What if that was what had happened to Peter? What if he had fallen somewhere and hurt himself? What if he were lying helpless in some corner that I had missed in my searching? But surely he had a good pair of lungs and he would have managed to answer my shouting if he needed help. He would have answered if he could.
There was a clamminess of sudden dread that made my palms damp. Peter might not have come here at all, in spite of his interest in the house. He might have gone down to the rocks along the ocean, or even to the boat-house. Motors of any sort had a fascination for him and in my mind’s eye I could see him heading out to sea, joyfully daring in a boat he could not handle. If I hadn’t been wakened so suddenly from sleep, I might have thought things through a little better. I shouldn’t have come rushing over here alone. I should have gone to Joel and Bruce so that we could each search in a different place. Peter wasn’t here and I had wasted time making the wrong try.
I ran down the steep steps with less caution than I’d planned, and I didn’t pause at the second floor, but went on again, down to the main hall. There I had the feeling that I was being peered at from between the hinges of that tarnished visor on the suit of armor. But the armor was legless and empty.
Armor! What was it I had heard? Had it been Peter who had told me that Theron Townsend of Redstones had collected suits of armor and weapons, and had a room for them in the house? He and Ferris had talked about this. If Peter came here alone, that was the room he would want to see. But I had found no such room in my searching. Wait—whoever had mentioned this had spoken of the basement—of a special room built into the basement. Of course.
I ran back through the rooms of the main floor till I found the basement stairs, glad now of the flashlight whose beam could light my way into those dark regions. There was a skittering again across the broken cement floor, but it did not stop me, and I only brushed cobwebs aside impatiently as I turned the flashlight from side to side.
The door was at the back of the long expanse and it was closed. Its knob balked at my first effort to turn it, but I tried again and the door swung open upon blackness. There were no windows here, so that the sense of airlessness was greater than ever, and the smell of dust was stifling. The floor was of damp, cold stone, like the floor of an ancient castle.
I choked and coughed as I swung the beam of my flash in a wide circle that caught the gleam of metal from all those armored figures which stood about the room rusting now, with the passing years. Everything was here, from helmets and visors to breastplates, skirts of chain mail, loin guards, kneepieces, greaves for the shins and sollerets that covered the feet. I knew something about armor because Peter and I had spent some time reading about the knights of the Middle Ages and we had visited museums to look at armor more than once. If Peter was anywhere in this house, it should be here.
I called to him again and kept the beam of my light moving inch by inch around the room, but no small boy answered me. Only those leering visors stared, an occasional gauntleted hand was raised toward me, and I could almost hear the clatter of hollow laughter from all these empty men. Above the mounted suits of armor the walls had been used to display weapons of various sorts—spears and swords and axes, along with the shields that had been raised against them. When I turned the flash beam upward I saw that the ceiling was vaulted, carrying out the medieval character of the room. Where no weapons had been hung there were tapestries, mildewed now, and the worse for neglect.
Peter would love this place, but he was not here.
I turned off my flashlight to save the batteries and stood still in the center of the long room, listening. If my son were hiding he would surely make some sound in the darkness. But there was not even the skitter of mice in here to break the silence. Yet there was something—not a sound, but something my eyes began to make out as they grew accustomed to the black room about me. It was a faint glow that seemed to come from a far corner.
I turned on my flash and followed its beam, but with the light on there was nothing to be seen—nothing but a patch of blackness on the stone floor. I walked toward it, puzzled, and when I switched off the light again that faint yellow glow seemed to come from the black square.
In moments. I had hurried to the corner, my flashlight beam revealing what appeared to be an opening in the floor where a sliding wooden hatch cover had been drawn back. It was from this opening that the faint glow emerged. I remembered that Ferris had spoken of an underground vault in the room of armor—and this must be it. My light was too weak to penetrate the depths, but it showed me a ladder that dropped out of sight, showed me a broken wooden rung. The break in the wood looked raw and recent. My heart began to thud.
Kneeling above the opening, I tried vainly to see into the room below where a pinpoint of light burned, giving off the glow I had seen. Once more I called for Peter. There was no immediate answer, but something down there moaned faintly.
“Peter!” I called again. “Peter, can you hear me?”
The faint mumbling and moaning came again and I began to talk softly, coaxingly.
“Peter darling, everything is going to be all right. I’m going to get you out of there as soon as I can. Peter, can you tell me if anything hurts?”
The faint tremor of his voice reached me. “My head hurts. And my leg.”
I examined the ladder with my flash, but I didn’t dare trust my weight to a rung lest I too be dropped into the pit of this underground vault. This time when I turned off the flash I realized what made the glow that had caught my eye. Peter had brought his own flashlight with him and it had remained on when he dropped it in his fall. It was still glowing down there, but it might not last too long and he would soon be left in darkness.
“I’m going for help,” I told him. “We’ll have you out of there as quickly as we can. Do you hear me, Peter?”
“I can hear you, Mother,” he said weakly.
I used my flashlight to get back through the rows of armor and through the bulk-obstructed basement to the window that had let me in. I had to find a packing crate to place beneath it so I could clamber out. Then I was up and through, out into the sunlight again, to climb the gate and run toward Spindrift and the help I must get for my son.
12
Before I had gone far across the grounds, I came upon Peter’s friend John, the head gardener. I didn’t want him to try to get Peter out alone, and I told him quickly what had happened, sent him to find Joel, or anyone at all who could come at once to Peter’s rescue.
“Tell him to bring ropes,” I said. “I’m going back and stay with my son. So hurry, do!”
The old man went off at a good pace and I ran back to Redstones. I had become adept at climbing gates, tumbling through windows, and I hardly noticed my barked shins and bleeding knuckles. My anxiety was growing, and so was my self-blame by the time I reached the armor room and ran to kneel at the opening in the floor.
“Somebody will be coming soon,” I called to Peter. “I’ve sent John for help. Are you all right?”
He answered me with a muffled sound of pain, and I knew I had to get down to him. This time it wouldn’t matter if I was dropped into that space beside him. I thrust my flashlight into the band of my slacks to free my hands, and then knelt at the top of the ladder to feel gingerly backwards with one foot for a rung that would bear my weight. The third rung seemed to hold and I began my descent, step by step, testing first and holding tightly to the sides of the ladder as I went down.
The next-to-the-last rung broke, but I dropped only a few inches, landing safely on the stone floor of the room. My flash beam picked out Peter where he lay, curled up in pain, and when I knelt beside him and raised his head, I could feel the lump at the back.
“I think my leg cracked,” he told me. “It hurt a lot when I fell, and it still hurts now.”
The light beam showed me his twisted leg and although his pain seemed my pain, I tried to reassure him. “Someone will come soon. We’ll get you to a doctor quickly. Just lie very still, da
rling.”
“I’ve never had a broken leg before,” he said with a certain pride, and I laughed softly with tears in the sound.
“I could hear you calling me when you went through the basement,” he went on. “But I couldn’t make you hear me. I tried, but my voice wasn’t strong, and after a while I didn’t try any more. Mother, before the others come, will you do something, please? Maybe it will scare you, but I have to know.”
“Whatever you want, Peter.”
“You’ve got a flashlight. Go look at the suit of armor down at the end wall of this place. Don’t be afraid—just look at it.”
His request seemed an odd one, but I turned my light on the rest of that small room and walked about it. Now I could see the steel safes built into the walls, which were the reason for the room’s being, their knobs and dials gleaming as light swept over them. The rusting suit of armor that stood in a corner against the wall seemed out of place, and I wondered why it had been brought down here. As my light beam flashed over it, however, I could see nothing unusual.
“I’m looking at it,” I called to Peter, “but I don’t know what I’m supposed to see.”
“Don’t be scared,” he repeated. “But just open that visor and look inside.”
His warnings alerted me to some unexpected horror, and I was reluctant to raise the grinning metal shield.
“Please,” Peter said. “Mother, I have to be sure.”
I held the flash in one hand and fumbled with the other for a way to part the sections of the visor. The closed edges opened with a clatter upon what would have been the face of the wearer. But what looked out at me was a naked skull—hollow-eyed and lipless, the strong teeth grinning more fearfully than the visor had grinned. I let the visor fall and went back to Peter.
“How did you know? What did you mean—you had to be sure?”
He roused himself to answer me. “The first time I came down today it was because I found the hatch open and I was curious. The ladder was okay and I didn’t fall. So I was poking around down here with my flash and when I saw the armor I opened the visor. I guess what I saw scared me a lot, and I climbed back up the ladder and was going to run home to Spindrift. But before I climbed out the basement window I began to wonder if I’d really seen what I thought I saw. Because if I had maybe the thing that looked out at me was real, and not just a joke of Mr. Townsend’s. If it was real I would have to tell somebody. I didn’t want to really, because then Grandma Theo wouldn’t want me to come here any more. Not alone, anyway.”
For a moment he was silent and his mouth tightened in the light from my flash that I’d set on the floor beside us. His hand reached out to touch me and I held it in my own cold one. Perhaps we comforted each other.
“It was awfully scary coming down the second time,” he went on. “I guess I wasn’t as careful as I was at first, and that rung cracked and I fell from near the top. My head hurt and my leg was twisted, and I was awfully afraid nobody would find me here. It got worse when I heard you calling upstairs and I couldn’t make you hear me. And all the time that awful thing was over there. If it really was what I thought. So I wanted you to check and see. Do you think it’s real, Mother?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. This hardly bore thinking about. If there was a skull behind the visor, then there was likely to be what was left of the whole man concealed in that suit of armor. Concealed because murder had been committed?
“After a while, I guess it won’t be so scary,” Peter said. “When I’m away from here and I get used to it, maybe it will seem exciting—like an adventure. But I’m glad you came. I didn’t want to be here alone with—that. I couldn’t even reach my flashlight because it hurt so much to move, and I knew the beam would burn out after a while, so I’d be in darkness. Then after enough time went by, I’d be just like that—thing in there.”
“Hush, darling,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I did come, and soon there’ll be others and we’ll get you out of here.” But the possibilities of his imagining chilled me.
“We’ll have to tell, won’t we?” he said.
“Yes, of course. But that’s not the most important thing now.”
In the distance I could hear voices. I had told John where to find us, and I called out as loudly as I could. There were answering shouts, and before long footsteps were sounding overhead. I heard Joel’s voice calling me, but inevitably Theo had come too, and I could hear her crying out in alarm, with Ferris trying to quiet her.
“Down here!” I shouted again. “We’re down here in the vault. There’s an opening in the corner. But watch the ladder—it’s got a broken rung.”
They had brought lanterns, which lighted a greater area than our torches, and when Joel held his above the opening, the small room of the vault glowed, showing up its horrid interior. All three were peering down at us through the opening, and I warned them quickly that Peter had a broken leg and a bumped head, so they would have to take care about getting him up. Theo exclaimed in distress and Ferris spoke beyond Joel.
“There’s an old hammock around here somewhere. I’ll see if I can find it. It will make a good sling for getting him up.”
He went bumping about the basement and Joel called down to his son. “Hang on, Peter, and we’ll have you up in no time.”
I could see Theo’s face in the lantern light and the shadows thrown upward made her look old as a witch and as menacing. That she was angry was clear, and of course it was with me.
“What were you and Peter doing in this dangerous place? Why did you bring him here where he could be hurt?”
Peter answered before I could speak, weak but indignant. “Mother didn’t come with me. And it wasn’t Miss Crawford’s fault. I didn’t ask anybody. I just waited till I had a chance to sneak away, and then I came by myself.”
“Then how do you come to be here, Christy?” Joel asked, his tone colder than his mother’s and without the passion of her anger.
I tried to explain. “When Miss Crawford couldn’t find him, she came to see if he was with me. I thought I knew where he might have gone because I’ve heard him talk about wanting to explore Redstones.”
“Then you should have come directly to me,” Theo said severely. “If you had used your head that’s what you would have done, instead of coming over here alone and letting no one know.”
In this case she was right and I had to agree. “I know that now,” I said meekly. “But I did find him and I did get help.”
They both looked down at me with disapproval and I was glad when Ferris came back with the woven hammock in his hands.
The two men climbed carefully down and Peter was folded gently into the hammock. Between them they carried him up through the opening. He groaned once or twice, but he was trying to be brave and cause as little extra trouble as possible. Theo began to croon over him and I knew his care had been taken out of my hands.
“Can you get up the ladder, Christy?” Joel called down to me, still cold and remote.
“Yes, of course,” I told him. “I’ll come right up.”
The lanterns moved away from the opening in the floor, so that once more I had only my flashlight. I picked it up and started up the ladder. But it had taken enough strain on its rotting rungs, and the first one I stepped on broke beneath my weight. The ones above felt rickety too and I was doubtful about trusting them. In the basement above everyone was moving away, and I could see myself left behind and helpless to get out.
“Somebody help me!” I called. “The ladder’s breaking up.”
Joel must have given the burden of Peter over to Ferris, for he came back with a lantern. “I’ve got a rope here,” he said when he saw the problem. “If the ladder won’t hold, I can pull you up.”
“Can you come down first?” I said. “There’s something here you need to see.”
He looked down at me impatiently. “I’d like to get back to Peter. This is no time to be whimsical, Christy. Whatever’s down there can wait.”
“
Yes,” I said. “I’m sure it can. It’s a dead man and he’s probably waited quite a while already.”
I heard his gasp of disbelief and knew he thought I was having aberrations again. But he busied himself fastening the rope to some well-anchored object in the room above, and then came gingerly down the ladder, holding onto the rope. The rest of the rungs held.
“Now show me what you’re talking about,” he said.
Reaction was beginning to set in and my teeth had started to chatter. I couldn’t bear to go over and open that visor again. I handed him my flashlight.
“Look inside that suit of armor over in the corner, Joel.”
It took him only a moment to walk to the corner and open the visor. He came back to me at once. “I don’t know what’s there, but we’ll have to report this. Now let’s get back to Peter.”
With Joel behind me and the security of the rope to hold onto, I managed the ladder safely and crawled out on top. The others were gone from the basement and we hurried upstairs to leave through the front door Ferris had left open. The wrought-iron gate was open too and when we’d gone through it and walked around the house in the direction of Spindrift, we saw Ferris ahead of us carrying Peter, and Theo a tiny figure in sweater and green slacks beside his tall one, fairly running to keep up with his long stride. We caught up with them as they went into the house and Ferris carried Peter, hammock and all, to one of the brocaded sofas in the Marble Hall.
“Rest there for now,” he said, putting him down gently. “I’m going to phone the doctor. Then we’ll get you upstairs.”
Peter looked white with strain and his eyes were closed, his lips firmly shut against the sound he might have made. I pushed past Theo and knelt beside him.
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