Within That Room! (9 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

PERCHED ON A FORTUNE

A most extraordinary performance was going on beyond, and the drawback was that they dare not watch for more than a few seconds on account of the deadly odor drifting out to them.

The lumber cellar was illumined by an oil lamp, and Mr. and Mrs. Falworth were both there. The stored articles seemed to have been moved to one side. A paving stone had been raised and into the square hole it had left depended a hose. It was connected to a small hand-driven pump, which old Falworth was moving up and down with surprising industry.

Scattered about the floor in various directions were bowls, bottles, and glass containers of every size and shape, some filled with water apparently, and others empty. Whatever came though the hose was sluicing out of the pump nozzle and into a large vessel like an overgrown goldfish bowl. But, most surprising thing of all, the housekeeper and her husband were both wearing respirators, not the ordinary civilian gas mask variety but laboratory masks, used exclusively for poison gas research.

“Shut—shut the door,” Vera choked, turning away. “I—I feel sick.... Come on!”

They floundered up the wooden steps again and back into the kitchen. In silence they put their shoes on once more.

“Well,” Vera murmured, “what do you make of that?”

“Very interesting,” Dick's voice showed he was preoccupied. “They're extracting water or something like it, from below. The smell is definitely that of sulphuretted hydrogen, so it does not take a Sherlock to see that they're extracting pure sulphur water.”

“Of all the cracked ideas!” Vera declared blankly.

“Cracked! Why, sweetheart, sulphur water in the pure state is one of the most valuable medicinal restoratives in existence. Ask any doctor. Take a trip to any place noted for its mineral springs and you'll find people drinking sulphur water, and other waters rich in natural irons and other deposits. Vera, your castle is perched over a fortune!”

“It is? But what good can it do—“

“Listen, what these two scoundrels are doing with the sulphur water isn't quite clear—but apparently they are bottling it. Some of those glass vessels down there are the product of a chemical factory. If they send that stuff to a professional chemist he may add something else and sell it, quite legally, as sulphur water; or he may even extract the pure sulphur and vaporize the water, thereby leaving sulphur tablets. There are endless varieties. It means, to the Falworths and the chemist, a good income—but it does not mean the fortune that could be made if this place were turned over exclusively as a place where people came to ‘take the waters'. You once said casually that this place would make a good institution. That perhaps is the very answer—a sanatorium. It would make a perfect one, with people in need of restorative coming here and taking the natural waters—waters and chemicals mixed by the activities of a long dead volcano.”

“Whew!” Vera breathed, as the possibilities dawned on her. “Now I understand! This could become a second Harrogate, or something—”

“Surely; and that is what the Falworths and chemist Henry Carstairs would do if only they could buy. Naturally, he is the chemist who does the receiving. The tie-up is obvious. Now we begin to see why you have got to be made to give up ownership.”

“Do you think Carstairs knows the real circumstances?”

“I can't say. Perhaps he does not know what is really going on, though he must know the value of the stuff being sent to him. That is probably why he has offered £15,000 for this place, knowing he can make it many times over once he takes possession.”

Vera set her jaw. “This settles it, Dick! I'm going to have the police in on this and get the Falworths thrown out! They've no right to do such things on my property—”

“True, but neither would you have the right either without official permission from the health ministry. I don't doubt that you would get it, but don't start a lot of things you can't finish. We have a ghost and an evil presence to solve yet, and no sanatorium can ever come into being until they are eliminated. Let's keep on plodding towards a solution first....”

Silently they drifted out into the hall, then Vera paused.

“Why do they wear gas masks?” she asked. “Because of the sulphuretted hydrogen gas?”

“Certainly—and it's pretty obvious that Carstairs has supplied them, since they are laboratory masks. Sulphuretted hydrogen is deadly poison. There may be other gases, too. The Falworths are taking no chances.”

“It didn't affect us much though, did it?”

“It couldn't, Dick said. “As I mentioned before, sulphuretted hydrogen is a heavy gas. It stays close to the floor. We were probably up to our knees in it, enough of it to kill us, but all we got was a slight, evil-smelling residue. Incidentally, there is a spot in America—Dead man's Gulch, I think they call it—which is part of a volcanic valley. A man can cross it, but no dog or small animal can without dying. The answer is because the gas is over the dog or small animal, but only up to a man's knees. Get the idea?”

“What beats me is how people can drink the awful stuff!”

“It undergoes certain refinements, of course, but that's a job for a professional chemist. Anyway, having solved what those two are doing, our next job is to eliminate our major troubles—ghost and evil aura. Let's go up and see how things are in the ghost room....”

Keeping close together, they went soundlessly up the stairs and along the upper corridor, pausing finally outside the door of the horror room. Vera held the torch while Dick operated the screwdriver.

“This,” he murmured, “is definitely the acid test! Get ready to back out quickly.”

He eased the door inward with a gentle squeak and at last he had it wide. They gazed into the dust that seemed to always cast a perpetual haze over the place. It was gloomy, illuminated—apart from the flashlight—by the moonlight. Of the demoniac phantom there was no sign.

Minutes passed, and there was not the remotest suggestion of that brain-numbing horror creeping upon them. The air smelt dusty and oppressive, nothing more.

At last Vera relaxed, her face grimly set in the torchlight.

“It begins to look as though you were right, Dick,” she murmured. “The Falworths don't know we are in here and because of that nothing happens! That isn't just coincidence!”

They began to move into the room slowly, step by step, as though treading on quicksand; but even when they had reached the center of the chamber there was no trace of anything unusual. Finally Dick turned the flashlight toward the fireplace. Lying flat in the dust he directed the beam inside the broken back and then up the flue. Turning over, he flashed it down it. When he withdrew he was dirty but grinning in triumph.

“My guess was right, Vera!” He got up quickly. “The upper flue of this chimney is closed with concrete or something; and the back of the fireplace having been smashed out, it seems that there is an open passage all the way down to the basement. Which also means that any fumes, gas, or smoke coming from the main cellar will float up here and, unable to escape up the chimney, will come into this room. We've got it, Vera!”

“Except that we don't know what causes the horror!”

“Yes.... If only I could remember what it was I saw— Well, I will—in time. And now we are here, let's look around for that ghost. There must be a panel in these walls or in the floor or ceiling, which might explain it. We know the outside is too sheer a drop for anything to be out there. Now, what have we?”

They began a slow prowl, Dick flashing light on every part of the stone wall, but the more they probed and examined the more evident it became that the idea of a panel was inadmissible. There could not be one in solid stone....

So they turned their attendance to a study of the dusty floor, smothering themselves in dirt and finishing up like two children who have had the time of their lives in an attic. But they found nothing. The floor was solid.

“Which leaves only the ceiling,” Dick decided, flashing the beam above. “And it would be a lofty one!”

Vera said: “Bend down and lend me your back. I'm not very heavy.”

“That's what you think!” he wheezed, as she scrambled with some difficulty on to his bent figure: “I certainly wouldn't like to have to carry you up a mountain side!”

Vera got gradually into position, kicking off her shoes. Her hand reached down and Dick gave her the flashlight. Then, precariously balanced, she stared at the ceiling, while Dick grunted and puffed below. At her commands he staggered to different parts of the room, which she examined minutely. In fact it seemed to Dick that she was taking far longer than she needed. “I'm not a trained acrobat, you know,” he objected finally.

“I'm not high enough,” she said. “There's something queer clinging to this ceiling. It isn't dust; it's a sort of gray film— Boost me a few inches, can you?”

Dick straightened to the limit and then gasped in anguish as she stood on his shoulders and then on his head.

“This might be all right as a vaudeville act but to me it's a pain in the neck,” he gasped. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Scraping some of this gray dust of into my hanky. Shan't be a moment. Down I come!”

Her feet moved back to his shoulders, then she slid down to the floor again. He took the flashlight and held the back of his neck. In the girl's outstretched hand was the little bag she had made of her handkerchief and in the center of it reposed a small quantity of powdered substance—gray with faint reddish-brown markings.

“And the idea?” Dick asked.

“Well, you seem to have ideas about gas or fumes of some sort. Either would leave a deposit. Everything like that leaves a residue. So, since there is not outlet for this hypothetical gas it must settle on the ceiling, the highest point. And it has shades in it similar to the ash in the cellar—red-brown. Maybe I've collected dust and deposit: I don't know. But if we could get the stuff analyzed we might find out something.”

A blank look had been stealing over Dick's face.

“A great idea! And I never thought of it! Very nice work, Mrs. Wilmott-to-be! Now let's get out of here before the charming Falworths think of discovering how we're going on!”

They left silently and Dick re-screwed the door. In a few minutes they were back in the girl's bedroom with the key turned in the lock.

“Point is,” Dick said, relighting the oil lamp, “who can we get to analyze this ash? The obvious person is Henry Carstairs—but that might mean putting our chins out too far. Just the same, it is a job for an analytical chemist.”

“I thought—perhaps Dr. Gillingham might do it,” Vera said. “He has helped us a lot, and naturally he is interested in what is going on. I know he's not a research chemist, but he understands dispensary and all that sort of thing. He might help us.”

Dick grinned. “Say, if you're always as bright as this in the small hours of the morning, it's a pity you don't sleep in the daytime! Dr. Gillingham it is—first thing after breakfast. And if he doesn't say he's sick of seeing us on his doorstep he ought to.”

“There remains,” Vera said worriedly, “the phantom! We are not one scrap nearer solving how it materialized into a locked room with solid walls, floor, and ceiling.”

“And now is no time to think about it,” Dick decided, yawning. “I'm going to bed and get some sleep before we start the next round. Okay?”

“Okay,” Vera agreed.

He stopped and kissed her smudged face gently as she sat holding the little bag of deposit.

“You're a great kid,” he murmured, patting her shoulder. “Sleep well—and see you lock your door!”

Silently he withdrew and she turned the key.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PROTECTION WITHDRAWN

Their activities in the night took toll of their sleeping hours. It was half-past ten before either of them stirred, and close on eleven when they got downstairs. In a way this was all to the good, for it looked as though a sleeping draught had done its work. On purpose, remembering that they were supposed to have been drugged, they both put on a bleary-eyed appearance as they settled at the breakfast table.

Mrs. Falworth appeared from the domestic regions after a moment or two, carrying the coffee on a tray.

“Good morning, miss—sir,” she murmured. “I trust you slept well?”

“Too well,” Dick growled. “Eleven hours solid is too much for anybody. Unlike me to sleep that heavily.”

“Unlike me, too,” Vera sighed. “Maybe yesterday's fresh air.”

The edge of a tight smile appeared on Mrs. Falworth's thin lips, then she turned to the business of serving breakfast.

“I suppose, miss, you have not decided to change your mind about selling this place?” she asked presently.

“Definitely not! I reason it this way—if it is worth £15,000 to a buyer, then it must be worth twice that and maybe more to me.”

The woman smiled gravely.

“I would remind you, madam, that today is the 21
st
of June, the day on which the potency of evil in this house is at maximum! I feel, in view of your continued refusal to bow to the inevitable and leave this house to the spirit that haunts it, that I must remove my beneficent influence and allow the evil power full play. In other words, I am withdrawing my protection.”

“Oh,” Vera said—not quite sure what else she should add.

“We'll survive,” Dick remarked.

“How typical of the bravado of youth!” Mrs. Falworth looked at him icily. “I have tried by every means to show you the danger. I think that from now on you will realize that I have not exaggerated!”

More than this she refused to say, but the words gave both Vera and Dick food for thought. They were still debating them as they left the house en route to Dr. Gillingham's.

“Do you think she means to make trouble?” Vera asked. “That is, more than she has already?”

“Only solution, I'm afraid.” Dick sighed. “Naturally, she hasn't any psychic power whatsoever. The withdrawal of her non-existent protection simply means that we are going to get the works—but how violently and in what form we can't guess. Either way we're ready for her. If she goes too far, we'll have to drop our efforts at detective work and turn her and her husband over to the police.”

On this decision they let the matter rest, and without exchanging many more words on the way they arrived at Dr. Gillingham's about noon. To see him was impossible, the maid explained, as he had just arrived from his round of calls and was busy in the surgery. So they waited in the reception room until one o'clock when the doctor was at last free.

“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” he apologized as he came in. “If it's to return the book, it could have waited.”

“It's not that, doctor,” Dick interrupted. “I'll keep it a while yet if you don't mind. We're here to find out if you have had any experience in analysis.”

Gillingham raised his eyebrows. He raised them even more when Vera spread out her handkerchief on the table and revealed the gray and brown ash within it.

“Can you find out, by chemistry, what this is?” she asked. “If you can, it may give us the whole answer to the terror of Sunny Acres. It may even bring about a conviction for the murder of my uncle!”

Gillingham looked at the stuff closely, then sniffed at it.

“No smell,” he murmured, “and unlike any ash I've ever seen before.”

“Can you possibly reconstruct its original nature?” Vera urged.

“Yes, I think so—providing it falls into any normal category, that is. Since so much seems to hang on it, I'll have a try. Come with me.”

He led the way across the hall and into his dispensary. He motioned to chairs, and Dick and Vera sat and watched attentively as he went through a process of chemical tests with his apparatus. But despite the thoroughness with which he worked and the various reagents he used, his disappointed face showed finally that he had failed.

“Sorry,” he said ruefully. “It just doesn't come into any of the known basic chemicals in medicine. It simply won't react to the tests I've given it.”

He handed back the surplus ash to Vera, tightly fastened in the handkerchief. She gave Dick a disappointed look.

“You don't know anybody who might be able to help?” he prompted the doctor, who stroked his chin and reflected. Finally he seemed to make up his mind.

“There's only one man I know—or rather have heard of—who might be able to help you, and that's Carstairs of Guildford. He's a research chemist of pretty high order. Does a lot of government work in connection with the food department.”

“You mean Henry Carstairs?” Vera asked quietly.

“Yes. You know of him?”

“I—er—have heard his name mentioned,” she acknowledged, and gave Dick a meaning glance. Then she smiled. “Well, maybe we'll try him, doctor.”

“Right. I'll look up his address for you.”

“I have it,” Vera interrupted. “Thanks again, doctor. It's hard work solving a mystery, but we'll do it.”

They retired to the street again and looked at each other doubtfully when they were a few yards from the practitioner's gate.

“Carstairs, eh?” Dick mused. “Now what do we do? If he is in league with the Falworths, he may know what this stuff is and relay the information back to them. They will realize how far we've progressed and perhaps try to murder us in the good old-fashioned way and risk the consequences. If Carstairs doesn't know the machinations the Falworths are up to, it's an even chance that he'll tell us what the stuff is.”

“Well, you don't get anywhere in this world if you won't take a chance now and again,” Vera decided. “I'm all for trying it. We can go from here to Guildford by bus and have lunch there—then we'll go to Carstairs' place. Might as well see what sort of a man he is, anyway.”

“You're the boss,” Dick shrugged. “To Guildford we go.”

And they did, when the bus arrived ten minutes later. Lunch occupied them for a further hour, then Dick consulted his notebook for the address he had written down.

“The Nortons, Cherry Tree Road,” he said. “Right! We'll ask the cashier for directions as we go out....”

She told them exactly how to find their way and Cherry Tree Road proved to be highly residential and lined with somber, dusty trees.

The Nortons stood by itself, a detached house with faultlessly kept gardens and boasting a great frontage of highly polished windows. In every sense it bespoke money and house-pride.

A neat maid opened the green front door.

“Mr. Carstairs in?” Dick inquired.

“Have you an appointment, sir?”

“Well, no, but it's—”

“I'm sorry, sir, but an appointment will have to be made. Mr. Carstairs is very busy and—”

“Look here,” Vera interrupted, “we've got to see him! It concerns a most important chemical research. Dr. Gillingham of Waylock Dean recommended us.”

The maid hesitated, then drew the door open wider and motioned into a drawing room.

“I will inquire if Mr. Carstairs can see you. Please sit down.”

Evidently, he decided that he could, for the maid came back shortly and conducted them through a side doorway across the hall, over a lawn, and so into a long, many-windowed annex at the back. Then she withdrew and left Vera and Dick in a wilderness of chemical appliances, where a tall man with upstanding black hair was brooding over a Bunsen burner.

At last he straightened up to a full six-foot-four and came forward. He had the face of an eagle—a big curved nose, powerful jaw and eyes of sharp gleaming gray. There was intelligence too, behind that lofty forehead and bald temples.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted, smiling cordially enough. “I'm afraid I do not know your names.”

“Brixton,” Dick said quickly, with a lightning glance at Vera. “Mr. and Mrs. Brixton. I'm a mining engineer and I've come up against a little problem which ordinary chemistry doesn't seem to touch. I happened to mention the fact to Dr. Gillingham over in Waylock Dean and he suggested I call on you.”

“Very kind of him,” Carstairs acknowledged, though whether he said it cynically or not was not entirely clear. Then he motioned to chairs. “Sit down, won't you? Now, Mr. Brixton, what's the problem?”

“One of my men has found this stuff—” and Dick motioned to the ashy residue as Vera opened her handkerchief—“in a test analysis of the soil near Waylock Dean. I can't decide what it is, so I wondered if you could analyze it.”

The chemist took the handkerchief Vera held out and looked at the ash pensively, stirred it with the end of his pencil. It was hard to tell what he was thinking.

“Naturally,” Dick added, “I'm willing to pay whatever fee there might be.”

“Only too glad to help a fellow chemist,” Carstairs interrupted, his gaunt face breaking into a smile. “I daresay we'll have this worked out in no time. Pardon me.”

Dick and Vera sat and watched as he went though a performance very similar to the one Gillingham had gone through. The only difference was that Carstairs seemed to be getting results. With small scoopfuls of ash shaken into different-colored liquids, and these, in turn, placed in various test tubes and heated over the Bunsen burner, he proceeded with the analysis. Finally, he had a murky sediment which he weighed in a pair of minute scales. Turning, he handed the residue in the handkerchief back to Vera, then he looked at Dick with a grim face.

“What's the idea, Mr. Brixton?” he asked shortly.

Dick gave a faint start. “Idea? I just want an analysis of—”

“This stuff,” Carstairs said, pointing to the scales with a bony acid-stained finger, “is nothing more or less than pulverized granite! So fine that it has been reduced to powder, either through age or dampness. Why did you come to me to find out a thing like this? Any mining engineer or chemist should have been able to classify it immediately.”

“You are quite sure it is that?” Vera demanded.

“Positive! And now I want to know your real purpose in taking up my time. What do you both want here?”

Dick got to his feet and Vera to hers. There were danger lights in those piercing gray eyes.

“I'm sorry,” Dick apologised. “I must have made a mistake in my reckonings somewhere. I assure you my only purpose—our only purpose—in coming here was for the analysis. How much do I owe you?”

“Only an apology,” Carstairs answered cynically. “But since you've given that I'll say no more.”

He walked across to the door with long strides and held it open.

“The path runs round the side of the house to the front gate. Good afternoon.”

Vera and Dick did not exchange a word until they were well beyond the gate and heading for the main road.

“Whew!” Dick whistled. “Serves us right, I suppose. Granite! Obviously dampness in the stone ceiling has made it flake and powder. And we thought— Gosh, but it's a pity! I believed we'd got on to something at last.”

“I never heard of granite dust having this coloring in it,” Vera said thoughtfully, opening her handkerchief to look at the reddish brown streaks in the gray. “Unless an element of rust comes into it somewhere— Oh!” she finished, in blank dismay.

Dick looked at her in surprise. “Now what?”

“I take first prize for being an idiot!” she gasped. “No wonder he told us it is granite dust! It isn't, Dick! He knows what it is and wouldn't tell us—and here's why! Look!”

For a moment Dick could not understand what she meant, then he saw her initials neatly inscribed in the handkerchief's corner—V.G.

“You—you nitwit!” he exploded. “And I told him the name was Brixton! I wonder, though, if he thought this was your maiden name initials—”

“You can be quite sure that he knows V.G. stands for Vera Grantham, and you can also be sure that he knows I'm the owner of Sunny Acres! Now we have put both feet in it with a vengeance!”