Alias nodded. "She walked into it with her mouth open," she explained. "Probably paralyzed her vocal chords. Maybe well get some quiet for a while," she said with a grin. "That's not funny," Olive retorted in a hoarse whisper.
They took the time to investigate the rest of the cellar. Dragon bait stood staring thoughtfully into the prison cell where he'd once been chained awaiting death, the cell where he'd sworn to the Nameless Bard that he would protect Alias. Except for the glistening slime left by the gelatinous cube, everything was just as he remembered it.
Alias, who had no clear memory of the place, was busy investigating bits of litter on the floor mixed in with the gold coins and the remains of the jelly creature. Several old rat skeletons, the skull of a very large cat, fruit peelings, moldy cheese, some bloody bandages. The swordswoman studied the ceiling. There was a hole overhead.
"Melman must be using the cellar as a midden," Alias guessed. "If it weren't for the gelatinous cube cleaning up down here, we might have had to wade through garbage. Melman probably threw the poor creature down here when it was just a bud."
"The door between the house upstairs and the cellar is secret, too," Olive explained. "Melman may not even realize that there's anything down here. He may think there's just an old well or sewer. I'll bet this treasure is all Cassana's original horde. Prakis said she stored it down here. Probably in there." The halfling pointed to a side room with a missing door. The hinges remained suspended from the door frame. "The door must have been wood. After several years the gelatinous cube dissolves it, slips into the treasury, drags the coins around beneath it, leaving them piled in front of the secret passageway."
Dragonbait extinguished the flame of his sword, and Alias covered the lantern so that only the faintest light showed. Then the trio climbed the spiral staircase leading to the first floor of the house. At the top, they halted and listened for any sounds that might indicate they'd been heard. The house seemed preternaturally still. Alias wondered if perhaps Olive had been spotted tailing One-Eye to the house, causing Melman to bolt. Olive, her ear to the secret panel, looked suspicious, but she finally pushed on the section of wall that released the secret panel. The curved section of wall slid easily enough until it caught on something in the alcove on the other side.
Olive was just able to slip through the crack in the secret entrance. There she discovered the obstruction immediately. In Cassana's time there had been on display in the alcove a stone statue of a particularly voluptuous succubus. The new owner had replaced it with a brass sculpture of a masked warrior driving a spear through the heart of a maggot-ridden mastiff. The end of the spear was blocking the secret panel from sliding all the way open.
Grunting and shoving with all her might, Olive found she could not shift the sculpture. She solved the problem by hanging on the end of the spear until it bent downward, out of the door's path. On the halfling's signal Alias shifted the panel open all the way and she and Dragonbait stepped into the hallway beside Olive.
The three adventurers moved down the hallway until they stood at the base of the staircase to the second floor.
There was a light on in a room upstairs, and voices drifted down the stairs. It sounded like a man and a woman arguing, but Alias could not make out any distinct words. She frowned anxiously. If the shouts came from the master of the house and some female friend, it was likely there were also servants awake and about.
As the shouting grew closer, Alias motioned Dragonbait into the hallway behind the stairs. Olive had already faded into some other'shadowy recess of the house. "And you call yourself a healer!" the man above bellowed.
"There are limitations to every craft," the woman snarled back. "You are lucky I could ease your pain. Perhaps after it scars I can help further, but not now. The wound's magic is still too strong!"
"So you say," the man shot back. "What good is a healer who will not heal?4 think you're in league with him!"
Someone now stood on the first landing, casting a shadow down the stairs and into the hallway. "If I were," the woman argued, "why would I come here in the middle of the night? Let it scar, then I'll call again. Until that time, I recommend you keep a very low profile. Good night."
Someone stomped very deliberately down the stairs and paused at the bottom. Alias peeked around the railing. It was a woman dressed in a tunic and leggings made from satin fabric printed with a harlequin diamond pattern. She wore a mask of black fabric that covered her face from her forehead to her nose. Around her neck was an iron necklace of a stylized mask-the unholy symbol of Mask, the god of thieves. The woman wrapped herself in a voluminous cape of wolf fur, nodded, and waved to someone down the hall, then let herself out the front door.
Alias waited anxiously for several moments, expecting a servant to come down the hall, but only Olive appeared.
"Did you see who she waved to?" the swordswoman asked the halfling.
"The sculpture we were pushing around. Its supposed to be of the god Mask stabbing Kezef, the Chaos Hound,"
Olive explained. Her voice was still a hoarse whisper. "Wishful thinking on the part of Mask worshipers. She's a priestess of Mask. She was just making an obeisance to the image of her master."
Alias nodded as she wondered what was wrong with Melman that he required a healer in the middle of the night, and why couldn't the priestess heal him?
Alias checked the door to what had once been Cas-sana's laboratory. The door was securely locked. Olive pulled out a tiny wire and began working at the lock as Alias and Dragonbait proceeded to investigate all the other first floor rooms.
It didn't take them long to ascertain that there was no one else in the other rooms. If there were servants in the house, Alias suspected they were quartered upstairs. Throughout their search she could hear pacing upstairs, punctuated by a man cursing occasionally.
Alias took the precaution of securing and locking the front door against any other evening visitors. Then she and Dragonbait returned to the entrance of the previously locked laboratory. The halfling stood within, her lantern propped up on an accounting table. A huge smile graced her face. With its window bricked up, the room had been converted to a treasure vault. All about the halfling were sacks, crates, and chests, each labeled with a tag. Alias read the nearest one. In a crabbed, tight handwriting was the notation, "500 gold, 100 platinum, Duck Statue stolen from Family Urdo for later ransom."
Quite a hoard for a simple vintner," Alias noted. "Grapes must have been exceedingly good these last few years."
Olive pointed to the last pages of a thin red leather-bound ledger lying on the accounting table. "According to these figures, Melman's profits are minimal. Not even enough to require payment of business taxes.
"So all this is just spare change he's found lying in the street," Alias commented.
Olive held up a finger for Alias to wait, then thumped deftly on the side of the accounting table and a small, secret drawer sprang out. Prom it the halfling pulled out a second ledger.
"This," Olive said, cracking open the ledger and taking several moments to peer down the page, "shows that our man Melman is a major player in Westgate. He's got his thumb in extortion, fencing, smuggling. It's all written down here."
"So we've caught ourselves a big Night Mask," Alias whispered with glee.
"Actually," Olive said, lifting a false bottom out of the secret drawer and pulling out yet a third ledger, "we've caught ourselves a big Night Mask who cheats. First ledger for the law, second ledger for his criminal cohorts and bosses, third ledger-well, that will have the numbers closest to reality. Melman was not only skimming off the top, but he was collecting outside his own territory. Here's today's entry from One-Eye in the second ledger. Two hundred gold, Gateside Protection, it says. In the third ledger it's entered as three hundred gold, Gateside and the Shore."