The Forgotten Room

33

“Let me get this straight,” Olafson said. “You let Ms. Flood into the secret room.”

Logan nodded. It was the following morning, and they were standing in the parlor of Willard Strachey’s set of third-floor rooms. The curtains were drawn wide, yet the space remained dim: a large tropical depression had formed over Bermuda, and already clouds were starting to veil the coast as far north as New Hampshire.

“And this was after telling her about the room — and about Will Strachey — when you’d been explicitly told of the need for discretion.” The director’s face looked pinched, his lips pursed into an expression of extreme disapproval.

“I needed information, and she was the obvious candidate. Look. She’s the great-granddaughter of Dark Gables’s architect. She worked with Strachey on the plans for the redesign. She refused to help unless I gave her physical access to the room.”

“My God, man! Didn’t it occur to you that she was just using you, leveraging this request of yours as a way of getting into the room?”

Logan hesitated a moment. This had, in fact, not occurred to him. But he dismissed it as being alarmist.

Olafson shook his head. “I don’t know, Jeremy. You’ve changed since you were last here. Maybe it’s all the press you’ve received. I thought I could trust your circumspection in this matter. But you’ve far exceeded your brief, and I’m afraid—”

“It’s a good thing I did,” Logan interrupted. “Because I’ve made some discoveries. Troubling discoveries.”

At this, Olafson fell silent. After a moment, he motioned for Logan to continue.

“We’ve discovered the doorway to the room — if you can call it a doorway. I’d have never found it if it weren’t for Pam Flood.” Briefly, Logan sketched out how the room was accessed by a manually operated elevator concealed in the storeroom overhead. “And on the heels of that discovery, I learned something else — that a person or persons unknown have begun making use of the room... and recently.”

A shocked look came over Olafson’s face. Unconsciously, his fingers went to the knot of his tie, smoothing it down against the crisp white of his shirt. “How recently?”

“Hard to say exactly. A few months, perhaps. Half a year. But, Gregory — they knew we were coming. That’s why the room was spotless. That’s why all the books and files had been removed. I think they’ve resurrected the work that was shut down three quarters of a century before. Resurrected it — and refined it.”

“Could it have been Will Strachey himself?” Olafson asked. “I mean, he was the one who ordered the work stopped.”

“I wondered that myself. In hindsight, it hardly seems likely, since he was in charge of the reconstruction project and could have found a subtler way to keep the room secret. But the fact is I have proof it wasn’t Strachey.”

“Proof,” the director repeated.

Logan nodded. Then he reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out one of the devices they had discovered in the hidden tray the night before, and held it out. Olafson reached for it tentatively, as if it might bite. He turned it over in his hands once or twice, then handed it back with a look of mute inquiry.

Logan placed it on a side table. Then he turned toward Strachey’s cathedral-style antique radio, picked it up, opened its back, and showed it to the director. “Remember my asking whether Lux ever did any radio research?” he asked. “Look inside.”

Olafson peered in. For a moment, a confused expression came over his face. Then his eyes widened as he made the connection. He looked over at the device sitting on the side table.

“That’s right,” Logan said. “They’re the same — except that the one in the radio has been enhanced, updated, with an integrated circuit instead of vacuum tubes and a twenty-first-century battery instead of electric power. If you reach into the radio and turn the device over, you’ll see for yourself. They’ve been installed on the underside — no doubt to be better concealed.”

Olafson took a step back. “What does it mean?”

“I’ll tell you,” Logan said. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”

When the director did not reply, he picked the unit off the side table and went on. “Last night, while investigating the secret room, I found a holding tray for four devices just like this. Two were missing.” He patted the radio. “One of those is in here.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know what the devices do, exactly. But I think that whoever was accessing the secret room put one into the radio and, knowing Strachey’s penchant for antiques, gave it to him as a present. Also, knowing of Strachey’s mechanical incompetence, they felt confident he’d never mess with the radio’s innards, try to get it to work. Because the ironic fact is that it did work — at least, in the way our unknown friends meant it to.”

“You don’t mean...” and Olafson went silent.

“Yes.” Logan waggled the device in his hand back and forth — gently. “I think one of these was used to prevent Strachey from continuing his work in the West Wing.”

“And you think that thing is responsible for what happened to him?”

Logan nodded. “As I said, I don’t know how it works — not yet. But, yes, I think it caused Willard Strachey’s psychotic break.” He slipped the device back into his jacket.

“That means we have a murderer here at Lux,” Olafson said.

“Clearly, someone who believes the technology in that room is valuable enough to kill for.” Logan closed the back of the radio and replaced it on its shelf. “My guess is that whoever is responsible was close to completing their research. They knew Strachey’s demolition crews were only days away from uncovering the room. But they still needed to finish their work. Nothing else makes sense. If they weren’t so close, why get rid of Strachey like that? No, they figured they needed just the amount of time it would take for Lux to recover from Strachey’s death and assign somebody else to the renovation. By then, their research would be done and they’d be gone. They hadn’t counted on...” And here he went silent.

“They hadn’t counted on you,” Olafson finished the sentence for him.

“When they learned I was here, this person — or people — must have guessed why. I believe it was then that the room was emptied of its contents — at least, those that were movable.” Logan ran a hand through his hair. “Once or twice, those first nights examining the room, I felt certain there was someone nearby, listening, watching. No doubt it was the killer, trying to determine whether or not I’d discovered the space.”

“If you’re right,” Olafson said after a moment, “then shouldn’t we stake out the room? Have it guarded, twenty-four hours a day?”

“I considered that. It wouldn’t work. As I said, the person, or people, know we’ve discovered the room. They would find a way, some way, to continue using its technology.”

Olafson did not reply to this.

“What I can’t understand is how this person learned about the old research. Obviously it’s not one of the original scientists — they must all be deceased by now. My guess is that it’s somebody at Lux who’s been snooping around the files in archive two and came across the redacted Project Sin files accidentally.”

“That’s not possible,” Olafson said in an odd voice. “First of all, I doubt there are any relevant redacted files in archive two. Even if there were, nobody could get access to them. Fellows are only allowed to file, or remove, folders directly related to their own work — we’re very careful about that.”

Over the course of the conversation, a parade of emotions had marched across the director’s face: first anger, then disbelief, then shock, and now something that not even Logan could read. Something in it alarmed him. “What is it, Gregory?” he asked.

Slowly and carefully, like an old man, Olafson gripped the arms of a nearby chair, then lowered himself into it. “There’s something I need to tell you, Jeremy,” he said in a solemn voice. “If I do, I’ll be breaking a solemn vow that’s held for many decades. But I think you need to know. You need to know, but I don’t know how to begin.”

Logan took a seat across from the director. “Take your time,” he said.

Then he waited, in the dim light of the parlor, for Olafson to speak.