The Forgotten Room

3

Olafson’s office was much as Logan remembered it. Dark, Edwardian-era wood panels, polished brass fixtures, and the anachronistic scribbly paintings hanging on the walls — Olaf son favored abstract expressionism. Along one wall, tall, thickly framed windows afforded a view of the well-tended landscape: greenery that swept down southward toward the rocky cliffs overlooking an angry ocean. The lower sashes of the leaded windows were slightly raised, and Logan was aware of both the distant crash of waves and the briny odor of the sea.

The director motioned Logan toward a chair, then took a seat beside him. “I appreciate your coming so quickly.”

“You said the matter was urgent.”

“And so I think it is. But I’d be hard-pressed to tell you precisely why. That’s...” Olafson hesitated a moment. “That’s where you come in. I wanted to secure your services before another assignment came up.”

The room fell silent for a long moment as the two men looked at each other. “Before I say anything more,” Olafson continued at last, “I need to know that you can put aside any prejudice, any ill will, that might have been caused by — ah — past differences.”

This prompted another silence. From his armchair, Logan regarded the director of Lux. He’d been sitting in this same seat the last time he spoke to Olafson, a decade earlier. It had been about this time of year, as well. And the director had worn the same expression on his face: at once both anxious and eager. Fragments of Olafson’s short speech came back to Logan now, filtered through a veil of time and memory: Certain members are rather concerned... perceived lack of academic rigor... the good of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious policy institute must come first...

Logan shifted in his chair. “It won’t be a problem.”

The director nodded. “And I can be assured of your complete discretion? Much of what I’m going to tell you is secret, even from the faculty, Fellows, and staff.”

“That’s part of my job. You shouldn’t even have to ask.”

“Ah, but I had to, you see. Thank you.” Olafson glanced briefly out at the sea before returning his attention to Logan. “Do you remember Dr. Strachey?”

Logan thought a moment. “Willard Strachey?”

Olafson nodded.

“He’s a computer scientist, right?”

“That’s right. Strachey was recently at the center of a... very tragic event that took place here at Lux.”

Logan recalled the atmosphere he’d sensed during his brief wait in the reception area. “Tell me about it.”

The director glanced seaward again before answering. “Strachey hadn’t been himself for the last week or two.”

“Can you be more specific?” Logan asked.

“Restless. Apparently not sleeping, or sleeping very little. Irritable — which if you have any recollection of him, you’ll know was completely out of character. And he...” Olafson hesitated again. “He’d begun talking to himself.”

“Indeed?”

“So I’ve been told. Under his breath but extensively, sometimes even animatedly. Then, just three days ago, he experienced a sudden breakdown.”

“Go on,” Logan said.

“He became violent, began assaulting his assistant.” Olafson swallowed. “As you know, we have only a skeletal security force here — we really aren’t equipped to handle any... well, scenes of that sort. We restrained him as best we could, locked him in the visitors’ library on the first floor. And then we called nine one one.”

Logan waited for the director to continue. But instead, Olafson stood up, walked to one wall, and pulled away a decorative curtain, revealing a projection screen. Then he opened a drawer in the same wall, took out a digital projector, and plugged it in, aiming it at the screen.

“It would be easier — for you, and certainly for me — if you just saw for yourself,” he said. Then he moved toward the door, flicked off the lights, and turned the projector on.

At first, the screen was black. Then a series of numbers scrolled quickly up its face. And then an image appeared, black-and-white, slightly grainy at this level of magnification: the video feed from a security camera. A date and time stamp ran continuously along the lower edge of the frame. Logan recognized the room. It was, as Olafson had said, the Lux visitors’ library: an ornate space with elaborate sconces and a coffered ceiling. Three of the walls were lined floor to ceiling with books; the fourth wall contained several very tall windows of the same heavy sash construction as those in Olafson’s office. Armchairs, ottomans, and banquettes were arranged around the gracious space. It was not a working library — that was elsewhere in the mansion, and much more fully stocked — but was instead meant to impress guests and potential clients.

From the bird’s-eye perspective of the security camera, Logan could make out a man pacing back and forth over the expensive carpeting, clearly afflicted by extreme agitation. He plucked at his clothes, pulled his hair. Logan recognized him as a decade-older version of Dr. Strachey, perhaps sixty or sixty-five years of age. Now and then the scientist stopped and bent forward, clapping his hands over his ears as if to block out some unbearable sound.

“We put him in there,” Olafson said, “so that he wouldn’t harm himself or anyone else until help could arrive.”

As Logan watched, Strachey went up to the door and yanked at it violently, crying out as he did so.

“What’s he saying?” Logan asked.

“I don’t know,” Olafson replied. “Raving, I’m afraid. The audio quality is poor — only a few of our security cameras even have integrated microphones.”

Now Strachey’s agitation increased. He pounded the walls, yanked books from their shelves and threw them across the room. Again and again he stopped and covered his ears, shaking his head like a dog shaking a rat. He approached the windows and beat them with his fists, but the leaded glass was too thick to be easily broken. He began to stagger, flailing, almost as if blind, running into walls, turning over tables. He stumbled in the direction of the camera and, for a brief moment, his voice became clearer. Then he turned away again, panting raggedly, looking around. And then, suddenly, he grew calm.

From the corner of his eye, Logan saw Olafson turn away. “I must warn you, Jeremy — I’m afraid this part is terribly disturbing.”

Under the gaze of the camera, Logan watched Strachey move toward the wall of windows. He walked slowly at first, then more quickly and confidently. Coming up to the closest window, he tried to raise it. The heavy, old-fashioned sash rose only a few inches.

Strachey went to the next window, tugged at it with sharp, violent motions. It, too, went up just an inch or two. The old-fashioned, metal-trimmed window sashes were very heavy to begin with, Logan knew, and they probably hadn’t been cleaned and oiled in decades.

Now Strachey approached a third window; tugged again. This one rose more easily than the others had. Logan watched as Strachey pushed the sash up farther, first using both hands, then applying a shoulder. Logan could hear the grunts of effort. Finally, Strachey managed to raise the window sash to its maximum height: almost five feet above the lower sill.

There was no screen; the library was on the first floor of the building; the yawning window frame gave Strachey easy access to liberty. In another minute, he’d be through the open window and gone. What, Logan wondered, was the tragedy in one scientist gone rogue?

Except that Strachey did not go out of the window. Instead, he bent low before it, reaching in toward the right edge, fiddling with something in the groove of the frame. It was, Logan realized, the window’s sash chain. He peered in at the screen, mystified. With one hand, Strachey now held the sash chain; with the other hand, he was performing some kind of twisting motion on an object that his body blocked from view.

Then the hand pulled away. In it was an iron sash weight, about ten inches long and obviously heavy. Strachey had detached the sash weight from the window chain. He let the weight drop to the floor. His other hand still held tight to the sash chain. Only Strachey’s grasp on the chain now kept the window from crashing downward.

Suddenly, a terrible dread flooded through Logan.

Still holding tight to the chain, Strachey knelt in front of the window and rested his neck on the sill. There was a moment of stasis in which Logan, frozen in his seat, heard the man draw in several ragged breaths.

And then Strachey let go of the chain.

With a sharp screech like the whistle of a train, the heavy metal sash came hurtling down in its casing. There was a terrible crack of bone, audible even over the rattling of the window; Strachey’s body jerked as if touched by a live wire. Logan looked quickly away, but not before seeing the head go tumbling down into the flower beds outside the library, and the heavy flood of blood running dead black in the pitiless eye of the security camera.