Neverwhere

the brightly lit front door, the restaurant’s steps leading invitingly down into the underground, and then he turned left . . .
He had been wrong. There was an Orme Passage. He could see the sign for it, high on the wall.
ORME PASSAGE Wl
No wonder he hadn’t noticed it before: it was scarcely more than a narrow alleyway between houses, lit by a sputtering gas-jet. You don’t see many of those anymore, thought Richard, and he held up his instructions to the gaslight, peering at them.
» ‘Then turn around thrice, widdershins’?»
«Widdershins means counterclockwise, Richard.»
He turned, three times, feeling stupid. «Look, why do I have to do all this, just to see your friend. I mean, all this nonsense . . . »
«It’s not nonsense. Really. Just—humor me on this, okay?» And she had smiled at him.
He stopped turning. Then he walked down the alley to the end. Nothing. No one. Just a metal garbage can, and beside it something that might have been a pile of rags. «Hello?» called Richard. «Is anyone here? I’m Door’s friend. Hello?»
No. There was no one there. Richard was relieved. Now he could go home and explain to the girl that nothing had happened. Then he would call in the appropriate authorities, and they would sort it all out. He crumpled the paper into a tight ball, and tossed it toward the bin.
What Richard had taken for a pile of rags unfolded, expanded, stood up in one fluid motion. A hand caught the crumpled paper in midair.
«Mine, I believe,» said the marquis de Carabas. He wore a huge dandyish black coat that was not quite a frock coat nor exactly a trench coat, and high black boots, and, beneath his coat, raggedy clothes. His eyes burned white in an extremely dark face. And he grinned white teeth, momentarily, as if at a private joke of his own, and bowed to Richard, and said, «De Carabas, at your service, and you are . . . ?»
«Um,» said Richard. «Er. Um.»
«You are Richard Mayhew, the young man who rescued our wounded Door. How is she now?»
«Er. She’s okay. Her arm’s still a bit—»
«Her recovery time will undoubtedly astonish us all. Her family had remarkable recuperative powers. It’s a wonder anyone managed to kill them at all, isn’t it?» The man who called himself the marquis de Carabas walked restlessly up and down the alley. Richard could already tell that he was the type of person who was always in motion, like a great cat.
«Somebody killed Door’s family?» asked Richard.
«We’re not going to get very far if you keep repeating everything I say, now, are we?» said the marquis, who was now standing in front of Richard. «Sit down,» he ordered. Richard looked around the alley for something to sit on. The marquis put a hand on his shoulder and sent him sprawling to the cobblestones. «She knows I don’t come cheap. What exactly is she offering me?»
«Sorry?»
«What’s the deal? She sent you here to negotiate, young man. I’m not cheap, and I never give freebies.»
Richard shrugged, as well as he could shrug from a supine position. «She said to tell you that she wants you to accompany her home—wherever that is—and to fix her up with a bodyguard.»
Even when the marquis was at rest, his eyes never ceased moving. Up, down, around, as if he were looking for something, thinking about something. Adding, subtracting, evaluating. Richard wondered whether the man was quite sane. «And she’s offering me?»
«Well. Nothing.»
The marquis blew on his fingernails and polished them on the lapel of his remarkable coat. Then he turned away. «She’s offering me. Nothing.» He sounded offended.
Richard scrambled back up to his feet. «Well, she didn’t say anything about money. She just said she was going to have to owe you a favor.»
The eyes flashed. «Exactly what kind of favor?»
«A really big one,» said Richard. «She said she was going to have to owe you a really big favor.»
De Carabas grinned to himself, a hungry panther sighting a lost peasant child. Then he turned on Richard. «And you left her alone?» he asked. «With Croup and Vandemar out there? Well, what are you waiting for?» He knelt down and took from his pocket a small metal object, which he pushed into a manhole cover at the edge of the alley and twisted. The manhole cover came up easily; the marquis put away the metal object and took something out of another pocket that reminded Richard a little of a long firework, or a flare. He held it in one hand, ran his other hand