CHAPTER NINE

NO PSYCHIC PHENOMENA

Dick looked again at the plant specimens, a frown crossing his face.

“Something wrong?” Vera questioned, at which he looked at her and smiled.

“No—nothing wrong. Just a passing thought.... Now, what about the book department?”

They turned to the shelves, and after a general survey they glanced at each other and registered the same reaction.

“Not so hot,” Dick sighed. “Most of them seem to be about plants, animals or insects. Doesn’t look as though your uncle went in for thrillers, Vera?”

“Don’t be too sure,” she said slowly, stooping to look at several books on a lower shelf. “There are about twenty detective stories here.”

“Evidently uncle had his lighter moments after all,” Dick decided. “There is none here that is any good to me, though. I’ve read ’em all—mostly when I was in the R.A.F.”

“I’ve read them, too,” Vera said.

Then suddenly Dick pulled down a heavy volume.

“Say, what’s this? The History of Sunny Acres, including all about the legend, together with maps of the district! Looks as if it might be interesting. To judge from the dog-ears, somebody’s been studying it pretty closely already.”

“Not for me, thanks,” Vera said. “I don’t want to know the history of this place. I know it too well. All I want to know, anyway!”

“Then I’ll have a look at it,” Dick decided, tucking it under his arm. “Somebody has spent a good deal of time on it so I’ll do likewise.”

Vera reached out her hand at random and took down a volume. Its title made her start—Macaulay’s Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome.

“Wow!” Dick exclaimed. “If you’re going to read through that, I shan’t see you again until next year!”

“It’ll do,” she said. “Come on.”

Dick extinguished the lamps and they made their way slowly upstairs. In the gloom of the corridor outside Vera’s rooms, they stopped.

“You’ll be all right?” Dick questioned.

“Of course, I’ll lock my door.... And tomorrow we’ll telephone Thwaite?”

“Definitely!”

Vera waited for him to move on, but instead his hand gripped hers.

“No use taking up the matter of that engagement kiss, is there?” Dick asked.

“Not yet,” she answered calmly.

“That’s what you think,” he murmured—and suddenly she felt his lips press on her cheek; then he was gone, skipping into the gloom, faintly outlined against the dim stained glass window.

“You—you fathead!” Vera breathed after him. It was not quite the right word, but it was the only one she could think of at that moment. She turned into her room with a smile on her face....

Much though she admired the massive prose of Macaulay, Vera found it impossible to pursue for very long his masterly exposition on Machiavelli once she got into bed. She couldn’t help thinking about that kiss she had received. It took priority in her memory over the horrible events in the ghost room; it even made her forget the problem of the transformed basement below. She was almost willing to think that she had imagined things after all.

Just at this moment she was feeling comfortable for the first time since she had arrived at Sunny Acres. She was drowsily tired; a strong young man was next door ready to protect her. The sheets were cool.... She stirred in the richness of comfort and lay on her back, head deep in the pillow, her hands locked behind it. Meditations took possession of her as she watched cool moonlight steal through the un-curtained window—meditations which trailed off into sleep.

Dick Wilmott was not asleep. He was propped up in the pillows, squinting at The History of Sunny Acres and muttering uncomplimentary remarks about the dimness of the oil lamp at his side on the bed table.

He twisted and turned sharply, laid his book flat on the bed. Stolidly he forced himself to read, not consecutively, but snatches of the close-packed text.

“It is an undoubted fact that a representative of the Devil does exist in Sunny Acres. In a long line of owners of Sunny Acres, all of the have referred to the evil presence which makes itself apparent every year on the 21st of June. There have been times, it is recorded, when it has also been seen on the 20th and 22nd of June....”

“Mmmm—think of that!” Dick murmured, nodding approvingly. “Just in case it missed fire the first time, I suppose....”

“...Whether the ghost is a genuine manifestation of the psychic realm, or whether it is the outcome of some peculiarity of the room itself is not known. Psychic experts have studied the room carefully—at times when the ghost has not been present—but they have all failed to detect the least trace of psychic phenomena.”

Dick found the lines blurring and he yawned hugely. He closed his eyes peacefully—then suddenly he sat bolt upright.

“What?” he said to himself. “‘Failed to detect the least trace of psychic phenomena’? But what the heck! After this evening, and we were only in the room a few minutes, we were nearly laid out.” He scowled in front of him and bit the ends of his fingers, a habit from the days when he had released bombs on Berlin. “No trace of— Vera’s got to hear of this!”

He rolled out of bed and went for his dressing gown; then he slowed up and sighed, rubbed his tousled hair.

“Better not,” he muttered. “Get back to bed, you dope!”

Disconsolate, he returned to his position between the sheets; but he was definitely awakened. The glaring fact that psychic experts had examined that room at leisure during the ghost’s absence and had failed to find a thing wrong with it was full of deep significance. It meant—

“Either,” Dick whispered, “the evil influence didn’t operate in the days when this was written, or else it is a sort of induced horror! Induced? Why not? And that ties up somewhere. Something I’ve seen—done—felt.”

He gave it up. The notion he had drifting in the back of his mind refused to be tempted out. He looked at the book’s flyleaf and found that it had been published in 1912. “Still, an evil influence could hardly come on slowly. It is one of those phenomena that should have been as pungent in 1912 as it has been this very evening.”

He flicked over more pages but found nothing as moving as those other few lines. Finally he scanned the index and studies the various plates referred to. One—“Complete Map of Sunny Acres and District”—took his fancy most, but when he looked for it, he got his second shock.

It was not there! The map had been torn out. Dick frowned deeply and resumed the biting of his fingernails. His mind, already jarred, had been jarred a good deal more. Of what use could the theft of a map of Sunny Acres and district be to anybody? For it had been theft. Whoever had taken it had not cut it out carefully. It had been torn out violently, hurriedly.

Dick muttered, “There must be something in the book about it....”

This new angle impelled him to the book once more and he held it close under the smelly oil lamp. Between spells of heavy yawning, he read stubbornly until at last he alighted on a few relevant sentences:

“Sunny Acres—so named because from dawn to sunset some part of the house or grounds is in the sunshine—stands on the rising ground which forms the valley side of Waylock, in the trough of which lies Waylock Dean (See Plate 18...listed in the Gazetteer as a hamlet). The district is rich in minerals and ancient volcanic deposits, while the atmosphere is mainly dry. It has been proven geologically that Sunny Acres has been built right across a now-sealed volcanic seam, and in consequence the grounds of the residence are richly fertile.”

“Only needs the volcano to erupt and then everybody will be happy,” Dick sighed, closing the book with a bang and relaxing wearily. “The ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ wouldn’t be in it! Rich in minerals and volcanic deposits, eh? See a plate that isn’t there! No psychic phenomena....”

He forced himself to meditate for a whole, his eyes on the high ceiling. Then again an active idea took possession of him. To his way of thinking, an overcrowded mind needs a tabulated list. He took a notebook and pencil from his coat and began writing:

“No psychic phenomena. Red-brown ash in cellar. Bad smell. Volcanic deposits. Something seen somewhere which links up....”

He looked critically at “Bad smell,” then crossed it out, replacing it with “Unpleasant odor.”

“Not that I lay any claim to being a detective,” he explained to himself, as he put the note away; “but there is something in all these incidents that forms a chain. If I could only remember the odd bit that keeps bothering me! Ah, well, I’ll probably have an inspiration in time.”

Satisfied—partly at least—he blew out the lamp flame and climbed back into bed. It said much for his power of detachment that he was soon asleep.