Heavy as the door seemed, it swung back easily when Sally dragged at it. As Elizabeth took an unwilling step into the blackness, her companion’s torch cut a swathe of light across the small room. And it was surprisingly tiny compared with the dimensions of the upper apartments; certainly no more than twelve feet square.
Sally flashed the torch around.
‘You see? Nothing to raise even a solitary goosepimple – just a bare room. Now then -,’ she thrust out the torch and grabbed at the bundled clothing. ‘Hold the light while I slip into these things.’
In turn, Mrs Blackburn played the silver finger of light over the rough unbroken walls and up to the ceiling that seemed to press down on her neat head. Then she pronounced her judgment. ‘I wouldn’t stay alone in this place for a cartload of silver foxes.’ She turned to where Sally was struggling with the stained overalls. ‘Listen, darling. Be sensible. Call the whole thing off.’
‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’
‘Sally!’ Elizabeth ’s voice was shrill. ‘Don’t say that, not down here!’
‘Peanuts,’ snapped Mrs Rutland inelegantly. She fumbled here and there, then pulled the cap over her dark curls. ‘There, I’m ready. Now – bring those doubting Thomases down here fast as you can. And be sure to bolt that door on the outside.’
‘Sally -’ it was a final appeal.
‘Outside, Infirm of Purpose! And bolt that door!’
For just a second. Elizabeth hesitated. Then she passed out into the dimly lit passage and strained at the door. It seemed to swing shut with almost sinister haste and she reached up and shot the bolts with none-too-steady fingers.
She was half way down the passage when she heard the first cry.
It was so faint, so muffled and so indistinct that Elizabeth wondered, at first, if it was merely her imagination stimulated by the hushed and sinister surroundings. Yet that curious echo had been so urgent and so arresting that, despite her eagerness to leave this place, she hesitated with one small foot on the lowest stair. In that moment, it came again and this time there was no mistaking the quality of terror which seeped through even walls of stone.
‘ Elizabeth – help! Come back!’
Some actions are purely automatic, made without conscious thought. Elizabeth only knew that she was back at that massive door, pounding on it, crying out, ‘Sally – Sally, what is it?’ Then as no answer came, she wrenched at the rusting bolts, tearing a nail. The door, seeming a dozen times as heavy in her panic, almost resisted her efforts to drag it open. It gave suddenly and swung wide with a sour grating of hinges. Elizabeth stood trembling in the entrance.
‘Sally,’ she called unsteadily.
The small black pit ahead threw back the echoes of her voice. Mrs Blackburn’s uncertain fingers found the sliding catch on the torch and a spear of light shot forward, wavered, explored the full circle, while the girl stared, amazed and incredulous.
The room was empty!
‘Oh, no,’ whispered Elizabeth Blackburn. Then she swallowed, for there was an odd, sick feeling in her stomach. Nerving herself, she moved forward into the room and its cold dankness rose up around her, so that she swallowed again and put out one hand to the thick wall for support. Standing thus, she played the torch around again, grimly, doggedly, choking down the panic within her, covering every inch of those solid, unbroken walls enclosing that unbelievable, incredibly empty space.
‘There’s no one here,’ she said huskily.
And then, right at her very side, something chuckled.
There was no amusement in it, nor was it a loud sound. It was, however, more than enough for Elizabeth. She swung around, played the light on the blank wall at her side, then with a little choking gasp, she bolted, – bolted frankly and unashamedly, taking the steps three at a time, running with outstretched hands through the long hall, across the armoury, past the stained glass windows with their heavy curtains, through the living quarters and into the sanctuary of the reception room, with its cheerful fire, its deep chairs and the comforting, though undeniably startled, faces of the assembled menfolk.
2
‘Darling,’ said Mr Blackburn.
‘Another little sip of brandy,’ advised Jim Rutland.
‘Slip this cushion behind the lady’s head,’ suggested the financier Wilkins.
Mrs Blackburn, recumbent, panting, choked with brandy, glared up at the good Samaritans and strove to get her breath. Then she sat up and began to pat her hair into place.
‘Listen to me, all of you -’
Jeffery placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘Take it easy sweetheart.’
‘But Sally -’
‘More brandy?’ said Jim Rutland. Anyone with a hide less thick would have recoiled from Elizabeth ’s look. But Rutland merely replaced the decanter on the table.
‘Now, what’s all this about Sally?’
Elizabeth said breathlessly, ‘I’ve told you. She had me lock her in that horrible little room downstairs – it was to be a joke on you men. Then I heard that cry. I rushed back, opened the door – and she’d vanished!’ She paused, looking from face to face. ‘Well! Say something!’
‘She was obviously hiding behind the door,’ explained Mr Blackburn and calmly lit a cigarette.
‘The door opens outward,’ replied his wife shortly. ‘Besides, while I stood looking into that room – a room bare as the palm of my hand, mark you – something chuckled!’
Jim Rutland grinned. ‘You bet it did!’
Elizabeth wheeled on him, but Evan Lambert cut in quickly. ‘Tell me, Elizabeth – was there any special reason why you should accompany Sally down to that room?’
‘Yes, I had to shoot the bolts on the door.’
‘But,’ persisted Lambert, ‘if the object was to scare us, why bolt the door at all? That wasn’t necessary.’
Jeffery nodded. ‘Good point Lambert.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Is your face red?’
‘Should it be?’ asked Elizabeth acidly.
‘Magenta,’ Jeffery assured her. ‘Don’t you see, darling? Sally’s real intention was not to scare us, but you! She concocted the other story just to get you down there.’ He blew a smoke ring. ‘No wonder she chuckled!’
‘But -,’ then Mrs Blackburn stopped. Her pretty face was such a study in conflicting emotions that Wilkins, watching her, spoke for the second time, spoke carefully, precisely, with a cold authority that stripped the discussion of all nonsense, reducing it to blueprint saneness.
‘All this doesn’t explain one very essential point.’ His eyes, piercing blue, close set, moved from one face to another. ‘Where, when Mrs Blackburn returned, was the lady hidden?’
Jeffery said ‘It’s possible, of course, that my wife had such a shock she didn’t trouble to look very closely.’
‘Perhaps,’ Wilkins smiled. ‘Yet Mrs Blackburn strikes me as being an extremely thorough young woman. Out of fairness to her, I suggest we four men should go down and search the room for ourselves.’
He paused. Elizabeth beamed on him. Jim Rutland shrugged. ‘We’re merely playing into Sally’s hands by keeping the joke going like this,’ he pointed out.
But Evan Lambert made the decision for them all. ‘Does that matter?’ he asked. ‘You were going to show us this room, anyway.’
Five minutes later, the little party met at the head of the stone steps. Rutland had a lighted candle, Elizabeth clung to her torch. They started downward. Where the stairs began to widen into the passage, Jeffery stopped and gestured to a slit-like aperture in the wall.
‘What’s this?’
Rutland explained it was a passage leading out to the summer-house in the garden. As they walked forward, his eye lighted on the stone door, still ajar. He turned to Elizabeth.