The Forgotten Room (12 page)

As Logan was returning to his own room on the third floor, another resident, in a small set of rooms in a far section of the second floor, was pacing restlessly. The lights were out, and the only illumination came from the flickering tongues of lightning beyond the mullioned windows.

After several minutes, the pacing stopped. The person, apparently coming to a decision, walked over to the phone, then dialed a number with a 401 area code.

The call was answered on the first ring by a gravelly baritone. “Operations. Abrams.”

“You know who this is, right?”

“Yes,” the man named Abrams said.

“You were responsible for what happened today, weren’t you? That run-in with Logan on the road.”

“How did you learn about that?”

“I heard him talk about it at dinner. Besides, it’s hard to keep anything private in a place like Lux. But that’s beside the point. Are you crazy, doing a thing like that?”

“But he knows about the room. You said it yourself. If he pokes around in there, it could ruin everything.”

“What would ruin everything is your killing him right in town. That’s not what we agreed. He’s too high profile. You’ll only raise suspicion. You might even wreck my cover.”

“Logan is an unknown variable in the equation. We can’t afford to let him remain at Lux.”

“He won’t learn anything. I’ve been too careful for that.”

“That’s a chance we can’t take,” said the man named Abrams. “The stakes have grown too high. If only he’d waited a few more days before—”

“Well, he didn’t. We have to play the hand we’ve been dealt. Look—no more going behind my back. No more making any rash decisions without consulting me. Otherwise…otherwise, I’ll back out. Take the item elsewhere.”

“You wouldn’t be that foolish. You’re in it too deep.”

“Then you listen. We’re going to do this
my
way. I believe Logan thinks what happened was an accident—and it’s a good thing for you that he does. If he gets suspicious, he’s going to become ten times as dangerous as he already is.”

“So what, exactly, is ‘your way’?”

“Logan is my problem—let me deal with him. I know just what to do.”

“You’re going to…?” The voice on the far end of the line trailed off.

“Precisely.”

“Don’t wait too long. The clock is running, and we don’t have much time.”

“That’s why I’m going to act fast.” And with a sharp click, the call was disconnected.

“This is weird,” said Kim Mykolos. “Seriously weird.” She was standing in the middle of the forgotten room, staring around in slack-jawed fascination.

When Logan had let her in on the secret—after securing the necessary promises of utter confidentiality—the young woman’s reactions had been first disbelief, then shock, and then consuming curiosity. Leaning against the worktable, Logan watched as she moved around, peering at this and that, reaching out to touch something, then quickly pulling back her hand as if afraid of being burned.

The tungsten lamp stood in a bare corner, providing a strong illumination but also splashing deep, jagged shadows against the far wall. Turning toward the worktable, Logan opened his duffel, pulled out a video camera, and then a portable music player,
which he placed beside the unknown implements and turned on. The calmly syncopated rhythms of
Jazz Samba
wafted quietly over the room.

“And you say that whatever research was going on in here stopped abruptly in the midthirties?” she asked.

Logan nodded.

“And the room was sealed off and remained forgotten to this day?”

“So it seems. And all the notes and records of whatever went on here have apparently vanished from Lux’s files.”

“What about Dr. Strachey? Did he discover this room before…” Her voice trailed away.

“I don’t know for sure. But it’s quite possible.”

Mykolos pulled herself away from her examination and glanced over at Logan. “So why me, exactly? How can I help?”

“You were his assistant. You’re got a background in computer logic, in reverse engineering. I need a mind like yours if I’m going to solve this room.”

“Solve it?”

“Yes. I’m convinced that only by solving its puzzle will I learn why Strachey died. And besides, from a purely practical standpoint I need a second pair of hands.” He hefted the video camera. “I want you to use this to document everything we do here.”

Mykolos nodded slowly. “So how do we start, exactly?”

“I’ve given that a lot of thought. I think the most important thing is to understand the purpose of
that
.” And he pointed to the oversized, coffin-shaped device of polished wood that sat in the center of the room.

“I was wondering about that. It looks sort of like a mystery machine on steroids.”

“A what?”

“A mystery machine. Something from the old penny arcades. A big box of wood or metal, with question marks all over it but no obvious features—no handles, levers, knobs. You put in your
penny and then kicked it, banged it, tried to figure out how to make it do whatever it did.”

“Well, don’t kick it, please.”

Mykolos nodded toward the bulky metal suits that hung from a metal bar on the far wall. “What do you make of those?”

“I can only assume they’re some sort of protective gear.”

She walked up to the closest, took it gently by one wrist, and moved the arm up and down, watching as the fanlike elbow joints telescoped to accommodate the movement. “Protection from what?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” He motioned her over to the central device, handed her the video camera. “You see those brass plaques screwed into the base, there and there? Those are manufacturers’ imprints.”

Mykolos turned on the camera and pointed it at the indicated plaques, filming both.

“I’ve looked into the names on those plaques. Elektrofabriken Kelle was a German electronics firm founded in Dresden in 1911. It has since merged with so many companies that its original purpose has become obscure. And in any case, all its records were destroyed in the firebombing of 1945. Rosewell Heavy Industries was an early manufacturer of sound and radio equipment. It went out of business in the fifties. I haven’t been able to learn much beyond the fact that it made highly specialized equipment for industrial use.”

Mykolos panned the camcorder slowly over the device. Then she thoughtfully caressed the appendages that sprouted irregularly here and there: gently curved panels of rosewood, carefully fitted and locked to the central mechanism, itself completely encased in wood. She walked over to the thick end of the device, looked at the roman numerals etched into the floor beyond. Next, she walked around to the narrow end and filmed the heavy wooden housing that was locked in place onto it. Lowering the camera, she pointed at the two words,
BEAM
and
FIELD
, etched into another brass
plaque just beneath the cowling, raising her eyebrows at Logan as she did so.

“As good a place to start as any,” he said. Approaching, he examined a wooden keyhole set into the housing directly over the plaque. Plucking a flashlight from his duffel, he gave it an even closer examination. Then, pulling a set of lockpicks from his pocket and laying the flashlight on top of the housing, he started working on the lock.

“Odd skill for a professor of history,” Mykolos said as she filmed the process.

“Don’t forget, I’m an enigmalogist, too.”

A brief silence settled over the room, broken only by the low sounds of samba. “What’s with the Stan Getz?” she asked after a moment.

“I’ll tell you if you promise not to laugh.”

“I promise.”

“I’m what’s known as a sensitive. An empath. I have a knack—if you can call it that—for hearing things, sensing things, that people felt or experienced, whether in the present or in the past. This room is…unpleasant. I’ve been hearing music—hearing it in my head. Stan Getz helps me to tune it out.”

“What kind of music?”

“Wild arpeggios, giant clashing clusters of notes, waves of sound. Unsettling melodies, almost insolently virtuosic.”

“You could almost be describing Alkan.”

Logan paused. “You mentioned him before. Wasn’t he a favorite composer of Strachey’s?”

“Charles-Valentin Alkan. Perhaps the strangest composer who ever lived. Yes, Willard was a huge fan. In fact, Alkan was the only composer other than Bach thematically and harmonically complex enough to interest him. I think it was his mathematical turn of mind.”

Logan reapplied himself to the lock, and a second later there came a click as the last pin crossed the shear line. Straightening up, Logan placed both hands on the rosewood cowling and carefully
lifted it. Beneath lay a row of buttons, with two knobs—one above the
BEAM
label and the other above the
FIELD
label—sporting matching antique VU meters and sets of switches. Everything was remarkably free of dust.

“What do you suppose all this means?” Mykolos asked, putting the camera aside and shaking out her jet-black hair.

“You tell me. You’re the propeller-head, remember?”

For a moment, they looked at the controls in silence. “Do you see anything that looks like an on switch?” Logan asked.

“No. But I wouldn’t look for one near these controls. I’d look on the side, below, nearer whatever machine powers this thing.”

Logan hunted around the base of the wooden housing until he found a much smaller cowling attached to the near edge. Once again employing his lockpicks, he managed to remove it after about ten seconds of manipulating the pins. Beneath were two switches, one marked
PWR
and the other
LOAD
.

“Bingo,” Mykolos said, looking over his shoulder, video camera once again in hand, eyes widening in excitement.

Logan reached forward to flip the power switch, then hesitated. “Should we?”

“Won’t get any further if we don’t.”

Gingerly, he took hold of the switch, then flipped it into the on position. At first, there was nothing. Then there came a low humming, almost beneath the threshold of hearing. He placed one hand on the main housing. It was now vibrating slightly.

“Anything?” Mykolos asked as she filmed.

Logan nodded.

“What’s that?” And she pointed to the
LOAD
switch.

“It probably connects a load from a voltage source.”

“In other words, like throwing a car from neutral into drive.”

“Basically, yes.”

They looked at each other, then at the switch. Even more gingerly this time, Logan reached forward and placed the tips of his fingers on it.

“You think maybe we ought to put on those suits of armor first?” Mykolos said, only half joking.

Logan did not reply. He took a firm grip on the
LOAD
switch, flipped it into the active position.

Nothing happened.

“Broken,” Mykolos said after a moment.

“Not necessarily. We don’t know the function of all those switches and dials on the front panel. They probably do the real work. But let me see if I can get the rest of these cowlings off first.”

Logan turned off the load switch, then the power switch. The faint vibration stopped and the device came to rest. Then, one after the other, Logan picked the locks of the two wooden housings fixed to the flanks of the device, and then, lastly, the metal plate covering the wide far end. Removing the two cowlings revealed complex gizmos of metal and rubber. One reminded him of a bulky, futuristic antenna; the other a kind of labyrinthine radiator, sporting two rows of horizontal tubes.

He shook his head. It seemed that each bit of progress they made with this strange device just yielded up fresh mysteries.

They bent over the antenna-like device. “What do you make of it?” Logan asked. “Does it ring any bells?”

“Look at this faceplate.” And Mykolos pointed to a legend beneath the contrivance that read, in small letters: EFG
112
-A. P
ATENT 4,125,662
. W
AREHAM
E
LECTRIC
C
OMPANY
, B
OSTON
. T
OLERANCES 1–20 M
G,
.1–15 M
T.

“ ‘mG,’ ” Logan read aloud. “Do you suppose that’s milligauss?”

“I think so. And I think mT stands for microtesla.”

“Then this thing is a…” Logan fell silent.

“A primitive electromagnetic field generator. And that”—she pointed at the lower section of the assembly—“is probably a rotatable pickup coil.”

Logan took a step back from the machine.

“What is it?” Mykolos asked.

Logan did not reply.

“What is it?” she repeated, frowning.

“One function of such generators,” Logan said at last, “is to detect changes in electromagnetic fields.”

“Yes, I recall that from my electrical engineering courses. So?”

“In my line of work, they’re used for a specific kind of electromagnetic change. Distortions caused by paranormal events.”

Surprise, then disbelief, crossed Mykolos’s face. “You aren’t saying that this was a machine built to…to detect
ghosts
?”

“It seems possible. Interest in spiritualism and mysticism was big in the nineteen thirties, and—”

“Wait. You’re creeping me out here.” Now it was Mykolos’s turn to take a step back from the machine. “You think this thing was created to detect ghosts…and was abandoned because it didn’t work?”

“Perhaps,” Logan murmured. “Or perhaps because it worked too well.”

Pamela Flood’s office was a large space in the rear of the old house on Perry Street. For a workroom, it was surprisingly elegant. While the antique drafting tables, framed and faded elevations, and technical volumes in old wooden bookcases gave testimony to earlier generations of architects, Pamela had refreshed and brightened the room with several feminine touches.

“Please take a seat,” Pamela told Logan, motioning to a metal stool set beside one of the drafting tables. “Sorry there isn’t anything more comfortable.”

“This is fine.” Logan took a look at the table, noticed it contained a series of architectural sketches in pencil. “You still work the old-fashioned way?”

“Only for the first drafts. Got to keep up with the times, you
know. I use a CAD-based software suite to make the customers happy, and I’m also learning BIM.”

“BIM?”

“Building Information Modeling.” She went over to a second drafting table, on which sat several old blueprints, tightly rolled. “I got these out of basement storage this morning. They’re my great-grandfather’s personal set of plans for Dark Gables.”

“Can we examine the diagrams for the second floor of the West Wing?”

“Sure.” Pamela sorted through the rolled sheets of paper, selected one, and brought it over to Logan’s table, where she unrolled it. “I have to tell you, it was something of a struggle not taking an early peek at these.”

“Without me, you wouldn’t have known what to look for.”

“Want to bet?” she asked, smiling. Logan couldn’t help but notice that it was a genuine, and rather winning, smile.

He turned his attention to the blueprint. It was covered with the same crowded lines, measurements, and notes that the set in Strachey’s possession had been. But as he refamiliarized himself with the warren of rooms and corridors, he was surprised to discover that—there, almost directly in the center of the floor—was the very room he had found. A corridor ran along its west wall; flues and mechanical spaces bordered its northern side; and rooms labeled
GALLERY
and
ART STUDIO
lay to the east and south, respectively. The room itself was unlabeled.

“Odd,” Pamela said just a few seconds later, placing a finger on the very room Logan was examining. “This room has no doors. And no obvious purpose. It can’t be a staircase—there are staircases here, and here, and another would be redundant. It’s not structural, and it’s not mechanical.” She paused. “It’s possible this is an unfinished blueprint…but, no, there’s my great-grandfather’s signature in the nameplate. How strange.”

On the drive from Lux to Pamela’s house, Logan had found himself in the grip of an internal debate. Now, the speed with
which she had noticed the secret room made up his mind for him.

“I’m not going to swear you to secrecy or anything,” he said, “but can you promise me that you’ll keep this between ourselves?”

Pamela nodded.

“Absolutely between ourselves? No gossiping to friends or family?”

“I don’t have any family. And I know how to keep a secret.”

“Very well.” Logan placed the tip of his finger gently atop hers, still resting on the sketched room. “
That
is the ‘unusual architectural detail’ I mentioned to you at the Blue Lobster.”

Pamela’s eyes widened. “It is? What is it, exactly?”

“You’ll understand if I’m a bit short on details. Suffice to say that it is a forgotten room, unused—in fact, unknown—for more than fifty years. I discovered it myself during an inspection of the West Wing, when I was looking into why Strachey stopped work so abruptly.”

He knew that Olafson would strenuously disapprove of involving Pamela Flood, even marginally. But he also knew there was a good chance—given her architectural knowledge, her family connection to the original design of the mansion, and her close working relationship with Strachey—that she could make a significant contribution.

Pamela was shaking her head. “Do you mean this room was hidden deliberately? What was its purpose? And why isn’t there any means of ingress or egress?”

“I don’t know all the answers yet, and they aren’t germane to this conversation. I wanted to see your blueprints because I was hoping they might shed some light on the mystery.”

Pamela glanced at the diagram for a moment before answering. “Well, they don’t shed much. They tell us that, for whatever reason, the blueprints I worked from at Lux were modified from my great-grandfather’s originals.”

“And they tell us the room was, in fact, in existence during the life of the original owner. Presumably, Delaveaux himself asked
that the room be built—he seems to have been an eccentric character, to say the least. But they don’t tell us
why
the blueprints were changed. The structure itself wasn’t—the room shown on this sheet is still there. I have to assume the plans were deliberately altered to conceal the existence of the room.”

“But by whom? And why?”

“I’m hoping perhaps your great-grandfather has other documents in his files that could tell us why.”

“I’ll start digging right away.” Then a new expression came over her face, as if a thought had just struck her. “Wait a minute. Do you suppose that man I told you about, the creepy one that came bothering me last winter, asking to see the original plans for Lux…do you suppose he knew about this room?”

“Not very likely.” Privately, Logan thought that it might be, but he saw no reason to alarm the architect. “Do you think we could spend a minute or two looking over the rest of these plans? Just in case there are any other, ah, surprises.”

“Of course.” And Pamela turned to the stack of rolled-up blueprints.

Twenty minutes of careful examination turned up some eccentric spaces in the original mansion—a lion cage, a gymnasium modeled after a Roman bath, an indoor skeet-shooting range—but nothing as puzzling as the secret room.

“How long do you think it will take to look through your great-grandfather’s papers?” Logan asked as Pamela began to put away the blueprints.

“Not long. A day at the most.”

“Then maybe we can talk about it over dinner tomorrow night?”

Another—warmer—smile lit up Pamela’s features. “I’d like that.”

She led the way out of the deeper recesses of the house to the parlor, where they had first met just a few days earlier. “I’m particularly interested in why the room was built in the first place and, even more, how it was meant to be accessed,” Logan told her.

“Right-o.”

Logan opened the door and stepped out into the gathering dusk of evening.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

He nodded. “Looking forward to it already.”

A
s he made his way back to Lux—a little more cautiously than usual, given what happened the last time he’d driven this route—Logan thought about what he’d learned…and what he hadn’t. He was fairly certain that, at some point early in the twentieth century, the think tank had discovered the secret room and realized it was a perfect location for doing work that was, if not officially unsanctioned, at least so unusual that it should be kept from the rest of the staff. A device to detect ghosts would certainly fall under that category.

A device to detect ghosts
. His thoughts wandered back to the strange device and its output in milligauss and microtesla. He’d told Kim Mykolos that electromagnetic field generators, such as this device apparently sported, could be used to do just that. What he did not tell her was his other suspicion: that the radiator-like device they’d discovered on the machine might be an EVP recorder. Such devices were used to monitor electronic voice phenomena. To the unbelieving, such electronic noises were thought to be banal radio transmissions. Researchers into the uncanny, however, felt it possible EVP recorders could capture voices of the departed. More than that: when replayed, such voices might be capable of inducing activity of a—put euphemistically—paranormal nature.

If this were true, the machine might not just have been built to detect ghosts—but to
summon
them, as well.

Was this, in fact, the case? Had paranormal entities—intentionally or unintentionally—been unleashed on Lux? Was this behind the recent strange behaviors, the ominous atmosphere…the death of Strachey?

He turned in at the security gate and, in the distance, saw the
vast bulk of the mansion rearing up, backlit against the sinking sun, neither inviting nor hostile; simply waiting.

…A
t that same moment, the device in the forgotten room powered up; its throaty baritone hummed into life; and, moments later, a shadowy figure moved quietly away and the few lights that had been turned on in the deserted West Wing went dark.