Midnight Jewels

man who ruined everything for me three years ago, weren't you? I want to know for certain. I do not like loose ends."
    "Neither do I." Croft ignored Gladstone's voice and concentrated on examining the shelving support. "Which way did it move?" he asked softly.
    "Left. I stumbled and grabbed for it and it just sort of shifted a bit." Mercy leaned forward and tried to wriggle the metal upright. "Gladstone told me once that this vault would be a trap for others but not for him. And you said he'd always have an escape route. So I started looking for one. It wasn't like I had a whole lot else to do during the past few hours."
    Croft nodded. "Logical. After the close call on the island, he'd want to make certain he had his new escape routes well planned. There's a reason he made it possible to lock this vault from the inside."
    "Falconer! Answer me, damn you." Gladstone's voice rose a notch.
    "He's getting upset," Croft remarked, not bothering to lower his voice this time.
    "He obviously has severe emotional problems," Mercy said in a normal tone, sensing it would infuriate Gladstone to be discussed in clinical terms. "Maybe that's true of all really evil men. They're emotionally sick."
    "No," Croft said with absolute certainty. "Gladstone knows what he's doing. He's made conscious choices all the way down the line. That's why he can't be forgiven or forgotten. He has to be destroyed."
    Gladstone's voice roared through the grill. "You will both be dead soon, you know that, don't you? Locking yourselves in the vault won't do you any good."
    Croft stroked the upright as if it were a long-stemmed chrysanthemum. His fingertips moved delicately over the surface from top to bottom, probing, prodding and pushing with light pressure. When he reached the bottom section something gave slightly. "I need a little time to figure this out," he muttered quietly. "We'll have to keep him talking."
    Mercy nodded, reaching down to lift some of the valuable books off the shelf so Croft would have more room to work.
    "You will answer me when I speak to you, Falconer," Gladstone thundered.
    "What makes you think you'll get away free and clear this time?" Croft asked Gladstone carelessly.
    "Last time the fire was an unexpected catastrophe," Gladstone said eagerly. "But I learned from it. I leaned how effective it was. Everyone thought I died in that fire, didn't they, Falconer? Even you. I almost did die. Anyone else in that situation would have. But I'm not anyone else. I always take the precaution of ensuring myself an escape route. In this case it was old and dangerous and nearly became a death trap for me. I had to go through a wall of flames to reach that island tunnel and when I got there it was already filling with smoke. But I survived and I learned from that, too. You can't begin to guess how much plastic surgery was required at a discreet private clinic in Switzerland before I could show my hands and face in public. But it was worth it, because when I did, no one recognized me. I realized then that there was nothing to stop me from starting over. There was, after all, a nice nest egg waiting for me in my Swiss bank account. I do not leave such things to chance."
    "How many lives did you consign to oblivion to get that nest egg, Gladstone?" Croft changed his grip slightly on the metal upright and pushed more firmly against it.
    "One must work with the material at hand," Gladstone responded. "The beauty of it is that there is always so much raw material available to a man who understands that most people in this world actually prefer to be told what to do. They want all the decisions made by someone else. They crave surrender and need an authority figure. So few people really like to think for themselves, Falconer, have you ever noticed?"
    "I've noticed." The upright began to slide to one side.
    "Offer such people a new religion, a cult, a sense of being special and apart and elevated from the normal run of humanity and they flock to you begging for direction."
    Mercy watched Croft as she asked, "Was your private artist colony supposed to be the start of another source of slave labor for you, Gladstone? I've always thought artists were a fairly independent crowd. What made you think you could manipulate them?"
    "You are very astute, Miss Pennington. More so than I would have assumed at this point. You're quite right. My artist colony was to be the start of a very useful power base. I made the mistake of having my followers too close to