The Forgotten Room

26

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.”

As 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.

…At 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.