The Key to Midnight

trying to determine if any of them might be watching him.
        Later, in bed in the dark, he and Joanna made love. This time it was slow and tender, and they finished like a pair of spoons in a drawer. He fell asleep pressed against her warm back.
        The peculiar dream came to him again. The soft bed. The white room. The three surgeons in white gowns and masks, staring down at him. The first surgeon asked the same question he'd asked before - 'Where does he think he is?' - and the same conversation ensued among the three men. Alex lifted one hand to touch the nearest doctor, but as before his fingers were transformed magically into tiny replicas of buildings. He stared at them, amazed, and then his fingers ceased to be merely replicas and became five tall buildings seen at a great distance, and the buildings grew larger, larger, and he drew nearer to them, dropping down from the sky, and a city grew across the palm of his hand and up his arm. The looming faces of the surgeons were replaced by blue sky. Below him was Rio, the fantastic bay and the ocean beyond. Then his plane landed, and he got out, and he was in Rio. The mournful but beautiful music of a Spanish guitar filled the Brazilian air.
        He mumbled and turned over in his sleep.
        And he turned into a new dream. He was in a cool dark crypt. Candles flickered dimly. He walked to a black coffin that rested on a stone bier, grasped the massive bronze handles, and lifted the lid. Thomas Chelgrin lay inside: blood-smeared, gray-skinned, as dead as the stone on which his casket rested. Heart pounding, overcome with dread, Alex gazed at the senator, and then as he started to lower the lid, the eyes of the corpse opened. Chelgrin grinned malevolently, exposing blood-caked teeth. He grabbed Alex's wrists in his strong, gray, cold hands and tried to drag him down into the coffin.
        Alex sat straight up in bed, an unvoiced scream trapped in his throat.
        Joanna was asleep.
        He remained very still for a while, suspicious of the deep shadows in the corners. He had left the bathroom door ajar, with the light burning beyond it. Nevertheless, most of the room was shrouded in gloom. Gradually his eyes adjusted, and he could see that there were no intruders, either real or supernatural.
        He got out of bed and went to the nearest window.
        Their room offered a view of the sea. Alex could see nothing, however, except a vast black emptiness marked by the vague lights of a ship behind curtains of rain. He shifted his gaze to something closer at hand: the slate-shingled roof that slanted low over the window, creating a deep eave. Still closer: The windows had diamond-shaped panes of leaded glass, and each pane was beveled at the edges. Closer: In the surface of the glass, he saw himself - his drawn face, his troubled eyes, his mouth set in a tight grim line.
        The case had begun with Joanna's repeating nightmare. Now he had a recurring dream of his own. He didn't believe in coincidence. He was certain that his dream of Rio harbored a message that he must interpret if they were to survive. His subconscious was trying to tell him something desperately important.
         But for God's sake, what?
        He had been to Rio for a month the previous spring, but he hadn't been hospitalized while there. He hadn't met any doctors. The trip had been perfectly ordinary - just one in a series of brief escapes from a job that had begun to bore him.
        He shifted his attention from his own reflection and stared into the distance again.
         We're puppets, he thought. Joanna and me. Puppets. And the puppetmaster is out there. Somewhere. Who? Where? And what does he want?
        Lightning slashed the soft flesh of the night.

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    57
        
        Rain was no longer falling. The morning air was piercingly clear. Judging by the window glass to which Joanna touched her fingertips, the day was also fearfully cold.
        She felt refreshed and more at ease than she'd been in a long time. She could see, however, that Alex had not benefited from the night at the inn. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed by dark circles of slack skin.
        He returned the 9mm pistol to its hiding place in the hollowed-out hair dryer and packed the dryer in Joanna's largest suitcase.
        They checked out of The Bell and the Dragon at nine o'clock. The clerk wished them a swift, safe trip.
        They went to a chemist's