That was when the reaction hit me. I'd escaped starvation and her gun, but I wasn't a hero and the release of tension flipped my stomach over and unhinged my knees.
Shaking badly, I stumbled through the big, empty house until I found a phone.
ou Pape got there so quickly that I still hadn't gotten over the tremors, in spite of a bottle of brandy I dug out of a credenza, maybe because the date on the label, 1763, gave me a new case of the shivers.
I could see the worry on Lou's face vanish when he assured himself that I was all right. It came back again, though, when I told him what had happened. He didn't believe any of it, naturally. I guess I hadn't really expected him to.
"If I didn't know you, Mark," he said, shaking his big, dark head unhappily, "I'd send you over to Bellevue for observation. Even knowing you, maybe that's what I ought to do."
"All right, let's see if there's any proof," I suggested tiredly. "From what I was told, there ought to be plenty."
We searched the house clear down to the basement, where he stood with his face slack.
"Christ!" he breathed. "The annex to the Metropolitan Museum!"