Corpses at Indian Stone

by Philip Wylie

  The "beach" on that lake--where Mrs. Drayman preferred to swim, owing to its proximity to her house--was a short, narrow strip of natural sand. No attempt had been made to extend it by trucking in more sand, as at Lower Lake. A small brook had carried in the sand, year by year, and the waves had arranged it.

  Aggie trotted up to the beach and swirled on his light. The water was disappointingly clear. Clear--but stained, perhaps. It certainly looked more brownish than the water of Lower Lake. He scooped up a handful and tasted it. No peculiar flavor. He hurried along the strip of sand to the mouth of the brook, wishing it was daylight so that he could define colors more accurately. The stream gurgled into the lake from a tier of pools shored up by mossy ledges. It was distinctly brownish. Since it was presumably spring-fed, the stream should have been crystal clear. Aggie thought that Mrs. Drayman would readily assume that a sudden darkening of the water on the beach was due to

  "algae" and that it was "unhealthy"--two notions that had nothing, essentially, to do with fact. Mrs. Drayman's opinions were forceful--and her interest in fact was always swayed by convenience.

  Aggie plunged into the woods and followed the stream up the hill. Now and again he examined it to make sure he was also following the brownness in it. The brook threaded its way between trees and glacial boulders for an eighth of a mile and came to an end in a gravelly bowl. This emergence represented the spring that fed the brook. It was, in reality, the spot where the stream ceased to run underground. The water in the bowl was even darker than the water farther down. On the bottom were myriad small squares of torn-up paper. He dipped into the basin and examined some of the fragments.

  Paper from a notebook and from what had probably been a tin-can label. Aggie shone his light at the surrounding rocks and studied them. He estimated the location of the spring.

  The clubhouse lay above him, several hundred yards to the southwest.

  He ran back to the lake shore and started for the road. On his way he passed a small pier at which two or three rowboats were moored. A voice spoke from one of them.

  "Hello, Aggie."

  He spun around. "Danielle! I heard you were back!"

  "What the deuce are you doing--whizzing around in the woods?"

  "What are you doing--sitting in a boat alone?"

  "Thinking. Just--thinking. I was going to come over to see you and Sarah, by and by. How is she?"

  "Much better. Well, I've got to push on."

  "You're in a terrible hurry!"

  "Yes," he said. "I am."

  "Won't you talk to me awhile?"

  He was already moving away. "Can't. Busy. See you tomorrow." He ran again.

  When he came back to the living room at Rainbow Lodge, he found Sarah bent over a large piece of brown paper, with a pencil and a ruler. "I take it," she said, "you believe somebody's hidden Hank under the club?"

  "Yeah. I'm sure of it, now." He looked over her shoulder. "Yeah. That's the way it goes. The plan of the wine cellar is perfect. I think the passage to the strong room goes more north and less east. But it'll do." He watched her erase and make the change. "Yeah.

  Like that. Do you remember any other cellar space? Anything they might have covered up? Anything the fire itself might have covered up?"

  "I honestly don't, Aggie. I think there was some. But maybe that's just a wish. I have a vague recollection it would be around in back--say, where the sun parlor is now.

  Part of the Sachem Hotel was built up on bare rock-carved and blasted out. It might have been that. I know that the foundations were so strong, everywhere, that the architect used all he could and built new ones only where he was compelled to. There was a note about it in those plans--and the old foundations were all in dotted lines. The Sachem House, though, was perfectly rectangular--"

  Aggie slapped his hands together. "That's something! If we could find two opposite corners--hunh?"

  "And it was smaller than the club. Much narrower." Aggie thought. "Which means--if there's still some unexplored cellar--the old entrance might have been in a place now outdoors. Here's the thing. If I were Hank, and if I were being kept underground--

  and if--mind you--if--I had a spring on a rivulet or even a sink-hole in my prison--one that ran in and out--as it would have to do in order not to fill my prison full--well, I'd muck up the spring in the hope somebody would notice the muck. But--suppose the place was rock? Old oak beams overhead, say, and perhaps a mess of roots coming through cracks in the stone? There's a lot of sumac around the club. Suppose I had a pot or a pan or a kettle. Well, I'd boil up the wood and the roots, if I could. Make a brown stew and pour that in the spring. I'd tear up all the paper I could--and add it too. The rocks round here are ferrous. I might put some of them in, if it was possible to stew anything. Then--if the tannin in the roots would act at all on the iron in the rocks, I'd get something really good. Tannic acid and iron salts are the basis of the earliest inks. I'd keep staining that water, knowing that I wasn't far from the lake and that the spring must flow into it. And I'd keep praying that somebody would notice that the lake, at some point, was becoming an unprecedented, color, and that whoever noticed would investigate. Since I was being held by force, and since I'd sent word that I was coming, I'd expect people to be looking for me. The police. And I'd expect the police to investigate the change in the water. Not--

  expect, maybe. But I'd hope!"

  Sarah had just listened--with her mouth open and her gray eyes very alive. When her nephew stopped talking, she said, "Aggie, that's the first thing a soul has said about what Hank might or might not do that sounds like him! What put you on the track of a stain in Upper Lake?"

  He sat down and covered his face with his hands. "Mrs. Drayman. She wouldn't swim in it."

  Sarah frowned. "Lots of excavations hit springs. As far as stewing up a mess of roots and rocks--wouldn't it smother him to make a fire?"

  Aggie shrugged. "We don't know." "He was an engineer--of course--"

  "Exactly. So he'd know about the rocks. About the iron in 'em. And he raised silver foxes--so he knows about fur and tanning--and tanning involves using tannic acid--

  that's what the word comes from."

  "I wish I could remember," she said, "some spot on those old drawings that was marked 'Hit water here'--but I can't."

  Aggie grinned at her and returned to her side. He stared at her sketch. "This is my department--now--isn't it? That's what I'm brooding about. An archaeologist ought to be able to dope it. I've helped open tombs. I've directed the digging up of a whole city--a city more than three thousand years old. This joint isn't a century old. How much narrower than the club was the old hotel?"

  "Maybe a third."

  Aggie began to draw. "The front veranda--is on new foundations--I think.

  Cemented fieldstone. So the old ones begin with the club. They must have gone back--out over the spot--where the rear drive is now. Where they trundle out the garbage cans. In the days of the hotel--that was probably part of the basement. Now--widthways--if we take off a third--that just about does come to the solarium. The water table level in those rocks slopes from southwest to northeast--roughly--and the spring--is over about here where the fox's tail is. A line would run pretty close to the solarium--if not under it. That's alongside the first tee on the golf course--and the sun porch is about half a story above it.

  Of course, water can flow cockeyed underground, just as it does above-ground. But--

  taking one thing with another--I think I'll try to burrow under that porch tonight."

  "I wish I could go along with you."

  "I won't have time," Aggie said solemnly, "to dig a hole big enough for you."

  "Suppose somebody sees you burrowing under that porch?"

  "Nobody will. I'll start under the sumacs. It won't take me long. The club's full of people this time of night. Bright inside and dark outside. I've had plenty of experience--

  digging. The solarium's on stone piers--with a heavy sill and clapboards between. Of cou
rse, if I knew where the other guy went in--" He shrugged. "Maybe he didn't. Maybe Hank's nowhere. That brook could have cut into some sort of minerals--or deadwood--

  underground--and stained itself. Somebody could have tossed in the paper." He started toward the kitchen. "I'll get a couple of tools--"

  "Aggie! If you find him--what will you do?"

  "Get him out--quick. And ask him who put him there."

  "Don't you know?"

  He stared at his aunt. "Why, no. Do you?"

  She shook her head. "I thought you did. You tell me the things you do think in such a spotty way--!"

  "Hank ought to know--if, as, and when," he said. "Sarah, didn't you say there used to be a hidden exit to the old hotel? A place the gay glades used for a quick getaway when their irate spouses caught them weekending?"

  "Great grief! There was!" Sarah sighed. "But that wasn't on the old plans either, Aggie. It was just--a story. A legend. Your father's father told me. Maybe his father used it. I wouldn't have put it beyond old Hilary Plum--to judge from the family records!"

  CHAPTER 17

  Aggie lay on his belly and dug like a beaver. Over his head was a canopy of sumac leaves. Filtering through was light from the club solarium. He could hear the thump-thump of the feet of table-tennis players, occasional strident voices, and the tap of the ball. Somewhere in the building above, a radio was playing. It began to utter news and the players stopped to listen. It went on broadcasting music, and the people resumed their game. The sill was partly buried, and dry-rotted. The ground outside it was hard.

  But Aggie inched steadily into his hole and presently his feet pulled out of sight.

  It was pitch-dark under the porch. The thumping of the players was louder. Aggie switched on his light.

  Such a place, even if inaccessible to man, can be reached by fungi, molds, and insects. Such a place contains rubble, old boards, nails, wire, rope, shingles--the oddments dropped and abandoned by masons and carpenters at the time of construction.

  Aggie could not quite stand up. The enclosed area was fifty or sixty feet long and some twenty feet in width. He walked through it, inspecting the ground. It consisted, mostly of time-compressed ashes, overlaid with dirt, rotted sod, and the debris. The foundation under the club proper--the inside wall of the place--was blackened. Evidence of the burning of the Sachem House.

  There were, however, two squares of unblackened brick on that wall--where windows that had once given on the outdoors had been blocked up because the club plans had called for a porch over them. Aggie noted them and thought about them. But he searched the place for a full half hour--with every iota of his trained skill--before he turned to them. Finding nothing that an archaeologist would consider suggestive of an old door or a hidden passage, Aggie finally went up to one of the two bricked-up rectangles.

  According to his knowledge of the cellar and Sarah's plan--the area behind those windows was terra incognita. No doubt it would prove to be a mere black hole under the lounge. Aggie reluctantly picked at the mortar around the least firm-looking brick.

  When he got it out--in two halves--he removed another. Then, fixing his eye and his light on the hole, he peered in. After that, he set himself to the demolition of the bricks--expertly--and as quietly as he could, although the noise overhead was considerable.

  Behind those bricks was a room--lower than the outside ground level, with a venerable coat of whitewash on its walls. The floor looked like a long-entombed bit of field. But in its middle was a huge pile of ashes and at one side of the pile were steps going down to a door.

  Aggie scrambled through the bricked-up window. The room was empty. There was no visible sign of any method of ingress save the one he had made. He knew there must be one--but he did not take time to look. He went down the stairway to the door. It was also blackened, and upon it was a new bolt.

  It had taken no more than a glance to reconstruct the raison-d'être of the stairs and the door. Into this place, as the old Sachem House burned, had poured much of the water that had doubtless been carried to the fire by a bucket brigade. Into it, too, had fallen a sludge of ashes, covering the door and filling the stair well. Afterward, the charred foundations had lain naked in the wind and the rain for years--until the site had been purchased for the club. During that period, every trace of the staircase had been erased by drifting earth, by leaves, by growing things--if, indeed, the ashes had left a visible trace.

  Somebody had located the stairway, either by search, or--as in Sarah's case--from an old document, and dug it out.

  Aggie shot the bolt. He pushed the door open. Ahead, was a long, downsloping passage. He followed it for a hundred yards. Its walls became rock. Cut in the wall, at that point, was a door; and on the door, another new bolt, as well as a heavy beam. He lifted the beam and slid the bolt. This door opened out.

  Behind it was a chamber. The walls were rock. The ends of freshly broken roots spiked the ceiling. From somewhere inside came an incessant gurgling of water. Aggie's torch, moving across the floor, touched a heap of opened tin cans and an old chair--and held for a moment on the opposite corner, where a pool of water flowed slowly out of sight in a cavern no more than a foot high. The air in the place was tinged with a chemical smell, but it was not foul. He had the impression that it was replenished from the little cave where the brook ran out.

  Aggie spoke. "Mr. Bogarty!"

  There was no answer. He stepped into the room and moved his light. Then he held it very still. Stretched out on the floor--raggedly bearded and in filthy clothes--lay a man.

  At his side was a pail set on two stones and under it was an empty solidified-alcohol can.

  The man did not look very much like the Hank Bogarty of the photographs Aggie had seen--but it was Hank. Aggie thought for a moment that he was dead. Looking closer, he saw that he was breathing--lightly, rapidly.

  Aggie knelt and took the man's wrist. His pulse was racing and feeble. He had been there, Aggie thought, for more than two weeks--supplied with food by his captor--

  and with canned heat, for cooking it. Light too--Aggie saw--for there was a mound of candle grease on the ground near by. Aggie thought, for a moment, that exhaustion--fear-

  -fury--shock--had prostrated Hank. Then he saw the true reason.

  Hank's head lolled. On the side of it, toward the back, was a savage wound that had not healed. The wound was infected. Reddish streaks ran into Hank's scalp and down his neck. He had needed medical attention for the injury that had knocked him out--and made it possible for someone to take him there.

  Aggie considered the two courses open to him. Hank was a heavy man--and unconscious. To take him out would be a tremendous task--and a rough journey for the sick man. To leave him might mean that his captor would check up on the prisoner-and see the hole in the bricked window. Aggie knew much about Hank's captor. He shuddered. Then, taking a deep breath, he rolled Hank on his face, wormed underneath him, wrapped his right arm around a thigh and seized a wrist with his right hand. He picked up his light with his left hand and lifted mightily.

  He went back up the passage at a running walk. He climbed the steps swiftly. He was panting. To lift Hank up and into the old window seemed at first impossible. Then Aggie saw he could do it by removing more bricks. He worked with frenzy. The radio overhead was still going--the feet were still thumping--but it seemed far away and Aggie did not feel safe in that place.

  When his task was ended and he was ready to try lifting Hank again, he stopped to breathe. Overhead he heard a slight creak--a sound disoriented from the others.

  Instantly, he switched off his light. He peered up in the darkness. He saw--some distance away, between two of the floor joists that made the ceiling--a long thin wedge of dim light that disappeared as he looked at it.

  Grimly, he lifted Hank again and thrust his head into the hole. Fiercely, he levered the big man up to it and pushed him through. He plunged after Hank even before Hank had fallen limply on the other side.

  Ther
e was some sort of trap door that opened into the clubhouse. Under a rug, probably. And whoever had put Hank down there had opened the trap a little--and seen Aggie's light--and closed it. Aggie thought of yelling. But it might take the people upstairs many minutes to find him. In the meanwhile--the man who had opened the trap door would have come out, and around the club. Then what? Aggie didn't know.

  The thing to do was to drag Hank to the hole under the sill, leave him there for a moment's reconnoitering, and come back. The tunnel would have to be enlarged for Hank. Aggie squirmed out. He stood in the sumacs, panting, sopping wet with sweat. He heard nothing. He waited, hiding against the side of the building. Still nothing. He ventured to crawl back and shine his light at Hank--and the space under the solarium.

  Nobody. Hank lay still, breathing rapidly. Aggie began to widen the hole--and listen--and work again. Ten minutes later he dragged Hank through it.

  He paused once more to consider.

  Suppose he picked up Hank again--walked boldly into the light--carried him around to the veranda--took him into the club? Was someone waiting for him--out on the shadowy golf course--with a rifle? Would there be a couple of shots--and somebody running away in the night? It was possible. But--suppose he slipped along the side of the club with Hank, and into the lilacs, and through them to where the sumacs met, and from there, down into the woods? Aggie caught his breath and struggled to lift the man. Then--

  a shadow among the black shadows--he began to move.

  Half an hour later, at the edge of the road in front of Sarah's cottage, Aggie waited for a car to pass and went across--palsied, gasping, almost demented by physical strain and sustained fear. He kicked at the screen door and Sarah opened it. He was too winded to speak. He staggered through the living room and into the butler's pantry, where he stretched Hank on the floor and lay flat beside the man, struggling for breath.