The Mansion in the Mist (7 page)

Anthony looked puzzled. "What does
expectorate,
mean?"

Miss Eells laughed. "It's a polite word for 'spit.' That's a wonderful reading of the clue, Em. I'm sure that's exactly what the word means."

"I was not being serious, Myra. Hmm. Wabe. Wabe. Backward it's Ebaw, but that's not very helpful either. Hmm. Hmm." He went back to puffing on his pipe and thinking. Meanwhile, Anthony cleared the plates off the table and scraped the leftover food into the garbage pail. Miss Eells boiled water on the stove in a huge teakettle, so they would have hot water for doing the dishes. Suddenly Emerson let out a loud roar and banged his fist on the table.

"By God! I have it! How stupid of me not to have seen it before!"

Miss Eells whirled suddenly and with a sweep of her arm knocked a teacup off the drainboard of the sink. "Good heavens, Em!" she exclaimed. "What did you find? The answer to the riddle of the universe?"

Emerson smiled. "Well, not exactly that. But something nearly as good. Do you remember the
Jabberwocky
poem in Lewis Carroll's
Through the Looking Glass?"

"Yes, of course I do. But I can't recite it from memory."

Emerson looked smug. "Well, I can. It begins like this:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

See? It mentions 'Wabe,' doesn't it? But, you will say, these are nonsense words in a nonsense poem, and they mean nothing. And the answer is, not necessarily. You see, there is a character in the poem—a real know-it-all type, like me—named Humpty Dumpty. And he tries to explain to Alice what the words in
Jabberwocky
mean. The important part is this: He claims that
Wabe
means 'The plot of grass around a sundial.' Well, Humpty may be talking through his hat, but this clue—probably left by the mysterious rebel Autarch—is important. If there's a sundial on that blasted estate, the Logos Cube is probably buried near it. Doesn't that seem likely?"

Miss Eells laughed. "Em, I don't know if you've noticed it, but whenever you come up with some farfetched explanation, you say something like, 'Well, now, isn't that logical? Isn't that reasonable?' Quite honestly, this
wabe
business seems like pie in the sky. For all you know, the rebel—the guy who left the clue—may be named Cyrus Q. Wabe. Or maybe he scratched that word on there just for the fun of it. Or to throw people off. If this character really did hide the Whatsis Cube, would he have left clues leading to its discovery? Wouldn't he have just destroyed the stupid thing?"

Emerson's face was beginning to get red. "It may not be possible for anyone to destroy the Logos Cube," he
mumbled. "As for leaving clues, he may have hoped that people of goodwill—like ourselves—would come to the cottage, find the card in the vase, and carry the cube away so the Autarchs couldn't get it."

"The logic of all this is as full of holes as Swiss cheese," Miss Eells shot back. "And so is your head."

By now Emerson was getting angry. "My dear sister," he said in a strained voice, "I have been right up to now, haven't I? Well, haven't I?"

Miss Eells sighed helplessly. "I suppose..." she began uncertainly.

"Well, then," said Emerson triumphantly, "I don't see why you should doubt my intuition and my logic in this case. We have to locate that sundial!"

"Did you see any sundials when we were at the estate last night?" asked Anthony timidly.

Emerson sighed. "No, Anthony, I did not. But I have a good idea of where one might be: in that blasted, infernal garden. You see, the Autarchs have tried to make their world look like an old-fashioned English estate. Years ago I went on a historic houses tour in England, and I recall that many of them had sundials in their gardens. It frightens me to think about it, but we are going to have to go into that garden and find the sundial. It might not be there, but it's the most logical place for one.

"As far as I'm concerned, it'll be about as much fun as going down in the crater of a smoking volcano. But it must be done."

That night, the weather got in the way of Emerson's plans. The day was sunny and chilly, but around sunset the sky clouded over, and the chest failed to appear. Meanwhile, the Autarchs were holding a special meeting. One of their servants, a guard at the estate, had spied on Emerson and the others through one of the windows in the Temple. Later, he had followed them down the path and had watched them get into the chest. At first the guard had been afraid to report to his masters, but he knew that the Grand Autarch could read minds, and he decided that it would go easier with him if he just went in and told what he knew. So the special meeting was called. Candles burned in every wall bracket and sconce, and their yellow wavering light played over the polished mahogany table and the faces of the grotesque black-robed people who ruled this strange, gloomy world. The guard stood near the end of the table where the Grand Autarch sat. Like most of the men who patrolled the estate, this was a young man, and he wore a close-fitting leather jacket studded with iron spikes. His hair was long and yellow, and on one cheek was an ugly scar made by a knife. The Grand Autarch had recruited him personally, on one of his trips to earth. On a visit to the city of Montreal, he had contacted the young man, who had no money and no friends and slept on park benches at night. Now the young guard stood nervously rubbing his hands together as he told his tale. He told of the three strange people who had invaded the Temple of the Winds and how they had taken away a small glit
tering object—a coin, probably. As the guard talked, the Grand Autarch grew angrier and angrier. His lips curled into a hateful scowl, and he fiddled with the golden chain of office that he wore around his neck. When the guard had finished making his report the Grand Autarch began to speak. He seemed to be struggling to control himself, and there was a tremor in his voice.

"Do you mean to tell me," he began, "that you made no attempt to seize these intruders? No attempt at all?"

The guard stared at the floor. "I couldn't," he said in a frightened voice. "They were carrying some kind of protection with them—amulets, maybe, I don't know. But I couldn't go near them. I could only watch."

The Grand Autarch glowered scornfully. "You could only watch," he repeated in a dangerously calm voice. "You couldn't do a thing. You were helpless. And so those people were able to escape and carry away something that might be of great importance to us."

The guard wiped his sweaty forehead with his hand. "Yes, my lord," he mumbled. "I couldn't help it, as I—"

He never got to finish his sentence. With a loud cry the Grand Autarch rose from his seat and pointed a long bony hand at the guard. The guard screamed in pain, and the air around him turned to gray smoke. When the smoke cleared there stood a hunched old man with drooping wrinkled cheeks and a few wisps of white hair on his head. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunk into
deep hollows. His spiked leather uniform hung loosely on his skinny withered body.

"Why did you do this to me?" the guard asked. His voice was cracked and shaky, the voice of a man who might be eighty or ninety years old. "I tried to do my duty, I really did."

The Grand Autarch was still boiling with rage. He clenched his fists and sank back into his seat. "I have punished you because you failed. A true servant of the Autarchs would have found a way to stop three silly, helpless people. And why didn't you come to me immediately after you saw them get away?"

"I was afraid," said the guard, who was weeping helplessly now.

"Why don't you kill him now?" said a nasty-looking old woman who sat at the far end of the table. "I hate to see people suffer."

The Grand Autarch shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "He will water the plants in the garden and rake leaves and do other tasks that are fit for elderly servants. Some day, if I feel that he has suffered enough, I will return him to his former shape. Go, wretch. I am finished with you for now."

The guard turned and shuffled away, still weeping. When the door had closed behind him all the Autarchs began to speak at once.

"What do you suppose they found?"

"We should go after them!"

"We need what they've got! And we need vengeance!"

"Who are they? And how did they find out about this place?"

And so on. Finally the Grand Autarch raised his arms and roared,
"Silence!
I still rule here, and I will deal with the problem in my own way. I will pursue these wretched intruders and make them wish they had never tampered with our world. In fact, I shall go tonight. The meeting is adjourned."

The Autarchs got up and left the Council Room, still muttering to themselves. But the Grand Autarch swept his cloak about him grandly and walked to a place in the paneled wall where carved cherub heads smiled amid clusters of carved grape leaves. Seizing one of the heads between his thumb and his forefinger, the Grand Autarch twisted it, and part of the paneled wall swung inward. Stone steps wound down into darkness, and the Autarch snatched a torch from a bracket just inside the doorway. A muttered word from him made the end of the torch bloom with fire, and down he went, along a corkscrewing passage so narrow that his shoulders almost brushed both walls. At last he came out into a crypt, a large room with heavy stone pillars and ribbed vaulting. Set into the walls were oblong niches, and in many of them were coffins. Brass plates glimmered on the sides of the coffins, showing that a certain Autarch had died on such-and-such a date at such-and-such an age. The grim-faced leader stalked on until he came to
an empty wooden coffin that lay in the middle of the floor. Climbing into it, he lay down and crossed his hands over his chest. He muttered a few words in a strange language, and the coffin began to fill with yellow smoke. When the smoke had cleared, the Autarch was gone.

For the next three days, the sky over Shadow Lake was gray and gloomy. Clouded by day and clouded at night. Emerson and the others felt terribly frustrated, but there wasn't much they could do except wait. Meanwhile, at night Anthony began to hear and see strange things. Once he woke from a sound sleep to hear someone whispering outside his door. Rigid with terror, he sat listening. Who was it? What was the whisperer saying? Anthony could almost make it out, but not quite. He didn't dare go near the door, and after a while the whispering died away. On another night, he heard something tapping at his window. It couldn't be a branch, because there weren't any trees close enough to his window to touch it. Still the tapping went on, and with a
sudden cry of fear Anthony rushed to the door and flung it open. There was no one there.

The next morning Anthony looked exhausted—he had hardly slept a wink after the tapping incident. But when Miss Eells asked him if anything was wrong, he merely shrugged and munched his cornflakes. Miss Eells and Emerson knew Anthony pretty well by this time, and they were sure that they would not get anything out of him by pestering him. So they just let the matter drop, and breakfast was eaten in silence.

The rest of the morning was spent cleaning up the cottage. Miss Eells and Anthony did the laundry the old-fashioned way, with tub and washboard and soap flakes. Later they hung the wash out to dry on a clothesline behind the house, while Emerson refilled the kerosene lamps and polished their nickel-plated reflectors. After lunch the three of them played badminton till they were tired, and after a brief nap they went fishing. Emerson steered the boat leisurely around the lake. As he pulled at the oars he wondered if the sky would be clear tonight. In spite of the danger he was itching to go back, because he felt that it was important to follow up the clue scratched on the Brasher doubloon. Besides, Emerson liked danger—it got the blood pumping in his veins, it made him feel alive. But the gray clouds that were rolling in from the west did not make him feel very hopeful—it looked like another night of overcast sky.

When the cottage and its dock came into view, the
three vacationers got a surprise: There, pulled up to the shore, was a rowboat with an outboard motor. And sitting in it was an old white-haired man who calmly puffed a corncob pipe and stared at them with a weary smile, as if to say
At last!
He seemed to be about sixty years old, and his chin was covered with a two days' growth of stubble. He wore a red plaid shirt, gray work pants, muddy combat boots, and a shapeless gray fedora stuck full of fishing flies.

"Evening," said the old man, as Emerson pulled the rowboat nearer.

"Good evening," said Emerson crisply, as he drew alongside the old man's boat. "We're the people who are staying in this cottage. Can we help you?"

The old man sighed. "Well, maybe you can. The truth is, I left my oars at home, and I just found out that I am out of gasoline. So I'll have to ask you to let me stay here tonight or... or help me to get home."

Emerson smiled. "As it happens, we can do either one: I have some extra gasoline, and I even have a spare set of oars. You're welcome to share our not-very-special evening meal and sack out in one of the spare rooms till morning or just go on your way. Whatever you want to do, we'll help you with it."

The old man seemed totally overcome by Emerson's offer of hospitality. Tears came to his eyes. "Thank you... thank you, sir," he said in a voice thick with emotion. "I was lucky to run into decent folks like yourselves. I will be glad to have dinner with you, and then
I'll put some gas in my tank and go on my way. I live on the other side of the lake. It's not so far."