The Son In-law They Mocked Found The Lost Vault

CHAPTER 9: THE HAND IN THE DARK

The dark was so thick that Adrian could not see his own fingers.

Somewhere close, a woman was screaming. It was Madam Feng. Somewhere else, a chair was rolling across the floor. Glass crunched under heavy shoes. The cold wind from the broken window pushed the curtains into the room, and they moved like ghosts.

The hand on Adrian's sleeve did not let go.

"Do not move," the voice whispered again. It was an old voice, rough like sand, but very calm. "Count to three with me. Then walk where I pull you."

Adrian did not count. He did not walk. He did the one thing the voice told him not to do.

He turned toward Helen.

Two seconds ago, she had been standing by the desk with Victor's gun pointed at her chest. Now there was only black where she had been. Adrian reached out with his free hand and felt nothing but air. His heart was beating so hard that it hurt.

"Helen," he said. Not loud. Just enough.

"Here." Her voice came from his left, very close. It was shaking. "Adrian, I am here."

His fingers found her wrist. It was cold and thin, and her pulse was running fast under his thumb. He held it tight. He was not going to let go again. Not tonight. Not ever.

"Find them!" Victor shouted. For the first time, there was no music in his voice. It was the voice of an angry child. "Somebody get a light! Now!"

A phone light came on near the door. Its white beam swung across the room, over the books, over the desk, over Mr. Feng sitting very still in his chair.

Then a gun went off.

The sound was so loud inside the small room that Adrian felt it in his teeth. Plaster fell from the ceiling like snow. Madam Feng screamed again. The phone light dropped to the floor and spun around and around, throwing crazy shadows on the walls.

"Now," the old voice said.

The hand pulled. Adrian pulled Helen. They moved together, three people in the dark, bent low, past the edge of the desk. Adrian's knee hit something hard. He bit his lip so he would not cry out.

"Father," Helen whispered. "Father is still here."

"I know," the old voice said. "He knows too."

From the chair by the desk came a soft sound. It was Mr. Feng's voice, so quiet that only Helen and Adrian could hear it.

"Go, my girl," he said. "Go with them. Do not look back."

Helen stopped. Adrian felt her whole arm go stiff. He knew what she was feeling, because he had felt the same thing twelve years ago, standing outside a closed door while men in uniforms carried his grandfather away. The feeling of leaving someone you love behind. It is like leaving a piece of your own body on the floor.

"I cannot," she whispered.

"You must," her father said. "Victor will not hurt me. He needs me. But he does not need you. Go."

Something cold touched Adrian's other hand. A small, hard thing pushed into his palm in the dark. He knew its shape at once. Stone. Smooth on one side, broken on the other. Two thin lines on its face, like a river that bent twice.

His half of the jade.

The old man had taken it from the desk while everyone was blind.

Adrian closed his fingers around it. He did not ask how. There was no time to ask anything.

The old man stopped near the bookcase. Adrian heard his fingers moving over the wood, fast and sure, like a man playing a piano he had played many times before. Then there was a small click. A breath of cold, old air came out of the wall. It smelled of dust and wet stone and something else, something like a closed room that nobody had opened in a very long time.

"In," the old man said.

Behind them, the phone light swung up again. Its beam crossed the room and stopped. Right on Adrian's face.

For one second, Adrian and Victor looked at each other across the dark.

Victor's face was white. His hair had fallen over his eyes. The gun in his hand was shaking a little. And for the first time since Adrian had met him, he looked afraid.

"West," he said.

Then the old man pulled hard, and Adrian fell backward into the wall, and the wall closed behind him like a mouth.

It was so dark inside the passage that the dark of the study seemed bright.

Adrian could hear his own breathing, loud and fast. He could hear Helen breathing beside him. Above them, through the wood and the stone, they could hear Victor shouting and fists hitting the wall.

"There is a door! There is a door here! Break it!"

"Keep walking," the old man said. "Do not stop. That wall is thicker than it looks. They will need an axe."

A small yellow light came on. The old man was holding a tiny flashlight, the kind people keep in a kitchen drawer for when the lights go out. In its weak glow, Adrian saw stone steps going down, narrow and steep, wet with water. The walls were so close that his shoulders touched them on both sides.

They went down. One step. Then another. Helen held the back of Adrian's jacket with one hand. With the other, she held her shoes. She had taken them off somewhere in the dark. Adrian did not even notice when.

"Who built this?" he asked. His voice sounded strange in the small space. It came back to him from the walls.

"The family who owned this house before the Fengs," the old man said without turning around. "Two hundred years ago, rich families always made a way to run. In the old days, when soldiers came, a good tunnel could save your life." He was quiet for a moment. "Your grandfather found it. Many years ago, when he and Robert were young and foolish and stayed up all night drinking tea and talking about dead kings."

Adrian almost stopped walking.

He tried to see it. His grandfather, young, laughing, sitting with Mr. Feng in that same study. Two friends with their whole lives in front of them. He had never once imagined his grandfather young. In his mind, the old man had always been old, with white hair and ink on his fingers and tired, kind eyes.

It hurt to think about. It hurt in a good way and a bad way at the same time.

The steps ended. The passage became flat and long, and the floor turned to mud. Water dripped from the roof onto Adrian's neck. Somewhere ahead, he could hear the soft sound of moving water.

Behind them, far away now, came a heavy sound. Boom. Then again. Boom.

Helen gasped. "They are breaking the wall."

"Then we walk faster," the old man said.

They walked faster.

Adrian's ribs were burning from the fight on the roof. His lip was swollen from the pier. Every part of his body wanted to lie down in the mud and sleep. But Helen's hand was holding his jacket, and he could feel her fingers trembling, and that was enough to keep him moving.

At last, the old man stopped in front of a rusty iron gate. Through its bars, Adrian could see the night. The moon was shining on black water. It was the old canal behind the Feng estate, the one the servants used to wash clothes in when Adrian was first married into the house.

The old man pulled a key from his pocket and opened the gate. It screamed on its old hinges, and all three of them froze.

They waited. Nothing came.

They stepped out into a narrow stone path beside the water. The air was cold and clean, and Adrian breathed it in like a drowning man. Helen sat down on the low wall beside the canal. She put her face in her hands, and her shoulders began to shake.

Adrian sat down next to her. He did not know what to say. So he did not say anything. He only put his arm around her, carefully, the way you hold something that might break. She did not push him away. After a moment, she leaned into his shoulder and cried without making a sound.

"My father," she whispered. "I left my father."

"He told you to go."

"That does not make it better."

"No," Adrian said. "It does not."

He looked down at the jade in his hand. The river half. The moonlight touched it, and for a second the thin green lines seemed to glow, as if the stone was alive and breathing. Two years of his life. His grandfather's whole life. All in a piece of stone no bigger than his thumb.

Then he looked up at the old man.

In the moonlight, Adrian could finally see his face. He was short and thin, maybe sixty five years old, wearing a brown coat that was too big for him. His hair was gray and cut very short. There was an old white scar on his chin, shaped like a small moon. His hands were stained with something dark, and he smelled faintly of glue and old paper.

Adrian had never seen this man before in his life.

And yet, something about him felt known. The way he stood. The way he looked at the water, very still, like a man who had waited a long time for something.

"Who are you?" Adrian asked.

The old man did not answer at once. He looked at Adrian for a long time. His eyes were wet.

"You have his chin," he said softly. "I did not see it when you were small. But you have his chin, and his stubborn way of standing. Like a man who would rather break than bend."

"Who are you?" Adrian asked again, more firmly.

"My name is Lu." The old man took a deep breath. "For twenty years, I worked beside your grandfather. I carried his books. I cleaned his tools. I made his tea when he forgot to eat. And for twelve years after he died, I watched you. From far away. Every day."

Helen lifted her head from Adrian's shoulder.

"Watched him?" she said. "Why?"

"Because I made Henry a promise," Old Lu said. "And because I owe him a debt I can never pay."

Adrian stood up slowly. His legs were shaking, but not from tiredness anymore. Something was rising in him, something cold and sharp.

"You were with him," he said. "Twelve years ago. You were there."

Old Lu looked away, toward the black water. The moon shook on its surface. For a long time, the only sound was the canal moving softly against the stones.

When he spoke again, his voice was so low that Adrian had to step closer to hear it.

"I was on the stairs the night your grandfather died," Old Lu said. "Halfway up. Close enough to touch him."

He turned and looked straight into Adrian's eyes.

"And I saw the hand that pushed him."