The Forgotten Room

2

Approaching from the west along Rhode Island’s Route 138, the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge was a four-lane, concrete box girder affair of a pleasing — if rather alarmingly pitched — design. It was midday, out of season; traffic was fairly light; and Dr. Jeremy Logan prodded the accelerator of his ’68 Lotus Elan just a little. The coupe obliged, rising effortlessly up and over the span. A narrow nubbin of land shot by beneath, and then a second bridge appeared ahead: the Claiborne Pell. This bridge was both much longer and much taller. Logan knew just enough about structural engineering to find suspension bridges faintly disquieting, and he pushed a little harder on the gas pedal. The car climbed; he topped the apex of the span — and then the view ahead and below drove all thoughts of resonant frequencies from his mind.

Newport, Rhode Island, lay before him, jewel-like and sparkling in the early autumn sun, like Oz at the end of the yellow brick road. Coves, marinas, harbors, wharves, and gleaming buildings dressed in stone or white-painted clapboard — barely discernible at this distance — stretched out to the left and right. In the middle distance, a handful of sloops and catboats coursed through the water, heeled over by the wind, their white sails taut and full. It was a sight that never grew old, and Logan drank it in.

It was almost enough to make him forget the nagging mystery of why, exactly, he was here.

At the end of the bridge he turned right onto Farewell Street, then cut through the narrow, traffic-heavy lanes of the old downtown until he reached Memorial Boulevard. Like all tourists, he turned first left, then right onto Bellevue. But then, instead of veering off to the east — toward the Cliff Walk and the impeccably manicured facades of such “cottages” as Marble House or the Breakers — Logan made his way south and west until he reached Ocean Avenue. He passed a series of small beaches, a country club, the inevitable summer mansions. And then, some two miles on, he slowed before a narrow road of paved stone that led south from the main thoroughfare, with no other name than PRIVATE fixed to its road sign. He turned onto the lane. A hundred yards on he reached a tall wall of weathered brick, leading off to each side as far as the eye could see. Directly ahead was a gate in the wall, and a quaint slate-roofed structure that served as a security station. Logan stopped to show some papers; the guard within the station glanced at them, nodded, and passed them back; the gate across the road lifted and, with a wave, Logan drove on.

The narrow, winding road passed through a tiny wood, over one low rise of land, and then another. And then, rounding a corner, Logan stopped as he caught his first glimpse of Lux in almost ten years.

It was even larger than he remembered. Modeled after England’s Knebworth House, but on an even grander scale, the sand-colored structure stretched away on both sides for what seemed leagues before terminating in East and West Wings. An odd mélange of Jacobean, Palladian, and high Gothic, leaded-glass windows winking in the sun, the mansion seemed even more Oz-like than Logan’s initial impression of Newport — save for the fact that the dark veins of ivy covering the facade; the oddly hooded, watchful appearance of the gables and turrets; and the low crenelations that ran along its roof as if in readiness for battle gave the building an appearance that was faintly sinister. No — that was too strong a word. “Disquieting,” Logan had termed it upon first sight, and he settled on that term again now. The high brick wall he had passed through could be seen far away on both sides, running up and down with the vagaries of the grassy terrain, and terminating on both sides at the steep, rocky cliffs above the Atlantic. Scattered around the flanks of the main structure were at least a dozen outbuildings of various shapes and sizes: a power plant, greenhouse, storage facilities, and a series of windowless structures that Logan knew to be laboratories, together forming a campus comprising almost a hundred acres.

Easing the car ahead now, he drove up the lane to a parking area on the near side of the East Wing — the front entrance, with its four massive Solomonic columns supporting a marble pediment, was much too grand to actually be used for anything save decoration — got out of his car, and walked down a short tree-lined sidewalk to a set of double doors. Only here, screwed into the facade on a weather-darkened panel of bronze, did the place allow itself to be named: LUX.

To one side of the doors were several devices: a numeric keypad, an intercom with a buzzer, and another technologic gadget Logan couldn’t identify. A printed sign above all three announced RESIDENTS AND GUESTS: USE KEYPAD AFTER HOURS. Logan was neither, and since it was noon, he pressed the buzzer.

After a moment, a woman’s voice rasped through the speaker. “Yes?”

“Dr. Jeremy Logan,” Logan said, leaning in toward the microphone.

A brief delay. “Please come in.”

There was a buzz; the doors sprang open; and Logan entered. Ahead lay the long, broad corridor he remembered. It quite clearly conveyed the double uses of the vast mansion. While the walls and ceilings were trimmed with elegant, almost rococo molding — implying the palatial abode of some robber baron of a previous century — the book-covered tables, heavily used wall-to-wall carpeting, door signs, and conspicuous red exit signs bespoke its second and quite different purpose.

Logan walked about ten yards down the hall, then turned in at the door marked RECEPTION. Telephones rang, and fingers tapped busily on keyboards. And yet there was a strange, subdued feeling in the air that Logan was immediately aware of: something that, for him, cut like a knife through the normal, professional tone of a busy office at work.

A woman was seated behind a long desk, and she watched him enter. “Dr. Logan?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“I’ve notified the director. He’ll be down in just a moment.”

Logan nodded. “Thank you.”

He looked around at the leather-upholstered wing chairs and sofas that made up the waiting room, decided on one, and was about to take a seat when the familiar form of Gregory Olafson appeared in the reception doorway. He was older, of course — his thick black hair had turned pure white, and there were wrinkles around his eyes that had once been merely laugh lines — but something other than years had aged his face. He smiled at the sight of Logan, but it was a brief smile, quickly gone.

“Jeremy,” he said, walking forward and taking Logan’s hand. “Good to see you again.”

“Gregory,” Logan replied.

“I know you must be wondering what this is all about. Come with me, please — I’ll explain everything in my office.” And he led the way out of the room and into the main hallway, Logan following.