it might be, but it still ached damnably.
Leverage. That's what was needed here: the foundation of any escape attempt. There wasn't any. Her legs were jammed right up against the bottom (or top? It was hard to tell) of the barrel, preventing her from kicking herself free. Smashing her head against the other end seemed even less promising an option.
There was always shouting, of course. Yelling for help like a "damsel in distress"… not her favorite response to a situation, made more than a little difficult by the stuffing bound into her mouth. It had to be tried, though.
"Hhggnhhh!" Inside the confined space of the barrel, the smallest of hums greeted her ears; she could imagine no reason why the sound should be any louder outside the barrel. Futile, as she'd known it would be.
No kicking, no shouting… being in a barrel seemed to suggest only one other option: rolling. Rocking back and forth, until the barrel tipped over and… and what? Diana had no illusion that the thing would shatter like balsa wood as was so often portrayed on television, and she had no real idea where she was: start rolling blindly, and she was as likely to end up sinking into a cistern as breaking free. Still, in the absence of other options, it had to be tried.
There was barely enough room in the barrel for her to conceive the plan, much less execute it. Diana shifted her body as best she could, painfully trying to distribute more of her weight to one side. She twisted her wrists, straining to get the toes of her boots in her fingers, trying to pull her legs even farther behind her, to compress her body as much as possible. She worked her bound wrists up into the small of her back, the tension in her muscles nearly intolerable. Diana closed her eyes, taking slow, deep breaths through her nose. One last time, she contracted her body, and then thrust all her weight up, to the top of the barrel, ducking her head and pushing upwards with her shoulder. The heavy oak teetered sickeningly; another inch or two of sway, and the barrel would… would… settle wobblingly back to rest.
Diana gritted her teeth around the disgusting rag, and grunted in frustration. She strained her aching muscles… wondering how many more attempts she would have before fatigue or lack of air doomed her to permanent residence in the barrel.
Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she tensed her body, pushed up and back as hard as she could, and was rewarded with the unpleasant sensation of her world coming loose from its moorings as the barrel tipped over and landed with a thud on the cement floor.
For a moment, Diana lay in imprisoned silence; then, slowly, she felt herself begin to… revolve. The floor had little incline, and there was no feeling of the sort of acceleration that would be required to dash the barrel against the wall, shattering the staves. Instead, it was a slow, sickening roll, that seemed to have no chance of doing the barrel any serious damage. She felt the barrel fetch up against the wall, start back the other way… then heard a strange scraping of metal on wood, and the bottom of the barrel seemed to give way beneath her feet. She pushed as hard as she could with both feet, and was rewarded by a shaft of light lancing in from the crack that had developed in the stopper. In a few minutes, she found herself stretching her legs luxuriantly as she crawled free of the barrel. She glanced down, and saw the old, rusted metal band that had snapped, providing the escape opportunity. She rubbed the bonds on her wrists over the conveniently placed edge of the metal; once they came free, she unbound her ankles, and tore the cloth from her mouth. Spitting out the disgusting bung, Diana got to her feet, and headed for the door that seemed to lead back into the pub. Someone, besides herself, was going to rue this day.
"Mrs. Steel!" As Diana did her best not to stagger coming through the door, Raef Tweed looked brightly up from his pint glass, and glanced exaggeratedly at his watch. "I do hope you don't mind that I started without you." For all the lightness of his tone, she could see the relief in his eyes.
"Not at all." Diana passed a hand over her disheveled auburn hair; her lips twisted into a wry smile as she turned to regard the barman. "I'm afraid I was-" Tweed cringed at the expected pun-"a bit tied up."
If it registered on the barman at all, he gave no indication. "Drink, ma'am?"
"Same as the gentleman." Diana's brown eyes were drilling into the large man's. "Tell me," she went on, "have there been any deliveries here this afternoon?"
The man shrugged. "We gets deliveries, o'course. It's a public house."
"And today…?" Diana's tone hardened.
"Well, a few cases of crisps."
"No beer?"
"Beer, ma'am?"
"Beer." Diana took her glass. "You know, the kind that comes in barrels."
"Barrels?"
"Yes. I would be interested in knowing of any deliveries you might have had today in barrels."
"You're uncommon keen on barrels, ma'am. And what would be the content of these here barrels?"
There was a pause.
"That would have been me."
As she expected, the man was less startled than an innocent man would have been.
"And as the contents of that barrel, I have an uncommon interest in knowing just who might have delivered me here."
The barman's watery eyes wavered as he attempted to meet Diana's gaze. He delved beneath the counter with a meaty hand, only to feel the handle of Tweed's umbrella crack the side of his elbow as Diana Steel darted a hand to his collar, half-choking him.
"Now, barkeep," she smiled thinly, "about those barrels."
The man grunted in pain as Tweed pulled the kosh from his nerveless fingers.
"I don't know, ma'am," he gritted. "I… I never seen the man who delivered them. It was a new truck brought them in, that's all I know."
"Then why would you have felt it necessary to try and brain me if you didn't know anything about it?" She yanked hard at the collar as Tweed applied more pressure to the man' s imprisoned arm.
"Please--" he gasped-- "All right, so I have the occasional unlicensed bit o' merchandise back there… Thought you might be with the Inland Revenue."
Tweed raised an eyebrow. "Your experiences with Inland Revenue must be rather different from mine." He gave the elbow another rap with the umbrella handle. "Now, the lady is no doubt thirsty, so why not pour her a drink, there's a good chap."
Grumbling, the man filled a glass and handed it to Diana, who released his collar. "Thank you," she smiled at him. "No hard feelings, of course." She joined Tweed at a table.
"And how was your afternoon?" she asked him.
"Less exciting than yours, I fear. No one seems to have seen or heard anything… no one that was inclined to speak with me, at any rate."
"Well, since no one attempted to put you in a barrel, I think it's unlikely you'd have run across anyone with much useful information, anyway."
"True." His eyes softened almost imperceptibly, and his voice lowered. "I am glad that you appear none the worse for your ordeal." The warmth in his tone belied the ironic lightness of his words.
"Thank you," she responded with the same slightly-too-casual air. "It certainly could have been worse. I mean, look at that poor girl they found on the railroad tracks. I'm probably lucky we weren't close to-oh, I don't know-- an old abandoned sawmill."
An old abandoned sawmill. Elaine Morrison had no idea that such things actually existed. This was the first time in her life she had ever been in such a place; clearly, it was also meant to be the last.
She strained her neck, trying once more to take in her surroundings, as though that would make sense of the nightmare. The rotted timbers were still there… the cobwebs… the rusted bits of equipment… all these things could be easily seen as she lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling. Her neck was almost the only part of her body that she could move at this point: thick straps of leather fastened her shoulders, waist, arms, and legs to the wooden table; if she tipped her head back as far as she could, she would be able to see the enormous circular saw blade, teeth chipped and rusted; she decided she didn't need to see it again.
A high-pitched giggle caught her attention as Dr. Parkinson came back into view.
When she had arrived at the ministry that morning, she had wondered at the source of the similar giggles she had heard coming from her employer's office. When she tapped on the door, and entered, she was greeted by the sight of Dr. Parkinson in a stained white lab coat, which she regarded as an extraordinary thing for a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics to be wearing, especially one scheduled to meet with the P.M. later that day. His thinning hair stood out from his head as though he had stepped out of a wind tunnel, and from somewhere he had obtained a pair of thick black eyeglass frames, which perched crazily on his nose; the absence of glass in the frames hardly seemed worth noticing by comparison with the rest of his appearance.
Elaine had been at a loss for words then; by the time he'd bundled her into the truck of his car, her arms trussed behind her, the opportunity for words had passed due to the mass of heavy tape he had plastered across her lips.
"You had your chance! All of you!" Elaine shuddered in her bonds as Dr. Parkinson bent over her, spluttering. "They said that my creation would never live!" The only things Elaine had ever seen her boss create were spreadsheets and coffee stains. "And you were right there, laughing along with them! Well, when I throw this switch, see if you feel like laughing then!"
Elaine shrieked, strangling hums and buzzes pushing through the gag. She flailed her head, blinded by tears, as she felt herself moving… moving slowly, head-first toward the monstrous blade that whirred dustily behind her. Closer, closer, the angry ratcheting sound louder… the smell of wood burned by friction… that smell replaced with another: the smell of a burnt motor. Elaine heard the protesting of whining metal, the clatter of the saw blade coming to a halt, and in a moment, the room was still, but for the sound of her gagged sobs.
"Curse you!" Spittle rained on her face as Dr. Parkinson addressed the fates. "Now how am I to dispose of this meddling--?"
"You'll do nothing, sir." Elaine gulped and nearly swallowed the gag at the new voice: smooth and competent. "This is the police. Be a good chap and step away from the lady. Don't make me shoot you."
"But… but…Elaine, what are you doing here? What am I…?" Dr. Parkinson's voice trailed off as Elaine felt one of the policemen unfasten the straps binding her in place. She staggered to her feet, and fell gasping into the officer's arms. For just a moment, she buried her head in his chest… and then raised her eyes to the pathetic sight of her employer being led away, his face a perfect study of hopeless confusion.
"That's two." Tweed hung up the receiver, and swung round in his chair, the Roman toga flapping around his ankles.
"Two what?" Diana Steel daubed paint on her study of Seutonius' The Twelve Caesars, and wondered why she could never get her model to hold still.
"There's been a second incident of a prominent government advisor kidnapping a personable young secretary with the evident intention of executing her in vintage Republic Studios style." Tweed resumed his posture atop the desk, arm upraised.
"Evident intention?"
"Yes. Once again, the plot was foiled by a curious lack of planning: she was found in an old sawmill whose equipment was in such poor repair that the girl was scarcely in any danger at all."
Diana put down her brush. "You can get down now. So, there must be some connection, then?"
Tweed sighed, relaxed his arm, and flopped back into the chair, frowning. "Have to be, I should think, but apart from the bizarre circumstances, there seems no relation between the two men or their victims."
"And the Ministry?"
"Baffled, not surprisingly."
"And us… are we baffled?" She put down the brush and paint, and came to stand over his chair.
"Never, Mrs. Steel!" Tweed bounced to his feet. "In fact, I've just had the Minister on the phone, and he's agreed to provide me the two things I need to get to the bottom of this." He paused.
Diana smiled wryly. "All right, I'll bite- what are the two things?"
"A post in the Cabinet, and a personable young secretary."
Diana Steel raised an eyebrow. "The Cabinet?"
"Strictly temporary, I assure you," he twinkled at her.
"Good." Her lips twisted into their familiar ironic smile. "For a moment, I was afraid I'd have to demand a recount."
"But surely you wouldn't deny me the personable young secretary?" he twinkled at her.
"Me? Deny you?" Diana grinned wickedly. "I'm sure the personable young secretary can do that herself."
