Day of the Djinn Warriors by P. B. Kerr Page B

body, they drove up a steep hill and into town.
    Philippa thought that Malpensa was a curious little place. Built on the top of a high cliff, it looked as if it were growing out of the rock like a tree or a bush. Inside the town, the buildings were in a poor state of repair from the earth tremors that occasionally affected this part of the world. Fearful of the effect one of these might have on their already weakened houses, most of the people in the town now chose to live in the area’s extensive network of caves, like so many bears and bats.
    Quite a few of the larger, more important buildings, such as the town hall and the police station, were now propped up by enormous timbers or surrounded by great cages ofscaffolding so that parts of Malpensa looked as if extremely large and fierce animals were caged there.
    “Easy to see why this place got its name,” observed Philippa.
    “Oh?” said Groanin. “What exactly does ‘Malpensa’ mean, anyway?”
    “Bad thought,” she said.
    “It does have a certain air of disaster about it,” said Groanin.
    The Carthusian catacombs were located in a small church in the Piazza Carthusi, on the edge of the town, opposite a soccer field where, underneath floodlights, a soccer game being watched by the whole population — approximately 825 people — was in noisy progress.
    “How is it,” moaned Groanin, “that we always seem to visit these horrible places at night?”
    “These catacombs are Malpensa’s only real tourist attraction,” said Nimrod. “So we’ve not much choice to come any other time. According to the guidebook, the place has as many as a hundred visitors a day in summer.”
    “There’s no accounting for what folks want to do and see on their holidays,” said Groanin.
    “Besides,” added Philippa. “I don’t think they’re going to just let us walk out of the catacombs with one of their main exhibits in broad daylight, do you?”
    “I admit,” said Groanin, “body snatching is something that’s probably best left to nighttime. Although I could easily wish otherwise.”
    The church door was not locked. They went inside and picked their way between some timbers that were propping up the walls. Several dozen candles burned in an enormous candelabra that hung from the ceiling on a metal trestle in a little chapel. Nimrod brought three candles from a pile stacked, like so many cigars, under the trestle, lit them, and then handed one to Philippa and one to his butler. At the back of the church, behind the altar, a crudely printed sign pointed out the way to the catacombs.
    Nimrod had borrowed Silman Franco’s skeleton key for the trip to Italy and he now fed this into the keyhole of a saucer-size padlock that secured the iron gate to the catacombs. The padlock now opened, Groanin hauled the heavy gate open and stood aside while Nimrod and Philippa went down the steps. Of course, he was quite happy to afford them this courtesy, being someone who was more than a little afraid of the dark — and of ghosts, in particular. Not to mention dozens of dead bodies.
    He gave a little shudder as the first group of bodies met his eyes. Near enough to touch, these were displayed like the chief treasures in some weird collector’s private museum. Laid out on shelves or propped up against the whitewashed wall, some were very well preserved, perfect in every feature, with hair and eyes, while some were little better than skeletons, with hands and jaws missing. There were dead babies and children, too, since death has little respect for youth. Groanin thought these especially sad and therewere several whose little faces brought a tear to his eye. At the same time, he thought it easy to see why someone might have been unscrupulous enough to steal three wax-museum dummies and use them to replace some of the corpses in the catacombs. For the place reminded him most of a wax museum.
    “Blimey, O’Reilly,” he said. “Just look at all these stiffs. There’s thousands