‘ 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.
‘Didn’t you bolt that door after you?’
The girl shook her head. ‘My one thought was to get back to sanity.’
‘Then,’ announced Rutland, ‘we’re wasting our time searching for Sally in that room. The moment your back was turned, she was out of that room and into the summerhouse passage. I’ll wager we’ll find her back in the library, helpless with mirth over all this fuss.’
‘Let’s see inside the room,’ said Jeffery.
But even as their host had warned, they might have saved themselves the trouble. In the flickering light, the room looked just as bare and just as sinister. Lambert, his professional imagination piqued, moved around giving perfunctory taps on the walls, but their solidness precluded any suggestion of secret passages. Jeffery, who had taken the torch, was poking the light into shadowed corners, achieving nothing more than the startled rout of generations of spiders. Wilkins stood watching the other men, his face frowning and mouth petulant, as though, in his opinion at least, this absurd business had gone on long enough.
Mrs Blackburn suddenly gave an exclamation of disgust and irritation.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Come on – let’s get out of this.’
She made a movement towards the door and as if by mutual consent, all activity within that room stopped. They filed through, one after the other. Without a world, Rutland pushed home the stone door and thrust the bolts into place.
They began to walk towards the steps when:
‘Where’s Wilkins?’
It was Jeffery, bringing up the rear of the party, who spoke. The others – Elizabeth, Lambert, Rutland – halted and looked around in surprise.
The stifled scream and the muffled pounding came almost simultaneously. ‘Oh, my stars,’ cried Rutland. ‘I’ve locked the poor blighter inside!’ And in a body, they leapt for the door.
To Elizabeth, tired, slightly hazy from the brandy, shaken by her previous experience, what happened next was vague but terrifying like a nightmare which keeps recurring even after dawn. She remembered the bolts yielding under Rutland ’s scrabbling fingers, the door being heaved back violently, Lambert shouting out Wilkin’s name. Jeffery taking a half-step forward, flashing his torch into the darkness – and then, clearly, more vividly than anything, the grotesque thunder-struck, stupefied expressions on the faces of the three men.