There was something about hunting for “hidden treasure” that he did not like, even though it really was his first time. There were too many things suggesting where things could be, which were dead ends.
Though many people had actually found things while looking for other things.
He stretched his tired limbs, and thought of going to the window.
“Well, what do you think?” Merton asked Mortimer, with a definite tone, looking sideways, at the fascinated face of James, at the door.
“What ...?” James grunted, amused, looking as if he had lost an argument, and that he had not expected them to be there.
Bryson noticed how much James was like the way that he remembered him – when he had been younger. He felt like smiling, but he was too tired, and he wished that he had stayed in bed longer than he had done.
“What are you looking for there?” James voiced, to their amusement, probably trying not to look daft.
Mortimer observed him, with a bewildered expression.
“Something is hidden down here!” Merton confessed, when he moved in the room.
James grunted, and briskly stood at the window.
Bryson smiled intensely, and studied the floor.
Another look at Mortimer showed him that he also had been up too long.
“It’s already becoming tiresome staying in here,” Mortimer confessed to him, slightly surprising him with his sudden openness.
Merton ignored him, sleepily hunched over the floor.
He tapped the floor, listening to see how hollow it was. There obviously was not any stone behind it, and he was sure of it.
“Why would someone put anything down there?” Bryson asked.
“Which looks kind of small to me!” Mortimer spoke.
Mortimer dropped down on his knees, and pulled up a handle, hidden in the rubbish – at the center of the hollow region.
He suddenly looked more energetic.
“How can we check what’s down there?” James said, smiling.
“We would need to tug at it,” Merton replied. “Perhaps we can find out what’s holding it in place.”
“It will be all that rubbish,” Mortimer assumed.
“Let’s check it, before we come to any conclusions.”
The three of them went to different places around the handle, and they simultaneously yanked it – feeling its weight, and that it was thick and heavy wood.
Mortimer’s side of it slightly shifted outwards first – proving nothing was holding it there, and the rest of it came out simultaneously.
As it shifted out, it became clear that it was a trapdoor, covering something.
There was no sign of what was in the darkness beneath it.
Small, ancient webs stretched across the corners of it.
James helped Bryson to squeeze into the gap, swiftly pulling away the layers of webs for him.
At a position where the blackness engulfed him, he fumbled about at the wall.
“Another tunnel!” Bryson revealed, looking down a line of stone steps, vanishing into darkness, somewhere beneath the castle.
“I’ll go and get a torch,” Mortimer said, going away towards the kitchen, leaving him studying its interior.
When he returned, Merton shrugged, and took the torch from him. He played with its switch, seeing how well it worked.
Bryson firmly took the torch, and shifted down the steps, stretching down to a point below.
Mortimer secured his feet, on the steps, making sure that they did not wobble, and that he would not fall.
Bryson watched the torch, making sure that it would not pack in when they needed it. But it had enough power, and it would last.
Mortimer climbed down, turning his head from side to side – as he approached the bottom – seeing nothing but webs shrouding a wall.
Dirt fell over them, but it seemed to be dry. Though a stale odor suggested the contrary.
It had the look of being just a cellar, which someone might have just added to the castle.
It gave him a light shiver, realizing what they could be dealing with though, as he glanced about him, exploring its depths, in the dim light. Had the haunting been coming from down here?
He heard faint sounds, which sounded as if mice were being strangled by a large bird.
Yet, if it did exist, and they could just find something that would prove to the world that there were supernatural phenomena, and solve the mysterious haunting of the castle, it would be worthwhile.
He considered if supernatural elements were part of the universe after all – and not just flaws in it! Their existence could have helped create the universe, and made it function – by a means, perhaps, that no human, alien, or computer would ever fully comprehend.
Perhaps the universe had supernatural dimensions and powers that it needed to exist. If the dangerous powers of the suns never existed, there would not be habitable worlds.
He considered what he would have thought of what he was doing now, when he had first visited the castle.
Mortimer glanced at him, and stared at him, tiredly, with the torch at his face, making it glow in the dark.
“Your passage seems to be a dead end,” James teased.
Mortimer nodded at him. “I can’t see why it ends ...”
“They might have built it for another use,” Merton muttered. “Such as to hide in, if invaders attacked the castle. They would never have found it!”
“What’s that ...?” Mortimer uttered, keeping his voice low. “Do you see something ...?”
He stopped, and pointed downwards.
“It’s a leaver!”
Mortimer crept forward.
The light was strong enough to illuminate it. And he strolled towards it.
On his approach, Bryson perceived that there was not much to see. It was so vague that it hardly looked like anything. Yet it was part of the structure, and he knew that it had a gap leading into somewhere.
Mortimer yanked the leaver, and the wall slowly shifted, with a machine-like noise, to reveal a gap.
“We’ve found something!” Merton uttered with excitement.
Bryson watched Mortimer rushing into it.
Bryson jumped through afterward, plunging into blackness. Mortimer’s arm mechanically shifted, with the torch.
He wiped away the thick gray webs, shrouding him.
His first glimpse startled him, as he had been expecting an identical emptiness endlessly going off into darkness.
It had look of a dungeon. Its space was large, and an amount of objects became visible.
There were ancient objects scattered everywhere, glowing in the dim light, covered in layers of dirt and webs.
He crouched beside a nearby object – an ancient seat.
It had mostly rotted away, with thick lumps of rust and decay over it. And piles of decomposed materials were beneath it.
“It’s a seat!” Merton explained, persuading Bryson to go further in, to another item.
He came to a similar seat, which he shook, causing pieces of it to fall and float about in the air, in the vague light, as if its parts were falling to bits.
Mortimer arrived at their side. They began moving about – checking various objects – treasure hunting – within the range of the light.
Their murmurs were soon telling Bryson that they were unable to identify the objects. Disintegrating boxes of things were heaped about them like mounds animals dig.
Within them, which he downheartedly viewed, he caught glimpses of something – differently shaped, and in a superior condition, to the rest.
They marched over to it, ignoring other strange objects, by their sides, vaguely capturing their attention – but they were mainly things that some past owner had discarded, or had forgotten about.
He had heard tales of people finding valuable and extremely rare antiques, in places where things had remained out of the reach of people, where they could not destroy them or throw them away – where they had remained for decades.
As he approached the object, he saw that it was large, and then that it was another bookshelf.
Mortimer carefully fitted the torch onto an old garden ornament, beside it, so that the light brightly went over it.
“It’s packed with books!”
“Is it another section of the library!” Mortimer uttered, looking confused.
“Someone must have put it there to store them,” Bryson uttered, glaring at the books with interest.
Bryson and James lunged towards them, with their eyes glancing everywhere, engrossed in what they saw.
That section luckily had no dampness, and deterioration had only partially ruined their contents.
They had to have found something, or it would lead to that. However, most of them were in bad condition, with no real value, and apparently never mentioned anything. Although they had similar contents as the original castle library, placed out of the way, by some such as Sir Richard, at an earlier era.
Bryson knew that there were books missing from the outer library. Their contents were empty – as if someone had chosen to put them there for their lack of information – perhaps so as not to give away too much, and give away the location of the money.
“How long do you think it’ll take to check them?” Merton asked, searching through the titles, which were readable, for things in particular.
“I don’t know,” Mortimer moaned. “We may be lucky.
“The others are working outside!” James replied. “Some of them can help us look for it.”
Bryson decided to do what he had done the last time, and to start by checking all the titles.
He soon started wondering how boring the people in those times had been.
He was sure that there was something there.
At a distance, his eyes searched the whole lot, seeing what would become noticeable, but his sight fell on empty, blank shapes. It was as though their spines had rotted away, or had some form of ink dropped on them. But it was their real original covers.
Even though many of them had bits missing, they seemed to have their contents intact.
He held one, unable to see little, in the dim light, and he then greedily roamed through the rest, confirming that they were just books to amuse people of there era.
When they finished, and the torch was going dud, they rushed up to the library with what they had.
Merton and Mortimer then dedicatedly rummaged through the tattered remains of the pages of books, slightly horrified at the state of them – as they were valuable!
They more than likely also would hold a great deal of useful facts, which might help a lot.
Their fingers touched their pages as if they were tissue paper that might crumble away, and be lost forever.
They insisted on leaving pages of them, and books, for further investigation, where they could properly restore and investigate them.
One surprised Bryson with how well he could read it, without trying to decipher it.
“What do you have?” James asked, becoming bored.
Merton leaned over, to examine it, and turned interested in it. Bryson then handed it over to him. He was curious what he would make of it.
Bryson tried to imagine what kind of person had written it.
And he wondered why the entrance had been hidden away under the floor.
Though Sir Richard had been eccentric, and had been capable of doing strange things, he doubted if he had known it was there.
“Let’s check them some other time,” Bryson informed them, seeing that Mortimer was becoming tired, and temporarily losing interest in their latest discovery.
“Good idea!” Merton replied, standing up.
Merton handed back the book.
Bryson started searching behind the shelves, at the inner library. Then for where the cable there led to, as it was not visible.
“Where do want to go?” Bryson asked, playing for time, while he tried to find it.
“We want to go back to the vault,” Mortimer announced firmly.
“We first want to collect a piece of equipment that we left out there,” Merton replied. “It’ll also be a good idea to check the others!”
“They’ll be looking in other places now,” James muttered.
“Where does that wire lead?” Merton moaned.
“They had to have covered it up!” Merton answered.
Merton and Mortimer followed the wall, occasionally glancing at the floor and roof for any signs of anything.
“I cannot see it,” Merton spoke, at the doorway.
They looked about the outer walls, seeing nothing.
Mortimer tapped the wall, about the doorway. It was, as it looked, solid.
Bryson observed him tapping at the wooden doorway, which thickly surrounded the entrance, where the door was at the middle of. And he saw Mortimer recognize something, and that he resembled a dog homing in on something.
He watched him tap the doorframe, showing him that it had a distinctly different sound.
Bryson banged it, trying to acquire some kind of insight into what was there; but it only sounded hollow, and that the wood there was thinner.
Mortimer then spotted something, and he moved the whole section of the doorframe, to its side, leaving a slight gap. And Bryson shoved it further, and the sheet of wood slid smoothly to the side, revealing a mechanism, with the cable wrapped around its spindle.
The device was magnificent! And it was far from being Victorian ... It looked more like machinery from the Second World War (perhaps even a little later).
Mortimer activated a red button, and they watched its small engine shudder, making screeches – showing him that it was either broken or jammed.
He then pressed it again, stopping it. And Bryson saw that the cable had been tangled by them opening the shelf out in an unconventional way, and that it had caught on a bit of metal on the device, which he untangled, and then activated it again.
The shelf opened out, and switched itself off.
“What era do you think it’s from?” Merton asked Mortimer.
“The Victorians never had anything as advanced as that,” Mortimer concluded.
Bryson then activated the red button, making it close.
Chapter 43
Another Death
They did what they could to check what the others were doing before they walked to the wood.
James left them, and joined Sarah, as she cheerfully left a taxi, with bags of souvenirs, from the village – while vaguely considering what the taxi driver was up to, trying to warn her of something.
The others notably seemed to have lost interest in looking for anything in that part of the wood.
The wood had returned to being virtually empty – with only a few distant sounds.
Merton and Mortimer walked slowly, obviously not bothered about how long it would take to arrive at their destination. But when they approached the vault, Mortimer swiftly took them towards the tombs, to get the piece of equipment.
Bryson wandered down the steps, expecting to see the figure of the reporter – with a resemblance of a ghost – with his image firmly implanted in his mind.
He was sure that he had even dreamed of the place.
Mortimer seemed obsessed with the tombs, probably because it looked like a haunted place, and a normal location that they worked at.
The piece of equipment turned out to be a small tape recorder, which Mortimer had not remembered, and which was in an unobservable place, between two tombs, where it could gather sounds.
When they reached the top of the stairs, Bryson soon started to become interested in it, as he thought over what it could have captured, and it had obviously recorded many sounds.
As they rested, in the upper chamber, Mortimer finally activated it.
Its batteries were weak, from much use.
Sounds of Mortimer appeared first, and then he heard the voices of James’s friends rushing around – with some of them astonishingly opening the tombs, while lau
ghing, as they had finished hidden bottles of wine.
As they had left, the machine had deactivated, and another sound had appeared. Footsteps had echoed through the chamber, going specifically to a place at the back – with no vocal sounds.
Bryson listened to the reporter lifting or moving something heavy – trying to grip whatever it had been. He then had stopped abruptly, and Bryson heard himself walking down the stairs.
The amount of time that it had taken Mortimer to emerge had been surprisingly short.
Then, incredibly, more noises appeared, afterward, showing that the reporter had gone straight back to the exact same place, after they had gone into the wood.
“What do you think that guy was doing?” Bryson muttered, mainly to himself.
Merton shrugged, showing his lack of interest.
Bryson grew determined to obtain facts, and he went out of the building, to search for his footprints.
Bryson and Mortimer then started following them, from where he had left the vault, after he had returned there. And they went from the vault in the opposite direction, from where he had arrived from.
“So you want to look over there?” Merton uttered, catching up with him, desperate to obtain some information on what he was doing.
“They go back to castle anyway,” Mortimer continued, while pointing to a place further out, where the prints sharply turned, going towards the castle.
They were at a distance away that they would never have seen from the pathway.
While they followed them, it became apparent that he had gone through places that had hidden him.
It astonished him that they looked the same as the other prints that had gone from the castle.
He started to wonder why he had not asked the police, the night before, to interrogate the man again, to ask him why he had returned there, and if he had entered the castle. They had his shoe prints to confirm it! How many people wore the same shoes, with that type of tread?
He attempted to remember every detail of the marks, and thought of drawing them.
The Lost Treasure Map Series Page 15