Chessmen of Doom

by John Bellairs

  "Do you need help?" he bellowed.

  The professor couldn't help laughing. "That must be one of the most idiotic questions I have ever heard in my life," he said between cackles. "Does it look like we're on a boating expedition?" he yelled back. "Yes, of course we need help!"

  The police boat pulled alongside the upside-down rowboat and its three soaked occupants. One at a time the boys and the professor were pulled into the other vessel. Gratefully they sank onto the ribbed bottom.

  "Many thanks, officer," sighed the professor. "I am very happy to see you!"

  The policeman with the megaphone handed out blankets to the three wet and shivering people that he had rescued. Then the police boat did a very neat U-turn and went plowing away at high speed toward the shore.

  That evening the professor and the boys were sitting in the study of the old mansion. A roaring fire was going in the fireplace, and everyone had a mug of hot cider in his hand. The boys looked dejected, while the professor looked mad enough to chew nails. For a long time there was no sound but the ticking of the gloomy black marble clock on the mantel and the crackling of twigs in the fireplace. Finally the professor spoke.

  "Well, it was a nice try," he said sourly. "But I guess I should have expected that the Mustache Monster would beat us to the punch. He probably guessed what we would try to do and conjured up that chapel illusion, and threw in the storm for good measure. I have heard tales of sorcerers who could command the winds and the waves, but I never believed it until now."

  Fergie made a squinchy face and stared into the fire. He was trying hard to be skeptical. "Are you sure that storm was his doing?" he asked with a sudden searching glance at the professor. "I mean, it could've been a coincidence, couldn't it?"

  The professor stiffened. "Oh, sure!" he said in a strained voice. "That storm was a mere coincidence! It was also a coincidence that those comets in the sky went out during the magic ceremony that our friend was trying to perform here in the tower room of the mansion. Look, Byron! I am as confused as you are about the things that have been going on around here lately. But I can tell you one thing: Dear Mr. Stallybrass may be as batty as a bedbug, but he has a lot of power and he's not shy about using it. Those lights in the sky may or may not have been comets. The storm may or may not have been summoned up by witchcraft. But something is going on, and it is evil. For that reason I think we are in great danger as long as we stay here. We have been up to bat twice against Mr. Stallybrass, and each time we have struck out. I think we had better escape while we still can."

  Johnny's jaw dropped. He put his cider mug on the coffee table and stared at the professor. "You mean you're going to just go home?" he asked in amazement.

  The professor nodded. "Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do. And you two are going with me because you really have no choice in the matter. I hate to sound like a tyrant, but I'm doing this for your good and for mine. We're like a bunch of people who are trying to put out a forest fire with water pistols—the chances of success are pretty slim."

  Johnny and Fergie looked quickly at each other. Each one knew what the other was thinking—the professor really had not given up. He probably had some secret plan for settling Mr. Stallybrass's hash, but he wanted to protect the boys, so he was pretending to give up. Luckily the professor did not notice the looks the boys were giving each other—he was too busy trying to light an old meerschaum pipe that he had found in Perry's desk.

  Johnny took a sip of cider and paused to let the warmth flow into his body. "Are—are you gonna give up the inheritance?" he asked hesitantly. He knew that the professor had to stay at the estate until Labor Day to collect the ten million dollars Perry had left him.

  "Inheritance, shminheritance!" said the professor with a shrug. "I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, so I don't need to be greedy. I had hoped that I could use some of that dough to provide for your college education, John, but . . . well, I'd rather make sure that you and Byron stay among the living. Don't lose any sleep over the lost money. It probably had a curse on it anyway!"

  The boys and the professor talked on until they were so weary that they saw spots dancing in front of their eyes. Then they gulped the last of their cider, turned out the lights in the study, and dragged themselves upstairs to their beds. In spite of the frightening adventure that they had had, they all slept soundly.

  On a chilly sunlit day in August the three travelers said good-bye to the estate of Stone Arabia and its haunted tower room. A hint of fall was in the air, and red maple leaves sifted down onto the porch as the professor turned the key in the lock of the wide front door. The boys stood beside him, and the professor's maroon Pontiac waited in the driveway. Its trunk and backseat were crammed with camping equipment, bedding, canned goods, and other odds and ends. For a long time the professor stood before the locked door with his arms folded. He was trying to remember if he had done everything that was necessary for shutting the house down. There's always something that you forget to do, said a little voice in the back of his head, but right now he was not terribly interested in little nagging voices. He wanted to leave.

  "And so we say farewell to Ghastly Acres," he said, and he flipped the keys into the air. Catching them behind his back, he turned and trotted down the creaky porch steps. The boys followed him.

  "Are you going to try to follow up that clue that the ghost gave me?" asked Johnny eagerly. "I mean the one about Crazy Annie, who has the key. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

  "Yes, John, I know what you are talking about," said the professor primly. "But you must remember that ghosts say lots of odd things that ordinary humans can't possibly understand. Who is Crazy Annie, anyway? And what kind of key is the ghost talking about? Is it a door key, a skate key, the key of G, Francis Scott Key, or what? You could spend hours or even years trying to figure out the "Crazy Annie" clue, and in the end you would probably come up with nothing. When I was young I tried to solve impossible riddles, but I won't try that kind of foolishness now!"

  Again, Fergie and Johnny looked at each other. They were convinced that the professor was lying to them. When he got home, he was probably going to turn the world upside down to find out who Crazy Annie was and what her key was supposed to be. Well, if he thought he was going to leave Johnny and Fergie behind while he searched for clues, he had another think coming.

  When they got back to Duston Heights that evening, the professor dropped Fergie off at his house and then drove to Fillmore Street, where he and Johnny's grandparents lived. The two old people were very surprised when Johnny walked in the front door lugging his suitcase, but they were happy to see him. The professor walked in after Johnny, and he told Gramma and Grampa Dixon a little story that he had made up on the way home. He said that the fishing had been bad and that life up in the wilds of Maine had been pretty dull, so they had decided to come home. As for the inheritance, he said that he would probably get it anyway because Perry's will was nutty and could be broken in court. After Johnny had had supper and talked with Gramma and Grampa for a while, he went across the street and helped the professor make a Sacher Torte, which is a very fancy Austrian chocolate layer cake. They played chess till they were both very sleepy and ready for bed. As he climbed the stairs to his bedroom that night, Johnny was thankful that no fearsome dark shapes would be hovering by his bedside or dragging him out on nightmarish journeys. But he kept thinking about the weird chessmen and the evil ruddy-faced man and Perry's insane poem, and he had a hunch that the strange sights and sounds they had seen at the old mansion were only a foretaste of worse things to come.

  For a time the New England newspapers were full of the strange case of the disappearing comets. Astronomers were interviewed on radio and television, and they gave various explanations for the incredible extinguishing of the comets. Some said that the comets had been put out by the solar wind, or that they had been dying comets that just happened to go out at the same time. As usual there were people who claimed that th
e vanishing comets were a sign that the end of the world was near. But nobody paid much attention to them. Meanwhile August ended, and September arrived. Johnny and Fergie went back to school, and the professor started teaching history again at Haggstrum College. As the days passed, Johnny saw less and less of the professor. The old man had gotten secretive and sullen, and he kept to himself a lot. Now and then Johnny would glance out his bedroom window late at night and see Dr. Coote's old blue Chevrolet parked in front of the professor's house. Dr. Charles Coote taught at the University of New Hampshire, and he was an expert on magic and the occult. Whenever the professor consulted him, Johnny knew that something was up. But what, exactly, was up? Johnny would have given a lot to know.

  One Saturday morning, to his very great surprise, Johnny looked out the parlor window and saw a black Packard coupe pulling into the professor's driveway. When the car door opened, out stepped Dr. Highgaz Melkonian. Dr. Melkonian was a psychiatrist who, had an office in Cambridge, and Johnny had been taken to see him once when the professor thought he needed help. The doctor was a short, burly man with a silky black beard and rippling black greasy hair. As usual he was dressed like someone who is getting ready to go to a wedding: gray cutaway, striped pants, and a pearl-gray ascot with a stickpin. As Johnny watched Dr. Melkonian amble toward the professor's front porch, he wondered what on earth the man was doing here. Had the professor suffered a mental breakdown? Was he losing his mind? Johnny became alarmed, and he began to imagine all sorts of frightful things, like the professor being strapped into a straitjacket and hustled away into a padded van by white-coated attendants. Then it occurred to him that Dr. Melkonian probably wouldn't have arrived if the professor had not called him up. So maybe things weren't that bad after all.

  That afternoon Johnny decided to make up a reason for visiting the professor. He would tell him that he had left his ring binder with his algebra notes in the professor's house. With this in mind Johnny trotted across the street and climbed the front steps of the huge gray stucco house. But just as he was about to push the doorbell button, the professor stepped out.

  "Good heavens, John Michael!" he exclaimed in a voice that was a little too loud and hearty. "Fancy meeting you here! Did you come over for cake or chess or just to talk?"

  Johnny stared hard at the old man. He knew when the professor was covering something up. He always acted too jolly and wouldn't look you straight in the eye. "I just wanted to see if my ring binder was here," said Johnny. "Have you seen it anywhere?"

  The professor coughed and looked away distractedly. "No . . . no, I can't say that I have. Hmph. You should be more careful about where you leave things. And now, if you don't mind, I have to get down to the post office before it closes."

  As the professor brushed past him, Johnny smiled. He knew that the post office closed at noon on Saturday, and it was about half past three now. "Hey, Professor!" Johnny called. "Was that Dr. Melkonian who was here this morning? I thought it looked like his car.

  The professor whirled suddenly. "Why—why, yes, it was," said the professor, staring at Johnny's shoes. "If you must know, he was . . . well, he was hypnotizing me.

  Johnny's mouth dropped open. He had expected an excuse of some kind, but not this one. "How—how come you wanted to do that?" asked Johnny faintly.

  By now the professor had recovered himself. He glared at Johnny. "Because, my dear friend," he said, "I am an old man who keeps forgetting the historical facts that he used to know. It's embarrassing when I don't know when the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, or who was czar of Bulgaria in 972 A.D. So I thought I'd try to recover some of this information by having Dr. Melkonian hypnotize me. Now, if you don't have any more questions, I must be off. See you later."

  With that the professor turned on his heel and stalked across the grass toward his car. Johnny watched him go, with a lot of confused thoughts rolling around in his mind. Slowly he started down the steps and then trotted along the sidewalk. He stood by the curb and waved at the professor as he drove off. Then, when the old man's car was out of sight, he spun around and headed back up the walk toward the front porch. Digging his hand into his pants pocket, Johnny pulled out the door key the professor had given him. Quickly he twisted the key in the lock and stepped into the front hall of the old house. He ran up the stairs to the professor's disorderly study. Heaps of term papers were piled on the floor, and the professor's desk was littered with cigarette ashes, paper clips, rubber bands, and pens. Flipping on the desk lamp, Johnny peered around, trying to see if the professor had left any clues as to what was going on in his mind these days. A cheap notepad lay on the desk blotter, and on it the professor had doodled flowers and butterflies and odd designs. He had also written several things:

  Find out who Crazy Annie is.

  Check burial records.

  Astrology. When will be try again?

  As Johnny read these things, he began to feel a bit smug—he had been right about the professor all along. He hadn't given up the fight against the evil Mr. Stallybrass. He had just pretended to give in, so that the boys would not be hurt. Well, said Johnny to himself, we're coming along whether he likes it or not! Snapping off the light, he marched downstairs and out the front door, locking it behind him. Then he went across the street to call up Fergie.

  Johnny and Fergie went down to Peter's Sweet Shop, their favorite ice-cream store, and their special place for plotting and planning. As they sat in a booth and slurped malteds, they figured out what they were going to do. They would keep a very close watch on the professor. As soon as Johnny saw that Dr. Coote's car was at the old man's house, he would call up Fergie, and the two of them would sneak into the professor's house through a cellar window. They would take the back stairs up to the third floor and hide in one of the unused rooms above the professor's study so they could listen in on the conversation of the two old men through the hot-air register. Johnny had found out some time ago that hot-air vents in old houses made a perfect listening tube. As long as the vents were open—and they would be, on a chilly September night—the two boys would be able to eavesdrop. After that . . . well, after that they didn't know what was going to happen. For all they knew, the nasty Mr. Stallybrass was doing his dirty work up at the estate right now. Each night, before he went to bed, Johnny looked up at the sky. If everything seemed normal, he always heaved a sigh of relief. But he felt in his heart that they were living on borrowed time. How long did they have?

  CHAPTER TEN

  A few days later, as he was walking home from school, Johnny glanced across Fillmore Street and saw Dr. Coote's car parked in the professor's driveway. Immediately his heart began to beat faster, and his face flushed. Trying hard to stay calm, he walked quickly up the steps of his house and across the porch. When he opened the front door, he saw that Gramma was on the phone. Johnny's heart sank. He knew without asking that Gramma was talking to her cousin Elda, and when the two of them got on the phone, it sometimes took an hour to get them off. Biting his lip impatiently, Johnny walked into the living room and sat down in the bristly brown easy chair. He opened his history book and began to read, but he might as well have been trying to read a piece of wallpaper. He kept listening to the conversation that droned on in the hall, and he wondered when on earth Gramma would get off the line. Finally he heard the receiver click back into the cradle, and the chair by the phone creaked as Gramma got up and walked slowly back to the kitchen. When he was sure she had gone, Johnny got up and tiptoed into the hall.

  The phone in Fergie's house rang fifteen times before someone finally picked it up. Luckily it was Fergie himself.

  "Hi ho, big John! So what's up? Is—"

  "He's here!" Johnny whispered hoarsely, "so you better get yourself in gear! Are you sure that cellar window is still loose?"

  "Don't worry, it is. The prof never checks things like that."

  Johnny scowled. He did not like spying on the professor, though in this case he felt he was doing it for a good cause. "Okay, just get o
n over here," he said, and then he hung up.

  Around seven o'clock that evening, Johnny and Fergie were crouching on the cold, damp ground next to the foundation of the professor's house.

  "Is this the window to the coal bin?" Johnny asked as Fergie edged forward and started prying at the glass.

  Fergie snickered. "No, it ain't, John baby," he whispered in a mocking tone. "It's the window to the laundry room. If you're lucky, you'll catch your foot in a tub and break your ankle. But you won't get coal dust on your nice clean pants."

  "Thanks," muttered Johnny sourly. He watched as Fergie gripped the window frame and shoved it inward. One at a time they slid over the sill on their stomachs. With a thunk Johnny's feet hit the bottom of a laundry tub. Awkwardly he hopped onto the floor, and Fergie came slithering into the room after him.

  "There, now!" said Fergie, as he jumped down to join Johnny. "That wasn't such a big deal, was it? Where are those stairs?"

  Johnny thought a bit. Then he pointed off to the left. "Over that way, I think. Come on."

  By the thin, faint beam of Fergie's penlight the two boys made their way past dusty shelves to the foot of the back staircase. In days gone by the old house had had a staff of servants, and they had used this back stair as a way of getting around the house without disturbing the owners. The boys climbed, and the steps creaked loudly; Johnny imagined that the professor and Dr. Coote were hearing every little squeak and groan of the ancient wood. After what seemed like forever they opened a door to the third floor of the house, which was like a large attic with sloping ceilings. In one of the small rooms, once used as servants' quarters, an old dusty bed without any mattress stood in one corner, and there was a tiny brick fireplace with a boarded-up hearth. Set in the baseboard of one wall was a hot-air vent with an ornamental iron grill. The vent had been pulled shut. Johnny knelt to shove it open. As luck would have it, this room was directly over the professor's study. Almost instantly the boys began to hear the voices of the two old men, which sounded hollow and distorted. Apparently Dr. Coote was trying to explain something, but the professor kept butting in because he was not satisfied with the explanation.