Within That Room!

by John Russell Fearn

  He sat scowling in thought. Behind him a distant sheet of lightning flamed the landscape for a moment.

  “What I don’t see,” Vera resumed, pondering, “is why you don’t come out into the open and tell Mrs. Falworth that we both know what she and her husband are up to, with the sulphur water I mean.”

  “I don’t, Vera, for one very good reason. So far she does not suspect that we know about that: she has no knowledge of our excursion down below, remember. If she did know she would probably run for it after destroying all traces of the work she and her husband have been doing. That would make it next to impossible to have her—and her husband—with everything on hand when we launch the final blow.”

  “She knows that we didn’t take the sleeping draught, anyway,” Vera remarked. “We couldn’t have been in the ghost room otherwise.”

  “Of course the stones were cold!” Dick cried, surprisingly, snapping his fingers. “I’ve just been thinking.... Had the Falworths made those fumes in the normal broken-down fireplace some of them would have been bound to affect them. Those respirators they have are probably not made to stand up to vapors as are service gas masks.... That means that the stuff must have been burned partly up the space between the walls—out of sight!”

  “I believe,” Vera breathed, “You may be right! Do we go and take a look, or what?”

  “I think we’ve done enough down there for the moment. But we are going to do something—lay that ghost! Trouble is, it is not going to be easy. I want to study that horror-room from the outside, and the only way is to get out on the roof and then go down the ivy to the window ledge.”

  “But what do you expect to find outside the window?” the girl asked.

  “You’ll see. Come on.”

  He opened a window and looked outside. Everything was dripping wet and the air smelled of rain after the storm. The wind had dropped again and far to the east the lightning was still flashing at intervals. Vera moved across to where Dick was leaning out and gazed above with him.

  “Uh-huh, I think it can be done,” he decided. “ I can climb to the roof by this ivy. It’s tough enough to stand it.”

  “Why not an extension ladder? Must be one about somewhere.”

  “What! And let the Falworths know just what we’re up to? Not likely! And if you want to come with me you’d better change out of that flowing frock. Anyway, here I go!”

  Dick felt in his pocket for his flashlight, rid himself of his gas mask, then climbed out to the sill. Vera watched anxiously as with lithe movements he dragged himself upward in the gloom. At length his flailing legs vanished over the top of the battlements above.

  “Coming?” he called down.

  “Shan’t be a tick—”

  Vera dived back into the bedroom, changed at top speed into blouse and slacks, then launched herself out on to the ivy. It was not as difficult a task as she had expected, and by no means as bad as her service training had been. The ivy, centuries old, was enormously thick and afforded easy toe and finger holds. So finally, splashed with water from the leaves and somewhat out of breath, she scrambled over the parapet edge with Dick’s hands helping her up.

  “So far so good,” he murmured. “Now, follow me.”

  Up there the roof was flat, but, all the same, they exercised caution in the dim light. A few yards advance brought them to facing the out-jutting section of the bathrooms—otherwise the watchtower. This meant that the horror-room was now immediately below them.

  “Now keep your fingers crossed,” Dick said.

  He threw a leg over the battlements and started to go down, Vera watching him uneasily. Far below was the hard shale of the driveway. One flaw in that ivy meant serious injury, or death.... Lower, Dick went, and lower, until at length he reached the sill and poised himself on it, clinging for dear life to the ivy roots. Vera waited, not in the least understanding what he was up to.

  “Hello,” came his voice presently.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’ve got to do something. Go inside the horror-room—put on your gas mask for safety—then tell me if you see the ghost.”

  “But—but Dick—!” She stopped in dismay.

  “You’ve got to do it,” he insisted. “I can’t do it for you this time. Go on—orders are orders.”

  Worried, Vera withdrew from the parapet and made the return trip to her bedroom safely enough. Then she picked up her gas mask and tiptoed into the corridor, looking about her. There was no sign of the Falworths anywhere. Whether they were still downstairs or not, she had no idea.

  Quickly, she unscrewed the horror-room door, slipped on her mask and stepped inside. Immediately, against the dim light of the stormy evening outside the stained glass window, she saw Dick’s figure moving. Going across to it, she tapped sharply—then she jumped back in alarm as the ghost suddenly came into being—very pale and transparent, grinning, trailing a streamer of light back towards the window.

  For a second or two Vera was too astonished—too horrified—to act: then, forcing herself to be calm, she waved her hands in front of her. They went right through the apparition. She hesitated, uncertain what to do. Then, again, her nerve failed her and she blundered out of the room hurriedly and re-screwed the door. Slipping off her mask as she went, she hurried back into her bedroom and began the climb to the parapet. In four minutes she was peering over at Dick.

  “Did you see it?” he asked.

  “I should think I did—but only palely. It was there, though!”

  “Then it’s solved.” He gave a delighted chuckle. “Come on down here. I’ll grab you.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE DEMON’S IMAGE

  Vera climbed over the stone edge slowly and held tenaciously to the ivy as she went down. Then to her relief Dick’s arm closed round her waist and drew her in. She finished round with her feet for the broad stone ledge and stood upright a trifle dizzily.

  “Okay?” Dick asked, holding her close with one arm and gripping the ivy with the other.

  “If I don’t look down, I am,” she answered.

  “Right. Here’s the ghost!”

  He flashed his torch back on the window, narrowing the beam down to a small circle that finally encompassed a tiny section at the top of the big area of glass. Vera peered at it earnestly, then her brows went up in surprise. She gave a gasp of astonishment.

  There, embedded in the design of the glass—which was mainly composed of diamond-shaped squares of red and green—was a tiny image, not more than four inches high and completely transparent. An image of a demon, skilfully executed as though in Indian ink on a piece of plain glass. As she passed her fingers over it and felt no roughening Vera realized that it was a picture dyed in the glass.

  “So—so this is it?” she whispered at last.

  “It works like a slide in a magic lantern,” Dick explained. “I had my flashlight beam behind it when you saw it. The image is so small as to be unnoticeable in the room among all that mass of glass—and anyway, one is usually too frightened to pay close attention. But it is projected into the room by the light behind it, and the dust haze always hanging in the air acts as a kind of screen for it. Ever noticed when you’re at the movies how the picture on the screen is also visible in the haze of tobacco smoke? Same sort of thing. The light which seems to surround it is actually the projected ray behind it.”

  “Well, that’s ingenious!”

  “Several things led me to this deduction,” Dick went on, shifting his position uncomfortably. “The first thing was that it only appears on the three longest days of the year. Now, it is right at the top of the window, and we noticed earlier—at least I did—that only that part of the window was illuminated. Those three evenings—and maybe one or two on either side of them as well—are the only ones when the sun peeps high enough over that watch tower parapet opposite to illumine this piece of glass. I mentioned the other one or two nights because the longest day really means the greatest number of solar hours. It’s poss
ible the sun peeps for about a week over that parapet there.”

  “Anything else?” Vera asked excitedly.

  “The fact that the phantom appeared every time lightning flashed finally convinced me. There must be a light behind it somehow. So I came out and had a look. I suppose really that the phantom would be visible in the dead of winter too, when the full moon takes the place of the sun—but that’s another story. What we’ve done is cross off a hefty problem. Now you’d better move. I’m getting cramped.”

  Vera reached up to the ivy again and Dick helped her to get a hold. Steadily she fought her way up to the parapet above and within a few minutes he had joined her.

  “Do you think,” she asked, “that the Falworths put that piece of glass in for themselves, or has it always been there?”

  “That I don’t know: but I did notice that it is far cleaner that the rest of the window, so obviously they have kept it spotless inside and out to give the maximum effect.... I’ll hazard a guess—that the legend of the ghost of Sunny Acres is about as truthful as Ann Boleyn walking the Tower with her head tucked under her arm. Therefore, the Falworths decided to supply a ghost.”

  “Think again,” Vera signed. “You told me that the history of this place stated that the ghost was known to appear on June 21st—and that book was published in 1912. So the legend can’t be just bosh.”

  “You’re right,” Dick said. “Well maybe we’ll get the truth later on...incidentally, I imagine that on the two occasions it didn’t appear—according to Mrs. Falworth—the weather was probably cloudy.”

  They fell silent, regarding the murky late evening. It was just starting to rain again in heavy drops.

  “Well, we’ve progressed somewhat,” Vera decided. “This means we have only one last problem to solve—the horror sensation. Then the coast is clear.”

  “We hope.... And we’d better get back in the house before we get drenched.”

  They moved as fast as they dared along the roof through the downpour and descended the ivy again to Vera’s room. Dick closed the window silently.

  “I wonder,” he said, “if Mrs. Falworth has given up trying to scare us? She vowed all sorts of things earlier in the evening but none of them seem to have materialised.”

  “I think it was those gas masks that defeated her.” Vera gave a soft laugh. “But I’ll tell you what I think we should do. See where that pump hose of theirs goes and what it is really withdrawing. We might be able to get a sample of the water, and that will give the police the motive back of everything. Their chemists will soon find out what the stuff is....”

  “Good idea....” Dick lighted the oil lamp and replaced the glass chimney. He looked at the girl and smiled. “Seems to me that we’ve earned a little rest after this lot! We might as well sit around for the time being, doze if we can, and then some time tonight we’ll dodge down to that cellar and grab a sample—if possible. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Vera agreed. “And for the first time since I cam here I’m not afraid of ghosts!”

  For a while they both contented themselves with following their own thoughts, but subconsciously each was listening for footsteps, either denoting the Falworths coming to bed or else setting out on a nocturnal excursion.

  “Be some time yet, I expect,” Dick remarked presently. “It’s only ten o’clock—”

  He broke off and sat up abruptly. Insidiously, a feeling of horrible nausea had crept through him—and moved on. His heart began to race abruptly.

  “What the—” he began; then it came again, surging through him. At the same moment Vera’s face went deathly white in the lamplight.

  “It’s—it’s that feeling—” she choked.

  They jumped up and stared at each other, baffled. But there was no denying it. The same awful mental revulsion of the horror-room was squirming into their senses, tearing at their nerves, battering them down—

  “Can’t be—in here!” Dick insisted, dry-mouthed.

  With a huge effort he turned as Vera swayed giddily and caught at the chair for support. Half fainting she hung there, gasping for breath. In three strides that seemed to take him through a nether world, Dick reached the window and flung it open. Rain and cool air came sweeping inwards, clearing his brain somewhat.

  Dazed, he lumbered across the room and caught at the girl. His arm round her waist he dragged her, stumbling and half conscious, to the sill. She moved dully as rain pelted on the back of her neck.

  Dick left her there for a moment and looked round with aching eyes. Then suddenly he remembered his gas mask and searched for it. He found it, slipped it on and drew thankfully at the purified air through the respirator. Then he began a search for Vera’s, located it on the dressing table where she had tossed it, and quickly snatched it up. In thirty seconds he had it over her head. He waited beside her for a while, then she began to stir, and at last straightened up.

  “Th-thanks,” she mumbled, through the folds. “You just about saved me, I think.... But, how did this happen?”

  He looked about the room, and finally at the oil lamp. The flame was burning oddly, and with a brownish red tinge! Instantly he dived for it and using his handkerchief, took off the glass chimney. Something was visible now which he had not noticed before. On the edges of the wick holder’s broad brass bands, was a residue of brownish ash still smoking and sending thin tails into the air.

  “I get it!” he shouted inside his mask. “Now I know what it is!”

  He whirled the lamp up savagely and flung it clean through the open window. It went whirling down to smash and explode in a flash of burning oil on the driveway below. For a while he and Vera stood close together in the dark, waiting for the air to clear. In ten minutes it was breathable again, though a deadly stuffiness hung upon it.

  “It’s the same stuffiness we noticed in the cellar the other night,” Vera said, taking off her mask and sniffing. “You remember? It must have been surplus fumes from the stuff burning in the chimney— But you say you know what it is...?”

  “I remember now where I heard of it before, and where I saw it,” Dick answered. “Come with me!”

  Grabbing her arm, he whirled her out of the room, along the corridor and down the staircase. Without a pause he raced—to the girl’s surprise—into the library. Muttering with impatience he lighted the oil lamps with his lighter and then hurried over to the specimen cases against the far wall.

  “There!” he cried in triumph. “Pedis Diaboli Root! That’s it!”

  Vera stared at the stuff, uncomprehending—two little pieces of substance like Coltsfoot rock.

  “Translated it means Devil’s Foot Root,” Dick explained. “You say you’ve read Sherlock Holmes? Don’t you remember the ‘Case of the Devil’s Foot’?”

  “Hazily...,” Vera mused. “Wasn’t it something about folks who went mad—? You don’t mean that this is the same stuff?”

  “No doubt of it!” Dick tapped the showcase emphatically. “It belongs to West Africa and is known to only a few experts in toxicology. In Conan Doyle’s story it was used in almost identically the same fashion as it was used on us. When heated, it gives off fumes that create violent mental derangement and leaves behind a reddish brown ash. Obviously your uncle, in his various travels abroad, found some of it and brought it back as a specimen—in fact, quite a few specimens maybe. I don’t suppose he ever intended to put it to its real purpose which—according to Doyle—is that of a poison for West African natives.”

  “And the Falworths knew what it was?” Vera exclaimed.

  “Must have. The name card underneath is enough for any expert in toxicology—Pedis Diaboli Root. It was probably Carstairs who knew the value of the stuff. In the Sherlock Holmes story there was another Latin name added. Let’s see now....”

  Dick crossed over to the bookshelves and took down Sherlock Holmes, Short Stories, turned to “The Devil’s Foot.” Then, amidst the context, he pointed to three words—Rex Pedis Diaboli.

  “That’s it!” he cri
ed. “Yes, and look here! The Falworths were even unoriginal enough to use the same method as Doyle’s character in that they put the stuff on the oil lamp! It was that very discovery that brought the whole thing back to my mind. I recalled a self-same incident somewhere that I’d read about.... After that the problem was solved for me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  YEARS OF PLANNING

  “To think,” Vera whispered, “that that innocent-looking stuff can create such horror when you burn it! I suppose the Falworths took some of it for themselves, and my uncle, always preoccupied, never even noticed or suspected. Tonight Mrs. Falworth must have thought that I’d be preparing for bed when the stuff began to function on the lamp. She imagined—and probably rightly—that I’d be overwhelmed before I had the chance to find out where the fumes were coming from. No wonder she has been looking so satisfied with herself! Probably there is some on your lamp as well.”

  “Yes....” Dick’s expression was grim as he put the book back on the shelf. “She meant making sure all right. If we didn’t die in the horror-room she meant getting us afterward. It only shows you how—”

  “Worked it out quite well, haven’t you?” remarked a cold voice.

  They both twirled in astonishment and alarm. So preoccupied had they been in fitting together the final details in the puzzle they had not heard Mrs. Falworth enter. She stood just inside the library doorway, her dark eyes malevolent, a revolver in her hand.

  “I hope,” she said slowly, “you did not think that I was going to permit you to run about the place at leisure, unmolested, poking your noses into things which do not concern you.”

  Dick took an angry stride toward her but the gun jerked up menacingly.

  “I wouldn’t advise you to lose control of yourself, Mr. Wilmott! Since every other method seems to have failed, since you have unearthed every subterfuge little by little, I am compelled to resort to straightforward means and take the consequences.... Come here, both of you!” Then as Dick and Vera both obeyed she stood aside, still covering them, and added briefly, “Go down into the basement!”