Vera swallowed some soup so hastily that she burned her tongue. It snapped her out of her attitude of calm wonder.
“Mrs. Falworth,” she said, “I’ve no intention of sitting here in the dark for spooks or anything else! Turn the lamps on! I—I mean light them. And why on earth isn’t there some electricity in the place?”
“Your uncle, miss, did not—“
“I know, he didn’t approve! I was always told that he was a trifle eccentric; now I’m sure that he was plain crazy! Don’t you realize that this is a modern age? Or didn’t you ever hear of the war that was just fought?”
“Our communication with the outside world has certainly not been very extensive,” the housekeeper admitted. “We have no radio, no telephone, no car, no electric light—”
“And no hot water,” said Vera. “If it hadn’t have been a summer evening I’d have frozen to death when I bathed just now.”
“I am sorry, miss. The water heater in the kitchen is not as efficient as it might be— You are enjoying your soup?”
“Yes,” Vera admitted. “You’re a first-class cook.”
“I am so glad there is something which pleases you, miss.”
With this doubtful observation, Mrs. Falworth struck a match, and then lighted a long, waxed stick. Holding it like a torch, she went around the array of lamps and lighted them. An uncertain yellow glimmer set the shadows flickering as the daylight fled. But Vera was not too scared to enjoy her meal. Nor was there any fault to find with it. From beginning to end it was a masterpiece of cookery art.
“Now,” Vera said, when it was over, “I want a word with you, Mrs. Falworth....” She sat back in the hard chair and lit a cigarette. “I want to know why people shy away when this place is mentioned. What is the matter with it?”
“An evil power has had possession of it for a long time, miss. Such things no human can prevent.”
“You mean a poltergeist?”
“You might call it such miss, even though the exact definition of that term means a violent phantom—a smasher of furniture, and so forth.”
“Oh, then this one does not smash up the happy home, then?”
“Not altogether, no,” Mrs. Falworth stood quite still and hands clasped in front of her. “The phantom—the manifestation—is seen once a year, but the spirit of evil is here all the time.”
“Well,” Vera said, “I don’t notice it—not particularly, anyway.”
“Not here, perhaps. It has its core in one of the upper rooms, but the influence it spreads can be detected anywhere. You will sense it—in time.”
“You and your husband have been here some years, and yet you haven’t gone crazy? Or have you?” Vera added under her breath.
“For me, miss, the psychic world holds no terrors. I understand it fully. I know how to defy the power of evil and darkness—but I cannot say the same for my husband. He is worldly, so essentially mortal, and he is frightened.”
“Then why on earth does he stay here? He’s got a mind of his own, hasn’t he?”
“I have persuaded him. I feel—and I have brought him round to my way of thinking—that it is our duty to remain as servants to you, as we were servants to your uncle for ten years.”
“And what if I decided to sell the place?”
For a moment a gleam came into Mrs. Falworth’s dark eyes.
“In that event we could leave, miss, with no sense of worry on our minds. If you would sell, it would relieve all three of us. I believe in all seriousness that this place is not fit for anybody to live in, especially an attractive young woman like you.”
“Why, does the ghost like blonde females?” Vera asked dryly.
“I did not mean it in that sense—rather, I meant that you have too many charms to waste them in a place like this. It is too gloomy and cheerless for a modern young lady.”
Vera said: “I don’t expect to be here all the time. I am seeking a post in London as a commercial artist.”
“Forgive me mentioning it, miss, but do you think such a post would provide sufficient remuneration to keep this residence going?”
“Oh, it might. I presume the upkeep isn’t terrific, and as I saw from the conveyance Mr. Thwaite had me sign this land is freehold, so there is no ground rent. No electricity to pay for, and paraffin isn’t dear. There is only food to consider and the salaries of you and your husband. Yes, I might be able to keep it going for a while, anyway. In fact, I might even grow to like it. I’ll be quite frank, I don’t believe in this ghost rubbish.”
“I have spoken the truth, miss,” Mrs. Falworth answered coldly.
“All right—you have your views and I have mine.” Vera got to her feet decisively. “Now, how about a tour round the place? I want to see what I have inherited. And, by the way, what is your salary, and your husband’s?”
“That matter hardly need concern you, madam. Your uncle, by his will, left both of us amply provided for—”
“Of course! The annuity.”
“Since we must live somewhere, we are prepared to stay here and give service in return for shelter.”
“Oh?” Vera raised her brows in surprise. “Well, that’s very sporting of both of you. Make it all the easier for me to run the show.”
But inwardly she felt that there was something queer, somewhere, though at that moment she could not decide for the life of her what it was.... She spoke little thereafter as Mrs. Falworth, with a spluttering torch in hand, took her on a tour of inspection.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE LOCKED CELLAR
They went through the oil-lighted regions. Then they explored the rambling conservatories and broken-down stables which, after a bit of restoration, might hold a car. From here they descended into a dingy abyss of basements. The cold down here was a shock to Vera and she stood looking round on stony emptiness. There were gray walls with rings in them; a ceiling of granite with rusty hooks imbedded in the stone.
“What are the rings for?” Vera questioned.
“I believe, miss, that this was once a torture chamber. The prisoners were fastened to those rings in the wall, their arms outspread, and then they were ‘persuaded’ with the help of the old forge there.”
The woman nodded to a corner where stood an ancient fireplace—similar to the type used by a blacksmith. The back had collapsed inward amidst a mass of bricks and oddly colored red-brown ash. At the back of it was a black square denoting the flue. Projecting from the side was the curved handle that had once worked the bellows.
“You will observe the branding irons,” the housekeeper said, indicating an array of differently shaped bars in a rack above the fireplace. “Irons for every type of persuasion. For burning of the skin, for obliteration of the eyes, for—”
“All right, all right,” Vera interrupted. “You needn’t bother. What are the hooks for?”
She looked above her and the ghost of a sadistic smile crossed Mrs. Falworth’s face.
“For hanging purposes purely, Miss. I have little doubt that victims were suspended up there in all manner of positions in the old days. Medieval, of course, but I am sure it must have been most effective.”
“Must have been,” Vera agreed. She looked around quickly for something to change the subject—and found it. “Is that another cellar there?” she asked. “That door?”
“That is an ancient wine cellar, miss—empty of wine, I regret to say. We use it now for the storage of disused articles.”
Vera’s blue eyes moved again around the chasing shadows. The gloom, the silence, the spitting of the waxed torch: they were horrible things. Medieval, slinking unbidden into her soul. “Let’s get back upstairs!” she said abruptly.
So they left the basement by the stone steps that led out at the side of the main staircase in the hall. From here the tour continued, covering Uncle Cyrus’ library—remarkable for its many showcases containing dried plants and insects—the huge drawing-room; then up the stairs to each of the twelve bedrooms. Of them all, fully furnished
, only two were in use—Vera’s own, and the Falworths’, two rooms removed from her. But there was yet one other room at the far end of the corridor, the edges of the door taped, and heavy screws driven through the door into the frame.
“What’s in here?” Vera asked curiously, stopping beside it.
“That, miss, is the room,” the housekeeper answered, holding the torch high over their heads.
“Where the ghost walks, you mean?”
“Within that room is a core of evil manifestation—and I would warn you never to enter it if you value your life and reason.”
Vera’s firm little chin began to set. She turned and looked at the housekeeper coldly.
“Look here, Mrs. Falworth, do you suggest that I own this house and yet have one room in it forever locked—always wondering what is inside it? I’m not that kind of a girl. It has got to be opened tomorrow. I intend to put an end to this phantom nonsense once and for all.”
The housekeeper stood erect, forbidding. “I do not wish to seem disrespectful, miss, but I must refuse to obey that order. I will not under any circumstances open that door!”
“Then your husband must.”
“I am sorry, but I shall not permit him to.”
A glint came in Vera’s eyes. She said: “Maybe you have forgotten that it is I who give the orders here? You won’t permit him, indeed! If I say this door is to be opened, it will be opened!”
Mrs. Falworth relaxed her frozen attitude suddenly. She caught hold of Vera’s arm.
“Miss Grantham, won’t you please see that I am trying to save you from an unimaginable disaster? I tell you—I swear to you—that if you go in that room your senses, your reason, will be blasted right out of you!”
Vera stared at her.
“But how do you know that such a horrible thing will happen?”
“Because it has happened before! Your uncle went into this room last year to lay the ghost, and he emerged just on the borderline of insanity! For many months he was raving and it took every bit of my nursing skill and Dr. Gillingham’s medical knowledge—he is the village practitioner—to restore his health.
“Even then, we were not very successful, for his dreadful experience undoubtedly hastened his end. This room does not contain just a commonplace spirit or apparition—in fact, the ghost is only visible once a year—but an overwhelming sense of evil even though the room is empty. That evil can destroy you, mentally and bodily!”
“Well!” Vera looked at the door and then folded her arms. “To think of that! A piece of screwed-up wood between me and the booby hatch! Who fastened the door like this anyway?”
“It was done at your uncle’s order last year, after he had entered here. He had the key thrown away and the room has never been entered since.”
Vera considered for a while, then she gave a shrug.
“Well, for the moment I’ll leave the matter alone, but I intend to have this room opened finally, so you may as well make up your mind to it. At the moment I am rather too sleepy to care about anything, ghosts included. Does this end the tour?”
“Unless you wish to see the closed wing?”
“Not tonight.”
“Then you have seen everything, miss.”
“Not quite everything, Mrs. Falworth,” Vera said. “Anyway, thank you for showing me round. I’ll go on to bed, I think, while I am upstairs.”
The housekeeper nodded. She was her tall, impassive self again with that strange light shining in her dark eyes.
* * * * * * *
To Vera, despite her trying day with its unexpected excitements, there came little desire for sleep. She was overtired and could not compose herself as she lay awake in the big, old-fashioned bedroom thinking over all she had seen and done. Once or twice she must have dozed, but only briefly. Then toward three in the morning, according to the big grandfather clock in the hall, which seemed to chime with needless somberness, she heard a sound in the corridor—the softest of footsteps.
For a time she lay listening intently, half expecting to see the knob on her locked door move back and forth in the moonlight. But nothing happened and the sound presently died away. The huge residence was deathly still again.
The only explanation for the sound seemed to be that the Falworths were on the prowl. Vera got out of bed and into her dressing gown and slippers. Picking up the old poker from the fireplace, she tiptoed to the door and unlocked it. Opening it an inch she listened. There was no sound save the tick-tock of the grandfather clock below.
“Well, come what may, here I go,” she said to herself, and went into the corridor.
It was deserted—with the moon casting a faint tracery of colored beams through the stained glass window. Feeling none too sure of herself, Vera crept to the staircase and then went down it silently, pausing to listen at every five steps.
She had gained the bottom when the first sounds reached her—curious sounds, like the clanking of two pieces of metal on each other.
She frowned in bewilderment and looked over the staircase’s stone rail at the dim, shadowy outline of the door leading into the basement. It was from that spot that the sounds had come. She took a firmer grip of the poker and went to the cellar door and opened it. Down below everything was dark but there were sounds, the unmistakable clink of metal and an odd swishing sound as though somebody were having a bath.
For quite a while Vera hesitated, then clinging to the basement stair-rail with her free hand she felt her way down into the darkness. But she only got halfway down before her nerve began to fail her. Alone here in this strange old house, facing a doubtful old man and an icily respectful housekeeper— It was no place to be at three in the morning.
Then there came to her an awful smell. It surged up in waves as she went lower. It seemed to be drifting from the direction of a thin bar of light low down in the gloom. Holding her nose and staring fixedly, Vera saw that it was leaking from under the door of the cellar Mrs. Falworth had said was full of disused articles.
Vera realized it required no genius to judge that all was not as it should be in Sunny Acres. Quite the opposite, in fact. Finally, though, curiosity overrode fears and she crept down the remaining steps. When she reached the door she looked at the bar of light showing below it and then listened to the clanking and swishing sounds beyond it.
Finally she lay flat and put her eye to the narrow crack. In the wavering glow of an oil lamp she could see something metallic and the feet of a man and a woman—presumably the Falworths—as they moved about. Nothing more.
Worried, Vera stood up again, debating. Then as there came the sound of a latch moving on the door’s other side she whisked up the flowing skirt of her gown and fled for the steps, blundering up them as best she could in the dark and emerging breathlessly in the hall. As fast as possible she got back in her bedroom and locked the door, her brain whirling.
“A phantom, people who work in the cellar at dead of night, a smell like the drains gone wrong! What sort of place did Uncle Cyrus wish on to me, anyhow?”
Since she could not answer her own question, she forced herself to give up thinking about the matter and instead went to bed to try to catch up on some much needed sleep. And she succeeded—for it was dawn when she awoke and one thought was clear in her mind as she opened her eyes lazily.
She had got to have help—and quickly.
CHAPTER SIX
FOR BUSINESS ONLY
Dick Wilmott was busy in his little radio shop in Godalming next morning when Vera walked in.
He turned from the bench where he was working, preparing his best smile for approaching business—then his eyebrows rose.
“Well, blow me down—the girl from Manchester!” he exclaimed. “This is a surprise and a grand one. Er—there’s a chair here somewhere.”
Vera laughed as he looked anxiously round amidst a little of radio equipment, packing cases, shavings, and various odds and ends.
“Never mind,” she said, “I’m not a physical wreck just yet, t
hough I have suspicions that I soon shall be if I don’t watch out.”
Dick pushed back his tumbled dark hair. “Sorry—about the chair. You know how it is when you’re setting up in business: everything gets cockeyed. Anyway, I’m darned glad to see you.” He smiled faintly.
“Feel like indulging in a radio set? Cost price to you, you know—”
“My housekeeper believes that I have come out for that very purpose,” Vera answered seriously. “But I haven’t. It’s something else.”
“Oh?” Dick tried not to show disappointment. “What then?”
“I don’t quite know how you’re going to take this, Mr. Wilmott....” Vera traced a meaningless design with her finger on the packing case beside her. “I’m in need of help. There is something very queer about Sunny Acres.”
“What’s wrong with it? And do sit down,” Dick urged, dusting the top of a packing case vigorously with a sheet of soft paper. “I hate to see a girl standing. There! That’s better!”
Vera settled daintily on the case’s edge and put down her handbag beside her.
“Mr. Wilmott,” she said, her serious blue eyes fixing on him. “I’m facing a legend, a phantom, an aura of evil, and—I think—counterfeiters.”
Dick half smiled. “Quite a load for a girl on her own! Sure you haven’t missed anything out?”
“Matter of fact, yes. There’s the odd matter of an abominable smell.”
“Probably the old age of the place!”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Vera asked quietly.
“Oh, I don’t say that exactly, but perhaps you’ve imagined part of it. For one thing, phantoms do not exist, and as for counterfeiters, they are more in the line of hoary melodrama than a country residence.”
He held out his cigarette case and then flicked his lighter into flame. Over the haze of smoke they considered each other—and both liked what they saw.
“Mr. Wilmott, would you call a room with a sealed and nailed door pure imagination? Would you call it imagination when my housekeeper swears that to enter that room will cause me to either die or lose my reason?”
Within That Room! Page 3
