Читать книгу Within That Room! - John Russell Fearn - Страница 9

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.