The Lost Treasure Map Series (23 page)

“
They might have built it for another
use,
”
Merton muttered.
“
Such as to hide in, if invaders attacked the
castle. They would never have found it!
”

“
What
’s
that ...?
”
Mortimer uttered, keeping his voice
low.
“
Do
you see something ...?
”

He stopped, and pointed downwards.

“
It
’s
a leaver!
”

Mortimer crept forward.

The light was strong enough to illuminate
it. And he strolled towards it.

On his approach, Bryson perceived that there
was not much to see. It was so vague that it hardly looked like
anything. Yet it was part of the structure, and he knew that it had
a gap leading into somewhere.

Mortimer yanked the leaver, and the wall
slowly shifted, with a machine-like noise, to reveal a gap.

“
We
’ve
found something!
”
Merton uttered with
excitement.

Bryson watched Mortimer rushing into it.

Bryson jumped through afterward,
plunging into blackness. Mortimer
’s
arm mechanically shifted, with the
torch.

He wiped away the thick gray webs, shrouding
him.

His first glimpse startled him, as he had
been expecting an identical emptiness endlessly going off into
darkness.

It had look of a dungeon. Its space was
large, and an amount of objects became visible.

There were ancient objects scattered
everywhere, glowing in the dim light, covered in layers of dirt and
webs.

He crouched beside a nearby
object
–
an
ancient seat.

It had mostly rotted away, with thick lumps
of rust and decay over it. And piles of decomposed materials were
beneath it.

“
It
’s
a seat!
”
Merton explained, persuading Bryson to go
further in, to another item.

He came to a similar seat, which he shook,
causing pieces of it to fall and float about in the air, in the
vague light, as if its parts were falling to bits.

Mortimer arrived at their side. They
began moving about
–
checking various objects
–
treasure hunting
–
within the range
of the light.

Their murmurs were soon telling Bryson that
they were unable to identify the objects. Disintegrating boxes of
things were heaped about them like mounds animals dig.

Within them, which he downheartedly
viewed, he caught glimpses of something
–
differently shaped, and in a
superior condition, to the rest.

They marched over to it, ignoring
other strange objects, by their sides, vaguely capturing their
attention
–
but they were mainly things that some past owner had
discarded, or had forgotten about.

He had heard tales of people finding
valuable and extremely rare antiques, in places where things had
remained out of the reach of people, where they could not destroy
them or throw them away
–
where they had remained for
decades.

As he approached the object, he saw that it
was large, and then that it was another bookshelf.

Mortimer carefully fitted the torch onto an
old garden ornament, beside it, so that the light brightly went
over it.

“
It
’s
packed with books!
”

“
Is it another section of the
library!
”
Mortimer uttered, looking confused.

“
Someone must have put it there to
store them,
”
Bryson uttered, glaring at the books with
interest.

Bryson and James lunged towards them, with
their eyes glancing everywhere, engrossed in what they saw.

That section luckily had no dampness, and
deterioration had only partially ruined their contents.

They had to have found something, or it
would lead to that. However, most of them were in bad condition,
with no real value, and apparently never mentioned anything.
Although they had similar contents as the original castle library,
placed out of the way, by some such as Sir Richard, at an earlier
era.

Bryson knew that there were books
missing from the outer library. Their contents were empty
–
as if someone
had chosen to put them there for their lack of information
–
perhaps so as
not to give away too much, and give away the location of the
money.

“
How long do you think
it
’ll
take
to check them?
”
Merton asked, searching through the titles, which were
readable, for things in particular.

“
I don
’t
know,
”
Mortimer moaned.
“
We may be lucky.

“
The others are working
outside!
” James replied.
“Some of them
can help us look for
it.
”

Bryson decided to do what he had done the
last time, and to start by checking all the titles.

He soon started wondering how boring the
people in those times had been.

He was sure that there was something
there.

At a distance, his eyes searched the whole
lot, seeing what would become noticeable, but his sight fell on
empty, blank shapes. It was as though their spines had rotted away,
or had some form of ink dropped on them. But it was their real
original covers.

Even though many of them had bits missing,
they seemed to have their contents intact.

He held one, unable to see little, in the
dim light, and he then greedily roamed through the rest, confirming
that they were just books to amuse people of there era.

When they finished, and the torch was going
dud, they rushed up to the library with what they had.

Merton and Mortimer then dedicatedly
rummaged through the tattered remains of the pages of books,
slightly horrified at the state of them
–
as they were valuable!

They more than likely also would hold a
great deal of useful facts, which might help a lot.

Their fingers touched their pages as if they
were tissue paper that might crumble away, and be lost forever.

They insisted on leaving pages of them, and
books, for further investigation, where they could properly restore
and investigate them.

One surprised Bryson with how well he could
read it, without trying to decipher it.

“
What do you have?
”
James asked, becoming
bored.

Merton leaned over, to examine it, and
turned interested in it. Bryson then handed it over to him. He was
curious what he would make of it.

Bryson tried to imagine what kind of person
had written it.

And he wondered why the entrance had been
hidden away under the floor.

Though Sir Richard had been eccentric, and
had been capable of doing strange things, he doubted if he had
known it was there.

“
Let
’s
check them some other
time,
”
Bryson informed them, seeing that Mortimer was becoming
tired, and temporarily losing interest in their latest
discovery.

“
Good idea!
”
Merton replied, standing
up.

Merton handed back the book.

Bryson started searching behind the shelves,
at the inner library. Then for where the cable there led to, as it
was not visible.

“
Where do want to
go?
”
Bryson
asked, playing for time, while he tried to find it.

“
We want to go back to the
vault,
”
Mortimer announced firmly.

“
We first want to collect a piece of
equipment that we left out there,
”
Merton replied.
“
It
’ll
also be a good idea to check the
others!
”

“
They
’ll
be looking in other places
now,
”
James
muttered.

“
Where does that wire
lead?
”
Merton moaned.

“
They had to have covered it
up!
”
Merton
answered.

Merton and Mortimer followed the wall,
occasionally glancing at the floor and roof for any signs of
anything.

“
I cannot see it,
”
Merton spoke, at the
doorway.

They looked about the outer walls, seeing
nothing.

Mortimer tapped the wall, about the doorway.
It was, as it looked, solid.

Bryson observed him tapping at the wooden
doorway, which thickly surrounded the entrance, where the door was
at the middle of. And he saw Mortimer recognize something, and that
he resembled a dog homing in on something.

He watched him tap the doorframe, showing
him that it had a distinctly different sound.

Bryson banged it, trying to acquire some
kind of insight into what was there; but it only sounded hollow,
and that the wood there was thinner.

Mortimer then spotted something, and he
moved the whole section of the doorframe, to its side, leaving a
slight gap. And Bryson shoved it further, and the sheet of wood
slid smoothly to the side, revealing a mechanism, with the cable
wrapped around its spindle.

The device was magnificent! And it was far
from being Victorian ... It looked more like machinery from the
Second World War (perhaps even a little later).

Mortimer activated a red button, and
they watched its small engine shudder, making screeches
–
showing him that
it was either broken or jammed.

He then pressed it again, stopping it. And
Bryson saw that the cable had been tangled by them opening the
shelf out in an unconventional way, and that it had caught on a bit
of metal on the device, which he untangled, and then activated it
again.

The shelf opened out, and switched itself
off.

“
What era do you think
it
’s
from?
”
Merton asked Mortimer.

“
The Victorians never had anything as
advanced as that,
”
Mortimer concluded.

Bryson then activated the red button, making
it close.

Chapter 43

Another Death

They did what they could to check what the
others were doing before they walked to the wood.

James left them, and joined Sarah, as
she cheerfully left a taxi, with bags of souvenirs, from the
village
–
while vaguely considering what the taxi driver was up to,
trying to warn her of something.

The others notably seemed to have lost
interest in looking for anything in that part of the wood.

The wood had returned to being
virtually empty
–
with only a few distant sounds.

Merton and Mortimer walked slowly, obviously
not bothered about how long it would take to arrive at their
destination. But when they approached the vault, Mortimer swiftly
took them towards the tombs, to get the piece of equipment.

Bryson wandered down the steps,
expecting to see the figure of the reporter
–
with a resemblance of a
ghost
–
with his image firmly implanted in his mind.

He was sure that he had even dreamed of the
place.

Mortimer seemed obsessed with the tombs,
probably because it looked like a haunted place, and a normal
location that they worked at.

The piece of equipment turned out to be a
small tape recorder, which Mortimer had not remembered, and which
was in an unobservable place, between two tombs, where it could
gather sounds.

When they reached the top of the stairs,
Bryson soon started to become interested in it, as he thought over
what it could have captured, and it had obviously recorded many
sounds.

As they rested, in the upper chamber,
Mortimer finally activated it.

Its batteries were weak, from much use.

Sounds of Mortimer appeared first, and
then he heard the voices of James
’s
friends rushing around
–
with some of
them astonishingly opening the tombs, while laughing, as they had
finished hidden bottles of wine.

As they had left, the machine had
deactivated, and another sound had appeared. Footsteps had echoed
through the chamber, going specifically to a place at the
back
–
with
no vocal sounds.

Bryson listened to the reporter
lifting or moving something heavy
–
trying to grip whatever it had
been. He then had stopped abruptly, and Bryson heard himself
walking down the stairs.

The amount of time that it had taken
Mortimer to emerge had been surprisingly short.