ToC - for previous parts.
Okay a few things before we launch into this part -- I am really having issues with verb tense in part of this. If you happen to have any suggestions please feel free to let me know -- you'll know what I'm talking about when you get to the part where the trouble is, assuming it's as big of an issue as I thought, and not just me being self-conscious about my writing =) I think however, aside from that issue, this part is where I want it.
So without further ado, and full apologies for its lateness:
Waking a Miracle (16/??)
It took Clark several long, and very painful moments to calm himself down enough to leave the conference room, but finally his panicked shaking ceased, and he didn't feel like he was going to explode into a messy jumble of nerves. The stares as he emerged, slow and deliberate, were piercing. Condemning. Sympathizing. He saw a whole array of emotions plastered across the faces of his new coworkers.
"Another man, chewed up and spat out," he heard a small brunette woman standing by the copier whisper to a much taller, lanky black man. The woman shook her head. Annie from advertising, and Frank from sports, he finally remembered. Annie was looking at him with a sympathetic frown. Frank's lips, in contrast, were quirked into a cold, unforgiving smirk.
"Doubt Kent could handle that much woman, even if she weren't the devil incarnate," Frank replied. "Do they even teach that sort of thing in Kansas?"
Annie batted his arm.
Clark turned his gaze down to the floor, trying not to make it obvious that he'd heard their remarks, but knowing the burning look on his face would make it dismally obvious. The rumor mill was already flying with wild and ludicrous assumptions. And, he realized with horror, that they all probably thought he had attempted to seduce her and she'd blown up at him. Well, that was okay with him if they smeared him, but it was infuriating that they were molding Lois's reaction into something that it wasn't.
She had every right to be angry with him. About, well, about everything. And she didn't need everyone assuming she was a man-eating psycho whenever she got justifiably piqued. Having that sort of preconception about her did little to help with the professional airs she tried so hard to convey to her coworkers.
The realization that Lois was having her reputation torn to pieces because of him did not help with the sinking feeling that wouldn't let go of him. An undertow of panic, it was threatening to pull him beneath the plummeting depths of frantic oblivion. Lois was out there. Chasing after Trask and Thompson on presumably more steam than he had. And he had no doubt she would propel herself along until she finally noticed that her little boat was sinking, and possibly continue even then. Until her engine got shot out and she was sucking in lungfuls of cold and unforgiving water. He squeezed that metaphor from his mind, unable to cope with the images of her flailing for breath.
What was he supposed to do?
Get there first. That's what he was supposed to do. If he couldn't stop the tidal force that was Lois Lane, he could surely beat her to the punch and drag Trask and Thompson's attention onto himself, couldn't he? He was convinced already that his life was going to be ruined in the course of this whole situation. So he didn't have much left to lose, if anything at all.
The problem with his whole 'getting there first theory,' however, was that she was figuring things out a lot faster than him, and not only that, she already knew more about what had happened in 1975 than he did. She had a half-hour of head start time and a folder full of notes and extra facts to work with. Would that beat out his hazy memories and suppositions? Probably.
He made a move for the exit ramp. He needed to start working on this story instead of trying to act as an ineffective hurdle. And he needed to switch gears *fast.* But where could he possibly start?
"Kent, my office. Now," he heard Perry's voice call out, loud, and jarring, but considerably more friendly than most of his verbal employee lassos.
Clark whipped his gaze toward the editor, who was staring at him expectantly from the doorway of his office. "But--" the word tumbled from his lips before he could hold it back.
"Did that sound like a suggestion, Kent?" The Chief waved him over. "Now get yer butt in here."
The newsroom, which he had thought couldn't have gotten more obtrusively whisper-filled as people stared at him than it had been earlier, was alive with eyes turned his way and the wispy sounds of words. He shrugged them off, trying not to specifically identify what was being said, and walked over. The door, which still stood open, was suddenly seeming more like a gaping yaw than anything else. Chomping jaws, trying to pull him in.
What could *this* be about?
"Yes, Chief?" he asked as he shuffled over the threshold and pulled the door shut behind him. The Chief was sitting behind his desk, hands clasped in front of him on top, graceful and proper.
"Have a seat, Kent," Perry said, his hands leaving their clasp to motion him to the chair that sat ominously in front of the desk, exactly where he had been seated earlier this week for his job interview.
This couldn't be good, could it? Clark tried to withhold a new swell of panic as he took the seat across from Perry.
"Now, Son," Perry began. "The article you submitted for this morning about the accident yesterday was top notch journalism. Top notch."
Clark swallowed, forcing his thoughts away from Lois for the moment, and arm-wrestling away any inclinations to look back towards the so very inviting door. This sounded almost like an 'I'm sorry, but' speech. He hoped he wasn't getting fired already. "Thank you, Sir," he said, though it was hard to sound grateful in his current state.
Time's up, freak. You had your week of fun. The voice dripped with sarcasm.
"But, Kent, that's not what I called you in here for," Perry began.
See? Told you!
Clark forced his gaze to remain level, and tried very hard not to look like the paranoid lump of nerves that he felt like. His hands fell into the old habit of gripping the arms of the chair. They immediately started to slick over with anxious perspiration.
"Yes?" he managed to say.
"When the King was a young man in the fifties, Son, oh... before you were even born, he met this young lady named Petunia."
Clark blinked. And then he blinked again. There'd been the Elvis anecdote during his job interview, and he'd accepted the propensity towards them as one of the Chief's little personality quirks, but... Well, he hadn't been expecting this. He suppressed a flash of annoyance that saving Lois had hit the backburner for a story about a dead singer. The question still remained, however. What was this about?
"She was a looker," Perry continued, his voice taking on more and more of a southern drawl as he immersed himself in the memory. "I tell you. Why, probably, the belle of any ball in the south, if she had ever gone to any balls, but, well, anyway. She had a heart of nails. She'd wouldn't even bat her eyes at any poor man who wandered her way. Are
you with me so far, Son?"
No. "Uh..."
"Anyways, well, the King met her and fell for her harder than a sack of rocks off a tall pier, and got turned down colder than an ice cube in the arctic. Oh, he was heartbroken, Son. Utterly heartbroken. Locked himself in his room and didn't come out for days."
Nerves and utter confusion slowly morphed into mortification. Clark felt his mouth fall open a little bit, and it took extreme effort not to stare dumbly at his boss. Perry thought this whole mess was about Lois turning him down too? He almost wanted to grab a bullhorn and announce to the whole swarm of rumor flies that *he* had run away from *her* and that today had *NOTHING* to do with that. This was positively exasperating, and now Lois was even further ahead of him on the road to danger. "Chief, Lois and I are--" he tried to explain, but Perry interrupted him.
"Now, Son. I know it looks like there's trouble in paradise."
"But, sir--"
"It looks like the doors are closed, and nobody's getting in."
Agitated, Clark stood up. "Sir--" he protested more firmly.
"Sit down and listen to me, Son," Perry said, his exasperated tone forceful enough that Clark fell back into his chair in defeat. "Lois has always been like this. The fact that I had to force you in here, instead of you coming in here, gibbering in terror. Well, that's a good sign! I think there may be something special there."
"Sir, I really do like working with Lois, and I'm not having any prob--"
"And if it doesn't work, well, you know how the King turned out..."
A drug addict, and dead? Clark thought, wryly, but stiffened soon after the image passed through his brain. Dead. Lois dead. He *needed* to get out of here. Soon.
"That whole debacle was what inspired Heartbreak Hotel, and his whole career took off. Do you see what I'm sayin', Son?"
"Yes, Sir." Completely. Just let me out!
"All right then, Kent. I'm glad we had this chat." And with a small, satisfied nod, the Chief finally gave him leave.
He didn't pay attention to the drop in volume as he exited the Chief's large office. He didn't look around, or think in self-recrimination about all the shaking heads and snickers. With exactly enough speed to show he was human, but in the Olympic athlete category, he raced up the ramp, into the stairwell, and soon he was on the roof.
Wind buffeted him as he walked towards the edge. His tie flapped across his chest with an unsteady thumping rhythm, and his sport coat almost seemed to lift off his back. If it weren't for the arms of the coat, he suspected it would have flown out behind him like a very short, very gaudy cape, well, before it flew off in the breeze entirely.
As he got to the fence surrounding the corners of the building, he peered out at the horizon that spread before him. The dull sounds of the city rose up from below, but were practically drowned by the breeze that was smacking into him as if it was actually annoyed at the obstruction. He looked down to the forest of concrete below, then he looked out ahead, and for the first time in a year, he consciously lifted his body off of the ground.
He was in the air, so quickly he was staring at light wisps of cloud and greater Metropolis sprawled out below him like a hobbyist's toy model before he had time to think twice. A jolt of weightless glee swept through him uncontrollably before he managed to shove it back down deep inside of him. The sun setting in the sky cast a flaming glow across the west faces of the all the buildings, and with the window panes of the towering skyscrapers flashing, the city itself appeared ablaze.
But for once, he wasn't thinking about the past. He wasn't remembering the fires. There were no logical debates going on in his head. And the use of his powers didn't bring him another moment's pause.
He was already lagging behind her badly -- at least an hour -- what with his own need to compose himself and Perry's intervention. He needed to beat Lois Lane to the scoop, and at this point, he had few doubts at all that his power of flight was the only thing that would get him there first before she came barreling through to the finish line. And he was even less doubtful that if she *did* arrive at some amazing epiphany first, she wouldn't last twenty-four hours alive with the knowledge.
And so now, he had an unintended mystery on his hands. He rotated as he peered around his urban surroundings. What was next? He made a quick lap around the city, sizing things up.
Trask was nowhere to be found, so far, so that was one element ruled out for the time being. The Bessolo Boulevard warehouse was a likely candidate to investigate, but the street was a long one, he could see as he flew overhead, and not only was he not sure which warehouse it was, but his whole view of the area was mottled. A lot of the warehouses were old, and still had remnant layers of lead-based paint.
He sighed. It would take him hours to try and weave his way through that mess. All that was left was Thompson, it seemed.
Where would Thompson be staying? He had an educated guess.
He bolted for the Lexor Hotel and scanned it. Yes. George Thompson was staying in one of the top level penthouse suites. There were tons of papers in the study with his name on it, scattered across the desk like a mussed, new-age tablecloth.
Luckily, it was still relatively early, and a campaigning candidate like Thompson probably had some sort of fundraiser or dinner thing to attend. Whatever the reason, the hotel room was empty for the time being. There weren't even any housekeeping officials busy there, or anywhere else on the floor. Lois was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't mean much yet. Clark looked once more behind him, to the horizon, and the surrounding buildings. He could only hope that Lois hadn't decided to try her luck in the Warehouse first, or he was going to end up increasing the gap between them.
He set down, light and unobtrusive, on the balcony that led into the study. The air that had buffeted him while was up higher was much subtler and more gentle now, the brunt of it taken away by the towering obstruction of the hotel, which clawed into the sky still quite a few feet above him, despite this being the penthouse. The balcony was fairly large -- roughly five feet deep and twelve feet long. It ran the whole length of the study's side. Sliding glass doors, covered from the inside by thick, embroidered drapes were all that stood between him and the room.
Clark slid forward along the balcony, past the two lawn chairs and the small glass table that sat between them. He gripped the handle of the door and pushed. At first it didn't give way, but eventually the foot lock snapped and the door jittered backwards along the track. Not the most subtle of break-ins, he realized, but he really didn't care that much at this point.
The study was a large room. There was a fireplace against the wall that appeared to have real wood in it. The fresh, burnt scent indicated that Thompson had been using this deluxe hotel feature quite enthusiastically. The mantle that hung over the fireplace was a rich, dark brown wood, covered with elaborate carvings. Candles and gothic-looking ornaments decorated the top, and a wingback chair sat a comfortable distance in front, a small beaten paperback book resting beside it on a circular table.
He pushed himself over the door track, struggling a bit as the drapes clung to him like vines. Over in the corner of the room there was a hefty-sized desk -- the one that had been strewn with all of the papers which had allowed Clark to identify this penthouse as Thompson's. Might as well start with what's in plain sight, Clark thought. Plain *normal* sight, he added with a frown.
He slipped over to the desk and started rifling through the vast assortment of papers. Mostly financial stuff, and a lot of extraneous campaign things. There was a small schedule he found that listed George Thompson as being at a banquet right about now. Good. He had at the very least an hour or two before anyone was expected back in the hotel room.
The sharp pierce of a whistle sounded in the hallway directly outside the hotel suite, and he stilled, but it turned out to be a man entering the adjourning penthouse suite. Nothing to worry about. Clark relaxed and continued searching. Nothing of use, it was all pointless campaign things that didn't tell him much of anything except who was paying him money and why George Thompson was a darn nice guy.
He lowered his hands to the center drawer and tried to pull it open. It was locked, so he yanked. The bolt on the lock snapped and the drawer went careening back into his waist before coming to a halt. All that was in the drawer was another smaller box with a lock on it, and he was immediately struck with the similarity of this perplexing situation to that of a Russian Matryoshka doll. He had seen one of the dolls being peddled by a street vendor during his travels through Moscow. The vendor had been very enthusiastic at making a sale, and had shown Clark at great length the fascination of opening the large oval-shaped doll to reveal a smaller doll inside, and so forth and so on until there was finally an final inseparable doll the size of a peanut.
He snapped the simple padlock on the side of the smaller box and tipped open the lid. A small, unlabeled leather-bound book sat inside. It was the size of a regular novel, but the spine was cracked along multiple lines, making it easy for Clark to set it on the desk and let it lie open and flat, unassisted by brute force. The writing inside was far from pretty -- it was tiny, blocky, scribble print that was barely legible and looked like it had been scratched, not written, onto the paper.
It appeared to be a diary of some sort.
He flipped to the first page and was shocked into stillness at the name that was jotted under the beaten cover, small and unobtrusive. This wasn't George Thompson's at all. This was Jason Trask's.
And, he found, as he skimmed quickly through it, it was a catalogue of Clark's life, starting with 1975.
Clark stood there for a few moments, unable to look more closely at the contents, instead stalling by examining the penthouse around him again. Another sweep of x-ray vision revealed a small detail he had failed to notice before. There was a duffle bag lying next to the couch, and the cushions were covered with a tussled up, forest green sleeping bag.
Thompson had a sleep-in guest. The duffel bag contained miscellaneous clothing articles -- all fatigues and sweats -- a loaded beretta 9mm accompanied by several extra clips, a safety razor and some other toiletry items, and also, a passport.
Jason Trask.
Jason Trask's mug shot stared back at him, cold, calculating. His passport was stamped into oblivion. Russia, Nepal, Australia, Borneo, Great Britain, New Guinea, Nigeria, and more, and more... All countries Clark had visited. All in the same order.
His throat closed up and his eyes burned. It seemed Trask had not been absent in his life after all. All those years, during high school, during college, during his travels, when Clark had thought he was free. Unhindered. All those years... and his life had been getting written down in this book. The whole time he had remained blissfully unaware, the details of his existence were getting carefully catalogued like he was some sort of lab specimen. Some sort of freak. Discovering this was almost worse than his fear of being dissected.
His stomach began to flop about and the room felt very cold, like ice was slipping in slow glacial sheets across his skin. His legs started to shake and his muscles lost all their strength in one woozy motion. He pulled out the desk chair and collapsed into it like a falling heap of stones. The room wobbled and spun on a carousel wheel around his head -- he didn't think he could get up if he tried.
The book sat out in front of him on the desk, a mere foot, but it may as well have been miles. Staring dully ahead, he pulled it toward him. Inch by inch, his life, bled out onto those pages by Trask's sinister pen, came closer. And closer. He drew it into his lap, where it sat for several moments like a still, disgusting thing, worthy of recoil. He almost couldn't bear to look, but somehow he forced his gaze down onto the first, well-worn page.
Trask's voice seemed to claw upwards, curling around the words and reading them aloud as though he were present in the room. "George took me to the house of my wife's murderer the morning after..."
*****
The side of the barn was on fire as we drove up in the truck, behind a shallow bank of trees. Smoke plumed upwards in dull lazy tendrils that coiled in the light breeze. Two frantic adults -- one male, one female -- ran about with hoses, trying to put the small blaze out with copious douses of water. The hoses wrapped back and forth, tangling like fighting snakes as the couple darted up and down along the side of the building. Up and down, up and down.
The sight before me would have seemed almost like a relay race if it hadn't been for the child. A small black-haired boy sat in the dirt about twenty feet back from the barn, sobbing uncontrollably, wailing, clutching at his knees, his distress so loud that we didn't even need our microphone turned on to hear it. It filtered back through the reflective glass of the window as though there were no barrier at all between it and my eardrums.
My vision blurred, and despite the awful racket of that kid, I found myself back at home, staring at Sarah's body, crumpled in my arms like a rag doll. When I had arrived home from my training, I knew something was wrong the moment I pulled into my driveway. The house had been quiet. Too quiet for my liking. Sarah usually rushes out to meet me,
but this time, she had not. And George's car had been in the driveway, blocking me from my usual parking spot.
I had darted through the door and found George standing there, over the body. Her body. George's face had been clawed across the cheek and was still oozing slow trails of rust-colored blood. "Jason," George had gasped as I ran to her and pulled her limp body into my arms.
"Sarah!" I had cried, although I knew from the gash on her forehead, the horrible red stain on the corner of the overturned table, the stillness of her chest, and the soft feel of her slowly cooling skin, that she wouldn't answer me. That she wouldn't answer me ever again.
"Jason," George had said again. "Thank God you're here. Thank the Lord. I couldn't..." He had sounded woozy, as if he couldn't remember. "I couldn't stop him. He came at us so fast. I tried..."
"Who did this?" I had growled. What did this to my wife? My sweet beautiful Sarah. My heart. Her final, porcelain stare into my eyes will never be something I forget. Not as long as I live.
"That's him, Jason," George said, forcing me back to the present, back into the claustrophobic quarters of that truck, away from the awful memory of my broken wife, gone then not twenty-four hours. I was still having trouble even referring to her in the past tense. It wasn't hard to imagine she'd be fixing dinner for me if I were to just pack it in and drive back home. But I knew in my heart that she wasn't there, despite how badly I could twist my brain into thinking it were true.
My eyes were threatening to overflow again as George pointed to the scene ahead, his index finger extending toward the child like a gnarled claw. "The boy. He's not human."
I raised my eyebrows, my grief momentarily forgotten. "You can't be serious?" I snorted and turned to George. George was smiling oddly as we looked on at what was happening ahead, as though he had won an unexpected jackpot.
"We've been tracking him since his landing in May 17, 1966," George finally replied. "This couple picked him up and passed him off as their own. He's developed some unique characteristics."
"Unique?" I asked, wondering how a child as small as this could be so strong that he could overcome both George and Sarah. Strong enough that he could have shoved my wife to the floor so hard her skull had cracked on the table as she collapsed. How could this innocent-looking mess of sobs be the alien murderer George confessed was able to outmatch him? I glanced sidelong at the gashes across George's face. There were five of them, long, inflamed, like a brand down along his cheek.
And so help me, I grew suspicious of my best friend, even though when I found her, Sarah had had no blood or flesh caught in her nails. Looking back on it, I guess I just wasn't being rational then.
"Just watch," George said. "I can show you the spaceship and our file on him, if you're still doubting me after we watch them."
I forced myself to watch, despite my growing, all-consuming anger. Even the grief I was feeling seemed pale in comparison to it. The fury burbled up inside me, but I somehow put on the large earmuff headphones without crushing them in my grip.
The couple had finally put out the blaze on the side of the barn and were consoling the young boy, rubbing his back in meandering circular motions. He looked human to me. Completely so. They rocked him in their arms, just like a human boy. They spoke to him in English, just like an American human boy.
I knew there were aliens in this world. I knew that we had even captured some of them for study, examined several. We had piles and piles of research, even had some recovered, but unworking craft stored away somewhere. I knew all that from my work with Project Blue Book back before it was signed out of government funding. But I couldn't count on one finger the number of aliens I had ever seen that didn't
look... alien.
But. He. Looked. Human.
At that precise moment, I was growing more suspicious of George with every passing second. But I was about to find out that the little boy's looks were deceptive.
"Oh, sweetie," the woman said. She was short, and her hair was a light strawberry blond. Her voice came crystal clear through the headphones, like a bell. Like Sarah. My fists clenched. "The barn is okay. See? All fine."
In truth, the whole side of the building was marred by scorch marks, but not one of the three of them seemed to be paying it any mind. The boy finally calmed down, his breaths coming strong and even, rather than in huge, jerking, moaning inhalations, and that was when the couple did something odd.
The heavyset man stood while the woman continued to rub the boy's back. "Let's try aiming away from the barn this time," he said, his tone and face lighthearted as he pointed to a stump that sat behind them. They all rotated 180 degrees, the boy and woman kicking up a bit of dust as they slid around.
"I can't," the boy whispered plaintively and shook his head, burying his face in the woman's chest, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
"Clark," the woman said, running her hands through his hair. When the boy did not respond, she replied a lot more forcefully, "Clark Jerome Kent, stop feeling sorry for yourself and just do it."
After a lot of similar coaxing from both the woman and the man, the specifics of which I have forgotten, the boy began to look intently at the stump, as if he were searching it for deformities, perhaps examining the grain of the wood, or counting the rings to see how old it was. What bizarre ritual was this? I shook my head, ready to protest that we just get out of here. That there was no murderer here except the one in this truck. That George was lying. I wasn't stupid, I'd had my doubts when George had finally told me his ludicrous story.
And that was when the stump burst into flame.
My mouth fell open as the three cheered and congratulated each other. "See, Clark?" the man said with a grin that just dumbfounded me. What was happy about that event? "You can control it just fine."
Control it. Just fine. The boy could control fire?
Something settled, cold and still in my stomach just then as I stared at the flames licking up from the dead wood like a miniature inferno. What kind of power must that boy have, to be able to light things ablaze with just the wink of an eye? What kind of dangers could he pose? The ability to incinerate a person with just a thought. One angry flash and the object of his gaze would be in flames. Spontaneous human combustion began to take on a whole new meaning for me. And the human couple was *teaching* him how to do it!
I ripped the headphones from my head, fury dripping from my pores like a hot sweat. I grabbed my pistol out of my glove compartment and started clawing at my seatbelt. Struggling to get free. To escape that suddenly claustrophobic vehicle and run at them.
"Jason, no, you can't," George said woefully.
"Why?" My vision was burning. I could barely see. It was as if something in me had just snapped. I saw the flames on that stump, burning brightly, climbing higher and higher as the oxygen fed it more and more strength. And I saw Sarah's dead, cold, expressionless mask of a face dangling backward over the crook of my arm. And that was all I could see.
All I would still see, even two months later, as I write this now. Every time I would see that wretched creature walking around, unscathed, untouched. Alive.
"He exhibits heightened strength, speed, and just recently developed a low-level resistance to damage. Minor physical trauma won't affect him."
I gestured to the gun, waving it about as though it were a more menial item, like a stapler or a beer bottle. "This is minor?" I cried, incredulous. A creature that could burn things into soot with a simple gaze, and not only that, survive any attack or defense? My heart began to race and I plastered myself against the window, staring at the boy. The thing.
If George was nervous, he didn't show it. "His skin is thickened somehow. He can't be punctured," George replied as he pulled the truck back out and put us back on the main road.
I wanted to protest. To scream. To run from the car and strangle the couple harboring that creature in their in their lives, and in their home. To take that small boy and show him the body of my Sarah. Show him what he'd done to her. And then kill him in a likewise fashion. But the knowledge that I simply couldn't took a while to sink in.
My hands found themselves clawing weakly at the door handle, but my vision was completely gone as I was wracked with salty, wet sobs. My sight went fuzzy and it was as if I suddenly couldn't suck in enough oxygen. George said nothing about my crying. I'm thankful that he did not.
"Is it even a he?"
George shook his head. "Unconfirmed, but if not, it's a very accurate facsimile. This is why I want you to join me, Jason. The work we do -- protects Americans from creatures like that."
Why couldn't you protect my Sarah, I wanted to scream, but I withheld a curse. Choked on it. Grunted as breaths heaved in and out of my chest like solid, disgusting, writhing things.
"I want to kill it," I said. "Kill it for what it did."
"I just said that you can't, Jason," George tried to soothe me, but I wouldn't be consoled. "He can't be hurt by any weapon we have." He seemed smug. Almost relieved. And I wanted to strangle him for it.
"Then I'll find out what *will* hurt it. And I'll use it," I threatened.
George nodded in approval, and we drove back to my house to figure out what to do with the body.
*****
"Well, I have observed the creature for several months since that incident, and I believe I have found the answer..."
The book fell from Clark's slackened, nearly lifeless grip and smacked into the carpet below, pages bending all out of sorts. He sat, cold, and shivering in the chair for several long moments, arms flopped to the side as if he didn't even realize they were appendages of his own. The whispers of shallow breathing echoed around him like thunder, magnified in the addled pit of his mind, and his listless stare continued, unthwarted.
He didn't even hear the maid coming until the door to the study crept open with a yawning creak.
*****
TBC...
(End Part 16/??)
