The Castle on Deadman's Island (8 page)

“It could be anywhere,” Graham said. “Behind a bookcase … under a rug …”

“Or a button behind a painting that opens a door in the wall,” Neil said. “That's a favorite in the movies.”

“Or a tile you step on and the floor opens up under you,” Daniel added.

They searched the kitchen, the dining room, the billiard room, the study, and the library, looking behind furniture and pictures and under rugs, but they came up empty-handed.

Daniel peered into the room next to the library. “Hey look at all this stuff!” he said. Scattered about were bumper cars, a colorful tunnel-of-love boat, two merry-go-round horses – one white and placid-looking, the other black and prancing – the car from a roller coaster, even a steam calliope. Bright posters featuring lion tamers, clowns, elephants, and trapeze artists decorated the walls. “Gramps mentioned that his friend collected old circus what-d'you-call-'ems,” Daniel said.

“Memorabilia,” Graham supplied.

“Yeah, let's have a gander. Great place to hide a secret entrance.”

“We looked in there last night,” Neil said. “It won't hurt to look again though.”

Inside, they began searching. Neil, down on his knees, peered under the bumper cars; Graham pushed the buttons of the calliope; Daniel checked the hooves of the prancing black horse. “Groovy stuff to collect,” he said, moving over to the white horse and pulling its tail absentmindedly.

Suddenly, there was a whirring and clanking sound, like gears meshing. The white horse began to tilt
sideways, and the rectangular section of floor it was attached to began to swing slowly upwards.

Daniel jumped back out of the way. Across the room, Neil and Graham gaped. “The trapdoor!” Graham exclaimed.

When the trapdoor was fully open, all three crowded around and stared down, but they weren't looking at the cement stairs that disappeared into the darkness below. Their gaze focused on the skeleton, lying at the top of the stairs….

The empty eye sockets stared back at them.

“Cripes, who is
that?”
said Daniel.

“Good God, Graham, can it be …?” said Neil.

“My aunt? No, thank heavens. Aunt Etta is small, but not that small. This looks like a child. Whoever it is, it's been here for months – more likely years, the state it's in.”

Neil shifted uncomfortably. It was hard not to look.

At that moment, the whirring and clanking noise began again. They had to back away as the rectangular
section of floor swung slowly down and settled into place with a clunk. The white horse attached to it swung back upright and stood there serenely, as if relieved it had finally shared the awful secret it had guarded all these years.

“Well, I'll be darned,” Graham said. “The mechanism must be on a timer. You pull the horse's tail and the trapdoor opens, but just long enough for you to go down the steps before it automatically closes behind you.”

“Leaving the FBI, who are chasing you, baffled,” Daniel added, “while you calmly follow the passage to the boat that's waiting in the cave.”

“Very clever,” Graham said. “And that's why your grandfather's friend kept it a secret.”

“Which still doesn't tell us who that skeleton is,” Daniel said. “Or was.”

“Not exactly,” Graham said. “But I'm beginning to suspect it's the answer to the mystery of the second owner's son – the one who disappeared from the castle and was never found.”

“It does add up,” Neil said. “I can just imagine the boy playing with the merry-go-round horses, then one day he happens to pull the tail of the white horse and the trapdoor opens.” He looked down at the patch of floor under the white horse, imagining the
scene that fatal day. “What kid could resist taking a look? Suddenly the floor closes over him … and that's that. Poor little guy.”

Graham shook his head sadly. “And his father, of course, didn't know about the trapdoor
or
the hidden passage. The man he'd bought the castle from was dead, and the secret of the trapdoor died with him.”

For a moment, all three were silent. “I suppose no one could hear the boy's cries,” Graham said. “Must be a foot of concrete under the floorboards. And if he gave up calling for help and followed the passage, he wouldn't get far because of the high water level. The curse of the castle, people said, when the boy disappeared. But it wasn't really that at all.”

“Or was it?” Daniel said.

They wondered what to do now. “I suppose we should tell the cops,” Neil said. “But how do we explain what we were doing here when we found him?”

“In New York, you'd make an anonymous phone call,” Daniel said, “then hang up and beat it. Maybe it's different here. It's up to you guys.”

“We have to let the police know,” Graham said. “But I'd like to explore the underground passage before they arrive. Who knows what else is down there.”

“It's a cinch you won't get near it once the cops get here,” Daniel said.

The thought of disturbing the boy's bones bothered Neil. “But there can't be anything to do with your aunt down there. It hasn't been opened in years.”

“I know,” Graham said. “Still, I have this feeling…. I guess I don't want to leave any stone unturned, so to speak.”

Neil shrugged. “All right, I'm game to go. But the trapdoor will close behind whoever goes down there, so someone has to stay up here to open it again. We sure don't want what happened to the boy to happen to any of us!”

“You two guys go, if you want,” Daniel said. “I'll wait up here for you.”

After Daniel pulled the horse's tail a second time to open the trapdoor, Neil and Graham stepped gingerly over the skeleton at the top and descended the stairs. A few minutes later, they heard the timer click and the gears begin to whir as the trapdoor closed over their heads.

“Poor little kid, trapped alone down here in the pitch dark,” Neil said. He couldn't stop thinking about the boy. He pictured him beating on the cruel concrete with his small fists, his calls for help turning to tears. “He must have been terrified.”

“It's creepy enough down here with a light,” Graham said, shining the flashlight around the walls. Water
dripped from the stones, and strands of soggy green growth hanging from the ceiling brushed their heads.

They had agreed that Daniel would open the door at regular intervals, in case he couldn't hear their shouts when they were ready to leave. Even so, Neil had to fight down a feeling of panic when the heavy trapdoor above them clunked solidly shut.

Now they were moving along the tunnel, over the rough, slippery stone floor. After some distance, the beam of the flashlight picked out an empty cardboard box. It was slumped against the wall, as if it, too, had given up hope of rescue. Part of the label was still visible:
anada's Best Rye Whi –

“A remnant of Prohibition days,” Graham said.

They pressed on, slipping and slithering as the passageway began to slope steeply downwards. Water appeared on the floor, first as puddles, then enough to soak their running shoes. “We must be getting near the cave entrance,” Graham said.

Soon they were splashing through several inches of water, where they kept finding debris. A soggy package of Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes, with the familiar picture of a sailor and a life preserver, the wrapping from a Rowntree's five-cent chocolate bar, a waterlogged boat cushion. “Not much point going any farther,” Neil said. “It's just going to keep getting deeper.”

“I guess,” Graham said. “Crescent heard Charlie say the cave itself is underwater now, so the far end of the tunnel will be underwater too. Let's just see what's around the next bend.”

They splashed their way there. Ahead was deeper water, but also a glimmer of greenish light. “The opening to the cave, I bet,” Graham said. “Okay, I'm satisfied. We've seen all we can. This flashlight's getting dim, anyway. Batteries are going.”

By the time they arrived back at the steps, the flashlight beam had faded away completely, but they didn't need it to know that the trapdoor was still closed. They shouted for Daniel and waited, listening for the whir of the gears that would tell them he was opening the trapdoor.

“I guess he doesn't hear us,” Neil said, after a few minutes.

“He'll be opening it soon anyway to check on us,” Graham replied confidently. “Every ten minutes or so, we agreed. Nothing to do but wait.”

They sat in the dark on the bottom step.

“Wish I had a watch,” Neil said, a bit later. “It must be all of ten minutes.” He kept looking up the steps, though he couldn't see a thing in the absolute darkness. He couldn't even see Graham, who was sitting
right beside him. He only knew Graham was there by his rasping, asthmatic breathing in the damp air.

They shouted again, both together at the top of their lungs: “DANIEL!”

No response.

“He's fallen asleep, I'll bet,” Graham said.

Neil felt a twinge of panic surface. He pushed it away and tried not to think about what had happened to the skeleton at the top of the stairs.

Eventually, Neil and Graham had to admit that something had gone terribly wrong.

It was so silent, Neil could hear the cracking of Graham's knee joints as he stood up. He felt an urge to reach out and touch him, but he didn't.

“Maybe there's a problem with the mechanism,” Graham said. “I'll see what I can do.” He gave a forced laugh. “Funny how I use that expression out of habit, even though it's completely inappropriate here.”

“Huh,
what expression?”

“‘I'll
see
what I can do.' Why did I say that when I
can't actually
see
a darn thing? It's an example of habit that leads one to …”

He's babbling, Neil thought, realizing his friend wasn't as unperturbed as he let on. The thought didn't help his own feeling of panic, which bubbled to the surface again.

A few minutes later, Graham's voice floated down from the top of the stairs. “The mechanism feels normal, far as I can tell. No bent rods, or anything like that.” He shouted several more times for Daniel, but his voice grew hoarse and he gave up.

We're trapped, Neil thought. Just like the boy up there was. Something's happened to Daniel and no one else knows we're here … no one even knows where the trapdoor is, or how to operate it. We'll end up skeletons too, lying on the steps. Three skeletons in a row.

Later, he sensed that Graham was beside him again. They sat in silence, wrapped in gloomy thoughts. Neil felt as if something was pressing on his chest, making it hard to breathe. Time seemed to have stopped. “What could possibly have happened to Daniel?” he said. “He was our lifeline.”

“Goes to show you,” Graham said. “Confucius say, when choosing lifeline, make sure no weak links in same.”

“What do you mean ‘weak links'?”

“Just that. When you come right down to it, how much do we know about Daniel?”

Neil was startled by the idea. He tried to imagine Daniel deliberately walking away and leaving them there.
Was Graham serious?
“But Daniel wouldn't abandon us,” he said. “He's a friend of Crescent's.”

“Is he? Or is he someone who just happens to be in the cottage next door and who she's met for the first time – a guy who hates fishing, yet who comes here, supposedly, to be with his grandparents who do nothing but fish all day”

Neil shifted uneasily. Being trapped down here with the boy's skeleton must be working on Graham's mind. It was making him paranoid. “I just can't believe Daniel would abandon us,” he said.

“That's because you're naïve. You accept people at face value. An admirable quality, but not when you're a detective investigating a possible crime.”

“But –”

“Just consider the possibilities: Mr. Lonsberg's been coming here every summer for years. He meets Jake Grimsby or maybe Carson Snyder … more likely Snyder. Snyder learns that Lonsberg knew the original owner of the castle and likes to talk about it. He cultivates Lonsberg, they become friends, and Snyder learns about the secret passage.”

“All right,” Neil said. “I suppose that's possible, but it's no reason Daniel would –”

“Ah,
but there's more. You and I come nosing around –”

“But Snyder doesn't even know we're here.”

“He's found out from Mrs. Ruff. She phones him and tells him we're snooping around. Snyder and Grimsby realize we're a danger to their plans. They tell Lonsberg about us, say we're spreading lies about them, and we need to be taught a lesson. They include Daniel in their little scheme, and he agrees to lead us to the secret passage and leave us trapped there – trapped temporarily he thinks, because Snyder says he'll let us out in the morning, only he has no intention to.”

“Sounds awful far-fetched to me, Graham.”

“Does it? Who knew that pulling the white horse's tail opened the trapdoor?
Daniel.
And who suggested that he be the one to stay behind to open the trapdoor for us?
Daniel again.
Still skeptical? All right, consider this possibility. Snyder makes a deal with Lonsberg. He and Daniel get rid of us and the Lonsbergs get to stay in the castle every summer for free. Lonsberg's fascinated by the castle, and he can stay in it while he fishes his golden years away –”

“Now hold on,” Neil said. “I may be naïve, but you can't tell me that Daniel's the sort of person who
would walk away and leave us here. I just don't believe it. And as for your ridiculous story of a plot …”

“Have it your way then,” Graham said, and Neil could tell from his voice that he was moving up the stairs, away from him. “I suppose you'll keep making excuses for Daniel until we breathe our last down here.”