condensed master

Will Bonner
question in his mind he would have to take it to be on the safe side.
Will looked at his watch as he drove over the bridge in Warrandyte, it was
7.30 p.m. and already dark. There were few shops in the main street, with only
one, a milkbar and convenience store, remaining open. Parking his car where it
was illuminated by the lights from the window he walked along the path that
followed the river until he arrived at the place where he would have to turn off.
Looking up the side of the hill he could see the scattered lights from the houses
peeping through the trees. The hills alongside the river were honeycombed with
dirt roads, either terminating or intersecting with others, eventually finding their way
back to the riverside.
He was glad that he had left the car down below as the road he was
negotiating was nothing more than a well used track, only wide enough for one
vehicle. In the daylight it would have been a picturesque setting, but at night it was
dismal, and apart from the sound of his own footsteps, all he could hear was the
wind rattling it's way through the dry leaves of the gum trees.
The road continued to twist and turn on it's way up the hill, until it crossed the
front of a large flat roofed house and then disappeared around the back. The sign
on a post next to the road read "The Gables" Now there was an irony, Will
thought, looking once again at the flat roof of the house, this can't be the place. It
matches the location that Tony had given him, but not the name. There were lights
coming from the windows indicating that there would be someone home. Will
climbed the steps to the front verandah and knocked on the door.
A couple of minutes elapsed but no one came. The effect of knocking louder
on the second attempt pushed the door partially open, and projecting his voice
through the opening he called out to gain attention. Pushing the door wide open
Will took a few steps inside to a sight that defied belief.
He was standing in a room some 12 feet wide by 50 feet or more long, a bare
room without furniture. Full sized paintings of nude women adorned the walls on
both sides and for the whole length of the room, each lit independently. On the
very end wall facing him, was the life sized portrait of a man, fully dressed in a
business suit, sitting in a large carved high back wooden chair, holding a pint of
beer in his right hand.
Expecting that at any moment he would be interrupted by a challenge, Will
stood trying to reconcile what he was seeing, and things just didn't fit in with what
238