Mad Scientists' Club (18 page)

We mounted one of the ultraviolet lamps so that it shone on the balcony that ran across one end of the Harkness living room. This was to be Homer's stage for his skeleton dance. The other light we directed at the top of the wide, curving stairway that dominated the entrance hall of the house. This was where Mortimer would do his ghost act. Henry could control both lights from a second-floor closet, where he and Jeff set up an operations center to direct everything we did. With a couple of peepholes bored in the wall they could see into both the living room and the downstairs hall, because both of them were two stories high.

Freddy Muldoon was detailed to the attic, where he was supposed to drag chains across the floor and make other acceptable ghost noises whenever Henry called him on the intercom. My job was to operate the dumbwaiter and raise what havoc I could by moving from floor to floor in it. I could also get from the third floor all the way to the basement in no time by using the rope ladder we'd hung in the big laundry chute.

True to his boast, Harmon Muldoon showed up that night, and what followed was pure panic. He had Stony Martin and Buzzy McCauliffe with him for moral support, and we could hear them breaking into the house through a cellar window. We kept quiet while they inched their way up the cellar stairs, and we let them roam around the first-floor rooms and shine their flashlights around until they got overconfident. Then Freddy started to drag a chain across the floor of the attic, and Dinky began to make a weird moaning sound from his perch in the chimney.

Harmon and his friends started for the cellar stairs, but before they got there the noise had stopped. Then it started again, and I could hear them holding a whispered conference in the main hall. They finally screwed up their courage and started to sneak quietly up the main stairway. Just then the big portrait of Simon Harkness that hung over the fireplace in the living room fell to the floor with a crash. Harmon and his friends dashed back down the steps and shone their flashlights around the living room. Two more pictures fell off the walls, and they almost jumped out of their skins. Buzzy McCauliffe flashed his light along the wall where one picture had dropped. He examined the picture and the wall above it.

"Hey, Harmon!" he said in a loud whisper. "There is no way to hang this picture up."

"The hook probably fell out of the wall," said Harmon. "Forget it!"

"It wasn't hanging on a hook," said Buzzy. "There's no wire on the back of the picture."

"Forget it!" said Harmon.

"This sure is a creepy place," Buzzy observed, dropping the picture onto the floor.

Just then the skeleton of Homer Snodgrass danced across the balcony the end of the room. Buzzy caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye.

"Yipes!" he shouted, and flashed his light across the balcony. There was nothing there.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Harmon.

"I saw a ghost up there on that balcony!"

Harmon flashed his light onto the balcony. "You're nuts!" he said. "Stop trying to scare us to death. And keep your voice down."

"I saw a ghost!" Buzzy insisted.

Stony Martin snorted in disbelief. "What kind of a ghost?"

"Smells like rotten eggs," said Harmon, sniffing the air. "There must be something dead around here."

"I told you I saw a ghost," said Buzzy.

Down in the cellar, I threw a little more sulfur powder onto the tiny fire in the furnace grate and scrambled back up the ladder in the laundry chute to the first floor.

"Phew-wee! It's getting worse," said Harmon Muldoon, flashing his light along the wall. "It seems to be coming from this head register. I'll bet there's something dead in the basement."

Something rattled along the balcony at the end of the room, and all three turned in time to see the glowing skeleton of Homer Snodgrass disappear behind the balustrade. Harmon Muldoon let out a bellow, and all three of them bolted from the room into the hall. There, at the top of the great staircase, floated a headless ghost, glowing faintly in the invisible black light. It seemed to be suspended in the air, with no feet under it, as it swayed slowly from side to side in a macabre dance.

The smell of burning sulfur was overpowering now, and a mournful sigh, which seemed to come from every direction at once, echoed through the empty rooms of the house. The rattle of castanets on the living room balcony again made it too much for Harmon and his friends. They made for the cellar stairs in a headlong rush. As they passed the dumb-waiter shaft in the kitchen, I stuck a broomstick out through a hole in the wall and caught Buzzy McCauliffe flat on the ankles. He spread-eagled on the floor with a crash, picked himself up, and beat both Harmon and Stony to the door.

"A big black thing just tried to grab me!" he shouted over his shoulder as he flew past them down the cellar stairs and out the window they had forced open.

If any of the three looked back at the house as they fled across the yard and down Blueberry Hill Road, they would have seen a dim lantern swinging back and forth in the windowed cupola atop the house, where it is said old Simon Harkness used to sit for hours peering through a telescope just to see what his neighbors were doing and whether anyone was trespassing on his property. After we got through laughing, we packed up our gear and went home.

Before long, the town of Mammoth Falls was alive with rumors that the Harkness house was haunted for sure. Several times during the next week the swinging light was seen at night high in the cupola. But passers-by who observed it just hurried by the place and were reluctant to tell their friends what they had seen. Nobody went near the place at night. But there is something about a haunted house that human beings just can't resist, and a lot of people snooped around it in the daytime and peeked through cracks in the boarded-up windows and dared each other to go inside.

Finally Chief Harold Putney ordered Constable Billy Dahr to go out and check the house thoroughly and investigate the rumors of unearthly phenomena. Chief Putney said he would like to do it himself, but he had an important date to play golf with Mayor Scragg. Billy Dahr asked if it was all right if he did it in the daytime, and Chief Putney said, "Of course! You can't see anything at night!"

When we heard this we held a council in Jeff Crocker's barn to figure out what we should do.

"I don't wanna do my ghost act," said Mortimer Dalrymple. "I might get arrested for having no visible means of support."

"Very funny!" said Jeff Crocker. "You couldn't do it in daylight anyhow. Billy Dahr is going to be out there this afternoon!"

Since Billy Dahr represented the law, he didn't have to break into the Harkness house. He plodded up the front steps in his oversized policeman's coat and pried two of the boards loose from the front door. Then he inserted a key in the lock and stepped inside. After a quick glance around, he was about to step out again when a scratching noise attracted his attention. It seemed to come from the fireplace in the living room. Constable Dahr crept noiselessly to the living-room door and peered cautiously inside, wagging his billy stick behind him the way he does when he's walking his beat in the Town Square.

"Who's there?" he said, not loud enough for anyone to hear him.

Since there was no answer he turned toward the front door again with a
hrrmph
. As he did so, every picture fell from the living-room walls and crashed to the floor. Billy Dahr spun around like a startled rabbit. He peered into the living room with his eyes popping. Slowly he circled the room, examining each picture carefully and scrutinizing the walls above them. Then he stood in the center of the room scratching his head. The sound of a clanking chain came from the attic, and a stove lid from the old coal stove in the kitchen clattered to the floor. Billy Dahr dashed into the hall, then padded softly toward the kitchen.

While he was creeping down the hall, I slipped into the living room through the other door and hung the pictures back on the wall. The gag was really quite simple. Henry had planted an electromagnet in the wall behind each picture, and taped a steel plate to the back of each frame. Whenever he cut off the current to the magnets, the pictures would fall.

The scratching noise in the chimney brought Billy Dahr back into the living room again. He stood there goggle-eyed, twitching his mustache from side to side. Then he pussyfooted up to the fireplace and peered intently at the portrait of Simon Harkness. The portrait fell right at his feet, and he jumped back to the middle of the room waving his billy club in the air. Slowly, he backed out into the hall with his eyes sweeping the walls of the room. No sooner had he turned his back than the other pictures crashed onto the floor.

This was enough for Billy Dahr. He started for the front door, but the creaking noise of the dumb-waiter rising in its shaft stopped him once again. Holding his billy club in front of him he tiptoed back toward the kitchen. There was a tapping sound coming from the door to the dumb-waiter. Billy sneaked up on it with his handcuffs in one fist and his club in the other. He pressed his ear to the door and listened for a moment. Then he flung the door open and jumped back with a loud, croaking scream. Hanging by the neck from the bottom of the dumb-waiter was the figure of a man.

Billy Dahr lost no time in getting out of there and into town to make his report to Chief Putney. He found him on the golf course with Mayor Scragg and brought both of them back out to the Harkness house. By this time we had cut the store-window dummy loose from the dumb-waiter and restored everything to order. Constable Dahr had a hard time convincing Chief Putney and Mayor Scragg that there was anything wrong. They trooped through the whole house, and when they had finished, Chief Putney looked at Billy Dahr with a cold-eyed stare.

"When was the last time you had a vacation?" he asked him.

"I don't rightly know," said Billy Dahr, pushing his cap to one side with the end of his billy club. "Mebbe eight years ago, when I took the missus to Bear Lake."

Chief Putney looked at Mayor Scragg, and Mayor Scragg looked at Billy Dahr. "I quite agree," said the Mayor. "Constable Dahr ought to take a long rest."

"Take a long-g-g rest! Take a long-g-g rest!" sighed a voice in the chimney.

"That's right! I quite agree," said the Mayor.

"What was that?" snapped Chief Putney, striding into the living room.

"What was what?" asked the Mayor.

"I could swear I heard a voice come from that chimney."

"Probably just a chimney swallow," laughed the Mayor.

"More than a swallow. It was a whole sentence."

"Maybe
you
need a rest, Harold," said Mayor Scragg, beaming. "Your golf game hasn't been so good lately."

"It doesn't have to be, as long as I play against you!" said the Chief.

"Well, let's get out of here," said the Mayor, moving toward the door. "Obviously this place isn't haunted."

"I'm not so sure now," said Chief Putney, scratching his chin. "I'm beginning to think Constable Dahr wasn't just seeing things after all."

"Oh, pooh!" said the Mayor. "You're letting your imagination run away with you."

"Would you like to make a small bet on it?"

"Well, I'm not a betting man," returned the Mayor, "but if you're silly enough to think this house is actually haunted, I wouldn't mind making a small wager. Shall we say five dollars?"

"No! We won't say five dollars, and I didn't say the house was haunted. I just said that I didn't think Billy Dahr was seeing things. Something is going on here. I just want to bet you won't stay in this house overnight."

"A steak dinner?"

"A steak dinner!"