The Mansion in the Mist (9 page)

The Autarch rubbed his sore shoulder and stumbled back down the steps to the path. "I'll make you wish
that you had never been born, little man," he snarled. "Being skinned alive would be a picnic compared to what I'm going to do to you. Just wait."

"I can wait," said Emerson placidly. "Your threats mean nothing to me. But if you're not out of here in two minutes, I'm going to come down there and beat knobs on your head. Understand?"

The Autarch paused a moment more. Then, turning abruptly, he strode off the path and made his way through the long grass to the place where his boat was pulled up onto the sand. After a little struggling he shoved the boat out onto the lake and climbed in. Once more Emerson heard the sound of oars splashing as the rowboat disappeared into the blackness.

"Oh, good Lord!" breathed Emerson, as he mopped his face with his handkerchief. "Mercy upon us all! It
worked!"

Two figures popped up from the place where they had been crouching, below the parlor windows. Anthony and Miss Eells had not really gone to bed. In stocking feet, they had tiptoed down the back staircase and crept along the hall till they reached the parlor windows. From there they had listened to the strange battle between Emerson and the menacing creature from another world.

Miss Eells stumbled out onto the porch, with Anthony close behind her. "What worked?" Miss Eells asked in a bewildered tone.

Emerson heaved a deep sigh. After the fight he seemed
weary, but he tried to act as if he was in control of the situation. "I guessed that the Autarch would be practically powerless in our world. Otherwise, why would he bother to make himself look like an old fisherman? Anyone who can fry someone's brains with a gesture doesn't need to use trickery to get what he wants. Or knives, for that matter. So I decided that I could push him around."

"But how come you were so sure?" asked Anthony, who was amazed at Emerson's calmness in the face of danger.

Anthony raised the beam of his flashlight, and he saw that Emerson's face looked drawn and haggard. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Once again Anthony asked his question. "How did you know? Weren't you afraid?"

"I... I wasn't sure at all," said Emerson faintly, "Not... not until I tried." And with that he collapsed in a heap on the splintery boards.

A few minutes later Emerson awoke. Anthony had placed a folded jacket under his head for a pillow, and Miss Eells was waving a bottle of smelling salts under his nose. Emerson coughed and sputtered and glanced blearily around. He was not the fainting type—or so he thought—so his present situation really embarrassed him.

"I... I seem to have collapsed," said Emerson vaguely. He struggled to his feet. "So our nasty enemy is gone," he muttered, as he brushed lint off his sleeves. "Let us hope that..."

Suddenly there was a sound of glass breaking. In a flash Emerson guessed. So did Anthony and Miss Eells.

"Good God!" exclaimed Emerson, clapping his hand to his mouth. "You don't suppose..."

Without another word Emerson, Miss Eells, and Anthony dashed up the front stairs and down the narrow hall. They stopped in front of the door of the room where the chest sometimes appeared. From a small table in the hall Emerson snatched a candle, and after a little scrabbling in a drawer he found some matches and lit it. Into the room he stepped, followed by the other two. Emerson walked straight toward the window and raised his candle high. What everyone expected turned out to be true—the purple pane was shattered. Pieces of violet colored glass lay on the floor of the room. And there was the small rock that had done the damage. The magic chest would never return to this room, no matter how brightly Arcturus shone. This pathway to another world was blocked forever.

Emerson was trembling with rage. He stood there silently staring at the broken windowpane. The candle shook in his clenched fist, and his shoulders hunched up as his whole body grew tense. Then Emerson let all his anger out in one long, shuddering sigh. He stooped and picked up one of the broken glass fragments.

"Well, I guess that's about it," he said. Letting the glass shard fall back to the floor, Emerson turned back to his friends. "I suppose we could glue the pieces together," he said glumly. "But I have always heard that the magic flows out of an enchanted object once it has been broken. We may as well pack up and head for Hoosac. I was getting tired of this vacation anyway."

Miss Eells stepped forward and touched her brother sympathetically on the arm. "Maybe it's all for the best, Em," she said softly. "You've cheated the odds twice by going to that place. Anthony has cheated them three times. But eventually the law of averages would have caught up to us. We would probably all have been killed before we found that Whatchamajigger Cube."

"Logos Cube," said Emerson, who hated to hear people use the wrong names to identify things.

"I think Miss Eells is right," Anthony put in. "And anyway, I don't really think those creeps can take over our world. They'll have to stay where they are."

Emerson glanced at Anthony, and he looked as if he was about to say something, but then he changed his mind and led the way out of the room. In silence the three of them clumped down the stairs and then walked around, fastening the first floor windows and bolting the doors. When this was done, each took a candle and climbed the steps to bed. As he wearily took off his clothes, Anthony thought that he would be glad to be back home in good old Hoosac. But this was only partly true. Anthony didn't like the danger they had been put into, but there was still a large question floating around in his mind: Had they seen the last of the evil mansion and its sinister inhabitants? If they had found the Logos Cube and smashed it, then they would be sure they were safe. As it was now, they would never know... until it was too late.

The next day the three vacationers packed up their things and straightened up the old cottage for the final time. They locked the doors and threw their luggage into Emerson's boat, and soon they were putting across the quiet waters of the lake. It was late August, but a chill was in the air, and leaves had already started to turn. Autumn was coming to this lonely northern outpost. Emerson steered toward the little settlement on the north side of the lake. It wasn't much—just a few houses, a trading post, a church, and the local headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. When they got there Emerson went straight to the Mounties' headquarters and explained that he and his friends needed to get home as quickly as they could. The officer on duty told him that a pontoon plane would be arriving around one in the afternoon, and for a fee the pilot would take them to the town of Withers, where they could catch a train to Montreal. From there they could fly to Minneapolis, which was only a hundred miles from Hoosac. So Emerson sold his rowboat and the outboard motor, and they settled down at the trading post to wait for the plane.

A few days later the three of them were back home, going about the normal routine of their lives. Anthony wandered about the town during the day and shelved books at the library at night. When his parents asked how his trip had been, he shrugged carelessly and said that it had been "all right." That was the most that they
could get out of him. Mrs. Monday was disappointed that he had not brought back any postcards or souvenirs—but then Anthony had never cared much for things like that.

August turned to September, and the usual breathless muggy heat of late summer stayed on and on. After Labor Day Anthony went back to school. But the dark mansion and its evil inhabitants stayed in his mind. What were they doing in their moonlit world? What sort of nastiness were they plotting? Emerson was pretty sure that the Grand Autarch had smashed the purple windowpane, and he was also convinced that the chest was not the only pathway between our world and the other one. If it had been, the Autarch would hardly have done something that would leave him stranded in northern Canada. There had to be another way, one that only the Autarchs knew of. But Emerson had searched the island before they left, and he had found nothing but trees and rocks and weeds. Maybe now the Autarchs would stay in their little kingdom and not bother the inhabitants of Earth. Maybe—but Anthony had his doubts.

A week went by. The heat wave broke and autumn winds began to blow in the valley of the Upper Mississippi. The leaves on the tall wooded bluffs turned and began to fall. One sleepy Saturday afternoon Anthony was sitting in a window seat in the Hoosac Public Library. He had a feather duster in his hand, but he had gotten tired of dusting, so he just sat and watched the
wind strip the yellow leaves from the elm trees across the street. The library was nearly empty. Old Mr. Beemis was in the East Reading Room playing chess with one of his friends, and a grim old woman in a black dress was up at the front desk arguing with Miss Eells about some adventure novels that she felt were not fit for young people to read. Because they were in a library, the argument had to be carried on in whispers, and this amused Anthony. From where he was sitting he could see the two of them wagging their jaws at each other, though he couldn't make out what they were saying. Finally the woman turned and stalked away. Anthony heard the inner doors of the library hiss shut behind her. With the duster still in his hand, he ambled toward the main desk. Miss Eells was shaking her head and laughing quietly. When she saw Anthony approaching she smiled, but then another laughing fit came over her. When it was over she sighed and wiped her face with a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

"Oh, my Lord!" she said, shaking her head. "That woman belongs in an institution! If we did what she wanted, there'd be a huge bonfire of books out behind the library. Fortunately everybody on the Library Board thinks she's a nut, so I suppose she's harmless. But I can't help arguing with her, all the same."

Anthony frowned. He had a favor to ask. "Miss Eells?"

"Yes, Anthony? What is it?"

"Do... well, do you think maybe we could get out
of here early today? It's nice out, and I think it would be fun to take a drive down the river."

Miss Eells laughed again. This was one of those days when everything seemed to strike her as funny. Then she pulled herself together and tried to act businesslike. "Anthony," she said quietly, "if I closed up shop and got out of this place every time I felt like it, I'd be out of a job pretty soon. I'm afraid I'm stuck here till four, when Miss Pratt comes in to relieve me. But if you'd like a late afternoon jaunt down the river, I'd be delighted. Why don't you call up your folks and tell them that you'll be having dinner with me? We can go south a little way and then angle off into the hinterlands and maybe take some roads we've never been on before. Then we'll come back and stuff ourselves at Reifschneider's, that wonderful German restaurant where you, Emerson, and I ate once. Sauerbraten and red cabbage and the works! Sound good?"

Anthony nodded enthusiastically. "Sounds great!" He glanced over his shoulder at the big electric clock that hung over the main doorway of the library. It said five after two. "I'll go find something to do," he said cheerfully. "The Winterborn Room does need dusting, and somebody spilled a Coke on the floor in the smoking room, so there's sticky stuff next to one of the armchairs. See you."

Anthony did a lot of cleaning up tasks, and Miss Eells read one of the rip-roaring adventure novels that the old
lady had condemned. Time passed, and at last four o'clock arrived. Mr. Beemis left, and Anthony and Miss Eells followed as soon as Miss Pratt walked in. Soon they were driving down a two-lane road that ran on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi river. Above them loomed tall limestone bluffs where trees waved in the wind. Now and then a shower of red and yellow leaves would come drifting down onto the car, which was still wet from the morning's rain. They drove on, singing football songs, like "Buckle Down Winsocki," "On Wisconsin!" and "The Notre Dame Victory March." After half an hour they came to a side road that angled off through a cleft in the bluffs. A wooden sign said:

NEW STOCKHOLM 13 mi.

DANZIG 6 mi.

ARETHA 28 mi.

Miss Eells slowed down and turned left onto the narrow side road. "I've never been to any of these towns," she said in answer to Anthony's questioning look. "And considering how long I've lived in these parts, it's high time that I investigated one or two of them. Okay by you?"

Anthony said yes, it was fine. He liked to explore, and he knew that Miss Eells didn't mind getting lost. So he just settled back and enjoyed the scenery. First they passed through rugged country where steep hills rose on either side of them. Here and there they would
see a collapsing barn, or a deserted farmhouse with boarded windows, or a lonely gas station with cars rusting to pieces in a field nearby. They passed through Danzig, which had a gas station, a general store, a Grange Hall, and a few houses huddled together. That was it— not even a post office. On they drove, as the sun sank lower in the west. Finally they came to New Stockholm, which was a bit bigger than Danzig—about 500 people, Miss Eells guessed. It was clear that the town had once seen better days: The Masonic Temple was quite a production, with stone lions in front, a red granite staircase, and a greenish copper cornice on the roof. And on the side streets were some old mansions that had probably belonged to rich people years ago. Anthony loved old houses and always tried to imagine who had lived in them and what their lives had been like. Suddenly Anthony gasped.

Miss Eells pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car, and turned off the motor. She turned to Anthony, who looked pale and frightened. "Good heavens, Anthony!" said Miss Eells in a worried voice. "Whatever is the matter?"