Nebulon Horror (24 page)

"I thought I was kidding, Willard, but maybe you have such a picture. Have you called the chief about this?"

"Not yet."

"You'd better, don't you think? You hear the eleven o'clock news last night? All that about the kids at the Wilding Nursery?"

"Yes."

"Call the chief," Doc urged. "If he isn't a desperate man right now, I can't imagine anyone who might be. He'll be glad of anything you can tell him, even about doors and ghosts."

Willard Ellstrom said good night and dialed the police station, while at the other end of the just-finished conversation Doc Broderick put down his telephone and returned to bed. After getting himself properly adjusted again, he reached out to extinguish the lamp he had turned on when his phone rang.

His hand stopped in mid reach.

That door. So it wasn't a real door Jerri Jansen had told him about; it was something a lot less easy to come to grips with. Something that would exert a much more powerful force on a child's imagination.

But there'd been still another puzzling thing. There had been the youngster's sudden alarm when she realized she might have said too much. She had been told not to mention that particular door. Not to anyone. Or "we won't get to open it anymore."

We’ll be punished.

Raymond Hostetter had drawn the diagram in the school yard and disappeared. Not right away, true. For several days he had been sheltered at home and then his mother had picked him up when school was over. But the first day she had failed to pick him up and he was vulnerable, he had vanished.

Jerri Jansen had drawn the diagram at the nursery and had been the fox in a game of fox-and-hounds ever since. And now she too was in the clutches of the red-eyed children. To be punished as she obviously feared? As Raymond may have been?

Doc got himself out of bed and reached for his clothes. Three minutes later he was at the wheel of his car, tearing through a sleeping Nebulon on his way to the police station.

O
n leaving the police station, Vincent Otto did not turn toward the apartment by the lake. Instead he went down through the park.

It was a little after one thirty in the morning. He could have looked at the watch on his wrist and known the exact time, but he did not care. He had not cared while sitting in the station, waiting with ever-increasing desperation for something that would tell him his beloved Jerri Jansen was still alive and would be returned to him.

One thirty was long after bedtime in Nebulon. The park pathways were deserted. Vin came to the place where Ruby Fortuna's baby had been taken from its carriage and thrown into the lake. Without slowing his stride, he glanced at the water. In the sky floated a moon that had risen late. The water was alive with its light as though shimmering under the impact of a luminous rain. The leaves of the park trees made a whispering sound.

He finished crossing the park and went along the town's main artery, past Willard Ellstrom's photo studio and Melanie Skipworth's gift shop. A car passed him and slowed, its driver peering at him suspiciously before speeding up again. Cars at this hour in Nebulon were not common, but of course tonight was the exception. Tonight, parents were out searching for
their missing children. All the police cars were prowling.

Vin cut through a darkened gas station and turned down a side street. He came in sight of the library. Careful now, he thought, the chief said he had a man watching the house.

What the chief had said was in fact slightly more complex; He had wanted to station a man in an unmarked car—the department had one that was nevertheless fully equipped—to keep an eye on Elizabeth Peckham's house in case the children turned up there. On arriving in the vicinity, however, the officer had called in to say there was no suitable place for a stakeout. If he parked where he could watch the house, the house could watch him.

The chief had then looked at a town directory, selected a citizen known to him on the next street over, and phoned him. He explained the problem and obtained permission for his man to use the citizen's driveway. Then, calling his officer back, he had said, "Terry, listen. Park in Russell Carr's driveway around the corner at 28 Pine. I've talked to him and it's okay. Use the car for home base, but check the Peckham place every fifteen minutes or so. Got it?"

"Yes, Chief," Terry Hinson said.

On reaching the library, Vin Otto turned off the sidewalk and stationed himself in a clump of hibiscus bushes on the library lawn. The Peckham house was forty yards beyond on the same side of the road. He could see part of it through the trees, and it appeared to be dark. He looked at his watch now, holding his arm up to catch the moonlight on its crystal. He waited.

Eleven minutes later he saw Terry Hinson walking toward him along the opposite sidewalk. Terry had changed to dark pants and a dark sport shirt for the stakeout. In the moonlight he was all too plainly visible, though.

He slowed his stride as he came abreast of the Peckham house. His head turned and he peered across the road at it, apparently searching the yard for any sign of activity. Seeing nothing that required investigation, he quickened his pace. A moment later he turned the corner and vanished.

Vin Otto stepped out of the hibiscus clump and went on down the sidewalk to Elizabeth Peckham's gate. A barrel bolt held it shut, but it was not locked. He slid the bolt and slipped inside, closing the gate after him. Then he paused to remove his shoes, which he left in a patch of darkness at the base of a tree.

The house was partly dark and partly washed by a haze of moonlight that made some of its windows look wet. Moonlight lay in the yard as well, though cut up into patches by the many trees and shrubs. Vin went slowly around the right-hand side of the house, keeping close to the wall. At each of the windows he reached up and pushed against the frame, hoping to find one Elizabeth had neglected to lock. He tried the back door, and there was a door on the other side of the house that he tried. Nothing was open.

He looked at his watch. It was time for Officer Hinson to be walking past again. From a place of safety he watched, and after the policeman had gone by he selected a window to work on. One of those not touched by moonlight, it had two panes of glass in each sash, separated horizontally. The putty was old and partly cracked out.

He had a jackknife that he used almost daily at the nursery. Keith Wilding had once jokingly remarked it was as much a part of him as either thumb. It was never dull. Now it removed with ease the ancient putty from the window of the old Gustave Nebulon house. Almost with too much ease. The pane of glass tipped out before he expected it to. Had he not been quick with his hands, it would have fallen to the ground and shattered.

He set it down carefully and returned the knife to his pocket. Hoisting himself up and supporting himself with one hand, he reached in and turned the latch and pushed the sash up. Then he squirmed through the opening and eased himself to the floor inside.

He had never been in the Nebulon house before or even heard it described except indifferently by Jerri and Olive. This room was a dining room. It had a huge table and other dark, massive furniture. He crossed it and stepped into a hall. Turning toward the rear of the house, he found himself in a kitchen. There were no night-lights burning, but moonlight entered through some of the windows. In the next room he walked into, a huge living room filled with old, dark furniture, the moonlight had trouble passing through heavy brown drapes. Still, he could see enough.

He took time to search the whole downstairs, even opening doors to what turned out to be only broom closets, storerooms, and pantries. If the child he sought was a prisoner anywhere on the first floor, she was well concealed. He turned to the stairs and slowly ascended, using the hand-carved railing to take some of his weight, and stepping warily lest the treads creak. It was not likely the house was deserted. Elizabeth Peckham would surely be asleep in one of the upstairs rooms, and her niece Teresa as well. Unless, of course, Teresa was with the other children.

At the top of the stairs he turned along the upper hall toward the front of the house. Two doors were open there. He paused in the first doorway. The room was a bedroom, a large one. The bed was empty but had been used. He walked in and placed a hand on it but could not decide whether it was still warm because the night itself was unusually warm.

He went through the other doorway into a second bedroom, a smaller one. It, too, was empty. Was the house deserted after all? Could he have switched lights on and really searched it? No, that would have brought Terry Hinson running, and Chief Lighthill would not be pleased at having his stakeout interfered with.

He went along the hall to the rear of the house and discovered some closed doors. There were five of them. Starting with the three on the right, he found the first and second rooms empty of everything, even furniture. The third door was locked.

He turned to the doors on the left and reached for a knob. Hearing something beyond the barrier, he withdrew his hand. It was a woman singing, but not really singing.
Chanting
was more the word. Something like that, anyway. It had no words. At least, they were not English words. Olive had a phonograph record something like it, a recording of ancient religious chants or psalms. He had never liked it. It gave him the creeps.

This did, too. Before reaching for the knob a second time, he had to build up his courage by deeply breathing. Then, holding his breath, he slowly turned the knob and inched the door open.

Before him in the center of an empty room knelt Elizabeth Peckham in a dress as long and dark as the window drapes downstairs. Her feet were bare. Her back was toward him and she held a large glass bowl in her left hand. It seemed to be half full of some kind of white powder.

There were curtains at the room's one window, blocking out most of the moonlight. Nothing was clearly Visible except the diagram Elizabeth was drawing on the floor with powder from the bowl.

C
hief Lighthill finished talking on the telephone and put the instrument down. Rising, he went to the door of his office and looked out into the main room of the station. A sergeant sat at the desk there. "Did I hear Worth Blair a few minutes ago?" the chief asked.

"He's in the back room with Wilding, Chief, getting some coffee."

"Ask them to bring their coffee into my office, will you?"

The two men came in without waiting for their refreshment, and Lighthill motioned them to sit.

"Willard Ellstrom just phoned me." As best he could, he recounted what the photographer had told him about the call from Oregon. They discussed it for ten minutes, trying to find a fresh lead in it. They were still vainly batting it back and forth when Doc Broderick walked in.

Doc nodded to them and sat down and listened. When the next stillness occurred, he filled it in by saying, "Willard called me, too. I got an idea afterward and thought I'd better bring it over here."

He told them about Jerri Jansen's door and her apparent fear of punishment.

Worth Blair said, "It goes right back to those books in Gustave's study. I know it does."

"You've examined the books twice," the chief said.
"
You
haven't found a thing."

"I'm an incompetent cop, that's all."

"Forget it. We're all tired."

Blair beat his fist on his knee and shook his head from side to side while staring angrily at the floor. He said, "Damn, damn, damn." For days he had been like a man tormented by a familiar song, the name of which he could not recall though it was on the tip of his tongue. He felt that a college man with police training ought to do better.

The chief sensed his self-disapprobation and felt sorry for him, knowing that being a good policeman was also a matter of time and experience.

"I should have stuck to writing poetry," Blair said bitterly. "At least I'm getting a book of poems published."

"Sure," the chief said.

Blair stopped pounding his knee and jerked his head up. "That's it!" he shouted. He leaped to his feet and brandished his fists in the air. "That's it! That's it! The publisher!"

The chief and Doc and Keith Wilding looked at him and waited, all of them aware that the office fairly crackled with a charge of something like electricity.

"I was looking for something
in
the books," Blair said loudly, in gleeful triumph. "My mind was stuck on explaining that blasted diagram. And all the time the answer was right there in plain view! Those two books published by the Mason Nicolini Company!"

A patient man, the chief realized his young colleague was entitled to a bit of time. "So?" he prompted gently.