The Forgotten Room (8 page)

The elevator doors whispered open onto a dimly lit basement hallway. Jeremy Logan knew that—as with several other areas of the mansion—Lux’s underground complex was strictly off-limits to visitors, day researchers, and even some part-time staff. As a result, it did not need to maintain the rococo elegance of the more public spaces. The hallway in which he found himself, for example, had walls of dressed stone and a curved ceiling faintly reminiscent of the Roman catacombs. The air was pure and chill, however, with no smell of damp or niter.

He glanced at his watch: quarter after one in the afternoon.

The discovery of the forgotten room, along with its overpowering foreignness and mystery, had affected him more than he’d initially realized. He had awoken that morning with an uncharacteristic sense of listlessness, as if he did not know what to do next
or where to turn. Newport, however, was possessed of a remarkably comprehensive public library, and a visit to it after breakfast—in particular, to its microfiche and DVD collections—had dispelled his feelings of doubt. If he did not know precisely what to do next, he at least had the germ of an idea.

He’d never been in the mansion’s basement during his tenure at Lux, and there were no signs indicating which way to go, so on a whim he headed left, past the base of the mansion’s central staircase, lacking in these subterranean depths its skin of polished marble. Within a hundred feet he was brought up short by a door of gleaming steel—a remarkable anachronism in this Poe-like space—with a single thick window of tinted Plexiglas, punctuated every few inches by small round holes set into an otherwise featureless surface. A sign on the door read
RESEARCH LABORATORIES: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. Looking through the window, Logan made out a long hallway of exceptionally modern, high-tech design, lit by recessed fluorescent panels. Closed doors with airbrushed labels lined both sides of the hallway, receding into the distance. It looked like the laboratory complex of a research hospital, save the fact that it appeared to be utterly empty.

There was a keyed panel beside the door, and a card reader, but no phone or buzzer for admittance. Somehow, knocking didn’t seem appropriate. Logan knew that Lux kept its most modern labs here in the basement—not only did this sequestration preserve the antique feel of the other floors, but the building’s status as a historic structure made it a requirement. With a shrug, he turned away from the polished door and decided to try his luck in the other direction.

This yielded better results. After passing the elevator again and following the passage around a bend, he arrived at an open door with a sign that read
ARCHIVES
. Beyond the door, the walls and ceiling fell away, revealing a most impressive space bathed in bright yet pleasingly mellow light. Row after row of filing cabinets ran from front to back in achingly regular lines, but they were
spaced far enough apart to forestall any sense of oppressiveness. At the far end, Logan could just make out another, smaller door, with what looked like a security station beside it. He stepped inside. Decorative wooden columns carved with encircling grape vines marched in serried ranks down the walls of the room. On the ceiling was an elaborate trompe l’oeil painting of Bacchus reclining in a glade, wineskin on his lap, his tresses and limbs being caressed by what appeared to be maenads.

Just inside the door, an elderly woman was seated at an official-looking table. A nameplate on one side of the desk read
J. RAMANUJAN
. She ran her eyes up and down Logan, lips pursing with an expression he could not decide was appraising or disapproving.

“May I be of assistance?” she asked.

“I’m here to research some of Lux’s early files,” Logan replied.

“ID, please.”

Logan rummaged through his jacket pockets and produced the card that had been provided him during his initial processing. The woman looked at it.

“This is a temporary card,” she told him. “I’m very sorry, but temporary staff are not allowed access to the archives.”

“Yes, I know,” Logan said, half apologetically. “That’s why I was given this, as well.” And he slipped out a letter on Lux stationary. It was written by Olafson, overriding Logan’s temporary status and giving him unrestricted access.

Ms. Ramanujan read the letter over, then handed it back. “How can I help you?”

Logan slid the letter back into his jacket. “I’m not sure, exactly.”

The woman frowned in confusion. “The researchers and scientists who use the archives are always looking for something specific.” Picking up a clipboard from her desk, she turned it toward him. It contained blank document requisition forms. “Before I can be of assistance, I’ll need to know the particular project or assignment you wish to research.”

“I fear the nature of my research is rather…amorphous. Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific until I actually investigate the files.”

This was clearly outside the archivist’s purview. “If you can’t give me a project title, or even a name, perhaps you can provide a time frame? A particular month, say, during which the work took place?”

Logan nodded slowly. “That might work. We could start with the thirties.”

“The thirties?” Ms. Ramanujan repeated.

“The nineteen thirties, yes.”

The woman’s face went strangely blank. She picked up the ID card, which she’d placed on the desk, looked at it, then replaced it on the polished wood. After a moment, she looked up again. “Dr. Logan,” she said, “there are records chronicling over eleven thousand research projects here. The total number of documents attached to those projects approaches two and a half million. Do you expect me to retrieve”—she did a quick calculation—“some two hundred thousand documents for your perusal?”

“No, no,” Logan said quickly.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“If I could just do my own, ah, browsing through the stacks, it would probably give me a better indication of what I’m searching for—and perhaps very quickly, as well.”

There was a pause. “Researchers are not normally admitted to the stacks themselves,” the woman said. “Especially temporary researchers. It is most unusual.”

In response, Logan let Olafson’s letter peep out again from his jacket pocket.

The archivist sighed. “Very well. You may use that table over there, if you need to. But take no more than five folders from the stacks at a time. And
please
be careful when you refile them.”

“I will,” Logan assured her. “Thank you.”

Over the next three hours, Logan—under the watchful gaze of the archivist—moved back and forth between the stacks and the
research table, thick folders in hand each time. He opened the folders and scanned them quickly, scribbling observations into a small notebook with a gold pen. At first, his investigations took him all over the large room. But later, he narrowed his concentration to a much smaller area. Now his examination of the folders became more studious, his reading slower. At last he put the final set of folders away, and—instead of doing additional reading—moved from stack to stack, gazing into various drawers, all the time making notations in his journal as if tallying something. Finally, he put the notebook away and returned to the archivist.

“Thank you,” he said.

Ms. Ramanujan inclined her head as she returned his ID card.

“I have a question. Extensive as these files are, there doesn’t seem to be anything more recent than 2000.”

“That is correct. These archives contain only files of closed or inactive research.”

“Then where is the more recent documentation kept?”

“Some of it, of course, is kept with the scientists doing the research. The rest is in archive two, beyond that door.” And she pointed toward the far end of the room.

“I see. Thank you again.” And Logan turned away, heading in the indicated direction.

“Wait—” the woman began. But Logan was already moving quickly toward the back of the room, his footsteps echoing on the marble floor.

At the back of the vast space—as he’d noticed upon first entering—was a security station, blocking the door beyond. A lone man in the garb of Lux’s security staff sat at a desk within it. He stood up as Logan approached.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“I’d like to examine the recent archives,” Logan said, nodding toward the door.

“Your ID, please,” the guard said.

To save time, Logan presented not only the ID but the letter from Olafson as well.

The guard examined them, then handed them back. “I’m sorry, sir, but you have insufficient privileges to access archive two.”

“But this letter from Dr. Olafson—”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the guard repeated in a firmer tone, “but only persons with a level-A access or greater are permitted past this door.”

Level A? Logan had never heard of such a thing. In fact, during his time at Lux, he hadn’t been aware of any access levels at all. “But—” he began, taking a step forward.

In response, the guard moved to block his progress. As he did so, Logan caught sight of a nightstick and a can of Mace snugged into the man’s heavy service belt.

“I see,” Logan said slowly. Then he nodded, turned, and made his way back through the stacks and into the basement corridor beyond.

It was quarter to seven when Logan knocked on the door of the director’s inner office.

“Come in,” came the disembodied voice from beyond.

When Logan stepped inside, Olafson was standing before a small mirror, adjusting his tie.

“Your secretary’s gone for the day,” Logan said. “Oh, I’m sorry—were you on your way to dinner?”

“It can wait.” Olafson shrugged into his suit jacket, then took a seat behind the desk. “You’ve got something?”

“Something, yes. And I need something—from you.”

Olafson spread out his hands, palm up, as if to say
I’m at your disposal
.

Logan placed his duffel on the arm of one of the chairs arranged before the desk, then sat down. Opening the duffel, he
pulled something out: a badly charred piece of paper inside an envelope. He handed it to Olafson, who scrutinized it carefully.

“I found that among a pile of burned papers in the forgotten room’s fireplace,” he said.

Olafson continued to look at it. “It seems to be three men in lab coats, standing behind a worktable.”

“Not
a
worktable. The worktable that’s still in the room. You can tell by that deep scar in the wood, near the left corner.”

“Even so, it’s impossible to identify the people. The images have been burned away from the chest up.”

“That’s correct,” Logan replied. “But the photo can tell us something nevertheless.” Reaching into his duffel again, he took out a piece of paper, folded it in half, and held the bottom half up for the director to see. It was a bright, cartoonish picture of an exaggeratedly rotund man standing on the deck of a ship in heavy seas—wearing a blue double-breasted yachtsman’s jacket, white shorts, and a beanie—gazing bemusedly down at an obviously seasick woman lying beneath a blanket on a deck chair.

Olafson squinted at it. “What about it?”

Now Logan unfolded the top half and let Olafson see the paper in its entirety. The logo of a magazine,
The New Yorker
, was emblazoned across the top of the sheet, along with a date: July 16, 1932.

“The Newport library has an excellent periodical collection,” Logan said. “They wouldn’t let me bring the actual issue, but they did make a color Xerox of the cover for me.”

“I don’t understand,” Olafson said.

“Take a closer look at the burned photograph. Notice those letters and periodicals sitting on the desk? They are all too blurry to make out—
except
for the magazine cover featuring a porcine man in an odd yachtsman’s uniform. Look closely; you can just make it out. It’s obviously not a cover from a slick such as
Colliers, Life
, or the
Saturday Evening Post
. In fact, it looked to me like a quintessential
New Yorker
cover.” He put the paper back in his duffel. “So now we have a
terminus post quem
for the work being
done in that room. It was in use at least as late as the summer of 1932.”

“I see.”

“And that puts to rest any question about who was using the room.
Lux
was using that room—in addition to, or instead of, the mansion’s initial owner. And speaking of the owner: I checked the original blueprints for Dark Gables in Strachey’s office. They did not include the forgotten room.” Logan picked up the charred fragment of photograph and returned it to his duffel. “Have you heard of something called Project Sin?”

“Project Sin?” Olafson frowned. “No.”

“Please think carefully. ‘Sin’ may well be just the beginning of a word. No Lux project of that name comes to mind?”

When Olafson shook his head, Logan pulled another glassine envelope—this one containing the bit of burnt memo he had also recovered from the fireplace—and handed it to Olafson.

The director looked at it a moment before returning it. “Doesn’t ring even the remotest bell.”

“I wasn’t able to find anything about any such project in your archives, either—although my search was as exhaustive as possible. I did discover something, however. Something quite interesting.”

Olafson poured himself a glass of water from a decanter on his desk. “Let’s hear it.”

Logan sat forward. “I’ve discovered what I think is a gap in your records.”

“What kind of gap?”

“When I was investigating Lux’s archives earlier this afternoon, I found files relating to certain projects that were gathering steam in the late twenties and early thirties. Interesting but seemingly unrelated projects on such subjects as exotic qualities of electromagnetic radiation; on the classification of chemicals in the brain; and on the attempted isolation and analysis of ectenic force.”

“Ectenic force?” Olafson repeated.

“Yes. That’s especially interesting, isn’t it? ‘Ectenic force,’
otherwise known as ectoplasm, was the substance believed to be emitted by spiritual mediums during séances, for purposes such as telekinesis or communicating with the dead. It was studied rather intensively in the late nineteenth century, but interest waned after that.” He paused. “Why would scientists at Lux have revived such a study?”

“I can’t imagine,” Olafson said. “Surely the files themselves must have given you an indication.”

“Therein lies the problem. While the files gave clear indications that these projects, and a few others, were gaining traction over the course of several years, there was a remarkable paucity of hard data on any of them—the names of the scientists involved, specifics on the nature of the work, data from experiments or tests or observations. Other files in the archives, by comparison, were stuffed full of information.”

Logan sat back again. “The files in question share another commonality. They all cease abruptly around the same time—early in 1930.”

Olafson rubbed his chin. “Do you have a theory?”

“I have the beginnings of one. I’ll get to it in a minute. But let’s return to the gap in your records. I did a comparative analysis of the amount of data in the Lux archives between 1920 and 1940. It was a quick-and-dirty analysis, but it nevertheless seemed clear to me that the years between 1930 and 1935 have less archival material than the rest. Sometimes a little less; sometimes rather more.”

Olafson looked at him, saying nothing.

“So: my hypothesis. There were several projects under way at Lux in the late 1920s that, around 1930, merged into a single project. This project continued until 1935, when—for whatever reason—it was suddenly abandoned.”

“And you think this was the so-called Project Sin,” the director said.

“Made visible by its very absence,” Logan replied. “Because in 1935, Lux’s records resumed their normal volume. I believe that whoever removed those files also sealed the secret room.”

“Which—I assume—you believe was the location for that project’s research?”

“What other assumption can I make?”

For a moment, a strange look came over Olafson’s face. Instantly, Logan sensed what it was: the look of a man who had just fitted two pieces of a puzzle together.

“What is it?” he asked quickly.

Olafson did not answer immediately. Then he roused himself. “I’m sorry?”

“You’ve just thought of something. What is it?”

Olafson hesitated. “Oh, nothing. I’m just trying to absorb all these deductions of yours, that’s all, get them straight in my mind.”

“I see. Well, I’d like to ask you a favor. Could you get me a list of all the Fellows who were working here at Lux from, say, 1930 to 1935?”

“A list,” Olafson repeated.

“As I told you, all the names of the scientists had been redacted from the files. If I could learn who was involved, perhaps I could work backward and discover more about the actual project.”

“I’m afraid that would be quite impossible. We don’t keep any such list—never did. Some people have reasons to keep their work, and their time at Lux, to themselves. If somebody wants to add their period at Lux to their curriculum vitae, that’s their business…but we make it a point never to broadcast it.”

Logan looked speculatively at him for a moment. Throughout the conversation, the director had proven singularly unhelpful.

“In any case, I don’t see what any of this has to do with Strachey’s death,” Olafson went on. “And that, after all, is why I summoned you here.”

Logan took a new tack. “I wasn’t allowed into archive two,” he said. “I was told something about level-A access. What is that? I thought I had unrestricted access to Lux’s records.”

It took Olafson a moment to parse this sudden change in subject. Then a slightly chagrined look came over his face. “I’m sorry. You have access to ninety-five percent. But there are a few recent
projects, still ongoing, that deal with extremely sensitive kinds of work.”

“Work so sensitive it requires a dedicated guard?” Logan asked. “I thought you told me you had a—what was the phrase?—skeletal security force.”

Olafson laughed a little uncomfortably. “Jeremy, just because we won’t work for the military doesn’t mean there aren’t projects at Lux that don’t have their…classified aspects. It’s something you had no experience with during your tenure here, and you have no reason to concern yourself with it now. The vast majority of Lux’s work, while of course proprietary, doesn’t fall under that rubric. Fellows working on current projects have the option of keeping their files in archive two. Will Strachey didn’t avail himself of that option—as you’ve seen, he was the most open of men, kept all his files in his office. Like almost everyone, yourself included, Strachey had level-B access. Level-A access is restricted to those few working on high-security projects.”

When Logan didn’t reply, Olafson continued. “Really, Jeremy, there’s no connection between any classified work going on here at Lux and Will’s death. None at all. And he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

For a long moment, Logan didn’t say anything. Then he nodded.

The director put his hands on his desk. “Well. Anything else?”

“Do you have that list I requested earlier? Of, ah, ‘affected personnel.’ ”

“Yes.” Olafson unlocked a drawer of his desk, reached in, and withdrew a sealed envelope, which he handed to Logan.

“Just one thing more. Did Lux ever do any radio research in the early part of the century?”

Olafson thought a moment. “I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of any. Why?”

“Because I found a vintage radio in Strachey’s rooms. Well, it looked like a radio from the outside, anyway. I thought maybe he’d picked it up around here from some abandoned project.”

Olafson chuckled. “Will was always collecting strange bits of antique technology and mechanical curiosa. You must have noticed examples of it in his rooms. He loved to haunt flea markets for the stuff.” He shook his head. “It’s funny, really, because as brilliant as he was with software, he was terrible with anything mechanical or electrical. It was all he could do to screw in a lightbulb or sail his beloved boat.” He stood up. “Well, despite everything, I’ve worked up an appetite. Shall we go down to dinner?”

“Why not?” And picking up his satchel, Logan let Olafson usher him out of the office.