Free The Cry of the Halidon by Robert Ludlum Page B

concern—the fear—was in her eyes; she tried to conceal it, but she could not. Her smile was hesitant, taut.
    “So you’re the young man …” Mrs. Hammond stopped and brought the glass to her lips.
    “Young and not so young,” said McAuliff, noting that the woman’s hand shook, as his had shaken an hour ago with Warfield. “It’s difficult to talk in here with all the blaring. And those godawful lights.”
    Mrs. Hammond seemed not to hear or be concerned with his words. The psychedelic oranges and yellows and sickening greens played a visual tattoo on her frightened features. It was strange, thought Alex, but he had not considered Hammond as a private man with personal possessions or a wife or even a private, personal life.
    And as he thought about these unconsidered realities, the woman suddenly gripped his forearm and leaned against him. Under the maddening sounds and through the wild,blinding lights, she whispered in McAuliff’s ear: “For God’s sake, go after him!”
    The undulating bodies formed a violently writhing wall. He lunged through, pushing, pulling, shoving, finally shouldering a path for himself amid the shouted obscenities. He tried looking around for the spaced-out intruder who had signaled Hammond by crashing into the table. He was nowhere to be found.
    Then, at the rear of the crowded, flashing dance floor, he could see the interrupted movements of several men pushing a single figure back into a narrow corridor. It was Hammond!
    He crashed through the writhing wall again, toward the back of the room. A tall black man objected to Alex’s assault.
    “Hey, mon! Stop it! You own The Owl, I think not!”
    “Get out of my way! Goddammit, take your hands off me!”
    “With pleasure, mon!” The black man removed his hands from McAuliff’s coat, pulled back a tight fist, and hammered it into Alex’s stomach. The force of the blow, along with the shock of its utter surprise, caused McAuliff to double up.
    He rose as fast as he could, the pain sharp, and lurched for the man. As he did so, the black man twisted his wrist somehow, and McAuliff fell into the surrounding, nearly oblivious, dancers. When he got to his feet, the attacker was gone.
    It was a curious and very painful moment.
    The smoke and its accompanying odors made him dizzy; then he understood. He was breathing deep breaths; he was out of breath. With less strength but no less intensity, he continued through the dancers to the narrow corridor.
    It was a passageway to the rest rooms, “Chicks” to the right, “Roosters” to the left. At the end of the narrow hallway was a door with a very large lock, an outsized padlock, that was meant, apparently, to remind patrons that thedoor was no egress; The Owl of Saint George expected tabs to be paid before departure.
    The lock had been pried open. Pried open and then reset in the round hasps, its curving steel arm a half inch from insertion.
    McAuliff ripped it off and opened the door.
    He walked out into a dark, very dark, alleyway filled with garbage cans and refuse. There was literally no light but the night sky, dulled by fog, and a minimum spill from the windows in the surrounding ghettolike apartment buildings. In front of him was a high brick wall; to the right the alley continued past other rear doorways, ending in a cul-de-sac formed by the sharply angled wall. To his left, there was a break between The Owl’s building and the brick; it was a passageway to the street. It was also lined with garbage cans, and the stench that had to accompany their presence.
    McAuliff started down the cement corridor, the light from the streetlamps illuminating the narrow confines. He was within twenty feet of the pavement when he saw it. Them: small pools of deep red fluid.
    He raced out into the street. The crowds were thinning out; Soho was approaching its own witching hour. Its business was inside now: the private clubs, the illegal all-night gambling houses, the profitable beds where sex was