The Shape Stealer by Lee Carroll Page B

had a sturdy-looking lock, but a mild push against the door with one shoulder revealed that it was actually broken, and Marduk slipped inside. A narrow, rectangular lobby, which seemed to run far back into the building, was dark and foul-smelling, poorly lit by one Victorian-era lamp with a frayed shade on a splintered table. Marduk looked around, feeling further confusion. There was no directory, or elevator, or even furniture to sit on. Again he wondered if he was in the right place. He thought he detected a faint aroma of stale urine.
    Then he heard a distant clamor of voices, perhaps from several flights above, muffled, as if from a crowd in a tapestried room. He started up the stairs, which were toward the back of the lobby. At the top of the second flight, he took one stride onto the landing, where an amateurish portrait of Napoleon hung in a cheap frame, turned to go up the next flight, and found himself in a different world.
    A sheet of polished metal that could have been steel but gleamed like silver blocked off the rest of the second floor hallway; the polished wooden landing under its reflection was bright, almost incandescent. An oval-shaped door, with a series of small red bulbs bordering it, was in the center of the metal sheet. In front of the door, a young man in a white, iridescent jumpsuit that resembled an astronaut’s uniform sat a desk with a computer in front of him. “Credentials, sir?” he asked Marduk.
    “What?”
    “Your credentials. No one is admitted to the trading room without at least three forms of identification, one of which must be a letter of certification, including bonding, from the CAC Quarante. The Paris Stock Exchange.”
    Marduk eyed the empty stairs below him. Short-tempered under the best of circumstances, he was of a mind to strangle this arrogant sentry, anxious as he was to start trading now that he’d come this far. At first he saw no potential witnesses below him, and the sheet of metal seemed to block any view from above. But then he heard voices, belonging to young persons judging by their laughing tone, floating toward him from the first flight of stairs. He strained his eyes downward and spied a few young men, dressed more casually than the others he’d seen, glancing up at him and sending looks of friendly recognition his way.
    “Will! Where have you been?” the first up the stairs, a tall, gangling blond man asked.
    “Haven’t seen you in over a month!” a red-haired companion in an orange and white sweater exclaimed. The little group increased their pace up the stairs toward him, and soon three men, the third with dark hair and wearing a shirt with a photo of Elvis Presley on it, emerged onto the landing.
    “Glad you fellows happened along,” Marduk said. “I’ve forgotten my wallet and apparently this novice”—he indicated the man at the table with a nod—“has not heard of Will Hughes!”
    The entry clerk, who mumbled apologies for being on only his third night on the job, was familiar with the new arrivals, for he opened the door for them without an ID request or further word. “We’ll vouch for Will,” the blond man told him, and Marduk joined them without further challenge.
    The tunnel stretching out before them now seemed remarkably long given the external dimensions of the building. An optical illusion of some sort, Marduk speculated. It was oval-shaped like the door, made of luminescent white plastic with rows of twinkling red lights extending along it. The thick, rose-colored carpet they walked on, luxuriant as the Turkish carpets he had encountered during years spent adventuring in the Ottoman Empire, ran down the middle. Marduk tried to focus not on the modern and spacious design within such a rundown and cramped building but on parrying conversational forays from the others that he found disconcerting, given that they were based on aspects of Will Hughes’s life he was not familiar with given that they concerned an older Will than the